SPECTRE IN GIF FORM; PART ONE

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WARNING!: THESE GIFS HAVE BEEN OPTIMIZED, BUT ARE STILL LARGE FILES; THEY MAY TAKE SOME TIME TO LOAD

SPECTRE BONUS: ASTON MARTIN DB10 VS JAGUAR C-X75 (Warning: Animated Gifs, heavy page load)

Degrees of Continuity - The Aston Martin DB5

We, by which I mean me, here at Volcano Cat are/am always conscious of the responsibilities involved. The unspoken bond, if you like between Blog and reader that we or for all you care I exists, manifested as it isn't by its complete lack of visibility and remarkable absence of any e-mails from you, the presumed Blog-ees. Does that mean we, myself and I ceases to care?, I would like to assure you, each and all that all our staff at VC productions Inc (Registered offices, Box 277, Place De La Revolucion, Bogota) cares as much as he ever did, or is likely to. So, with that thought sitting uneasily in our stomachs in the fashion of an under-cooked pork casserole lets turn our attention away from the ethereal nature of whatever that was all about and contemplate a product of an unlikely survivor in the disaster that we Englanders laughingly called the British Car Industry. The Aston Martin DB5.

Sepia-Vision on, and back we go, in cranky and blotchy silent movie news-reel fashion to 1913. Yes, Queen Victoria was dead and one of the other lot was on the Throne, probably Edward or Edwin. Some bloke. But whats this?; why it's two badly under-researched bloke called Robert Bamford and Lionel Martin. Look, there goes young Martin up a hill, Aston Hill no less. In a car. Changing reels – and I really should do some more research – its World War One, but thanks to the Credit Crunch we've had to abbreviate it to WWI, and there's no footage. Imagine in your mind, if you will – a lot of dead people and some hideously waxed moustaches, bit of poetry and Hurrah! - peace once more. When, oh when will mankind learn, eh?. Moving on – after WWI halted production before it even started, it resumed. Production, not the war...

ABOVE: The original design drawings by Ken Adam with the final article.

BELOW: The Gadgets

 The legendary racer and engineer Count Louis Zborowski gave the ailing company a financial boost and their cars set several speed records at the famous Brooklands circuit. Bamford left the factory in 1920 and it went bankrupt, closing in 1926... Lionel Martin left, but the company was bought out.

Le Mans, the Mille Miglia – such names!, the company, by now calling itself Aston Martin, was on the way to fame and World War II. Eh?, who ordered that?. Yes, more newsreels, but this time with the Pathe cockerel and chirpy plucky lets-all-pull-through-for-victory commentator chappie-bloke. AM made aircraft parts. Hitler shot himself. We really, really need a word about the budget...

ABOVE: The interior and boot of the 'Q-Car'

19 and Forty Seven. David Brown buys the firm and Lagonda, the latter chiefly to get his hands on their WO Bentley-designed motor.

Lets do the desk-calendar dates flying off thing like forties movies... (Ready?)... 1950...(There it goes)...the DB2... 1957...(Whoosh-flutter)...the DBIII... 1958... the DB4... and zoom in to 1963 and the DB5...

ABOVE: The two Goldfinger cars, with a few examples of sixties advertising featuring the 007 Db5

6 cylinders. Four litres. Two Hundred and Eighty Two Horse-Power. 0 to 60? - 7.1 seconds. Top speed? - around 148mph. The DB5 was a development from the DB4, (Durr) itself a stand-out car in a history of notable successes. The third film in the 007 series, Goldfinger was being made, the novel featured a DBIII, but Aston Martin's current model was chosen and the rest... you know the rest. Two cars were used in the film; one, a standard model was used for the driving scenes, the other, heavily modified to showcase Q-branch's incredible array of gadgets. As well as the ejector seat, directional beacon finder, tyre shredder, machine guns and bullet screen seen in the final film, the car featured a radio telephone, a radar system built into a wing mirror and a tray beneath the passenger seat for a gun.

ABOVE: The DB5 returned, briefly in Thunderball

BELOW: The DB5 used in Goldeneye and the return of a classic in Skyfall.

Glencoe, Scotland provided a breathtaking backdrop for the Aston.

The iconic status of the car ensured it's return – notably new Bonds Brosnan and Craig were 'established' to us using the DB5 motif. Goldeneye featured the car explicitly, whilst Casino Royale gave it a more subtle nod with a sky-blue left-hand drive model. The car in Skyfall, was, of course cars. EON productions used their own car, copying it faithfully for the movie. Aston Martin Heritage found a green model, transforming it and aging it, even painting a line around the roof panel to suggest the 'ejector seat' of the original. Every so often, the original gadget car seems to change hands, fetching millions at auction every time. The producers seem to have waved goodbye to the DB5 in Skyfall. I hope they have – the old girl was past her best and showing her age. Should have made that a Judi Dench joke, but you get my drift. A car – even a cutting edge Grand Tourer – from the sixties will not cut it alongside the Aston DBS of Quantum of Solace. Even so, the car's importance to the Bond films was highlighted in the scene at Skyfall lodge where the car is shot to pieces. Daniel Craig's priceless look of outraged anger is the only real emotion he shows, at least until the end of the story... The final scenes of Skyfall establish the new M, a clear statement that Bond is back to his beginnings. Even the office looks like Bernard Lee's original. I love the DB5, that rather beautiful little car with it's small pedals that Connery found so hard to drive. Even after all the years, it still had the audience applauding, a pretty remarkable achievement from one of those very British little car firms that somehow managed to survive two World Wars and the demise of virtually every other company in the business...

ABOVE: Relax, it's a model! - a combination of SFX and model shots were used in the scene where Silva's helicopter shoots Bond's DB5 to pieces.

BELOW: The DB5, Home again - for the last time?

Finally, a note of humour from Mail cartoonist Mac, as the DB5 changes hands once more

Oh, MATRON!...

...And what better way to kick-start the old Blog back into coughing, spluttering life after the New Year, than with an in-depth look at the Cultural Issues affecting modern life?. With a hasty, ill thought-out skim-over of the Carry On films, that's what...

With 31 films from 1958's Carry on Sergeant to the last Carry on Columbus in 1992, the series ranks second only to the James Bond films in durability – and if you were like me, i.e. British, white and born anywhere around the late sixties, chances are you grew up with these classics on the telly. The style of humour in the Carry Ons is best defined as 'saucy seaside postcard' and music hall – that end of the pier British humour with busty girls and lusty gents. Wey-HEY!.

The team of Producer Peter Rogers and Director Gerald Thomas hit on the idea of a series of low-budget, (The lead players were paid just £5,000 a film) low-production value gag-fests, each featuring the same basic cast members – the 'Carry On Gang' – in a different set-up; they're Doctors and patients in a hospital, they're Explorers in the Jungle... the main purpose of the plots seemed to be to cram as many silly, hackneyed and genuinely hilarious gags into the whole thing as possible. It was a national phenomenon. Whole generations of British movie-goers trooped in to see these films. Art-house producers must have wept...

ABOVE: CARRY ON CAMPING Terry Scott gets a pain in the arse for once... and Below: Mike Myers wasn't the first...

The core of the Carry On Gang?; Sidney James, Kenneth Williams, Hattie Jacques, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims, Kenneth Connor, Bernard Bresslaw, Barbara 'Babs' Windsor, Jim Dale and Peter Butterworth. Only a few of these names are still in the land of the living – Barbara Windsor's bubbly blonde bombshell was until fairly recently Peggy Mitchell of Eastenders fame. The names in that list cover just about the whole spectrum of British vintage comedy – Sid James made his name on Hancock's Half Hour with Tony Hancock, as did Kenneth Williams, who specialised in different characters and voices before his run on Round the Horne. Another Hancock regular was Hattie Jacques, famous for her Matron characters. Aside from the Carry Ons, Jacques found fame with Eric Sykes, working with him for many years, including her final role, in the comedy short Rhubarb Rhubarb released after her death.

The flavour of the series comes largely from Talbot Rothwell's scripts; he wrote twenty of the films before retiring with exhaustion to Worthing in West Sussex. (My two 'Lames' to fame here are apart from living in Worthing, as a kid when we lived in Surrey I was almost run over by the horribly unfunny Terry Scott in his Rolls Royce) A WWII fighter pilot, Rothwell was shot down and was held in the notorious Stalag Luft III, the camp famous for The Great Escape. While there, he met future Carry On regular Peter Butterworth who performed in Rothwell's early plays – covering the noise of the tunneling below!. 

 

SID JAMES

Solomon Cohen was a Johannesburg hairdresser – changing his name to Sidney James he went into acting. After some serious roles, he went into comedy – almost always playing characters called Sid or Sidney. His trademark was a dirty laugh and 'Cor, blimey!' (Pronounced; BA-limey!). Famously, he carried on with Babs Windsor, whose husband Ronnie Knight was a leading figure in Gangland. Rumour has it Knight threatened Sid, whose other obsession was gambling – a life-long gambler he would often be found on the phone to his bookie, losing thousands. He collapsed onstage with a heart attack in 1976.

How you perceive the Carry Ons largely depends on your age and background – today they are seen as howlingly unfunny, cliche'd sexist and racist by turn. For example – in various films Bernard Bresslaw turned up as either a native African, an Arab, or as an Afghan warlord. These days a white Englishman blacked up would provoke howls of outrage – especially as, in the first example he was surrounded by actual black actors. No surprise here; I see these films as a product of their time, films made without malice for the entertainment and enjoyment of the audience of that time. The far-off daze when Britain seemed more innocent are long gone, sadly. I grew up with these films and they are GREAT – the jokes are groan-worthy and brilliant one after the other, all tongue-in-cheek and the very best of British post-war humour. Judging films made forty years ago by society's mores today is just madness – it doesn't work; instead of tut-tutting, sit down and watch these gems – enjoy seeing the Britain of the sixties and seventies (Even the 'foreign' ones were never filmed farther afield than Wales) and have some laughs!.

ABOVE: Two more from 'Camping'. The redhead fighting Barbara Windsor is Anna Karen - Olive from the long-running British Sitcom On the Buses...

The gif(t) of Elvis...

As HQ has just informed me; dinner is ten minutes away... so, as it's Bangers, Mash n'Onions I'll be brief... (Simple fare, perhaps, but my wife, the long-suffering Mrs.S is a Cockney* - that means lots of things, but in the food area we're talking simple, well-cooked traditional British nosh - top grub!.*As opposed to Mockneys, those annoyingly loud post-yuppie pumpers that claim 'Orfentick Lahndan Ancesterey' because their grand-dad's aunt's best friend once visited Big Ben. Mrs.S was born in Newham, as in the East End of London and just three minutes from West Ham FC.)

So, have some Elvis GIFS - those animated amusements (They amuse me) that slow your computer down maddeningly, never save when you want them to, but are one of my childish delights... (I didn't do the Elvis Vegas one or the Animated Elvis Cartoon, I nicke...appropriated those...)

Elvis & Nixon - you'd never believe it, but EP did actually make the trip - on a whim - to the White House to meet Tricky Dicky, offering his services as an undercover drug agent (UnderCOVER? - the guy was more famous than Pepsi!) and a sort of youth ambassador in the nation's fight against commie thinking and drugs generally. I won't waste too much time pointing out the obvious, but Elvis' drug use was, as he saw it, legit - doctors prescribed the drugs so they were o.k.. As opposed to scoring on street corners. I guess being alone at the top for so long, you turn to whatever comfort you can find. Anyway - I love this one, not least as EP looked his best here.

(Roustabout - the only Elvis movie I own, bought for £2 at a charity shop...) Cornball, but fun. BTW - If you see it, check the bike through the fence stunt - isn't that actually Elvis Presley doing the stunt?... Anyway, dinner's ready!...