Fright (1971)

"Young babysitter Amanda arrives at the Lloyd residence to spend the evening looking after their young son. Soon after the Lloyds leave, a series of frightening occurrences in the gloomy old house have Amanda's nerves on edge. The real terror begins, however, when the child's biological father appears after recently escaping from a nearby mental institution."

As I've been watching a few films containing outstanding portrayals of nutters recently, it would be remiss of me if I didn't say something about Peter Collinson's "Fright" (also known as "I'm Alone and I'm Scared" in America).

Although I'm one of those people who would argue until I'm red in the face that the plot of "Fright" paved the way for "Halloween" (1978), I have to admit that John Carpenter probably had no idea of this film's existence when he made his slasher classic. Psychos escaping from asylums and seeking revenge was nothing new in the horror genre even in 1971, but whereas John Carpenter added a few supernatural abilities to Michael Myers, "Fright" (scripted by Tudor Gates) deals with a much more human and sympathetic villain.

"She's a sensible girl. She won't be frightened."

"Fright" is almost a film of two distinct halves due to focusing first on Susan George as babysitter Amanda and then eclipsing her performance with the late Ian Bannen as nutty Brian. When I say "almost", it's because Susan George in her skimpy lilac mini-dress absolutely carries this film from beginning to end.

Obviously this isn't just a story with two actors such as "Sleuth" (1972), but the others are little more than supporting roles. Honor Blackman does her best to act paranoid as Helen, Cockney geezer Dennis Waterman tries to be Amanda's desperately horny boyfriend Chris, and George Cole as Jim is, well, just the same slightly amusing George Cole as he ever was. There's nothing wrong with any of their performances, and none of them are merely two-dimensional bit parts, but as I said, this is Susan George's vehicle most of all.

"From now on, the world is your lobster."

Since I wasn't really alive at the time that "Fright" came out (1972 in the USA), I have absolutely no idea about what the critics' reaction was to it. If you compare "Fright" to "The Exorcist" (1973), it's obvious that horror movies really increased in nastiness in little over a year. I know that it's like comparing oranges with apples, but "Fright" seems like a throwback to a much tamer world of horror movies. The fact that it contains some quite brutal violence and lots of screaming yet still retains a PG certification does little to persuade me otherwise.

I suppose there's just something a lot more cosy about British horror movies which the censors didn't pick up on, plus most British filmmakers didn't often go for gritty realism until much later than their American equivalents. Consequently, "Fright" is full of well-mannered Brits all saying "please" and "thank you", although on one occasion Susan George lets a lovely four-letter expletive out, and there's never any doubt in your mind that this is a horror movie.

"I wrote the theme tune, sang the theme tune..."

If this was an American horror, Susan George's cussing would have one of those annoying clichés which would set her out to be either morally or mentally unstable. In "Fright", not only is our heroine very much a prototype for the even more foul-mouthed Margot Kidder in "Black Christmas" (1974), but you know that she isn't an innocent dumb blonde with a pretty face. It makes her character real.

Of course, Susan George is a fantastic piece of flawless eyecandy (or "tottie" as we Brits say) as well as being a feisty final girl. I really don't know a lot about her as an actress, but I do know that she was footballer George Best's girlfriend at one point, was married to Simon MacCorkindale, loves horses, and also starred in the infamous "Straw Dogs" (1971). If she ever looked more beautiful in a film than she did in "Fright" then I want to see it.

"Here's Brian!" doesn't have quite the same ring to it really.

Once creepy Ian Bannen turns up, however, Susan George is almost pushed completely out of the limelight by his acting prowess. Although he's not nearly as good in "Fright" as he is in "The Offence" (1972), there are some obvious parallels between the way Ian Bannen plays Brian and the suspected paedophile Kenneth Baxter.

Maybe it's because he does a trademark mumbling thing every so often, but Ian Bannen really gets under my skin (or on my last nerve). I know it's wrong to speak ill of the dead, but there was just something very sinister and menacing about Ian Bannen in every role that I've ever seen him in. He was probably a lovely man in real life though, and weirdly, that shows through too in the scene with his screen son (Tara Collinson) which looks improvised rather than scripted. I even felt a little bit sorry for nutty Brian because he's more to be pitied than blamed.

I really don't have anything else to say about "Fright" other than recommending that you watch it. Yes, it's a little bit dated now but not in a bad way. It's not really very scary or exciting either when compared to modern slashers, but it still has some effectively tense scenes.

Trivia lovers will note that the two stars of ITV's "Minder", George Cole (who played Arthur Daley) and Dennis Waterman (who played Terry McCann) were both in "Fright" eight years before their famous partnership. Oddly though, they have no scenes together.

Also watch out for a couple of self-aware "meta" moments which pre-date the "Scream" series by a quarter of a century.

R.I.P. George Cole, OBE. He died at the age of 90 on August 5th, 2015.

uwantme2killhim? (2013)

"A teenage boy's descent into the dangerous world of the Internet and the harrowing consequences of his actions. A true story."

Based on a news story originally published by Vanity Fair, "uwantme2killhim?" is the off-putting txt-speak title of Andrew Douglas' somewhat flawed dramatisation. It's written like that for reasons which will become obvious (except that spaces are used in the chat room scene), but those of us of a certain age who have never succumbed to typing like an idiot are more likely to pass this movie by as something which is meant for teenagers. That's a real shame too, since there's a semi-decent psychological thriller lurking within.

It's not the best movie in the world (it looks like a cheap British soap opera), but "uwantme2killhim?" tries hard to present a true story which is far stranger than fiction in an entertaining manner. Artistic licence intentionally prevents you from seeing the whole picture until the end, and depending on how much you think the story could have been more realistic, you will probably still agree that it's quite cleverly done. For anyone taking the movie at face value, however, the ending will feel like an enormous cheat.

The biggest problem though, other than changing the names, ages, and location to protect the not-so-innocent, is that the characters feel "wrong" in every scene. It's not just the clichés, everything they do and say reeks of fakery. To some extent it's intentional, but a lot of it is simply because the casting is questionable and the acting stinks. Not knowing how much is meant to be one way or the other until after the movie ends would be metafiction genius if handled better, but it's more likely to throw you out of the story than draw you in.

Who cut your hair? Dewhursts?

It isn't an issue that the characters talk to their computer screens as they type their words into a chatroom, we've all done that before. One character uses speech recognition software anyway, but it's easy to accept the movie convention when the others are clearly not using Microsoft NetMeeting or the yet to be invented Skype. I remember using Microsoft NetMeeting and a webcam at the end of the '90s, so the use of 2003 technology is spot-on otherwise. If you're feeling nostalgic for 2003, this is about as good as it gets without watching a movie which was actually made then.

Similarly, the school scenes may seem contrived and particularly horrible, but they are awkwardly realistic and familiar too for some bizarre reason which I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe it's because I've tried to forgot what it was like to be a very British teenager. The sad truth is that we're all complete dicks between 14-18 (and older!) with no exceptions, and I can recognise a lot of myself and my former school friends in the characters. Not that we were teenagers in the 2000s, but some things are universal. For the sake of not committing libel, all I can say is that we were some vile and immature little buggers.

While Channel 4's much shorter docu-drama version, "Kill Me If You Can" (2005), is slightly better overall, "uwantme2killhim?" isn't a bad "remake". Andrew Douglas' "The Amityville Horror" (2005) wasn't as strong as the original either, but as he's hardly a prolific director, maybe it's too early to say if there's a pattern forming.

The World's End (2013)

"Five friends who reunite in an attempt to top their epic pub crawl from 20 years earlier unwittingly become humankind's only hope for survival."

Since I've been discovering far too many good movies recently, rather than tempt fate to throw a load of bad ones my way, I decided to redress the balance with a day of more torture than one person should ever have to endure. There may be no power on Earth which could ever get me to rewatch "Shaun of the Dead" (2004), but I finally watched "Hot Fuzz" (2007) and followed it up with "The World's End". Such a heroic act has to keep karma quiet for a while, doesn't it?

Although I can freely admit that I enjoyed "Hot Fuzz" almost until the end, I only did so as it was a kind of half-way house between the greatness of "Men Behaving Badly" (the British version) and the smarmy creepiness of Mitchell and Webb's "Peep Show" to prepare me for worse to come. Laddish comedy is so '90s and over now that movies such as "The Cornetto Trilogy" (or whatever the Hell these are called) are little more than throwbacks. I liked Olivia Colman's character, was amazed at how realistic Simon Pegg was as a far too politically correct cop, but the running gag with the swan stole the show. Let's face it, "Hot Fuzz" is only a comedic homage to "The Wicker Man" with a couple of lovely gore scenes anyway. Adam Buxton wearing a piece of church as a head is memorable, but nothing else.

I don't know what it is about the combination of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (with Edgar Wright as the director) which irritates me so much. It's not as if any of them owe me money or something; I just have a completely irrational loathing of them based on their movies. Thus, as you can imagine, I really wasn't looking forward to "The World's End"—even the title gave away that it was going to be yet another pub-centric fiasco which isn't funny—but surprisingly, I wasn't dead set against it either. If anything, my pre-movie mood could be described as hesitantly curious.

The thing you have to remember is that I have absolutely no sense of humour. It just doesn't exist for me in any kind of "laughing out loud" way, so I tend to watch comedies as dramas and note the wit, stunts, or happy endings which would place the subject matter in the correct category. When it comes to comedy, I'm 100% objective because I have no physical way of being subjective about it. For that reason, I can say everything that I need to say about "The World's End" in a few quick paragraphs.

Stop reading now if you don't want spoilers!

"This is a pub! We are in a pub! What are we going to do now?"

"The World's End" is very good indeed for the first 40 minutes. It's nicely filmed, the backstory is well told as an introduction, the characterisation is decent, the location is perfectly British, and several recognisable TV faces make everything comfortable. The witty banter reveals that the former bad boy hero is now a bit of a dick, his friends are easily led, and they're all uncommonly stupid, but it's aimiable enough. Sadly, everything goes horribly wrong when the first robots (or "blanks") appear. The whole mood of the film is killed in one fell swoop and never recovers afterwards.

What would have been better as a straightforward comedy about the reunion of old schoolfriends who reveal their secrets and discover a few more during a pub crawl then turns into a stupid parody of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"! WTF? WTF indeed! It's a pity that "Shaun of the Dead" already covered zombies because aliens are too far-fetched and ridiculous to be entertaining for me. I don't believe in aliens, I'm not even sure that there's intelligent life left on this planet, let alone anywhere else in the universe, and if there's one thing which will make me switch the channel on the TV instantly, it's anything about aliens. Unfortunately, you can't do the same thing in a movie theatre, and walking out wastes $12.

After a few text-speak jokes, the second-half of "The World's End" is a bunch of repetitive fight scenes which become extremely tedious by the third or fourth time they happen. There are, after all, only so many robot arms and legs you can pull off or eggshell heads you can crush before the action scenes fall into the same trap as the running-joke about "Starbucking" and identical-looking pubs. Needless to say, the carefully crafted characters are lost among the spectacle of effects and explosions, some of them physically. What a shame.

As I'm not down with the kids, I don't know if Pierce Brosnan's cameo is meant to be a special secret or a selling point, but either way, you know about it now. His former "Die Another Day" Bond-girl Rosamund Pike is on the alternative posters, so you already know that she's in this and is just as easy on the eye 11 years later. She doesn't have a very big role either, but ironically, she's on screen more than Pierce Brosnan in this movie.

Maybe if I had been as drunk as the characters were supposed to be, "The World's End" might been more entertaining, but I didn't completely hate it. Despite easily being the second weakest of the three Pegg-Frost-Wright movies and ending with a half-arsed swipe at our de-humanising reliance on modern technology, I'm sure comedy fans would get something out of it. It's simply a film of two halves—and twelve pints—which, just like this review, isn't very well written. That shitty ending which I'm sure everyone thought would be so clever is still too rushed, disappointing and unsatisfying for everyone except the characters themselves though. Stupidly, I expected more.

Placing the three movies in order of merit, I can now rate "Shaun of the Dead" as the weakest with 1 out of 10, "The World's End" gets 3 out of 10, and "Hot Fuzz" is the best of a bad lot with 4 out of 10. Thank God, I will never have to watch any of them again.

"I know all about you - sex for dinner, death for breakfast"

Ghost Stories for Christmas - Part 11

The Amazing Mr. Blunden (1972)



"A mysterious, very old solicitor Mr. Blunden visits Mrs. Allen and her young children in her squalid, tiny Camden Town flat and makes her an offer she cannot refuse."

Based on the "The Ghosts" by Antonia Barber, "The Amazing Mr. Blunden" is another classic British movie for the Christmas season.

This is the last one of these that I'm going to post since you all hate free movies so much. Bah, humbug!

My Top Ten Most Traumatising Kids' TV Shows

I'm not sure if it's because of my recent scathing review of "Brazil", my "Ghost Stories for Christmas" series, or that I published a guest post, but I've lost three blog followers in the last week. I know that I'm not the greatest writer in the world, but give me a break here! At least I'm trying to come up with something in the midst of the horror famine.

As much as I loathe trips to nostalgia-land even during this traditional time for reflection, and I don't want to compete with Kindertrauma which does it so much better, I know how you all love top ten lists, so here's something I knocked up as a bit of fun. Christmas is for kids anyway, but traumatising them is something that can be done all year long.


1. Doctor Who (1963-present)

I'm too old now to be scared by any of the current "Doctor Who" monsters, but there are still several of them which I wouldn't want to meet down a dark alley. When I was a child, it was a different story. I was absolutely terrified of the Cybermen for some reason, I think it has more to do with what is involved in their creation than their really cool appearance, but I do remember an episode where Adric's gold star was crushed into the respirator of one of them which gave me the heebies all the way through. Sontarans, Davros, and even the Master (when he was all bubbly and rotting) also gave me enough reasons to soil myself. To this day, anyone unfortunate enough to look a bit squishy in real life just creeps me out.


2. Rupert the Bear (1969)

The whole thing was just weird, but the little birdy-creature called Raggety used to freak me right out especially when just its head appeared during the opening titles. This and the lenticular World Wildlife Fund card I had of an aye-aye made me wet the bed more than once.


3. Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967)

Puppets are scary anyway, but don't go thinking that it was the "supermarionation" or even the zombified Captain Black who upset me. No, it was the voice of the Mysterons at the beginning which had me screaming like a 3 year old. It was probably a good job that I was a 3 year old at the time or I would have been really embarrassed. I wasn't even born when this was made, so damn you ITV for showing re-runs!


4. Chorlton and the Wheelies (1976)

Fenella the Welsh witch. 'Nuff said. Looking back on it, I think the whole thing was dodgy, and I still don't know what the Hell was going on in any of the episodes. Surrealism and talking dog-things bother me. I think Chorlton was supposed to be a dragon, but it's hard to tell when you are crying with fear.


5. The Feathered Serpent (1976)

I have no idea what this ITV drama was about other than Aztecs because I never made it through the opening sequence with all the screaming and skulls to be able to find out. I'll have to watch it eventually because now I know that Diane Keen was in it, and I had a huge crush on her.


6. Worzel Gummidge (1979)

Given his appearance, you would think that a living scarecrow was the most terrifying thing possible, but I liked Jon Pertwee and didn't find him scary at all. Much more sinister was The Crowman played by Geoffrey Bayldon who looked like a Victorian undertaker. I couldn't even bring myself to lust over Una Stubbs as Aunt Sally if The Crowman appeared in an episode.


7. Charley Says (1970)

As a Public Information Film, "Charley Says" was supposed to put the fear of God into kids anyway, but what really horrified me was the little boy, his scratchy voice, and... ugh... the terrible things which happened to Charley the cat.


8. Lonely Water (1973)

Another often repeated Public Information Film which you just have to watch on YouTube at some point to understand the trauma that it caused a whole generation. The combination of a menacing black-robed figure and the chilling voiceover from Donald Pleasence made sure that kids never went near water again. Yes, we all stunk!


9. The Ghosts of Motley Hall (1976)

I know it was meant to be a comedy, but the opening titles and music set the scene for something potentially a lot worse than Arthur English's jokes.


10. Kinder (1980)

Finally, not a TV show but a commercial that used to appear when people least expected it. Even though I was old enough to not be terrified, I'm sure the Humpty Dumpty from the Kinder Surprise adverts damaged some people. I used to do impersonations of "The Kinder Man" at school because I thought it was cool. Maybe it was my way of compensating since he was almost a Sontaran.


What did you see on TV that freaked you out when you were a kid?

Brazil (1985)

"A bureaucrat in a retro-future world tries to correct an administrative error and himself becomes an enemy of the state."

It's not often that I don't know what to say about a movie, but having watched "Brazil" for the very first (and second) time today as part of my Christmas movies selection, I don't know how to categorise it. I'm not even sure if I enjoyed it or not. I think I did in some ways, but I still wanted to hate it all the way through.

"Brazil" is a surreal, sci-fi fantasy set in an Orwellian future which annoys me almost as much as "1984" itself. I've been watching a few sci-fi movies on the side lately and, since I'm a natural pattern finder, all these dystopian futures are the same from one movie to another. There's always a big, bad government and some neo-noir style lead character who turns out to be the unprepared hero of the piece amidst a load of technology which makes absolutely no sense.

I'll eventually review them, but I've also rewatched "The Matrix" (1999) and "Dark City" (1998) this weekend for absolutely no good reason at all other than entertainment. I'm not sure if that's the purpose behind them, but I keep feeling that I've seen the same story over and over ever since "Metropolis" (1927). It makes me glad that I'm not a real sci-fi fan because the clones and lack of originality in that genre even outweigh the current problems with horror.

In some ways "Brazil" is also a horror movie. There's some nice gore and definitely a nightmarish atmosphere to the arty-farty nonsense which makes it suitable for a horror fan, but there's comedy too which really messes things up. If it wasn't for the slapstick and satire, I think I would rate "Brazil" as a great film rather than a turd trying to be cleverer than it is. As I said, I don't really know how to classify it or rate it properly because it's not in a style that I'm used to.

The funny thing is that I got caught up in the story even though the plot is as simple as they come with a predictable twist at the end which I thought was going to be an even bigger cop-out. I honestly expected it to be another "it was all a dream" movie or to go into "brain in a vat" territory. I hate those "we don't know what reality is" pseudo-philosphical stories especially as the whole concept is "meta" in the first place. If I'm willing to suspend my disbelief to watch a movie, I don't want any more layers of unreality to throw me right back out of it. That's where bullshit like "Inception" (2010) failed to impress me.

All I can say for sure about "Brazil" is that it has a great cast of some bigger names than I thought I'd ever see in the same movie, and it pretty much wastes the talents of every single one of them. I'm surprised that they ever worked again. Robert DeNiro? Well, he's never been that good anyway, but Bob Hoskins playing Mario before actually playing Mario is just plain weird.

Kim Greist, who plays Jill (the girl of Jonathan Pryce's character's dreams), looks a lot better in a wig even though she does nothing for me, but I could say that about any of the actors and actresses in this. They all look the part, but their characters' reactions to each other and their lack of depth ruins everything they do. It's impossible to care about any of them except in short bursts and then it's like they never existed. I swear it's possible to forget about everyone in the movie within seconds of hearing their last line.

"Brazil" is all style over substance at the end of the day and not very memorable except for the way it looks. I get that it's a satire or parody of some kind, but it's not funny. If it's a satire of the sci-fi genre itself, it's kind of insulting.

Sci-fi masochists everywhere who want to enjoy a combined brain-numbing and ass-numbing can now appreciate the new Criterion Blu-ray of the 142 minute long "fifth and final" director's cut which was released last week. Allegedly, it's better than the Universal version and my DVD version, but I'm sure that's like saying eating hot vomit is worse than eating cold vomit. I never want to watch "Brazil" again.

Ghost Stories for Christmas - Part 9

Cold Christmas by Nina Beachcroft (1974)

Yes, it's a kids' book rather than a film, but "Cold Christmas" is one of the few books which I read when I was in the intended age range for it. As someone who was reading James Herbert instead of the patronising and unrealistic "approved" books in English lessons when the teacher wanted some peace and quiet, I still think that "Cold Christmas" is one of the best of its kind.

"Cold Christmas" is out of print, but there are plenty of copies available to buy from eBay and Amazon. I got mine from a church jumble sale back in the early '80s. I don't have it now as I passed it on to another jumble sale along with all my other paperbacks in the early 2000s. "Cold Christmas" is not a rare book by any stretch of the imagination although I can't tell you how many times it has been reprinted. I had the Piccolo version as in the picture above which I know didn't have the original cover art.

I don't understand why nobody ever thought of adapting "Cold Christmas" into a TV miniseries or a film except that maybe it would have turned out to be too much like "The Amazing Mr. Blunden" (1972) or "The Watcher in the Woods" (1980). Nowadays, with filmmakers cloning every other success, this wouldn't even be an issue.

"Cold Christmas" isn't really like "The Amazing Mr. Blunden" or "The Watcher in the Woods" though. It doesn't have quite the same childish vibe to it. Give or take some of the dialogue, if it's similar to anything then it's a lot like Robert Westall's books in the way it handles the perspective of a lonely child caught up in a more adult situation than the child realises. The closest thing to it that I can think of would be Robert Westall's "The Scarecrows" (1981) which was, of course, written later and meant for slightly older readers, but there are superficial similarities to a lot of Enid Blyton's stories, Barbara Sleigh's "Jessamy" (1967), Penelope Farmer's "Charlotte Sometimes" (1969), Antonia Barber's "The Ghosts" (1969), and even Philippa Pearce's "Tom's Midnight Garden" (1958). Most children's fantasy books are in the same vein, but "Cold Christmas" feels a little bit more modern.

So what's it about? Basically, due to changes in her family circumstances (i.e. remarriage), a neglected little girl named Josephine spends Christmas in a large Georgian mansion, and discovers that the mansion is haunted. Just like every other children's ghost story, it features an alienated lead character and the "Cassandra" trope as what Josephine sees isn't believed by the grown-ups until the very end.

Apparently, Nine Beachcroft saw a house in a Hertfordshire village called "Cold Christmas" and was inspired to write a story about it. The real house has no such legend, but it's described so well that the you can really imagine the place existing and having a ghostly mystery to solve.

The atmosphere is very sad, and the whole family situation is very "upper working class" or even "lower middle class", but that's hardly a hindrance to a child's imagination. I'd hazard a guess that the book was intended for girls, but that doesn't matter so much either. How many boys have read "Twilight" or "The Hunger Games" in recent years? Gender specific books don't seem to phase anyone who wants to read something. Hell, I used to read "Misty" comic along with my weekly "2000 A.D." because the girls' comicbook was the only thing with horror stories in it at the time.

It's a pulp children's novel for sure, but if you've never read "Cold Christmas", I recommend that you do so. It's one of the great Christmas ghost stories no matter what your age is.

Here's the Amazon link: Cold Christmas: A Ghost Story

Ghost Stories for Christmas - Part 8

The Mistletoe Bough



The Mistletoe Bough, a ballad by Thomas Haynes Bayley and Sir Henry Bishop, was published circa 1830.

The mistletoe hung in the castle hall
The holly branch shone on the old oak wall.
The Baron's retainers were blithe and gay,
Keeping the Christmas holiday.

The Baron beheld with a father's pride
His beautiful child, Lord Lovell's bride.
And she, with her bright eyes seemed to be
The star of that goodly company.
Oh, the mistletoe bough.
Oh, the mistletoe bough.

"I'm weary of dancing, now," she cried;
"Here, tarry a moment, I'll hide, I'll hide,
And, Lovell, be sure you're the first to trace
The clue to my secret hiding place."

Away she ran, and her friends began
Each tower to search and each nook to scan.
And young Lovell cried, "Oh, where do you hide?
I'm lonesome without you, my own fair bride."
Oh, the mistletoe bough.
Oh, the mistletoe bough.

They sought her that night, they sought her next day,
They sought her in vain when a week passed away.
In the highest, the lowest, the loneliest spot,
Young Lovell sought wildly, but found her not.

The years passed by and their brief at last
Was told as a sorrowful tale long past.
When Lovell appeared, all the children cried,
"See the old man weeps for his fairy bride."
Oh, the mistletoe bough.
Oh, the mistletoe bough.

At length, an old chest that had long laid hid
Was found in the castle; they raised the lid.
A skeleton form lay mouldering there
In the bridal wreath of that lady fair.

How sad the day when in sportive jest
She hid from her lord in the old oak chest,
It closed with a spring and a dreadful doom,
And the bride lay clasped in a living tomb.
Oh, the mistletoe bough.
Oh, the mistletoe bough.

Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)

"Abetted by the elderly Dr. Hertz (Thorley Waters) and handyman Hans (Robert Morris), Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) determines that the soul does not immediately leave the body upon death, and can be transplanted from one body to another with a special apparatus he has developed."

Since "Frankenstein Created Woman" is yet another overpriced and OOP R1 DVD, I've embedded the full movie from YouTube above. It's also another old Hammer movie which you've probably seen anyway so I don't need to spend much time reviewing it.

Set in an unnamed European country (either Austria or Switzerland) during an equally difficult to pin down historical period, "Frankenstein Created Woman" is a "fantasy" movie which is more about the drama than terror.

As ever, Peter Cushing provides a lot of class as Baron Frankenstein in this huge departure from Mary Shelley's original piece of science fiction. Thorley Walters also gives an exceptionally good performance as the amusingly named Doctor Hertz. In many ways, he's channelling Nigel Bruce's bumbling Doctor Watson throughout.

The real attraction, however, is Susan Denberg as Christina who evokes sympathy right from the beginning as she hides her disfigured face with her hair. It's not enough to hide her true beauty from her lover Hans (Robert Morris) or anyone else other than three excellently played but spiteful bullies.

In fact, the cruelty which the bullies inflict on poor Christina is one of the most harrowing parts of "Frankenstein Created Woman" which deserves far more attention than I'm going to give it. Suffice it to say that "Frankenstein Created Woman" is a great piece of wish-fulfilment fantasy for those who have ever been bullied themselves. Revenge is apparently best served cold in a mended body with a transferred soul.

Even though "Frankenstein Created Woman" lapses into the usual scientific silliness about resurrecting the dead, it deals with themes of injustice and vengeance quite admirably. It also unwittingly throws up a few questions about transgender issues which I'm sure get discussed on sites with an axe to grind about such things.

"Frankenstein Created Woman" is a sparsely populated, slightly stagey, and obviously low-budget production which looks better than it should do thanks to the geniuses at Bray Studios. While it doesn't have the great atmosphere of earlier Hammer horror movies and some of the camerawork could be better, it's a kind of in the middle deal due to having a much better story.

As a big fan of Hammer horror movies, I rate "Frankenstein Created Woman" quite highly despite its rather tame exploitation scenes which in no way match up to the promotional stills. Although "Frankenstein Created Woman" is listed as "Unrated", I wouldn't class it as more than a PG-13. There isn't much gore or anything too scary about it even for children so, apart from a very minor sex scene, it's almost good wholesome family entertainment.

If you are looking for something cosy and not too extreme for Hallowe'en, you can't really go wrong with horror movies from this period. If, like me, you grew up seeing everything by Hammer and Amicus repeated ad nauseum by the BBC, you might not be quite so eager to revisit them. Trust me though, it's always worth giving them another airing if only for the pretty girls and the nostalgia.

The Innocents (1961)

"A young governess for two children becomes convinced that the house and grounds are haunted."

It's October! Once again Hallowe'en is on its way and all the horror movie bloggers are frantically scratching around for something to write about. Not me though. I already have my October viewing list sorted out, and I will be bringing you another 31 days of supernatural terror. Wooooo! Ghosties!

Starting off my "Hallowe'en Countdown" is one of oldest ghostie films which is still worthy of rewatching. Having already reviewed "The Haunting" (1963) and "The Uninvited" (1944), it was time to pull "The Innocents" (1961) out of "The Vault". If you are lucky enough to have cable, according to the TCM monthly schedule, all three movies will be shown back-to-back on Wednesday, October 10th with "The Innocents" actually at 3.30am on Thursday morning so you don't even need to buy it.

Based on "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James, Jack Clayton's version of "The Innocents" has become the best-regarded adaptation of the classic 1898 ghost story. It wasn't the first, however, as there was also an opera and a live television play directed by John Frankenheimer two years earlier. For all of you who hate remakes, "The Innocents" was a kind of remake, but it was a considerable improvement over the TV movie which you can watch clips from on YouTube. Not to belittle Ingrid Bergman's performance, Deborah Kerr is simply much better in the role as a governess.

It probably helps if you haven't seen Deborah Kerr in anything else if you want to fully appreciate her in "The Innocents". Having previously played a nun in "Black Narcissus" (1947) and a governess in "The King and I" (1956), her portrayal of Miss Giddens is occasionally little more than a logical fusion of the two. It's not that she was a bad actress, but as a product of the time, she was a bit limited. The very dated and "Victorianised" dialogue didn't exactly help matters much there either.

Some younger viewers will undoubtedly find the talkiness of this production rather boring in places. At times, I actually found it all to be quite awkward and cringeworthy myself especially with all the clippy-clop, posh English accents. Although I still appreciate "The Innocents" as a ghost story, it lacks realism even considering the period that it was set in. Trust me, I'm English, and I can't imagine anyone speaking like that ever in real life without getting a punch in the throat.

The housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, comes across as the much more credible character due to Megs Jenkin's Northern accent which slightly lessens the jarring quality of the words she speaks. Being no stranger to horror movies since appearing in "The Monkey's Paw" (1948) and going on to "Asylum" (1972), it was no great surprise that Dan Curtis of "Dark Shadows" fame got Megs Jenkin to reprise her role as Mrs. Grose for his own TV movie adaptation of "The Turn of the Screw" (1974).

Staginess aside, the little kids, Miles (Martin Stephens) and Flora (Pamela Franklin), are also really outstanding and genuinely creepy. If, like me, you don't like kids anyway, you can see the evilness behind their façade of innocence which was either brilliant acting or just something naturally horrible about children. A couple of scenes of animal cruelty really made me hate them. There are even suggestions of incest and paedophilia which are downplayed almost to non-existence, but they still deliver some shocking stuff especially in the case of the obviously psychopathic Miles.

The ambiguities raised by the story don't just stop there. In a big change to the novel, it is never truly explained if the ghosts and possessions are real or just in Miss Gidden's head. As much as I prefer the supernatural explanation, the fact that her character seems to be a sexually-repressed "old maid" (for lack of a better term) has tempted numerous essay writers into psychological analysis of her character and her apparent nervous breakdown throughout the movie. Make no mistake about it, "The Innocents" has some very adult elements which were explored further (and rather poorly) ten years later in Michael Winner's "The Nightcomers" (1971).

If you want scares, Freddie Francis' cinematography almost provides enough black and white creepiness on its own without the more startling scenes. I rewatched "The Innocents" during a gloomy and rainy afternoon and, not to put too fine a point of it, pants were nearly shat several times. I say "nearly" because the timing is occasionally a bit off, and I'm too hardcore to really be frightened by anything in a movie.

I still highly recommend "The Innocents" to anyone who loves ghost stories or who loves analysing characters afterwards. While not quite Hitchcock, there's a lot more depth to "The Innocents" than most horror (and proto-horror) movies from the 1960s.

Dark Places (1973)

"A scheming couple plot to conceal a hidden cache of stolen money from its rightful owner. The only problem is that the house they plan to hide it in is haunted."
(Please note that this IMDb synopsis is completely wrong.)

Directed by the late Don Sharp who, apart from having a host of TV credits under his belt, also made some very enjoyable non-horror movies such as "Callan" (1974) and "Rasputin: The Mad Monk" (1966), "Dark Places" was a very overlooked British horror from the '70s.

In fact, it was so overlooked that I hadn't ever seen it myself until I found it on YouTube earlier. Although seeing Christopher Lee's name attached to it was an instant attraction, he made some absolutely horrendous movies in his career and turned out to be horribly miscast in this too.

"I smell poopie!"

The first time Christopher Lee appeared fully on screen, the look on his face was as if he could smell a tray full of rotting cat excrement. Maybe he knew something I didn't about this film and was warning me, but I brushed it off as just being his standard, surly look.

I was even more intrigued with the idea of Robert Hardy playing a possibly romantic leading man in a horror movie. With the other big names being Joan Collins and Herbert Lom, there were only two ways this could go. Either "Dark Places" was going to be extremely good or extremely bad with no middle ground possible. I still tried hard to give it a chance to impress me though and was prepared to overlook the scenery-munching as far as possible.

Bombastic Robert Hardy was a bit shouty, but I could see that he was trying to rein himself in most of the time. I'm not a big fan of his work outside of "All Creatures Great and Small" although I watched nearly everything that he made when I was much younger (due to my mum once being an extra in an early film he made with John Schlesinger). He wasn't too bad really given that he was really playing two roles and his descent into madness was almost up there with anything Jack Nicholson could do.

"Here's Johnny!"

One scene where Robert Hardy was tapping the panelled walls with a coin and listening for something hollow amused me not only due to it going on for far too long, but also because, in reality, all wooden panelling has a gap behind it.

Hilarity ensued when he smashed through a wall and a load of rubber bats on wires came flying out. I wasn't expecting something that amateur to be in this movie at all, and I really did laugh out loud.

Christopher Lee turned in his usual routine performance with even less time on screen than Herbert Lom. Even Jean Marsh and the lovely Jean Birkin had little more than cameos. All four did really well and stayed serious, but I would have liked to have seen more from them.

Joan Collins stood out the most in a highly slutty and slightly bitchy role which, of course, she was typecast in throughout her later career. I thought she looked beautiful though and even made Jean Birkin look plain in comparison.

"After the pleasure, the pain, lover!"

Something which came across as quite original was the use of quasi-possessions instead of the more usual flashbacks to recount the story of the mostly bloodless murders in the house and tie them into the present. I can't say that every time it happened wasn't confusing, but it was inventive.

With no actual scares, absolutely no atmosphere, and a plot which wasn't much different to a least a dozen previous ghostie movies including its twist and the downbeat ending, I would say that "Dark Places" was entertaining but not particularly memorable. It pulled its punches on at least four occasions where it should have been great, but, given the time it was made, I will mark it up for even daring to suggest the things it did.

House of the Long Shadows (1983)

"An American writer goes to a remote Welsh manor on a $20,000 bet: can he write a classic novel like Wuthering Heights in twenty-four hours? Upon his arrival, however, the writer discovers that the manor, thought empty, actually has several, rather odd, inhabitants."

For some reason when I was a lot younger, I always confused "House of the Long Shadows" with the abomination known as "Bloodbath at the House of Death". It probably had something to do with Vincent Price being in both of them, although I'd also guess that the stupid titles were somewhat interchangeable in my own mind. Either way, I'd only seen a third of the the latter before switching it off and had never watched the former. No matter how many times it cropped up on late night television, I'd vowed to never watch that crap again and changed the channel immediately.

Having recently discovered "House of the Long Shadows" on YouTube, I clicked on it to see if it was as horrible as I remembered. It was only then that I realised that it wasn't actually the film I hated at all.

Starring the four most famous veteran horror actors of my youth, Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and John Carradine (okay, that's really only three because I never much cared for John Carradine in anything), "House of the Long Shadows" was exploitation movie director Pete Walker's finale. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but he never made anything else afterwards.

I'm going to keep this as brief as I can because I'm still somewhat undecided about whether or not I really liked "House of the Long Shadows". I did find it entertaining and enjoyed the series of twists at the end. More than that, I cannot say, but hopefully, I'll come to some conclusion by the end of this review.

Being pretty sure that I had only ever seen Desi Arnaz Jr. in the "Automan" TV series before watching this, I really have no idea if he was ever a serious actor or just a comedian. Therein lies a problem since the film spent a lot more time focused on his character than the horror actors. Everything about his persona was rubbing me up the wrong way in a kind of "poor man's David Naughton" manner at the beginning, but he grew on me by the end.

As soon as I saw Julie Peasgood, my heart really started to sink because I've never liked her or her incongruously fake posh accent which, to this very day, she still forces over the top of her real Northern one. She used to be Fran on "Brookside" (a Liverpool based soap opera on Channel Four), and I couldn't stand the sight of her on that either. I know it's an irrational thing, but some actors and actresses just do that to me. Mercifully, her appearances were brief and to the point in this film.

The "old guys" were either as serious or as camp as they ever were and had enough screen time to be more than just cameos. The only thing I didn't really like was Peter Cushing's rhotacism. It was embarrassing and a shame to ruin his perfect speaking voice.

Vincent Price was mostly his usual self but somehow slightly more serious due to his age. He was a pleasure to watch but certainly wasn't as commanding as Christopher Lee. Let's face it, nobody could be as commanding as Christopher Lee, and he stole every scene he was in.

As for John Carradine. Who? He didn't do much and I can't remember ever seeing him in a good movie, or at least, in a role where he played anything other than himself, a grizzled old man, or a cowboy.

There were a few other actors who all did well with what they were given. Although Sheila Keith was largely wasted, she looked horrible enough. Richard Todd did a great job at the beginning and the end. Norman Rossington was a suitably surly railway station master, and the married English couple of Richard Hunter and Louise English surprised me with their reappearance later in the film. I wanted to see a lot more of Louise English really but not quite in the way things turned out for her character.

The horror elements were quite good, but to be frank, this was all very dated and slightly comical stuff. Having read some things about the film since watching it, it seems that it was intended to be a comedy originally, but then it was decided to edit it back into a straighter horror. I see nothing wrong with that, and I wish it would happen to a few more "horror-comedies", but it's painfully obvious where one thing was intended and another delivered.

I was most amused by an obligatory "cat scare" which happened twice but only showed the black cat once. There was a "meta" moment of explanation concerning this, but following the big reveal at the end, the whole story turned out to be a giant old school prank anyway and three years before "April Fool's Day" did it all again.

"House of the Long Shadows" had no big scares, but one of the "gore scenes" disturbed me slightly because I know of at least one person on the planet whose real life story made that a lot more horrible to me than it really was. I'm not going to say anymore about that though because I'd hate for the Google search robots to pick up on it. I don't mind getting some second-hand internet fame from crappy old horror movies, but I don't want my blog to ever be associated with real crimes.

I suppose, if I liked films such as "Clue" (1985), I might have appreciated "House of the Long Shadows" more. I'm not a fan of very much outside of the horror genre though, so I was probably expecting too much from it. It was still a horror movie but with a much lighter feel than the ones I really like, so I'll just rate it as average.

Doctor Blood's Coffin (1961)

"People are mysteriously disappearing near a remote Cornish village, where a scientist is experimenting with reviving the dead."

Since it was 18 years ago today that I first named my video review column in "The Demeter" magazine after a movie which I had never actually seen at the time, I decided to watch a remastered version of "Doctor Blood's Coffin".

There are two things which I have to get out of the way before I begin my review. The most important of these is to tell you that, in spite of the name, "Doctor Blood's Coffin" isn't a vampire movie. Yes, I did feel rather silly when I found out. I was writing my first published reviews for a Dracula magazine back in the day but nobody else realised my mistake either.

The second thing is that when I first watched "Doctor Blood's Coffin" on television in the late '90s, I thought it was horribly dated and boring. I didn't even make it to the end. Like a lot of younger reviewers nowadays, I only wanted the latest thing and had yet to develop any real taste or discernment.

"Doctor Blood's Coffin" has one of those somewhat embarrassing titles which would make you believe that it was yet another of those "cheesy" (I loathe the use of that word, by the way), over-the-top, campy horrors which today's hipsters like to get off on because they think it's "so bad, it's good". Fortunately, for me, although some of the acting is a little bit clumsy, the film is way more intelligent than the crapfest which it could have been.

The big draw here for movie lovers of the time is Kieron Moore who plays one of the two "Dr Blood" characters in the story. As Peter Blood, he is the younger, handsome, research scientist son of Ian Hunter's Robert Blood.

Kieron Moore was a very recognisable face during the '50s and '60s although his acting style was always rather more shouty than subdued. If you think of him as a constantly smoking prototype of Brian Blessed but without the beard and with an Irish accent which sounds German then you won't go far wrong.

The other even bigger draw for horror fans in particular is the late Hazel Court who plays Nurse Linda Parker. Hazel Court was one of the most beautiful of Hammer's horror actresses and was previously known for her role alongside Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in "The Curse of Frankenstein" (1957). It's ironic (and probably no coincidence) that "Doctor Blood's Coffin" is, basically, another Frankenstein subgenre story.

One thing which I find fascinating (and here I'm going to get a bit spoilery even though the trailer gives it away) is how "Doctor Blood's Coffin" deals with the subject of human heart transplants six years before the first successful one was achieved by Christiaan Barnard in 1967.

There's a lot of outright moral condemnation of the whole organ donor thing here especially as Peter Blood comes across as quite a psychopathic bad guy and none of the donors are willing. There's even a big argument between Dr Blood and his nurse later in the film which doesn't present his case in a very good light at all although both sides of the case are treated somewhat childishly and it's hard to tell who was more insane.

The style of the film is very Hammer-esque but is nothing to do with them. The location filming really was done in Cornwall rather than the Bray Studios version as in "The Reptile" (1966). What horror directors had against Cornwall, I have no idea. It's hardly the most desolate place on the planet. The trope goes back to "The Uninvited" (1944) and is a bit like how New York city people think that anything upstate is all farms.

Another thing which stands out for me is the love the cameraman must have had for the old cars. I'm not entirely sure but I think at least one of them is a Hilman. There's definitely a Wolseley and a Ford Zodiac in here too. You can see them on the IMCDb (yes, an "Internet Movie Cars Database" really exists). As I grew up in the '70s and most of these cars were still going strong back then, it's a nice nostalgic moment.

Of course, what you really want to know about is whether or not "Doctor Blood's Coffin" is gory or scary. Well, it's definitely gory in a couple of places and, if you are the right age, the last ten minutes could be quite scary. I think it's more of an intriguing serial killer kind of thriller until the story really jumps the shark at the end. It would probably have been a minor classic if it hadn't gone so bizarrely into the absurd.

I don't want to give a major spoiler about the ending, but I will say that it isn't how anyone with a brain would expect this film to end. Of course, the producers were counting on that shock factor to get bums on seats in the cinema, but it's too unrealistic and doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

If it wasn't for the last ten minutes, "Doctor Blood's Coffin" would get at least a 7 out of 10 rating. The trouble is that those last ten minutes put the movie in a whole other category, and so it only gets a 6 out of 10 from me.

Dead of Night (1945)

"An architect senses impending doom as his half-remembered recurring dream turns into reality. The guests at the country house encourage him to stay as they take turns telling supernatural tales."

Although a lot of people rave about "Dead of Night" being one of Britain's finest horror anthologies, I've never really thought much of it myself. Just because it was the first to link several short horror stories together doesn't make it the best, in my opinion, although it's quite entertaining in places if you are easily pleased.

Two of the five stories are very weak and there's a stupid comedy one involving two golfers which I loathe even more than the entirety of "Shaun of the Dead" so it must be bad. The best ones for me are the racing driver's tale and the story of the ventriloquist's dummy which has a life of its own although I've seen that one done better since as well.

"Dead of Night" isn't so much dated as it is simply a rather unsatisfying experience overall. The ending is particularly messy and then the final twist is just annoyingly predictable, but at least it ties the other stories together in a better way than a lot of the wraparounds on later anthologies.

I'm keeping this review short as I really don't like "Dead of Night" all that much. It's highly overrated (especially on the IMDb of course) and there isn't one single moment that's actually scary in it.

If you like "The Twilight Zone" TV series, you'll probably get something out of "Dead of Night" but, best of all, you can watch it for free on YouTube (in the video which I've posted above). I don't recommend this as a purchase or even a rental as it's just one of those average films which you can only watch once and will then forget about quite quickly.

Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror (1994)

Everything you ever wanted to know about the old Hammer horror movies.

Although this excellent documentary has been on different movie sites for ages, this is the first time that I've seen it in full on Youtube. I've posted it above to save you the trouble of looking for it yourself.

This is a great way to remember Hammer as it used to be. The new incarnation with its unnecessary remakes has tainted the Hammer name. No wonder they are now looking for lost footage from the '50s and '60s although I'm surprised that they don't just remake that too.

The Uninvited (1944)

"A composer and his sister discover that the reason they are able to purchase a beautiful gothic seacoast mansion very cheaply is the house's unsavoury past."

I'm finally back to working on my "Hallowe'en Countdown" with another ghostie film which I'd never seen before. I'd never seen "The Uninvited" available as a DVD (not even a bootleg) or even a VHS tape and if it was ever shown on British TV then I simply must have missed it.

Luckily, TCM had a marathon of classic black and white horror movies on Monday night through to Tuesday morning and "The Uninvited" was one of them. Although it meant suffering through the irritatingly repeated poem of "The Wolf Man" (1941) beforehand, I missed most of that awful Universal dreck due to not knowing that TCM was on channel 63 on my cable box and having to surf for it.

Anyway, I finally got to see "The Uninvited" which a lot of horror movie review sites say was Hollywood's first attempt at a "serious ghost story". Well, it was and it wasn't especially since, aside from its Paramount Studios locations which are supposed to be Cornwall, it's very British. I'd call it more of a creepy romance with Ray Milland trying to be funny and failing than anything else.

There were quite a few bizarre relationships in "The Uninvited" which were actually a lot more interesting than the ghost story itself. Ray Milland's character and his sister immediately suggested incest to me (viewing it from a 21st century perspective), and I'm sure that he was supposed to be a middle-aged man who was trying to pick-up a naive girl half his age to boot. If this was purely artifice to allow the characters some romantic mobility then it was done badly.

The facts that the original owner of the house had been having an affair and his wife was certainly the object of a lesbian crush (if not more) stood out inarguably even if I may have been making more out of the other relationships than a 1940s audience would. Older men who live with their sisters while courting young girls wasn't quite so weird back then, I suppose.

You would think that even the laziest writer would still have mirrored the past with the present. For Ray Milland to not play a married man having an affair was a wasted opportunity which countless ghost stories since have reworked (right up to this year's "American Horror Story" on TV). Thus, for me, the story itself wasn't neat enough. It was a mess which meandered from one thing to another with far too much spoken exposition.

The reasons for the haunting were already predictable so the back stories became tedious rather than mysterious and the final "exorcism" of the ghosts turned out to be anticlimactic to say the least.

"The Uninvited" may have been an attempt at a serious ghost story but it wasn't a very good one. A lot of the formulas for future ghost stories, including getting a house for a lot less than its real value, animals being used to show that there is something very wrong there, and the "Cassandra truth" trope (and its reverse) being used ad nauseum, were laid down here so I have to give it credit for originality but that is all.

It wasn't a scary film. There was no real air of menace about the haunting and no tension. Although some of the effects were good for the time, unfortunately, Ray Milland completely ruined the atmosphere of the whole thing by being far too jocular and by mimicking the Irish housekeeper's accent at every opportunity.

I'm rating "The Uninvited" as just average. If you haven't ever seen it then you haven't missed anything important.

TCM are showing it again on Sunday, October 30th, at 9.15am.

Attack the Block (2011)

"A teen gang in South London defend their block from an alien invasion."

You would think that any film written and directed by Joe Cornish would be a comedy but, in this case, you'd be very wrong. "Attack the Block", if it can be described at all, is mostly a British action film with enough aliens to make it about as science-fiction as an episode of Doctor Who.

Having said that, "Attack the Block" has a very fatal flaw especially for a British audience. The main characters are a bunch of the lowest possible chavscum and all you want to do is see them die horribly one by one.

Of course, it wouldn't be much of a story if that was all that happened so the teenage thugs are developed into the unlikeliest of heroes.

I found nothing of merit in this film since I was completely alienated from all the characters except their victim after the opening mugging scene. I absolutely loathe chavs, their stupid droning accents, and their adoption of everything bad from American rap music. Most of all, I despise the society which allowed them to happen. They truly are Britain's shame.

The alien "gorilla-wolf" creatures and their kills weren't all that impressive either and, although I made it all the way to the end of the film, I didn't really enjoy the experience.

If you are American and are expecting another "Shaun of the Dead" from this, don't.

James Herbert Movie Adaptations

I've been dying to write something about my favourite horror author, James Herbert, for some time. Since this is a horror movie review blog and I don't really deal with literature on it, the only way I can think of working something in about "Herbie" is by briefly reviewing the movie adaptations of a few of his books.


The Survivor (1981)



The first adaptation of one of James Herbert's novels was, surprisingly, an Australian production which still roped in the talents of the very English Robert Powell and Jenny Agutter. James Herbert didn't think much of it and claimed that he fell asleep during the screening. I can't say that I'm surprised. "The Survivor" differs greatly from the book and, in particular, Jenny Agutter plays the part of what was originally an old blind man. It's still quite a creepy film but, due to conflation, it all seems confused. The book, on the other hand, is a very straightforward ghost story and very sad at the end.


The Rats / Deadly Eyes (1982)



I didn't see this for the first time until the middle of the '80s on a schoolfriend's Betamax video recorder. I was expecting a lot more than small dogs dressed up as giant rats! Even though some of the character names were similar, moving this out of London to Toronto and changing the story considerably meant that it had very little to do with the book. "The Rats" (2002) starring Mädchen Amick is far closer to James Herbert's idea yet he doesn't get any mention in the credits for that film. "Deadly Eyes" is an absolute abomination which can't be saved by Scatman Crothers and should be avoided.


Haunted (1995)



Bearing in mind that the novel started out as a screenplay for a BBC TV series, this should have been good. Also combining the considerable talents of Aidan Quinn, Kate Beckinsale, Anthony Andrews and John Gielgud could have made this a classic. Unfortunately, it's again so different to the book, with an emphasis on a ghostly love story rather than supernatural revenge, that it's just not James Herbert anymore. It's arguably the best adaptation so far but the dated effects are very weak (especially the fire scenes created with Paintbox) and all the scares have been inexplicably left out.


Fluke (1995)



Although the New English Library paperback edition of "Fluke" was labelled originally as "horror" eventually someone realised and changed it to "fiction". "Fluke" isn't a horror story but it certainly involves the supernatural, reincarnation, and is a pretty good thriller. Possibly making a PG version with the voice talents of Matthew Modine and Samuel L. Jackson seemed like the best way to sell the story but moving it to America killed it for British James Herbert fans. Even Eric Stoltz, Nancy Travis and Ron Perlman were involved in this so it isn't actually a bad film but it's nowhere near as effective or moving as the book.


James Herbert obviously wrote far more books than these somewhat lacklustre movie adaptations might have you believe if you aren't British. He wrote a new book nearly every year as I was growing up and, because they were released near my birthday, I ended up reading and collecting all the first edition hardbacks.

Here's a quick list of the titles and the years they came out:
The Rats (1974), The Fog (1975), The Survivor (1976), Fluke (1977), The Spear (1978) - which I collected much later during my early teenage years.
Lair (1979), The Dark (1980), The Jonah (1981), Shrine (1983), Domain (1984), Moon (1985), The Magic Cottage (1986), Sepulchre (1987), Haunted (1988) - which I received as birthday presents.
Creed (1990), Portent (1992), The City (1993), The Ghosts of Sleath (1994), '48 (1996), Others (1999), Once (2001), Nobody True (2003), The Secret of Crickley Hall (2006) - which I bought for myself.

Such was my obsession that I even bought the paperback versions in all their different incarnations (including "The Rats" for Filofax), the Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer game of "The Rats" (1985), most of the audio books on cassette and CD, and, of course, the non-fiction/biographies - By Horror Haunted (1992) and James Herbert's Dark Places (1993).

As the years went by, the number of new books became considerably less both in frequency and quality. Even though it hurts me to say it, there are at least ten books in my James Herbert collection which are not worth the paper that they were printed on. I'm not going to name and shame them but I even have the updated paperback biography which I left behind in England without ever fully reading.

James Herbert will always be "Britain's Number One Horror Author" and, even at his worst, he will always be better than Stephen King. I've got a feeling that he's pretty much written everything that he will ever publish now even though there is a rumour that he has written a new book - Ash - which is due out later this year.


My favourite James Herbert books:

Mum & Dad (2008)

"Mum and Dad, and their 'adopted' children, Birdie & Elbie, work at the airport. The family live off whatever they scavenge from cargo holds, offices and hotels - including a steady stream of transient workers who populate the airport's soulless hub. When Lena, a young Polish office cleaner, is befriended by Birdie, she gets drawn into a nightmarish world of torture, murder and perversity. Imprisoned in a suburban House of Horrors and designated a 'Mummy's Girl', Lena's only options appear to be to become part of the family - and join them in their insanity - or die."

I first watched "Mum & Dad" over two years ago when my local Hollywood Video still existed. Not only was I extremely happy to find a fairly new British horror movie, but I was quite surprised that they even had it. Just before they closed down, I went back and bought myself a copy of "Mum & Dad", and I love it so much that I've watched it over 20 times since.

I'm going to keep this review as spoiler free as I can because you absolutely have to see "Mum & Dad" for yourself. I haven't had my heart pounding so hard from the tension in a horror film ever before, so I'm sure that you will enjoy it too.

Basically, it's a modernised, almost "torture porn" version of "Girly" (1970) mixed with an unhealthy number of nods to the crimes committed by Fred and Rosemary West. At no point during any interviews about this movie, or anywhere on the DVD commentary, did writer/director Steven Sheil admit to using any specific real life murderers as his inspiration, but anyone British will pick up on it immediately. American audiences will notice a lot of similarities to "The People Under the Stairs" (1991) and certain scenes from "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" (1974). Like all horror movies, it's derivative, but "Mum & Dad" has a lot of original touches too so you can't really hold any reworking of existing genre themes against it.

It's amazing that something with such incredible production values was made for as little as £100,000. When I hear people crowing about how successful James Wan's "Insidious" was compared to its budget, it makes me laugh that "Insidious" cost over five times the amount of "Mum & Dad" and wasn't even half as intense. A lot of this has to do with where most of the funding came from. To qualify for a grant from the U.K. National Lottery, you simply have to have something so impressive that it's worth investing in.

As I said, I'm not going to give any spoilers apart from any that are unavoidable through praising this film. Perry Benson as "Dad" is cast completely against type, but it still works. Dido Miles as "Mum" is so psychotically evil that she is also completely different from anything I've seen her in before. I am still blown away by how good these recognisable TV faces are in such a demented horror film. Each of the main characters are memorable in their own way, and that doesn't happen very often. Toby Alexander as the mute "Elbie" doesn't even have a single line of dialogue yet conveys so much emotion with just his expressions. You will probably hate "Birdie", I know I did at first, though that's the point. Ainsley Howard nails her role too.

The acting and character development is just fantastic and way ahead of anything you'd usually find in such a low-budget independent horror movie. The nastiness of the dysfunctional family is so believable that it comes as quite a surprise when you watch the special features on the DVD and discover how nice (and funny) all the actors are in real life. It's like chalk and cheese and that's the sign of real actors. You can never go back to watching amateur handycam dreck after seeing something like this, although I'd advise you to never get involved with any of that crap to begin with.

Of course, the character who stands out the most for me is Lena. I had never really heard of Olga Fedori before though I remember her vaguely from a few episodes of "Eastenders". A quick check of her IMDb profile reveals that she's Ukrainian rather than Polish and is a Harvard Graduate. I think she's lovely and I felt for her character all through the film. The stuff Lena goes through is absolutely awful yet she remains one of the strongest female characters that I've ever seen in a horror movie. She has a lot of inner strength and really doesn't make any of the clichéd mistakes which other girls do and that is, of course, another credit to Steven Sheil's writing.

The practical effects are all disgustingly realistic although one gruesome scene near the end could be argued to be little bit too far-fetched due to their inclusion. You'll know exactly what I'm referring to when you see it but, the more I think about it, the more I can see how it could work. I am, of course, talking about a certain "Christmas decoration", so feel free to discuss it in the comments section below.

The make-up, costumes, set dressing, camerawork and, well, just about everything really is all first class, so I have definitely included this in my Video Vault. "Mum & Dad" is something I can bring out just to show my American friends exactly how sick and twisted us Brits really are. I highly recommend this film!

Little Deaths (2011)

"Composed of three disturbingly sensual and terrifying short narratives, unified by the twin themes of sex and death."

With each section being respectively written and directed by Sean Hogan, Andrew Parkinson and Simon Rumley (who was also responsible for "Red White & Blue"), this new British horror anthology is an uneven yet still highly entertaining collection of bizarre sexual nastiness.

In the first story, "House and Home", a rich couple who abduct a homeless girl for their own sexual gratification get a lot more than they bargained for. I enjoyed this gory story most of all but it was over far too quickly.

"Mutant Tool", which comes next, is the longest and most excruciatingly dull tale of a prostitute, her boyfriend and an experimental drug. I couldn't get into it and just wanted it to be over. Unfortunately, it dragged on and on with nothing much happening and no great surprise ending. I've got nothing against Andrew Parkinson and enjoyed "Dead Creatures" from ten years ago but this section seemed very out of place and quite confusing. If you make it through (although I recommend using the fast forward button), the final story is worth the wait.

Entitled "Bitch", this is the Simon Rumley section which completes the trio and has a most definite style to it. Flawed as it may be with yet another overpowering piece of background music at the end, at least this involves some poetically twisted piece of justice. I'm not sure if bestiality is more than suggested but there are at least three scenes of sado-masochism which should satisfy most sick puppies (yes, the pun is intended).

Overall, I enjoyed this low-budget anthology but it was very reminiscent of the "Urban Gothic" TV series and just as rushed except, as I've already said, for the middle story which wasn't worth wasting even five minutes on. The acting was good, the actresses were pretty and everything was as sleazy as you'd expect from a piece of gritty British filmmaking.

I know that "Little Deaths" has been doing the festival circuits and hasn't even got a distributor yet but some bright spark has been uploading it to over a dozen different places on the internet where you can watch it for free.

Judging by the quality of the streams, this must have been done by someone with access to a DVD version of the film (which was supposed to have been released in the UK on June 6th) and I wouldn't put it past one of the directors themselves as being responsible for uploading it. If I'm wrong about this and they have actually been ripped-off by a pirate then the three writers/directors should probably take some comfort from the fact that the middle section is so bad that it's doubtful that anyone would give them any money to see their film anyway.

I doubt that any of them are looking for advice from a horror blogger but, constructively, each director needs to go back and re-edit their own (or each other's) stories if they really want "Little Deaths" to be a success.