Hawkwind - The Chronicle of The Black Sword (1985)

The chance to finally see a live performance of one of my favourite albums of recent years was too good an opportunity to pass up, even if the cost of the DVD on eBay was a bit on the pricey side.

Hawkwind: The Chronicle of The Black Sword is a 75-minute live show by the legendary rock band, performing select tracks from their 1985 album of the same name, a musical adaptation of the early adventures of Michael Moorcock's cursed, albino, swords-and-sorcery anti-hero, Elric of Melniboné.

Not only does Elric himself appear in the show, in the form of actor Tony Crerar, complete with Kabuki-style face paint and wielding a mighty Stormbringer prop, but Michael Moorcock pops up as well, providing lyrical 'spoken word' narration to some of the stories being presented.

He returns for the encore, adding guest vocals to the medley of Hawkwind tracks.

Hawkwind: The Chronicle of The Black Sword isn't a full-on rock opera though, more a series of psychedelic vignettes, often centred around primitive and dated lighting effects, clearly designed not so much to be "watched" as "experienced", quite possibly with the aid of non-prescription drugs. 

Filmed at London's Hammersmith Odeon in 1985, and released (presumably initially on VHS) the following year, both the sound and the image quality are not up to the levels we are used to these days, and I couldn't help feeling that this concert recording could benefit from a 21st Century Blu-Ray or 4K upgrade.

I think I only consciously discovered Hawkwind, and particularly this Elric-inspired album, in the last decade or so.

I have to confess that this live performance will never replace the majesty of the original album, but it was certainly captures a moment, and gives us a unique Moorcock-endorsed look at a hallucinogenic interpretation of the world of Elric.

For comparison, the album tracks, on the version I own, are:

• Song of the Swords
• Shade Gate
• The Sea King
• The Pulsing Cavern
• Elric the Enchanter
• Needle Gun
• Zarozinia
• The Demise
• Sleep of a Thousand Tears
• Chaos Army
• Horn of Destiny
• Arioch
• Night of The Hawks
• Green Finned Demon
• Dream Dancers
• Dragons and Fables

Whereas the songs performed in the live set are:

• Song of The Swords
• Sea King
• Master of The Universe
• Choose Your Masques
• Needlegun
• Zarozinia
• Lords of Chaos
• Brainstorm
• Moonglum
• Elric The Enchanter
• Magnu
• Horn of Destiny

Now, come on Hollywood, where's our Elric of Melniboné movie?

You already have the perfect lead in Tilda Swinton...

THROWBACK THURSDAY: My Life and Humanoid Ducks In Roleplaying Games

Part of the reason for my passionate support for Darcy Perry's wonderful DuckQuest roleplaying game - and why I backed several of his anthropomorphic duck-related miniatures Kickstarters - stretches right back to my earliest days of gaming.

In the late '70s and early '80s the bulk of my long-form (rather than random one-shot) gaming was with Gublin, a friend who lived five doors down the road from me.

Although created for a specific Dungeons & Dragons adventure at our local gaming club, my enduring character from those days was a female half-elf fighter/cleric/magic-user called Staghind, who enjoyed a storied adventuring career, before becoming a queen of her own nation and retiring.

At some stage in her life she adopted an anthropomorphic duck called Quincy as one of her many children and he taught her Quack Fu. Or she was taught Quack-Fu by a master and then she adopted Quincy. My memory from those days is like Swiss Cheese!

My ideas about humanoid ducks were entirely shaped by reading Steve Gerber's bonkers Howard The Duck comics, rather than RuneQuest (which officially introduced ducks into the roleplaying consciousness).

This is also why I have a copy of this issue framed and hanging on the wall in our lounge with other key comics from my years of collecting and reading. 

Not just because of the incredible impact it had on me as a nascent comic book reader, exposing me to the gonzo possibilities of the medium, but also for the influence it had on me as a fledgling gamer.

Whilst my anthropomorphic duck gaming ended rather abruptly with Staghind's retirement, the concept endured with the help of one of my mum's delightfully random fandoms.

Once I was of working age (and writing nonsense for the local paper), my mum somehow became a massive fan of the late '80s kids cartoon Count Duckula, so I used my salary to ensure she had an extensive collection of VHS tapes and annuals (as that was the only merch available at the time).

These days duck characters can be found roleplayng games such as Dragonbane (from Free League Publishing), where they are called "mallards", and Twilight Sword (yes, this was a deciding factor in me backing this game).

In the latter game the duck kin are also known as "mallards" and were available, in print form (as a set of cards), as an early bird sweetener to entice backers to get the ball rolling on the crowdfunding campaign.

I hesitated and missed out on this bonus "kin", but understand it will still be available to all backers as a PDF. I can't NOT have ducks as a playable race in my version of Twilight Sword!

Biblical Epics

Every now and again in my non-stop viewing calendar I like to take a moment to return to the big screen epics of my youth, the grandiose Bible stories that were a staple of vintage cinema.

In those benighted, pre-VHS days, when there were only three TV channels available in the UK, I would get my large-scale fantasy fix from 1950's movies like The Ten Commandments (which I'm watching at the moment), Ben-Hur, The Robe, Quo Vadis etc which were played, it seemed, pretty much on rotation at the weekends.

I have an embarrassing childhood memory of a very young me (possibly five or six) standing in the garden with a large stick - doubling as a staff - pretending to be Moses at the top of my lungs!

Never once did I think these were anything more than pseudohistorical, sword-and-sandal, fantasy stories but there was something there that piqued my young imagination.

In parallel with my unwavering love of Ray Harryhausen films and coupled with Kirk Douglas in The Vikings and, of course, Spartacus, these movies were already shaping my "swords-and-???" tastes even before I was introduced to the works of JRR Tolkien and then Dungeons & Dragons. 

Dungeons & Dragons provided me with a way to quantify ("stat up") the things I was seeing in these movies and hearing at school during our compulsory "religious education" (which meant trying to force Christianity onto us, rather than teaching us about all the religions of the world).

At prep school, I recall excitedly going through the hymn book we were given, hunting for potential magic items: "Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire!"

In recent times, harkening back to this mini-obsession of my tween and pre-tween years, I even sought out (I think from Noble Knight Games in the  States eventually, when it didn't cost an arm and a leg to ship something across The Atlantic), the Green Ronin d20 supplement Testament, for running games in the Old Testament era.

No, it doesn't have stats for God (unlike the Fantasy Wargaming book, by the late Bruce Galloway, published in the early 1980s, which has stats for both God and the Virgin Mary) but it does go into a lot of historical detail about life and beliefs in that ancient era.

The most recent "Biblical Epic" of the peplum variety that I've seen was 2018's Samson, a pretty decent retelling of one of the few Bible stories that ever held my interest.

Although they seem to be few and far between these days, I always keep half-an-eye out for any competent "Biblical Epics" that skirt the edges of my geeky radar.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: The Horror! The Horror! The Horror!

These days I'm a sucker for horror movies, with a particular weakness for monster movies.

While my passion for the genre began with a teenage viewing of the original 1978 Dawn Of The Dead, one of my favourite franchises remains the Nightmare On Elm Street movies.

I can still clearly remember the buzz the first one generated around school when it came out in 1984.

I was 17 at the time and not as into horror movies as I am now, but the "word on the street" was - in those pre-internet, pre-DVD dark ages - that it was the "most terrifying movie anyone had ever seen ever!"

Of course, when I eventually got to see it on VHS it was quite tame; still brilliant, thrilling and gory, but nowhere near as horrific as my teenage mind had imagined, fuelled by the hyperbole of fellow teenagers who'd claimed to have seen it... and just made it through to the credits by the skin of their tough guy teeth.

Even at the time some of the mood-setting special effects seemed quite primitive, these days they look positively archaic.

I seem to recall that the first horror film my parents let me stay up to watch on television was The Omen II. That scared the crap out of me and gave me nightmares for days - but now that also seems quite tame to my cynical forty-something brain.

I guess at the time it was some 'reverse psychology' parenting to stop me pestering them to be allowed to stay up and watch 'grown-up' movies.

It must have worked because I don't recall any horror movie encounters until the height of the heady days of the tabloid-led 'video nasties' scare (in the early '80s), when it was de rigueur to go round each others' houses and dare each other to watch the latest piece of nasty that someone had acquired on video tape.

I didn't make it through either The Evil Dead or Texas Chain Saw Massacre - which is ironic as the latter would, decades later, form the backbone of my university dissertation, and both movies rate among my top horror flicks these days.

It wasn't until one of these illicit gatherings when a gang of us were watching George Romero's Dawn Of The Dead that I had my 'Road To Damascus' moment and realised I was actually rather enjoying this movie and would like to see more of the same.

But that's not to say I've become so hardened and blasé to horror that nothing has a lasting impact on me.

Here's a quick rundown of the top three horror movies that still give me the heebeejeebies:

• The Exorcist

• The Blair Witch Project

• The Amazing Mr Blunden

No real shocks with the first two. I know The Blair Witch Project doesn't do it for everyone, but it digs at me on a psychological level for some reason - I guess it's something about being lost in the woods with an unseen antagonist, and the cinema-vérité style, with the handheld camera, just makes it all the more real.

It's that level of 'truth' that also makes The Exorcist so unnerving to me. Later horror films have generally taken a lighter touch, and even been more action orientated, but The Exorcist unfolds like docudrama and, to this day, as with Blair Witch, I can't watch it without the lights on!

The final entry in this trio of terror is an unlikely one that is obviously very personal.

My gran took me to see The Amazing Mr Blunden at the town centre cinema in Tunbridge Wells when I was six - and it scarred me for life.

To be honest I can't remember much of the specifics of the film, just that it involved a ghost and a large house fire. It wasn't the ghost that got to me, it was the house fire.

To this day, I haven't watched the film again because something about it just flicked a switch in my little, six-year-old brain.

And I have no plans to... even though it appears to actually be a U-certificate kids' film and not the hideous torture porn my addled brain recalls being 'forced' to sit through Clockwork Orange style with my eyelids pinned back.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: My First VHS

The first film I saw on home video was Battle Beyond The Stars, which my parents rented for me on the way home from purchasing our first (top-loading) VHS player.

However, the first tape I actually owned (and still do) was Raiders Of The Lost Ark, which my parents gave me as a Christmas present when I was 15.

In the early days of VHS, when we were just renting the cassettes, I had a policy of watching every film five times before we had to return it.

You have to remember, back in the olden days, films came on TV (or at the cinema) and if you didn't watch them when they were shown, you had to wait until they were shown again (which could be years later... or never).

Until 1982 (when the creatively named Channel 4 began broadcasting), we only had three channels of television to chose from in the UK.

So, to a budding cinephile and storyteller, the invention of home video was a game-changer.

Imagine, one day not being able to watch a film you wanted to, and the next day you could watch it as many times as you liked, whenever you liked.

For months, I even kept a log of every film I'd watched on tape (until I missed one, and that threw my system completely out of whack and I gave up on that exercise... See, I had control issues even back then!).

One of my few remaining vivid memories of my childhood is - rather bizarrely - crawling under my parents' bed to see what they'd got me for Christmas and finding the Raiders tape.

I was so excited! Even though it wasn't going to be a surprise now, I knew I would soon be able to watch this amazing movie as often as I wanted.

And I suspect, although I lost count, I watched that tape of Raiders Of The Lost Ark (which remains the film I've seen most often in the cinema) way more than my mandatory 'five times minimum'.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: University

Two of the things that helped get me through uni: The Manic Street Preachers and Star Wars

It's hard to believe that I graduated from Bournemouth University at the end of the last century!

My degree course - which is no longer offered - was Scriptwriting for Film and Television, and while it helped hone my writing and broaden my knowledge of cinema, I never really pursued a career in the arts, instead simply returning to what I knew best: local journalism.

Of course if you need proof of how long ago this was just check out the 'modern' technology below - at my work station in the last house we all lived in: the slimline PC and the discrete music system!

You can just make out, next to the CDs, my collection of West End Games' Star Wars RPG books and fanzines - my only real acknowledgement during that era of my gaming hobby.

It struck me, years later, that I never really gave the idea of active gaming a serious thought during my time in Bournemouth, instead relegating it to the reading of old supplements, and occasionally as an outlet for creative writing. 

The picture below is of my VHS video collection - note the top shelf with the Star Trek movies at one end and Star Wars at the other. This was pre-Prequels, so there were only three Star Wars films then.

And talking of cutting edge technology, please be impressed by my ancient top-loading video recorder on the bottom shelf. I loved that machine!

And that portable TV (with the Bjork picture on top) stayed with me from my later years of living with my parents in Pembury, through my own house in Tunbridge Wells, then uni, back to my parents', then flats in Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells, and right up until the time I moved in with Rachel.

As there are no notices on my notice board in this picture, I suspect it was taken just after we'd moved into this house (which Paul and I shared with Gordon, John and a young girl from a different course whose name has slipped my mind completely).

And finally, a cheeky (staged) photo of me reading on the toilet! Just for the hell of it...

Joe Bob Was My Guru

Over the years, I've talked about how I was inspired to become a journalist by the adventures of Tintin and Clark Kent, and that it was reading a reprint of Fantastic Four #17 that got me hooked on comics, I've talked about my favourite authors (e.g. Philip Reeve, HP Lovecraft et al) and my introduction to the wonderful world of roleplaying games many decades ago.

But I'm pretty sure I've never discussed the man that inspired me to start reviewing movies - particularly movies that other people might consider "bad" (such as trashy horror flicks).

That man was the one and only Joe Bob Briggs (aka film critic John Bloom), and, in particular, his first book, Joe Bob Goes To The Drive-In - a collection of his tongue-in-cheek reviews from The Dallas Times-Herald.

Joe Bob Goes To The Drive-In

The Penguin Originals edition of the book was published in 1989 and I'm pretty sure I picked it up soon after that.

At that time, mainstream movie critics, epitomised by the BBC's Barry Norman, felt completely disconencted to my own movie-watching experience.

They were a snobbish elite who either ignored the sort of films I loved or looked down their noses at them, dismissing with snarky asides and patronising put-downs.

All they ever praised - it seemed to me - were dull, earnest films that I had zero interest in.

Then I read Joe Bob Goes To The Drive-In.

And suddenly I knew how I wanted to review films.

Joe Bob, for instance, coined the phrase "spam-in-a-cabin" - which I use freely in reviews and conversation - to describe a certain style of horror film where the protagonists are trapped in a small environment by their attackers - supernatural or otherwise - and anyone can die at any time.

He was funny, clever, crass, and carefree. He'd talk about the T&A content in a film as well as the volume of blood spilled and body count.

Suddenly film reviews didn't have to read like dry, academic dissertations in Sight & Sound (a magazine designed to suck the fun out of films since 1932).

Seriously, if you love horror movies, trash cinema, drive-in fodder, you need to find a copy of Joe Bob's book and read it now.

I was surprisingly lucky that when I was allowed to create the position of "film critic" on the local newspaper that I worked for, I was pretty much given free reign.

Although I was never clever enough to go full Joe Bob, I'm pretty sure I was the first to use the phrase "spam-in-a-cabin" in the pages of the Kent & Sussex Courier.

My guru's inspiration shone through even brighter when I broadened my reviewing to the latest, trashy VHS tapes. I somehow got myself onto the mailing lists of several "low budget" video houses and, for a time, was reviewing three or four low-budget sci-fi/horror/action flicks a week.

It was in seeking to ape Joe Bob's style that I found the first inklings of my own "voice".