Films
In the dark, into eyeballs and ears,
direct to our brains
Ligeia
Ligeia, by Edgar Allan Poe, is a six-thousand-word hallucinatory tale about an intense marriage that survives beyond death. The narrator is looking back, remembering his wife, Ligeia, who he idolised.
Physical media
Continuing my interest in how fiction and films work together, I picked up Cornish Horrors: Tales from the Land’s End, part of the British Library’s Tales of the Weird series, a collection I’ve owned for a few years and never read...
Nostalgia
I’m in Wales at short notice because Dad’s been admitted into hospital. The co-morbidities have gathered and decided to strike. He’s in bad shape. Around visiting times I’m looking for peaceful, distracting activities.
Fidelity
I’ve deleted my Patreon creator’s account, which was beginning to feel like I was cheating on my website (or the other way around, I’m not sure). Two places for almost the same words.
Best film discoveries and fiction of 2023
My favourite ten film discoveries (ranked) and ten favourite fiction books (not ranked). (Letterboxd is a hella sexy website. I wish GoodReads made more of an effort.)
Halloween (1978)
It has a purity that other slashers don’t have — the crisp cinematography, Laurie’s naive, nerdy charm, the simple (perfect) motif of the score. I can’t fully explain it.
Enemy (2013)
My favourite discovery of the month. Barely ninety minutes, looks beautiful, has a startling final image, and I’m still thinking about it a day later.
Cloverfield (2008)
Feeling insignificant in the face of a fictional disaster, whether natural or alien, has its psychological comforts. Sometimes you just want something big to fuck shit up.
You're Next (2011)
It’s bleak fun with some good twists. Everyone apart from Erin, our survivalist heroine, is awful. Is this where the current trend of violent final girls began?
Duel (1971)
I watched Duel dozens of time on television as a kid, as well as it’s rip-off cousin The Car, so it was a treat to revisit it. I didn’t remember the crisis of masculinity.
Return of the Living Dead (1985)
The gang of punks hanging out in the graveyard are everything I wish I’d been as a teen — vibrant, trashy, horny, loud, and sometimes naked in public.
Evil Dead 2 (1987)
A man who wanted to have a romantic weekend in the woods with his girlfriend is instead made to fight for his life against demon-possessed corpses.
Invaders From Mars (1986)
A pastiche of black and white science-fiction films, but subverting them by having the aliens turn people into conformist fifties stereotypes instead of communists.
Lifeforce (1985)
Naked space vampires hidden in Halley‘s Comet, you say? I’m in! Plays on a much bigger canvas than I expected and owes a debt to Quatermass.
Infinity Pool (2023)
A man pays dearly to escape his writer’s block when he accepts the malign attention of a woman who wants to test him to destruction.
Crimes of the Future (2023)
Graphic body mutilation, big ideas and knowing performances that lead to some surreal laugh-out-loud moments. A raised eyebrow at all that he has made before.
Messiah of Evil (1973)
People bleed from the eyes. An artist’s studio is painted with staring faces. The citizens of Point Dune dress respectably but do terrible things. The four protagonists share a bed. (Groovy.)
Don’t Look Now (1973)
A masterpiece — ghost story, sort of, psychological thriller and family drama, certainly — a magical exploration of a marriage under the strain of a tragic loss.
The Lair of the White Worm (1988)
Camp horror fun with a nasty edge. Ken Russell was a genius. I taped this off the TV back in the day and watched certain bits over and over... naked nuns and Amanda Donohoe.
Slugs (1988)
It’s silly — it’s called Slugs! — but as lots of these cheap 70s and 80s horrors were, it’s creative, fun and weirdly sexy.
Death Ship (1980)
Keeps a steady pace as a ghost story, making the most of the spectacular empty ship as a location. The final act really dials up the horror. Also - KINDERTRAUMA!
Scream VI (2023)
The surviving friends from Scream 5 go to college as a pack, and in New York the franchise finds some fresh energy.
Scream (2022)
Ah, the plot. It’s a whodunnit, but with lots of stabbing. Twas ever thus. David Arquette’s Dewey is the best thing about it. I think I’m finally too old for Scream films.
There’s Nothing Out There (1991)
A mix of Cabin in the Woods, Friday the 13th, Evil Dead and Scream, but with no budget. It’s fun, a broad horror comedy that isn’t afraid of the horror. Cheap but clever.
Castle Freak (1995)
The Reilly family arrive in Italy to inherit a castle left to them by an elderly Duchess. The creature she’s been keeping in the dungeon breaks free. Gothic melodrama and cannibalism ensue.
Re-Animator (1985)
A gory take on Frankenstein with a psychopathic scientist, an evil academic, and a morgue full of reanimated corpses. The ever-present syringe of neon green liquid is iconic.
65 (2023)
An alien gets stranded on Earth when an asteroid hits his ship. There is a fellow survivor. There are challenges. There are dinosaurs.
The Pale Blue Eye (2022)
A nineteenth century murder mystery set in the snowbound US military academy at West Point, where a cadet is found hanged with his heart removed from his body.
The Exorcist III (1990)
A flawed film filled with wonders. More of an existential downer than I expected — yes, it’s about a demon bringing hell to earth, but it goes strong with what that might mean.
Survival of the Dead (2009)
An exiled patriarch tempts four soldiers to his island with a hope of settling an old score. Tonally weird — part western, part comedy, not much zombie threat — it’s a clunker.
Diary of the Dead (2007)
Found footage Romero style. A student film crew try to stay alive as the dead come back to life, but the director decides to film everything putting pressure on the people around him.
Eye in the Labyrinth (1972)
Julie is looking for her missing psychiatrist (hard relate) and travels to a Greek island to search for him. There she stays at a clifftop villa with a commune of shifty artists.
Strip Nude For Your Killer (1975)
Sometimes the algorithm wears you down, and the familiar cover art catches you in a vulnerable moment, and you choose a film that you know will be bad... except it’s good!
The Broken (2007)
A mirror falls off a wall during a party, releasing cold-hearted döppelgangers from a mirror world who begin to replace their counterparts.
The Cursed (2021)
Kelly Reilly plays another mother, this time on a remote estate in nineteenth-century rural England, and is visited by a ‘pathologist’ instead of Poirot. A curse is made, werewolves ensue.
A Haunting in Venice (2023)
I started this year’s #31DaysofHorror with a classic whodunnit mashed with a ghost story. Kenneth Branagh plays around with spooky children, Viennese masks and fish eye lenses to fun effect.
Meg 2: The Trench
Teeth and tentacles chomp, devour, squeeze and rip through submarines, boats, research stations, and eventually a holiday resort. People die. Lots of people having fun die.
Everyman
Heat. During the final chase, I could feel the rumble of planes in my stomach, and my wife now has the hots for nineties Pacino. He’s a very sloppy kisser on a big screen.
Author speculation
I’m reading Cinema Speculation, Quentin Tarentino’s non-fiction celebration of key American films of the seventies—Bullitt, Dirty Harry, Escape From Alcatraz, The Funhouse. I heard about it through the Pure Cinema podcast, which is connected to Tarentino’s Los Angeles cinema, the New Beverly. The prose voice is exactly how Tarentino sounds in interviews and podcasts.
Puzzles
At the start of the day a deployment of code went awry and at the end I was a go-between over my still-hospitalised father’s boxer shorts. Life can be ridiculous. On Monday I went to see John Wick 4 and ate a terrible hot dog. The person serving sprinkled it with dried (!), crunchy onions. Then yesterday I watched the first half of Michelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte. The two films serve different parts of me. Michelangelo Antonioni — I am Michael, my uncle was an Anthony who is now with the angels.
Content apocalypse
This is the tipping point. I’m fifty in two weeks. I’ve watched fifty percent of the 800 films I own, and even less of the books. The amount of time I have left is constricting, but the number of books and films I own keeps expanding. Something has to give. I need a new philosophy. What I consume (bleurgh) must feed (this is family trauma speaking) whatever I am creating. I envy those who have perhaps always done this. Collecting and list-making is the hoarder’s comfort.
Adieu, 2022
In time-honoured fashion, here are my favourite discoveries of 2022, in chronological order of publication or release. It’s been a year of three big creative adventures: getting a new job (first in fourteen years); a family holiday in France (first to Paris for a week, then to Morzine in the French Alps); setting up my Patreon (experimenting with a patrons-only podcast). There was very little fiction writing, but plenty of reflective writing.
Films, dreams, fiction and writing
I’ve come to think that films are intrinsically linked to my writing practice, but I’m worried my film-watching habit is more of a distraction than an inspiration.
Farewell, 2021
As 2022 comes into view upriver, the final days of 2021 flow past, and I couldn’t pass up the chance to reflect on what I’ve read, watched and written this year.
The great adjustment
Between January 2018 and December 2021, I watched 569 films. I know this because I track the films I watch on Letterboxd. That’s a lot of films.
In the Earth (2021)
A fascinating, horrible, blackly funny film about Covid, nature, group dynamics, and how humans exist in relation to other forms of life.
Ghostbusters II (1989)
To finish my parade of eighties sequels, I went with this, which I can remember seeing in the cinema at a birthday party. The chemistry isn’t the same, and Bill Murray is... unpleasant.
Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
Five years after the killings of Crystal Lake, a new camp has been created, and a killer again picks off the counsellors one by one.
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
Ten years after the Haddonfield killings, Michael Myers escapes, forcing Loomis to return and protect Laurie Strode’s daughter, Jamie.
Halloween II (1981)
When Michael Myers’ body goes missing, Dr Loomis continues his search on the streets of Haddonfield, while Laurie is taken to hospital and sedated.
Planet Terror (2007)
An accidentally released biochemical weapon turns soldiers into a pack of marauding flesh-eating mutants. Soon the local population swamp the hospital creating a relentless circus of cheesy dialogue and amusingly extreme violence.
Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1987)
Clowns on screen have never frightened me, not even Pennywise, although on the page he was a different proposition. This film isn’t trying to scare you.
Scream 4 (2011)
Sydney returns to Woodsboro on the fifteenth anniversary of the original killings to promote her new bookbut her niece, Jill, is in the High School, which presents another Ghostface with new victims.
Muppets Haunted Mansion (2021)
Gonzo decides to miss his friends Halloween party to take up an invitation by The Great MacGuffin, his favourite magician, to stay a night at the most haunted mansion in the world.
Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972)
An abusive husband has writer’s block. When a killer murders a woman he has agreed to meet, and then others are found dead, he forces his wife to help him.
Censor (2021)
Enid Baines is a censor at the British Board of Film Classification. Her parents decide it is time to have her long-missing sister declared dead. Enid’s daily life, the films she has to watch, and memories of her sister, begin to bleed together.
La Llorona (2019)
A former general found guilty of genocide is trapped in his house by protesters, and strange things begin to happen to the family as the ghosts of the past insist on being heard.
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Ana, a nurse, wakes up to the start of a zombie apocalypse, and manages to hook up with a police officer, Rhodes, and three other survivors and hide in a nearby shopping mall.
Night of the Demons (1988)
A disparate group of misfits are tormented by a demon after a seance-like party game on Halloween night. The second half of this film rips.
Saw (2004)
Two men wake up chained by the ankles to radiators on opposite sides of a locked room. There is a dead man between them with his brains blown out, clutching a tape recorder.
Triangle (2009)
Triangle is this year’s first such nugget of gold. It’s about the patterns of thought, feeling and action we find ourselves in, the bad habits we can’t break, especially with the people we love.
The Crazies (1973)
A military developed virus is accidentally released into the water supply of Evans City, Pennsylvania, and the military attempts to impose martial law to contain its spread.
My Bloody Valentine (1981)
A unique film set in a small mining town, with the young male characters mostly miners. It was exciting to see working class characters and locations in a film like this.
The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail (1971)
I though The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail would be a giallo, or at least a proto-slasher, but it is far more a crime-thriller. A wife inherits a million dollars and becomes the focus of a killer.
Nosferatu (1922)
The oldest unseen film in my collection. I appreciated the original Dracula and Frankenstein, but they were pretty dry in places. Nosferatu is ten years older again. This did feel like homework.
Salem’s Lot (1979)
Salem’s Lot has a special place in my heart. It was the first scary book I ever read. The film is the two part miniseries I remember from the eighties stitched together.
Nightmare Beach (1989)
The late eighties, Spring break in Florida, and thousands of young people are in bars and cars along the seafront, drinking, sunbathing and having sex. But this is Nightmare Beach.
A Quiet Place (2018)
Krasinski displays a touch of Spielberg in the way he shows the children’s lives, as well as in the adrenaline-inducing set pieces.
The War of the Worlds (1953)
I recently watched the cleak Spielberg/Cruise War of the Worlds, so I thought I’d go back to the original 1953 adaptation, whose bleakness is softened by the folksy charm of small town America.
The Thing (1982)
A perfect film. A shape-shifting alien picks off the crew of an Antartic research station. Suspicion turns to paranoia, and the remaining humans have stop the alien from taking over the world.
The Thing From Another World (1951)
A report of a crashed aircraft, a remote scientific outpost, a prickly doctor — and an alien whose unique biology threatens humanity.
Shadow in the Cloud (2020)
Horror stretches across many genres, and you can’t always know in advance how horror-y a film is, so with Shadow in the Cloud we are in war-action-horror territory, in that order.
Lisa and the Devil (1973)
One of the lesser-known corners of the Mario Bava-verse. Telly Savalas as the possible devil Leandro is an amusing presence, and if he is not particularly devilish, the dream-like plot definitely is.
The Addiction (1995)
This is a film thick with social commentary, philosophy texts and existential ideas. The first images we see are piles of dead bodies from the Holocaust and Vietnam.
Jakob’s Wife (2021)
The irrepressible Barbara Crampton and Larry Fessenden star in this story of a woman’s mid-life crisis being super-charged by an encounter with a vampire.
Werewolves Within (2021)
To kick off this year’s #31DaysofHorror I chose Werewolves Within, a comedy-whodunnit-horror based on a Ubisoft video game. It sounded like a fun October opener.
Horror AND sex!
Here we go again, with my fourth #31DaysofHorror. I’ve talked about this before, but watching these sorts of films makes me feel like I’m hanging out with my dad. This year I just want a reason to watch a lot of horror films.
Auguste
The Three Colours trilogy marked my move from July into August, and amusingly the fledgling judge in Red is called Auguste.
Inland Empire (2007)
An unusual and meta experience, but after three hours, as the end credits roll, I find I’m crying, because of the joyful music, yes, and because I’m exhausted.
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Events organically unfold, the images are striking, the narrative is confusing, characters are not who they seem to be, and in the last twenty minutes he reveals what’s really going on, sort of.
The Straight Story (1999)
If David Lynch were trying to somehow redress all the darkness of his earlier films in one go, then he would make The Straight Story.
Lost Highway (1997)
Lost Highway is a puzzle. It opens with a jealous husband who thinks his wife is having an affair, and ends with a deadly resolution, but what happens in between is ambiguous and complicated.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
A howl of pain from Laura Palmer, the murdered girl that opened the story of Twin Peaks. It’s difficult, heavy, hard to watch in places, and grapples with incest, rape, drug-taking, murder and domestic abuse.
Wild at Heart (1990)
Wild at Heart is a series of deliberately melodramatic, hyper-violent and sexual scenes stitched together into a road movie, with a tenuously-made connection to the Wizard of Oz.
Blue Velvet (1986)
Blue Velvet has a fearsome reputation but is also culturally beloved. Dennis Hopper’s over-the-top performance has become iconic, and its themes foreshadow those in the massively popular Twin Peaks.
Dune (1984)
I went into Dune thinking I would see something the critics were missing – I mean, how could the director of Eraserhead and The Elephant Man direct a complete dud? – and... it’s so over-the-top, it manages to not be awful.
The Elephant Man (1980)
The Elephant Man is as traditional and straightforward as Eraserhead is surreal and obtuse. Both are black and white, and Lynch does use some dream imagery in The Elephant Man, but they’re at opposite end of the narrative spectrum.
Eraserhead (1977)
So imaginative and pure and watchable and laugh-out-loud funny, which I didn’t expect at all. A psychosexual puzzle about the horrors of unplanned parenthood, marriage, intimacy, capitalism, poverty, dreams – you can take it any direction you like.
Writing gland
Time to stimulate my first draft writing gland and get my novel moving again. I’d run aground at twenty thousand words. Stephen King’s advice? Write every day and keep going.
Slippery surfaces
Am I doing weekly summary posts now? Perhaps I am. It helps me notice what impact the week’s books and films have had on me. Hand-written notes just get lost in the stream of ink on paper.
Autumn and The Long Goodbye
In Ali Smith’s Autumn, when discussing a piece of art, Daniel Gluck asks the young Elisabeth, ‘And what did it make you think about?’. I love that question.
She Dies Tomorrow (2020)
This isn’t a horror film, though it is marketed as one. The camera is often still as figures move towards us, faces blurred by lights or shadows, which creates a sense of dread.
To the Ends of the Earth (2019)
I couldn’t resist another film by my new favourite director, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, care of my Mubi subscription. Knowing a film I fancy is going to disappear in a few days makes me create the time to watch it.
A Short Film About Love (1988)
Tomek is nineteen, lonely and living with his possessive godmother in a Polish apartment block. Every evening he spies on Magda through his telescope when she comes home from work.
Creepy (2017)
The films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa were a revelation to me in October’s #31DaysOfHorror — I started with Pulse (2001), then went back to Cure (1997), and both were masterpieces.
Creativity 2.0(.21)
I wonder what next year will bring? I wonder how I can make my craft feel more fun? With those questions in mind, we enter a season of change.
Doctor Sleep (2019)
Danny Torrance is an alcoholic, but finds a place of peace and sobriety in New Hampshire, where he uses his shine to ease the deaths of the elderly people in a local hospice.
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
The Bride of Frankenstein contains some of the most iconic images in cinema, but it opens with a scene I really didn’t expect — Lord Byron and Percy Shelley praising Mary Shelley for her book, Frankenstein.
The Exorcist (1973)
A cultural behemoth. It’s an astonishing film and deserves the plaudits. As I watched it, the question that kept coming up in my mind was, why Regan?
Tenebre (1982)
Tenebre is set in Rome, but we could be anywhere, because the story stays in hotel rooms, suburban streets and modernist buildings made of concrete and glass.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
People in the background of shots look directly at the camera. A windscreen is a web of cracks that we struggle to see through. The score is spidery and jarring, and the camera is often off-kilter.
Land of the Dead (2005)
I’d been so careful in choosing the films up to this point, but for one night I thought I’d just go with something random, and here we are. Land of the fucking Dead.
Christine (1983)
Stephen King is brilliant at weaving vivid teenage experiences into his novels. Christine was one of the formative books of my childhood. But this is a horror film first and foremost.
Prom Night (1980)
Like Scream’s Ghostface, the killer in Prom Night can be dodged and knocked over. This is not Michael Myers. There is a lot of disco.
A Cure for Wellness (2017)
The vampiric financial services industry meets the parasitic wellness industry in a fairy tale where an ambitious young man is sent to a Swiss sanitorium to bring back his company’s rogue CEO.
The Dead Center (2019)
In a Nashville morgue, an unnamed man comes back to life and walks out. A short, sharp film, less than ninety minutes, and it zips along.
It Follows (2015)
The film opens with a wide shot of a leafy suburban street, and we look closely for whatever we think the director wants us to see. Like Jay, we are trained from the start to scan the horizon for trouble.
The Beyond (1980)
There is a portal to hell in the basement, and people get mysteriously hurt while working in the house. Like Hellraiser a few years later, the dead return to claim the ones that escape from hell.
#Alive (2020)
After Fulci’s barely moving dead, these running zombies are a bit of a shock. Technology is an ally, but the adult Joon-woo seems to be in a semi-infantile state.
The Mummy (1932)
The original Universal horror films are a bit of a blind spot for me. Imhotep has many magical powers, including mind control. Boris Karloff’s stare is a thing to behold.
City of the Living Dead (1980)
Zombies really bothered me as a kid. Seeing the insides of the human body spill out was as pure a vision of horror as I could imagine. Guts should not be outside of your body.
Blade (1998)
Blade is like a magical source of future movie ideas. The opening sequence is brilliant. A fun, if empty, blockbuster
Cure (1997)
Takabe, a detective in Tokyo, investigates a series of murders, each by a different killer, but all carving a cross into their victims throats.
Spring (2014)
If Guillermo del Toro shot a film scripted by David Cronenberg, based on a story by HP Lovecraft, then had it edited by Richard Linklater, you would get Spring.
Jacob’s Ladder (1991)
Jacob is beset by visions and fever dreams. We constantly switch between realities, from the Vietnamese jungle, to his home in New York City, and it’s bewildering, for him and us.
Noroi: The Curse (2005)
This mockumentary is made from grainy handheld video and low-resolution clips of Japanese televison shows. It revels in its fragmentary, low-fi nature. It feels cursed.
Berberian Sound Studio (2012)
Gilderoy is a fish out of water in a remote Italian sound studio. He thinks the film he's working on, The Equestrian Vortex, is about horses, but in fact is an Italian horror film about the torture of witches.
Piranha (1978)
Being nibbled to death by a swarm of piranha is a different agony, I imagine, to being bitten in half by a great white shark. It’s fun, with a surprisingly dark heart.
Fascination (1979)
Marc, a thief, steals a bag of gold from a gang, and is chased by them to a nearby chateau, where two women, Elisabeth and Eva, are waiting for the arrival of their marchioness.
Vampyres (1974)
The first of my #31DaysOfHorror choices this year that I would say is exploitation cinema, I chose Vampyres, naturally, because of the cover art.
Knife+Heart (2018)
Knife+Heart (Un couteau dans le cœur) is a modern giallo film that plays out in a gay porn production company in the summer of 1979.
Death of a Vlogger (2020)
A bang-up-to-date social media horror mockumentary. Twenty years on from Pulse, people still feel empty and disconnected, but now everyone has a webcam. Affecting, funny, and unnerving.
Pulse (2001)
The Tokyo in Pulse is empty and eerie. People are lonely and disconnected from each other. The characters are all young and, in one way or another, alone.
The Crow (1994)
Eric and his fiance Shelly are murdered by a gang of men on the night before their wedding. Eric’s soul cannot rest until he gets justice.
The Fog (1980)
The Fog is an old favourite. I watched it over and over again on VHS as a kid, recorded off the television, and it embedded Adrienne Barbeau’s radio DJ, alone in a lighthouse on the edge of town, as a lifelong crush.
Atlantics (2019)
Atlantics is art house, and it’s a romance, but it’s hardly a horror film. It is, however, fascinating.
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)
I wanted to start this year’s #31DaysOfHorror with a classic. I’m trying to watch only films I haven’t seen, and Creature From the Black Lagoon was the oldest unwatched horror film I owned.
31 Days of Horror, 2020
With 2020 being a demented shitshow, I did fleetingly wonder if I wanted to do #31DaysOfHorror again this year, but then I remembered why I love horror films — they are an escape from reality.
Reality Bites
Reality Bites is still surprisingly affecting. I had low expectations. I’m not sure why. There is something about your early twenties that is particularly painful and potent.
Anomalisa (2015)
Everyone looks the same to Michael Stone. He is in Cincinnati to give a talk at a conference. He is desperate for something real in his life, an authentic person who is not like everyone else.
Point Break
It’s tricky to find films that my fifteen-year-old son will want to watch with his forty-something parents, but this seemed to sit in the sweet spot — surfing, armed robbers, a cocky young hero, skydiving, a love interest and lots of banter.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Siblings Sally and Franklin come to a remote part of Texas to make sure their relatives remains haven’t been dug up from a local cemetery in a bizarre, gruesome local crime. But Franklin’s curiosity gets them into trouble.
Exhibition (2013)
A married couple, D and H, have created their own emotional ecosystem, balancing intimacy and distance, in a big modernist house somewhere in Central London.
High Rise
I read several Ballard books in the late nineties — my mid-twenties — starting with short stories, before being entranced by the original shiny silver paperback cover of Super-Cannes, and then going back to his earlier work.
1: Written on the Body/Let the Right One In
Week 1. I'm going to try to read a novel and watch a film each week in 2018. In time, I'll work out what I'm doing with it. We'll see if it sticks. I love the idea.
It Follows (2014)
I avoided watching It Follows because the idea was so unsettling. Like most unpleasant things avoided, the reality was nothing like as bad as I imagined. It’s actually genius — a really great film.