"AS YOU WISH"

Goodness only knows what took me so long! Only 37 years after its release, I finally watched (and loved) Rob Reiner's 1987 film of William Goldman's book, The Princess Bride! 

"WHAT?" You say. "INCONCEIVABLE!"

Well, there it is: life is a successions of possible discoveries: some are made early on, others made rather later than we might have wished and, of course, quite a few get missed altogether. So, I'm never ashamed about making discoveries that fall into the 'Better Late Than Never' category.

And what's not to enjoy about this magical film? As (probably) most people reading this will know, it features Robin Wright and Cary Elwes as the pretty young lovers – the latter also demonstrating a formidable talent for swashbuckling Errol Flynn-Doug Fairbanks-style swordsmanship in that exhilarating sequence in which he and his well-matched duelist, Mandy Patinkin, demonstrate their fencing skills – right-handed and left-handed! A truly heroic episode.

On the 'Boo-Hiss' side of things there's an delightfully odious Prince-portrayal by Chris Sarandon and succulent, sneering villainy from Christopher Guest that is reminiscent of Basil Rathbone as Sir Guy of Gisbourne in The Adventures of Robin Hood or the Lord Ravenhurst in The Court Jester.  

Then there are glorious Pythonesque comic turns from Wallace Shawn, Billy Crystal, Carol Kane, Mel Smith and Peter Cook; and we really mustn't forget the (literally) larger than life presence of Andre the Giant (French-born wrestler, André René Roussimoff, popularly known at the time as 'The Eighth Wonder of the World') playing... well... the Giant... Nor can we overlook the smaller, more intimate companionship of Peter Falk, whose endearing and reassuring performance as the storytelling grandfather holds the whole narrative together and, in so doing, 'sells' the film. Oh, yes... and there's also a lively medieval-cum-'Eighties score by Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler! 

How can I have I denied myself all these rare and fine pleasures for so many years? Never mind, now (time willing) I will be able to enjoy them some... several... possible many times more!

A BRADBURYIAN BIRTHDAY

 

Remembering the 102nd anniversary of the birth of this great conjuror of words and imagery without whom we might never have tasted Dandelion Wine, A Medicine for Melancholy or The Golden Apples of the Sun; might never have been drenched on The Day It Rained Forever; might never have ridden The Toynbee Convector or met The Illustrated Man; might never have witnessed the launching of The Silver Locusts, learned of the dangers of Fahrenheit 451 or been warned that Something Wicked This Way Comes...

 

[Portrait of Ray Bradbury (from the BS&DW collection) by Barnaby Conrad, Jr. (1922 – 2013) was an American artist, author, nightclub proprietor, bullfighter and boxer!]

 

HERE THERE BE DRAGONS!

Dragons a-plenty!

And not just dragons, but also walking trees, robotic warriors, flying fish, floating cities, machineries of war and a host of other marvels and monstrosities!

I am referring the strangely wondrous worlds of fantasy artist Ian Miller, whose extraordinary visions are celebrated in a new book, The Art of Ian Miller, to which I had the singular honour of contributing a foreword...

A modern master of pen-and-inkery, Ian Miller is a true child of Albrecht Durer, Gustav Dore and Hieronymus Bosch and he has used this exceptional skill to illuminate the dreams and nightmares of such authors as Ray Bradbury, H P Lovecraft, Philip K Dick, Mervyn Peake and J R R Tolkien whose The Lord of the Rings here provides the artist with an opportunity to depict Treebeard and the Ents destroying Saruman's stronghold, Isengard...

 Here a few more striking images from this electrifying portfolio...

 

 

 

 

Written by Ian Miller and Tom Whyte, The Art of Ian Miller is available from Titan Books as a trade edition and as a limited edition in slip-case with a signed print. For full details Click here

And you can visit Ian Miller's website here

BLUE-MOVIE VIEWING

Well, we finally caught up with Avatar over the weekend (thanks for the screening, Ian) and it was curious experience after so many months of feeling that I owed a duty to my sensibilities to avoid getting sucked into the blue hole of hype surrounding the Most Successful Film Ever Made.

I freely admit, however, that I now rather regret having missed seeing it on the big screen in 3D, although I realise that I probably only feel like that because I viewed it from the comfort of Ian's sofa with ready supplies of pizza and wine and on-demand comfort breaks! I very much doubt if I would have felt quite like the same had I been trapped in a cinema seat for an unremitting three hours.

But that genuine whisper of regret came from the very real and beautiful strangeness of the Pandora environments created for the film and the equally tangible (even in 2D) of being inside that alien world.


On reflection, however, 'strangeness' isn't the right word because what I really experienced as James Cameron took me on a tour of Pandora's gargantuan forests filled with their amazing foliage and showed me those extraordinary floating islands with their populations of butterfly-dragons was a sense of familiarity that I, eventually, realised were straight out of those trippy Other Worlds which fantasy artist, Roger Dean, created by for - among other things - the albums of '70s rock band, Yes.

Just take a look at some of Roger Dean's breathtaking dreamscapes and tell me I'm wrong...

Pause a moment there and take a closer look at that exquisite flying thing...

Look familiar?

You bet!

And what about the floating islands of Pandora...

And the Tree of Souls...

And the battle scenes with invading aircraft...

So much then for the look of the film, what about the characters and story? Well, frankly, I didn't give a damn about the characters who, to a blue-man and woman, totally failed to engage my emotions, while the gun-toting, marine-commander-bad-guy stomping though the forest in his giant robot-suit was simply a ludicrous cartoon version of rather more sophisticated movie caricatures such as Sterling Hayden's paranoid patriot, General Jack D Ripper, in Kubrick's Dr Strangelove.

And the plot? Several reviewers, I knew, had commented on the similarities between Avatar and Pocahontas - Disney's revisionist, eco-drama on the theme of American imperialism - but I kept being reminded of another, less well-known kid's film: an Australian animated feature made in 1992, entitled FernGully: The Last Rainforest.

Later, a quick browse of Google showed I was not alone in making this connection and that several YouTubers with way too much time on their hands had made some very amusing mash-ups combining elements of the two films. Here's one of several (with Avatar sound clips and FernGully visuals) to enjoy before the Thought Police have it removed...

Images: © Roger Dean uploaded from my flickr Photostream.

A CHRISTMAS GIFT

I'll never forget the Christmas - too long ago now to attach a date to - when I spotted a book in my local bookshop entitled The Fox At The Manger. It was written, it said on the cover, by P L Travers, the author of Mary Poppins.

Although, at the time, I had yet to read any of the books about Miss Poppins, I knew and loved the Disney musical film based on her exploits whilst serving as a "practically perfect nanny" in the household of Mr and Mrs Banks in Cherry Tree Lane.

The Fox at the Manger, I discovered, was nothing like Mary Poppins - except that it was a tale shot through with magic! It re-told the events of the first Christmas - familiar from every nativity scene - but with an unexpected twist.

The animals in the Bethlehem stable - donkey, cow and sheep - who witness an unusual birth in the midst of their straw-filled little world are dismayed and alarmed when an alien creature enters their domain: a red, furry, fox - the chicken-stealing outlaw of the countryside. But the fox has come to the manger to bring his own, unique gift to the Christ Child...

What that gift is you must read for yourself --- or discover it by listening to a radio dramatisation that I made of the story some years back and which is being repeated this Christmas on the BBC.

The Fox at the Manger which stars Dame Wendy Hiller as the storyteller and Alec McCowen as the Fox is being broadcast on BBC Radio 7 at 10.15 am and 9.15 pm on Christmas Eve and, again, at 2.15 am on Christmas Day morning.

It will also be available to hear, on line, via the BBC's iPlayer for seven days following transmission.

If you'd like to hear The Fox at the Manger, here's all you need to know about BBC Radio 7; what you need to know about how to listen to Radio 7; the current 'What's On' page for Drama and how to listen again on-line via BBC iPlayer (the play will be listed on this page following its first transmission and can be be heard there until 1 January )

***

And, while on the subject of Sibley radio shows, And Yet Another Partridge in a Pear Tree... my 'Cautionary Tale for Christmas Showing that it is Better to Give than to Receive' can still be heard, on-line, via the BBC's Radio 7 iPlayer (you'll find it on the alphabetical listing of shows) but you've only got today and tomorrow to tune in...

***

Meanwhile...

Tomorrow we go to VENICE, so any delays in approving blog-comments will be due to changes in European time zones or, more likely, my inability to get on-line!

It has been said of the city which the Venetians call La Serenissima...

"Other cities had admirers,
Venice alone has LOVERS."

- Paul de Saint-Victor

But it has also been said...

"The abuse that the city suffers derives
from its own fatal gift for manufacturing
endlessly seductive clichés."

- Jonathan Keates

So, welcome to one of the most complex cities in the world!

As for buttons, he can't wait to get there!


Images: The Fox and the Raven from Aesop's Fables (and later The Fox at the Manger) by Thomas Bewick; Venetian Masqueraders © by Brian Sibley

ARTHUR C CLARKE

1917-2008

visionary, poet and explorer of the imagination
has - at the age of 90 - embarked on that odyssey
which has been called

the ultimate trip

"Then he waited, marshalling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something."

Farewell and God speed!

COME BACK, RAQUEL!

Little known historical facts learned from 10,000 BC - in descending order of earth-shattering importance...

1) A race of people with plaited pony-tails and gold finger-nail extensions built prototypes for the Egyptian pyramids using woolly mammoths to haul the building blocks.

2) Good prehistoric folk spoke impeccable English; baddies (wearing turbans and riding horses) spoke in subtitles.

3) Cave-people had first-rate dental hygiene and used beard-trimmers with variable settings.

4) 10,000 BC is mammoth bollocks.

If you doubt this newly acquired knowledge, the film opens nationwide today, so you can check for yourself.

If you want to save the cost of a ticket, just take it on trust...

DAEMONIZED

As you may have noticed from the side bar (right), I've a couple of new books out, one of which is The Golden Compass: The Official Illustrated Movie Companion, which should absolutely not be confused with earlier titles such as The Lord of the Rings: The Official Movie Guide...

Essentially, however, this is another of those 'book-of-the-film-of-the-book' books; but it's been rather nicely got-up and, at £14.99 (or, probably, cheaper!), it will make a fairly spiffing present for someone-or-other's Christmas stocking!

Just in case you have been vacationing on Mars, I should explain that The Golden Compass is the upcoming fantasy film blockbuster (from New line Cinema who brought you... er... yes... that's right, The Lord of the Rings) and stars Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Tom Courtney, Jim Carter and talented newcomer, Dakota Blue Richards.

The film, is based on Northern Lights (or as it is known in the USA, The Golden Compass), the first volume of the award-winning, best-selling trilogy, His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman.

Even if you're not just back from Mars, you might just have missed the trailer, take a look at it here.

Stunning-looking stuff!

What...? Ah, yes, that was the voice of Gandalf speaking for Iorek Byrnison the armoured bear (a late substitute brought in from the Gray Havens to replace Nonso Anozie) and, yes, again, that really was Saruman in one shot, playing, I'm told, Lord Boreal - although this came as a bit of a surprise to the author of The Golden Compass: The Official Illustrated Movie Companion, since whilst Lord B is a character in Pullman's book, he wasn't in any version of the shooting script that I ever read...

Anyway, as readers of Philip Pullman's trilogy will already know all of the characters in the story are accompanied by a daemon: an outward manifestation of their 'soul' in animal-form. And as part of the fun-and-games on the official website, you can answer a questionnaire in order to identify your personal daemon.

I had a go and and I'd like to introduce (below) to Aleone, the daemon that has been chosen for me...

However, before it takes on its final manifestation, you can assist in shape-shifting it into a possibly more appropriate form by joining in the process.

Thanks for your help - I await the outcome with interest and will report back in due course...

GRIM FACTS

It must be something to do with this time of year (or too many recent dealings with hospitals!) but I came across a quote the other day by Robert Alton Harris, who wrote:

You can be a king or a street sweeper,
But everybody dances with the Grim Reaper.

This reminded me of an exchange I once had with Discworld author, TERRY PRATCHETT, during an interview for a BBC book programme.

We were talking about DEATH, who appears as a character in many of the Discworld novels and who - contrary to expectations - has a butler (Albert), an adopted daughter (Ysabell), an assistant (Mort), a pale horse (Binky) and lives in a black-and-white, suburban villa with a golf course and a pond containing a skeletal trout!

"Just supposing," I said to Pratchett, "that the door to this studio was to suddenly whisper open and DEATH was to come in and lay his bony hand on your shoulder, what would you do?"

"Well," replied Pratchett, "there's nothing I could do! But that wouldn't matter, because I long ago learned to take life as it comes!"

He paused and then, with a wry smile, added: "Which, of course, when you think about it, is exactly what DEATH does: takes life as it comes!"

WATCH OF THE WEEK: Pottering on!

I sometimes feel terribly alone: being the one person in the entire world who hasn't read the Harry Potter books --- well nothing after the first volume-and-a-half which, when you consider how HUGE the later books have become, probably means scarcely 1% of everything J K Rowling has written...

So, I am both the worst and the best person to tell you about the latest (fifth - but you knew that!) film in the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, opening nationwide on Thursday. The worst, because I have absolutely no idea how many magical moments of that great doorstop of a volume has been pared away in order to keep the running time of the film below 180 mins; the best, because, if it works for me then it works, first and foremost, as a film rather than as an adaptation of a book... Which it does - and rather splendidly, too!

That said, I did find that I needed to keep my wits about me - because it's all too easy to miss some of the star-turns' cameoettes! For example, Emma Thompson (Sybil Trelawney) had no more than a couple of speaking scenes while Warwick Davis (Filius Flitwick) had only a couple of non-speaking dittos. But, then even the divine Dame Maggie (Professor Minerva McGonagall) only gets a couple of moments in the spotlight.

I think I noticed David Thewlis (Remus Lupus), but I'm not sure if he actually spoke; Fiona Shaw (Petunia Dursley) did say something, but it was only one line - or maybe just a half... And yes, that does means the dire Dursleys are back on screen which, as far as I'm concerned, is not a plus point; never mind, the Weasley tribe have also returned in force with Arthur and Molly, as always, looking out for Harry and the Twins, Fred and George, providing some excellent fun just as things are teetering on getting a bit serious.

I won't bother to give you a synopsis of the plot, if you know the book, you don't need me to tell you about it and, if not... well, never mind, you'll understand (more or less) all you need to know when you see it!

Suffice it to say, that despite the obvious complexities of the story, the whole thing zips merrily (and later scarily) along and contains several truly enchanting scenes as when, during Harry's secret training sessions, the young opponents of He Who Must Not Be Named (aka Ralph Fiennes) conjure fanciful birds and creatures out of magic dust; and a tour de force finale that is desperately dramatic and --- since you know the books, you'll know why --- terribly traumatic.


The special effects are some of the best in the series, so far - especially those involving Fred and George and a fantastical fireworks dragon. Hagrid's cgi brother is less impressive and there are one or two dodgy shots of the junior wizards and witches flying their brooms over modern day London, where suspension of disbelief has to be temporarily - er - suspended!

As a side-note, I have to say that seeing HP & Co skimming past Canary Wharf Tower and the Gherkin reminded me of a question that always bugs me about the world of Hogwarts: how come no one has a mobile phone and they obviously don't have access to computers? As long as I think of Hogwarts as existing some time in the past - rather like Greyfriars School attended by Master B Bunter - it really doesn't bother me; but seeing its pupils whizzing across a 2007 London skyline got me puzzling again...

Anyway, I guess you really shouldn't think too much about the logic in a Potter film: I mean how come a young wizard as deft with the wand as Harry needs half a dozen representatives from the Order of the Phoenix to rescue him from the back bedroom of number 4 Privet Close, when the door is secured with nothing more than a flimsy-looking B&Q lock?

But enough...

Daniel Radcliffe seems to me to be getting better as maturity gives him a leaner-meaner look and he copes valiantly with The Kiss which appears pretty experienced for a first-timer and, unlike his love scenes on stage in Equus is achieved whilst wearing school uniform!


Apart from Harry's kisee, Cho Chang (Katie Leung) there's a new contender for Harry's emotional interest: Luna Lovegood (Evanna Lynch) who has a melting Irish brogue and spooky charm. Emma Watson's Hermione remarkably avoids being upstaged by these Other Women and only Rupert Grint's Ron seems to have become rather marginalised - probably because everyone's finally realised what most us knew from day one: that, nice kid though he doubtless is, he really can't act!

The star of the show - apart from Gary Oldman who gives a spirited and poignant farewell performance as Sirius Black - is undoubtedly the fabulous Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbrage, a poisonous pink marshmallow who becomes Hogwarts' new Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor and later replaces the discredited Dumbledore.

Staunton's portrayal of Professor Umbrage (like Kenneth Branagh's Gilderoy Lockhart in H P & the Chamber of Secrets) is an instance of the films providing the defining portrayal of the Rowling characters and Dolores' twittering personality and silly, frivolous appearance (dressed like a cross between Barbara Cartland and Miss Marple) are in sharp contrast to her cruelly malicious nature. It is, without question, a deliciously bravura performance!

The film as a whole skilfully treads the fine line between the frightening --- Deatheaters come screaming out of the screen at you within minutes of the film's opening --- and the funny, such as ripe running gag of Filch precariously balanced on a series of increasingly tall and tottery step-ladders nailing up the latest injunctions from the Ministry of Magic.

I'll conclude with a curious piece of Potter minutiae that I happened on as a result of puzzling over something - or someone - in the film that I didn't quite get: viz, the House Elf, going by the name of Kreacher, who is seen creeping and muttering around the home of Sirius Black.

Now, I've always prided myself on my ability to spot a voice (it comes, I suppose, from so many years of working in radio and being a fan of animated films) and as soon as Kreacher started mumbling about, I instantly knew that he was being spoken for by veteran actor, Timothy Bateson, who is the last surviving cast member of the first British production of Waiting for Godot (he was Lucky) and who appeared in my debut radio play, 32 years ago!

What I couldn't understand was why, in a film already stuffed with characters, this one - who, seemingly, does nothing of any importance - was remotely necessary to the plot. So, when I got home, I duly Googled Kreacher and found this fascinating titbit of trivia...

David Yates told MTV Movies: "We took Kreacher out, and Jo [JKR] said, 'Listen guys, you don't have to put Kreacher back, but I'm just telling you, if you want to kind of keep a thread going for six and seven, you might want Kreacher to come back.' She basically told us Kreacher plays a role in seven, in a sense. She hinted. We thought about it for five seconds, and he came back."

So, something to ponder there in the last two weeks until all is finally revealed with the publication of.................


Incidentally, is it just me (as a confessed non-Potter reader) or is the "artwork" on that left-hand cover-option for volume seven (above), TOTALLY and UTTERLY HIDEOUS?

BORED OF THE RINGS

Now, look! I love The Lord of the Rings! OK? I mean, I am a fan... a true devotee…

I’ve written and broadcast about J R R Tolkien and his fictional realm of Middle-earth; I’ve grappled with a book which its author described as being “'very unsuitable for dramatic representation” in order to adapt it for the radio; and I have chronicled the process by which the book later became a movie trilogy.

So, I went to see The Lord of the Rings - The Musical with high hopes and a keen awareness of the gargantuan challenge facing those responsible for the production.


I came out not so much disappointed as dismayed that Tolkien’s epic has finally been reduced to a series of almost meaningless tableaux, which employ some of the most startling effects that money can buy and yet which conspire to leave the audience with a nothing more than a piece of theatrical artifice in which spectacle substitutes for character and dazzle for drama.

The cumulative effect is to render Tolkien’s heart-breakingly perilous quest as a trivial trip into territory which strays perilously close to the borders of Pantoland and, in so doing, tosses aside the moral weight, mythic purpose and emotional dynamism of the original story. until virtually all that is left is a bag of wizard tricks...


True, the interior of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane looks amazing with the proscenium arch overgrown with a woodland growth more tangled than Treebeard’s Fangorn; true, the much-written-about stage mechanics, that are almost constantly turning, rising and falling to create a changing landscape, are undeniably ingenious; true, a handfull of the set pieces - from Bilbo’s utterly magical disappearance to the fiery appearance of the Balrog - are pretty stunning. But, beyond these conjuror’s treats, there is little to engage the mind and nothing to seize the heart.

Three hours (with a short interval) is too long for a theatrical experience as vacuous as this and too short to do any kind of justice to Tolkien’s three-volume epic.


The costume designs are all too obviously inspired by those in the films (I wonder that Jackson and New Line Cinema aren’t pleading copyright infringement!) as are some of the plot devices in the first act, which only manages to take us to Gandalf’s fall in Khazad-dûm, five chapters shy of the end of The Fellowship of the Ring.

This leaves a vast amount of incident and character drama to be somehow crammed into the next two acts. It is a prodigious task and one that proves impossible.

Almost the entire content of The Two Towers and much of The Return of the King is junked and, with no time to deal with the problems facing the horse-folk of Rohan, it’s a whistle-stop visit to Minas Tirith for Aragorn, Gandalf, Legolas and Gimli (Lord Denethor has one speech and is never seen or heard of again) followed by a hurried excursion to the Black Gates.

Frodo, Sam and Gollum fare slightly better but as the evening wears on (and on) what’s left of the plot disintegrates under the sense of ever-accelerating panic as lines are rattled off and everyone hurtles blindly towards the final curtain.

It’s hard to say what’s the worst thing about this misbegotten project...

Maybe it is the irritating hobbits with their squeaky voices and absurd Mummerset accents; the bored and utterly charisma-less Gandalf; the stilt-walking Yorkshire Ents wearing pork-pie hats; or the Cirque du Soleil style elves who swing arouth Lothlórien on trapeze-vines and whose speeches are accompanied by risible hand gestures that look like boy scout semaphore signals.


Or perhaps it is the ghastly pre-show invasion of the auditorium by silly-ass hobbits throwing apples and chasing fireflies; or (where the second interval ought to have been) the equally tedious orc-attack on people who have paid far too much for their tickets to be jumped on by over-enthusiastic members of an ensemble, desperately trying to make up for not having any other real moments in which to demonstrate their ability to act.

Or it could simply the totally unmemorable songs that far from advancing the story or fleshing out the characters, stop everything dead in its tracks for what feels like an eternity.

Gollum is good but arrives far too late to do anything more than play out his famous schizoid debate with Sméagol in a style that is clearly intended to approximate - if not impersonate - the performance in the film by Andy Serkis.

As for the rest of the cast, only Elrond and Galadriel have any sense of authority and stature but, alas, they hopelessly outnumbered.

The greatest crime committed by the show is its total failure to make any of the characters live as real people: not as Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits and Heroes but as flesh-and-blood individuals - like us - with the same fears, loves, hatreds, jealousies and sorrows as we all experience.

That is why people engage with Tolkien's characters; it is what we strove for in creating the radio series and it is what Jackson superbly achieved in his movie trilogy. Incredible though it seems, however, it is a concept that appears to have totally bypassed the creators of this production, and the price paid for this missed opportunity is high...

In the dying moments of the show, Gandalf tells Frodo that he is off to spend some time with his good friend Tom Bombadil - a joke, one assumes, at the expense of those earlier versions on radio and film that (to the chagrin of devout Tolkien fans) omitted those episodes from the book featuring Master Bombadil.

However, in a production that not only drops Old Tom but also cuts Celeborn, Théoden, Éowyn, Faramir, Wormtoungue and half a dozen other characters and which skips over such key events as the battles of Helm’s Deep and the Pelennor Fields, it is a fatuous jibe.

In truth, if anyone in the audience hasn't read the books or seen the films, I doubt they'll have the faintest idea what's going on... But then some of the cast may not be entirely sure, either...

There may be a way of putting Tolkien’s story on stage but, if so, then this isn’t it.

Others, more generous than I, will say that it fails but is nevertheless a brave failure. But, whichever way you look at it, with a budget of £25 million, it’s likely to prove an expensive failure…

IT'S ALIVE!

Not only are they alive, but there are no strings attached!

In response to my recent blog about Archie Andrews, my friend Phil commented: "Lots of dummies (and dolls) in movies have a life of their own," going on to cite such examples as Dead of Night, Magic and (in the Hitchcock TV series) Riabouchinska. "What is it with these comedy turns," Phil asked, "that wants us to be scared of them?"


It was a question that got me thinking, not least because the 'technical adviser' on the ventriloquism sequence in the 1945 psycho-thriller, Dead of Night, was none other than Arthur Brough (left), father to Archie's guardian, Peter Brough.

Without question the most dramatic and disturbing sequence in this multi-segment portmanteau movie, directed by Alberto Cavalcanti and others, was that telling the story of ventriloquist Maxwell Frere and his ventriloquial dummy, Hugo Fitch - seen here to the right of Arthur Brough.

In an unforgettable performance by Michael Redgrave, the ventriloquist is seen degenerating into a state of utter insanity when his own personality is taken over by that of the terrifying, ever-smiling Hugo.

Despite only running for the length of a short-subject - and filmed in black and white! - this episode from Dead of Night runs rings of terror round the Technicolor, feature-length frights of Richard Attenborough's 1978 film of William Goldman's Magic.

Nevertheless, Magic, starring Anthony Hopkins, Ann-Margret and Burgess Meredith is typical of the evil doll/toy movie of which there have been legion from early pictures such as Tod Browning's 1936 sci-fi creeper, The Devil Doll, through to the various ghastly goings-on in the slew of movies starring Chucky and friends.

So, where does this concept come from?

For as long as children have had toys they have been bringing them to life in their imagination: endowing their dolls, teddies, soldiers, cowboys and indians with personalities, visualising them having adventures and, indeed, even creating worlds for them to inhabit...

The idea that toys come alive is deeply ingrained in our psyche - if you doubt me, visit i used to believe, and see just how many people have recollections of childhood fantasies about their nursery companions coming alive after 'lights out' and going off to have adventures on their own, or plotting to attack them or, far more commonly, ganging up to protect them from whatever monsters lurked in the darkness.

Children's literature is full of tales of the secret lives of toys - such as Winnie-the-Pooh, The Velveteen Rabbit and The Indian in the Cupboard - and the highly successful Toy Story franchise is an obvious manifestation of the same phenomenon.


When we grow "to man's estate" (or simply get a bit older!) we are not only taught to "put away childish things", but we are also taught that giving imagined life to inanimate objects is - depending on your cultural beliefs - blasphemous or psychotic.

The crime of Prometheus was in usurping powers reserved for the gods of Olympus. Firstly, Prometheus made mortal men from the clay of the earth, then he stole the fire of the gods (the very source of creativity) and gave it to mankind so that they, too, might create...

Which is why when, in 1818, Mary Shelley wrote her celebrated novel about Victor Frankenstein and what (thanks to Moviedom) we now call his 'Monster', she titled the volume Frankensten; or, The Modern Prometheus.

Ventriloquism and puppetry are rouge artforms and their wooden players - the Cheeky Chappies and Mr Punches - have (despite the best endeavours of the most rabid moralists) somehow always escaped the axe long enough to amuse or, perhaps, terrify us with their wide eyes, rictus grins and simulated lifelikeness...

But however much we tolerate them, we still subconsciously wonder whether they aren't playing in a forbidden playground - reaching for the power of the gods - to breath life into a dummy and to make it talk with a voice thrown through the air.

Small wonder, I think, that so many stories have sprung up to feed on that fear and seize on the concept of a doll, dummy or puppet that, once brought to life, has (like human beings) "free will" and (again like human beings) is equally capable of going towards the dark as towards the light...


[Images: Pooh & Co by E H Shepard; Boris Karloff as Frankentein's creature (on a USA postage stamp) by Thomas Blackshear II; portrait of 'Mr Punch' © Brian Sibley, 2007, from the superb Punch and Judy show presented by the incomparable Professor Geoff Felix]