Apocalypse and Invasion
The lines above are from William Wordsworth’s poem ‘Composed Upon Westminster Bridge’. If Earth truly has not anything to show more fair it’s perhaps the reason why so many fictional aliens and bug eyed monsters have chosen the location to launch their apocalyptic invasions.
My next guided walk, coming up on Monday 8th June explores how writers, TV and film directors have used the area around the south bank and Westminster Bridge to depict apocalyptic events and alien invasion. The starting point will be the Coadestone Lion and Lambeth end of the bridge – details of how to book can be found here.
Apocalypse and Invasion Guided Walk
Westminster Bridge is one of London's most iconic bridges, with the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben on the Westminster side and, more recently, the huge tourist attraction of the London Eye on the Southbank side. The original Westminster Bridge was built in the mid eighteenth century, under the supervision of the Swiss engineer Charles Labelye and opened to the public on 18 November 1750. The modern version of the bridge. The one which stands there today was designed by Thomas Page and opened on 24 May 1862. This version of the bridge has frequently provided a backdrop for film directors seeking to depict stark imagery of a London where something has gone terribly wrong.
An early example is imagary dipected in the 1951 scifi classic ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’, directed by Robert Wise, who went on to direct the musicals ‘West Side Story’ and ‘The Sound of Music’. In a scene from the movie Westminster Bridge, viewed from the Lambeth end, facingf the Houses of Parliament, is presented as ominously silent, with traffic at a standstill as the world awaits the verdict of the alien visitor, Klaatu.
The bridge appears again in the 1962 version of John Wyndam’s classic sci-fi novel ‘Day of the Triffids’. Published in 1951 the novel centres on the survivors of a meteor shower which has rendered most of the population blind and who are now being hunted by predatory Triffids, a terrifying carnivorous plant which can move easily across terrain with the aid its snakelike roots. The film version was directed by Steve Sekely and co-directed by Freddie Francis who worked as cinematographer with David Lynch on film such as the Elephant Man and Dune. His list of director's credits for horror movies include Doctor Terror's House of Horror, Tales from the Crypt and Dracula Has Risen from the Grave.
The star of the film was Howard Keel, better known at the time for his lead roles in MGM blockbuster musicals and later better known for his role in the TV soap opera Dallas. Keel’s character wakes up after an operation in Moorefield’s Eye Hospital and finds that the streets of London are deserted, before encountering survivors who have been blinded by the meteor storm. The Westminster Bridge scene shows him walking across a desolate and deserted bridge in the company of a schoolgirl he has rescued following a train derailment. Like him she still retains the gift of sight. At the Lambeth side of the bridge they climb into an abandoned car and set off on a journey to the coast across a countryside plague by marauding Triffids. The scene was recreated for the BBC’s 2009 television adaptation, with publicity shots showing stars, Dougray Scott and Jolie Richardson, fleeing across a devastated Westminster Bridge.
Two years after the original film was shot it was the turn of the Daleks to occupy the bridge. The six-episode ‘Dalek Invasion of the Earth’ William Hartnell storyline went out on the BBC between late November and Christmas in the second Doctor Who series broadcast in 1964. The Daleks, first seen in 1963 on their home planet of Skaro, have now invaded the Earth in the 22nd Century. It is up to the Doctor and his companions, including his granddaughter, Susan, played by Carol Ann Ford, who also had a role in ‘Day of the Triffids’, to save the day.
They arrive in London to find it in ruins and soon encounter a patrol of Daleks in an iconic scene filmed on the walkway behind St Thomas’ Hospital and on Westminster Bridge itself. The story was subsequently released in cinemas as a Milton Subotski directed Amicus film, ‘Dalek’s Invasion of Earth 2150 AD, in 1966, with Peter Cushing assuming the lead role. While much of the action takes place in nearby Embankment tube station the film doesn’t recreate the Westminster Bridge scene.
2023’s ‘War of the World: The Attack’ a modern teen version of the HG Well’s classic has the three main characters follow the same route along the St Thomas’ walkway and up onto Westminster Bridge as Barbara and the members of the human resistance did in the Doctor Who episode.
In October 1977 robots of a different sort appeared on the bridge when EMI records carried out a publicity stunt to promote ‘News of the World’, the newly released album by rock band Queen. The album cover depicts a gigantic mechanical man scooping up the band in his huge metallic hand. The publicity stunt, however, did not live up to that promise, with the robots depicted as a procession and small, stubby-looking things that may have been more at home in a scene from the Wizard of Oz.
Twenty-five years later, in 2002, it was the turn of a zombie apocalypse to blight London. Like Howard Keel in Day of the Triffids, Cillian Murphy, star of Danny Boyle’s cult movie 28 Days Later, wakes in a hospital bed to find London deserted and devastated. On this occasion the hospital is St Thomas’s. Murphy’s character, Jim, leaves the hospital and crosses an ominously silent and deserted Westminster Bridge, littered with refuse. On the other side he encounters an overturned London double decker and is soon being relentlessly pursued by blood thirsty zombies.
The updated cover of John Christopher’s 1977 post apocalytic novel ‘Empty World’, about a global pandemic, shows a lone figure crossing an empty Westminster Bridge, littered with abandoned cars and double decker buses, with Big Ben and Portcullis House at the other side.
The scene from Westminster Bridge looking onto Parliament has long provided inspiration for graphic artists depicting scenes for book covers for horror and post-apocalyptic sci-fi novels. Amongst these are ‘City of Fae’ by Pippa da Costa, Michael Moorcock’s ‘The Whispering Swarm’ and ‘The Hunchback of Soho’ by Edgar Wallace. The Sci-Fi Classics edition of HG Wells’ ‘War of the World’ shows a Martian war machine rising out of the Thames to the side of Westminster Bridge to fire its death ray on Big Ben. A favourite of mine is the cover of Harry Adam Knight’s 1985 horror novel ‘The Fungus’ in which an attempt to solve world hunger results in a deadly fungus that mutates and spreads across England. The book cover shows rampant species of gigantic fungi growing wantonly out of the sides of the Big Ben’s tower.
Film directors too have been keen to use the view from Westminster Bridge to depict mayhem and chaos with Parliament and Big Ben being destroyed completely in movies such as Independence Day, Mars Attacks and V for Vendetta. Card number 16 of the original 1960s ‘Mars Attacks’ bubblegum card series depicts the Martians bursting through the roof of Westminster Hall as a debate on how to save the earth of the invaders is taking place.
The clock tower of Big Ben has been used on a number of occasions to indicate the size of gigantic things. In Konga (1961), the UK’s answer to King Kong, where a giant gorilla takes revenge on the scientist who created it next to Big Ben. And in Gorgo, made in the same year, the UK’s answer to Godzilla, where a gigantic lizard caged as an attraction at Battersea funfair is rescued by her even more gargantuan mother as she smashes through Westminster Bridge wreaking havoc on her way along the Thames. It was also used as a backdrop in the 2002 movie ‘Reign of Fire’ set in an apocalyptic future where Matthew McConaughy, Christian Bale, and Gerard Butler do battle with huge fire breathing dragons unleashed on London as a result of construction work on a new underground station.
Recently, facing the other direction from the bridge, the London Eye has caught the attention of film directors looking for something to destroy. For example, in the 2007 blockbuster ‘The Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer’ the heroes do battle with the interstellar villain on and around the Eye. When the film came to London the studio hired one of the pods and media interviews with the cast were conducted as the Eye turned its slow revolutions.
The Eye also became a focal point for the first episode of Russell T Davies’ reboot of Doctor Who. In ‘Rose’, the 2005 episode which introduces Christopher Ecclestone and Billie Piper, the Eye becomes the focal point for the plot, because beneath it the Nestine Consciousness, in league with the Autons, has set up its base. Later in the series, for the episode ‘Aliens of London’, the area was revisited when a spacecraft belonging to the Slitheen crash lands in the Thames just in front of the Eye.
Of course, reality can often be far scarier than fiction. In March 2017 Westminster Bridge was the target of a tragic terrorist attack, with four people killed and almost fifty injured. The main attack by a vehicle ramming into pedestrians was followed by the fatal stabbing of a police officer. In March 2020, at the start of the lockdown brought about by the Covid 19 pandemic, many newspapers carried pictures of a desolate and deserted Westminster Bridge, looking every bit as apocalyptic as the fictional scenes depicted in Day of the Triffids and 28 Days Later.
Maggie’s House
This eposide has an extract from Chapter Two of Maggie’s house and a link to my Gravestone Press blog about the 70’s music featured in the novel.
Maggie’s House - ChapterTwo
“Maggie’s house had stood empty since the mid-50s, slowly crumbling and collapsing in on itself. Everybody said that it was haunted. If you made the run the chances were that Maggie herself would be waiting for you behind one of the doors, all rotting flesh and bugged out eyes. Before you made your run you were obliged to confirm that you knew Maggie’s story. Everyone who was about to make the run knew the story. You knew it by heart. You’d been making the run in your nightmares for weeks, the story rattling round in your head.
Especially the part about Maggie and how the police found her hanging behind one of the doors, the flex from her vacuum cleaner twisted around her neck, her tongue all black and swollen and poking through her lips. Her hospital gown still dripping from the rain. Hair hanging round her shoulders in rattails.
The run was legendary. It had become a rite of passage for teenagers from our housing scheme. By then it had been going on for years. Danno had made his run at the end of the Easter break. Once he did it there was huge pressure on HC and me to follow his lead. It had taken me till almost the start of the summer holidays to pluck up the courage. HC had managed to make excuses, till now.”
Find out about the musical references in Maggie’s House here…
Maggie's House and the Music of the 70s
New walk coming in July. If you like music from the 70s, and indeed from the 50s and 60s, watch this space for news of ‘Lambeth Rocks’ - a new guided walk coming up at the end of July.