Wednesday 10 February 2016

The Pike!!


Great book! Great cover!  Especially the banner in the top right-hand corner!  No, not 60p, it cost £1.99, the robbing bastards!  Soon to be a major film!  Surely this would be a great cinematic event, added to the Brit-horror canon of recent years up with Hellraiser and, er, all those films with Craig Fairbrass in them.  But sadly, as you (the only reader) and I both know it was never made.  Joan Collins never got the chance to bat off a paper-mache pike in Lake Windemere, no matter how much you screw up your eyes and hope it'll happen (I do this when I want to see more of the Clockwork Wizards band in Dr Phibes).  There is a little more to be found here.  But what of the author?


Cliff Twemlow, martial artist, author, straight-to-video auteur - a remarkable man.  Library music composer ...
Eh?  More soon...

3 comments:

  1. Good to see you back, more please!

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  2. I was on a roll with Guy N Smith and his ilk when this book appeared IIRC, so it must have been only lack of funds that kept me from it back then. It certainly fits my bill. Perhaps a link-up between the Clockwork Wizards and the titular beast in a Phibes spin-off would have excused the rubbishy look of the aquatic monster, the musicians swinging stiffly in a mildewed band-stand on an island in the lake whilst wind-up sentinel El Pikey mechanically munches those who would desecrate the waters of a place the late Mrs P loved dearly. As to why the film never happened I can only assume that when asked directly what the film was to be called the writer-director commanded his staff "Don't tell them".

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