Saturday, February 23, 2008

Kensington Gore

If I rewind back one year, one of my fondest memories is going to the Wayne Kinsey book launch/Don Fearney documentary at the Cine Lumiere. After the event a bunch of us walked back, immersing ourselves in what made this day special (having lunch with Caroline Munro, treating Edward De Souza for a drink or three), planning what to do next and other fanboy stuff. Someone brought up the subject of Kensington Gore and none other than Norman J Warren pointed out that this term for stage blood used in horror productions of the 1960s and 70s (i.e. most of Hammer’s output) was named after a London thoroughfare. Once I heard this, it was clear to me that this is where I wanted to go next, but unfortunately I couldn’t convince any of the others to come along, so dropped the idea.

Next time back in London for the Hammer at Bray event it was briefly discussed that we may check out the location, but nothing came of it.

When I then returned last month I had absolutely NO plans whatsoever to check it out, but guess what my eagle eyes discovered while travelling on the top of a double decker bus through London?

Yep, that street sign I’ve been dying to see for nearly a year now. I was surprised to see that this wasn’t a small hidden alley somewhere in the back of beyond, but in actual fact one of those very prominent main streets surrounding Hyde Park. So prominent in actual fact that I had been on it before without ever noticing its significance.

So should you ever visit the Big Smoke (maybe for this year’s Kronos event), you now know what to do.


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1 comment:

Arbogast said...

That's an incredible piece of cinematic anthropology! Wonderful!