My love affair with all things relating to “Famous Monsters of Film Land” continued unabated, particularly when it came to the Aurora plastic kits on offer in the magazine. The kits eventually went on sale in the UK and I managed to get my hands on some of those shown in the photo above. My first purchase was the Creature from the Black Lagoon followed by the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Due to the onset of political correctness I’ve since found out he’s not a hunchback anymore – he’s a bellringer. Coincidentally, due to a casually discarded Gauloise cigarette last year Notre Dame nearly wasn’t anymore either.
I must admit to my nostalgia getting the best of me recently to the point where I bought one of a series of reissued monster kits currently available on a famous non-tax paying internet platform. I aim to put together my Phantom of the Opera kit once the Covid virus is brought to heel and I can stop identifying with the poor screaming sod you see in lockdown behind him. Still, good to see the Phantom brought his own mask.
As for the films, here’s a couple of historical dramas that started off the year with a bang. “Zulu” recently came under criticism for promoting outdated colonial values not worthy of consideration in this day and age. I thought it was just a bloody good movie. I dunno. You can’t please anyone these days.
John Wayne has also received a lot of stick from the PC brigade for his unapologetic views that he aired in an interview back in 1972. However, it’s only recently that someone has pointed out to me that Wayne had a spanking fetish, as you can see from the “McLintock!” poster and an image from “Donovan’s Reef”, which I never actually got to see in the cinema. They certainly don’t make films this anymore – which is a good thing right?
Three of the four above had brilliant soundtracks but the one that didn’t, “First Men in the Moon”, has great Ray Harryhausen special effects to make up for it.
Looking back I’d have to say “Goldfinger” was the best film of 1964 for me, with “Lawrence of Arabia” a close second. At the beginning of the series you’d get a new Bond movie every year and it was a real event to go and see the latest offering, “Goldfinger” still one of the best . Even if the current pandemic hadn’t delayed the release of “No Time to Die’ there would still have been a five-year gap after the release of the last Bond film, “Spectre”. Maybe they should rename it “No Time to Wait”.
I think it’s about time I revealed my somewhat disturbing obsession – in my defence I was only twelve at the time – for the mute blonde puppet Marina in “Stingray”. The program was part of our family Sunday viewing a few years or so before me and my brother started trying to beat each other to death on a regular basis on the Sabbath. I think it was the song at the end of “Stingray”, a romantic ballad called “Aqua Marina”, that set something stirring in me to the point where I genuinely felt affection for what was basically a few pieces of wood cobbled together and hung from a couple of bits of string wrapped in a doll’s dress. What can I say? I’m only human – even if she wasn’t.
My school mate Max (not his real name) lived just a few streets away and I used to drop round to his house to do our homework together. He had an ancient gramophone player in the parlour and just two records, the single of “The House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals and the Beatles “Hard Day’s Night” album. He played the Beatles LP practically every time I was there to the point where I knew the track listing by order of the songs on both sides. Amazingly it didn’t kill the record for me and I still play it to this day. It’s difficult to convey to someone of a younger generation how much the world brightened up back in the 1960s once the Beatles arrived. They seemed to be everywhere, on the radio and TV, in the newspapers, on the newsreels in the cinema, they even played the Winter Gardens in Margate the year before, although I didn’t have the money to see them which is one of my biggest regrets.
And finally, something I meant to include at the end of my blog posts for 1963, images of the train set my parents bought me for Christmas that year. I really liked this one because it appealed to the nihilist in me. Once the track was complete you uncoupled the red truck, the sides of which were held together on the inside via a set of metal clips. The train would then roll around the track until it was adjacent to the truck after which you would then illuminate it with the searchlight then blow it to bits with the rocket launcher. The truck could be rebuilt and the process repeated ad infinitum. Great fun for all the family, until one day it disappeared, ending up for sale in the window of Thanet Models at the lower end of Northdown Road. So, in case any of my family are reading this and want to know what I’d like for my birthday on March 1st….
Steve Mayhew 