Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts

Wednesday, 11 June 2014

Another World


I've just been watching Worth the Risk? the sixth volume of the Central Office of Information public information films to be released on DVD, and like the other discs in the series there is a bounty of fear, neurosis and death to delight all ages. 

It's difficult to single out one individual highlight from the dozens of shorts included here, but I've chosen to share Another World, one of the lesser known works of the fourth Doctor Who.


The uncredited 'soundtrack' (three minutes) is "all killer, no filler", the opening syncopated drums and fuzz bass like a poor man's Lalo Schifrin, moving to anxious brass and synth squelch. I would be grateful for any suggestions as to the identity of the composer - Alan Hawkshaw perhaps?

Tuesday, 10 June 2014

A Matter of Life and Death Masks

A trip to Edinburgh the other week turned up these life and death masks in the library of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. The first six could easily come from my family album.
Male Insane / Female Extreme Cunning

Male Celtic Type / Male English Type

Female Idiot / Female Idiot

Murderers: George Bryce / John Adam

Murderers: George Campbell / John Dempsey

William Burke / William Hare

Isambard Kingdom Brunel / Benjamin Franklin

Voltaire / Andrew Coombe

James Hogg / John James Audubon

Jacques-Louis David / Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Felix Mendehlsson / Joseph Hayden

John Keats / George Combe (phrenologist)