The Demon Headmaster
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The Demon Headmaster is a series of books by Gillian Cross which were later adapted as a television series starring Terence Hardiman in the title role.
The title character is a strange person (as far as we can tell he is human) with the powers of hypnosis and a desire to take over the world - he believes it will be better under his ordered rule.
Contents |
[edit] Reading order
- The Demon Headmaster - ISBN 0-19-275374-6
- The Demon Headmaster and the Prime Minister's Brain - ISBN 0-19-275372-X
- The Revenge of the Demon Headmaster - ISBN 0-19-275373-8
- The Demon Headmaster Strikes Again - ISBN 0-19-275388-6
- The Demon Headmaster Takes Over - ISBN 0-19-275389-4
- Facing the Demon Headmaster - ISBN 0-19-275369-X
- Beware of the Demon Headmaster - ISBN 0-19-275236-7 (a short story about the Demon Headmaster, without the other characters)
[edit] The Books
[edit] The Demon Headmaster
Dinah Glass moves in with the Hunter family and starts going to the same school as her foster brothers Lloyd and Harvey. It's not easy, as they seem to hate her, and school is really strange. Pupils suddenly talk like robots and do weird things, even Dinah finds herself acting oddly. She's sure the headmaster has some kind of power over them, and is determined to find out more, with help from SPLAT (the Society to Protect our Lives Against Them, consisting of her, Lloyd, Harvey, Mandy, Ingrid & Ian) but the Demon Headmaster is equally determined to stop her. This was serialized in the first 3 episodes of the first Demon Headmaster TV series.
[edit] The Prime Minister's Brain
Dinah wins a place in a final of a computer competition, and she and SPLAT go to the finals at the computer competition, but little does she realises that the computer competition is a plot by the Demon Headmaster to take over the world by hacking into the Prime Minister's computer (The Prime Minister's Brain) and hypnotizing the Prime Minister. This was serialized in the last 3 episodes of the first Demon Headmaster series.
[edit] The Revenge Of The Demon Headmaster
There's a new craze - Hunky Parker. Everyone's watching the TV programmes and queuing up to buy Hunky T-shirts, trainers like pigs' trotters and pig-swill yoghurt. Is it just normal hype or is something sinister going on? When there are riots, Dinah and her friends start to investigate. But someone has a plan, and they're not going to let it be scuppered by a bunch of kids. This book is sometimes known as 'Hunky Parker Is Watching You'. This has never been serialized.
[edit] The Demon Headmaster Strikes Again
Dinah's father is headhunted for a new job at the Biogenetic Research Centre and who should be the Director, but the Demon Headmaster... This time his lust for power sees him meddling with evolution itself. The consequences of his evil schemes will be deadly if the SPLAT gang doesn't act and fast as The Demon Headmaster is in charge of a scientific research centre and has created an Evolution Accelerator: a machine to speed up the evolution process and produce the perfect human. But for this he needs Dinah's DNA, and then to put her into terrible danger to test his theories. This was serialized as Series 2 of the Demon Headmaster TV series.
[edit] The Demon Headmaster Takes Over
Dinah and her brothers are pretty sure they're rid of the Demon Headmaster once and for all. When people start dismantling the research centre Dinah contacts Professor Claudia Rowe, who's an expert on artificial intelligence. With Dinah's help she saves some of the precious materials and they become friends. Then weird things start to happen. Libraries start closing and their books are taken away. Telephones stop working, and there is no internet access. People start talking like robots, even Claudia Rowe and more and more of them seem to be wearing strange badges. It all adds up to one thing: the Demon Headmaster must be back. Dinah's search leads her to the university where she finds him developing a Hyperbrain, a computer with superhuman intelligence and deadly potential. Suddenly she's trapped. Is there any way to foil his plan? This was serialized as the 3rd TV series.
[edit] Facing The Demon Headmaster
The new club Purple is the place to go - if you can get in - and Ellie persuades Dinah and her friends Táo come along too. The man everyone wants to see is DJ Pardoman whose face keeps changing from Elvis to Madonna to Brad Pitt. His electronic mask is mesmerizing but no one knows who he really is. When the kids visit his website they see there's an online competition: the person who finds out about him will be allowed to lift off the mask. Dinah thinks it's all weird but she's also curious. In her search she stumbles across something amazing: her real father might be alive after years of thinking he was dead. Dinah must find out more. But she only realizes the truth of these strange coincidences too late. This time the Demon Headmaster is intent on ensuring that Dinah will not interfere with his plans.
[edit] Short stories
In 2003, before the 6th book was released (Facing The Demon Headmaster), Gillian Cross wrote 'Beware Of The Demon Headmaster' which did not feature the SPLAT team. Here is the synopsis of the book:
'Sally and her twin Ben have been looking forward to their school trip to Notley Castle for ages. There are dungeons, and weapons, and a cannon to fire...But on the day, Ben is ill and has to stay in bed, so Sally promises to send him a text message every hour, to let him know what's going on. When Sally's messages start sounding very strange indeed, Ben decides to get out of his sick bed and ride to the rescue. An exciting, fast-moving story with a topical plot based on text messaging. At only 99p, this is the perfect introduction to the Demon Headmaster books for a whole new generation of readers.'
Back in 1998, Puffin Books released a series of goody bags on certain themes and featured a notepad, pencil, rubber etc, the usual goody bag type stuff, but the main part was that there was a small book in it. In the 'Fantasy' goody bag there was a book calling 'Crash Landing & Other Stories' by Gillian Cross. This book contains 3 short stories about the Demon Headmaster or people similar to him.
The first story called 'Crash Landing' is set after 'The Prime Minister's Brain' and is about the Headmaster crashing in a small village. It features SPLAT type characters as the lead girl is called Charity and actually reads the Demon Headmaster books in the story.
The second story called Carnival! doesn't actually say that it is the Demon Headmaster but from the illustrations and description it is obvious that it is him.
The third story is called Maths Homework and features a teacher referred to as Old Webster. This isn't the Demon Headmaster but is a very similar character. In fact the introduction to the story says... 'Maybe you think you have spotted the Demon Headmaster somewhere. Are you sure? Things aren't always what they seem.'
In the front of the book it says that 'Crash Landing' was first published in 'Shark And Chips And Other Stories' and that 'Carnival' was published in the Young Telegraph in 1996. It does not mention the other story so presumably that was written for the book.
[edit] The television series
The TV series ran on the BBC between 1996 and 1998 for three series. The first series aired twice weekly from 2 January-18 January 1996, and was split into two, the first three episodes being from "The Demon Headmaster", and the second three being from "The Prime Minister's Brain". The second series aired once a week from 25 September-6 November 1996, was seven episodes long, and was taken from "The Demon Headmaster Strikes Again". The third series, which aired twice weekly from 6 January-22 January 1998, was taken from "The Demon Headmaster Takes Over" and was six episodes long.
On 25 December 1997, CBBC showed "The Demon Headmaster Takes Over TV" which was a recorded version of the CBBC Pantomime performed at the CBBC Big Bash in Birmingham that year. Whilst the main three series have been repeated several times on TV, this special was only shown once and has never been repeated.
The cast was Terence Hardiman as The Demon Headmaster, Frances Amey as Dinah Hunter, Gunnar Cauthery as Lloyd Hunter, Thomas Szekeres as Harvey Hunter, Tessa Peake-Jones as Mrs. Hunter, Anthony Cumber as Ian, Kristy Bruce as Ingrid and Rachael Goodyer as Mandy. There was also many other supporting characters varying on which book was being covered.
The first series was released on VHS on 5 January 1998, combined into two 70-minute long episodes (Look Into My Eyes and The Prime Minister's Brain), though the release has since been deleted.
