Frankie goes to Mexico!
QUESTION
Did Boris Karloff make a series of Mexican horror films? LONDON-BORN actor William Henry Pratt, known to horror movie fans as Boris Karloff, is famous for his movie portrayal of Frankenstein’s monster in the Thirties.
In the spring of 1968, despite the fact he was aged 80 and in bad health, he signed a package deal with Mexican producer Luis Enrique Vergara to star in four films: House Of Evil/ Macabre Serenade, Snake People/Cult Of The Dead, The Incredible Invasion/ Alien Terror and The Fear Chamber/ Torture Zone.
Karloff was suffering from acute emphysema, down to half of one lung and could barely walk, but he took on the films because he’d been promised a $400,000 pay packet.
He was so unwell that he could not make the journey to Mexico. The Mexican actors and crew travelled to a modest soundstage on Santa Monica Boulevard in LA to shoot Karloff’s scenes, which were directed by Jack Hill.
Due to his illness, no Hollywood studio would insure him. To get around this, Columbia Pictures teamed up with Azteca Pictures in Mexico to distribute the films.
Karloff’s scenes were filmed in five weeks. He sat in a wheelchair with an oxygen mask pressed to his face between takes, studying his lines, chatting with co-stars or dozing.
When summoned, he rose out of the wheelchair, the years falling away, to stride on to the set with the aid of two leg braces and a sturdy cane.
None of the films were very good, though they are campy fun.
Snake People, in which Karloff played Haitian voodoo spirit Damballah, featured a crazy cast of characters including a sexy snake dancer named Tongalele, a maniacal grinning dwarf, zombies and lots of big snakes. Karloff didn’t live to see the completed films. He died aged 81 on February 2, 1969.
Dean Laurence, Newcastle upon Tyne.
QUESTION In George Orwell’s memoir Down And Out In Paris And London, he says pavement artists, known as Screevers, made their own chalks using condensed milk. How did they do this?
CHALK is soft, white, porous, sedimentary rock composed from the calcite shells ( coccoliths) of minute sea organisms called coccolithophores.
The process for making artists’ chalk is fairly simple. The rock is ground into a fine powder and mixed with a binder to form solid white chalk sticks. The chalk powder can be tinted with a pigment or dye to make coloured chalks.
Orwell’s Screevers evidently favoured condensed milk as a binder. This is not unusual: antique recipes called for a host of comestible binders, such as sugar solution, milk, figs, beer, ale and honey.
Though impurities produce natural chalk in many colours, when artists made their own chalk they added pigments to render these colours more vivid.
Carbon was used to enhance black, malachite for green, cochineal for pink and ferric oxide for a more vivid red.
Janet Finch, Falmouth, Cornwall.
QUESTION Is there an inventory of the rubbish left on the Moon? What are some of the stranger items?
THE Nasa History Program Office maintains an inventory of human rubbish left on the Moon: The Catalogue Of Manmade Material On The Moon.
It is thought that the Moon is a repository for more than 200 tons of man-made material. Most of the debris is accounted for by spacecraft — more than 70 vehicles are scattered across the lunar surface. Most were crashed deliberately into the Moon’s surface.
Many artefacts come from the Apollo moon landings. These included life support systems, cameras, geological equipment such as hammers and trowels.
There are also remnants from scientific experiments; assorted magnetometers, seismic experiments and ion detectors that were left on the Moon while the data they collected returned to Earth.
The astronauts on Apollo 11, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, left more than 100 items on the Sea of Tranquility, including the plaque announcing to the universe that ‘we came in peace for all mankind’.
They also left a small silicon disk bearing goodwill messages from 73 world leaders and a golden olive branch.
The Moon has been used as a toilet, at least in the form of defecation collection devices, urine collection assemblies and emesis (vomit) bags.
Other items include five American flags, two golf balls, 12 pairs of boots, movie magazines, backpacks, insulating blankets, utility towels, used wet wipes, personal hygiene kits and empty space food packets.
One of the more unusual items is a feather from Baggin, the Air Force Academy’s mascot falcon. This was used by astronaut David Scott to conduct Apollo 15’s famous ‘ hammer-feather drop’ experiment (to make sure they hit the ground at the same time in the vacuum of space).
The crew also left Fallen Astronaut, a 3.5 in aluminium sculpture created by Paul Van Hoeydonck, commemorating American and Soviet astronauts killed in the space race.
The only artificial objects on the Moon that are still in use are retroreflectors left there by the Apollo 11, 14 and 15 astronauts. These are mirrors designed to reflect an incoming laser beam directly back at its source so astronomers on Earth can measure the distance to the Moon to within three centimetres.
Ian Weiss, Guildford, Surrey.
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