Hammer films are back in production. I had quite a surprise last night when I turned over to the Ten O’ Clock news. Expecting to see footage of Gordon Brown attempting to perfect his smile, I was instead greeted by a clip from The Curse of Frankenstein. I immediately presumed that Christopher Lee had died, but he hadn’t and it was a report about the return of Hammer films.
I’ll believe it when I see it; when I’m in the cinema watching new Hammer Horrors. New films were promised in the early 2000s then nothing, there was talk in the 1990s then nothing. The last productions I’m aware of bearing the Hammer name were the TV series Hammer House of Horror and Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense in the 1980s. The last feature films must have been more than thirty years ago…
More of this please!
Update
The Fortean Times isn’t a publication that I’d normally subscribe to, but the June issue has an excellent article about Hammer films by Kim Newman. Worth reading.
‘Just the place to bury a crock of gold,’ said Sebastian. ‘I should like to bury something precious in every place where I’ve been happy and then, when I was old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.’
A famous television series from 1981. Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews. Teddy bears. Long visits to Venice to meet Laurence Olivier. Oxford undergraduates drinking heavily and speaking through megaphones. These are just a few of the images that have haunted me over the years, stopping me in my tracks every time I thought about reading Brideshead Revisited. But I decided it was time to take the plunge, and although I had many flashbacks when I was reading the novel I just held on tight until they passed. My edition is the 1957 Penguin; it’s been in my possession for as long as I can remember. I’ve moved house eight times in the last 15 or so years and this is one of those books that has always travelled with me.
An army captain is billetted to an old house during the Second World War. He’s been there before, and it evokes memories of his past; Oxford in the early 1920s, where Charles Ryder befriends the effete, charismatic and extrovert Sebastian Flyte. They quickly develop an intense and often disturbingly insular friendship; whilst their relationship is never revealed to be a homosexual one, they prefer their own company to others and are indifferent to the charms of women. Although both from the priviliged upper classes, both also come from dysfunctional families; Charles’ closest relative is his eccentric and slightly mad father, Sebastian’s own father lives in apparent exile overseas after leaving his mother. They begin to drift apart when Sebastian himself drifts into hopeless alcoholism; neither Charles or his own family are able to help him. Ten years later Charles, now a successful artist, embarks on a doomed love affair with Sebastian’s sister Julia.
Although he’s perhaps not someone you’d want to be associated with in real life, the star of Brideshead Revisited is definitely Sebastian. He’s the friend from hell; you begin to despise them and their actions of self destruction but you still try, and fail, to save them. He irritated and infuriated me, but the parts of the book where he wasn’t around were just dull. And the teddy bear, which was a suitable affectation for the fashion conscious of the early 80s, is one of just many keys to the personality of a doomed individual. And putting the homosexual debate to one side, Sebastian, as Charles’ first love, represents the first love for all of us – the one we can never forget even if we might want to (even if it means settling for the sister).
I’ve heard reports that the new cinema version, due for release in 2008, will concentrate mainly on Charles and Julia’s relationship. Something that won’t capture the imagination, or haunt the memory, nearly as much. Why? I found them unappealing characters, and the novel sagged without Sebastian’s disturbing exploits. Unfortunately Brideshead Revisited is ultimately a depressing read. The scenes with Charles’ father are hilarious but the comedy in this novel is minimal. There’s always the sense that life will be a disappointment, even before it’s really got going, with things lost never to be retrieved again:
I felt that I was leaving part of myself behind, and that wherever I went afterwards I should feel the lack of it, and search for it hopelessly, as ghosts are said to do, frequenting the spots where they buried material treasures without which they cannot pay their way to the nether world.
Crocks of gold? I think in Waugh’s mind, if memories of youth are rekindled they invariably only serve to cause feelings of sadness or regret. Depressive that I am, I tend to agree with him.
Following last week’s Reading in Public, a follow up meme from Booking Through Thursday. Where don’t you read?
Although I try to squeeze in a chapter or two at lunchtimes, I don’t read at work. Well, I do in a way, but it’s all work related, which tends to take the pleasure out of it. As I manage a website, I can get away with looking at forums and blogs and internet magazines in the name of research although there’s only a limit that my conscience will allow.
My daily commute to work lasts for an hour each way and because it’s by car I lose a lot of valuable reading time. I miss squeezing onto the underground with my paperback when I lived in London, which is something I never thought I’d say. I’m stuck instead with UK radio, which can rot the soul. I know, I should try audio books.
As I said before, I try not to read where I think it might offend others. Mainly family gatherings, or visits to places where I am meant to be doing something, such as water parks, which – inexplicably – I always find myself in. I’ve cunningly found a way around these situations. If you pack a book with your flask and sandwiches for the family picnic, or slip one in with your swimming costume and towel, you need only produce it momentarily when others are looking. Then there’s always the possiblility of striking up a book-related conversation if someone like-minded is passing round the paper plates, or standing behind you in the queue for the water rapids.
Talking of water, I never read in the bath as I can’t bear wrinkly pages, and logistics prevent me from reading whilst sleeping (although I’ve tried, and often wake up in the morning with an open book sprawled over me). Otherwise, I will try my best to read when and where I can.
