Hello, there. I’m Darren, and this is a collection of stuff I’ve written over the years, mainly about music but there’s some other stuff too, such as film, TV and merch. You’ll also find the odd bit of promo for videos and music I’ve made. Thanks for dropping by.
It’s Thursday night and I’m queuing in the freezing cold outside the Royal College of Surgeons in Holborn. I’ve been here for more than an hour. My instructions were to arrive early, so I did. And now, despite my hat, scarf and gloves, I feel like I’m on the verge of hypothermia.
When the doors eventually open, I shuffle forward until I reach the...
I woke up today to an email from a friend telling me that Nicholas Courtney, Doctor Who’s much-loved Brigadier, had died. I didn’t think this was even possible. I knew that Nick had been suffering with his health over the past couple of years, but the way he kept bouncing back - showing up at conventions with a twinkle in his eye - suggested that he’d probably be around forever.
The last time I saw Nick was at an event called Seventh Heaven, which was held...
I want to share a few thoughts (spoilerish ones, so be warned) about Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein, which I saw at the National Theatre on Monday. The play, written by Nick Dear, is still in its preview stage at the moment - press screenings follow later in the month, and the official premiere happens on 24 February - but what I saw appeared to be pretty well formed.
Famously, the roles of Victor Frankenstein and his creature...
Some people like to buck conventions, but I embrace them - at least I do when they’re branded Doctor Who**.** (Do you see what I did there?) The current kings of Who cons are Fantom Films, a company who regularly run small-scale but hugely enjoyable day-long events in Chiswick, west London. The venue for the last couple of years has been the George IV pub on Chiswick High Road - or, to be precise, the Headliners comedy club...
****The Ward - or John Carpenter’s The Ward, to give it its full and proper title - is a film I’ve been pining to see for what must be the best part of a year, ever since I heard it had gone into production. Carpenter has long been one of my favourite directors. I’ve been enjoying his films since I was 14 years old, at the height of the home-video boom. Long before I even knew what a director did, Carpenter’s name in the opening credits of a...
As much as I enjoy attending 10th Planet’s Saturday-morning events in Barking, my day usually starts with a groan. The act of rising before the sun does might be easy - nay, compulsory - for vampires but, let me tell you, it hurts when you’re more alive than undead.
Of course, when I put it like that, the solution seems obvious - I need someone, or something, to put the...
Wandering around Collectormania London recently, I saw on one of the stalls a copy of Let’s Scare Jessica To Death, John D Hancock’s cult chiller from 1971. This was a movie that had long been on my want-to-see list, thanks largely to the critic Kim Newman. In my late teens, I was a regular browser of Newman’s 1988 book Nightmare Movies, in which the author championed the film, describing it as “shamefully underrated” - though,...
It’s Sunday 28 November, and three Doctors - Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann - plus companion Katy Manning (Jo Grant from the Jon Pertwee era) and Stephen Moore (a Silurian from this year’s Cold Blood) are...
Set your videos - or whatever new-fangled recording machine you currently have living under your telly - because this Saturday, BBC2 is showing a bona fide horror classic, Night Of The Demon.
Directed by Jacques Tourneur, and starring the late Dana Andrews and the, um, fashionably early Peggy Cummins (sub-editor - please change to something that makes sense), this 1957 film based on an MR James story is not only a cracking thriller and a masterful work of suspense; it’s also a damned fine fright flick, layered with some fantastically creepy moments and topped and tailed with cinema’s best-ever demon (possessed young girls from Georgetown notwithstanding).
To some, Memorabilia, the twice-yearly signing/collectors’ fair held at the Birmingham NEC, is the once proud, now underachieving older brother of Collectormania and the London Film & Comic Con.
Its recent guest lists seem to have drawn more tuts of dissatisfaction than any other show of its kind, both online and offline - primarily, it seems, because there haven’t been enough guests from modern...
