I'm laid up with the dreaded lurgy looking for online space vampires when an ogre showed up.
Said ogre is a memorable nasty from my monstrous childhood, namely the baddie in Ogre's Castle, a 6 page terror tale in the second issue of Creepy comic, April 1965 by the great house of Warren.
I would have been 4 at the time and unlikely to have languished in Uncle Creepy's wisdom just yet and waited a a couple of years whilst my big bros gathered a decent stack. I devoured those black and white stories on the floor in a room my parents called the lounge. So I lounged a lot.
Ogre is a very specific beast. A man-eating giant no less. Shrek's an ogre I think, a tame one. His Wife's an Ogress. In my mind Ogres often have tusks, a huge broad back and little legs. Oh, and carry a massive club. I might be thinking of Shrek again!
My next Ogre after Creepy was a small metal fellow, which I sent off for with a postal order [remember them?]. He arrived with a posse of miniature cast Samurai and somewhere they battle across the centuries in my loft. I might even still have the delivery note for that Ogre, unless he ate it.
I'm not sure if Hammer covered ogres. I can't recall a man-eating giant in Karnstein. Sinbad probably ran into one along with its buddy the Cyclops.
By and by I became a teenager and my next Ogre was a furious one, a warring one. Well, a few really. Yes, it was Queen's thunderous Ogre Battle, when Freddie and co were still heavy metal in 1974. I could at this point use Ogre Battle as a cue for mentioning the altogether more magnificent monster skirmish that is By Tor and the Snow Dog by Rush [1975] but I won't as it doesn't contain an Ogre.
Rolling boulders along to 1978 and I started the daily grind aged 17. Yep, work work work, the tiresome toil of the human lot. By day I was an insurance office clerk. By night I was a hippie headbanger and I had trouble keeping my two halves apart. OK I wore patchouli and cheesecloth shirts on non-public Saturdays in the office doing overtime to save up for an amp but it wasn't enough. I needed some solid sorcery during the working week as well. It came in the form of Lord of the Rings, which I read secretly from my desk top drawer. Who knows how many insurance claims I stamped 'Accepted' whilst Frodo was heading slowly for Mordor!
Lord of the Rings is the Worlds Fair for mythical beasties. Everyone's there: dragons, orcs, goblins, giants, wraiths and trolls. Lots of trolls. However, I can't recall a specific Ogre. It could be the fog that's settled over Middle Earth but nope, I'm ogreless. Can you recall one readers?
My final Ogre before Shrek made them plush returns to its salivating roots and lives once more in a castle. Its Castle Freak from 1995, which I saw on VHS rented from the fish shop nearby. There's shocks aplenty as new owners attempt to make a des res out of the old place and the resident 'freak' living in the dungeons ain't too happy.
Thinking about it this may not be an Ogre film at all. The freak isn't that big and returning to my definition they should be, not might be [pop reference there!], giants.
Obviously in the modern world of mythology there is some fluidity between monsters. When is a Zombie a Ghoul and when is an Ogre a Troll for instance? Even so, we all know an Ogre when we see one: in a castle, a cave, the workplace, a home and on film.
Sticking to my guns, that Ogres are always man-eating giants [tusks and club optional], I would say that they have had a poor showing on the big screen in particular.
A wiki search found just three films; The Hobbit, the Spiderwick Chronicles and the brilliant Time Bandits. There is also a 2008 movie called Ogre as well, which I've never seen. Four films, that's all. Shameful. They deserve a blockbuster.
Now to combat further lurginess I shall take two paracetamol, sleep some more and hope Blue the Moonbase Mutt keeps those auditioning Ogres at bay.
I have left out some chews.
