The New Avengers

Purdey Hair

The New Avengers
ITV 1976-77
Two series
26 episodes
Studio Canal Blu Ray Box 

When I was around four or five years old, in the very early 1970s, I used to watch repeats of The Avengers on TV and I remember liking it a lot. I saw the Honor Blackman episodes (indeed, I must have seen many of the episodes I suspect are now no longer with us from the first season), the Diana Rigg episodes and the Linda Thorson episodes... and I believe some of my earliest name fictional character recognitions were Kathy Gale, Emma Peel and Tara King*… along with other usual suspects like Joe 90, Captain Scarlet, Doctor Who and Scott Tracy.

And of course there was the solid rock of a character in every episode, the male lead in pretty much every incarnation of The Avengers... John Steed, with his bowler hat and umbrella. Played, as always, by the great Patrick Macnee.

So it was with no small amount of excitement when the 8 year old version of myself received the news that a brand new series of The Avengers, entitled rather practically as The New Avengers, would be on my TV screen soon.

It was on fairly late on a Saturday or Sunday evening, if I’m recalling correctly… and we sat down to watch the first episode, The Eagles Nest, about a group of modern nazis who has been keeping Hitler’s body on ice all these years, until medical science was able to resuscitate him. And I have to say, it was pretty good stuff. We all loved it as a family and it even had Peter Cushing in the episode, as the scientist the new nazis kidnapped to get the job done right.

Now, not long after the show had started, my mother and I were run over by two cars which hit each other before mounting the pavement, out of control, and clobbering us. Since my jaw bone from my ‘against all odds’ still attached head couldn’t be wired back in the normal way, I had to take a few years off school to allow it to heal itself. Every cloud has a silver lining I guess but the problem was, I was stuck in hospital for the first week or two and the nurses on the children’s ward wouldn’t let me stay up with the television on to watch The New Avengers. Which I was very concerned about at the time. Although I did have the special souvenir magazine put out by TV Times to comfort me at some point, which was pretty thick and covered a lot of the show (and predecessors)… an issue which I’m pleased to say I still have to this day.

So, alas, I didn’t see a fair few of the episodes on its original run, which makes me happy to be finally catching up with them again after all these years, in a new Blu Ray set put out by Studio Canal, which looks good but is way too expensive for what is, after all, just 26 episodes.

And I watched these all recently with my mum and it’s still great. Patrick Macnee was still charming as Steed and his two new, supporting Avengers, Gareth Hunt as Mike Gambit and Joanna Lumley as the amazing Purdey (shortly before she would amaze us all again by taking on one of the title roles in Sapphire And Steel), are brilliant.

Some of the episodes… and this is no surprise since the show was using the same writers and producers of the bulk of the original incarnation… are able to capture the surreal and fun spirit of the originals and, others are a bit more humdrum but, even so, the chemistry between the three leads and the dialogue writing for them, was absolutely brilliant and I was a little surprised that these whimsical ‘to and fros’ between the characters still hold up today.

For instance, when Purdey pulls her bra off to give to Mike to use as a slingshot to get them out of a jam, he says “Why didn’t you burn it with all the other ladies?” To which she replies, “I didn’t need to. I already knew I was liberated.”

There were guest directors as well, such as Robert Feust, who you may remember directed The Final Programme (reviewed by me here). And, of course, many actors and actresses who would suddenly turn up for an episode (because who wouldn’t want to be in The Avengers) such as Jenny Runacre, Jon Finch, Ronald Lacey, Deep Roy and even the great Caroline Munro.

They even have a bit of a reunion, with Ian Hendry returning for an episode, although not as the co-starring lead character he played alongside Macnee in the early years of the show. Not to mention an episode where the two bad guys are played by Martin Shaw and Lewis Collins, who would bring exactly the same chemistry they had here to the producer’s next TV show, The Professionals.

Not only that, the set includes the last four episodes, shot and produced in Canada, proudly proclaiming before the pre-credits sequence that it’s The New Avengers in Canada, before going onto the usual action sequence which would then freeze at the crucial part... followed by the wonderful animated credits sequence that came in from about halfway through the first season… and then going back to the freeze frame and concluding the opening scene. As was the format of all the episodes.

And of course, all the music, including the wonderful new opening title music which cunningly utilises his old baseline from the original show in a new way, is by the original show composer Laurie Johnson, who came on in the early days of the show after original composer Johnny Dankworth left. The show is filled with good music including a few sly nods to Johnson’s mentor, composer Bernard Herrmann.

And with episodes dedicated to such antagonists as killer birds, a giant rat in the sewers and a homicidal building… it’s just a fun packed snapshot of what late 1970s TV could be. The New Avengers makes for a nice, if prohibitively expensive slice of TV heaven that audiences of a certain age should surely enjoy and a worthy successor to the original show. Go on, give it a go.

*I’m not forgetting Avenger girls Ingrid Hafner as Carol Wilson and Julie Stevens as Venus Smith... but that’s for another review (coming to a blog near you, sometime late 2026 or early 2027).

The Satanic Rites Of Dracula

Rites Said Dead

The Satanic Rites Of Dracula
UK 1973
Directed by Alan Gibson
Hammer/Warner Archive Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: Spoilers for the inevitable outcome here.

The Satanic Rites Of Dracula is one of the more closely related of the Dracula follow ups. Although it’s set a few years after the events of the previous film, Dracula AD 1972 (which I reviewed here), it was actually released only one year after. It does have four running characters from that previous excursion in the contemporary adventures of Hammer’s flagship vampire, although only three actors returned to those roles.

The two obvious returners are Christopher Lee playing Dracula and Peter Cushing once again playing the modern descendent of the Van Helsing clan, Lorrimer. We also have Michael Coles returning as police Inspector Murray from the previous Dracula adventure, this time working in conjunction with a special government agency represented mostly by characters played by William Franklin and Richard Vernon. It should be noted that Coles is, apparently, the only person in Hammer film history other than Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing to play the same character in more than one Dracula movie.

Rounding out the more important cast members are Freddie Jones as a Nobel prize winning chemist and, to fill the boots of Stephanie Beacham, who was not available to reprise the role of Van Helsing’s granddaughter Jessica, we have Joanna Lumley who, it has to be said, doesn’t have an awful lot to do in this and plays the role, it seems to me, completely differently from her predecessor... but then again, that’s because the character seems differently written as, although it takes place in more or less the same times, there’s no sense of a swinging London vibe to this movie at all (even though it’s set there). I should probably also mention Pauline Peart’s brief role as a wordless vampire girl, one of a few chained in a basement, since she does cut a striking figure and she still goes to Film Fairs to sign photos from this film.

The film opens strongly with lots of location footage of London with a really annoying and distracting silhouette of Dracula superimposed over the whole credits sequence, slightly off centre at the bottom of the screen. However, John Cavacas’ excellent, funky 1970s score more than makes up for this annoying blemish on an otherwise interesting credits sequence.

This movie always seems to be better in my memories but, every time I sit down to watch it over the years, it always seems a little bland too. Dracula doesn’t even enter the picture until about half an hour into the thing. And when he does, there’s no real discussion as to how he was revived after his death at the end of the previous movie, this time around. However, there’s some distracting nudity, some occult practices and also cults like the Hellfire Club referenced to ensure the audience know that they’re in black mass kind of territory... and also mention that vampires also have a weakness in the grip of a Hawthorn bush, which they use here to help usher in Dracula’s latest death at the end of the tale.

The plot of this one involves Dracula’s attempt to kill off humanity with a new instant and more deadly version of a black plague. When it’s pointed out to him that the destruction of mankind would mean he’d leave himself without an adequate food supply he changes the subject but, the film very gently touches on the idea that Dracula may also be wanting to bring about his own downfall by this point.

So, yeah, it’s another contemporary adventure romp with a biker gang of hoodlums controlled by Dracula’s new corporation, to lend action scenes to the picture, all of them wearing sheepskin waistcoats just like the one I used to wear myself when I was two or three years old. There’s lots of shooting, chasing and punching... not to mention some quite nice frame designs where various uprights and horizontals are used to highlight different parts of the action. But for all this, somehow, the film seems curiously bland in places and, I think I’ve finally put my finger on why some of the film feels like this, finally...

I noticed, this time around, that in all the various shots of characters going about their business in London, there are never any people on the streets. Like everything had been locked off for filming but the production was too cheap to have extras. It’s a little off putting, to tell the truth. Like London has suddenly been emptied out in the aftermath of some great catastrophe. Oh... although there’s a shot inside Freddie Jones’ house where, you might notice a person extra, as one of the crew seems to be ducking behind a half open doorway at the rear of one shot, although there’s clearly meant to be nobody there apart from Freddie at this point.

In addition to the Hawthorn bush oddity and a number of in-the-moment, do it yourself crosses and stakes used throughout the movie, we have a nice scene where Peter Cushing’s character melts down a silver cross and casts it as a silver bullet (which he manages to miss Dracula with later) and a nice moment of running water demise, when Inspector Murray turns some sprinklers on the chained vampire gals in the basement, having learnt that this can be deadly to a vampire from the previous movie, invoking death by running water. That being said, it’s one of a few scenes where the action seems ever so slightly slowed down and a bit strange... this particular scene even more so because the director has chosen to switch to a posterised colour version of the shot to show the undead ladies writhing around on the floor. I’m not sure why this colour technique was used in just this one scene in the movie but, the cynic inside me suspects that something went wrong with the action of the shot which was only discovered later and they posterised the footage to disguise it. That’s my best guess on that one, anyway.

So that’s me finished with The Satanic Rites Of Dracula for a bit. The film is a little insipid in places and it’s certainly not as strong as the previous outing, Dracula AD 1972 but, it’s still quite entertaining and I appreciate the attempt to give the film a stronger link to the previous story through the characters and their learned knowledge from that film. And the John Cavacas score rocks and is worth picking up on CD if you don’t have it as it’s one of the few Hammer scores which has been released on CD still at this point. This was the last time that Christopher Lee played Dracula for Hammer but, not the last time Peter Cushing would play one of the Van Helsing clan... which would create continuity problems galore, as I’ll point out when I go on to watch that Hammer/Shaw Brothers collaboration as my next, final Hammer Dracula film review.

The Avengers - The Cybernauts Trilogy

Cool As Thwack!

The Avengers - The Cybernauts Trilogy
Airdates: 16th October 1965,
30 September 1967 & 2nd November 1976
Network - Zone 2 Blu Ray

Warning: Some spoilerage here.

When Network released this Blu Ray set a couple of years ago, I was hoping it would lead to a proper Blu Ray restoration of all the surviving episodes of various series of The Avengers in one massive boxed edition. Alas, that hasn’t happened yet but I’ve finally got around to watching this marvelous little mini set and, I have to say, they’ve done such a good job with these that they really should get onto doing a full restoration sometime soon (I see StudioCanal have got Blu Ray sets out for just three individual seasons but... that’s not enough and my respect for that specific company and their rights to release things in various territories and therefore blocking other labels has been steadily going downhill over the last few years).

The Avengers started in 1961 as a replacement show for Police Surgeon,  for the star of that series, Ian Hendry. This bizarre arm of the British Secret Service had Henry assisted in most episodes by a character called John Steed, played by Patrick Macnee. However, Hendry left the show towards the end of the first series which left Steed as the main character and he would continue on in that role in six more series of that show from 1961 - 1969, followed by the reincarnation of the show with two more series as The New Avengers from 1976 - 1977. During that time he had various assistants, all known over here in the UK as ‘Avengers girls’ (excepting in one obvious case) and they were Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale, Diana Rigg as Emma Peel (played by Uma Thurman in a later movie adaptation), Linda Thorson as Tara King and, for The New Avengers, the duo of Joanna Lumley as Purdey and Gareth Hunt as Mike Gambit. It’s of some interest to note that three of the four Avengers girls, with the exception of Linda Thorson, were also Bond girls. Diana Rigg and Joanna Lumley even starred in the same Bond film, my favourite one, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (reviewed here) and, of course, Patrick Macnee would also have a large role in A View To A Kill (reviewed here). Alas, the vast majority of the Honor Blackman episodes are lost to history but I do remember seeing her in these (and catching all these old episodes) when they were repeated in the early 1970s on British television.

This Network release picks on the three episodes out of the entire run which have what is, for three episodes spaced apart over the course of 11 years, a surprising amount of connective tissue, not least of which is the main instrument of destruction of the main bad guy (who is different in each episode), the Cybernauts of the titles. The set also allows us to see three different periods of Avengers history too, in that the way those episodes fall we have one of the black and white Diana Rigg era episodes, followed by one of the colour Diana Rigg era episodes and then, finally, an episode from The New Avengers.

The Cybernauts are a lovely creation, actually, and you can see why they were reused a couple more times throughout the show’s history. In a pre-titles sequence in the first of these, simply called The Cybernauts, we meet the antagonist robots who really never change much over the course of the stories which feature them. They have no emotion or real reasoning, they just home in on anyone who happens to be carrying a certain homing pen (in the first one, this plot mechanism is changed for the next two), can bash their way through walls with their very distinctive ‘woosh... thwack’ karate chop sound and can kill or stun a person with one blow. After we first see them in action, we are presented with the title sequence of the time, which was static shots made into a montage (somewhat like a slow flickerbook) of Steed and Mrs. Peel striking poses to Laurie Johnson’s classic music.

We then get to the main plot and have a wheelchair bound cybernetic scientist, Dr. Armstrong, played by Michael Gough (who you may remember from a number of horror movies but who you might best remember these days as Alfred The Butler in the two Tim Burton Batman movies) and his assistant Benson, played by Frederick Jaeger. These two are murdering the ‘competition’ and are going to create a technological dystopia with their suspiciously scientific ways. Enter Steed and Mrs. Peel who eventually work out what’s going wrong and manage to get the two active Cybernauts to attack each other... Dr. Armstrong getting in the way at the wrong time and getting killed by them himself.

The next story, The Return Of The Cybernauts, sees a somewhat familiar opening scene as the previous episode to feature them two years prior. We also get, of course, that wonderful opening title sequence from this era with the beautiful, musical pre-amble to the main theme as Mrs. Peel uncorks Steed’s champagne bottle with a pistol shot. Wonderful stuff. This is pretty much the same kind of thing but it’s revenge that drives the story beats. Benson, who seems to have gone bizarrely unaccounted for in the last episode, is now assisting Dr. Armstrong’s surviving brother, played here by the wonderful Peter Cushing. They both want to kill Steed and Mrs. Peel and they once more use the Cybernauts in a very strange way... to kidnap scientists to devise a terrible poetic justice for the death of Armstrong. Lots of Dutch angles in this one but, even though the show once again features those killer Cybernauts with their deadly wooshing and thwacking... these episodes seem somewhat atypical for The Avengers as I remember them... they’re not nearly as surreal as they sometimes got, for sure.

The third story, The Last Of The Cybernauts?? (accept no substitutes on the IMDB, it’s definitely got a double question mark in the title) from The New Avengers has a slightly different plot variation in that a dastardly double agent is almost killed and left in a fiery inferno by the show’s three heroes. One year later, he uses the man who made the original cybernauts for Dr. Armstrong all those years ago (a character who was never mentioned in the previous episodes, alas) and uses them in a plot to avenge himself on Steed, Purdey and Gambit, who kind of instigated the car chase that led to him being disfigured and in a wheel chair. By the end of the show, though, he can walk again as he augments himself and turns into a human Cybernaut, only to fall at the first hurdle of his revenge plot. We also have, of course, The New Avengers title sequence with Laurie Johnson’s new theme which is steadily rooted in the base line phrase of the original music.

So, three great episodes which, I have to say, look crisper than I've ever seen anything like them looking before. Network have done an absolutely wonderful job here and seeing unexpected guest stars such as Burt Kwouk and John Hollis popping up in minor roles in an episode here and there is almost the icing on the cake but... not quite. Because there’s more...

My favourite part of  this disc is the option to watch these episodes with ‘the vintage experience’ switched on. Basically, Network have gone out of their way to restore vintage ads which would have been showing during the commercial breaks contemporary to each episode (seriously, the restoration on the ads is as good as on the episodes themselves) and although I tend to hate advertisements on principle, it’s kind of nice seeing adverts and hearing jingles from when you were a child which you had forgotten about over the years. That also means, of course, that you get the ‘bumper’ titles and music to separate the ads fro the show... which is also a very welcome addition.

If you’re interested, I noted down all the ads in the order they appear and they are as follows: Birds Eye Beef Burgers, ESSO Extra, Tempo Frozen Garden Peas, a Polo advert which is quite unintentionally sexual and therefore very funny (what with various talking heads going on about how much they enjoy sucking them), Birds Eye Fish Fingers, Benson And Hedges cigarettes (I’d forgotten how televisions and cinemas were full of what are now illegal tobacco adverts back in the day), Kellog’s Corn Flakes, Mr. Kipling's exceedingly good cakes, Martini, a different Birds Eye Beef Burgers ad, Gale’s Choc-Nut Spread, Gillette razor blades, After Eight chocolate mints, Biological Radiant (for a purer white), the ESSO Tiger ad, Terry Wogan bestowing the virtues of Bovril cubes, KiteKat cat food, Reliant Robin, John Le Mesurier not saying much of anything to sell Castella Court Cigars, Orson Welles telling us about Domecq Sherry, Diana Rigg travelling by British Airways, Ready Brek (central heating for kids), Castrol GTX and Hai Karate aftershave (which I was just getting into for a couple of years before it retreated from the market place).

And that’s that for The Avengers - The Cybernauts Trilogy. Three mostly wonderful episodes (the dialogue isn’t great in The New Avengers episode, to be fair but... the chemistry between the actors is phenomenal) brought to us by Network and, seriously, if they’re reading this, they really need to get cracking on giving the full series a shot at Blu Ray box set heaven, before the horrible world of streaming tries to take over the marketplace. Can’t do much more than recommend this trilogy heavily for people who like this period of British espionage television. It’s a wonderful thing and you should grab it before it goes.

Assigned!

Time Pieces

Assigned!
The Unofficial and Unauthorised
Guide to Sapphire And Steel
by Richard Callaghan
Telos Publishing ISBN: 978-1-84583-869-0

I always feel a bit torn when I read an account of something which is labelled up as either unofficial or unauthorised or, as in this case, both. There’s usually a lack of occlusion implied by one or more of the creative forces behind a project and also there’s usually not an abundance of illustrative material to be found in these kinds of volumes... such is the case here, with the only picture content being that on the front cover. However, this is sometimes offset by the fact that uncomfortable or awkward issues about a production could be discussed which, more often than not, wouldn’t see the light of day in an authorised edition. And while there’s not a huge amount of controversy on show here, you do get the feeling that, in the few instances of people being consulted for the book, they are being completely truthful about the show which is the focus of this volume and so, yeah, this book is a fun and sometimes informative read.

Assigned! The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Sapphire And Steel is obviously a labour of love for Richard Callaghan who, like many of us of a certain age, remembers being fairly unsettled by this ‘family’ show as a kid. Sapphire And Steel was, if you don’t remember this remarkable series, probably the most terrifying programme on TV... perhaps more so because it was intended for family viewing and was broadcast at times which reflected that, rather than at times reserved for other shows of a scary nature, such as The Omega Factor or Hammer House Of Horror (reviewed here). It ran for three, very sporadic series (and got really screwed up and had to be partially repeated due to a big television strike during the run of one of the 'two story long' seasons). There were six serialised TV ‘assignments’ all told, two per series of varying episode counts and shown as two half hour episodes (with ads) of each assignment per week, sometime between 7 and 8pm on, I think, Tuesday and Thursday nights. And of course, each episode except the last one of each story would end on a cliffhanger (as did the last episode of the last assignment, in a way). I remember it was always the one show that the kids in the playground would talk about the next day.

Why? Because it could be truly terrifying and it was utterly inscrutable in terms of just what the show was really about and who, how and what the two lead characters, Sapphire And Steel, actually were. I mean, you got kind of an idea that they were some kind of ‘elements’, Sapphire played by ex-Avengers girl Joanna Lumley and Steel played by ex-Man From U.N.C.L.E agent, David McCallum... but the writing played with the mysteries of the characters without revealing too much and the enigmatic way in which the two lead stars played these roles ensured that... although we knew the enemy of the week was always ‘time’ in some kind of evil manifestation, breaking through into our world in a supernatural manner to try and do as much damage as possible... we really often didn’t have a flying fig of an idea just what the heck was going on from one episode to the next, other than the ending of each episode was more or less life threatening to at least one character.

The two ‘agents’ spoke to each other using telekinesis most of the time and usually only used their ‘outside voices’ when they wanted one of the human characters to hear what they were saying. They were mostly here to save the humans but, as the second story set on a disused railway station invaded by the spirits of those who died alone in world wars made brutally clear, they were not above sacrificing the odd person to stop time from breaking through and destroying everything. They also had other incredible powers... such as being able to inhabit pictures or, in Sapphire’s case, being able to take time back for a period for their own ends but, the scope, range and details of their particular talents, and the abilities of other elements who would sometimes enter a story to give them a hand, such as Lead or Silver, were often quite flexible and played close to the chest of the writers.

It always felt like there was an overall plan to the thing though so it comes as something of a surprise when revealed in this tome that creator P. J. Hammond, who wrote all but the fifth of the six serials, was kinda making it up as he went along and would like to be surprised as to what the characters would be getting up to next, without doing any planning out. Indeed, from the sound of it, episodes would start being filmed while later episodes were still being written and would often be rewritten on the set, often with he assistance of McCallum who was, like his co-star, very committed to the project.

The book is set up with an introduction followed by a big chapter dedicated to each assignment. Each chapter is split into smaller sections starting off with a very brief plot summary of the story before going into details about various cast members and production crew for that particular shooting block and picking out various bits of, often very interesting trivia, before finishing on a full blown critical look at the story in question. Which is as good a way as any to do it and it certainly is very informative here. In these sections the writer might, for example, explore how ahead of it’s time, say, the fourth story is (the one with the man with no face coming out of photographs), where it’s implied that the main supporting protagonist (that is, other than the title characters), is actually a sex worker and strong, independent woman. Not a combination of qualities shown in a positive light that you would normally expect to see at the height of 1970s family TV viewing.

As a bonus to the six original stories that writer Richard Callaghan puts under the microscope here, he also goes a bit further with some additional sections for a quick, critical look and summation of all the other media which the title characters have appeared in... which, for this show, is a very short list. So, yeah, he also looks at the original paperback novelisation of the first story (also written by P. J. Hammond), the Sapphire And Steel Annual (for readers in other countries, an Annual is a British tradition consisting of a thin hardbound book of themed strips, stories and other activities which would be released for different licensed TV and comic properties every Christmas), the comic strip stories that appeared in Look In magazine and the three series of Big Finish CD audio plays starring David Warner as Steel and Susannah Harker as Sapphire. These are also invaluable chapters and serve to whet the appetite somewhat, although it’s a shame that stuff like the Look In strips haven’t been collected together and reprinted in the intervening decades.

All in all, though, a very welcome visit to the facts and figures that made up what was one of the most enthralling and spooky shows on British TV. There will be a lot of people of a certain age who will remember some of the somewhat uncompromising stories of Sapphire And Steel with a lot of affection and they, especially, are the people who I would recommend this book to. It’s not as long or as meaty as an authorised, fully illustrated, coffee table book look back at the show might have been but, in case that never happens, then this is definitely one people familiar with some of the material here covered will want to check out. Thanks to my friend Dr. Rob for grabbing this one for me for my birthday.

Daydreaming With Stanley Kubrick

Kubrick-A-Brac

Daydreaming With Stanley Kubrick
6th July to 24th August
Somerset House, London, England

While I was on the way to stay with a friend for a London holiday over a few days, I noticed a tube train advert for an art exhibition called Daydreaming With Stanley Kubrick. Now Kubrick has always been a bit hit and miss for me (although he did some films which I hold in very high regard), so I didn’t give it much of a second glance. However, on the last day of the holiday, me and my friend decided to go to the show at Somerset House, last minute, since it’s located only a few minutes walk from the hotel where we were both staying.

I have to say... I’m glad we did. I also wish we’d got there earlier as two hours was not enough and one of the exhibits shuts at 5pm, before we could get to that room (although I will most certainly be going back there to check that one out too).

The exhibition is a selection of works with the common theme of art inspired by Stanley Kubrick and, although it sounds like its going to be a bit derivative of the director’s work... nothing could be further from the truth and there are some great works of art on display here, along with the fair share of pretentious rubbish you also get at these things. There are paintings, installations and also some films with big names such as Michael Nyman, Joanna Lumley, Cate Blanchett, Samantha Morton and Philip Castle involved in one way or another. Not to mention a contribution by Stanley’s wife, Christiane Kubrick.

After seeing one of her paintings opposite the desk where you buy your tickets, you go into a room and are confronted with an art installation of a space helmet with a screen inside depicting a monkey. No guesses for which of Kubrick’s famous films inspired this one then. After that, a fair amount of the exhibition is floored with shiny tiles which sport the same pattern as the carpet in the Overlook Hotel from Kubrick’s horror masterpiece, The Shining. After pausing to look at a pile of electric fires over the carpet, you enter a room with lots of old radios and the Dies Irae playing loudly in the background. It’s amazing stuff but it just keeps getting better and better as you make your way through this astonishing exhibition.

There were two works in particular which invoked the ‘wow’ factor in me when I saw them. One is a room you enter to watch a short film play out on each of the four walls. The piece is called The Corridor and it’s by Toby Dye. Each wall's film is shot in the same corridor but... stick around and look at all the screens as much as you can, constantly shifting your head, as the looping movies with no actual end or beginning (and starring Joanna Lumley, amongst others) start to interpenetrate and invade each other’s narrative space in a truly amazing way. I’ve got no idea how the artist was able to plan this one all out in his head but it’s worth standing in the centre of that room and just watching what is going on, constantly changing your viewpoint, as it plays out. Just mind blowing.

The other mind blower, for me, is a long, thin, flashing light situated near the end of the exhibition on the far wall of a lighted corridor. It’s stroboscopic and looks a bit pretentious until you... well... until you see the brilliance of it for yourself. The piece is by Chris Levine and it’s called Mr. Kubrick is Looking. I’ll quote the free booklet you get when you buy a ticket here, I think.

“A self-portrait by Kubrick is projected into the viewers peripheral vision using LED light technology. This ‘visual echo’ appears and disappears in a moment like a phantom. Levine is fascinated by the ‘sensory energy’ and ‘spiritual dimension’ of light.”

So, yeah, what happens here is quite uncanny and, being as I’m not technically minded, I am at a loss to explain exactly how it does this but... look at it full on and it’s a thin column of flashing light... look away from it and immediately, for half a second or so, you’ll get a photograph of Stanley Kubricks face as a fading ghost impression on your eyeball. As your eyes flash back and forth between the light and anywhere else in the room, the image briefly appears and reappears in your vision. Just incredible, amazing stuff. I was absolutely gobsmacked by the scientific alchemy on display here and will need to look into this at some point soon.

There are, of course, some not so hot pieces with fairly tenuous links in the show too. For me the two similar Scottish churches made of cardboard as a ‘tribute’ to the twin girls in The Shining seemed nicely constructed although a bit ludicrous but... you know... one person’s disappointment is another’s true art. I would certainly say the exhibition was way more positive than the few negatives I found and with 45 exhibits of varying shapes, sizes and media dotted about the ersatz Overlook, you’d be hard pushed, I think, not to find something to your liking here. Definitely a big recommendation for me and something which I’m still thinking about a week on from having first seen it. A repeat visit is certainly on the cards and you can find out more about Daydreaming With Stanley Kubrick at the website somersethouse.org.uk/dreamkubrick and photography is, apparently, allowed... although ‘flash photography’ is forbidden.