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In 1880s Montana, wealthy, egomaniacal land baron David Braxton (John McLiam) is determined to rid the territory of cattle rustlers and horse thieves. Taking the law into his own hands, he hangs a captured member of an outlaw gang (Hunter…
Why would anyone make a sequel to the boring, artless It’s Alive? Try a gross of more than S6 million. This movie is, however, not just another cheapie money-maker – although it is probably the most repugnant film since 1932’s…
“Never sneak up on a man who’s been in a chemical fire.” Rod Kimble (Andy Samberg) is an incredibly naive and completely unskilled amateur stuntman living in a small town. He wears a fake moustache for “respect” and is deeply…
Films set in the future tend to go out of date fairly quickly. Here, the opposite is true. Directed and co-written by Alfonso Cuarón in 2006, this classic dystopian film set in a future (2027) police-state Britain of closed borders…
For most British singers and groups in the early 1960s, chart success alone did not guarantee financial security. While pop acts might expect fair royalties from a Top Twenty hit, their main day-to-day income — which paid for basics like…
Before 1964, America’s worldwide domination of the pop music industry — and youth culture in general — was virtually total. Few British artists made much of an impression overseas, and those that did manage to penetrate foreign markets were little…
1 9 8 3 (Australia) 3 x 120 minute episodes Like other momentous world events – for example, the assassination of JFK – the sacking of Gough Whitlam as Australian Prime Minister in November 1975 is a subject for endless debate and speculation. For this…
1 9 7 9 – 1 9 8 6 (Australia) 692 x 60 minute episodes Screened in the UK between 1989 and 1993, Prisoner: Cell Block H was low-budget late-night Australian jailhouse schlock. Complete with butch women, bad acting, dingy lighting, ropey…
1 9 7 4 – 1 9 7 7 (Australia) 335 x 50 minute episodes A controversial new night-time drama debuted in Australia on the 0-10 network on 11 February 1974. Hungry for a series even more outrageous and salacious than…
1 9 6 3 – 1 9 7 0 (Australia) 338 x 55 minute episodes Premiering on 19 July 1963 and running for seven and a half years, this Friday night musical variety show from Australia’s Channel Nine was broadcast from…
1 9 6 9 – 1 9 7 0 (Australia) 33 x 30 minute episodes Two contestants were isolated from each other in soundproof booths, both racing to reach nine points for “television’s highest money stakes” by answering true/false questions in…
2 0 0 5 – 2 0 0 8 (USA/South Korea) 52 x 25 minute episodes 10-year-old Ben Tennyson (voiced by Tara Strong) expects a boring summer road trip across the United States in an RV (affectionately nicknamed the “Rust Bucket”)…
Anthony Peter Hatch was born in Pinner, North London, in 1939. Growing up in the 1940s, he took up the piano at the age of four and was in the school choir by the age of ten, discovering Mantovani at…
The Four Pennies (formerly The Lionel Morton Four) hailed from Blackburn (Lancashire) and infiltrated the Liverpool scene to such an extent that they qualified for a spot on Radio Luxembourg’s Sunday Night At The Cavern. The band used to rehearse in…
Originally based in East Anglia (they formed at a Norwich college) and led by Peter Jay on drums, the seven-piece Jaywalkers predated the British Beat Boom but scored a minor hit in 1962 with Can Can ’62. The follow-up singles Totem…
Formed in Yorkshire in 1972, Be-Bop Deluxe are one of British rock’s classic marginal bands. Everyone seems to have heard of them, and yet few have actually heard their work. A number of their tracks – such as Ships In The…
Have you heard the one about the two Dutchmen, two Englishmen and a Scot who emigrated to Australia? It was at the Villawood Migrant Hostel in Sydney’s western suburbs in 1963 that Stevie Wright from Leeds, George Young from Glasgow,…
The Detours formed in Shepherd’s Bush in 1964 as a local youth club band. Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, and John Entwistle (who originally called himself John Allison) founded the band and, after jettisoning Colin Dawson (vocals) and Doug Sandom (drums),…
Following the success of Smokey And The Bandit (1977), Burt Reynolds was, for a short time, the world’s leading box-office star. Here he once again partenered with stuntman-turned-director Hal Needham. Sonny Hooper (Reynolds) is a middle-aged devil-may-care Hollywood stuntman who…
Clint Eastwood was warned by his associates not to make this picture, but he made it anyway, and his share of the profits was reputedly in excess of $15,000,000. So much for associates . . . Eastwood plays Philo Beddoe -…
This sequel to Dirty Harry (1971) found San Francisco cop Inspector Harry Callahan – there is no explanation for why he’s got his job back after disobeying orders and resigning at the end of the last film – pitted against a cell…
“I know what you’re thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun…
“I don’t want to become one of the living dead in Beverly Hills,” says plastic surgeon-turned-mortician Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis) in Robert Zemeckis’ black comedy Death Becomes Her. Novelist Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn) and superbitch actress Madeline Ashton (Meryl Streep)…
It is still Halloween night 1978, and Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is in Haddonfield Hospital recovering from Michael Myers’ near-fatal attack upon her in John Carpenter’s seminal horror film. She now believes Myers to be dead, but somehow he…
Derek Taylor was a British journalist working for the Daily Express when he was assigned to write a review of a Beatles concert on 30 May 1963. He sang their praises in his article and soon became a trusted journalist…
Tony Blair was born on 6 May 1953 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was educated at the Durham Choristers School in Durham, England and at Fettes College in Edinburgh. In 1971 and 1972, Blair and his friend Al Collenette ran weekly…
Barney Bubbles is a cult figure among other designers but is barely known outside the field – unlike contemporaries and followers like Peter Saville, Neville Brody, and Vaughan Oliver. War baby Colin Fulcher was born on 30 July 1942 in…
Originally produced in one room beneath the Smash Hits offices on Carnaby Street in London, The Face launched in May 1980 under Nick Logan, the journalist who had previously edited New Musical Express and Smash Hits. In the autumn of 1979, with Smash Hits’ circulation at…
Britain in the mid-1970s: The streets were awash with stale, post-hippy denim and airbrushed Farrah Fawcett-Majors flickbacks. But in the summer of 1976, a group of outrageously attired suburban teenage misfits from the outer fringes of south-east London – dubbed the ‘Bromley…
Just three months after the September 1976 punk festival, the Roxy opened in a former gay club called Chaugerama’s at 41-43 Neal Street in London’s West End. The premises had originally been used as a warehouse to serve the nearby…
January 02 – 22 die as hurricane winds rock Britain. 05 – The Khmer Rouge drafts a new constitution in Cambodia, renaming it Democratic Kampuchea. 05 – Former Beatles road manager Mal Evans is shot dead by Los Angeles police investigating a domestic…
January 01 – The ‘Uniform Monday Act’ moves Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day and Columbus Day holidays in the US to Mondays. 02 – 66 Football fans are killed when a barrier collapses at Ibrox Park in Glasgow following a match between…
Following a decade of weak record sales and a short-lived retirement, 58-year-old crooner Frank Sinatra arrived in Melbourne, Australia, via private jet on 9 July 1974 to perform five dates on his “Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back” comeback tour -…
January 01 – Dusty Hill of ZZ Top is accidentally shot in the stomach by his girlfriend, Jane Ellen Henderson. She is pulling his boots off when his gun falls to the floor and discharges. 02 – Paul McCartney turns down a…
January 01 – Eleven European countries replace their national currencies with the newly created ‘Euro’, a single European currency. Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Austria, Portugal, Finland, Ireland and Luxembourg all make the switch. The actual circulation of Euro…
January 01 – In Britain, Alf Ramsey is knighted and Bobby Moore gets an OBE in the New Years Honours. 01 – 48-hour ceasefire ends in Vietnam with B-52s attacking the DMZ. 01 – All Night Rave at The Roundhouse…
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Enjoy your trip in the time machine!
The club scene in the “Swinging London” of the 1960s revolved around the area known as Soho – contained in just one square mile, bordered by Shaftesbury Avenue to the…
In February 1957, rock’n’roll thundered onto British television screens when the BBC introduced a new programme for teenagers titled Six-Five Special. As the 70th anniversary of that influential programme approaches,…
No. 22 The first resident at #22 Ramsay Street was stripper Daphne Lawrence (Elaine Smith, pictured at right), and when she moved in with Des (Paul Keane), wacky doctor Clive…
3 May 2021 A nondescript brick house at 1 Pin Oak Court, Vermont South – a suburb of Melbourne, Australia – has just sold for $1.6m AUD, the first time…
The words ‘folk horror’ tend to evoke images from the 1970s – the beards, the flares and the knitted jumpers lend themselves perfectly to the vibe of discovering our inner…
Psycho (1960) Turns out that stabby Mrs Bates is actually Norman in drag! That’s right, our motel man is a phallic-knife-wielding nutjob – Freud’s wet dream. Audiences in 1960 wouldn’t…
Taxiride formed in Melbourne (Australia) in 1996, with singer-songwriters Tim Watson and Tim Wild. Jason Singh and Dan Hall soon joined them, and they recorded a demo that landed them…
When the Ted Mulry gang formed in 1972, Mulry was already a well-known pop balladeer. Born in Oldham, England, in 1949, Mulry emigrated to Australia and developed an interest in…
2 0 0 8 – 2 0 1 3 (Australia) 122 x 60 minute episodes This Australian family-oriented drama/comedy series debuted on the Seven Network on Tuesday 26 August 2008. Julie…
Formed in Sydney, Australia, in 1975, Ol’ 55 were originally a four-piece band known as Fanis (after Richard “Rockpile” Jones’ girlfriend, Janis, broke up with him and became known thereafter…
1 9 8 5 – Current (Australia) As the theme song suggests, everyone who lives on Ramsay Street needs good neighbours. Everything in the sunny cul-de-sac (in the fictional Melbourne suburb of…
1 9 7 4 (Canada) 12 x 30 minute episodes Premiering on Monday 1 July 1974, this summer replacement for the panel quiz show, This Is The Law, was loosely based…
1 9 7 6 – 1 9 7 7 (Canada) 28 x 30 minute episodes American disc jockey Wolfman Jack (born Robert Weston Smith) came to the general public’s attention in…
Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s origins can be traced back to the substantial commercial achievements of The Guess Who in the late 60s. Randy Bachman (guitar/vocals) was a prominent member of that band but left…
1 9 9 8 (Canada) 13 x 45 minute episodes This big-budget Canadian science fiction anthology series looked to the future and warned, “Be careful what you wish for.” The citizens…
1 9 9 7 – 2 0 0 2 (Canada/Germany) 61 x 90/45 minute episodes The tyrants who rule the Light Universe pass their essence onto their successor upon their…
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Nostalgia Central covers the period 1950 to 2009 and is presented as a historical artefact. Some words and references which reflect the prevailing attitudes of those times may be considered culturally insensitive, discriminatory, offensive or inappropriate today..