In this strange complex of time and space anything can happen

It's been a lovely weekend. I've done some errands, gone shopping, lounged about in lady_lugosi1313's garden, worked out some ideas for a lecture on Dracula I've been asked to deliver, eaten some lovely food and of course live-tweeted the latest Cellar Club film. Just the kinda stuff a girl can do when she's no longer devoting all her evenings and weekends to a largely hopeless cause! Anyway, talking of live-tweeting, I thought I'd get another few Twitter threads down here.

( 18. Sing-along-a-Wicker-Man in Sheffield, 20 November )

( 19. Island of Terror (1966), dir. Terence Fisher, broadcast 26 November )

( 20. A Candle for the Devil (1973), dir. Eugenio Martín, broadcast 10 December )

In June, for the sake of some exercise and something to do in a COVID-afflicted world, I walked down to Kirkstall to take some photos of the ITV studios there which appear in the 1979 adaptation of M. R. James' Casting the Runes (LJ / DW). I've been waiting ever since for it to snow, so that I could have a go at visiting another of the production locations in the right weather conditions, and on Thursday it did. Sadly, I couldn't go off on a jolly on Thursday itself, or Friday, as I really needed to finish the first draft of the paper I was writing before the weekend. But the snow was still more or less hanging on today, so I decided it was time to get out there.

This time, I visited St. Mary's Street, where the rectory in which Karswell lives is located. I knew that the actual church there was long gone - even in the 1979 production, you can see that it's semi-ruinous, and indeed in some shots you can actually see JCBs etc. on the site, presumably preparing to demolish it. What I didn't know until I got there, though, was that the building used for the rectory itself is actually still there, at the back of the site where the road does a dog-leg. So that was quite an exciting discovery.

My pictures are far from a perfect match for the screenshots from the production itself. The snow conditions would have been much better on Thursday when the snow was falling, as it is in that section of the production. As with my last trip, I also quickly found that neither of the cameras I had with me (my actual digital camera and my phone) could replicate the shots perfectly. In particular, the cameras used on the production obviously had the same kind of long lenses which allow newspaper photographers to make it look like loads of people on a beach are all really close together because the distance between the foreground and background is telescoped. My pictures of the rectory aren't well-matched to the screenshots, because I didn't expect it to be there so didn't take along any reference pictures. Even when I did have reference pictures, I couldn't always match the angles precisely, because there are currently a load of builders' huts immediately to the right of the pedestrian bridge as you look at it which blocked a lot of the views. And there has been a lot of building work across the New York Road (a new road which goes to York, obviously, not a road to New York) from the site since the original production was filmed.

Nonetheless, I had a reason to go out of the house, I got some exercise, and I saw details in my city which I wouldn't have paid any particular attention to otherwise. ( The pictures follow under this cut )

To help put the above in context, here are a couple of general views of the area as it really is now:





On my way home, I walked past an advertising hoarding at the bottom of Cross Chancellor Street. For those who aren't local, I should explain that the people charged with naming streets in Leeds have for some reason historically been peculiarly unimaginative. Rather than give each street its own individual name, they frequently just take one name (e.g. Harold, Welton, Hessle, Thornville, Estcourt) and simply give a whole batch of streets that name, distinguishing between them via the second part of the name. So you get Harold Terrace, Harold Grove, Harold Avenue, etc. Sometimes, when one street intersects with another, the second one is called 'Cross [first one]', e.g. Chapel Street and Cross Chapel Street. Here, the result has been Cross Chancellor Street, which makes me smile every time I see it.

Anyway, I took a moment to look closely at the adverts pasted up on it, and especially the dates of the events they were advertising. As I had strongly suspected, they turned out to be a bit post-apocalyptic. Not all of them specify a year, because the people who designed them didn't expect them to be up long enough for there to be any ambiguity about that. But they are all for events between February and May 2020, most of which must never have taken place. It's going to take us a long time to come back from this. :-(



( Post-apocalyptic adverts )

Well, I am really, really happy for you tonight, America! It's just great to see people dancing in the streets for something which is actually good for once.

I must say I've never found Biden a hugely exciting candidate, and I was very worried for a long time that the Democratic campaign was relying too heavily on merely pitching him as 'not Trump', rather than offering enough that was positive and different. But I didn't follow the campaign at all closely. Maybe he offered more than I could see, or indeed maybe just not being Trump was enough this time? Certainly, Trump has set the bar for being better than him extremely low indeed. Just having a grown-up in charge who doesn't respond to a global pandemic by claiming it's a hoax, blaming it on the Chinese and suggesting people inject themselves with bleach will be a big positive change.

As for Kamala Harris as VP, what an amazing historic first and a wonderful precedent for all women and girls, but especially those of colour.

I just hope that one way or another the transition of power happens smoothly, all Trump's legal challenges come to naught, and his supporters don't rise to the violence he's already been inciting them to.

Meanwhile, those of us elsewhere can hope that Biden might reverse the tide of isolationism which has seen American pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement, the WHO, UNESCO and heaven knows what else. And in Britain specifically we can cross fingers that Biden's obvious commitment to the Good Friday agreement will push our own horror-show political leaders towards a softer Brexit, and at the very least enjoy the sweet, sweet knowledge that N*gel F*rage lost £10,000 betting on Trump winning. Muahahahaha!

I synchro-watched this with lady_lugosi1313 on Friday from a Talking Pictures TV broadcast which we'd both recently recorded. I have seen it before of course. I can't remember how old I was when one of the terrestrial TV channels (probably BBC2) did a late night Poe / Corman / Price season, but that was my first introduction to all three of them, and as I know I was avidly reading Poe by the age of about 14, it must have been before that. Later, I also had the pleasure of attending a Masque of the Red Death-inspired actual Masquerade Ball in 2006, which was quite, quite wonderful in many ways. But all of that was before I started writing regular film reviews here, so I haven't actually said anything about the film.

Price's Prospero is just great, and it's in many ways the definitive role for him. (Though actually, I could readily say that of many of his other roles coming to think of it.) He starts out as a cartoonish villain, proclaiming things like "Burn the village to the ground!" and is at his cattiest best when he tells a nobleman offering his wife as 'payment' to let them come into the castle that "I've already had that doubtful pleasure". But as the film goes on he gradually reveals, mainly to Francesca, something more of his inner jadedness and torment, and indeed an almost philosophical world-view. Juliana, his Lady Macbeth-ish wife, has much simpler motivations, throwing herself eagerly into the worship of Satan because she thinks it will bring her immortality and triumph over her competitors. But Prospero - for all that he is certainly petty and cruel at the same time - does it more because he is disillusioned with the world and the limitations of the Christian faith. It's a complexity which Price unveils and sustains in his unique fashion, as he did repeatedly throughout Corman's Poe adaptations. And, again as so often, we see it comprehensively deconstructed at the end of the film, when the Red Death appears and proclaims that he is simply death - not Satan or Satan's servant come to reward Prospero for his devotion.

But this is not just a great Price film. It's a great film with Price in it. His villainy would fall flat without the courtiers cruelly laughing along as his humiliates their fellows, Hop-Toad gets his fiery revenge on Alfredo (in the gorilla suit) for humiliating his wife, and Francesca's lover Gino and father Ludovico are forced to play poison dagger roulette in front of her. Visually, it's beautiful, from the howling wind and monochrome winter landscape outside the castle to the luxury within. I have a better appreciation now that I've read up a bit on Hammer's studio sets for how expensive and impressive the interior castle sets must have been at the time, with the way you can see across one huge room and through arch-ways into another, expanding away into the distance. And of course we all remember the striking coloured rooms with their details of Moorish window shapes, suitably coloured flowers and tableware. In the final, darkest room, as she approaches the altar for the ritual which she believes will make her Satan's bride, the lighting on Hazel Court is absolutely perfect, making her face and a plume of smoke from the incense stick she is carrying stand out just enough from the darkness. The hallucinogenic sacrifice scene which follows also makes good use of sound, creating an uncanny, out-of-body feel as we see but don't hear her screams, while a similar device is used to convey the impact of the Red Death in the final scenes as the bustle and music of the ball cedes to silence and slow, hypnotic motions as he passes by.

Talking Pictures quite deliberately broadcast this film now because the coronavirus pandemic gives it a new relevance, and I applaud the decision. Watching it with COVID eyes, we engaged in some discussion as the film went on about how the red death eventually gets into the castle, which neither us of could remember clearly. Was Francesca an asymptomatic carrier, so that Prospero was effectively punished for the lust that made him bring her inside? What about Gino and Ludovico, her lover and father, whom Prospero holds and visits in his dungeons? Who was touching or breathing on whom? But this isn't how the logic of the film works at all. Though on the surface the figure of the Red Death declares that he claims peasant and prince, worthy and dishonoured alike, in fact it is very much a morality tale, in which he enters into the castle to punish Prospero and his guests for their selfish cruelty, while allowing the innocent and good-hearted Francesca to escape. This is all too tempting a line to pursue in a drama, where it delivers the reassuring message that if we behave well enough, we too will be safe. But COVID has made us all perhaps more aware than ever that this sort of moral take on disease is no morality at all, since its logical conclusion is that the sick are to blame for their own suffering. That is a very harmful belief to transfer to real life.