Sometimes this blog will just be HALLOOOOWEEN! And the Punishment Poll from "Mr. Sardonicus".

 Remember this? 

 

 Or this?

 

 Or who could ever forget this?

 Yes, disparage the pioneer of "Percepto" and "Emergo" all you like, every horror film William Castle made had at least a couple of images that were unforgettable, for one reason or another, whether or not your seat was wired to buzz, or a luminous skeleton trolleyed over your date's head. Even Castle would grow sick of gimmicks however, so when Columbia Pictures demanded one be included in his historical thriller Mr. Sardonicus, he came up with the "Punishment Poll". Just before the film's final reel Castle himself would appear onscreen and ask the audience to vote for whether the rictus-afflicted anti-hero should receive his come-uppance, or mercy.

 Only one ending was shot.

 

 

 Happy Hallowe'en then, my old Unattendees! If that didn't get you in the mood, why not watch the opening fifty seconds of Castle's House On Haunted Hill with the volume way up? Or there are still the remains of my Frankenstein Countdown to polish off, so here's what I wrote about 1945's House of Dracula: 

“Erle C. Kenton's House of Dracula does not bear close examination, if any. It is a bad film.” 

 And here is even more of what I wrote! Fortunately three years later Frankenstein would be met by Abbott and Costello and you can read my thoughts on that encounter HERE, along with whether or not it would become the most influential film ever made, because I can't remember. 

 Please don't be too frightened!

 

Behind Closed Ghosts. Last Ghosts Post. Ghost Promise.

The opening credits of Ghosts provide a pretty good approximation of the interior of West Horsley Place where the show's filmed. The real thing's deeper of course, and wider (and I never got to see the basement), but at the bottom left, there, you can see the pillars where we had the ghost fight, and the stairs at the back do indeed take you to ballroom where the wedding was held. Did I take photos of the actual interior? Absolutely. Was I even allowed to? I've no idea but to hell with the rules, I'm going to let you in anyway, yeah! Welcome, once again, to Behind The Scene with Kieth Darren Dean!

  Okay, it seems that is all I took. I have no idea what is wrong with me seriously. Sorry. Back to the doll's house: To the far right of the ballroom is the green room, which I was lucky enough to share with not only with the stars of the show but, as I intimated here, a star of my life:

 

 Ned Mond, to give Neil Edmond his myspace name - which I would scrupulously do back in the early days of this blog, to preserve people's anonymity from my millions of followers - appears in the very first post I wrote on here, and our friendship goes back even further. This is a picture from 2002 of him as Hamlet, me as Polonius and Nigel Barrett as Claudius in Sulayman Al-Bassam's Al-Hamlet Summit, which we won a prize for in Cairo. Neil and I visited the pyramids of Giza on horseback, wobbling at a canter like a pair of Denholm Elliotts. You're never shown the back of the pyramids by the way, but they have a KFC. I think Nige and the musicians took a jeep.

 As the vicar Neil was encouraged to improvise quite a bit around the filibuster Jim Howick and Mathew Baynton wrote for him. "I had a flat-head..." I think was one of his, and I also remember something about the bride in the anecdote having "quite a meaty smell" which never made the cut. It should also be noted that his vicar is from the United Reformed Church, as Jim and Mat discovered the Church of England does not perform same-sex weddings. Yet.

 God literally bless them.

 I think I will leave it there. If you have any questions I'll be happy to field them in the comments. The episode Neil and I are in will be up here for another ten months, as will the entire series I assume, and it is really very good. I would like to thank everyone at Button House for having me, and also my showreel for helping me land the role by opening with me accidentally shooting someone, then looking distraught for four minutes. If you look very hard at the last shot of the series you'll see me waving my arms with joy behind the leads like a pro. 

 I was feeling it. 

 Here is your moment of Den:

 

 Oh! Also, I realised a day into starting the countdown of my Frankenstein pieces that I’d completely mistimed it and should have started a day earlier, but anyway here is my far from penultimate piece on 1944′s House of Frankenstein.

Just Passing Through (More Ghosts)

  This, gloriously, is the scene we filmed the day Terry Jones died. I can't think of a better way to honour the man's memory. The blow that initiates the cacophony was achieved by digitally removing Jim Howick's fist as it nears my body so it looks like it's passing through. We're not as close to each other in the still below as it looks, in other words, there's a false perspective or something, I think that's how it was done anyway, it's... Does that look right? It was back in January, I've no idea now. Welcome to Behind The Scene with Kieth Darren Dean!

  I definitely remember that when I walked through Jim in the next scene, after leaving the stump, I passed him on the right and this was then digitally shunted to the left to overlap him, but you probably guessed it was something like that. There was a green screen set up outside the house. The weather was perfectly overcast, although there was no snow. It looked like this. That's frost on the ground.

 

 The frost disappeared as the day wore on, and the sky was perfectly overcast for the effects shot I enjoyed filming most which had nothing to do with passing through anything. That beautiful picture-book longshot of Keith and the Ghosts standing like transfers in a field was a composite. Lots of little shots put together. Here is a photo director Tom Kingsley posted of its filming:

 

 Spot the chancer on the far right.  Each of us ("us" - Get me!) had to walk up the strip of white plastic alone, pause at the end, then walk back in front of everyone else without giggling, like a shy fashion show. It was in its way the silliest thing I witnessed all week and I felt blessed to have a seat at it. Actually, it wasn't so much like a catwalk I now realise, it felt more like - Have you seen The Ususal Suspects?  

 

 (Trigger Warning:Spacey. Rudness.)

 

 Here is that episode. 

 And in other notices, continuing the Hallowee’en Countdown through Universal’s Frankensteins, here is the one instance of proper scholarlship I managed in the entire run - a piece of sleuthing that will change the way you watch 1943′s Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man FOREVER!

A Couple Of Things I Learnt From Ghosts

 One thing I learnt filming Ghosts back in January was how to tie a double-half-hitch, which is why there was that rope hanging from the ceiling of my trailer in case anyone peered in and was wondering. I was prepared for the double-half-hitch therefore, but less prepared for what I had to do just before: nothing but my hand would come into shot initially to grab the collapsing festoon, and then the rest of me would swing into shot revealing the identity of this hero. Not a detail in the script, just some proper film-making from director Tom Kingsley, which was a lesson in itself. And I sort of managed it, but the line "I got it" was actually recorded a few months later on a phone under a duvet in my flat, possibly to cover the faff of me not managing it more smoothly. It still really works though, doesn't it, don't get me wrong. Also, this is very much what I normally look like at weddings by the time the dancing's started. The costume department gave me lots of stuff to bulk out my pockets because I thought Keith's decision to turn up might have been a bit last minute, and he couldn't find a big coat.

 The other thing I learnt from Ghosts, just off the top of my head, was how to act in front of a camera. This I learnt very quickly from Tom Kingsley after two takes of the scene at the stump. It had been one of the scenes at the audition, an uplifting ten minutes in a room with Tom, Jim Howick, Ben Willbond and the producer Matt Mulot sharing stories of Ripper Walks - which it turns out Jim also did - and of course also being invited to act. So I'd definitely done okay, but performing the scene again a month later in front of a green screen outside West Horsely Place (oh! I didn't know until I got out of the car that the show was filmed in a real mansion - that was exciting!) I could tell the knockee wasn't really leaving the park. So: "Okay," said Tom after the second take. "This time, just try saying the lines to yourself."

 Up until then I had been saying them to camera. 

 And the camera was, well, this far away.

 Whereas the microphone was directly underneath my tie. So that's what I learnt. You don't actually have to act for the camera. The camera will pick it all up anyway. So will the microphone. And I hope it's okay to say that I adore this scene, partly because I know I'm just doing what I'm told in it, (even if I didn't manage to make my forehead go all veiny like a sad Don Draper). If it's the only acting I get to do on terrestrial television, it will still have been something useful in something great, and a performance that could never be given on radio or on stage, because it needs green screens and framing and a soundtrack and a microphone under my tie. So I got to do some proper telly. I also got to do something brilliant, kind and loved, made by - as I hinted back in January - a brilliant, kind and loved team. You can watch it here.

 

 (The filming of this, sourced from Tom Kingsley's twitter) 

 

   And to continue the Hallowe'en Countdown of the old Universal Farnakensteins, here's what I wrote about 1942's Ghost of Frankenstein.

More Espionage For Kids!

 Further to the spy kids' induction held over the weekend at the Imperial War Museum, here's a bold and beautiful set of Rainy Day activities from shunt's Nigel and Louise. I've not seen enough of their work since the shunt lounge closed, but these photos of the first "Spy Day" seem indicative of the kind of thing they've been up to: in this case, filling a warehouse in Weston Super Mare with children intent on defeating a man dressed as a raven.

 

 Thanks to the pandemic, the sequel to this show is now an adventure we can all go on. As with their more adult Party Skills For The End of the World, there's an embarrassment of exercises here that could easily fill the whole day, including passport forgery, and learning how to distinguish between a rook and a jackdaw. I personally have not yet tested the softness of my tread by laying a trip of toilet paper on the floor, nor built my own laser maze, but if you have time and children, and a bit of courage - it's recommended "for Dr Who aged kids (7-12ish)" - the whole thing is wonderful and free and waiting for you HERE.

 

 And speaking of the virtual work of shunt associates, you still have until Saturday the 31st to enjoy Silvia Mercuriali's Swimming Home in which I played a small part, and which I also enjoyed hugely as an audience, though some water did go up my nose, while Gemma Brockis' Winchester Mystery House of an online course, The Kiss, gets similarly immersive here.

 And finally, continuing the Frankenstein Hallowe'en countdown, here's what I wrote about 1939's Son of Frankenstein.

There's The There. Right There.

source. 

 

 Rewatching Joe Versus the Volcano last night with friends over zoom, I was surprised to see this view turn up in a film so unambiguously set in its own world, and was reminded why as someone who's never worked there I love Los Angeles so much. A landmark without a landmark, the city as seen from the Griffth Observatory is still unmistakable. You can't see the skyscrapers just to the left, or the mansions on the hill below, just one enormous, uninterrupted, unshowy settlement. A lit grid, it's beautiful by accident, like the back's been taken off something functioning and marvelous, something without secrets. I could be completely wrong. End of post. No. I could be completely wrong but I want to credit Steven Spielberg with immortalising it. I first saw it in ET anyway - or possibly the lovely accompanying special ET and Friends (starring Robin Williams and viewable here) - and previously it was inverted to make the mothership from Close Encounters. But I'd love to know if I'm wrong, and if so, who the first artist was to realise the view's gigantic, humble power.

 

 In other notices, continuing the Frankenstein Hallowe'en countdown, here is what I wrote about 1935's Bride of Frankenstein. And I'm sorry that this post isn't about Ghosts, but please watch Ghosts. And I will write about Ghosts.

Prefab Spon

 Among the many public information films from the late forties being shown in the corner of the Imperial War Museum in which I had installed myself (see yesterday) was one showing the viewer around one of the prefabricated aluminium "Churchill Villas" being almost literally wheeled out to house returning soldiers. My Dad grew up in one of these.

 

 

 

 This isn't exactly the film I saw, but it uses much of the same footage. What I watched dwelt less on the narrowness of the corrridors and more on the materials used in the bungalow's construction. Common in fact to everything I saw in that corner of the IWM was a note of what things were made of, and how much they cost.

 

 

 "And before you've smoked your third cigarette, the curtains are going up in the living room."

 Another thing I noticed in these films was how thin everybody seemed. Brief shots of shirtless British troops bare-legged in their shorts and boots showed a body type not unfit, but almost uncastable these days. And that's what first reminded me of Spike Milligan.

 

 

 It didn't seem preposterous to me to suppose that it was the constant exposure to these bodies, bodies like his own, that inspired the unflattering scrawniness of his illustrations, and the octagonal-shin-shaming character descriptions of The Goon Show.

 

"HASTILY DRAWN HOLE TO CONCEAL BADLY DRAW BOOTS."

 

 Once reminded of Milligan, more and more of what I saw of this post-war world so badly in need of repair seemed to be reflected in his work. Every bravely heralded, short-term, cost-assessed solution - like the prefabs my Dad grew up in "intended to last ten years" - recalled the face-saving announcements of The Goon Show's Greenslade, or the tags left on the costumes of Q9, or the holes dug and sticks erected to support Spike Milligan's badly drawn feet. 

 

 

 So that was an educational weekend for me. In other notices, as Hallowe'en is fast approaching I thought I'd do little reposts of the Universal Frankenstein essays I wrote earlier this year, so here is what I wrote about 1931's Frankenstein.

Professor Wire's Post War Peek

 

 Sometimes the easiest way to report what I've been up to is just to post a picture of it and hope the fun is inferred. At such times this blog will almost exactly resemble my instagram feed, with the only bonus content being this text to explain that fact. Anyway here I am being a "spy in disguise" at The Imperial War Museum. This is what I was rehearsing with Story Spinner last Friday, and it's turned out to be suprisingly well attended, which is a privilige. It's happening Sunday too if you fancy it. I'll be posing as a normal visitor on Level 2 (see above - failing to be inconspicuous is always a favourite gig), getting my post-war fix of brave new worlds with big-windowed schools as explained by this performatively Scottish park-keeper:

"And now, now for the things of peace."

The Polish Film Poster Round

 

 We returned to zoom-quizzing this Friday, donning our old London Dungeon gear for Hallowe'en and sharing stories of figures dimly glimpsed while closing up or big poos nudged into bin bags with a broom. Mine was a multiple choice round, featuring ten Polish film posters (rather than ten Polish Film posters) all sourced here, although many more sources of this wonderful stuff are available, I could happily do this all week BUT... What films are they advertising? Answers as ever are posted in the comments.

 

 

1.

A) Basic Instinct

B) Romancing the Stone

C) Capote

 

 

 

2.  

A) 2001: A Space Odyssey

B) Looper

C) Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home

 

 

3.

A) Fight Club

B) Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

C) This is Spinal Tap

 

4.

A) The Omen

B) Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

C) The Birds

 

 

 

 

5. 

A) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

B) Live And Let Die

C)Taxi Driver

 

6.

A) Willow

B) The Little Mermaid

C) The Birdcage 

 

7.

A) Angel Heart

B) King of Comedy

C) Gone With The Wind

 

 

 

 

8.

A) The Hudsucker Proxy

B) The Last Emperor

C) Dumb and Dumber

 

9.

A) Out of Sight

B) Silence of the Lambs

C) Lost In Translation

 

10.

A) Amadeus

B) Interview With The Vampire

C) Bad Santa

Don Quixote Reads Himself, Silly

 

Sourced here, but the artist is uncredted, sorry.
 

 One of the more interesting discoveries I made doing "English" was how self-aware the first fiction was: Medieval writers couldn't just launch into a story they knew to be untrue, they had to first tell you about the person they met who told it to them, or about how they fell asleep and dreamt it. I loved being carried over the threshold like this. It inspired the creation of Laika as a narrator for Time Spanner, and definitely endeared me to the shunt ethos that a show begins as soon as the venue is entered (whether anything's happening or not). Subsequent traditions however decided that this quarantine between the real world and the world of the work was a waste of time, and self-awareness became considered self-indulgent, or "meta-textual", but it absolutely used to be the norm. 

 The post-medieval Don Quixote - one of the first novels - purported to be the story of a real man, which meant a lot of Volume 2 had to be spent with Quixote dealing with the fallout from the publication of Volume 1 (UPDATE: like Borat.) I'm sure this wouldn't have seen self-indulgent in 1605. The point of the book was that Don Quixote existed against his will in the real world, a world which therefore would also contain the book. 

 I'm probably not the only one who wondered as a kid what the characters in Eastenders watched on BBC1 at 7:30pm.

Pioneers of Motion Capture #2 - Cab Calloway

 

 

 Some great Max Fleischer restorations have been appearing online recently, and their newly anachronistic, skateboard-clean crispness seems even weirder to me than the flickering murk I grew up with, back when Dad used to project these cartoons for us onto the wall of his study. Fleischer would often rotoscope - ie, trace footage of  - live performers whenever he wanted his characters to do something more than bob or run, or pull bits of themselves off, but I'm pretty sure nightclub legend Cab Calloway was the first rotoscoped celebrity. His first teaming with Betty Boop was as The Old Man of the Mountains, a feral impregnator chasing the former dog (those earrings were originally spaniel ears) who breaks off mid-chase, as obligingly does Boop, into an unmotivated song and dance, which is where the rotoscoping comes in, Cab Calloway's unmistakable moves even less grounded than usual across the scrolling cartoon backdrop, pretty much inventing the moonwalk.

 

I assume the structure of staged assault alternating with song and dance was a staple of cabaret at the time. It can't have come from nowhere. You can watch it here. The cartoon opens with live footage of Calloway and his band very similar to the clip above, but not identical, so I don't where that comes from; it looks too good to have been shot simply for research though. Anyway, below is the sequence I know best - and one that did make it onto the Vulture's list - from Betty Boop in Snow White. Calloway is now Boop's ally, a clown who steps through a mirror and turns into a ghost to mourn our heroine who dies halfway. If any of this is new to you, Happy Halloween!

 

The Erasure of Ahmed Best

 First, I just want to check that Jar Jar Binks would look kinder with the eyes of a furious Gollum...

... than with the goats' willies he was given...

  

 Yep okay, he never stood a chance. Why am I writing about Jar Jar Binks at two o'clock in the morning? Because the Vulture's list of "a hundred sequences that shaped animation" which I linked to on Sunday had one serious but typical omission: While Gollum obviously made it on because he's extraordinary, the performance providing the script for all motion-capture software programmed in the last two decades was not Andy Serkis' in The Two Towers, but Ahmed Best's in The Phantom Menace. And it's not clear from the behind-the-scenes pictures of the actor in a rubber suit, taken back in the day when green screens were still blue...

... but Best would return to perform Jar Jar in a motion-capture suit months after principal photography, and it was this work which would go into programming not only cinema's first ever completely computer-generated lead character, but every single motion-capture computer-generated character since, Gollum included. Ahmed Best wasn't just the Neil Armstrong of mo-cap CGI, he was the Adam and Eve, which isn't nothing, whatever you think of CGI.

 (A brief tangent: Look at Han idly fingering that stucco - 

 

 That's what happens when you put an actor on a set!) 

 

 Back to the CGI: I only learnt about Best's contribution to the history of animation this June when he appeared on Nicole Byer and Lauren Lapkus's podcast "Newcomers", and I remember thinking I must remember him. He has anecdotes to rival Peter Serafinowicz's too - of his first audition at Skywalker Ranch, for example, crawling across the floor like a salamander in a baffling scuba-suit covered in ping-pong balls, or of Michael Jackson's jealousy when he finally landed the role. You can listen to it here. He soundd like he's doing well. It was only researching him later that I found out that this was, pretty famously, not always the case.

 

 But he seems to be doing well now, as I say. I'm just posting this because I find his contribution exciting: I still don't like Jar Jar of course - Look at those eyes -

 

But Ahmed Best should be on our lists.