Rob’s Terrible Tomb Of Tat

…and you will know me by the typing of the dead.

  • Warning From Space

    I know people like to take the piss out of the star-shaped aliens from Warning From Space but really, I adore them.

    You see, partly the art of a good creature costume in cheap sci-fi for me is that I can look at a still, think “that is so cool” *and* immediately know what film the creature belongs to. You cannot mistake the Pairan for anything in any other film.

    I would have first seen these in my much coveted at the time book of sci-fi films as a young ‘un and yes, from the photo in the book alone I knew this was a film I really needed to see because star-shaped aliens are just brilliant. (Even more so if you believe they might command their own legions of demons in hell too. Which I assume they do.)

    It took a fair few years before I’d get to watch Warning From Space for real but I can’t say I was even vaguely disappointed by it. The baggy costumes, the actors clearly struggling to get about in the damn things (always a bonus for any creature costume), and the really surreal air they lend to every scene they’re in makes them pretty much perfect in my book.

    Sitting there watching it again last night and yep, I still love these baggy aliens a lot. It’s almost saddening when they morph into human form a bit later on.

  • Show Us Your Magic Wand

    I’ve long been enjoying wondering just how far Luke Haines can push the whole suburban glam folk anti-nostalgia thing without running out of steam.

    There’s no sign of that happening any time soon though in a lot of ways the title track from the latest album “Izzy Wizzy Let’s Get Bizzy” does feel a lot like the whole thing has reached its final, excellent, full Luke Haines, form.

    Mixing seventies and eighties kid’s TV and magic into one particularly fuzzy memory is usually the domain of electronic music and whilst I am never going to complain about someone lifting the Paddy Kingsland sound in a million years, there’s so much more to explore so why not glam-folk it up a bit? Get the guitars and the flutes going and invoke the spirit of Wurzel Gummidge, why the fuck not? The death of Tommy Cooper linked with chaos magic? Yes. Fuck it. Do it.

    And though there is a wonderfully sinister tribute to Children Of The Stones on the album, you’ll be glad to know it is nowhere near as terrifying as the original OST. Still unsettling, mind.

  • Cyber Controller

    The Cyber Controller. Telos Tum! The one with the big noggin! Ah, how much I love thee.

    (Don’t worry, I’m nearly out of cyberman doodles for the time being.)

    Attack Of The Cybermen is one of (many, many) things I had no idea some folk have a peculiar dislike for until I crash landed onto the internet, I’ve always loved it pretty wholeheartedly and still confuse people every now and then by saying “getting a bit rough is it?” whilst delivering a terrible Brian Glover impression.

    This is the thing with largely just going about your business in life, I guess. For me, Attack is filed under “slapping cybermen’s noggins off, some of my favorite huffy Colin Baker moments, Michael Kilgarriff’s most amazing podge and it being one of the most exchanged and watched stories amongst my little fan group back when nobody biz brained had really considered that folks might want to rewatch Doctor Who” and I remained blissfully unaware that some folks held a particular animus for Saward scripts and especially Attack.

    It’s got Lytton teaming up with the Tetley Tea wrestling dude! What is wrong with you all? It’s brilliant.

    I will grant you all the Cryons are really annoying and that whilst integral to the plot, the whole Doctor in the cell bit slows things right down in the most annoying manner possible. We’re talking Time Flight levels of script guff here and all with a bizarre bunch of performances that wouldn’t be out of place in The Web Planet — or someone’s school play.

    But! To counter that, I say “stealth cyberman” and we can all go to a happier place.

    (And yes, if you’re wondering, I can still have a great time just flicking through the pictures in the David Banks’ Cybermen book.)