The rumour papers rumoured and the scandal papers scandaled, the Studio (VOSTOCK/RKO) made no comment and producer Verbatim just said he was sorry to have to let such a good actor go. Those who knew would not speak on the record. But in private they whispered that the marks on Davies’ back, the wounds, rope burns and other scars incurred making BONE GRAFTERS II were creating havoc for the make-up people on the parallel film. After a time, those that knew him said, it was more or less impossible to keep track of the damage let alone disguise it or check its progress on his body. Of the escalation of this process and its disastrous results we need say little here – it belongs rather later in our story.

Get a copy of BONE GRAFTERS II if you can. You’ll see the deep dark stairwells of VOID HOUSE in the end credits sequence and the service tunnels and elevator shafts in its closing moments. As the end-titles roll watch out for the name of Marriane Pubis – she went on to great things later altho it’s only a cameo role for her. Her credit is as GIRL IN BAR but it’s not really an adequate description of the look she gives Ludger Shat in the opening scene.

Anyhow. You should also check out the name of Quentin Collins when it goes by on the credits – he’s listed a script editor but everyone knows he was just a boyfriend of the other male lead Andrej Kropotkin. And look out for Fillomena Petersen too – she was the continuity girl who had an on-set affair with the camera-man Buzz Aldrin. Petersen really had an eye for detail and her conscientiousness was legend on a set already steeped in that word.

Think about Petersen. If you stand in room 637 of VOID HOUSE you can still see some of the daubs of blood she placed high up on the ceiling – a spiral of spots and smearing fingerprints that had to be replaced seventeen times as the scene got re-shot in ever more complex and ‘realistic’ ways. Aldrin used to joke about Petersen, saying in some strangely affectionate way, that she was really working for God – maintaining order, continuity and cohesion in a world that tended otherwise to its opposite. It’s fun in some ways to think of Petersen maintaining order on the set of BONE GRAFTERS II. Dragging Sven Horblad out of the bathrooms with the needle still stuck in his arm, trying to organise transport for the wounded extras, trying to find booze for Paunch Davies at 4am when all the bars were closed, or even, as Aldrin described her, rearranging his apartment, removing every sign of her presence, removing her lipstick, her discarded underwear, the traces of ash from her cigarettes, making it seem for all the world like she never had been there. A continuity girl.