Photo © 2012 Mandy Slater
Dacre Stoker and Stephen Jones
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Photo © 2012 Mandy Slater
Richard Dalby and Stephen Jones
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I was invited to the Albert Embankment offices of The Robson Press/Biteback Publishing, with
spectacular views overlooking the River Thames and the Houses of Parliament, for the launch
of The Lost Journals of Bram Stoker: The Dublin Years by Elizabeth Miller and Dacre Stoker.
As well as many of the Stoker family being in attendance (from as far away as Australia),
Ellen Terry's descendants were also present, along with such old friends as Stephen Gallagher,
Richard Dalby, Tina Rath, Sylvia Starshine, Roger Johnson, Tony Lee, Robert Eighteen-Bisang,
Tony Rudlin and others, including the two authors.
The thunder, lightning and torrential rain sweeping across London ensured that the evening
had a suitably dramatic background to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Stoker's death.
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Photo © 2012 Mandy Slater
A Game of Thrones
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Photo © 2012 Peter Coleborn
Paul McAuley and Stephen Jones in the bar
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Poster by Shiv
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And so to the slightly spooky location of the Old Vic Tunnels near Waterloo Station on
a crisp Saturday evening to attend "The Flicker Club presents Hammer at Vault". I had
been invited to introduce a screening of my favourite science fiction film,
Quatermass and the Pit (1967), in a converted crypt-like morgue that once served
the London Necropolis Railway, built in the mid-nineteenth century to service the newly-built
Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey. (For more about this, I recommend Basil Copper's
Gothic novel Necropolis.)
Following a typically exuberant reading and effusive introduction by The Flicker Club's
Clive Perrott, I talked to an attentive audience about my own history with the movie, some of
the background details behind its production, and my memorable meeting with creator Nigel
Kneale. I'm not a public speaker and, although I suppose it went okay, it was not nearly as
good as it was in my head beforehand.
However, the highpoint of the evening for me was meeting child actress Janina Faye, who horror
fans will remember for her appearances in The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll,
The Hands of Orlac, The Day of the Triffids and, perhaps most memorably, as the
young "Tania" in Hammer's 1958 Dracula. Accompanied by film director Norman Warren, she
had been attending a screening of a restored print of that film, introduced by the redoubtable
Kim Newman (who does this stuff so much better than I do).
We had a lovely chat, and when I bemoaned the fact that I would have loved to have
her sign some of my Hammer memorabilia—had I had the foresight to bring any with me!—she
very kindly produced a postcard depicting her and director Terence Fisher on the
set of Dracula, which she autographed to me.
Also in attendance was Hammer's Nic Ransome (whom Michael Marshall Smith and I had met
previously during discussions for an animated movie project) and Hammer expert Marcus Hearn.
As I made my way back through the graffiti-strewn tunnels to the tube station, I could not
shake the feeling that I had left behind me the ghosts of those who would now never catch
the train to their final resting-place. As I suppressed a shiver in the cold night air, I
could think of a no more fitting location for a retrospective of Hammer horror.
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