Now, in my head 1970s/early 1980s British television is awash with faceless creatures and automatons, come to carry out their wickedness and fill dreams full of night terrors.
But funnily enough when I recently(ish) looked up such things, there weren’t all that many I could find.
Actually it came down to a creature/character in Sapphire & Steel and the “still terrifying all these years later” shop dummies come to life in Doctor Who (which strictly speaking aren’t faceless but in my head they are).
I suppose that as an effect it was cheap and relatively easy to do but there is still something particularly unnerving about such featureless faces.
They crop up from time-to-time around these parts and I though I would gather a few of them together.
So, we have the aforementioned bowler hat wearing character from Sapphire & Steel…
And something of a classic and possibly one of my all time favourite book covers: the paperback cover to the virtual reality prescient pastoral-esque science fiction of Christopher Priest’s A Dream Of Wessex…
The faceless corn husk folk art-like figures from around these parts…
Which set me a-wandering…
There seem to have been a fair few books along such lines published, often from back when. And maybe it’s just me or a layering/other connections that have happened and gathered over time but they can seem to have an air of quiet unsettledness or not-quite-so-mainstream pastoralness to them…
(File under: Trails and Influences / Year 3 Wanderings)
Intertwined wanderings around these parts:
Day #26/365. Christopher Priest – A Dream of Wessex and dreams of the twentieth century
Day #87/365: Faded foundlings and Tender Vessels…
Elsewhere in the ether:
Contemporary not-quite-so mainstream pastoralness: Tender Vessels #1. Tender Vessels #2.
