Really, Really Not The Sort Of Song You Want Rattling Around Your Head All Day.

Riddle me this Batman - what's the mystery tune?

But sadly, there it is seeded, singing and ringing around my synapses. A tune that gatecrashed my internal playlist yesterday, (my mistake for downloading I suppose) and has bounced about like mad spacehopper or a bad penny ever since. A loony tune on a permament loop.

Damn those seventies soundtrackers for their catchy compostitions

I know what is - but do you ?

Mystery Tune



Having said that, it would make the perfect soundtrack to my single figure total of DIY attempts.

Last of the Indie Vid Shops

For all the justified mumbles, grumbles and moans regarding the decline of local record shops - it's easy to overlook the disappearance of another small scale independent entertainment outlet. Video rental shops. The last of the indie vid's in our area shut up shop a couple of weeks ago, and until the closed sign was finally flipped forever it maintained all the required trappings and trimmings of a generic local video shop

The 'card-full-o'-signatures' loaner system (was there ever a name for that?)

A sticker claiming '6 (or 8) copies available' on recent releases - although all 6(or 8)copies were rarely available.

Poster splattered walls and windows.

Oddbod titles with one solo signature on the rental card 'Dunstan Checks In'

Faded Copies of Donnie Brasco or Devil's Advocate for sale (£5)in the ex-rentals bin

So are there any still standing near you, and what are the names please? Or do you have any cherished memories from the eighties rental boom and beyond (£50 deposit and £1 a night hire) when video shops spread across the UK faster than swine flu.

A couple video-rewinds of mine are...

The first wave saturation of video renters and bandwagon riders. Record shops, garages even a hardware shop (yes I was a member) were lending from their extensive overnight libraries.

In the splatter-friendly pre-certification days, a film chosen as suitable viewing for a former girlfriend and myself by her parents (while they went out for an evening) was the full strength, unedited version of 'Cannibal Holocaust'!?!?

Do you want to see something really scary ? # 5 Don't Go Near the Water

Cashing in on the cinematic splash made by Jaws (which I became obsessed with and saw at least five times at the pictures) filmmakers chunked out a mad amount of 'When Animals Attack' movies at the tail end of the seventies, pointing a potentially-hostile-to-humans finger at such unlikely aggressors as bats, worms and whales.

Tentacles
I actually paid good coin to see this Flop-O-Matic movie. Have a peep at the trailer, you will not believe the Hollywood heavy-hitters that got on board on for this titanic wet fish of a film.



Pirhana
The novelisation of Pirhana was the first adult fiction book I read (aged 12). Published by New English Library, with, I think those oddly yellow edged pages - saw this one with Carrie (so much better) as the B-movie.



The Incredible Melting Man was another horrorshow seen around this period, although I seem to be the only person that remembers it.

The Incredible Melting Man - trailer

The Beach Boys - Don't Go Near the Water (in which the BB's appear to be doing a day trip to Southend)

Back in Black

I'm really not tempted or taken by the Dark Knight trailers. I should be. I'm a lifelong (since the age of three anyway) Batmaniac - more than a fan, but not quite a geek - a fanorak I suppose.

But I've been put off by sequential superhero cinematic letdowns, the all black outfit which makes the Dark Knight Detective look like Robobat, and the Joker seemingly styled on Wurzel Gummidge meets Leigh Bowery and not the clipped, edgy deadly dandy he actually is.

What I hope to see at some point is an adaptation of Batman's equivalent of Elvis's 68 Special. A period when after spending most of the sixties lost in the wilderness of wackery and camp, the Caped Crusdaer became regenerated and revived by the dynamic duo of Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams.

Adams almost draughtsman like artwork, expressive cape and the make over of Batman's build (Adams felt that Batman and Superman shouldn't share the same body type - Batman should be athletic rather than powerful) and O'Neil's Gotham goes Hammer Horror stories - 'The Demon Of Gothos Mansion', 'The Secret of the waiting Graves' 'Night Of The Reaper' 'Daughter Of The Demon' - all late night tales of haunted mansions, ghostly lovers and freak show runaways, that created a magical arc of dark art and returned Batman to the spooky moonlight roots of his earliest appearances.

Now that would be something to tempt me out of the shadows and into the cinema.

Recommended Reading

www.nealadams.com/
Neal Adams Batman Cover Gallery
Dennis O'Neil - Wiki entry