|
Hobbs End, sometimes Hobbs Lane, is the name of a fictional location used in several works of speculative fiction. Its name is possibly intended to convey a sense of unease, evil, or "wrongness", since "Hob" is an old nickname for the devil. Hobbs Lane / Hobbs End tube station The 1958 BBC science fiction television serial Quatermass and the Pit centered around the discovery of alien artifacts uncovered during the construction of a new office block at the fictional street location Hobbs Lane (once called 'Hob's Lane', from an old sign seen) in Knightsbridge, SW1, London. The serial also mentioned strange events taking place in 1927, when the fictional Hobbs Lane underground station was built. When the serial was adapted into a film (also titled Quatermass and the Pit) in 1967, the London Underground system was being extended with the construction of the Victoria Line. Accordingly, the producers of the movie decided to change the setting to the construction of the fictional Hobbs End underground station, a fictional extension of the Central Line. This revision has been attributed to Anthony Hinds, the son of Hammer Films co-founder Will Hammer. A street nameplate shows Hobbs Lane to be in the W10 postal district. Other locations named Hobbs End In Henley-on-Thames there is a real street named Hobbs End, and Hobbs Lanes exist numerous locations in the UK including Bristol, Beckley,Woodmancote near Cirencester, and a Hobs Hole Lane in Aldridge, West Midlands. In the 1995 movie In the Mouth of Madness, a pastiche of H. P. Lovecraft directed by John Carpenter, Hobbs End is the name of a New England town in the books of fictional horror author Sutter Cane, "this century's most widely-read author". As parts of Sutter Cane's stories start to influence reality, Hobbs End also becomes real, and is the setting for much of the action in the movie. Carpenter had previously worked with Nigel Kneale, creator of the Quatermass character, on Halloween III: Season of the Witch; and has also used the pseudonym 'Martin Quatermass'. Hobbs End is also used as the name of a village in the 1999 Peter Robinson book In a Dry Season. Hobbs End is both the title of, and Pacific northwest setting for, a 2002 slasher film directed by Philip Segal. It received uniformly below-average reviews. Hobb's End was used as a location in Gordon Rennie's story Caballistics, Inc. in British comic 2000AD. The town at the centre of the British 2007 horror film Flick is also called Hobbs End. When Ben meets the character of The Curator in Mark Gatiss's horror pastiche Crooked House, broadcast on BBC Four in December 2008, there is a partially obscured Hobb's End sign on a shelf above their heads. A similar name crops up in the 1971 Doctor Who serial The Dæmons, which is set in the fictional Wiltshire village of Devil's End. The plot of The Dæmons bears several similarities to that of Quatermass and the Pit. It becomes the name of a fictional Massachusetts town featured in the episode, "Here There Be Monsters", of the 2002 series Stephen King's Dead Zone. The plot focuses heavily on witchcraft and superstition. Other references to Hobbs End The Séance at Hobs Lane is the fifth album by the Drew Mulholland project Mount Vernon Arts Lab. A track on the band Force of Evil's album Black Empire is titled "Hobb's End". The Chance Morrison project 'Requiem for Delinquency' released an album titled Hobs End in June 2009. "Hobbs End" is the title of a station in a model railway used for staff training by London Transport in a training centre in West Kensington, London. In Massachusetts, near the fictional location of H.P. Lovecraft's city of Arkham is a small body of water called Hobb's Pond just north of Manchester, Massachusetts.
|
|
|