My mind wandered back to another time. Just two weeks ago my
creation, "Dead Souls", the world's first Gothic martial arts act,
had debuted in front of a shocked professional wrestling audience. Amid an
array of lighting effects and pounding music, I, under the guise of the Spirit
of Instinct, had done battle with The Gatekeeper in a routine that looked part
ritual part fantasy performance with clashing blades, spinning high kicks and
tumbling tricks. Nothing like this production had been presented before to a
professional wrestling audience and certainly not a British one. It had become
the climax of two exciting months of realising old dreams. My emotionally
destructive relationship with my longest running girlfriend at the time had
also been given its death stroke. I felt free and ready to explode with ideas
and enthusiasm. The excitement of producing a show was over, but I, along with
the wrestler, Stuart Allen, knew that there was a fantastic world out there to
discover.
Then, just when I felt my soul being transported back to the
cheering crowds and coloured lights, a voice broke through the haze.
"Fetch me another ashtray." One of the many guests at the birthday
party had mistaken me for being an elaborately dressed waiter. Keeping what
little dignity I felt at the time I politely explained that I wasn't what she
thought I was. At that very moment I was aware of a warm sensation creeping
down my shoulder. The parrot had shit on me.
That night I received the last telephone message from my
ex-girlfriend. I had done everything I could not to prolong our painful
separation. Once she was my original dancer, but after leaving the act she had
become a subtle adversary of it, all the time trying to erode my confidence
fuelled by her own insecurity issues. A year after I finally shelved the
production, Stuart Allen had encouraged me to give it another shot. This had
coincided with my relationship's break-up, which she had initiated. The aftermath,
however, had seen her use the Gatekeeper's girlfriend as a spy hole on my life
along with her own personal attempts of renewing our "friendship."
The long-winded message she left that night, using her two year-old son in a
form of emotional blackmail, made me decide once and for all to put my heart
into Dead Souls and the professional wrestling promotion Stu and I had
discussed.
Our first course of action was to rally the troops. Josh
Perry, fresh from his success with heading our lighting team at "CCW: Animal
Instincts", was back on-board. Just about every wrestler we considered to
be any good in our show we contacted and, for the most part, got enthusiastic
replies. We hoped they were going to leave CCW and embark on our venture with
us. However, with the exception of Lee Edwards and Les Allen, everyone else free-lanced
in wrestling. Looking back I can't blame them.
Stu's main area of concern was to get a video copy of the
show. Josh had set a camera up from his position heading the technical team
from the balcony, but it only provided a static long distance shot. CCW had
employed the head of the Trowbridge wrestling association who had hosted CCW's
first show to organise the main filming. We needed that copy if we were to have
evidence of our work when trying to get venues or sponsors. After a week or so
it appeared clear that CCW were not going to send the tape. Stu was still
stringing them a line that he intended to appear on their future shows and they
had even sent out contracts to get most of the wrestlers permanently on board. I
even got a letter from the promoters, complementing me on the Dead Souls
routine, something the CCW "management" (for want of a more
inglorious title), had secretly been against during the show's pre-production.
Stu ended up driving over to Kidderminster, where the two brothers who ran CCW
lived, with his own double-decker video recorder and a blank tape to get our
copy. Only one wrestler had signed and he was Trowbridge's main man. We hadn't
intended to use him to begin with and the appearance of his underpants during
his terrified performance against a shoot-fighter in Animal Instincts had put
the final reckoning on our decision.
With two video angles of the show and a full card of talent
that were willing to appear in our promotion, Stu, Josh and I turned our
attention to getting the business, we would call "Exteme
Entertainment", running. It was intended to be far more than simply a pro
wrestling promotion, but an entertainment company that would produce various attractions.
During a brainstorming session held in the old circus wagon I had grown up in
when my parents ran their circus, Stu came up with the title for our promotion.
We called ourselves "Extreme World Warfare." It summed up our product
precisely. Firstly the absence of wrestling from the title made us different
from every other promotion, yet the presence of the W's in the obligatory
abbreviation made sure we weren't completely discounted from the family of
upcoming federations. The extreme aspect pushed the fact that we intended to be
a hardcore promotion, succeeding where CCW had chickened out. "World"
was perhaps an arrogant assertion over our opposition. CCW had been
Commonwealth wrestling, whereas others had "British" in their titles.
We didn't want a title that made us appear small or limited, so we went for the
big one. "Warfare" made our punk-inspired protest on entertainment.
We were declaring war on "Old School" wrestling and entertainment as
a whole.
However, our next move was not to promote EWW but to push
the Dead Souls act, which I argued could bring us in money without much capital
layout. Using the footage of my Dead Souls production, performed a year
earlier, along with the act I'd done at Cheltenham, we put together a montage
of highlights. I also came up with the idea of dressing the whole advert up
with extra footage taken around graveyards and use it to give a surreal origin
story for the Spirit of Instinct. The video featured the first appearance of
Stu's new character, The Dominator, along with his two sidekicks, Pleasure,
played by Stu's then fiancé, Niki, and Pain, played by his bodyguard at CCW's
previous two shows, "Big" Jay. Niki wore a PVC catsuit and Jay, a
rubber "gimp" mask with a leather waistcoat. Stu put some black face
paint on, carried a replica of a Norman sword and wore some suitably gloomy
casual wear. I got away with a white shirt and trousers, seeing as the parts we
were filming around the church would be about the Spirit of Instinct's life as
a mortal. It wasn't exactly a million pound wardrobe, but peculiar enough for
the gang to need to improvise covering clothes to appear respectable as we
surreptitiously crept from church to church.
The more atmospheric moments were filmed at night. The
Minster Lovell ruins near Stu's home in Shipton-under-Wychwood provided an
excellent location for the film's opening moments. However, we had to film in
the day in order to get the action sequences. Time was very tight. Stu and Niki
had previously booked a holiday in Florida the week we were filming so their
parts had to be done first. Also I had discovered a live event, that I figured
would be perfect to tout our video at, was taking place in London the following
week. Therefore we had to get all the filming done and edited in our own crude and
cheap fashion within a week.
Using churches for the purpose of adding a backdrop for an
unsolicited pseudo-occult promotional video is not exactly the type of activity
approved by the local clergy, so various tactics and strategies had to be
employed in order for us get into the churches. We would soon be using a
technique that would be called upon a lot to further the aspirations of EWW:
lying.
Our visits to the churches coincided with a sponsored
bike-ride. This meant that the churches would be open, enabling us to film
their interiors and a few pieces of action. We were almost caught a few times.
One out-take shows me pretending that Josh and I are filming for an architecture
project. Not caught on film was the moment Stu, Niki, Jay and I are scurrying
over a sty after almost being discovered. Josh is left doing his best
bullshitting job to a couple of bike riders with a video camera in one hand and
our ceremonial Norman sword shoved down his trouser leg. The cyclist believed
him, although I'll never forget their puzzled expressions as he limped off in a
fashion that resembled the Gestapo officer, Herr Flick, from the "'Allo 'Allo" comedy
series.
The video out-takes are hilarious, but sadly they seem to have gone astray and only received one viewing. Classic moments included our desperate attempts to
fit Jay in his "gimp" mask. The back zipper just wouldn't go down and
there are hurried cries on tape from the unfortunate "Pain" as he
fought for air on several occasions. Once the mask was removed poor Jay's face
was often frozen in the position the latex had forced it. However, he was far
from being the only one who suffered for art. The story called for my character
to be "baptized", which amounted to me being thrown by Pain into a
river and then emerging from beneath it and becoming the Spirit of Instinct. It
was October and England isn't the warmest of climates to do this sort of thing.
After Stu and Niki left for Florida, Josh and I went through
the whole procedure of putting the footage together into a short film called
"Dead Souls: Dark Generation." There were many headaches during the
process from sound problems to the presence of static due to the primitive
copying machinery we used. The whole procedure was very dodgy D.I.Y. from my "ingenious" idea filming
the opening credits by pointing a video camera at a computer screen to the
portable smoke machine we used to veil the emerging Spirit of Instinct after
his baptism. The opening credits were interspersed with a type of live creation of the Dead Souls logo, which consists of a sword, encircled by a snake and thrust through a bloody apple and framed by a triangle. I ended up pouring Kensington gore in a triangle and over the apple whilst we had a live Burmese python from my parents' zoo crawl over the sword. It was like a twisted version of "Art Attack" or "Take Heat" or insert your generation's children's arts and craft show here. Josh, of course, was the technical one and his inventiveness was
amazing considering our editing suite was contained in his converted loft and
his frenzied editing work was frequently interrupted by attacks from his randy pet
dog, Fernando.
The soundtrack for the promo was a mixture of Josh Perry improvising on a synthesizer and two tracks from black metal band "Cradle of Filth". I have never been a fan of that band's main vocals, especially the work of the high-pitched Danny Filth who sounds like what one would imagine a hamster might sound like if were being castrated without anaesthetic on a wet stone. However, the instrumental work fitted exactly the atmosphere I was trying to convey. "Malice Through the Looking Glass" had been used previously on the original production as the theme for The Gatekeeper character. Now it became established as the Dead Souls official anthem. The synthesizer work used throughout the opening credits and over the extra footage we shot made the whole thing feel like a dodgy Euro-horror from the 1970s.
Haunted Shores - Cradle of Filth
Malice through the Looking Glass - Cradle of Filth
The soundtrack for the promo was a mixture of Josh Perry improvising on a synthesizer and two tracks from black metal band "Cradle of Filth". I have never been a fan of that band's main vocals, especially the work of the high-pitched Danny Filth who sounds like what one would imagine a hamster might sound like if were being castrated without anaesthetic on a wet stone. However, the instrumental work fitted exactly the atmosphere I was trying to convey. "Malice Through the Looking Glass" had been used previously on the original production as the theme for The Gatekeeper character. Now it became established as the Dead Souls official anthem. The synthesizer work used throughout the opening credits and over the extra footage we shot made the whole thing feel like a dodgy Euro-horror from the 1970s.
Haunted Shores - Cradle of Filth
Malice through the Looking Glass - Cradle of Filth
I had organised free tickets with my cousin for the vampire
party, where we planned on handing the tape to the event organisers. My cousin
had contacts at Campden Palace, where the event was being held, and had also
agreed to put Josh and me up. Just before we left Josh's house with our
promotion videos I let out a sudden shout of exasperation. The headed paper,
which accompanied the videos and should have read "Soulless
Productions", had a "t" missing. Josh quickly inserted one and
we left again.
Sadly the whole episode in London was anti-climatic. We gave
our tape to the management at the vampire party and left one with my cousin to
give to her contacts who booked acts for clubs. Nothing came back. This would
be just the first of many disappointments along the way that would harden us
all, as no matter how much work we put in a good comeback was never a
guarantee.
Stu returned from America bubbling with ideas and his now
famous spiked shoulder pads. We both began firing ideas off each other and came
up with our initial plan for EWW. From the beginning we wanted an ongoing
storyline that would run through regular shows. We also wanted to keep the
standard of production displayed at Animal Instincts.
The title for our first official show, like our promotion's
name, took little debate. We always wanted our titles to mean something rather
than the common meaningless macho names that are usually attached to such
events. Later titles would be more storyline based, pushing the shows more into
self-admitted physical theatre than the awkward ambiguity of "sports
entertainment." For our first show made a straightforward statement. It
was a challenge to the British perception of wrestling and signalled the
beginning of our scheduled onslaught: "Extreme World Warfare: The
Declaration."
