BLEAK METAPHYSICS

Ah, Space 1999: the Moon is blown out of Earth’s orbit, and subsequently flies through the universe getting into scrapes and adventures like an out of control 81 quintillion ton wrecking ball. There are three hundred human beings living on it in a climate controlled, hermetically sealed hellhole, Moonbase Alpha. Bizarrely, it has functional, opening windows. They have enough food and drink to live out their lives, but no way of going home, ever. It’s pretty depressing. 

In The Guardian Of Piri the inhabitants of Alpha find a planet that will support human life, a wonderful candy coloured ball of oxygen and water and all they need to begin again. The problem is that, once you arrive, you can’t leave, as The Guardian, an all-powerful super computer, won’t let you. It is The Guardian’s job to serve its people, and it won’t allow them to do anything. Instead, you are expected to spend your days in a blissful torpor, lounging around in your pyjamas and staring at a mesmerising illuminated hole in the red sky. It’s a form of slow death, but it’s not a bad life, especially if the alternative is eking out your days on a miserable mobile Moon.

Naturally, Commander John Koenig stops all the nonsense, overthrowing The Guardian and dragging his bewildered crew back to their airless plastic prison. Given their tragic history and limited future it seems cruel to take them from Piri. Rightly or wrongly, they were happy there. But then Space 1999 is about an endless struggle for a pathetic facsimile of ‘normal’ life, not about sitting on your silk clad arse and staring happily at the sky all day, so the bleak metaphysical circus continues.   

SIGN AND SAY

WELCOME TO LA

Cleon Peterson is a contemporary artist from Los Angeles who specialises in starkly rendered depictions of epic violence: a mix of graffiti, mythology and fantasy. His semi-naked, shaven headed figures battle constantly amongst themselves, or commit atrocities to others. They remind me of the Brutals in Zardoz, heavily armed savages bred to kill and rape and keep the world a savage and terrifying place.  

Peterson's art stirs in me the memory of when I was a child and would spend hours drawing enormously detailed scenes of dead soldiers, crocodiles, murder, pools of blood, people being thrown into pits full of spikes, that sort of thing. It was probably the peak of my creativity. If I'm honest, I've ploughed rather an arid furrow for the last forty years.

THREE POP ART PIECES

THE FLESH AND BLOOD SHOW

Hu-Man, d. Jérôme Laperrousaz (1975)

A group of television executives approach Terence Stamp (playing a po-faced actor called Terence Stamp) with a unique idea for a television show that will blur the lines between entertainment and experimental science. Stamp will be placed in extreme danger and his fear will be transmitted directly to the viewers. The energy of their reactions will be captured and used to power the next phase of the plan, in which Stamp will travel backwards or forwards in time depending on the strength and clarity of their emotions. If he wants to, and if he can retain a positive mental attitude, he may even be able to return. 

It’s not much of a deal on the face of it but fictional Stamp, dealing with the recent suicide of his wife, readily accepts (the real Stamp was in an Indian ashram at this point, decompressing after a very busy sixties, and his onscreen counterpart,  with his pony tail and tai chi exercises, seems on a similar quest). What follows are some extraordinary scenes filmed on the very edges of the natural world, the wild places where man has no place or purpose other than to die: Stamp caught by the incoming tides at Mont St Michel, running back and forth until he stands on a tiny patch of land as the sea quickly engulfs him; hanging precariously out of a helicopter as it flies high over an arctic landscape; waking up at the edge of an active volcano, a lake of seething, spitting lava mere feet away. These set pieces, accompanied by electronic music and Stamp's enigmatic facial expressions are among the most amazing things I've seen on screen.

Hu-Man is both profound and off-hand, and the so called science that underpins it is as much magic as method (the time travel energy is apparently stored in a massive plastic bag). Never mind, it’s the mid-seventies, where good vibes are just as important as good wiring. 

MONSTER OF THE DEEP

From Web of Mystery 18, May 1953 (as reprinted in IDW's Haunted Horror, available now)

BLUES

GREENS

Some verdant looking company idents from the wonder years of the VHS boom. 

COLLAGE d'OR

This. This is good. This is good stuff. Cosmic Neighbourhood make magical Moomin mushroom music, the soundtrack to the golden glowing endless woodland childhood you remember, not the one you actually had. 

STARLETS

JANET MUNRO (1959/2015)