In this strange complex of time and space anything can happen

A General Election has been called, and I am the chair of a Liberal Democrat constituency party in a very, very winnable target seat. So I am unlikely to get much time for LJ / DW until after it has finished. BUT I've recently been to three very cool performances of different kinds, so I am damn well going to make the effort to record them before they entirely disappear from my memory.

This first one was another staged reading of an unproduced Hammer script held at De Montfort University's Cinema And Television History (CATH) Research Centre, similar to the ones I have been to before of The Unquenchable Thirst of Dracula (LJ / DW) and Zeppelin v. Pterodactyls (LJ / DW. This time, though, rather than being part of the Mayhem Film Festival in Nottingham, it was produced by kierantfoster, who has just completed a PhD on the unmade scripts, and got some postdoctoral funding to put it on. He told me he would be doing this at the Vampire Festival I went to in July (LJ / DW), so I kept a careful eye out in the months that followed, leapt on the tickets when they came out and enthusiastically recommended it to all my horror-loving friends. Kieran even commissioned a special poster by Graham Humphreys just for the event:


JohnJJohnston was kind enough to offer me crash space at his flat in south London for the night, so we met up beforehand for a bite to eat, strolling through Soho past Hammer House (where the studio's offices once were) on the way:


Then it was on to the cinema where more or less everyone who was involved with Hammer and is still with us was there - Caroline Munro of course, because she had a part in the reading, but also Judy Matheson, who had contribute a voice-over, and Madeleine Smith and Renee Glynne (script supervisor), I assume just because they wanted the fun of being at a Hammer performance, not to mention all the people who do Hammer art, and books, and run Facebook groups.

The set-up for the reading itself was similar to the other ones I've been to - a cast of actors, most with one major part and a couple of minor ones, reading the script with appropriate body-language and accents, with occasional music and animations projected onto the screen behind them to help the story along. Here is Jonathan Rigby doing a bit of opening narration, before settling down into his major role for the evening of the ageing, alcoholic stage magician Pendragon:


Having read up a bit on the history of the script and its various woes before the performance, I found that the most pressing question I had for kierantfoster in the bar before things began was, "Is it actually a good story?", to which he replied "Er, it is now." From this I gathered that judicious editorial work had been done - but I still have to say that the plot-line was pretty bonkers and hard to make much coherent sense of. Besides which a fortnight has already passed since I saw it, so my memory of it may not be particularly sharp.

Still, these are the outlines as far as I can remember. The story is set in mid-70s (when the script was originally written), and the major locations are Bermuda and London. Bermuda beach, we gradually learn, is where Vampirella first fell to Earth, in the form of a bat, after an alien race called Akrons destroyed her home planet, Drakulon, where the rivers run with blood. There, she met alcoholic stage magician Pendragon, who helped her adjust to life on Earth and took her to London where her alien powers lent his act a new lease of life. But she cannot fully remember who she is or where she came from, and is only able to access her past in scant fragments via hypnosis with the help of her boyfriend, Allan. Meanwhile, planes and ships are disappearing in the Bermuda Triangle. They are scooped up, scanned, and then either returned or destroyed. And in London, a scientific organisation called Space Operatives for Defence and Security (SODS), of which Allan is a part, are trying to work out the cause of multiple cases of apparent mass murder and mutilation across the globe.

Early in the story, Pendragon and Vampirella perform their show at a London casino, but we also notice that a strange blue-eye man is tracking Vampirella. He turns out to be one of the Akrons who destroyed her planet, who is also operating the alien base which has been plucking vehicles out of the Bermuda triangle. Vampirella inevitably ends up captured and transported to the base, where she sees horrible visions of brains in jars, but initially she is returned to SODS, where the team are struggling to get their supercomputer to help them work out the cause of the mystery deaths. Their efforts, though, are undermined when their chief (played by Caroline Munro, though in a role originally intended for a man) turns out to be an alien infiltrator, whereupon Vampirella kills her. Vampirella is transported to the alien base again, where she this time confronts the blue-eye man and learns about her past and his role in destroying her planet. He suggests that they should team up and become all-powerful together, but instead she reveals the identity of the base to SODS, who destroy it. Vampirella escapes back down to Bermuda beach, where Pendragon is sitting, and they leave together.

Vampirella as a character originated in a series of comic books, and the story sort of makes sense on that level - casinos, aliens, teams of scientists, kidnappings, supercomputers etc. Indeed, it may have worked best not as a live-action film, as Hammer were planning, but as an animation, where the very staccato story with sudden jumps from one scene to another without much obvious logic behind them might have seemed less surprising. I think it also suffered pretty badly from just having too many characters in it, so that none of them was very well-developed. Still, the core pairing of a washed-up but charmingly paternalistic Pendragon (a role originally intended for Peter Cushing) and a resourceful but out-of-place Vampirella was sound.

For me, the most effective scene by far consisted of a party hosted in their echoing old ballroom by two elderly sisters, Gloria and Constance, who have sent their man-servant out to invite their society acquaintances of the past without realising that they are all long dead. Instead, Pendragon and Vampirella show up, for plot reasons which I can't now remember, followed shortly thereafter by a motorbike gang who get right into the spirit of the party. The sisters are mainly just delighted that anyone has come, while Vampirella uses her alien powers to conjure up visions of the guests they had originally invited, who dance with them for a while, but then gradually fade away. I got the impression from the script that this was intended as visible fading, in which they would become more and more transparent before disappearing, but in my head it was done via edits - each time the camera cut to a new angle on the room, there were just fewer and fewer dancers until only the living ones were left.

Vampirella is a very different kind of vampire from Hammer's more usual gothic variety, both in that she is actually an alien and in that she behaves largely like an ordinary human being, only killing when people deserve it (e.g. the alien who has infiltrated SODS). But I was pleased to find that the story was designed to dovetail with the Dracula 'universe' nonetheless. This was partly done through two characters called Adam (the father) and Conrad (the son) Van Helsing, who come after Vampirella as though she were a typical Hammer vampire, but fail when garlic proves to have no effect on her. I like to think they are maybe the brother and nephew of Lorrimer from Dracula AD 1972. Also, at the end of the film, as Vampirella and Pendragon walk off Bermuda beach, a horse-drawn hearse pull up and its driver informs them that his Master invites them to perform at his castle, whereupon a hand wearing a ring embossed with a D extends from the coffin inside. ♥

The linking narration from the original script was shared out between the various members of the cast when they weren't busy with other roles, and was similar to other Hammer scripts I've seen or read in the quantity and quality of descriptive detail. Indeed, it included some quite nicely worked out linking devices, like a from-space view of Earth switching to life on the planet by cutting from an image of the globe to a spinning bicycle wheel. I missed Jonathan Rigby's narratorial voice as we'd enjoyed it in The Unquenchable Thirst of Dracula a little bit, but he was great as Pendragon (pronounced as PENdra-gon rather than the more usual pen-DRAgon), channelling Peter Cushing quite uncannily in the role. This wasn't just about his vocal delivery, but something about his stance and the angle of his head which almost made the shape of his face seem to change and acquire a Cushing-esque gaunt profile and long nose.

Georgina Dugdale, whom I didn't even realise until afterwards is Caroline Munro's daughter, played Vampirella, interestingly choosing to do her as sweet and demure (but deadly when she needed to be), rather than the default sexy superhero that the character's comic art suggests. Caroline Munro herself unfortunately stood out a bit as less in command of her role than the others, and she obviously felt it hadn't been her best performance. I chatted to her briefly in the bar afterwards, as I was wearing a T-shirt with a big picture of her in Dracula AD 1972 on it, and a Hammer super-fan who knows her quite well insisted on taking me over so she could see it, and when I asked her if she'd enjoyed it she said straight away that she wished they'd had more rehearsal time. But she has such a lovely warm personality, and was so gushingly proud of her daughter (with good reason!) that no-one could possibly mind.

I came away feeling that it had probably never been a terribly good story, and there were probably good reasons why it was never made, but that it had been a brilliantly fun evening watching it come to life with an audience of appreciative people, and having the chance to reach that conclusion for ourselves. There is plenty more yet to be discovered in the Hammer script archive, and I for one will be there next time it's tapped into.

Well, it's nearly five a.m., well over half of the seats have declared now, and so far it's a pretty depressing picture. There have been a few surprising results, but no sense of a big swing of popular opinion; no big shocks or iconic defining moments. Just a slow but steady trickle of seats of all sorts falling to the Conservatives.

Far more depressing, of course, is the spectacle of thousands of voters being deprived of the chance to cast their votes at all because of an inexplicable failure on the part of polling stations across the country to predict that they might want to. I'm particularly bothered to note that most of the places where the polling stations ran out of ballot papers or didn't have time to process everyone who wanted to vote before 10pm were urban constituencies - that is, exactly the places that are most crucial to both Labour and the LibDems.

My silver linings about this are two. One - it has already clearly produced widespread rage, and we have been promised a thorough enquiry by the Electoral Commission into exactly what happened. Some results may be declared invalid, and if the overall situation is a hung parliament, it may be yet another argument for basically have a re-run of the entire election in the very near future. Two - this issue, along with high voter turn-out in general and large numbers of postal votes, seems to be contributing to delayed counts in a lot of the seats where it happened. As I've said, they are generally the types of seats which are most likely to come out as Labour or LibDem. So as their results do come out, they may start to show that the real Tory lead is actually smaller than it currently looks like it is going to be - at least if they are held to be valid, anyway.

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for my current constituency, Leeds North West, to declare. I note with pleasure that Bristol West, where I lived in 1997 and cast my first vote, has seen an increased LibDem majority. But that pleasure is distinctly tarnished for me by the news that my more recent former constituency, Oxford West, has fallen to the Tories, causing the wonderful Dr. Evan Harris to lose his seat.

Elsewhere, it's a pretty depressing night for the LibDems. They've lost a few here, gained a few there, but generally look on track to do what the exit poll predicted, which is retain more or less the number of seats in parliament which they already had. I'd like to know what their overall share of the vote nationwide is - has that gone up? I hope so, as it will strengthen their ability to claim that they should be able to have a decisive input into whatever happens in the wake of this election. But it's disappointing after the support they've been enjoying lately, and far short of what I'd hoped for them.

Ooh, this just in, though - Charles Clarke loses out to a LibDem candidate, and has a face like a slapped arse! That was fun.

Anyway, dawn is breaking, and David Dimbleby is sounding pretty tired and fed up now. I guess most of us feel much the same. I'm not too tired myself, as I have been deliberately time-shifting myself over the past week in anticipation of this evening - as the time-stamps on my last few posts will make clear. This is still rather later than even I'm used to staying up, but I can do another hour or so. If you're still up too, or even getting up early to check in on LJ before you go to work, drop me a comment and let me know you're out there!

ETA (05:30): excellent! Leeds North West holds, with an increased LibDem majority! Now why couldn't that have been repeated nationwide, hmm? I could go to bed now, especially since it will still clearly be a good 24 hours before we really have the slightest clue what this result will actually mean. But I'm still anxious to hear what has happened in Sheffield Hallam (Nick Clegg's seat, and clearly badly affected by polling station problems).

ETA the second (06:40): Clegg's seat now declared, and I'm very impressed by his speech emphasising the utter unacceptability of people being deprived of their votes first, and then saying we shouldn't rush into anything without taking time to think it through. Sensible man. Apparently the Queen is a sensible woman, too - she said early on that she wouldn't see anybody before 1pm. This seems to me like advice for life; and besides I don't think she's in much danger of being disturbed today at all. I could go to bed now, but still don't feel much like it. I will pay for this later.

ETA the third (09:00): OK, the BBC are closing down their election night coverage, it's still not completely certain that the Tories won't win an outright majority but it's pretty likely, and now I think I really am going to have to go to bed. Annoyed that the LibDem's share of the vote seems to have gone up slightly overall, but their number of seats has gone down. FPTP the post is clearly never going to work for them - so here's hoping that there is enough willingness now for them to push successfully for electoral reform.

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There will be no research leave updates this week, because the master plan advises that May is 'probably a good point at which to take a clear, structured week off'. And this week I am taking that advice.

Holiday Tiems actually started late on Friday afternoon, when I set off for the station to catch a train to Tunbridge Wells for the wedding of swisstone and ladymoonray. I'd never been there before (and of course its reactionary reputation precedes it), but it is all very idyllic and leafy and Edwardian-looking. I stayed at The Royal Wells hotel, where allegedly Queen Victoria liked to go in her youth, but I expect her room was a little bit bigger than mine.

( The setting and the ceremony )

( The people )

As for the rest of the week, I have spent today busy doing nothing at all. Well, no - I have caught up on LJ, Facebook, emails and the weekend's TV, in between watching the snooker. That is still going on now, and looks like it could go on until about 2 in the morning. Both players are clearly very tense, and playing quite scrappily as a result. At the time of writing I think all of about 6 points have been scored in the last half-hour - or that's how it feels, anyway. But I do not care! I am on holiday, and can stay up as late as I like!

( Snooker spoiler under here )

My main goal for the rest of the week is to de-blue my kitchen. Currently, it has duck-egg blue units, bright blue tiles, a pale sparkly blue floor, pale blue doors and blue walls. Even if I liked blue, that would be a bit much. Meanwhile, for some reason, someone has at some point chosen to paint the door-frames and skirting-boards a shade which the half-empty tin left behind in the shed reveals is called 'urban grey'. It's about as attractive as it sounds. So the blue walls and the grey woodwork are going, in favour of pale creams of the type which will complement the remaining blues without overwhelming the room.

I'm also having some local chums round for an election 2010 all-nighter on Thursday, in honour of which I shall be popping into town tomorrow to buy an assortment of red, blue and yellow sweets for consumption when the relevant parties win seats. It should be a good night - clearly it's going to be a very close-run election, and probably also one which has a major long-lasting effect on the political landscape in this country. It's not like the snooker, of course - it's our collective future at stake, not a shiny trophy. But all the more reason to go through it in the company of friends, I think.

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Well, given the hopes expressed in my last post, I can't complain too much about the results as they stand this morning: Labour 351, Conservative 192 and LibDem 59 at the time of writing.

This basically meets all my criteria for happiness: Labour have had a kick in the teeth, but not to the extent that the Tories have actually got in, while the LibDems have increased their majority. My only complaint is that more of Labour's lost seats didn't go to the LibDems instead of the Tories. But it still constitutes a good consolidation of their existing position: hell, I remember the days when they had all of 18 MPs, and were proud of it. It's also nice to see a) that their share of the vote overall is now standing at around 23% and b) that many of the places where they made really significant gains have large student populations. This latter means that young, and in most cases presumably first-time, voters are choosing the LibDems, which as those people filter up through the population pyramid should mean a steadily increasing share in the vote overall.

Naturally, all three sides are claiming it as a victory: Labour on the grounds that they won a third term at all, and the other two on the grounds that they increased their holdings. I think Michael Howard has every right to expect his party to keep him on after this, and I'm certain Charles Kennedy is safe. So the most interesting question now is whether Tony-boy will jump or get pushed before the next election.

I'm also very pleased to see three independent candidates winning their seats - apparently the largest number since 1945. We have George Galloway for the anti-Iraq War "Respect" party in Bethnal Green and Bow, Dr. Richard Taylor kept Wyre Forest, which he originally won in 2001 on his "Save Kidderminster Hospital" ticket and Peter Law, a Labour rebel who left the party due to his opposition to all-woman candidate short-lists, has won Blaenau Gwent from the official Labour candidate. I realise that the party system allows effective governments to be formed, but it's always nice to see that it isn't 100% dominant.

In other news, splorfle, splorfle, Mr. Kilroy-Silk, but I do wish more BNP candidates were losing their deposits... :-(

Apparently, the UK consulate in New York has been bombed. (Thanks to rentaghost31 for the tip-off). Nothing too serious, but erk!

It's fairly obviously election-related, but I suppose in a way we can be paradoxically reassured. It suggests that whoever is behind it (presumably al-Qaeda or similar) doesn't have operatives capable of doing the same in the UK itself, and, at least on this occasion, wasn't able to mount a particularly effective attack.

I mean, these are still only small comforts, but you know... I'm just sorry that the attackers obviously do have operatives in the US.