Stewart Home's Blog, page 14

The real Christopher Lee – tall, dark and an airhead!

Having recently read Phil Baker's The Devil Is A Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley, I was moved to revisit the Hammer film adaptations of Wheatley's novels – The Devil Rides Out (Terence Fisher, 1968) and To The Devil A Daughter (Peter Sykes, 1976), both of which 'starred' pseudo-aristocratic plonker Christopher Lee. The first flick is an ultra-conservative thriller with some occult trimmings that looks absolutely pathetic when compared to what was happening in horror cinema...

69 years of press coverage for Ray 'The Cat' Jones…

Over the past year I've devoted a number of blogs to my first cousin once removed Ray 'The Cat' Jones. Having talked to various people about Ray and located assorted print references to him made after he'd retired from being the greatest cat burglar in the world, I thought it was time to dig back into the past. Old newspaper reports of Ray's court appearances verify much of what he had to say about his life, clarify various matters, and show that more recent accounts of his famous jail break ...

Porno Galore II: Orgy of the Xmas Blogs

Greetings pop pickers! I figured that this being the time of year when people go nuts for lists, mainly of presents for "Santa" admittedly, then I might as well take part by giving you my Christmas album Top Ten. I hope that I'll be only one of many bloggers to do this, so that just about justifies my "Porno Galore II: Orgy of the Xmas Blogs" header at the top of this. Moving on, here's my top ten Christmas albums, please add your top ten or top five or top one or why you don't like...

Martin – or where it all went wrong for George A. Romero

Martin (1977) was the film that revealed director George A. Romero's desire to emulate the middle-brow success of 'horror' author Stephen King. It is the tale of a teenage boy who believes he's a vampire. Obviously, and as Romero confirms in a making of documentary you'll find on the Arrow's '2 Disc Special Edition', he isn't; in 'reality' he's just an alienated psycho. The central character comes from a dysfunctional family who believe they suffer from a vampire curse. Despite this, Martin c...

The best of 'Beat Beat Beat' – as incoherent as the 60s will always be!

The label tells it like it is – "Beat Beat Beat was a German music programme that ran during the sixties. Not to be confused with the other well known German pop programme Beat Club. Beat Beat Beat was broadcast out of Frankfurt commencing in 1966." Well you wouldn't want to confuse the two programmes as far as getting the DVDs of material from them is concerned, coz while the Beat Beat Beat (ABC Entertainment) disks give you classic mod, British Invasion, freakbeat, pop and even soul...

Peter Plate and the off-line 'revolution'…

San Francisco based novelist Peter Plate came up in conversation the other night. I was at the launch of the Sara De Bondt and Fraser Muggeridge edited tome The Form of the Book at Art Words new Broadway Market shop, where I ran into some people I hadn't seen for a while and we started rappin' about mutual friends. None of us had been in contact with Peter Plate for a year or two and he became the focus of our conversation. While we were still in touch with him, he refused to do anything on t...

My 'moment of truth' – MP3s have some advantages over CDs….

The other day as I was eating out (and no I wasn't with my girlfriend Tessie Talk), Gang Starr's Moment Of Truth album was playing in the background. I find Gang Starr's earlier work a mixed bag but there are some good tracks among it. That said, by the time they made this 1998 album they were so self-obsessed and up their own arses that their rhymes were a shower of shit. It should go without saying they wouldn't have recognised a 'moment of truth' if it had hit them on the head with a...

Digital Tenderness – MP3s have some advantages over CDs….

The other day as I was eating out (and no I wasn't with my girlfriend Tessie), Gang Starr's Moment Of Truth album was playing in the background. I find Gang Starr's earlier work a mixed bag but there are some good tracks among it. That said, by the time they made this 1998 album they were so self-obsessed and up their own arses that their rhymes were a shower of shit. It should go without saying they wouldn't have recognised a 'moment of truth' if it had hit them on the head with a brick.

Ther...

Terry's Taylor's cult novel 'Baron's Court, All Change' is a classic – official at £238!

Copies of Terry Taylor's 1961 novel Baron's Court, All Change don't come up for sale at all often but until now when they did they've never been particularly expensive. I have a paperback that came from an exchange stall and it cost 20p. I was looking for a hardback for about 4 years until I finally acquired one via eBay – and no one else even bid on that copy of the book. I've been checking the obvious online places for further copies since then (eBay, Amazon, Abe Books), and I've not come a...

The sinful nuns of St Valentine meet the Marquis de Sade at the Borders closing down 'sale'….

Watching capitalist corporations fail is a groove sensation, and it takes me right back to everything from the three day week to the 'winter of discontent' in the 1970s. All those who love power cuts will recall that the mid-1970s was a real peak for this type of fun in London. As a long-term fan of this great anti-tradition, you can't keep me out of shops that are closing down. The last 12 months has been a real bonanza for entertainments of this type: first there was the closure of...