This 1932 black and white science fiction horror shocker was the first, and far and away the best of three Hollywood adaptations of the 1896 H.G.Wells story, The Island of Dr Moreau.

Starring one of the era’s finest actors, Charles Laughton, this is about a mad and sadistic doctor on a remote Pacific island who carries out cruel surgical procedures to graft bits of animals onto humans, without anaesthetic, on his operating table in his “house of pain”. To control his dozens of created abominations the repellent Moreau uses a whip on them, and indoctrination into “laws” against violence designed to protect him from any revenge. and repeated by his brutish “Sayer of the law” (Bala Lugosi). His one attractive and female creation, more human than animal, is Lota the beautiful panther-woman (Kathleen Burke) and with Moreau’s encouragement (he wants her to breed) she falls in love with a shipwrecked traveller, Parker (Richard Arlen) who has fetched up on the island after being dumped overboard the freighter that picked him up. Continue reading →

The tragedy of the 150 dead victims of the Germanwings flight deliberately crashed in the French Alps by a co-pilot reportedly suffering from mental ill-health is a chilling reminder for all of us who fly, if one was needed after 9/11, that if someone wants to kill you in that way, for whatever reason, they’ll find an easy way to do it.

In this case Andreas Lubitz, 27, simply waited until his pilot left the cockpit, locked him out and put the plane into descent mode until it hit the ground eight minutes later, killing all on board. Those with a fear of flying have now got another very good reason not to, and no amount of reassurance from the airline industry about changes in procedures and pilot screening is going to change that. Continue reading →

One association understandably having problems staging some of its events is the Chartered Institute of Credit Management (CICM).

Over the years its British Credit Awards, at which bailiff companies are rewarded for effective enforcement of debts, has generated angry protests that it is obscene to make money from celebrating action that has, in some cases led to vulnerable people being evicted from their homes with their children. Continue reading →

Meanwhile those organisers who want, or need to know more about protests, and how they fit or not into the events industry can buy a fascinating book on the subject.

Published this year Protests As Events is a collection of writings on the subject edited by Ian R. Lamond, Lecturer of Events Management, and Karl Spracken, Professor of Leisure Studies, both at Leeds Beckett University and themselves participators in protests, pickets and marches, so some practical experience to draw on. The 269-page book is published by Rowman and Littlefield and covers the motivation for, the management of and the effectiveness of protests. Continue reading →

A former purchase ledger clerk at Pembroke College, Cambridge stole £286,000 from her employer to help finance a gambling addiction, placing bets on online bingo site Jackpotjoy totalling more than £6 million and gambling any winnings.

Jaqueline Balaam, a 41 year-old married mother of two from Cambridge, was jailed for 30 months after admitting duplicating invoices from college suppliers, false accounting and defrauding a local social club of £3,000. She was caught by the college after an internal audit.

A new venue review site for London venues, Eventopedia, has been launched.

Unlike Tripadvisor those event organisers posting reviews have to identify themselves, so the site should not degenerate into venues posting positive reviews of themselves or fake negative reviews of competitors properties.

Not to be confused with Event-o-Pedia, the free encyclopaedia of events.

Note.
In the SEO’s ongoing survey of venue criteria important to organisers none of those from the charity sector rated the opinions of other organisers as “vitally important” or “important” as a consideration when choosing a venue, though a few rated them “a possible consideration” and the same number as “no consideration”. A lot more association organisers felt that the opinions of others were “possibly a consideration” with the same number scoring this criteria as “important”. Those from the corporate sector were less enthusiastic about the opinions of others with 40% of responders judging them “an important consideration”, 20% as “a possible consideration” and 40% as “no consideration”.

No organisers from any sector felt the opinions of other organisers about venues were vital to their own choosing of them.

Those interested in the First World War and what it was really like in the trenches will want to see the searing depiction of Wooden Crosses, a recently restored 1932 film that uses real war veterans as actors and advisors and achieves a documentary feel for the battlefield hell faced by the French 39th Infantry Division.

Directed by French director Raymond Bernard and based on a 1919 novel by a former corporal of the 39th Roland Dorgeles, the film was the first French talkie about WW1 and doesn’t spare the viewer the gore and horror of war, nor the assaults on the eardrums made by the different types of guns and cannons, an aspect Bernard took pains to get right. Continue reading →

Those organising events in London might want to advise their delegates that the 50 worst blackspots in the country for illegally polluted air are all in our capital.

The fact was revealed this week after a Freedom of Information request by the London Evening Standard showed that toxicity levels of nitrogen dioxide – a gas linked to asthma, lung infections and other respiratory diseases – were at least twice the legal EU limit at all 50 spots, and up to three and a half times the limit in the worst affected places. Continue reading →