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Post by dem bones on Jul 30, 2014 20:39:39 GMT
Carl Ruhen - Neighbours # 9 (Star, 1989) Blurb: While having a blazing row with Harold, Madge throws his engagement ring into the lake without realizing its true value. Jim buys a jinxed racing car which he intends to drive in the Classic 500 race despite pleas for him not to do so. And Scott and Charlene create a sensation when they announce their plans to live together.
On the eve of Scott and Charlene's wedding, everything goes wrong. Daphne's baby arrives at an awkward moment, Lucy shows disturbing signs of clumsiness and Mrs Mangel takes to reading tea leaves...It's all go on Ramsey Street for sure but, sadly, Neighbours #9 is not quite the occult thriller it's back cover blurb suggests. Jim Robinson's death race in the jinxed racing car is particularly rubbish. The motor, we're told, has already claimed the lives of a father, his son and an innocent bystander, and nobody, not even his ex-wife, wants Jim to risk his neck, but his selfish streak wins out. Little Lucy is distraught: she's going to be an orphan! Yeah, right. Whizzing around the circuit, Jim's conscience gets the better of him: how could he be so cruel and heartless toward his loved ones? Sure enough, the grate big fairy sheepishly pulls over, having learned one of life's harsh lessons, etc., and we are denied our blood-sacrifice. It's always the reader who suffers. At least Mrs Mangel's way with the tea-leaves bears a genuine touch of the dark arts, but then she's a pro. "I had to give it up," she explains to Eileen Clark. "Len was totally against me dabbling in voodoo, as he called it." Mrs. Mangel is recovering from a recent heart attack, but Eileen is too excited to pay that any mind and imposes on her old friend to perform a reading. Harold Bishop (pre-psychotic episode) is sceptical, but: "The griffin," Mrs Mangel said in a doom-laden voice. "There's no mistaking it. A mythical monster with a lion's body and an eagle's wings ... Mr. Bishop, I'm afraid life is about to deal you a very savage blow."Sure enough, Harold's day immediately takes a turn for the worst when he traps a football with his face. Later he returns from the video rental store with something called Hot Cargo, "rituals of life and love among the Amazons", which, he has it on good authority, is like a cross between On Golden Pond and Key Largo. Evidently, video rental counter staff are closet Vault reviewers as Hot Cargo has far more in common with some of author's earlier pseudonymous works ( Orgy Farm, Bar Stud, Sex Parlour, etc.), as Harold, Eileen, and Mrs. Mangel are soon to discover. File Under: Not very Satanic. For more on the prolific, genre-hopping Carl Ruhen, see Andrew Nette's Wild Beat: Carl Ruhen and Australia's Forgotten Pulp Fiction
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Post by mcannon on Aug 7, 2014 0:23:30 GMT
Somehow I missed this when it was first posted - or perhaps a merciful Providence blasted it out of my mind the first time.
I only ever watched "Neighbours" briefly, back in the late 1980s, around the time that many of these characters were in the show, so Dem's review revived some truly horrific memories. At the time, Mrs mcannon was pregnant with Number One Son, and she became hooked on the show. However, once Son of mcannon 1.0 was born, she almost immediately lost interest in the show, and other than the occasional single episode here or there (the TV being on and us being too lazy to change it) we've never watched it since. Mrs mc decided this was proof of the theory that pregnancy can do strange things to the chemical balances of women's brains.
The cover of the novelisation is particularly impressive. So far as I can recall these aren't actual actors from the show but rather Srough lookalikes, presumably for the sainted Scott and Charlene. Perhaps there's the horrific element - "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"-type Pod People in Erinsborough?
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Post by dem bones on Aug 7, 2014 9:53:03 GMT
The cover of the novelisation is particularly impressive. So far as I can recall these aren't actual actors from the show but rather rough lookalikes, presumably for the sainted Scott and Charlene. Perhaps there's the horrific element - "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"-type Pod People in Erinsborough? I'm up for collecting all nine of these, if only for the creepy covers. How superbly cheapskate on Star's part that they would settled for look-nothing-alkes rather than the proper cast. And would you believe that, after all the build up, we're denied a ringside seat at Charlene & Scott's Royal Wedding? The author cuts straight from Scott's "get me to the church on time!" histrionics to some trivial domestic non-event or other. We never get to know for sure if they married. Were it not for the, admittedly, spine-freezing revelations concerning Mrs. Mangel's black sorcery years, why, this book would be a complete waste of our time. |
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Post by pulphack on Aug 7, 2014 10:12:35 GMT
Um, that I can say this won't surprise you at all, Dem, but (cough) those aren't lookalikes for Scott and Charlene but cast members from the time. The geezer is Shane O'Brien (? doing this without checking), who went on to the Flying Doctors and acted in the UK. I think he was Charlene's older brother or cousin or something. The actress I can't remember the name of, but her character was called Jane (maybe Anne - one or other was the actress, the other the character), as in plain Jane, because she was and then miraculously blossomed into a femme fatale or something similar. All I can say is that the first mrs ph and me had to have something to replace Crossroads... I had successfully blotted this from my memory for years, so thanks for that...
The Sons And Daughters paperbacks had a similar rubbish cover design, if I remember rightly. A slack day at work for the Star art dept, then...
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Post by mcannon on Aug 7, 2014 10:37:08 GMT
I have to confess, 'twas I who made that mistake, not Dem. I'll take some pride, though, in claiming that it means I'd managed to scrub most of my "Neighbours" memories!
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Post by pulphack on Aug 7, 2014 10:44:28 GMT
You're a luckier man than me, that's for sure... I was hoovering just now and remembered it's Peter O'Brien, not Shane - he played Shane Ramsay. Still not sure about Annie/Jane, though. For a horrible moment I felt like an '80's housewife, thinking about Neighbours while doing the housework!
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Post by dem bones on Aug 11, 2014 8:36:11 GMT
What one was Dannii Minogue in, playing some teenage punk-goth hybrid? While we're all making a clean breast of past transgressions, I used to watch that when I got in from work.
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Post by pulphack on Aug 11, 2014 10:34:03 GMT
That was Home & Away, which always makes me think of League Cup or UEFA Cup ties from my youth. Away goths count double? I'm ashamed I can tell you this...
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Post by dem bones on Aug 11, 2014 18:06:58 GMT
That was Home & Away, which always makes me think of League Cup or UEFA Cup ties from my youth. Away goths count double? I'm ashamed I can tell you this... Thanks, mr. hack! A crafty google confirms that ms. minogue 2 played gobby-but-nice punk princess Emma Jackson for a year or so before launching her pop career. I don't suppose there were any Home & Away haunted house episodes or the like, were there? Our When popular TV series' go supernatural thread needs a booster now Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman has vanished from ITV3. |
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Post by ripper on Aug 21, 2014 9:47:48 GMT
Were these UK originals or re-prints of australian-published books?
I watched Neighbours when Kylie and Jason were in it and at their peak of soap star fame. I quite liked Daphne--fancied her like mad to tell the truth--wasn't she written out by dying in a car crash or something? I stopped watching it after leaving university. My wife was very fond of Home and Away for several years when it was shown on (I think) ITV. There was an earlier aussie soap--c.1980--called The Young Doctors that was shown in the ATV area that was fun in a can't-believe-what-I'm-watching kind of way.
I hope Jim didn't accidentally buy James Dean's car :-O.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 31, 2014 12:44:27 GMT
Carl Ruhen- Neighbours #7 (Star, 1989) Blurb: When Warren Murphy is brutally assaulted after a party, Charlene's loss of memory places her under a cloud of suspicion. In the meantime, Helen Daniels is abducted by a maniac masquerading as a clergyman and Daphne Clarke takes in a delinquent girl with a predilection for snatching old ladies' bags.
The whole street becomes involved with the grudge boxing match between Shane Ramsay and Mike Young over Jane Harris. much to the disgust of zany doctor Clive Gibbons. who has his own ideas about putting a stop to the mayhem.
And the question on everybody's lips is could the prying and self-righteous Mrs Mangel really have committed murder most foul?On the face of it, no chilling voodoo content this time, but the promise of murder on Ramsey Street, a psychotic priest impersonator, and unremitting hardcore violence suggest that #7 is a brave incursion on 'Michael Slade' territory which may yet prove as indispensable as the seminal #9. Cover spotlights Kylie and Jase some years before the formers magnificent derrière ( fig A) achieved entire world domination and the latter did Too Many Broken Hearts In The World.  fig A (yet again)
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