The Cult

March 1, 2026

For Malcontents Only Film, Music Cults, Father Yod, Penetration An Aquarian Symphony, The Source Family, Ya Ho Wa 13 Leave a comment

The video below comes via a stinger accompanying the end credits of the 2012 documentary The Source Family. The quality of the clip is beyond terrible. Arguably the music isn’t much better, but the story behind Ya Ho Wa 13 is undeniably fascinating. That’s André Previn’s daughter Alicia aka Lovely on violin, incidentally.

Spotting the behavioural indicators of cult membership can apparently be a complex task. Even trying to define a cult is difficult. Is Scientology one? Or, as I’ve seen suggested online, is MAGA a cult? Is there a trans cult?

Guess what? Defining ‘cult’ acts isn’t entirely easy either. I asked AI and was informed that cult bands included The Cult (‘they achieved a cult following in the UK before gaining mainstream success’), The Clash (though famous, they are often characterised as a cult band of the punk movement), and some other relatively mainstream and successful bands like The Stone Roses and New Order.

The subject of my previous past, The Cardiacs, are a prime example of what I would class as a cult act. Eccentric, commercial underachievers, they sparked a connection to a group of fans whose loyalty exceeded any normal fanbase. Like many a cult act, not everybody will ‘get’ them, but those who do really ‘get’ them. Another example: Lawrence of Felt, Denim, Go-Kart Mozart and Mozart Estate. Despite existing on the margins of the mainstream, he’s had a biography written about him (Will Hodgkinson’s excellent Street Level Superstar) and a documentary focussing on him (Lawrence of Belgravia).

Approval from a respected musician can help establish cult credentials. Think of Bowie favourites, The Legendary Stardust Cowboy or Klaus Nomi, or the countless obscure acts that Julian Cope adores, Magma being the first that springs to mind. Highly unconventional quirks like that group inventing their own language to sing in helps too. Being unexpectedly championed by former world snooker champion Steve Davis is also perhaps a bonus. Maybe one day I’ll get round to listening to them.

So-called outsider musicians like The Shaggs and Daniel Johnston tend to find themselves bracketed under the cult banner due to their back stories and lack of traditional musical skills. Severe mental health problems and subsequent erratic career or an early death play a part too for many (think Syd Barrett, say, or Nick Drake). Then there’s the ‘we will shock you brigade’, acts best known for their extreme provocation (GG Allin and Eldon Hoke of The Mentors). Are they cult acts, though? I’m not entirely sure.

Thankfully, actual cults aren’t something I’ve ever be drawn to. I just about remember the Manson trial as a kid, which was very disturbing, and I watched coverage of the Jonestown Massacre in 1978, which was utterly sickening.

I rejected religion at a young age. I aim to avoid groupthink whenever possible. I’ve never felt the need to search for a surrogate family or community. I’ve also never held any desire to be given some hippy-dippy name like Sunflower or Lotus and told to meditate. Why would anybody think that joining some cult might be a good idea?

But what if I’d been an alienated young man living in California in the late 1960s or early 1970s with the possiblity of being drafted to Vietnam hanging over me?

Back then cults weren’t as well understood. Many alternative publications frequently portrayed them in a favourable light. Plenty of those associated with America’s counterculture even sided with Charles Manson after his arrest, together with members of his ‘family’. ‘The first time most hippies like myself set eyes on Manson’s picture in the paper we were certain he’d been railroaded,’ Rolling Stone reporter David Dalton recalled in 1998. ‘We knew that anybody who looked like that could never have done these horrible things they were saying he did. It was just the Pigs picking on some poor hippie guru.’

Others, like militant group The Weather Underground, did assume his guilt, but celebrated the slaughter as an anti-establishment attack, calling the victims ‘rich honky pigs.’ They even named Manson their ‘Man of the Year’.

Post-Manson, a backlash did emerge, although many cults were still supported by some of the ‘influencers’ of the era. Jim Jones of The Peoples Temple was repeatedly praised by radicals such as Harvey Milk and Angela Davis. The latter even radioed in a supportive messages to Jonestown in the months leading up to the massacre of over 900 men, women and children. She happily called Jones ‘a friend’ and ‘a humanitarian’.

As cults go, the Source Family were surely relatively benevolent. No outlandish belief in igniting any Helter Skelter race war, or plan to murder heavily pregnant actresses, or to persuade followers to drink a Kool-Aid style drink laced with arsenic. The behaviour of founder Jim Baker aka Father Yod, though, did follow a familiar pattern.

Leader decides he needs a harem of young wives: Tick.

Declares himself to be God or Godlike: Tick.

Begins warning about an upcoming apocalypse: Tick.

This necessitating the exodus of his family to somewhere more remote. Another tick.

Father Yod – and I would find it almost impossible to take anybody who named themselves that with any degree of seriousness – espoused Eastern mysticism. He urged his followers to practise yoga and eat healthy foods. The Source Family, as it became known, actually grew out of a vegetarian restuarant on LA’s Sunset Strip. Baker, who admitted to having murdered two men in self-defence, made a real success of it. Celebrities flocked there: John and Yoko, Steve McQueen, and Goldie Hawn among others. It was even later chosen as a location for the film Annie Hall, where Woody Allen’s character orders ‘alfalfa sprouts and a plate of mashed yeast’.

A congregation began to gather around Baker, who we’re told in the 2012 documentary, The Source Family, was amazingly charismatic. Capable of performing miracles, too. If his former acolytes are to be believed, he once revived the life of a stillborn baby, although one interviewee also recalls seeing thunderbolts shoot out of his ears. Good Yod almighty!

Born in 1922 and therefore hardly of the hippy generation, Baker was a bear of a man with long greying hair, a Rick Rubin beard, and a penchant for giant medallions. He also wore flowing robes, which he persuaded his followers to also adopt, kinda like The Polyphonic Spree.

En masse, they all moved into a Georgian-style mansion in the Hollywood Hills in 1972 – outdoor pool, panoramic views, and no shortage of good-looking young devotees drifting around. Each morning began with a quick blast of what Yod liked to call ‘the sacred herb.’ And for the musically inclined, the garage was transformed into a fully soundproofed studio with more than $30,000 blown on instruments and recording gear, ready for anyone who felt moved to channel the cosmos, maaan.

A band emerged with a number of names, Ya Ho Wa 13 being the best known iteration. Record companies were approached, but predictably, none were tempted to add Yod’s band to their rosters.

Never mind, albums were soon being recorded and self-released on Yod’s own Higher Key Records, most being pressed in small runs of 500 to 1000 copies and sold in the restaurant.

The band performed live too, Yod targeting schools to help recruit gullible youngsters to his group. In the documentary, there’s footage of the band playing outside to a crowd of schoolchildren from Beverly Hills High School. Yod spraffs on about picking up on vibrations and reincarnation while standing upright and banging a primal though not entirely steady beat on a kettledrum. Strangely hypnotic, the performance encouraged me to seek out more. I found 1974’s self-titled Ya Ho Wa 13 online, and gave it a listen. Psychedelic and improvisational, not one track appealed to me in any way. ‘I drive a Rolls-Royce,’ Marc Bolan once sang. ‘Cause it’s good for my voice.’ Yod drove a Roller himself, but this didn’t prove good for his voice. But you could make a persuasive case that he did fool the children of the revolution. Some of them anyway.

Unfortunately, the other band members didn’t really have the option to kick him out of the band and seek a more talented vocalist. I’ll give them something, though. Ya Ho Wa 13 are unquestionably a cult band.

Nine physical albums came out. Over sixty more were recorded. I’m guessing quality control was not overly stringent. A tenth album of sorts credited to Fire Water Air (a version of Ya Ho Wa 13 with former Seed Sky Saxon joining the lineup) was released in 1977, after the death of Yod in a hang gliding accident. Among fans – and there are some out there prepared shell out a couple of hundred quid to buy some of the band’s original albums on vinyl – the most highly regarded seems to be Penetration: An Aquarian Symphony. Here’s an excerpt.

While the music holds little appeal to me, the documentary was engrossing, albeit largely uncritical of the cult. It’s inspired by the book The Source: The Untold Story of Father Yod, Ya Ho Wa 13, and The Source Family, written by (ahem) Isis Aquarian and (ahem again) Electricity Aquarian, which includes an essay by Jodi Wille, the co-director of the documentary, along with Maria Demopoulos.

There is mention of a number of underage girls who were drawn to the commune, and Yod’s wife Robin aka Ah-om, who married him legally when he was still Jim Baker, calls him a ‘dirty old man on a lust trip’ for demanding to take on over a dozen new young ‘spiritual’ wives. She has a point. Surely five or six is enough for any man. Seven at a push, so you could have one for every day of the week. More seriously, his belief that medicine was unnecessary was deplorably misguided and brought the commune into conflict with the Californian authorities when a child became very ill.

Many involved, though, somehow still regard Yod highly. Some have gone on to live what appear to be successful, fulfilling lives too. Others not interviewed in the documentary take the opposite view and present Yod as virulently anti-gay, chauvinist and abusive. Speaking of the time when the Source Family finally disintegrated, former member Laura Garon wrote in her blog: ‘It felt like being released from an internment camp where you had suffered deprivations.’ Here’s her take on the doc.

A Salvation Army of the Damned

February 1, 2026

For Malcontents Only Music A Little Man And A House And The Whole World Window, Cardiacs, Is This The Life, R.E.S., Tim Smith 2 Comments

More often than not, my relationship with the artists I’m drawn to follows a predictable pattern: I’ll love their early output, only to find them less and less vital as their inspiration inevitably wanes the longer they go on. Think Belle & Sebastian, Elvis Costello or Patti Smith for starters. Cardiacs defied this linear decline, but my experience with their music always tended to fluctuate wildly – swinging from pure adoration for one track to active dislike for the next. I love them, I love them not.

Confession: I know relatively little about the band – their devotees won’t find anything that surprises them here – and I heard little of their music until 1988 and the release of their first official full-length album A Little Man And A House And The Whole World Window.

I’ve also only seen them once, and the show, a concert at the Falcon in Camden, somehow managed to simultaneously resemble a skronky Dadaist cabaret with shades of panto and even performance art thrown in for good measure. The intensity of the band and the euphoric reaction from their fiercely loyal fanbase that night was truly something to behold.

This was in contrast to how they were perceived by most of the British music press. I have read of a ban on featuring the band by NME, although I’m not sure if this was something of a myth, but many were deeply hostile. John Peel was also famously unmoved. Despite his massive support for independent releases, he didn’t spin a single Cardiacs track throughout the 1980s, preferring the safer, indie sensibilities of acts such as The Pooh Sticks and Siddeleys, Popinjays and Senseless Things, as Cardiacs released that debut album.

Categorising their music is difficult. Though independent, they were fond of the kind of time signatures favoured by King Crimson and Caravan; conspicuously competent musicians, they also liked to veer into more frenetic territory with the kind of unruly, punkish thrashes that would make a massive impact on the early Blur. Their influences are many and varied: from The Incredible String Band (another band I have mixed opinions about) to sea shanties, from Van Dyke Parks to Van Der Graaf Generator.

Some critics attempted to pigeonhole them as ‘pronk’ – a portmanteau of progressive rock and punk. Frontman Tim Smith, who passed away in 2020, loathed the term; he preferred to describe their complex compositions simply as ‘psychedelic pop’.

Their closest brush with the mainstream was likely the 1988 single, Is This The Life, written and produced by Smith. This might be described as straight ahead rock. It kicks off with a big stadium riff that Bruce Springsteen might envy, and includes a guitar solo that brings to mind Adrian Belew and the final magical minute of Bowie’s Boys Keep Swinging. Sadly, it’s cut halfway through on the promo below, but you can listen to the full track here.

Is This The Life limped into the British top 100 at #93. It would climb only as far as #80, before dropping out. This remained their highest ever chart position.

As you might know, or could have easily guessed, their image was also a problem for some. Defiantly unfashionable, they were theatrical, favouring clownish make-up that looked as if it had been applied without a mirror. They gurned while they played and wore grimy bandsmen uniforms, leading author (and fan) Cathi Unsworth to describe them as ‘a Salvation Army of the Damned.’

A female I knew once claimed they looked like a bunch of inbred weirdoes, an ironic comment as when Tim was interviewed in British nonsense rag, the Sunday Sport,* he claimed that he and sax player Sarah Smith, shared ‘the same mum and bed’. He further insisted: ‘We often have to tell people we’re Mr and Mrs to make it easier. That’s why we don’t get people asking why we’re holding hands all the time, or living together.’

Paradoxically, the best way to keep a secret like that isn’t usually via a national tabloid. Tim and Sarah were actually husband and wife at the time – and entirely unrelated by blood – but were happy to fuel the sensationalist narrative.

Okay, remember I mentioned actively disliking some of their songs? Here’s one of those. R.E.S. is very possibly short for Residents, the mysterious American conceptualists, and the track remains a taste I doubt I’ll ever manage to acquire. All those tempo changes grate on me, as does the merry-go-round keyboard motif, Tim’s heavily mannered vocals, the Mike Oldfieldy guitar solo, and jazzy section. The ‘that’s the way we all go’ group chorus even reminds me of Pop Goes the Weasel‘s ‘Half a pound of tuppenny rice’ line.

Of course, the track that follows it on the album, The Whole World Window, was superb.

Cardiacs, Family & Friends, as they’re being billed, will play a short tour to celebrate the music of Tim Smith in March, with dates in Portsmouth, London, Manchester and Glasgow. Details here.

For the latest Cardiacs news, click here.

*Readers outside Britain should note that the Sport specialised in crazy headlines that no-one could possibly believe like ‘World War 2 Bomber Found on Moon’, ‘Adolf Hitler Was a Woman’, and ‘Coldplay Make Exciting Album’. I only made one of those up myself.

The Adventures of Brigitte Bardot in the Firth of Forth

January 12, 2026

For Malcontents Only Cinema Alastair McKay, Alternatives to Valium, Bonnie and Clyde, Brigitte Bardot, Dave Gilmour, Serge Gainsbourg, Two Weeks in September Leave a comment

I’m not sure how Brigitte Bardot ended up in the lead role of 1967’s Two Weeks in September. Until then, the settings of her films had been synonymous with glamorous, sun‑drenched resorts. Her breakout hit And God Created Woman was filmed in and around Saint‑Tropez, while her most critically acclaimed work, Le Mépris, unfolded against the backdrop of Italy’s Isle of Capri. But for Two Weeks in September, she agreed to a shoot involving outdoor scenes filmed by the grey waters of the Firth of Forth.

As the film’s press release put it: ‘Brigitte Bardot and her co-stars soon become familiar and very welcome figures as they enacted key scenes in the romantic comedy around Dirleton Castle near North Berwick and Tantallon Castle. Further enchanting locations were completed along the beautiful East Coast of Scotland, favourite haunts for many tourists and sightseers.’

In his book Alternatives To Valium, which I would recommend, North Berwick native Alastair McKay devoted a short chapter to the visit of the star and gave more detailed information on some of the locations caught on production stills such as the one below. Reading about the film put me in the mood to see it, but it wasn’t easy to find.

The recent death of Bardot, got me thinking again about trying to track it down. This time I was in luck: somebody had uploaded it onto YouTube. I also just discovered it had been given a physical release by Kino Lorber in America late in 2024.

À coeur joie, to give it its French title, was a French/British co-production shot in 1966 and released the following year. It was directed by Serge Bourguignon, whose reputation was high in the mid-60s, as his Sundays and Cybele had picked up the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film of 1962.

Bardot plays Cécile, a ridiculously photogenic model living in Paris with her partner, Philippe. She loves him, but senses their relationship is growing stale. She’s impulsive and likes to party. He’s a bourgeois publisher who prefers to read.

When the offer of a two-week assignment in London comes up, she decides to accept it, hoping that she will come back refreshed, with absence making the heart grow fonder.

She flies into Heathrow along with three fellow models. The city is starting to swing, although a visit to a small West End nightclub called Charlotte’s is far from the full-on hippy experience of something like the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream at Ally Pally or Pink Floyd playing at Middle Earth. Cécile, though, does happily shake her stuff to an obscure track by uncredited Cambridge band Joker’s Wild, which features Dave Gilmour before he had joined the ranks of the Floyd. It’s one of two tracks he sings on the soundtrack, and nowadays, he’s a little embarrassed by these early efforts. The songs are enjoyable enough psych pop ditties, but his voice is dreadfully weak at times on both.

On the banks of the Thames, with London Bridge in the background, the girls pose in their finery while David Baileyesque photographer Dickinson (Mike Sarne) snaps away, coaxing nuggets of personal information from Cécile.

As he does so, Vincent (Laurent Terzieff) appears, walking a basset hound. The young man’s presence startles Cécile, who clearly recognizes him. Wait a minute, wasn’t he glimpsed in an earlier scene at a street party in Montparnasse? Yes he was (I had to check). ‘Is this a coincidence?’ she asks.

No, it is far from a coincidence.

I won’t give any major spoilers away here, but within days, the pair are taking the high road north to Scotland in a red Mini.

Any hopes that the Scottish Tourist Board might have had that a big international hit could send tourists flocking to the Firth of Forth were scuppered by the poor box office returns and lukewarm critical reception on the film’s release. Its reputation hasn’t improved over the years.

Steven H. Scheuer’s Movies on TV and Videocassette calls it ‘a dreary tale of model dallying with two macho men,’ while Leonard Maltman’s movie guide allocates a whole two sentences to the plot, the second one being: ‘Location shooting in London and Scotland enhances OK story.’ It would be hard to argue with that assessment.

Serge Bourguignon lacks the directorial spark of his contemporaries such as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. He himself described the New Wave directors as ‘a clique he wasn’t part of.’ Godard certainly used Bardot to far greater effect in Le Mépris.

I won’t be the first to note that the camera loves B.B. and her performance here is commendable, but the script is as weak as those Dave Gilmour Joker’s Wild vocals.

That press release quoted earlier touted the film as a ‘gay, romantic comedy,’ but don’t expect Brokeback Mountain or Blue Is The Warmest Colour, as gay here is used in its original sense. Don’t expect much in the way of comedy either. It’s hard to imagine anyone chortling away consistently as they watch, let alone howling with laughter. There is at least romance, and at times, I was reminded of some of those films that Eric Rohmer used to make with good looking, young Frenchies yapping on about l’amour incessantly, albeit it lacks the charm that Rohmer always managed to inject into his work.

The main problem is that neither of the two lead characters is very sympathetic or all that interesting. Cécile is selfish. As my auld granny might have said: ‘She wants to have her cake and eat it.’ As for Vincent: well, all that stalking early on put me off him completely. Philippe might have been incredibly dull, but he at least seemed a decent man with morals.

Two Weeks In September was released in Britain in October 1967, the same month that Bardot began an affair with Serge Gainsbourg, the pair getting together while rehearsing for a forthcoming TV Special – so like Cécile, she cheated on her husband. It was apparently a torrid affair. In Yé-Yé Girls of ’60s French Pop, Jean-Emmanuel Deluxe writes: ‘Overloaded with work, overwhelmed by passion, Gainsbourg couldn’t face the pressure. He even complained to Michel Colombier ‘each time I put my shirt back on, she has me take it off again!’ Poor Serge, eh?

The relationship didn’t last long but it did help spawn at least one classic track. Taking inspiration from the then current cultural phenomenon of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, this performance is taken from Le Bardot Show.

The early days of 1968 saw the release of the pair’s album, Bonnie and Clyde, before the sunshine beckoned once again, and B.B. headed off to the searing heat of Almería in southern Spain to shoot Shalako with Edinburgh-born Sean Connery, who was likely keen to find out about her time filming twenty miles or so from his hometown.

Brigitte Bardot: 28 September 1934 – 28 December 2025

Mike Joyce’s The Drums (With A Little On Kevin Rowland’s Bless Me Father Too)

November 15, 2025

For Malcontents Only Books Andy Rourke, How Soon Is Now?, Johnny Marr, Manchester, Mike Joyce, Morrissey, The Smiths Leave a comment

Within a few days during the summer, I breezed through a book about a second generation Irish musician born in England who found fame in the 1980s. Although I’d largely lost interest in Dexys after they had too-rye-ay’d their way to number one with Come On Eileen, Kevin Rowland’s Bless Me Father proved a surprisingly compelling read, and struck me as gut-wrenchingly honest, with Kevin resolutely refusing to sanitize his life.

He’s also not shy in putting the boot into several critics of his music and image, one example coming from a Radio 2 interview with Billy Bragg, who picked up Kevin’s My Beauty album and sneered: ‘Look! You can practically see your cream crackers there, mate.’ The quip obviously still rankles.

With music books of the year starting to feature in some annual best of lists, Bless Me Father is a cert to earn many mentions.

But, what of The Drums?

Mike Joyce might share a very similar working-class Catholic background to Rowland – both were even altar boys, but The Drums is a very different kind of read. ‘I want this book to be a love letter to that time and a love letter to The Smiths, capturing some of the stories and moments that defined that period of my life.’

I’m sure this will disappoint those hoping to hear his take on the infamous legal dispute that saw the drummer take Morrissey and Johnny Marr to the Supreme Court. ‘I have little desire to dredge this up again,’ he explains, although he does very briefly address the main issue that led to the trial, and there’s a short footnote explaining the basics of the case written in the third person. In his acknowledgements, he even gives ‘a special thank you to my fellow Smiths.’ Any criticisms are relatively tame. Morrissey is ‘a bit weird,’ and ‘to call Morrissey complex is an understatement,’ he notes, and even the singer’s superfans might struggle to disagree with either assessment. Morrissey was, of course, utterly scathing about Joyce in Autobiography.

Like Rowland in his memoir, Joyce spends a lot of time on his childhood – the sort of thing I sometimes skip then go back to if I’ve enjoyed the rest of the book, but not here. I suppose their backgrounds were not too dissimiliar to mine, which maybe helped. My Irish roots go further back, my forebears fleeing to Glasgow from County Cavan during the famine, albeit Catholicism has never played any real part in my life, not even as a child. Me becoming an altar boy? More chance of Morrissey becoming a butcher.

Seeing John Maher playing with Buzzcocks inspires the teenage Mike Joyce to become a drummer. Soon, he plays on a single by local punks The Hoax, before joining Victim, who’d formed in Belfast before moving collectively to Manchester. While still a member of Victim, he auditions for a new act consisting of a singer called Steve, a cool looking guy born John Maher (who changed his name to Marr to avoid any confusion with the Buzzcocks drummer) and a Dale, who needs John/Johnny to tune his bass, and who will quickly be replaced. Mike ingests some powdered magic mushrooms before auditioning. Luckily before they kicked in, Johnny has heard enough of his playing to be impressed. Mike is a Smith.

Glamour doesn’t play a huge part in the early days of the band. They play a ‘club’ in Bath, that more resembled a cafe, filled with table and chairs. No stage, although those tables and chairs would be pushed to one side to make at least some extra space. Their first taste of a ‘festival’ is headlining a bill along with a couple of bands called Shambolic Climate and A Dog Named Ego. This turned out to be more of a miners’ gala than a music festival and was opened by actor/screenwriter Colin Welland of all people. The Smiths do later progress onto the bill of Glastonbury, back when a weekend ticket would set you back a whole £13. Festival founder Michael Eavis apparently declared it his favourite ever Glastonbury set, and considered their ‘appearance to be a seminal moment in the history of the festival.’

Just prior to taking to the Top Of The Pops stage for the first time, Mike, dressed in a crew neck and jeans, is chided by two female audience members who hadn’t heard of the band. ‘Surely you’re not going on TV dressed like that, are you?’ Oh, and there’s a little anecdote about a band on the same TOTP bill with them on another occasion who did like to dress up. I wasn’t expecting to read about the toiletry habits of a member of Duran Duran, but it did make me chuckle.

There are many other amusing anecdotes here, from the possibility of hiring a musician with a ponytail for an American tour: ‘This made for a barrier that was impossible to overcome,’ to spotting Mick Jagger grooving at the side of the stage as Mike drummed: ‘He was not just grooving, though, he was doing a Mick Jagger dance.’

The cliché ‘that all our fans were bedsit-bound softies clutching a slim volume of poetry to their chests at all times,’ is punctured. I remember myself fans swamping into the Sara Heid pub across from Barrowland before a concert, and showing a lot more interest in necking down glasses of White Tornado (gut-rot wine) and pints of shammy (gut-rot cider) than reading Walt Whitman or Shelley. A rowdy bunch.

It’s an engaging read with a good flow and the writing never veers towards the occasional purple prose favoured by the former Steve in his own Autobiography.

But, but, but… enjoyable as it was, The Drums wasn’t making a deep impression on me, and I was never absolutely hooked as Mike covered that magical series of singles and albums the band released within a five-year period. Throughout, as you may have guessed, he comes across as an incredibly well-adjusted guy, especially when compared to Morrissey, or Kevin Rowland for that matter. Maybe he’s just too damn nice, I thought and wondered if the court case ruling had been reversed, might he have come out swinging in an attempt to settle some old scores? If so, we might have been in for a more intriguing read.

Joyce, though, suddenly excels during the final chapters with Johnny Marr calling an end to the band, and Mike’s thoughts on his great pal Andy Rourke. He’s upfront about the bassist’s drug problems and temporary expulsion from the lineup, and by the time Andy’s health becomes a big worry, I’m totally engrossed and glad I picked up a copy.

Although he covers Andy’s death in a brief epilogue, the book basically ends with the end of The Smiths, so if you want to hear about Mike’s period in Public Image Ltd, say, or his time in Suede, forget it. This decision at least avoids any anticlimax. As for Kevin Rowland, he’s adamant that he’ll never be writing another book. I would recommend both these memoirs.

Mike will be in conversation tomorrow afternoon at Bath Komedia, while next Saturday he’ll be DJing in Italy. For more on The Drums, click here.

Finally, here’s a track that began life with the working title of Swamp. Recorded with Joyce, Marr and Rourke ‘really stoned, the drummer describes taking the white studio bulbs out and replacing them with red ones. ‘We created this smoky, trippy atmosphere. We wanted the mood to feel as though we were being pulled under by quicksand.’ They certainly succeeded in that aim.

Blood For Dracula (aka Andy Warhol’s Dracula)

October 31, 2025

For Malcontents Only Cinema Andy Warhol, Blood For Dracula, Joe Dallesandro, Movies for Halloween, Paul Morrissey, Udo Kier Leave a comment

Blood For Dracula, as I’ll be calling it, opens with an unblinking and deathly pale Dracula (played by cult German actor Udo Kier) applying make-up in front of a mirror to give himself some colour.

Why, you might ask, would a vampire use a mirror, as he doesn’t cast a reflection? Best maybe not to pay too much attention to the vampire lore here, as director Paul Morrissey has admitted that he did almost no research into it. ‘I respect the legend, but I wasn’t going to have my hands tied.’

The Count does refuse to eat garlic. He can’t abide the sight of a crucifix, but can happily walk in his courtyard and take a long road trip during the day, although he does shield his face with a hat when he emerges from the car. Why? Morrissey simply forgot about that particular vampire convention while filming and nobody in the crew questioned him about it before he remembered.

Originally advertised in America and some other countries as Andy Warhol Presents Dracula, before being shortened to Andy Warhol’s Dracula, Andy directed this in the same way he produced The Velvet Underground & Nico. As in, he didn’t. The film was written and directed by Morrissey, although just to complicate matters, it was for a time credited in Italy to Antonio Margheriti. Long story.

Morrissey was a fascinating guy. Although very much associated with the Factory and its assortment of socialites, speed freaks, hustlers and drag queens, he was an anomaly in being a traditionalist, who described himself as ‘kind of square’. He preferred Rachmaninoff to The Velvets (who he managed for a time). He worked normal hours, behaved like an adult and was anti-drugs.

Before Morrissey arrived at the Factory (where he gradually took control of film production), Warhol employed an ultra-basic directorial style, consisting mainly of pointing a camera and letting the ‘actors’ get on with it. Or, in the case of Empire, pointing the camera at New York’s most famous building for hours on end, then switching it off. Not the best date movie I’ve ever been on!

Ironically, Warhol listed John Palmer as Empire‘s co-director, Palmer having conceived of the idea and provided funds for the film to be developed and printed. The decision to promote Morrissey’s films with the Warhol brand was a commercial decision to capitalise on the pop artist’s fame. This was apparently fine by Morrissey at the time, although later in life (he died last year), he resented his lack of a proper acknowledgement.

In 1920s Transylvania, Count Dracula is very sick and unable to function without the help of his intense and creepy servant Anton – Morrissey denied this was a comment about his relationship with Warhol incidentally, but the subconscious works in curious ways.

‘You must have the blood of a wurgin. Or you’ll be dead within a few weeks,’ Anton warns his master, the wurgin part being essential as drinking blood from non-wurgins would have seriously bad consequences for the Count. The advice isn’t easy to implement, though, due to Dracula’s local reputation, with local wurgins having learned to give the man a very wide berth. If you’re wondering about my spelling of virgin, I do love Anton and Dracula’s distinctive pronunciation of the word.

A plan is hatched for him to travel to Italy, the home of the Pope and the Vatican, where the ascendancy of Catholicism and the fact that nobody knows him should make finding a wurgin easier. Hey, that’s the theory anyway.

On their journey, Anton discovers that an aristocratic family live nearby. Even better, they have four unwed and beautiful daughters. Anton introduces himself to La Marchesa di Fiore and explains the situation, though obviously not the whole situation. ‘The Count is looking for a wife, an Italian wife and he wishes to know if your daughters are wurgins and available for marriage?’ Anton’s a man who likes getting to the point.

Luckily, she is keen on the idea, and vouches for the chastity of all four daughters. Dracula’s money could be a boost for her family, who have seen better times, the patriarch Il Marchese di Fiore having gambled the family fortune away in casinos. And to digress briefly, he’s played by Vittorio de Sica, who had a real-life gambling addiction, and who, as a director, helped launch the Italian neorealist movement.

Dracula is formally introduced to the daughters: Esmeralda, Saphiria, Rubinia and Perla. He also meets Mario Balato played by Joe Dallesandro (Little Joe who never once gave it away), the estate’s resident handyman, who makes no attempt to hide a distinctly Brooklyn accent, although we’re supposed to believe he’s a native Italian. With a head full of Lenin and the libido of Casanova, Mario takes an instant dislike to the Count and hates the idea of him marrying any of the sisters, especially Saphiria or Rubinia, who are considered the front-runners for his hand. I forgot to mention – no, I better not.

As Mario puts it: ‘Right now, he’s a disgusting person with money. After the revolution, he’ll be a disgusting person with no money. We’re supposed to see Mario as a good guy in contrast to the aristocrats he is forced to work under, but his vision for a new, egalitarian society doesn’t extend to women, or at least to upper-class young women. According to him, Saphiria and Rubinia are hooers, who he slaps around, while he brags that he’d like to rape the hell out of youngest sister Perla. She’s only fourteen (although played by an obviously older actress).

As for Dracula, he’s humourless. Snobbish too. He attempts to trick the sisters into believing that if they marry him, they can enjoy great wealth purely so he can clamp his fangs into their necks, but he can’t help his inherent predatory nature. I found him more sympathetic than the brutish and constantly lecturing Mario, which is frankly damning with faint praise.

Let’s combine the ‘x’ meets ‘y’ cliché with another, even lazier cliché. Blood For Dracula is like Hammer Horror meets John Waters on acid. Decadent and deranged, it’s a consistently bizarre watch that veers between horror and comedy. It will appeal to some; it will appal others. There’s incest, rape, surely the longest vomiting scene in cinema history, and one of the most severe disembowelling sequences I’ve seen outside a Samurai movie or Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Much of the gruesome action is accompanied by a gorgeously melancholic theme tune composed by Claudio Gizzi, who had previously worked with Visconti. Director Luchino Visconti that is rather than than Bowie’s pal Tony. It’s as beautiful as the film’s climax is insanely schlocky.

As for Udo Kier, his weak and vulnerable vampire is one of the most idiosyncratic and memorable interpretations of Dracula I’ve seen. In contrast, some of the other performances are flat, very flat. A considerable amount of the dialogue is also flat, but Blood For Dracula proved intriguing and entertaining enough for me to seek out its companion film Flesh For Frankenstein, which also features Kier and Dallesandro, and which I haven’t seen since the 1990s, when the two movies made up a double bill at London’s legendary Scala cinema. Halloween viewing sorted.

To see the trailer for Blood For Dracula, here’s your link.

Children Of The Stones (Folk Horror #7)

September 28, 2025

For Malcontents Only Folk Horror Avebury, Children of the Stones, Gareth Thomas, HTV Folk Horror, Iain Cuthbertson, Peter Demin, Sidney Sager, Standing Stones, The Ambrosian Singers 6 Comments

It’s the early days of 1977. A new TV show is being premiered on ITV’s late afternoon children’s slot. Having recently turned fifteen and being practically an adult (in my naive mind anyway), I refused to tune in. The next day at school, I discovered that it had caused something of a sensation, maybe the biggest talking point since The Sex Pistols interview with Bill Grundy a few weeks earlier. Unlike that controversy, there were no dissenting voices; the response to the new show was entirely positive. It was as if everyone had been taken over by some inexplicable force that made them think identically.

Okay, I’m exaggerating slightly here for the sake of a bit of foreshadowing.

Stubbornly, I didn’t watch any of the remaining six episodes of the series either, and it was another thirty-odd years before I would see it when somebody uploaded it onto YouTube.

So, what had I missed?

Filmed during the long heatwave summer of 1976, Children of the Stones would likely strike younger viewers today as highly peculiar. On reading the script for the first episode, the director even had to double-check that it was intended for children. I doubt that he would’ve been too surprised when many viewers later cited the show as the scariest program ever made for a juvenile audience.

Adam Brake (Gareth Thomas) is a recently widowed academic who has been given a university grant to report on the standing stones of Milbury, a scenic Wiltshire village that is actually Avebury. The plan is to spend three months there gathering data along with his teenage son Matt (Peter Demin). ‘Suppose they all turn out to be nutters?’ Matt asks his father as they drive into the village. Hey, there’s some more foreshadowing.

They’ve rented a rustic cottage for their stay that’s owned by Raphael Hendrick (Iain Cuthbertson), a landowner who is treated as Milbury’s unofficial figurehead by locals, not unlike The Wicker Man‘s Lord Summerisle. I do wonder if the writers, Jeremy Burnham and Trevor Ray, had seen that film.

The villagers here are a far less eccentric bunch than the residents of Summerisle, although they have an inane habit of greeting one another by saying ‘happy day!’ They’re all polite enough but lack any sense of individuality, and any discernible sense of humour, kind of like any Taylor Swift fans I’ve met. Additionally, we see that the established Milbury youngsters possess a curious talent for solving mind-bogglingly complex algebraic equations. Matt is obviously a super smart lad; he can discuss subjects like black holes with his dad, but in his new class, he’s nowhere near their level. The three other relative newcomers, Sandra, Jimmo, and Kevin, are struggling far more. Are the Milbury teens equally good at, say, English? Or History? The answer to that question is never answered.

Introduced in the second half of the first episode, Hendrick is obviously intelligent and outwardly friendly, but he also oozes more than a whiff of menace. He invites Adam to join him in the village boozer and Adam agrees. ‘A hard drinking man, I hope,’ Hendrick quips. Now, that’s a line you won’t be hearing any time soon on children’s TV.

The pair enjoy a couple of double whiskies, and Hendrick introduces Adam to Margaret Smythe, who is alone and having a sherry. She’s the curator of a local museum and arrived in Milbury six weeks prior to Adam. She is also the mother of Sandra from Matt’s class.

The next day, Adam meets up with Margaret. She persuades him to touch one of the standing stones. He does, and some kind of force sends him hurtling to the ground. He is briefly unconscious but quickly recovers back home with the aid of a large Scotch.

As this is happening, his son meets Dai, a disturbed older man who largely survives by poaching. He’s not one of the happy day brigade and later warns Matt that once you enter Milbury, you can’t leave. So, who delivers the food to the village shop? How does the pub restock its drinks? Okay, maybe folk who only enter temporarily don’t count somehow, although Dai was on the cider and maybe was a bit mixed up.

More Wyrd events follow, such as Matt discovering he possesses psychometry skills with an ability to see what is happening to other characters like the local doctor and Margaret, while touching an item of clothing belonging to them, a useful talent as some of the other new arrivals appear to be succumbing to happydayitis. Just one example: days after the teacher sneering at his distinct lack of academic ability, Jimmo in a matter of days somehow goes from class dunce to mathematical whiz. Who’ll be next?

They don’t make shows aimed at children and young adults like this anymore. Not only do the adults routinely gulp down glasses of bevvy, but there are many complex subjects and theories bandied about by the father/son duo, including ancient folklore and time shifts. One minute they might be talking about a supernova, the next about the absolute accuracy of atomic clocks. Two of the central characters are astrophysicists, another is a budding young astrophysicist.

It’s admirable that there’s never any pandering to the young viewers, but this resulted in an over-reliance on some pretty heavy exposition for the plot to progress. Another criticism might be that the few special effects used are as unconvincing as special effects tended to be on low-budget British children’s TV of the time, so maybe best to cut the show some slack on this aspect of it.

More positively, the outdoor locations in Avebury are incredible, even though the standing stones were augmented by some painted polystyrene replicas knocked up by the art department. I did visit the village myself back in the early 1980s when I briefly lived in Salisbury, and I’ve been to nearby Stonehenge (it’s about 25 miles south) twice, as well as the Machrie Moor site in Arran. Not exactly Julian Cope, but I do feel drawn to stone circles and wish I’d already seen the show before my day out in Avebury. The schoolboy me did make a schoolboy error in not watching.

Would any adults find the series scary? I doubt it, although the idea of being brainwashed into thinking Morris dancing is a good idea is certainly a disturbing thought.

On the acting front, Gareth Thomas and Iain Cuthbertson are both perfectly cast, and the younger actors all do a very decent job too and improve as the seven episodes progress. Peter Graham Scott’s directing is also generally effective – the recurring scenes of villagers on foggy nights, holding hands and ritualistically chanting on the village green outside Hendrick’s manor house are amazingly atmospheric; and I can see why some younger kids might have been spooked by the dissonant shrieks, and eerie moans and wails.

The chanting for these scenes was supplied by long-running choral group The Ambrosian Singers, and their voices are utilised imaginatively throughout the series. Mysterious and unsettling, Sidney Sager’s score is as striking as any I’ve heard in a British children’s TV series – actually, make that any TV series anywhere. It’s not something I would normally listen to, but here it is entirely apt. It’s said to be influenced by Krzysztof Penderecki, whose music can be heard in Kubrick’s The Shining, although Buried Treasure label boss Alan Gubby believes it sounds more like a shortish piece called Nuits by Iannis Xenakis, a Greek experimental composer, who Lou Reed was keen on listening to around the time he recorded Metal Machine Music. Nuits somehow manages to make that album sound vaguely commercial.

45 years after the show aired, Jonny Trunk with some help from Alan Gubby, released the show’s soundtrack on a one-sided vinyl record (there were only 17 minutes of music recorded for the series). This sold out speedily, but you can digitally download the album from the Trunk label website.

Finally, Jeremy Burnham and Trevor Ray, the co-scriptwriters, also penned a short novelization of the series, which was published to coincide with its screening. Almost four decades later, Jeremy Burnham penned a sequel, Return to the Stones, which took up the story and again featured Adam, Matt, and many of the other characters from the original.

Tally Brown Sings David Bowie

August 24, 2025

For Malcontents Only Bowie, Cinema Andy Warhol, Bowie cover versions, David Bowie, Heroes, J. Hoberman, Philip Glass, Rosa von Praunheim, Tally Brown 2 Comments

If the average Bowie fan was asked what made the singer so special, it’s unlikely that many would suggest his many cover versions.*

Admittedly, I’m very fond of some: I’m thinking Wild is the Wind and Fill Your Heart here, and I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spaceship from Heathen is a big improvement on The Legendary Stardust Cowboy’s original. Saying that, it would hard not to be.

If, though, I never hear David doing God Only Knows again, that’s perfectly fine by me. The same could be said of Tin Machine’s turgid take on John Lennon’s Working Class Hero – and while I’m at it, what Bowie thought he could add to Across the Universe remains a mystery to me.

But what of other artists covering Bowie penned songs?

Most are pretty pointless, but some of the less predictable attempts are worth investigating. Philip Glass’s Low Symphony (later retitled Symphony No. 1) reimagines a trio of Low-era Bowie tracks, Warszawa maybe edging it as the best of the three and one I’d recommended to anyone who enjoys a bit of minimalism. The Langley Schools Music Project’s take on Space Oddity is charmingly offbeat – a bunch of primary school kids from British Columbia who recorded an album in their school gymnasium. Bowie himself later declared himself a fan. Finally, Tally Brown’s take on Heroes deserves to be much better known.

After a brief introduction shot in 42nd Street, Rosa von Praunheim’s 1978 documentary Tally Brown, New York cuts to the song. Introduced by some jaunty piano, Tally starts slowly, verging on a spoken word rendition but does gradually build up, especially when she switches to singing in German and coming over like a chanteuse in some Weimar cabaret bar. She possesses a versatile voice: sometimes velvety, sometimes jazzy, and every now and again quavery.

She has a soothing speaking voice too, as she reflects on the neighbourhoods where she grew up, appearing in Andy Warhol’s underground movie Batman Dracula while asleep, and working in Mafia run clubs – which she’s surprisingly positive about – and much more.

You might not be aware of Tally. Born in Brooklyn, she was a classically trained singer who released an album A Torch for Tally back in 1958. As far as I’m aware, no more of her music has ever been issued on vinyl or CD since then.

As the title suggests, this is a portrait of Tally and of NYC, specifically the pre-Aids, arty milieu that prospered there around this time.

Two of Andy Warhol’s ‘superstars’, Taylor Mead and Holly Woodlawn (you know, the Holly that came from Miami, Fla. and who hitchhiked her way across the U.S.A.) appear here, and to digress, Tally and Holly had previously starred together in 1972’s Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers, a zany production that might have been best appreciated while toking on some industrial strength grass during a midnight movie screening.

Speaking of midnight movies, Tally also accompanies Pink Flamingos‘ star Divine to one of his live shows. Tally’s undoubtedly a big gal but perfectly fine with her size. She jokes to Divine: ‘Nobody would notice us in a crowd together,’ and laughs heartily. It’s far from the only time that Tally laughs heartily.

Fascinating and entertaining though she is, the reason most will watch the documentary is to see Tally’s many re-interpretions of a number of tunes including Bowie’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide and this, her take on Bowie’s 1973 grandiose glam classic, Lady Grinning Soul:

Tally Brown, New York was screened at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1979, but for many years it languished largely unseen to the point that it was becoming forgotten. There isn’t a single review on Rotten Tomatoes and as far as I can tell, it isn’t available commercially though it can be seen on YouTube as I type, albeit in very low quality.

There is at least some positive news for Tally fans. The documentary has just been chosen by Peter Strickland in Sight & Sound as a hidden gem, and Tally earns a few mentions in J. Hoberman’s new book Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde—Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop. Hopefully a Blu-ray release for Tally Brown, New York from a boutique label with some special features emerges in the not too distant future. Likewise, it would be nice if somebody out there obtained the rights and issued some of her music. Including her Bowie covers of course.

*Okay, there are likely a few contrarians out there that will pretend Pin Ups is their favourite Bowie album.

For more on Tally Brown click here.

A Pete Walker & Sheila Keith Double Bill: House of Whipcord & Frightmare

August 10, 2025

For Malcontents Only Cinema Frightmare, House of Whipcord, New Wave of British Horror, Pete Walker, Sheila Keith, The Sex Pistols Leave a comment

First up, some words on the director. Pete Walker’s a fascinating figure in British cinema. He started out making sleazy stag shorts followed by some low-budget sexploitation movies like For Men Only, before moving on to slightly more expensive to make thrillers like Die Screaming, Marianne.

Another change in direction took place during the middle of the 1970s. At a time when Hammer was looking increasingly old fashioned – even when they attempted to update Dracula by inserting him into a contemporary setting in Chelsea with a gang of supposedly groovy young things in Dracula A.D. 1972 – a new wave of British horror was brewing and Pete Walker would be at the forefront of it, despite not even being a fan of the genre.

According to Matthew Sweet’s Shepperton Babylon, Malcolm McLaren was a big fan of his work and at one point signed him up to direct his Sex Pistols film project after Russ Meyer had walked off the set in frustration with Malcolm the Embezzler’s scheming. Walker went to see the band play in Brunel University’s cavernous Sports Barn in late 1977 as part of their Never Mind the Bans tour. Not a man who’d ever set foot inside the Roxy or Vortex, SEX or Acme Attractions, non-Pistol Pete wore a conventional suit and tie to the show. He agreed to take on the job, despite being far from impressed by Britain’s most controversial act,

Not that Walker didn’t enjoy controversy. Favouring sensationalist subject matter, the director aimed to cause outrage himself and always liked to promote his new films by using negative reviews in his publicity. Judged by many critics as schlocky and disreputable, The Observer called Frightmare: ‘A despicable film’, while The Telegraph branded it: ‘a moral obscenity.’ When critics failed to be shocked by his House of Mortal Sin, where he put the boot into the Catholic Church, Walker admits he was dismayed.

Like The Sex Pistols, Walker was largely persona non grata within his industry. Unlike The Sex Pistols, he believed in being independent. Not for any ideological reasons, but because he judged that by setting up his own Heritage Films company, he could get his hands on more of the profits generated by his movies. And he did aim to always make money from his movies. Asked by Will Hodgkinson if his films had any hidden meaning or depths, he rejected the idea outright: ‘All I wanted to do was create a bit of mischief.’

He certainly achieved that aim and central to his career would be ‘a nice little Scottish lady’ called Sheila Keith. The Aberdonian actress was an unlikely candidate to achieve cult status as a star of British exploitation cinema in the ’70s. She had already enjoyed a long career, appearing in a string of popular British TV shows such as Dr. Finlay’s Casebook and The Pallisers, but I don’t think I’ve ever saw her in any of her TV outings. I have, though, watched her in all of the five movies directed by Walker, which she featured in, and I’d guess that it’s for these that she’ll be best remembered, especially House of Whipcord and Frightmare.

A few months back, I got reading about secretive ‘care’ homes in Saudi Arabia. According to The Guardian, conditions there were ‘hellish’ and included regular floggings, strip searches, virginity tests, forced religious lessons, and a total ban on any contact with the outside world. Accused of being a lesbian. Not praying enough. Women can be packed off to what are known as Dar al-Reayas for any number of allegations to protect the reputation of the family. A truly nightmarish scenario.

House of Whipcord tells the story of a female imprisoned in a similar kind of institution, where young women are subjected to grotesque abuses. It’s set in Britain in the 1970s with a focus on Christianity rather than Islamism, and luckily it isn’t based on a true story.

There will be some spoilers in the following paragraphs, folks.

The movie kicks off with an odd, even jarring dedication: ‘This picture is dedicated to those who are disturbed by today’s lax moral codes and who eagerly await the return of corporal and capital punishment.’

If you went to see House of Whipcord on its release, then it’s very likely you might rather approve of ‘lax moral codes’. Certainly when I got to see it a few years later, still officially too young to see an X certificate, lax moral codes sounded like a terrific idea to me, albeit I was never a ‘bring back the rope’ kinda guy. Probably another case of Walker’s devilment.

The prison where the women are sent is not one run by a prison governor and accountable to the Home Secretary. This is a secret jail, run by warped fanatics who believe they have the right to lock up females who they judge to have behaved immorally and that their sadistic behaviour is fully justified. Margaret Wakehurst (Barbara Markham) is in charge. She’s maybe based to some extent on another Margaret, then a Tory politician on the rise. But there’s maybe a Mary Whitehouse influence on the character too.

New inmates face a trial presided over by a former judge. I’m guessing none are ever found innocent. Anne-Marie Di Verney certainly isn’t. A French model living in London with an accent that is part Parisian and part Paisley – the latter being actress Penny Irving’s hometown, she’d been lured there by boyfriend of sorts Mark E. Desade, believing she was visiting his parents for a weekend in the country.

A gargantuan error and that name should’ve been an instant giveaway. It isn’t long before she’s being stripped and whipped by unhinged and joyless warden Walker (yes, like the director) played by Keith, who delivers her lines with an icy and unhinged intensity. ‘I’m going to make you ashamed of your body, Di Verney. I’ll see to it personally.’

Anne-Marie’s crime? She was involved in some nude modelling.

So, is she destined to spend the rest of her life incarcerated in this miserable hellhole? I won’t say, but will mention that the endings of Walker movies are generally far from predictable.

The critic Kim Newman has suggested that the more time Sheila Keith spends onscreen in a Pete Walker picture, the better it is. So he’s a big fan of Frightmare, which I must stress here should not to be confused with the awful 1983 American horror movie of the same name.

Here, Scotland’s greatest ever cult actor plays Dorothy Yates. She looks like a genteel, benign older lady. She’s fond of needlepoint and takes pride in this hobby, but it’s her other hobby that Walker focusses on here.

Okay, you might not find cannibalism classified as a hobby anywhere.

The film begins with a brief flashback to 1957, and the murder of a man by an unseen Dorothy in a cabin in a funfair in Battersea. Both Dorothy and her husband Edmund – who was found guilty of attempting to cover up her crimes – are sent to a Broadmoor-style asylum for six cannibalistic killings by Dorothy.

Now in the mid-1970s, both have been deemed entirely sane by experts and released. They find a secluded farmhouse in which to live, and Edmund gains employment as a chauffeur.

Meanwhile, at a dinner party, Jackie Yates (Deborah Fairfax) hits it off with Graham Heller (Paul Greenwood), a youngish psychiatrist who wears a check jacket and Jarvis Cocker specs.

A third story strand features Jackie’s younger sister Debbie (Kim Butcher), a gum-chewing wild child who devotes her life to being as obnoxious as possible. She hangs around with her biker boyfriend and his gang of pals and never misses an opportunity to manipulate them into getting in to some aggro.

After a period in a orphanage, fifteen-year-old Debbie is now staying in Jackie’s flat, and her stroppiness is difficult for her older sister to deal with – I initially assumed that both girls were Dorothy’s, but it emerges that only Debbie is, Jackie being Edmund’s child from a previous marriage. This raises the question of nature versus nurture when Debbie exhibits clear signs of derangement. Like mother, like daughter?

Equally naive and arrogant, Graham is sure his expertise can help sort out the situation, but this being exploitation cinema, I don’t think there would be many asking themselves if Dorothy’s re-entry into society will prove the benefits of a skilled psychiatrist in helping to rehabilitate psychopaths. Dorothy’s craving for human flesh is a cert to return – resulting in driller killing, stabbings with red-hot pokers, and other murderous mayhem with Sheila Keith in superb form again, clearly relishing her role as she fluctuates between nice old lady and full-on psycho.

Times critic Philip French complained that the film seemed to suggest that ‘no patient should ever be released from an asylum for the criminally insane’ and that Frightmare was ‘nasty, foolish and morally repellent.’

All I can say to that is I must like nasty, foolish and morally repellent films, and I wouldn’t be too happy about a supposedly rehabilitated cannibal moving in next door to me, would you?

Some final thoughts: It’s a pity things didn’t work out on the Sex Pistols film idea, which was to be titled A Star Is Dead, with a script by Michael Armstrong, whose career began with a short film he’d written and directed called The Image – which starred David Bowie. A Star Is Dead would have involved the four Pistoleros in acting roles.

With the shoot pencilled in to get underway shortly at Hammer’s Bray Studios, the band toured America and we all know what happened there. With Johnny AWOL, Sid suffering an almighty overdose and the band having split up, Walker’s project was no longer feasible. It would surely have made for a better watch than Julien Temple’s The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle.

Next up for Walker was his 1978 film The Comeback. Initially, he envisioned Bryan Ferry as his lead, although Grammy-winning crooner Jack Jones was later given the role as the Roxy man couldn’t commit. Bryan Ferry in a slasher? I’d have paid my money to see that one.

Here’s the original Frightmare trailer. As you’ll see, Pete Walker dared ‘show only small segments of this terrifying film.’ Be warned!

Morrissey, Marr, Rourke, Joyce & The Angel of the Hully Gully

June 29, 2025

For Malcontents Only Music A Taste of Honey, Celia Brayfield, Morrissey, Selina Todd, Sheila, Sheila B. Devotion, Shelagh Delaney, Smiths Sheila Take A Bow, Yé-Yé 4 Comments

I’m maybe unusual nowadays in that I visit my local library to find books and take them out, rather than to sit eating some lunch while yapping on a phone. In recent years I’ve sat in pubs on weekend nights that were less noisy than on my last library visit as young people ‘studied’ for their upcoming exams. Maybe I’m becoming a grumpy old man.

Anyway, last week I was hoping to get my hands on some of J.D. Salinger’s collections of short stories, which I haven’t read in decades. Although widely recognised as one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century, my local library stocks only one book written by him (Catcher in the Rye, not surprisingly), while finding space for six books by renowned wordsmith Katie Price (who hasn’t been quite so prolific an author since the death of her ghostwriter, apparently).

On the plus side, at least this is one library hasn’t been closed down just yet and I did come across Celia Brayfield’s Rebel Writers: The Accidental Feminists, which examines key works by seven female writers who emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, Shelagh Delaney being the first of the writers to be examined in the book. It’s an interesting enough introduction to her, but if you want more detail on the playwright then I’d recommend Selina Todd’s biography Tastes of Honey.

One of the mostly fondly remembered of Britain’s kitchen sink films, Tony Richardson’s film adaptation of A Taste of Honey is a favourite of mine, which I’ve been meaning to write about for some time – the original idea for this post was to review it together with Charlie Bubbles, which Delaney wrote the screenplay for. The copy of Charlie Bubbles I ordered from Amazon has went AWOL, so I’m going to be improvising even more than usual here.

The play A Taste of Honey is pretty special too. It’s said to be the most performed drama by a female playwright in Britain. I saw a version myself at Glasgow’s Citizen’s Theatre years in the not too distant past, a superb show soundtracked by a number of songs by The Smiths. Of course, as detailed many times elsewhere, Morrissey was a big Delaney fan and cherry-picked some lines from her play for tracks such as This Night Has Opened My Eyes. Salford-born Delaney was also selected as the cover star of both the Louder Than Bombs compilation and the Girlfriend in a Coma single.

Was Shelagh Take A Bow a homage to her? I’ve always assumed so, although in his biography Morrissey – Scandal and Passion, David Bret suggests that it may have been written in honour of Sheila, a French yé-yé singer who had a million selling #1 in her homeland with L’école est finie (School’s Out) while still a teenager in 1963. A segment of the promo for the song does echo Morrissey’s Kooksy line about throwing your homework onto the fire but would Morrissey have seen this in the pre-internet world of the 1980s? Doubt it, but then there’s the spelling of the name in the song title, which might be taken as further evidence that Morrissey did possibly have the French singer in mind when penning his lyrics, although Shelagh Delaney was born Sheila Delaney.

The single’s cover doesn’t provide any clues. For whatever reason, it featured Warhol superstar Candy Darling while strangely, for their next single Girlfriend in a Coma, a photo of Delaney was chosen.

Okay, you may be thinking, so there doesn’t seem to be a definitive answer as to the identity of Sheila in the song (not that it matters anyway), but who is this angel of the hully gully? And what in hell’s name is the hully gully?

‘What the Beatles are to England, the singing Yé-Yé girls are to France,’ Life magazine explained in May of 1964, as they profiled Sylvie, Francoise Hardy, and Sheila, who they described as – you’ve guessed it – the angel of the hully gully.

I’ve just learned that this is a kind of unstructured line dance that became one of the many dance crazes of the early sixties (around the time the Taste of Honey film came out). I also just discovered that Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs’ Wooly Bully is largely a reworking of a 1962 song by Big Bo and The Arrows called Hully Gully, the hully gully lyric changed to – you’ve guessed it again – wooly bully.

Here is Sheila, who looks to me to be twistin’ rather than hully gullying in the promo. I would have to admit that while I like a lot of the frothy French pop of this era, this is not a track that I’m drawn to.

You might be wondering whatever happened to Sheila when the yé-yé trend faded out? The answer is that she went on releasing records. By the second half of the ’70s these were being credited to Sheila B. Devotion, or alternatively Sheila and B. Devotion, as she began aiming her music for the dancefloor. She even recorded a discofied version of Singin’ in the Rain. You don’t want to hear that, do you? No you don’t.

Saturday Night Fever sent the popularity of disco into the stratosphere, while the success of Star Wars at the box-office was unprecedented. Inevitably, some sought to combine the two phenomena and a stack of acts sprang up dressing in bacofoil and singing about androids. Or robots. Or even losing their hearts to starship troopers – and yeah, there was also a disco version of the Star Wars theme – which was awful. Around this time, the one time angel of the hully gully emerged as a cosmic chanteuse and gave us one of the better examples of what has become known as space disco.

From the album King of the World, Spacer features the choppy and spellbinding guitar of Nile Rodgers and chunky yet sinuous basslines of Bernard Edwards. The pair also wrote and produced the track which made the top twenty in Britain in 1979, later being voted #8 on NME‘s Tracks of the Year list.

Some Of The Young Droids

June 12, 2025

For Malcontents Only Music All The Young Droids, Andreas Dorau, Die Marinas, Fred Vom Jupiter, Junkshop Synth Pop, Philip King, School Daze Leave a comment

Coming out before the month of June is over is All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978-1985, a compilation album of mostly obscure electronic nuggets selected by Phil King, a man who is no stranger to the record racks of charity shops and car boot sales and who is also a former Lush, Felt, and Jesus and Mary Chain bassist. It’s a very loose kind of follow-up to his All The Young Droogs comp, which gathered together sixty hellraisers and arty glitter gems from the 1970s, most of which failed to make much of an impression on the children of the (glam) revolution. But which shoulda.

I reckon I only know two of the tracks included on All the Young Droids: the eponymous single from 1979 by merry Manc pranksters Gerry and the Holograms which I featured here, and Die Marinas’ Fred vom Jupiter, which you can hear below. The idea for the latter song originated in a music class in a Hamburg school. Demos were made in the classroom by Andreas Dorau who was 16 at the time, together with a bunch of even younger schoolgirls before a proper studio was hired and this wunderbar slice of synth pop was recorded. Picked up by Ata Tak, the single sold something in the region of 20,000 copies in what was then West Germany, reaching #21 in the charts. In Britain, it came out in the Spring of 1982 on the Mute label and was played by John Peel, albeit it failed to chart on these shores.

It’s a fun listen with an incessant and irresistible synth motif, vocodorised voice, driving bass, and a scattering of sci-fi laser pings. The lyrics are built on a cartoon sci-fi concept – humanoid Fred visits Earth and females all adore him, but the males resent this and their hostility persuades him to return to his home planet. Intergalactic kitsch maybe, but majorly enjoyable intergalactic kitsch, so much so that I can even forgive the boys wearing bow ties and boaters.

If you fancy seeing a no expenses spared promo with the same level of technical accomplishment that Stanley Kubrick achieved when directing 2001: A Space Odyssey then, sorry, that doesn’t exist, but here is a charming vid that looks like it cost two and a half Deutsche Marks to shoot, with an extended version of the song, slightly better dancing than in the TV appearance, and Andreas/Fred looking rather green about the gills:

All the Young Droids will be released on June 27th on School Daze, an imprint of the Night School Records, a Glasgow-based label dedicated to rediscovering music from the past. Other artists represented on the album include former Squeeze bassist Harry Kakoulli, one-time Glitter Band bassist John Springate and Alasdair Riddell (that’s him on the album cover), who was also featured on All the Young Droogs.

For more on the album, click here.