Knightmare and the Helmet of Truth

A lot of folk are excited that here in the UK the classic adventure game show "Knightmare" is being re-shown on the Challenge TV channel.

Rating as one of the best things ever put out on ITV - yes I am a BBC snob - I never got to see it as much as I would have liked, as initially I never got home from school early enough, and then I was at university for a large chunk of its run.

Various things stick in the memory though. The fact that to conceal the fact that the young adventurer was actually doing his dungeoneering in a bare green screened studio, he was forced to wear "The Helmet of Truth" - essentially a bucket with horns on it, as can be seen here;

The bearded, slightly psychopathic looking chap here is Hugo Myatt as Treguard, the guide, the dungeonmaster, much given to saying things like "Life force is becoming critical" and "But team, where is the trumpet to blow down the Walls of Jericho?". He would sit with the other members of the team, three classroom spods with pencils and paper who would shout "FORWARD! LEFT! LEFT! NO LEFT!" like someone playing a ZX81 text only adventure with a voice recognition system. They also had to cast spells, getting the spelling right, as some kind of educational sop to the "quality television" brigade. The watching kids, of course, thought this was a load of pointless bullshit getting in the way of the action.

And all the while, as the be-bucketed one struggled to get a key in a lock, or dispose of a troll, thumping heartbeat music would sound ominously, and a graphic of a face would appear in the corner of the screen. This would slowly disintegrate into a scary looking skull with bits of meat on it as the lifeforce ran out, always reminding me of the life indicator in the old Spectrum game "Atic Atac".

The show ran its course, as they always do, as even with some location footage mixed in and some updated graphics Knightmare began to look underpowered compared to the latest in Snezzy Megasony home video game technology. However, the charm of this and the earlier BBC2 "The Adventure Game" is unmatchable to any retro low tech lover like me!

Konga - British Sci Fi does Killer Gorillas

I have just been reading an excellent anthology of writing on British Sci Fi cinema from the days of "Things to Come" in the early 30s, as far as Hardware, the film in which Carl McCoy of flour covered wearing leather hat sporting goth botherers Fields of the Nephilim appeared.

In between it deals with Quatermass, invading space dominatrixes, the adaptations of John Wyndham novels and naughty (and under-rated) space vampire type movies Inseminoid and Lifeforce.

In amongst all that, was a chapter dealing with British monster movies of the 50s and 60s, in which Konga, a 1961 release from Anglo-Amalgamated featured prominently.

Obviously the film takes King Kong as its starting point, but the movie is evidently more influenced by the Toho studios Gaiju films i.e. a man in a monster suit rampages around a carboard city squashing cultural landmarks. Eventually the heroic British army reasserts control of the situation which was initially created by the usual sort of deranged scientist with an axe to grind before being exacerbated BY A MADWOMAN SCORNED. The film thus combines two of the fascinations of home grown sci fi - how science must be kept coralled and controlled lest it destroys Westminster Cathedral, and how women are an inherent bloody menace whether they are space or not. As ever, tea drinking normality is restored in the end.

I haven't seen it, but along with virtually every other film mentioned in this book, I have decided I must. It can't be much worse than Peter Jackson's version, which the carnivorous insect section apart, is overlong and overblown.