11th January 2010.

Not doing anything on Tuesday February 16th and you live in the Brighton area?  Why not pop down to the Lighthouse, 28 Kensington Street (BN1 4AJ) and say hello to David McGillivray and myself who’ll be there to talk about all things horror. Subjects will range from what the key ingredients of a good horror movie are to the way the genre has changed over the years, and anything else the audience wants to throw at us I’m sure. Even if that is rotten eggs and squashy tomatoes! It’s strange how these things come about though. You may remember me telling you I was recently employed to teach that self styled commandant of concentrated camp Julian Clary how to roller blade for his new stand-up show. I know it will come as something of a surprise to many of you but I’m really good at it. In fact, I produced the roller disco pantomime ‘Cinder Roller’ back in the early 1980s, but that’s another story entirely.  Well, the fruits of my labours have been on show in Julian’s current tour ‘Lord of the Mince’ and I must say he did rather well considering he’s never put his foot in a skate ever. Anyway, the assistant director on the show was Janet Sate who coincidentally runs the Lighthouse and when David informed her about my horror street cred, she immediately formulated the ‘Under the Skin of the Horror Genre’ event. Doors open 6.30 pm for a 7 pm start and the ticket prices are £3.00 (£2 concessions). Janet tells me interested people should book early due to limited space. David as you will know from his many FrightFest appearances over the years (until recently that is because, frankly, his short movies haven’t been as good as the earlier ones!) was the writer of many cult 1970s sleaze shockers, like Pete Walker’s FRIGHTMARE and Norman J. Warren’s SATAN’S SKIN and TERROR, in which you can glimpse me as a bearded dancing extra. In fact, now I think about it, I turned up on set on roller skates! Talk about a theme emerging here.  It was the ‘fladge fantasy’ HOUSE OF WHIPCORD David wrote for Walker that actually got us to meet for the first time. I say meet. I was actually stalking David after seeing that movie because it made such an amazing impression on me. I knew his name from his work in the seminal magazine ‘Films and Filming’, especially his brilliant feature ‘The Crowded Shelf’ that exposed every movie unreleased in the UK for un-commercial or censorship reasons. This checklist was the precursor to the Video Nasties one later published by the BBFC and was an invaluable resource at that time.  Because of his picture in that magazine I knew what he looked like. So when I saw him lurking around the London Pavilion cinema Leicester Square (now the Trocadero mall) where WHIPCORD opened, I pounced and did the typical fan rant. David swears he doesn’t remember this, but because I learned he lived close by me at the time, we became firm friends. Through him I met Walker, Warren and Michael Armstrong (MARK OF THE DEVIL director) whom I interviewed for various magazines. When he had one of the first ever cable entertainment shows on TV for the Premiere Channel, he invited me on as a guest to talk horror and it seems we’ve been doing that ever since. Now’s your chance to see if our on stage FrightFest double act schtick does actually transfer into the more serious discussion arena. The only other person I feel truly comfortable with in such a heated debate environment is Mark Kermode for many of the same reasons. I truly enjoy slagging both off because of my affection for their friendship and knowledge. Who knows, perhaps one day Mark will rise to my challenge and actually join us at FrightFest. For further information about the Lighthouse event follow these links -

http://www.lighthouse.org.uk/whatson/undertheskin.htm

and map http://www.lighthouse.org.uk/about/contact.htm

Until next time.

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