Janina News

• The IMAX near Waterloo are showing Dracula on the 30 and 31st of  October 2007 as a Halloween treat. On one of these dates Janina will be attending.  For more information visit their website:  www.bfi.org.uk/whatson/imax/getting-there.html

• Janina was a guest at Bray Day 2007 recently; she will also be appearing at the Ciné Lumière in London on October 27th. See below for details.

A message from Janina: September 2007

To all the wonderful Hammer fans,

Thank you all for making yourselves known to me at the Bray Day 2007 and for helping to make it such a successful event for everyone. After such a terrible summer (weather wise) how fantastic that the sun shone on us all day!

This was my second Bray Day event, and like the first, it was a genuine pleasure for me
to be able to meet and greet so many old friends and to be introduced to new ones. I hear the day was so successful that another one is planned in the not too distant future.

Thanks to my friend Wayne Kinsey (who ran around all day with his camera!) you can now see some happy snaps (click here).

For those of you who are interested, there will be a showing of The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll and Never Take Sweets From a Stranger at the book launch on the 27th October at:

The Ciné Lumière Cinema
Queensberry Place, London SW7 2DT
Tel: 020 7073 1350
Tube: South Kensington
Bus: 19/395/59/70/79/C1

I look forward to seeing you there.

Best wishes,

       Janina

• 1962's Don't Talk to Strange Men, in which Janina plays the part of Ann Painter, was released on DVD in the UK on 24 September 2007. Janina notes that this was "an excellent cautionary B-Movie of its time."

The DVD is available from play.com or hmv.co.uk. Here's the synopsis:

A young girl accepts a lift home from a stranger. Moments later she lies dead; another victim of the murderer who is targeting young, impressionable women. Whilst Christina (Jean Painter) is waiting for a bus on a deserted country lane she answers the ringing telephone in the public callbox. She begins to chat with the charming stranger and arranges for the man to call her at the callbox the next night. Fearful for her safety, Christina's parents forbid her to go out alone at night whilst the murderer is still at large. But Christina continues her schoolgirl dalliances with her romantic stranger and arranges to meet him on a dark and lonely night at the callbox.

• UK TV Channel 5 showed Day of the Triffids in its 'The Best of Disaster' series, and as part of this episode Janina appeared in an interview about the making of the film.

• Janina was a special guest at an evening dinner with the members of The Horror Show at the George Inn in London, celebrating 25 years of fear, 1981-2006. Janina reports: "A lovely group. I was treated to a great meal, and I spoke briefly to them about Dracula and Never Take Sweets from a Stranger. That was followed by a signing and a showing of Dracula."

• Janina appeared at the Memorabilia show at the NEC in Birmingham on August 14th and 15th, 2004, where she was available to meet fans and sign autographs. Click here to see photos of Janina at the show.

Personally inscribed photos of Janina are available again

Janina's memories of Eddie Powell

Janina's Recommended Reading: Wayne Kinsey's excellent book, Hammer Studios:The Bray Years, published in November 2002, sold out its first printing and has gone back to press. It's available in the USA from Amazon.com, and can also be ordered from Amazon UK.

Click here to read a very good review of the book.

Janina Faye - An Introduction
by Harry Nadler
(Late founder of The Festival of Fantastic Films, Manchester, UK)

I first met Janina Faye in the summer of 1958.

I was just 17 and sitting in the circle of Manchester's Theatre Royal Cinema. But Janina couldn't see me, she wasn't in that audience - she was up on the giant silver screen in a Technicolor Hammer movie entitled DRACULA. Janina played Tanya, the little girl of the Holmwood's housekeeper. She was the centrepoint of that delightful scene with Peter Cushing, who having saved her from the clutches of a vampire, wraps his overcoat around her to keep out the morning cold and gives her his silver crucifix for protection while he re-enters the crypt to put "Aunt Lucy" to rest forever. It's a wonderfully poignant scene.

But I wasn't to know then that almost forty years later, in September 1997 (again in Manchester), I'd meet Janina face to face. The occasion this time was the 9th Festival of Fantastic Films and she came along as our Guest of Honour at the request of our Chairman Gil Lane-Young. So we all owe Gil a great debt of thanks, because the adult Janina Faye is one of the most wonderful people we have ever met in the 11 years of The Festival of Fantastic Films.

Her career as an actress includes theatre and television in addition to the many films she has appeared in and although her main fantasy and horror films were made when she was very young (Dracula, Day of the Triffids, Never Take Sweets From a Stranger etc), her adult work includes a formidable range of roles. There's even a stage version of Dracula with Janina playing the part of Lucy Holmwood... and looking absolutely stunning!

Anyone who has had the good fortune to see Janina act on the large or small screen or even better, at a live stage performance, will know just how talented she is. Her resounding theatre success was undoubtedly in 'The Miracle Worker' (the story of Helen Keller). Laurence Olivier was in the audience, and was so impressed that he brought her flowers backstage and personally asked her to join the National Theatre - which she did.

If you meet her to talk to at a movie convention you cannot fail to come away with memories of a beautiful lady with a wonderful smile and a genuine warmth. I am most privileged to feel that we at the Manchester event have become personal friends of Janina and could not think of a future Festival of Fantastic Films without enjoying the great pleasure of her company.

(With thanks to Stephen Laws)

Never Take Sweets
From A Stranger (1960)

Harry Nadler and Janina Faye at the Festival of Fantastic Films (1997)

With Howard Keel in
The Day of the Triffids (1962)