Totally Jinxed

The Horror of the 80s: When Will I Be Famous?

2012-01-26T17:18:00.003+01:00

When I was a young thing, American pop combo New Kids on the Block were the wholesome young pinups of choice for young girls across the land. With their catchy, if somewhat illogical, songs and their boyish good looks they set many a teenage heart aflutter as they insisted on ‘Hangin’ Tough’ all over the UK charts. Although most of us weren’t entirely sure what ‘Hangin’ Tough’ actually meant we were reasonably certain that it was something terribly cool and American as New Kids were doing it with abandon.

This all worked well for some, but fundamentally it had a flaw - we were British - we didn’t entirely understand these perky Bostonians and their oddly synchronised dancing of the street, we needed something else, something that captured the England of our time with all its sullen irascibility. Enter Bros – two leather clad twins of infinite blondeness and the other one in the back in an anorak.

Bros wilfully set fire to the charts with their peculiar brand of Aryan blandness striding through the pages of Smash Hits like pedestrian Norse gods with the other one tagging along behind. They were largely responsible for semi-petrified hair, bottle cap shoes and uncomfortable dancing to their nasal and distinctly trilly version of ‘Silent Night’ at Christmas discos across the land. Yes, they were lacquered pioneers; in fact, the only Bros downside apparent was the unfortunate side effect of inspiring a generation of pubescent girls to dress like stereotypical 80s lesbians. But this was small price to pay.

Upstarts Bros petulantly demanded of us in 1987 ‘When Will I be Famous?’ and the answer was ‘we’ve scheduled in some time for you around about 1987-89 and then you can have some more low-key fame round about 2007, but only you, Luke. Matt, the other one, you’re on your own. I’m sorry, our hands are tied.’

In a bizarre turn of events Luke Goss would, indeed, achieve a level of fame as a minor league horror star. Let us take a peek at his blondness in action.

Jared Nomack, Blade II

In Blade II our 80s icon emerged as new breed of vampire and carrier of the Reaper Virus. Doing Britain proud, Goss the elder (10 minutes older) looks suitably pale and ailing, as is the British way, as he chomps his way through lesser vamps and engages in exuberant battle with Wesley Snipes. For me this was the blonde popstrel’s acting debut (I believe he did do some other stuff previously, but this was the first I’d paid attention to) and I have to admit that I was dubious, in fact, I found the whole prospect laughingly ridiculous. But, surprisingly, the golden maned one acquits himself quite nicely in his first horror outing and manages to create some genuinely creepy moments, but then I suppose the Snipes factor probably worked to his advantage by creating a talent vortex that makes the even inanimate objects look a better performer by comparison (not to be confused with Reeves factor which goes one step further by making the thin air around him more interesting and well-rounded.) Only joking, Wesley, I’m completely serious about Keanu though.

Jack, The Dead Undead

Really not sure what was going on here....vampires vs. zombie vampires apparently. A meandering, awkward mess of nothingness for the most part. Teenagers arse about in a motel getting eaten by the undead until (thankfully!) a third of Bros show up. The drumming third of Bros plays Jack the leader of a heavily armed gang of mercenaries who also happen to be vampires, the good kind not the bad zombie kind (there’s a difference apparently). The rest of film is largely action, weaponry and killing bad zombie vampires peppered with peculiar flashbacks spanning centuries to flesh out the good vampires. Not the best film, I couldn’t help feeling that I was watching the pilot for a TV series for the majority of it, but, he of the locks of blonde puts in a pretty good showing wielding firearms and being all macho and commanding all over the place which is what was called for the wake of all the chewed up teenagers. Go the 80s and go Britain!

Also notable for a cameo from legend Forrest J Ackerman as a wheelchair bound zombie vampire.

Kale, Unearthed

Massive silliness all round. Our ex-pop pin up plays, a little incongruously, a gun toting archaeologist who, like best archaeologists do gun toting or not, goes poking about in a Native American burial round and accidently unleashes a ravenous, toothsome creature on humanity. All manner of bland chaos ensues and we all wish we’d watched something else instead. Not Goss’ greatest outing, but he puts a brave face on and battles through doing the very best with what he’s given.

Prince Nuada, Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Once again reunites the Gosster with Ron Perlman (he was also in Blade II, as if you didn’t know). Ron Perlman is at his awesome.....sorry, force of habit. I meant to say that Luke Goss plays the prince of the elves who takes on Ronnie P in his ruthless pursuit for the a third of a crown that will resurrect the Golden Army and destroy mankind.

Hellboy II heralds the return of the blondeness. In these later years our Luke has largely been all moody and shaven headed, but in Hellboy II he is so blonde again that it’s blinding, and, unexpectedly from what one might expect from an elf, he’s a bit ruddy kick ass too, but obviously it’s the blondeness that’s important.

While he may not have been the greatest drummer (or even the greatest drummer in Bros for all we know) little Luke Goss is growing up to be something of genre star and, despite my initial misgivings, I for one am rather pleased about that.

Where Are They Now?

Matt Goss (twin) – Surprisingly he is currently packing in the crowds at Caesar’s Palace in Vegas in a live stage show produced by the creator of the Pussycat Dolls. I find this hilarious. Apparently he’s also written a children book and does an advert for Yorkshire Tea. Actually, in retrospect, this is more hilarious.

Craig Logan (not twin/bassist/anorak wearer) - Even more surprisingly Logan became a song-writer and was nominated for an Ivor Novello award. He went into management and is now in charge of Pink. Who knew?!

Whatever Happened To Baby Jinx?

2011-12-21T23:33:00.002+01:00

I'm here, I'm here!!!

Bloody hell it’s been a while. First off my most massive and hearty apologies for disappearing for months on end without so much as a by-your-leave, I’m a shocking disgrace and I shouldn’t be tolerated. Secondly, some excuses: it’s been a bit of tough time in The House of Jinx. I was made redundant at the end of September - given as I did very little at work for a good year this wasn’t much of a surprise, also, those of you who have read previous posts will know I despised my job with a fiery passion will also know this wasn’t a great loss. However, financially the lack of income (such as it was) is a bit devastating, point being we’ve all been a bit miserable around here for a while hence my recent absence. But, fear not, we have been handling it in the typically grown-up fashion you would expect of me. The way my husband and I see it is that we’re like a long running TV show, we’ve been around for a lot seasons now and the producers have decided to throw in a bit of conflict to liven things up. We reckon things should work themselves quite nicely and we’ll be back to wacky scrapes and one liners by the season finale.

My other not very good excuse for not being around is that apparently my coping mechanism for dealing with redundancy was to watch nothing but plane based action films for a very long time, an odd coping mechanism I’ll grant you, but apparently that was what was called and I did become weirdly obsessed for a while. Some of the highlights included; all of the Airport films (awesome!), Executive Decision (hilarious), Con Air and Air Force One (obviously), Snakes On A Plane (snakes on a plane?! Don’t really need to add anything there) and something that reunited the cast of Family Ties much to my delight (Ma Keaton and Mallory’s boyfriend Nick in the same film, playing a brother and sister team that happen to be both the President and a pilot! Excited? I nearly died.)

In addition to this I also become briefly obsessed with the sub genre of ‘train based action starring Denzel Washington’ (this wasn’t as fruitful an undertaking sadly).

Anyway, enough of this nonsense, what I mean by all this is that I’m alive and well and as soon as things settle down here I will be back to more regular blogging and catching up with all of yours. Before I bugger off for the traditional Christmas screening of Die Hard, I would really like to say a massive thank you for the lovely emails I’ve received while I’ve been away. I can’t even begin to express what it has meant to know that people from all over the world have been concerned about me. I have great friends and I’m very lucky and grateful. Massive kisses and love go to my girl Jenn who is just so fantastically awesome there aren’t even words and to my wonderful Matthew who is not only a genius but also the most kind and thoughtful man (my presents were the best ever, Matthew, they cheered me up SO much.)

Before I definitely go, I promise the next post will definitely be a proper post about something horror related that isn’t me. I swear.

Me looking like a bag lady, but loving Mattew's presents

Jinx Lives!

2011-11-03T18:50:00.000+01:00

for shame

Normal(ish) service (and apologies) will resume shortly.

Miss you.

xxx

The Birthday Post: Why Jaws is the Best Film Ever

2011-08-26T11:48:00.001+02:00

‘Y’all know me. Know how I earn a livin’.’

As you may know, (because I keep mentioning it) me and Jaws are the same age. Well, to be accurate, Jaws is a couple of months older, but apparently it’s only me that’s counting that, Jaws has yet to express an opinion so probably isn’t bothered. Anyway, as it’s my stupid 36th birthday tomorrow I thought it would be nice (and also might distract me from the horror of the event a bit) to celebrate Jaws and why it’s The Greatest Movie Ever.

I’m sure that there is a complex and intricate criteria for determining the Greatest Movie Ever. A lot of learned people are probably involved and it probably takes into account a great many elements of the filmmaking process, the artistic merits of the finished product and box office results. Or it’s a pubic phone in on Channel Four. Either way, it’s nearly always Citizen Kane.

Now, while Orson Welles’ masterwork may well be a incomparable example of filmmaking genius, I prefer to judge my Greatest Film Ever on a different criteria, I prefer to consider how often I can quote any given movie in my daily life. Hence, Jaws is the Greatest Film Ever, followed closely by Ghostbusters.

Jaws is distinctly quotable, it is choc full of memorable lines that can lend gravitas and drama to any otherwise prosaic occasion. Here are a few of my favourites and some potential uses.

‘Y’all know me. Know how I earn a livin’.’
I use this all the time as a precursor to the introduction of my opinion in any discussion (see above).

‘I’ll find him for three, but I’ll catch him, and kill him, for ten.’
Obviously good in any bartering situation, but this generally also works quite well as a confusion tactic when someone asks to you to do anything.

‘This was no boat accident!’
An incredulous rebuff perfect of pointing out the mistakes or incorrect assumptions of others.

‘Ha, ha - they're all gonna die’
Ideal for expressing derision at other peoples’ stupidity.

‘You have city hands’
First and foremost this can be used at any time of physical contact to inject an air of vague unease into the situation. Being introduced to someone new can be a wholly new and exciting experience by saying this on shaking hands, friends’ new partners, business associates or clients, even medical professionals, you can immediately disquiet them for the rest of the meeting by throwing a little Quint in there. Also, depending on what intonation you choose to employ, it can operate on a dual level as the recipient can never be sure if you are coming on to them in a uniquely disturbing way or subtly disparaging them. It can also operate as in inarguable closer in any argument.

‘You’re gonna need a bigger boat’
The classic! Variations can be used in any situation as an expression of how ill-equipped you are to deal with a particular task at hand.

‘For that you get the head, the tail, the whole damn thing.’
Ah, the multipurpose quote. Can be utilised to highlight how great and indispensable you are, it can also be used as qualifier when you are endeavouring summation of an argument or opinion or even a sales pitch. Furthermore, with the right sarcastic delivery, is also suitable for the illumination of extortionate prices of miscellaneous goods and products.
I have also used this in reference to our kittens so many times, particularly when I’m obliged to help out with claw trimming.

‘Here’s to swimmin’ with bow-legged women.’
There is never a situation where this toast is inappropriate. I used it at my mother’s last wedding. And at my own.
‘That’s some bad hat, Harry.’
Perfect for deriding anyone’s sartorial choices, or just choices or opinions full stop.

Obviously there are lots of reasons why Jaws is the best film ever, it’s phenomenally awesome being just one, but its quotability has got to rank up there, more people should be using Jaws quotes in everyday conversation. In fact, I positively demand it!

Things That Scare My Husband

2011-08-17T16:36:00.002+02:00

My husband has many admirable qualities; he’s intelligent and well versed in a myriad of interesting subjects, he’s well read, he’s hysterically funny, he’s thoughtful and kind and loving and tells me I’m beautiful countless times each day even when I’m quite patently not, like first thing in the morning, or when I’m full of cold or when I’m yelling furiously out the window at whatever has annoyed me at any given time. He’s also a diehard horror fan and zombie expert and you’d want him on your team come the zombocalyse. These are all, indeed, admirable qualities. However, he is also inclined to a certain skittishness that, while endearing, is still slightly less than entirely admirable. My husband is easily startled by certain things, rather like a small bunny on a motorway. In fact, in certain circumstances, I’m essentially married to Shaggy from Scooby Doo.

So, because I’m an awesome and supportive wife, let’s have a look at some of the things that scare my husband.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

The Blair Witch Project’s simple brilliance took the horror world by storm way back in 1999. It took my husband by storm a little later than that, probably somewhere around 2001. It has been sporadically terrifying him ever since. His fear on the Blair Witch front can largely be seen as twofold – scary ghost witches and nature. The truth is we’re not country people, hiking, camping, even gardening, are things that happen to other people, other people who are clearly mad. We are definitely soft city folk, we like comfort and convenience and indoor plumbing. Immersing oneself in sundry flora and fauna is stuff best left to David Bellamy, or that pigtailed kid from Little House on the Prairie, it’s not for the likes of us. Needless to say the very premise of The Blair Witch Project is immediately the stuff of pure, primal horror in our house. For my husband, The Blair Witch is a nightmare from the outset in terms of location but beyond that, once the fledging filmmakers get lost and the spooky noises and flickering shadows start kicking off, he generally dissolves into the couch displaying all the spinal fortitude of a particularly cowardly mollusc. The enduring problem for him with The Blair Witch Project is the corner-staring screamy ending, it leaves him bereft and bewildered searching for answers that just aren’t there, like a small child who’s just been punched by Santa.

I always want The Blair Witch Project to end like an episode of Scooby Doo where we get to find out that the Blair Witch is really Mr. Jenkins the disgruntled owner of the local mill, I think this ending would help my husband to have the kind of closure he needs.

Paranormal Activity (2007)

I never liked Paranormal Activity. It sold itself to me as the scariest movie ever ever EVER and then was decidedly lacking. I wasn’t scared, I was annoyed, partly I was annoyed for not being scared, but mainly I was annoyed because even I, and I’m quite frankly lovely, like Anne Diamond, not only didn’t care if hideous things happened to the ghastly lead characters, but was actually actively encouraging of horrible things happening to them. My husband on the other hand was scared. While I was feeling downright let down by the whole cinematic event he was balancing on a razor edge of fear. Even early in the film, as Katie and the bafflingly named Micah are barely even entertaining the possibility that their home has a demonic squatter, my husband was already braced to the point of pulling several muscles for the night vision terrors that lay ahead. Paranormal Activity clearly plays on our most basic fears, the childlike certainty that monsters lurk in the shadows of our rooms and that every nocturnal sound is something evil closing in on us. I myself am a big fan of sleeping so even I can understand the unsettling building dread of having the sanctity of your sleepy time bower destroyed. My husband, on the other hand, finds the whole thing to be an exercise primordial terror; the expectation, the jump scares, the sinister sounds, demons, just generally, and thee eternal standing and staring. The last one there may be a little bit my fault, I do have a tendency for apparently creepy eyes open sleeping and sometimes, more alarmingly, singing - this has probably damaged him immeasurably.

Personally I found the scariest thing about Paranormal Activity to be the ghastly lead couple and their ghastly relationship, my husband would beg to differ, when he comes out from behind the couch.

Exorcist III (1990)

I think The Exorcist III is highly underrated, I think it suffers partly from the enormity and awesomeness of The Exorcist, but also from the fact that it has the number 3 attached to it. In most cases when the number 3 is attached to something it’s usually a bit rubbish – the obvious exception to this rule being Shark Attack 3 Megalodon, but for my money The Exorcist III is pretty snazzy; it has some great character actors, some brilliant dialogue and is, quite frankly more than a little bit scary.

Now while the whole concept makes my husband a little uneasy, it is that one bit that truly terrifies him. We all know ‘the bit’. ‘That bit’ makes him squeal like a small child. ‘That bit’ it is often used as a measuring scale in our little family to determine how scary something actually is. In testament to how enduringly terrifying ‘that bit’ is to him, we had never actually watched it together until just a few months ago, we hadn’t particularly not watched it because he was scared of it, but rather because he was frightened that ‘that bit’ would let him down and not be nearly as scary as his childhood self remembered it. Turns out he needn’t have worried, girlish shrieks still rang about our house at the moment in question and there was a moment after where he did momentarily debate having be accompany him to the bathroom, just in case.

I’d like to point out that this post was entirely my husband’s idea and that I’m really not pointing and laughing at him behind his back. Honestly. I do all my pointing and laughing to his face.

Hiding behind a small cat. Probably watching some scary ghosts

Other things that scare my husband include:

Clowns

Spiders

Escalators

Mushrooms

More from my husband’s grab-bag of miscellaneous fears later.

Guest Post: 5 Excellent Evil Clowns

2011-08-03T10:13:00.000+02:00

There are a lot of awesome things about blogging about horror, I mean seriously, it is awesome, but the most awesome thing about being part of this community is definitely the people I’ve been lucky enough to ‘meet’. It’s just the best. Everyday I am inspired, enthralled, moved, informed, cheered up and given a damn blummin’ good laugh by all your comments and posts, and the support I have had recently from so many of you when I’ve been a bit down with my silly foot and with my whole inability to get a better job and all that has been just amazing. I don’t even have words to express how grateful I am for all of that and to say how brilliant you all are. Because of all this I am naturally, therefore, always thrilled when I get emails relating to my blog and from people I’ve been lucky enough to ‘meet’ here. So when I got an email recently from lovely Ross Tipograph from the fabulous Star Costumes I was very excited and rapidly became even more excited when Ross very kindly agreed to write a guest post for me. And he wrote it about evil clowns which just makes it even more awesome. So, ladies and gentleman, please be upstanding (or cower in a corner, both are valid responses) for Ross Tipograph’s Excellent Evil Clowns:

Clowns have such a bad rap. It’s funny how they started out in culture as harbingers of joy because these days, they’re connected more with hiding in dark corners and waiting to kill than with making balloon animals. The horror genre is notorious for exploiting how freakish they can be. It’s up to us to call out five perpetrators of this crime.

5 Excellent Evil Clowns

PENNYWISE from Stephen King’s It

Tim Curry is nearly unrecognizable as the subject of so many children’s nightmares, including mine. He’s a shapeshifter, adapted from the shapeshifting creature from King’s delirious novel, but mostly he’s a clown in a white jumpsuit and razor fangs that bleed. His eyes may be the scariest part – when he’s at his peak of fury, they glow a deathly blue, weirdly magnetic, which makes them all the more terrifying. He stalks a group of small-town kids, and then, even worse, continues stalking as they become adults. BEST MOMENT: Stretching his arm out of a photo album…

TOY CLOWN from Poltergeist

The clown here is such a supporting “character,” he’s almost difficult to include – but he truly makes an impression. He’s up there with the sliding kitchen chair and the horribly menacing hurricane trees outside the little boy’s window; all parts compose the pseudo-ridiculous Spielberg ‘80s classic. The closet full of violent sucking wind that consumes poor Carol Anne, is nothing in comparison to the toy that comes alive from under the bed. BEST MOMENT: …Under the bed.

KILLJOY from Killjoy

Here’s one you’ve never heard of, unless you scanned the outrageous box cover in Blockbuster one day – like me, and then rented it. When I was twelve. A couple of friends and I got it out of morbid curiosity and watched in one afternoon: it’s an “urban horror,” a sadly condescending sub-genre name for a horror movie tailored for African-American audiences, in which a tiny clown doll comes to life and stalks those around him for no apparent reason. But he is scary as hell – what the movie lacks in everything else, it makes up for in this creature’s make-up. Director of Killjoy, wherever you are, you’re being praised right here. BEST MOMENT: All.

ZEEBO from Are You Afraid of the Dark?

The children’s horror anthology from 1991 made an unforgettable mark on its tiny viewers for creativity and imagination. Nothing compares to Zeebo, the ever-chuckling gangster in clown’s clothing, a myth invented in the very first episode ever of this classic series. The myth, of course, is reality, and the clown brings torment to a very unfortunate victim. He breaks into the boy’s home, screws with his microwave, leaves dark messages on the walls… BEST MOMENT: Leaving smokey cigar butts in his trail. This is a children’s show.

KILLER KLOWNS from Killer Klowns from Outer Space

Now these are just bizarre. This campy late-‘80s sci-fi midnight movie boasts creature make-up that’s not exactly scary as it is ugly. The most memorable part of this movie, where the alien Klowns hi-jack ice cream trucks and kill people with cotton candy missiles, is the grotesque faces of the villains. They giggle and shake and destroy you with sugary goodness. You’ll have a good time, but you’ll have no idea what the hell you’re watching. BEST MOMENT: The Klowns lure our protagonists into a demonized funhouse tent for the finale.

When he’s not reviewing movies, Ross is writing about Halloween costumes.

Red Rocks!

2011-07-28T15:22:00.001+02:00

I love red! I think it’s awesome, awesome like Def Leppard, and kittens, and Tony Todd, and Saturdays, and Christmas, and pizza, and horror triple pack DVDs and Magic Sand…….

Yup, I do love red and it’s the hair colour I’ve stuck to most enduringly. While I have had many a ridiculous hair colour in my time, red is the one I always come back to, it suits me, it makes happiest, I feel most comfortable and most like myself as a redhead. And, as far as I’m concerned, you can never be too red.

However, recently, I’ve been a bit blue. Not for any particular reason, just a bit down, kind of like how you feel just after Christmas when all the excitement is over and you are faced with going back to work/school and the long, bleak months of cold and snow and ice and sleet and general freezing misery stretch out ahead. I hasten to add at this point that I’m absolutely fine, this current, vague existential ennui is just a passing fad that will dissipate instantly just a soon as I spot something shiny and get distracted, so nothing to worry about.

Now, to get back to the point (kind of), one of the reasons I am wee bit down is because of my day job. My day job sucks, it’s a monstrous parasite that is slowly destroying my soul with its monotony and general hideousness (I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way). Fact is that I’m ill-suited to my day job, it utilises absolutely none of my skills or pervious experience and training, and, in fact, to all intents and purposes, I could be replaced with a wire coat hanger and no one would probably notice, productivity might even increase. But ultimately we all have to do what we have to do to make ends meet, especially in this current climate. Really I need to find a new job, but again, this current climate makes that difficult. I did, however, have a job interview last week. I didn’t get it. I’m still not at the point, but, trust me, I’m getting there. It wasn’t a great job, I didn’t particularly want it except that it was a little more money for 10 less hours (this will give some idea of the pitiful wage I am on at the moment, it’s shocking, it really is). I was, however, glad that I did the interview.

Interviews are horrific, no one normal likes interviews, I utterly hate interviews, I dread them, largely because I really don’t like talking myself, I know that you are not going to believe that for a second and justifiably considering all I seem to do here is witter on about myself, I’m doing it now, for heaven’s sake, but really it’s true. By nature I’m really a self-deprecating person and don’t generally feel the need to be constantly patted on the back for every little thing I accomplish, consequently I tend not to make very much of any achievements I make, in a public sense, and I am often self mocking. This isn’t through any lack of self-confidence or self-esteem or anything silly like that, quite the opposite; I’m secure in myself and don’t feel the need to make myself feel superior in any respect, more significantly it’s my sense of humour and you have to work with what material you have. Add to those facts that I’m British, and we generally find that kind of self praise and boastfulness distasteful. All of this combined gives you the reason I hate interviews - I’m just not very good at them. But despite my clear inabilities in this vital area, I do generally tend to come across quite well; I’m intelligent and eloquent, I have diverse experiences, I’m personable, I’m kind and genuinely interested in others, I have a lot of pretty darn great qualities, but I never get any job I interview for and this is really quite limiting. But again, ultimately, this is largely my own fault and I know it is. When it comes down to it, when a lot of people interview for a job a lot of them are going to be excellent and when an employer comes to making a decision as to who employ in the real world the vast majority are more likely to pick the more conventional looking candidate over the blousy tattooed broad with ridiculous hair and too much make up. I do not mean this as any negative reflection on anyone involved in any of these processes, absolutely not, or on myself for that matter, but I’d be naïve not to recognise that that is downfall for me. But, when all is said and done, that is my fault, not theirs, it’s my decision to look the way I do, and I’m fine with that (I’d like to point out that I do scrub up fairly well). I could tone myself down; hide the tattoos better, dye my hair a more natural colour and wear more subtle make up, effectively I could be someone else for the sake of employability, but I don’t want to. A long time ago I made an informed decision that I wasn’t going to comprise myself to conform to what society may expect from me, or I may perceive that it expects, I am happy to be me, and, for the most part, people generally accept that without question and that’s just great, and people who know me love me because of these factors not in spite on them, and that’s even better.

So yeah, I’m an unemployable unnatural redhead and I’m proud!! That really took a long time to get to the point, many apologies. Anyway, to cheer me up in the face of defeat, and to celebrate my unashamed redness and the individuality in all of us no matter who we are, where we come from, what we believe and who and what we love, I have complied a pictorial jubilee of images of red in horror and genre film, TV and literature.

Yeah, red is awesome. And I got two pics of Ron Perlman as Hellboy in there, did you spot that? Hell yeah!

Just wanted to add to anyone who has emailed me recently (by recently this could mean the last few months), my email account is being weird, I keep replying to emails and then it sends me them back a few days later claiming failure (this is actually quite depressing symbolic of my like at the moment now I come to write it down). I will continue to seek resolution to this issue, please don’t think I am ignoring anyone because I’m absolutely not, I will respond as technology ceases its conspiracy against me. Damn machines.

Foot Watch 2011

I’m off for my second lot of cortisone injections next Thursday. Whoo hoo! Although I know what to expect now, I’m still none to happy about this state of affairs. I will, however, get to spend quite a few days on the couch as I won’t be able to walk, so if anyone has watched anything awesome recently that they think I should see please let me know, I shall have a considerable amount of time on my hands.

The Horror of the 80s: Part Two

2011-07-12T11:34:00.001+02:00

Pssst, 80s, are you there? It’s me – Jinx - again. I was wondering; if you’re not busy, do want to hang out some more? We could play some Pac-Man or we could practice our dance moves to the top 40 I taped off the radio, or we could do each other’s hair and you could make mine look like Tiffany’s. Hell, yeah, Tiffany! Oh, I know, even better, we could wriggle into our Snoopy jammies and watch some movies. Yeah, 80s, lets do that.

C.H.U.D. (1984)

When the homeless population of New York begin disappearing at an alarming rate, a concerned policeman along with a photographer and his girlfriend and the man who runs the homeless shelter begin to investigate. Little do they know exactly what is lurking in the sewers beneath the city.

A few weeks ago I straddled the arm of the couch and spent a considerable amount of time pretending to be Cher in the ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’ video. (Everyone's got to have a hobby, mine's pretending to be Cher, ok?) This made me feel like a silly teenager again. Worrying, but true. And this is how C.H.U.D. makes me feel. There’s something delightfully retro about C.H.U.D., and I mean retro even for the 80s, that appeals to me.

The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)

In the employ of a large pharmaceutical company an anthropologist travels to Haiti to investigate rumours of a drug used by black magic practitioners to turn people in zombies.

Love me a voodoo yarn. And The Serpent and the Rainbow is one hell of a voodoo yarn. Stylish, colourful and delicious, and Bill Pullman, which for some reason I’m always a little surprised about, the Bill Pullman bit I mean, not the first bit, I don’t know why Bill Pullman surprises me, but he does, I just don’t expect to see him places and then he’s there, or maybe I always get him confused with Bill Paxton, yes, that might be it. But, more to the point, The Serpent and the Rainbow is genuinely creepy and a must see. It also stars the wonderful Cathy Tyson who I believe isn’t appreciated enough as an actor.

The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

A home alone teenager decides to have a slumber party and not to invite new girl in school, and conveniently girl next door (well, across the street) to join in the fun. Unfortunately for our teenage hotties a multiple murderer with a propensity for power tools has escaped and is at large in the neighbourhood. Naturally he soon finds his way to the party and the scantily clad teenage nymphs soon find themselves in all manner of trouble and the unpopular new girl becomes their only chance of survival.

Written originally as a parody of the slasher genre by feminist author Rita Mae Brown, but ultimately filmed in all seriousness, The Slumber Party Massacre is the gift that keeps on giving. I don’t really need to say any more than; boobies, drills, blood and phallic imagery. It like the horror fan’s Christmas all wrapped up in a big blood stained bow, with a free pizza delivery thrown in. While as a woman maybe I’d have liked it to have been the fully realised feminist parody it could have been, and it does have its moments, as a horror fan I just love it regardless.

Terror Train (1980)

Any 80s horror that has Jamie Lee Curtis in it is going to be awesome, add to the JLC, one David Copperfield, and an array of ridiculous fancy dress costumes and the awesome just keeps getting awesomer.

At a college fraternity New Year's Eve party, Alana Maxwell (JLC) is lightly coerced into participating in a hilarious prank that any rationally human being can see is bloody stupid idea from the outset. Instead of saying that this is bloody stupid and telling the wacky japesters to bugger off, Alana instead climbs onboard the stupid wagon and lures the shy and awkward butt of the prank Kenny Hampson into a darkened room with the promise of sex. Really Kenny should have known that this was going to end badly so partially he really did deserve to find a woman’s corpse in the bed rather than the promised Jamie Lee. Understandably traumatised by this turn of events Kenny winds up in a psychiatric hospital.

Failing to realise how badly this bodes, three years later the same get together and hold a costume party aboard a train and as the partygoers begin to disappear it would appear that Kenny is back for bloody revenge.

Classic slasher fare - but on a train! Terror Train is a tense and claustrophobic thrill ride peppered with promiscuous teenagers, decent deaths, an outfit switching killer and cowboy Ben Johnson. And if that wasn’t enough Terror Train also features the bizarre presence of illusionist and notorious supermodel worrier David Copperfield, starring as a creepy illusionist Copperfield’s acting reminds us that he is illusionist who worries supermodels.

Heck yeah, high five me, 80s! Woo!! You’re my best friend, 80s, I want to dress you in my love, all over your body…. Sorry there, 80s, that was a bit creepy, wasn’t it? I promise it won’t happen again. 80s? Where you going?.....come back…….

Childhood Horror: The Child Catcher

2011-06-29T10:09:00.000+02:00

There are many scary things about childhood; almost everything else is bigger than you for a start, that’s very scary, and then you’ve got strangers, parked cars (according to Dave Prowse), maths, impending acne, and the fact that seemingly every other week you are taken to the doctor to be jabbed with needles to guard against an endless variety of terrible diseases that are apparently constantly trying to kill you. And, as if that wasn’t enough, sometimes, people, with absolutely no thought to future consequences to the innocent children who are, indeed, our future, make the illogical decision to insert the most terrifying characters and imagery into seemingly harmless pieces of co-called children’s entertainment. A prime example of this is Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s The Child Catcher. I mean really, who thought this was a good idea?

Eeep

Like the unholy offspring of a spider and an undead funeral director, The Chid Catcher stalked onto our screens 43 years ago and has filled mini hearts with terror ever since, and probably some big ones too. Just to make him even more horrifying, The Child Catcher came fully equipped with a great big net, a savage looking hook and an all action cart cage cleverly disguised as the ultimate child attractant, a sweetshop, this is precisely why our parents so vehemently advise us against sweets and strangers. The only consolation here is that if Dick Van Dyke’s kids were really so dumb as to be tempted out from hiding by the badly disguised skeletal form of creeping pure evil then it probably would have been for the best if they were removed from the gene pool altogether. I really have no sympathy for them.

Largely their own fault

Splitting his time equally between smelling cheeeldren and stalking about balletically brandishing lollipops in their general direction, The Child Catcher was in the employ Baron and Baroness Bomburst and charged to capture and imprison any errant children from the streets of Vulgaria, a task he undertook with all due evil relish.

With Benny Hill (also inappropriate for children)

I have to confess that as a child I actually wasn’t that scared of The Chid Catcher. I suspect that this is because I came from a family of dancers so therefore was on some level aware of the aesthetics of movement and what it can create. Also I didn’t like sweets, and wasn’t dumb so I knew I’d be ok. Weirdly though, as an adult (ish), I can see and appreciate how truly terrifying he was, I mean really scary. Honestly, 60s, what were you thinking?

Horror Hospital!

2011-06-15T11:38:00.001+02:00

No, not 1973 horror classic starring lovely Michael Gough and seventies love machine Robin Askwith, no, it’s all about me! Though Horror Hospital would have been better and more fun, sorry, for letting you down there.

I’m off this afternoon to get my stupid foot injected with steroids. Yay! I’m getting myself through this horrific trauma by partially hoping that it is going to turn me into some manner of freaky footed superhero, probably one with one massive foot that is very good at kicking things but mainly spends the rest of the time running round in a small, tight circle. This is probably not going to happen.

Stupid foot

I’m fairly certain that my tolerance for pain is quite high. I've sat and been tattooed for five hours straight, for Perlman’s sake, not to mention the fact that I wandered round with this agonising foot fiasco for a good eight months saying ‘it’ll be fine’ through gritted teeth before I finally relented and sought medical attention. However, medical pain is far different from fun tattoo pain or avoiding medical pain pain. I’m fairly certain that this hospital escapade is going to go one of two ways; either my inherent politeness gene will kick in and I’ll be lovely and acquiescent and merely deal with the pain by giving a slight, ladylike, grimace (much like how I’m sure women in the 50s dealt with childbirth, if cinema has taught me anything) or my crazy, mental gene will kick in and I’ll scream, yell and swear and probably stab the surgeon in the head with the hypodermic (in this instance I shall probably wind up either in custody at Her Majesty’s pleasure or sectioned so if I’m AWOL for a while you can probably guess I went with the latter option).

In the meantime, if you miss me, you can investigate my new Tumblr and plough through the ridiculous assortment of things I think about on a daily basis (confession: I have no clue what Tumblr is, does, or how you use it, I just saw other people had one and I wanted one too, I’m like a 35 year old brat).

Right, I’m off like a brave, little soldier to investigate this fresh new hell of alleged tumour reduction. Think kind thoughts of me. (I’m such a big, fat drama queen!!)

Book Review: Zombie Ohio

2011-06-06T10:27:00.001+02:00

‘When rural Ohio college professor Peter Mellor dies in an automobile accident during a zombie outbreak, he is reborn as a highly intelligent (yet somewhat amnesiac) member of the living dead. With society crumbling around him and violence escalating into daily life, Peter quickly learns that being a zombie isn’t all fun and brains. Humans—unsympathetic, generally, to his new proclivities—try to kill him at nearly every opportunity. His old friends are loath to associate with him. And he finds himself inconveniently addicted to the gooey stuff inside of people’s heads.

As if all this weren’t bad enough, Peter soon learns that his automobile accident was no accident at all. Faced with the harrowing mystery of his death, Peter resolves to use his strange zombie “afterlife” to solve his own murder.’

Surprising as this may sound; I’ve never read a zombie book. There, I’ve said it; I’ve never read a zombie book. I do own a collection of zombie short stories, but I don’t think that counts. But, I do love zombie film. I love it, I love it, I love it! I’m fairly certain that it’s impossible to make a bad zombie film, or at least for me. I’ll watch them all not matter how dire, I don’t care if it’s got a massive budget and all special effects Hollywood can muster or if you made it on your phone with your friends and your mother’s make up. Chances are I’ll love the experience. This said, Autumn did try it’s damnedest to ruin zombie cinema for me recently, and very nearly succeeded with its boringness and banality and appalling lack of peril, but still I refuse to be deterred and I soldier on valiantly. (I’m so mad at Dexter Fletcher right now. You know what you’ve done, Fletcher!)

Bad man

Anyway, my petty vendettas aside, when Scott Kenemore’s Zombie Ohio dropped through my letterbox I was equal parts excited and worried, so much so that I just stared at it for a long time, just stared, slightly apprehensive to pick up because my heart wanted to love it and my stupid brain kept saying; No, Heart. You always do this. What if it’s not good? You’re too fragile; you’re not up to this. Remember Autumn…..

Fortunately for all concerned, my stupid brain needn’t have feared because Zombie Ohio soon lived up to my over burgeoning, but delicate, hopes and expectations.

The zombie apocalypse has been hard on everyone and philosophy professor Peter Mellor is no exception. In fact, when we first meet him it soon becomes apparent that his current situation is presenting him with two immediately pressing problems. Firstly, he has a shocking case of amnesia, although this is not surprising as he has just been involved in a rather nasty car crash and secondly, and probably slightly more concerning, he’s beginning to come to the realisation that he’s dead. However, the newly zombified Peter, as it turns out, isn’t your ordinary zombie. Somehow this philosophy prof has managed to retain human consciousness and is now a unique breed of self aware zombie, and one with a sneaking suspicion that his ‘death’ was entirely an accident at that.

Zombie Ohio is essentially about Peter coming to terms with his death and it is also a reflection on the schism between the cerebral and corporeal, (much like my own internal dilemma on commencing this novel), and how the essential nature of self is called into question once he is defined by this new circumstance. Are humanity and mental capacity and reasoning stronger or more intrinsically valuable than primal, bodily desire and instinct in any given situation? Or, indeed, do we have an essential, inherent self or are we defined by circumstance, environment and experience? He is a philosophy professor after all. But, more importantly, the main question is will Peter give in to his zombie urges and mangle some flesh and chow down on delicious brains?

The bulk of the novel is Peter journey, emotional and physical, to understand is zombie state and to make up for his living transgressions by ensuring his girlfriend and her daughters’ survival. Along his way he witnesses and ponders the plight and behaviours of the undead, the very worst of ‘humanity’ in the living, the resilience of the human spirit and considers the potential of an ethical code for the modern zombie and the possibility of turkeys as spirit totems, and also in the back of his zombie mind is the nagging suspicion that someone may have killed him and he really ought to do something about that.

As the novel is essentially the internal dialogue of the undead Mellor, it is notable how engaging that voice is, not only is it wonderfully comic, it also skilfully presents us with believable character development as the more we learn about Mellor’s past it becomes increasingly apparent that his ‘death’ was largely the making of him and how, paradoxically, as a zombie he ultimately becomes a better man.

Zombie Ohio is a witty, involving and surprisingly moving tale that while it doesn’t necessarily address all of the philosophical themes you may expect when its main protagonist is a professor of the subject, it does offer an interesting take on the human (and inhuman) condition and the potential for redemption despite seemingly insurmountable adversity. There is also the simple fact that it is an exciting, funny and enthralling adventure and has sufficient gore to delight any zombie fan. Mr. Kenemore is a gifted and engaging writer, Zombie Ohio is a thoroughly charming and enjoyable read and I very much look forward to reading more of his work. And frankly if Zombie Ohio doesn’t get made into a movie soon the world has gone mad.

You can buy Zombie Ohio here and here. You can also read Scott Kenemore’s blog here.

Race With the Devil (1975)

2011-05-23T11:16:00.002+02:00

There are many things us Brits are good at, and there are quite a few of those things that we even mange to make look cool and sexy, like Italy based gold bullion heists and Mini Coppers, for example. One thing us Brits aren’t good at, and we definitely don’t’ make either sexy or cool, is caravanning. For one thing, British caravans are rather like badly decorated sardine tins, sardine tins who’s interior design sensibilities invariably ground somewhere around 1987, this is immediately a problem. Also, we don’t have the weather for it, when caravanning in the UK the average person is wearing three pairs of socks, stout Wellington boots and as many jumpers as they can fit under their cagoule. Non of these factors make for sexy or, indeed, cool.

When I was a child caravanning holidays were very much the done thing. I can’t even begin to recall the amount of time I must have spent as youngster in what we laughingly refer to as the height of British summer listening to the rain hammer against the tin lid of some ghastly, probably infested rented tin can on wheels whilst being forced to play family card games until the weather lets up enough that we can go back outside and visit some crumbling castle or a craft fair. British caravanning is monumentally dull. The only notable thing that ever happened to me whilst staying in a caravan was I fell off a small craggy outcrop whilst chasing a goat. I was warned repeatedly, this was entirely my own fault. But the point remains; again, neither sexy or cool.

But none of these problems are problems for Race With the Devil’s the Marshes and the Stewarts, they are both sexy and cool in their brand spanking new $36,000 R.V, although they do however, have minor issues with angry Satanists so I suppose things even out.

Roger and Kelly Marsh (Peter Fonda and Lara Parker) and Frank and Alice Stewart Warren Oates and Loretta Swit) haven’t had a vacation in years, they’ve been far too busy racing dirt bikes and making a ton of money. To rectify this all work situation they decide to pack up their bikes on the back of Frank’s fancy R.V. and head off to Colorado for a well earned holiday.

So, without a care in the world the two couples, and a small dog named Ginger, head out cross country for what should be splendid jaunt with all the luxuries the 70s had available. Now, this may come as a surprise to you, but the Untied States of America is massive! In Britain if you want to travel from one county to the next it takes about 5 minutes, but in the US you had just better settle in for the duration because it takes a small eternity on account of being so massive.(It may be obvious at this point that my temporal and spatial awareness skills aren’t the best). The Marshes and the Stewarts, however, fully aware that their country is a billion miles wide, are well prepared for the fact that soon they will have to settle for the night before continue on their merry way to Colorado (approximately 137 light-years away). Unfortunately, and to their later detriment, the group decide to stub the local trailer park with all its colourful charm and instead opt to park up in a secluded area and set up camp with their lovely awning.

We now come to another reason I love the 70s. In the 70s there was never not a reason to have cocktails; pre-dinner cocktails, after dinner cocktails, just got up in the morning cocktails, ‘it must be five minutes since we had cocktails’ cocktails, at any given moment in the 70s the cocktail shaker could be miraculously produced from nowhere and any variety of alcoholic beverages could be shaken about. I actually believe that there is a law somewhere that states you can not be in charge of a cocktail shaker unless the cuffs of your trousers measure in excess of 12inches. In testament to this phenomenon, before the R.V. even fully comes to a halt, Frank’s out of his luxuriously upholstered driving seat and mixing Martinis. Respect, Mr. S. Now, while I may admire the ‘anytime, any place, anywhere’ spirit, it is partly this behaviour, and ‘Hot Lips’ Houlihan’s inability to keep her ‘hot lips’ shut, that’s about to cause all manner Satan related problems that they probably could have done without on their lovely, glamorous holidays.

Still quaffing Martinis Frank and Roger settle comfortably under their smashing awning (probably an incentive bonus for purchasing the deluxe R.V. package, and also something else that we manage to make look a bit rubbish and we huddle underneath it for shelter and some semblance of warmth, but they make look sexy and cool) and take in the night air. Unfortunately though, what Frank and Roger don’t know is that this particular secluded spot is also the secluded spot of choice for the local neighbourhood Satanist chapter and it isn’t long before the boys spot some funny goings on around a fire in the middle distance that they feel compelled to investigate, with binoculars.

Now, there are many things that I believe in; equality and freedom of speech, for instance, but mostly, mostly I believe that people who spy on people through binoculars generally deserve what they get (except for Jimmy Stewart, that was entirely different), I also extend this to people who think it’s perfectly acceptable to wander uninvited into people’s houses usually on the basis that houses/people in question are a bit weird, these people definitely deserve all they get.

Anyway, stumbling closer to get a better eyeful of what they assume is a convenient orgy staged for their voyeuristic pleasure, the boys get more than they bargained for when what they actually witness is a Satanic rite that culminates in the ritual murder of a young girl, but they did get to see boobies so the spectacle wasn’t entirely wasted for them. Just as the boys are realising that their best course of action is to sneak quietly away and alert the appropriate authorities, ‘Hot Lips’ Houlihan marches into the fray and ruins the covert perving by yelling at the boys to come in for their tea, or something. Thanks to Hot Lips the Satanists now know that their evil privacy has been invaded by half-drunk tourists and unsurprisingly they’re non to happy about it.

At this point they decide that it is their best interests to make a run for it and they speed out of the secluded overnight spot dragging their awning behind them. Also at this point, in case you are interested, I decided to have a light supper of cheese and crackers, yum. And thus the vacationing quartet find themselves pursued relentlessly up and down Texan motorways by enraged cultists and the eponymous ‘the ‘race with the devil’ begins.

From here on in the film essentially becomes a classic car chase flick as the hapless couples spend the rest of the movie trying desperately to get to the safety of Amarillo but at every step of their journey they are dogged by the satanic version of the Anthill Mob, unhelpful law enforcement officers, weird trailer park residents wearing so much polyester they certainly must be a fire hazard and sinister gas station attendants and librarians. I think it’s fair to say that the film only really finds its feet when the action sequences begin, shotguns are fired out of windows at high speed, cars are driven for miles on two wheels, stuff explodes, Satanists career off bridges and Peter Fonda consistently sports some the of finest 70s shirts mankind has ever witnessed.

Race With the Devil is so 70s it made my nose bleed. (This isn’t actually true. The only time I have ever spontaneously bled due to over stimulation is when I thought I saw Alan Moore whilst in a beer garden in Northampton, I had also just hit myself in the face with my mobile phone so these two factors may not even be related. For the record we never did get any clarification as to whether it was in fact Mr. Moore, I like to think it was). While Race With the Devil is undeniably a raucous romp round the back roads of 70s horror, I like to think of it more as a morality tale warning us of what would have really happened to Scooby Doo’s gang when they go meddling into the affairs of evil doers in masks.

Things I learned from Race With the Devil

Satanists are persistent little buggers and apparently make up a good fraction of the state of Texas.

Everyone, in fact, knows the way to Amarillo and if you do happen to be in doubt you can always ask a roadwork’s labourer.

Libraries are awesome. Any given library anywhere will always have a comprehensive collection of books on satanic practices for your perusal.

Satanists are also excellent stunt drivers and could easily make living in the movies if the Devil thing doesn’t work out.

Cheese and 70s Satanists before bed make for messed up dreams.

1986: A Very Personal Horror Story

2011-05-16T10:52:00.004+02:00

My brother: the pride of 1986

Many notable events occurred in 1986. Halley’s Comet put in an appearance, and became the first comet to be observed in detail by a spaceship. Mexico hosted the football World Cup and saw Diego Maradona’s infamous (and rather cheaty) ‘Hand of God’ bring victory for Argentina. We put our Hands Across America, (not me personally sadly, I was busy starting Big School), to fight hunger. And, most importantly, my little brother was born! Kurt came into this world on 16th May 1986 at 15.05 weighing in at a mighty, and rather alarming, 9lb 3oz, and he has plagued and delighted my life ever since.

Initially I was none too thrilled about getting a little brother, I’d have rather gotten a dog, or Mousetrap, but despite my repeated assertions that we didn’t need a baby one turned up anyway and I reluctantly became a big sister. To my eternal regret I wasn’t the greatest big sister. I spent much of Kurt’s early life either ignoring him or tormenting him. The two most notorious instances of my evilness, the ones that are rolled out at Christmas and birthdays go thusly: Once I came home late during the summer when it was still quite light at night and woke him up and told him it was morning and time for school, he got dressed and went bleary eyed into my mother’s room expecting his breakfast at about half ten at night. And worse, and most shamefully, once when I was babysitting I covered myself in tomato ketchup and lay on the floor with a massive knife on my chest, when the poor little lamb found me and ran away and hid in the airing cupboard I proceeded to follow him and rattle the knife across the slatted door. I know, I’m ghastly, and I honestly couldn’t hate myself more. For the record both of these instances occurred when I was about 17 and old enough to know better. I disgust myself. Fortunately, and clearly despite my best efforts, he grew up well balanced and healthy and has grown up into an extraordinary young man. I quite genuinely love my brother more than breathing and the one regret in my life is that I didn’t give him the attention he deserved and missed all that time with him as a child due to my own horrificness.

To any ladies reading; my brother would wish me to point out that these pictures are a couple of years old, because his sister sucks, and that he's been working out a lot.

So in honour of Kurt’s 8th birthday (he’ll always be 8 in my head) let’s sit back and remember some classic horror of 1986. It’s all for you, Kurt!!!

Aliens (1986)

Ripley’s back and this time she isn’t taking anymore of this darn nonsense, yeah, damn skippy. Hmm, turns out there’s a reason I don’t write movie taglines, scratch that off the potential new career list.

Beginning directly where Alien left off, Aliens catches up with Ellen Ripley as she wakes from her cryogenic sleep to find it is now fifty seven years later and people now live on the home planet of the alien that decimated the Nostromo. Unsurprisingly the stupid colonists soon find themselves it a whole mess of trouble and naturally it’s then left to Ripley accompanied by a troop of Space Marines (Space Marines!!! Awesome!!!) to save the day.

James Cameron takes the helm here with explodey gusto the likes of which probably only James Cameron can achieve. Debates will probably rage eternally as to whether this or Alien is the superior movie in the franchise, I have to say that my heart lies with Alien largely because I’m purist but also because Ridley Scott is a local boy. Interesting fact: Dawdon Blast Beach features as the alien planet in the opening credits of Alien 3, I used to play there as a kid.

April Fool’s Day (1986)

Muffy St. John invites her closest pals to her fancy mansion for a Spring Break weekend of fun frolics and other such stuff that 80s teenagers enjoy. Conveniently, Muffy’s friends all fit into handy stereotypes and this makes them easy to spot; jock, geek, goodtime girl, sensible girl next door, etc. As they all pile onto the boat to head Muffy’s dream house everything seems fine and dandy, but then people start messing around with knives and, just as our mother’s warned us, it ends in tears as what begins as a prank ends in propellers mushing faces. Things don’t get much better when they arrive at the holiday hideaway either as soon Muffy is wandering around acting ten shades of crazy and people start disappearing.

April Fool’s Day is a slasher genre classic with the kind of plot twists M. Night Shyamalan can only curse god he didn’t think of first (sometimes in my darker moments I think if my life had turned out the way I planned I could have been M. Night Shyamalan, starring, writing, directing in my own movies like a massive egomaniac, which would be awful and I’d have to kill myself, and then I think, no, how silly, if my life had turned out the way I planned I would have been a serious Garth Marenghi, and that would be awesome. I have a huge affection for April Fools Day, although it only just occurs to me now that if hadn’t seen it and loved it my darling brother might have had a less disturbing childhood (sorry, Kurt, I love you).

Night of the Creeps (1986)

“I got good news and bad news, girls. The good news is your dates are here.”

“What's the bad news?”

“They're dead.”

In 1959, an alien experiment crashes to earth right near Corman University. While this strange intergalactic catastrophe is going on, frat boy John and his lovely girlfriend Pam are indulging in some, what I believe in popular parlance would term ‘making out’ when they hear the news that escaped axe wielding maniac is loose and headed right for them, bloody typical. Their night goes from bad to worse when aforementioned axe wielding maniac murders lovely Pam and John gets himself infected with an alien parasite. Worst date ever. Fast forwarding in time to the modern day, Chris Romero and J.C. Hooper are two hapless geeks pledging a fraternity who accidentally manage to thaw the cryogenically frozen corpse of the original victim and proceed to infect the campus with alien parasites that transform their hosts into killer zombies.

Seriously, what’s not to love about that set up?

Night of the Creeps is a movie that loves horror movies; everything about it loves horror movies. With more references to horror movies and icons than you can shake a xenomorph at, Night of the Creeps was once a neglected classic but thankfully it seems finally getting the recognition it deserves. And it’s got Tom Atkins in it. I love Tom Atkins.

Friday The 13th 6: Jason Lives (1986)

Because mental Tommy Jarvis can’t leave things well enough alone, Jason is resurrected as an unstoppable zombie killing machine. Well, nice one, Tommy. Naturally, much like an undead homing pigeon, Jason immediately marches off back to the place he knows best, Crystal Lake, and the obligatory massacre commences.

I find Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives to be hysterical. Part of this amusement comes the fact that I invariably give a running commentary throughout that mainly consists of ‘for fucks sake, Tommy’ while I hold my head in my hands in exasperation. I find Tommy so moronic in this film and it makes me laugh. Forest Green also makes laugh. Forest Green! Most futile attempt at rebranding ever!

Obviously not the best in the series, but it has a place in my heart nonetheless.

Edited to prove my love for Jason Lives to Matthew: I have the tour t-shirt and everything

Critters (1986)

‘The battle began in another galaxy. It's about to end in the Brown’s backyard.’

When a bunch of furry miscreants known as the Crites escape from a prison asteroid head straight for earth in a stolen spaceship, all hell breaks loose for the people of a small Kansas town. Armed only with the local drunk and his space bounty hunter pals (I think space bounty hunters may just trump space marines as coolest job ever) a family fights for survival against the razor toothed, quick quipping balls of furry doom.

My brother watched Critters over and over and over when he was small. This meant I had to watch Critters over and over and over again. For a long time this ruined Critters for me. I knew every word of dialogue; it was ingrained in my brain for so long I began to think I’d been born with that knowledge. Fortunately I got over that I can now appreciate Critters for the glorious B movie, monsterfest that it is. While it may not be Gremlins, I still love it, and not just because it will always remind me of my brother.

1986, eh? What a year!! It gave us so much; this list could easily have been twice as long, easily. But of all the great things 1986 produced I love my brother the most, he is my favourite 1986er without doubt and the one I’m most grateful for. Yup, he's even better than Highlander.

Happy birthday, Kurt! I love you. xxx

Special Announcements or Confessions of a Maladroit Redhead

2011-05-09T11:56:00.000+02:00

You have may have noticed that I haven’t been around the ole internet as often as usual, certainly not as often as I would like. I haven’t been posting as much and have been neglecting on your delicious blogs terribly, particularly when comes to making comments, for which there is no excuse. I’m appalled at myself, I really am. Partly this is because of my own stupidity. In an embarrassingly tragic turn of events I recently managed to spill vinegar onto my, already a bit rubbish, laptop. That’s right, vinegar. It made an alarming fizzing noise, and while it still kind of works it’s a bit crap. Frankly it was already a bit crap due to minor dropping incident last year, there must be a loose connection somewhere and it’s really difficult to keep the screen from flickering horrendously without contorting yourself into ridiculous positions and loosing sensation in your fingers from bracing the screen, the vinegar has clearly only exacerbated this problem. I shouldn’t be allowed technology.

In other better news, I am now also writing for The Awesome Cryptozoology Club. I just did a post about my beloved Megalodons and intend to get up to some other cool beastie related stuff in the near future (The Lambton Worm may even make it over). As starting new things is a bit scary, I would dearly love it if some of you would add us to your blog lists, it would be great and reassuring to see some familiar faces over there.

Foot Watch 2011

You will doubtless all know by now, because I keep boring you at length about it, about my creepy right foot and its stupid tumours. Latest news is that it still sucks, however, we have now named the tumours, because I’ve heard if you name evil it takes away its power. Zak and Skylar, as they are now known, are currently throbbing away malevolently in my stationary foot, plotting and laughing at me. I fear that they are making me do things while I’m asleep. However, and keep your voices down here because I don’t want them to get wind of it and mount a counter attack, I am currently waiting for an appointment for the first in course of cortisone injections that is apparently going to shrink them. Ssshhh. It’s taking ages to book because they need to be sonogram guided right into Zak and Skylar, can’t say I’m in a great rush as it’s going to be horrifically painful and quite frankly rubbish. Of course all of this could be avoided if I’d just man up and go and have the damned op to cut them out, but no, apparently I would rather go and sit there and take the repeated agonising pain of great big needles in the foot, like a massive idiot. Unless I’m not a massive idiot and they are fiendishly making me too scared to have the op so they don’t get cut out and lose dominion…no, probably not, I’m just a massive idiot.

In other news, while I have been lounging around resting Zak and Skylar, I have watched a crap load of films. For reasons best known to my worrying subconscious, I’ve been more than a little obsessed with 70s Satanists of late and that has taken up a lot of my time. For aiding and abetting me in this endeavour I need to thank the glorious Matthew from Carfax Abbey and WoV from The Wizard of Vestron for their wonderful movie suggestions. You guys are awesome.

On a related note, can anyone explain to me why I can’t for love or money get a copy of Crowhaven Farm anywhere? It’s ridiculous. I’m becoming more and more obsessed with it by second and it continues to allude me to a spectacular degree.

Not related at all, but it amused me, I watched a film with Ron Perlman in it (not very surprising, I know) in which it eventually transpired he was the killer, a killer who through the course of the movie not only brutally killed a load of people but also systematically tormented and manipulated an already mentally unstable teenage boy into thinking he did it. Why, would Ron do such a thing, you may ask, well, apparently for no other reason than I could ultimately discern than he was mad at Sweden. Yup, mad at Sweden. I love you, Ronnie P!

I would also like to give a big thank you to the ever wonderful Doctor Cyclops from Doctor Cyclops Horror for honouring me with the Versatile Blogger award. I can’t tell you how amazingly flattering it is and how much it buoys my spirit to be singled out like this. I think I’ve already covered the seven things about myself, and more than anyone would ever want to know, in this post so I will not bore you with more. With regard to passing it on to you amazing folks, this is where I struggle. I know many of you already have this lovely award, and, more significantly, you are all so magnificent and make my day everyday in so many different ways with each of your posts I couldn’t possibly pick so few, so I feel that I can only say to you all, if you don’t have this award, please, please accept it with love and respect from me now. I think you are all amazing, and Zak and Skylar think so too, it’s one of the few things we agree on.

Lastly, kitten update: Bebe Gunns and Opie Golightly remain impossibly gorgeous, but are consistently full of mischief and have developed a strange new interest in free running up and down our walls and doors for hours on end. Not climbing walls, actually wall of death style laps of the house. Cats are weird. Here’s a gratuitous picture of them being adorable and quiet for once.

Awwww

Local Horror: The Lambton Worm

2011-05-03T11:05:00.001+02:00

Us folks from the North East of England are notoriously a chatty bunch, we’re natural storytellers, spinners of yarns and voyagers on flights of fancy. You can wile away hours in any given North Eastern pub simply by striking up a conversation with a local resident (for best results seek an elder patron) and allowing yourself to regaled with the most fantastical tall tales and enthralling anecdotes. I myself have done this often, and have frequently heard a story so amazing that I have been compelled to tell the purveyor of wonder that I will be forced to steal that particular tale and tell it myself, and such is the glory of the oral tradition.

Yes, us Northeasterners love a story and I think it’s fairly safe to say that The Lambton Worm is a tale that has a special place in our hearts and is probably the most famous of the fables from our region. The legend of The Lambton Worm has been told and retold evolving from oral tradition through the written word and even into song and pantomime form. So, whisht, lads, haad yor gobs an' aa'll tell ye aall an aaful story…..

Young whippersnapper, and heir to Lambton Hall, John Lambton, decided one particular fine Sunday morn that his time would be far better employed on a fishing trip rather than by going to church like a good lad. So, while all the other townsfolk were dutifully attending mass in Brugeford Chapel, John was parked by the River Wear dangling his rod in its murky depths (that sounds entirely more filthy than is really necessary, I apologise).

For a long time John sat without so much as a nibble, but then, all of a sudden, his line was jolted with a terrific force. Naturally assuming that he’d landed the catch of the century, John excitedly set about reeling in the tremendous beast, but the task proved harder than he could have imagined. But steadfast, John refused to give up his prize without a fight and bracing himself against the riverbank he laboured for a seeming eternity until, finally, just as the sheer exertion was threatening to claim him, his line popped free from the water and he landed his magnificent catch on the bank by his feet. Somewhat amazed, young John peered down at creature his efforts had lain before him and saw to his surprise that it wasn’t even nearly the mighty fish he had been expecting. At his feet lay a black wormlike animal, and it was small, astonishingly small for something that had presented him with so much trouble to land. While John contemplated his catch the creature slithered and coiled in the mud beside him and venturing a closer examination John could see that its jaws were indeed mighty, and, he noted, lined with rows of razor sharp teeth that, although small, looked fearsome and deadly.

Just as John was preparing to throw the disappointing, and decidedly unpleasant, brute back into the river he became aware of a presence behind him and turned to find an old man eyeing the creature and crossing himself furiously. When John asked him what was wrong the old man said that he must not throw the creature back t the river, that it would bode badly for young John, but at all costs he must keep the beast and not return it to the river. Obediently, if a little startled, John duly picked up the black worm and cast it into his basket, but as he turned back to question the man further he found he was alone on the riverbank and the old fellow was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly a feeling of deep unease overwhelmed John and the more he looked at the worm the more he knew he must be free of it. The old man’s warning had unnerved him enough not to consider risking returning it to the river, but as he walked home he spotted an old well and seized the opportunity to rid himself of his slithery burden.

For years all was quiet and John Lambton never gave a thought to peculiar creature he had caught that day. But, unbeknownst to our hero all the while the worm was wallowing in the murk of the well, becoming strong and growing, growing and growing Years later while John was off fighting in the crusades villagers began to notice that there was something very wrong with the well. It became apparent that the water was poisoned and unusable and at night eerie vapours were seen rising nefariously from the mouth of the well. As is natural in these situations, the villagers sagely decided that the well had clearly been claimed by an evil force and was now cursed as a result.

Surprisingly it turned out the villagers were absolutely right as early one morning it was discovered that the full grown worm had crawled from its gloomy home and had lain waste to the surrounding farms savagely feeding on all livestock it could find leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. To their horror they also saw that the creature heavy and bloated from its night’s feast had coiled its massive bulk about a rocky outcrop close to the river of its terrible birth.

News swiftly spread through the village and surrounding areas and filled the region with fear and dread. For a while the beast remained still and silent, some of the very brave even dared to creep closer to catch a glimpse of the razor toothed terror, but this relative peace was not to last and all too soon the creature became ravenous once more and embarked upon another bloody rampage devouring everything that lay in its path. The villagers were terrified, but something had to be done, some brave souls banded together to attempt to slay the beast but all who tried were immediately torn to shreds by the worm’s savage teeth or brutally crushed in its mighty coils.

Eventually the beast made its way to Lambton Hall where now only the lord resided. Fortunately the villagers were quick to react and managed to distract creature with offerings of the fattest livestock left alive. And so the ritual began that would last for seven long years, again and again the villagers would sacrifice what livestock they could muster to keep the worm in a sated slumber and prevent it from feasting on all who dwelled there.

When seven whole years had passed John Lambton finally returned from the crusades and saw the terrible fate that had befallen his village. Wracked with tremendous guilt he resolved there and then that he would destroy the evil creature himself and free his people from its servitude. To prepare himself for this dangerous task he visited the local wise woman. Aware of his culpability the wise woman confirmed for John that was indeed his duty to slay the beast, she advised his to seek the blacksmith and have a suit of armour crafted that was wrought with sharpened spearheads at every inch of its surface and then once clad in this new fearsome attire he must lie in wait for the worm at its rocky lair. Convinced by her words John nodded his acquiescence, but, just as he was about to run straight to the blacksmith, the woman’s face darkened and she seized his shoulder with a startling strength. Looking him square in the eye and with a gravity that chilled John to his very core she warned him that if should slay the beast he must then also put to death the first living thing he sees following the act and if failed that task then three times three generations of Lambtons would die badly.

Knowing she spoke the truth John ran as fast he could to the blacksmith’s forge and tasked him to craft his suit. The blacksmith worked tirelessly all through that night and by morning the armour was ready and as John emerged from the forge a crowd of villagers had gathered to cheer their hero and as he passed through them he swore to himself that he would be victorious.

For what seemed like an age John waited, but there was no sign of the worm. He waited and waited and then, just as he was giving up hope, the creature finally emerged raising its enormous, vicious head from the depths of the river a rapacious glint colouring its cold eyes. Without time to think John charged towards the water his sword held high and so began a long the violent battle between man and beast. It soon became apparent that every time the creature attempted to wrap John in its coils or crush him in its maw it was only succeeding in tearing itself up on the razors of the armour. John then knew that if he had the strength to endure the attacks for long enough then all he had to do was wait for the creature to be sufficiently weak and then he could slaughter it and put an end to its tyranny. Steeling his resolve John braced himself for the extensive battle he knew faced. And on the pair raged the sky darkening around them, until, eventually, the last of its strength spent the worm slumped onto the riverbank. Exhausted John struggled to its side and with the last ounce of energy remaining in his aching body plunged his blade right into its heart and blew three sharp blasts on his horn to signal to the servants at the hall to release a hound in order he could complete his vow. But, the joy of victory was short-lived as on hearing the blasts Jon’s father, the lord, was so overcome with delight he rushed to greet his son as he crossed into the hall’s grounds. Devastated John turned away and slew the hound, but it was too late, the vow was broken, the worm was defeated and his people free but for generations none of the Lambtons would die a good death.

Penshaw Monument; where the worm is said lie

The legend of the The Lambton Worm has even done its best to extend beyond its northern folktale status and into more mainstream culture. In 1911 Bram Stoker’s The Lair of the White Worm was published and I think its fair to say that the story borrows heavily from our humble local worm, and of course, who can forget that Ken Russell turned Stoker’s novel into his 1988 classic of the same name. I you haven’t seen Russell’s Lair of the White Worm you must, it’s mental and awesome. You can also hear a few repeated bars of the Lambton Worm song near the end within the melody Peter Capaldi’s character Angus is plays on the bagpipes to lure the acolytes.

You can listen to The Lambton Worm song here. And here are the lyrics so you can sing along at home.

One Sunday morn young Lambton Went a-fishin' in the Wear; An' catched a fish upon his huek, He thowt leuk't varry queer, But whatt'n a kind a fish it was Young Lambton couldn't tell. He waddn't fash to carry it hyem, So he hoyed it in a well.

Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs, Aa'll tell ye aall and aaful story,
Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs, An' Aal tell ye 'bout the worm.

Noo Lambton felt inclined to gan An' fight in foreign wars. He joined a troop o' Knights that cared For neither wounds nor scars, An' off he went to Palestine Where queer things him befel, An' varry seun forgot aboot The queer worm i' the well.

Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs, Aa'll tell ye aall and aaful story,
Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs, An' Aal tell ye 'bout the worm.

But the worm got fat an' growed an' growed, An' growed an aaful size; He'd greet big teeth, a greet big gob, An' greet big goggle eyes. An' when at neets he craaled aboot To pick up bits o'news, If he felt dry upon the road, He milked a dozen coos.

Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs, Aa'll tell ye aall and aaful story,
Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs, An' Aal tell ye 'bout the worm.

This feorful worm wad often feed On calves an' lambs an' sheep, An' swally little bairns alive When they laid doon to sleep. An' when he'd eaten aal he cud An' he had has he's fill, He craaled away an' lapped his tail Seven times roond Pensher Hill.

Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs, Aa'll tell ye aall and aaful story,
Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs, An' Aal tell ye 'bout the worm.

The news of this most aaful worm An' his queer gannins on Seun crossed the seas, gat to the ears Of brave an' bowld Sir John. So hyem he cam an' catched the beast An' cut 'im in three halves, An' that seun stopped he's eatin' bairns, An' sheep an' lambs and calves.

Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs, Aa'll tell ye aall and aaful story,
Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs, An' Aal tell ye 'bout the worm.

So noo ye knaa hoo aall the folks On byeth sides of the Wear Lost lots o' sheep an' lots o' sleep An' lived in mortal feor. So let's hev one to brave Sir John That kept the bairns frae harm Saved coos an' calves by myekin' haalves O' the famis Lambton Worm

Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs, Aa'll tell ye aall and aaful story
Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs, An' Aal tell ye 'bout the worm.

Noo lads, Aa'll haad me gob, That's aall Aa knaa aboot the story Of Sir John's clivvor job Wi' the aaful Lambton Worm!

Honestly, those are the words. Because I’m helpful like that I shall now translate for those of you unfamiliar the local dialect:

One Sunday morning young Lambton went fishing in the Wear; and caught a fish upon his hook, He thought it looked very queer, but what manner of fish it was Young Lambton couldn't tell. He could not be bothered to carry it home, so he threw it in a well.

Hush, gentlemen, hold your tongues, And I will tell you all an awful story,
Hush, gentlemen, hold your tongues, and I will tell you about the worm.

Now Lambton felt inclined to go and fight in foreign wars. He joined a troop of' Knights that cared for neither wounds nor scars, and off he went to Palestine where queer things befell him, and very soon forgot about the queer worm in the well.

Repeat chorus

But the worm got fat and grew and grew, and grew an awful size; He had great big teeth, a great big mouth, and great big goggle eyes. And when at nights he crawled about to pick up bits of news, if he felt dry upon the road, he milked a dozen cows.

Repeat chorus

This fearful worm wouldd often feed on calves and lambs and sheep, and swallowed little children alive when they laid down to sleep. And when he'd eaten all he could and he had eaten his fill, he crawled away and lapped his tail seven times round Penshaw Hill.

Repeat chorus

The news of this most awful worm and his queer goings on soon crossed the seas and got to the ears of brave and bold Sir John. So home he came and caught the beast and cut him in three halves, and that soon stopped eating children, and sheep and lambs and calves.

Repeat chorus

So now you know how all the folks on both sides of the Wear Lost lots of sheep and lots of sleep and lived in mortal fear. So let us drink to brave Sir John that kept the children from harm saved cows and calves by cutting in half the famous Lambton Worm

Repeat chorus

Now gentlemen, I’ll hold my tongue because that is all I know about the story of Sir John's clever job with the awful Lambton Worm!

A List What I Wrote

2011-04-18T14:30:00.001+02:00

Unsurprisingly I’m ridiculously late to this party. This is largely because I suck, although in my defence, picking favourites isn’t in my nature, my love is vast and all encompassing and there’s room for all in its somewhat disturbing embrace. What I’ve actually managed to cobble together here is a list. That’s it really. It’s a list of things I’ve seen recently and appreciated. Let’s not call them favourites because then I’m going to have call a million movies and apologise for their not being included, and then there’ll be the letter writing to the ones I couldn’t reach on the phone, and the apology cards, it’ll just be a ghastly cycle of misery and guilt and blame and no one wants that. So here is a list.

A

Not a good start, but I really couldn’t commit here. It’s one of these:

American Werewolf in London (1981) Alien !979), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

I love them all!

B

Again, I struggled here, there are so many good Bs, but I eventually plumped for my two favourite brides.

Bride of Frankenstein (1935) Bride of Chucky (1998)

C

God, this is hard. I went for Child’s Play because the franchise has suffered something of a bad rep in the UK due to a particular atrocity that occurred in the early 1990s. While I obviously wholeheartedly deplore the associated, and any, real life violence, I think it’s a shame the films have been tarnished.

Child’s Play (1988)

Honourable Mention: Cut (2010)

D

I watch Die Hard at least three times a year, in fact I’ve watched it twice already this year. I unreservedly love it.

Die Hard (1988)

Honourable Mentions: Demonium (2001), Dawn of the Dead (1978)

E

I’m still as terrified of The Exorcist today as I was the first time I saw it. An undisputable classic of the genre.

The Exorcist (1973)

Honourable Mention: The Evil Dead (1981)

F
I remain consistently disappointed that the world doesn’t dress and look like 1980’s Flash Gordon. I think things would make a lot more sense if we/it did. ‘Gordon’s alive?!!!’ I love Brian Blessed and I love Flash Gordon.

Flash Gordon (1980)

Honourable Mentions: The Frighteners (1996), Frankenhooker (1990)

G

I hold Bob Hope responsible for my love of horror it was via his child friendly antics in the spooky realms that I progressed to, well, this. Ghost Breakers is one of my fondest memories from childhood.

Ghost Breakers (1940)

Honourable Mention: Ghostbusters (1984)

H

Another one of my early horror experiences, and, frankly, anything with Vincent Price in it is always top in my book.

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Honourable Mention: Hold That Ghost (1941), Hellboy (2004)

I

Aside from being great and my favourite film of 2009 it’s got Ron Perlman in it so no further explanation is needed.

I Sell the Dead (2009)

J

I will never get over the amazingness that is Jaws, it’s the daddy of shark movies and I will never tire of watching it.

Jaws (1975)

Honourable Mention: Jurassic Park (1993)

K

Still makes me cry.

King Kong (1933)

Honourable Mention: Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)

L

Behold the wonder of Bowie!

Labyrinth (1986)

Honourable Mention: Leprechaun 4: In Space (1996),The Lair of the White Worm (1988)

M

Second showing for Vincent Price, this time aided and abetted by another fave Peter Cushing. What’s not to love? Adrienne Corri is also gorgeous and fabulous in it.

Madhouse (1974)

Honourable Mention: The Monster Squad (1987)

N

Not a lot to say here, simply an absolute classic.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Honourable Mentions: Night of the Comet (1984), Night of the Creeps (1986),

O

Spawned many sequels and a pointless remake, but the original Omen remains the scariest and best.

The Omen (1976)

P

Too hard to pick, one of these maybe:

Peeping Tom (1960), Psycho (1960), Psychomania (1971), Piranha (1978)

Q

There’s really only one Q

The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)

R

There are many reasons why I should never have children, but Rosemary’s Baby terrifying me is one of the biggest.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Honourable Mentions: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), Re-Animator (1985), Rear Window (1954)
S

Obscenely politically incorrect MGM musical that ought to offend my every feminist principle, but I love it! I know all the words and everything. Let us never speak of this again.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)

Honourable Mentions: Slaughter High (1986), Shaun of the Dead (2004) Suspiria (1977), Swamp Thing (1982)
T

My husband and I consider Nick and Nora Charles our marriage role models; they’re beautiful, well dressed, devastatingly witty, desperately in love and they solve crime while drinking cocktails. That’s the dream!

The Thin Man (1934)

Honourable Mention: Theatre of Blood (1973)
U

Unbreakable makes me cry too, I’m really soft and rubbish.

Unbreakable (2000)

V

The Valley of Gwangi is the movie that keeps on giving. Ever wondered what would happen if cowboys faced off against dinosaurs? What about dinosaur vs. elephant? Want to see a tiny, tiny horse or dinosaur in a church? Look no further.

The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

Honourable Mention: Vertigo (1958)

W

Three words: Naked Britt Eckland.

The Wicker Man (1973)

Honourable Mentions: Withnail and I (1987), Wild Zero (2000)
X

Ok, technically the only ‘X’ I could think of, but it’s still outrageously awesome and it’s got Gene flipping Kelly in it!

Xanadu (1980)

Y

There could only ever really be one here; still unspeakably funny, still awesome.

Young Frankenstein (1974)

Z

I don’t feel any need to explain this. Clearly a scathing diatribe against the Bush administration and a thoughtful and considered discourse on patriarchal attitudes towards the female form.

Zombie Strippers (2008)

So there you go, a list.

My Creepy Right Foot

2011-04-15T15:50:00.001+02:00

Most people have something that creeps them out, some kind of physical trauma they find it difficult to watch on screen. I think mostly it’s the smaller, relatable pains that we’ve to some extent experienced ourselves and are inherently aware of the sensation that mannerpain creates. My husband, for example, hates fingernails being torn off, it makes him wriggle about and go all queasy, however, he’s also afraid of spider, clowns, escalators and mushrooms so maybe he’s a bad example. For my mother it’s anything related to Achilles’ tendon trauma, she snapped hers a few years ago and therefore is fully aware of the agony and entitled to be creeped out. I also understand that eye trauma is quite popular one and anything relating to genitalia. I don’t have one these ‘things’, there isn’t one particular screen trauma I struggle with. I don’t know why, I’m probably just weird. I hasten to add that I do feel empathy and I appreciate the pain of others, but there just isn’t one specific that I could call ‘a thing’. Until recently. Recently I started to be creeped out by own foot, my won right foot. I many have mentioned early that I have foolishly managed to get myself a condition known as Morton’s Neuroma. Ruddy stupid, flippin’ Morton’s Neuroma is a tumour that grows on the nerve between your toes. And, as Wikipedia fail to mention, bloody hurts like all hell.

Neato!

Laughingly it is most commonly suffered by stiletto wearers, dancers and athletes, none of which I sadly am, certainly not the last two, which frankly adds insult to injury, it’s like the universe is taking the piss out of me for not being sexy, talented or fit. Also, just to make it worse, because I have to do everything bigger and better than everyone else, I don’t just have one tumour, I have two, one ‘massive’ one (the radiographers words’) between my second third toe and a ‘smaller one’ between my third and fourth. I’m awesome. And I can feel them, I can feel them inside my feet all the time, even when I have no shoes on and I’m just sitting down, I can feel them, the two little buggers sitting in there pinching at my nerves laughing at me. So consequently now my own bloody foot creeps my out. Which sucks. And is a bit embarrassing. Don’t even let me get started on the ‘treatment’, urrrghhh.

What creeps you out?

Heck Yeah, Sharks! Part II: The Revenge

2011-04-05T10:35:00.001+02:00

Despite having been away for couple of weeks being rubbish, you’ll be relieved to know that nothing has changed in the House of Jinx. I remain a slightly clumsy bundle of ill-contained red headed excitement and nonsense, and, I still have an unhealthy obsession with all things shark. So, rather than discuss this obsession with a suitably qualified psychiatric professional I thought I’d come back with another foray into the shark cannon and have a look at some more of the gems that lurk therein.

Malibu Shark Attack (2009)

When a tsunami tragically floods happy, sunny, carefree Malibu, it also, to add insult to substantial injury, inadvertently dredges up a deadly collection of deep-water, prehistoric goblin sharks. Bloody typical. Said Goblin sharks then proceed to chomp the merry hell out of an assortment of lifeguards and construction workers who have found themselves stranded due to this freak chain of largely implausible events.

Had Malibu Shark Attack kicked it old school and gone with some honest to goodness, old fashioned, hella bitey Great Whites, I’d have probably enjoyed this more. Turns out Goblin sharks are bit rubbish. All in all, rather less exciting than that episode of Baywatch where that lifeguard lady that isn’t Pam Anderson gets attacked by a shark while saving a boy, but Hassellhoff saves her and then she dies anyway of something stupid. Also, what the hell happened to poor old Peta Wilson? She looked unwell and frankly miserable as sin, like maybe someone was making her act at gunpoint, but, as it turns out, she is up for a threesome so that’s good to know.

Sharktopus (2010)

Turns out this too is not about sharks and octopi having sex. God Damn it!

The U.S. Navy commission a group known as ‘Blue Water’ or Eric Roberts, whichever you prefer, to genetically engineer a half-shark, half-octopus for combat purposes apparently, but heck who needs a reason to genetically engineer and half-shark half-octopus creature? It’s awesome, that’s all anyone really needs to know or consider. Anyway, whilst testing the aforementioned battle sharktopus, the beast only goes and escapes the control of its fiendish creators and makes a bloody bid for freedom. Who can blame it; it’s half-shark and half-octopus it wants to show itself off. In white-hot pursuit of the deadly creature are Blue Water, or Eric Roberts if you prefer, a bland, muscle bound bounty hunter of some description and a hapless television crew, but most importantly Eric Roberts being evil.

You have may have noticed that I’ve been mentioning Eric Roberts a lot so far. I’m honour bound to do this as penance to my BFF Kev for not being suitably impressed that Eric Roberts was in Sharktopus in the first place. It nearly caused a fight, well, not fight exactly, more an idle bicker. Sorry, Kev, and sorry, Mr. Roberts.

There is nothing About Sharktopus that displeases me. From the wonderfully joyous title theme music to the man, the icon Eric Roberts, from the early morning drinking, sea faring radio DJ (who became my new hero) and his bikini clad assistant to the folk dancing, fire brandishing display team. It was a joy from start to finish. But most importantly it’s about a ruddy shark/octopus hybrid for flip’s sake, I really don’t need to say anything more than that.

I’d like to dedicate this portion of ‘Heck Yeah, Sharks’ to the person who stumbled upon my blog by Googling ‘shark and octopus sex’. Apparently someone else is as inappropriately interested in this as me. Good sir or madam, we live in hope.

12 Days of Terror (2004)

12 Days of Terror is an oddly compelling docudrama that details the real life events that took place in July, 1916 in Central and Southern New Jersey As the title suggests, the film recounts 12 days during which people along the Jersey coast were subject to attacks by a shark (probably not a great white shark as the film depicts, but a ruddy shark nonetheless). Said shark, who may or may not have been a great white, probably wasn’t, killed four people during its reign of terror and badly injured a fifth. Apparently, this odd shark behaviour still keeps scientists occupied searching for answers to this day. Scary stuff.

While 12 Days of Terror may be notable for its not too shabby period detail, some fancy shark action and, sadly, for fundamentally lacking any of the ‘terror’ so blatantly promised, for me, the appearance of SyFy stalwart and budget Brian Blessed, John Rhys-Davies makes it worth the price of admission. Starring as the obligatory salty old sea dog Rhys-Davies provides the kind of colour that keeps this TV movie sharkbuster afloat.

Sharks in Venice (2008)

Err, right, so, Stephen Baldwin’s dad miraculously manages to get himself eaten by a Great White Shark whilst pottering about in a Venetian canal, but no one knows that, everyone thinks he’s just mysteriously disappeared, the eponymous sharks in the eponymous Venice are, I can only imagine, the big surprise revelation later on. Stephen Baldwin, like any good son, sets about investigating the mysterious disappearance and within approximately five seconds spots a massive fin merrily wending its way through the serene waterways of Venice.

What follows is stupid and ridiculous in a way only Raging Sharks can imagine. In a kind of bizarre, insane, badly crafted amalgamation of Jaws, Indiana Jones, any given Mafia movie and any movie starring Stephen Baldwin, our boy Baldwin soon realises that he’s embroiled in a cryptic race against time to recover the lost fortune of the Medici that is stashed somewhere beneath Venice seemingly guarded by ferocious sharks and to complicate matters more his ruddy girlfriend goes and gets herself abducted by Mafia hoodlums in a dastardly ploy to ensure that the Baldwin will risk everything to secure the loot for their own gangstery ends. So essentially, Stephen Baldwin fights sharks, shoots and gets shot at by Mafiosi types, solves cryptic riddles and hunts for legendary treasure all in one movie. Kind of like The Da Vinci Code raping Jaws while The Godfather watches. God, I hate you, Da Vinci Code.

Sharks in Venice is careering car crash of a film and as no one put any effort whatsoever into making it I don’t see why you should put any effort into watching it. Proving this point at one point during an ‘action’ sequence in the film Stephen Baldwin gets his leg noticeably bitten off by a shark, minutes later he awakes in hospital looking no worse for wear and with a full compliment of limbs. This is actually the best bit of the film.

Stephen Baldwin Acting. I find this hilarious.

While I can’t in good conscience recommend you actively seek out Sharks in Venice, I will say that if you are in the mood for some heavy drinking and open to a bloody good laugh at terrible stock footage and the inept acting stylings of a certain Mr. S. Baldwin then Sharks in Venice is certainly a time filler.

God, sharks, I bloody love you! Films in which you star rock my world, even the really bad ones and ones starring one of the more rubbish Baldwins.

Wake Wood

2011-03-27T20:20:00.000+02:00

Apologies for my recent radio silence. I suck. But, hell yeah.......

Sooo excited!!!! Check it out here

Back soon

xxx

Skull Heads (2009)

2011-03-08T09:23:00.003+01:00

Much as I hate to begin with indecision, I genuinely can’t decide whether Skull Heads is one of the greatest films I’ve ever seen or one of the most ridiculous. Probably a bit of both.

The Arkoff’s are an odd family. First off they are clearly American despite apparently living in Italy for generations and never leaving to do anything ever (a tenuous reason is given for this anomaly, but it’s too silly to be worth mentioning). Their little family unit is made up of a domineering disciplinarian dad, Carver, who makes his first appearance tying his daughter to a rack for the heinous crime of bringing a mobile phone into the castle. We also have mum, Lisbeth; a pampered and temperamental curvaceous ‘Italian’ sex kitten, mentally deficient, but sexually voracious Uncle Peter and a shadowy bedridden grandfather with a penchant for Poe. Daughter Naomi completes the picture and she’s something of unsurprising loon too though seemingly harmless with her childlike wackiness. Their peculiar brand of crazy is allowed to run free in their rambling and picturesque ancestral home.

Things seem to be going swimmingly for the nutty Arkoffs, but trouble looms on the horizon in the shapely form to teenage Naomi who is beginning to discover a world of cell phones and iPods which, as these things are apt to do, is beginning to open a whole new world outside the castle walls and filling her head crazy ideas like college and travelling and new people. Fortunately big mad dad is around to show his daughter the error of her ways and the evil of the outside world by introducing her to medieval torture devices.

Excellent parenting

The trouble really kicks off when a film crew arrive and express interest in using the castle a possible filming location for a new movie. Naomi is thrilled with idea especially when spots attractive young Jensen among their number (however to be fair Naomi probably hasn’t seen a boy before so Jensen’s relative attractiveness isn’t really qualified by this). Big daddy Craver, on the other hand, doesn’t care a smidge about how attractive Jensen is and he rudely sends the pesky showbiz types on their way sagely stating ‘nothing good can come of strangers.’

Crafty little minx Naomi won’t be beaten though and conspires with the more congenial Lisbeth to invite the crew to a fancy Arkoff family dinner where, helpfully, the legend of the Skull Heads is finally explained. The Skull Heads are apparently hundreds of years old and are the protectors of the Arkoff castle, I’m not really sure what exactly they do to protect the castle, but they can raise the dead and really that’s impressive enough by itself. Now, this is my favourite part, odd glimpses of the Skull Heads have been seen through the movie and they are something of revelation. The Skull Heads, it turns out, are small glittery Día de los Muertos style examples of art and craft hour. As ridiculous as this sounds, in a time of crappy CGI, the fact that someone sat down and made these and animated them makes me really happy. Even though they really don’t contribute anything to the film despite it being named for them and a teensy bit of dead raising at the last minute, I still love this. Someone really persevered to insert them into a film where really a much simpler and less silly narrative device would have done of the job; I thoroughly respect such blind, bull-headed commitment to artistic vision.

Hell yeah!

Back at the plot, the awkward dinner with a bunch of crazy people is going as well as can be expected, but it soon becomes apparent that the guests have more nefarious plans on their minds than shooting a WW2 epic. It turns out that they are in fact a bunch of thieves intent on robbing the castle of all its priceless treasures and helpfully the guiless Naomi gives the team a guided tour so they can earmark all the best stuff.

Naturally the Skull Heads are non to pleased with this turn of events and things promptly kick off bad style (I’m not sure why I just said that). In the madness that ensues we learn the real disturbing truth about the Arkoff family.

Arts and crafts gone mad

Despite a rather rushed and chaotic ending, Skull Heads is silly crazy fun and the bizarre little family at the centre of the tale are thoroughly engaging and something of a depraved delight. I’d also like to give a shout out to the gratuitous and lingering nude scene. Kudos to all involved.

Horrific Beards I Have Known and Loved

2011-03-01T14:44:00.003+01:00

Kurt Russell
R.J. MacReady
The Thing (1982)

I’m fairly certain that it’s widely agreed upon and that I can speak on behalf of everyone everywhere when I say that The Thing is awesome. I’m also confident that few people will disagree when I say that Kurt Russell in The Thing is awesome. But, despite the inarguable awesomeness of Mr. Russell, there is still one who monumentally and heroically overshadows even him, one who is the true star of The Thing, and that star is, of course, Kurt Russell’s beard!

As helicopter pilot R.J. MacReady, Kurt Russell, or more specifically Kurt Russell’s beard, is stationed at U.S. Outpost 31 in the Antarctic when all manner of alien skulduggery kicks off and it seems apparent to me that it was the beard who was running this show. Although part of a twelve man crew, MacReady is something of the brooding loner and prefers to spend his time alone in his cabin playing computer chess and cultivating an alcohol problem. Despite this, and a general all round feeling of mutual mistrust, he still commands the respect of his team mates and his unassuming confidence and quiet reliability sees the other crew members defer to him as an unsanctioned figure of authority. When the interloping alien organism stakes its insidious claim on Outpost 31 it is MacReady who takes charge (much like Scott Baio’s Charles and, of course, Bruce Forsythe). Fortunately for everybody MacReady has an innate and primal survival instinct that spurs him into heroic action against the eponymous Thing.

It is self evident that the MacReady’s beard is the hardest working beard in cinema. It is lush and verdant, the kind of beard not only created to battle the deadly freezing conditions of Antarctica (although it is clearly a master of that aspect of the role) but also to be a gallant hero against extraterrestrial menace, to save all of mankind with its epic, godlike might.

The beard is masterful and captivating delivering a multi-layered performance, effortlessly it emotes the pain and ravages of an ungodly fate and climate, it demonstrates the cool thought processes of a tactician and subtly but powerfully it conveys world weary acceptance, a reluctant, uneasy heroism, a beleaguered understanding of necessary self sacrifice and the weight of a past that was already to hard to bear. All of this and still all the while it unrelentingly manages to remain simultaneously both defiant and vulnerable, the defining traits that underpin the character and draw the audience in.

Kurt Russell’s beard, whether you be hoary with Antarctic frost or luxuriant and virile in combat with the intergalactic scourge, I salute you!

Women Horror Month: Old Girls Gone Wild

2011-02-14T10:25:00.000+01:00

As Women in Horror Month rolls on I continue to be ludicrously excited, even more excited than the time I was in a café tucking into an all-day breakfast and The Chuckle Brothers and seven dwarfs came in for teacakes. Excited? I nearly wet myself. For this week’s contemplation of the awesomeness of womankind I thought we’d cast a little joy onto one of the less fun parts of being a girl; the ageing process. So, come on ladies, let’s chuck away the Oil of Olay (or whatever it’s calling itself these days) and revel in the bits of us that aren’t as perky as once they might have been.

As I’m knocking on a bit (or, as it feels to me, galloping towards menopause with a speed and momentum that is quite frankly terrifying, and also patently ridiculous as I didn’t agree to anything past 30 and certainly didn’t sign anything so somebody somewhere has clearly got the wrong memo) I find myself increasingly required to imagine what style of old lady I’m going to be. While I’m reluctantly aware (though currently choosing to ignore) that as you get older certain allowances ought to be made; maybe less garish hair dye, subtler make up, possibly outfits that are more grown up in nature, I still wonder how us Gen-Xers are going adapt to becoming the punk rock elderly. Ideally I’m dimly hoping that I’ll just remain the same, I’ll keep stuffing myself into leather pants, wear all the old band shirts, swathe myself in leopard print and burst through fishnet like a hellish Play Doh factory experiment. But will the inevitable pressures of society’s expectations force me to look for an alternative model of acceptable elderly? And if so who will I be? Just in case, I decided, as any sane person would, to look to some of the magnificent mature ladies of horror cinema for inspiration.

Pamela Voorhees : Friday the 13th

My husband and I recently rewatched Friday the 13th, strangely for the first time together, and he commented that the film it meant more to him now knowing my family because he knew if anything happened to Kurt (my brother) and he became a crazy freaky loser and someone hurt him I’d go all Ma Voorhees on someone’s ass. I took offence at this and pointed out that I don’t pick favourites and if anything happened to Jay (my sister) I go just as psychotic killer crazy, thank you very much indeed, matey skip. He said, no, Jay was too sensible and well balanced to ever be a crazy freaky loser. I don’t know who this says more about, my husband, my brother or me. Anyway, point is I can relate to Ma V; you hurt one of mine now this is happening to you, bitch! I’m also partial to knitwear so I reckon that Mama Voorhees could be a pretty good option for me in my twilight years.

Mrs Ganush: Drag Me To Hell

I admire Mrs. G. for the sheer force of will and complete vicious bloody-mindedness that it takes to not only continue to make someone’s life an absolute hellish misery but also to damn well ensure that they are, in fact, dragged to hell after her own death. This deserves some god damn respect.

Shrivelled, toothless, half blind, perpetually oozing and so old it’s ridiculous, Mrs Ganush’s exterior my not necessarily be the first choice of model to follow as old age creeps up, but bloody hell she’s got some pretty darn tempting crazy ole Romanian cursing powers. Also, I think there’s something liberating and admirable, not to mention decidedly punk rock and antiestablishment, about popping your teeth out on a banker’s desk. Mrs. Ganush isn’t going to be walked upon, she’s defying the system really, really old school and she so vengefully obstinate that even death isn’t going stop her. She also comes with her own free Lamia demon for the personal cursing of your enemies so that’s a pretty good deal. Yes, there are a lot of upsides to ageing the Ganush way.

Baby Jane Hudson: Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Now this is probably my level of crazy. Deluded, drunk, daddy fixated, inappropriately dressed, tantrum throwing, stuck in a self mythologised past, filled with misguided self importance and with a fantastically alarming inability to accept the natural order of things and face the mirror’s ugly truth. Yup, I can work with that, (as discussed before I’d never hurt my sister, if I did then I’d be forced to go all psychotic killer crazy on myself and that would just be a mess).

Baby Jane can never be accused of letting herself go when it comes to the ageing process, she’s still working the make up and the outfits and still planning her big comeback. When it comes to domestic crazy and growing old disgracefully Baby Jane Hudson shows us kids how it’s done.

Mother of Sighs (Mater Suspiriorum): Suspira

Mater Suspiriorum is formidable force of dark power and malevolence (I’m thinking of having that printed onto business cards) who has walked the earth for centuries amassing untold power and wealth. Clearly already onto a winner here. Despite being on form to rule the world in 1895 this mother decides to become Helena Markos and for some reason settles in Germany and founds a dance academy. This all goes swimmingly until the fear she inspires in the locals (again, winner!) forces her to fake her death and to continue her evil deeds and bloody murders in secret apparently largely from a nice comfy bed. Really not seeing anything wrong this.

There’s a lot to aspire to in Mater Suspiriorum, if you’re going to get old and grey and impossibly withered you might as well do it in style with all the wealth and all the power and the irrepressible desire to commit acts of pure, unadulterated evil, these are the things that keep you young.

Minnie Castevet: Rosemary’s Baby

There’s a lot that’s enviable about the life of Minnie Casevet; she’s happily married, has led an interesting and exotic life, lives in a fabulous apartment in glamourous New York, has many friends and is well connected amongst the rich and powerful. Of course there’s the small matter of being part of a satanic cult hellbent on delivering the Anti-Christ into the world to lead us into a new age, but nobody’s perfect.

Interfering, devil worshipping, mousse spiking busybody Minnie is irrepressible, single-minded and completely unhindered by the subtle niceties of polite society. She’s a woman without boundaries, the advancing years have given her the enviable freedom to ask the questions that need asking and say precisely what’s on her mind irrespective of how intrusive or rude these things might be.

Between bouts of herb peddling and devil pimping, the manipulative, overbearing Minnie also has a penchant for snazzy hats and rouge that can be seen from space. With her make up that could only have been applied in the dark and outfits fabulous in a way only the late 60s could ever have fathomed, Mrs C. is a glorious vision of unabashed eccentricity that I can wholeheartedly aspire to.

Honourable Non-Horror Mention

Mrs. Slocambe, Are You Being Served?

Mad about hair dye, a slave to her pussy (can’t believe I just wrote that), spends her days rummaging amongst ladies’ lingerie, Mrs. S. is unquestionably one of my style icons.

Yes, this has definitely given me a lot to think about, and something to look forward to as my ovaries shrivel and my face begins to resemble a relief map of Tibet. The horror ladies growing old disgracefully show us that we don’t have to pull up a rocking chair and start knitting after 40 and that bad behaviour isn’t just the privilege of the young. Depraved, deranged, murderous and downright mental as they may be, I love the old girls gone wild and salute them.

Women in Horror Month: There is Nothing Like a Dame

2011-02-08T15:31:00.002+01:00

Oh, yes, Women in Horror Month is in full swing, and I remain as excited as a small child high on sugar the night before Christmas. I’ve been loving wandering around the internet this week as reading all the marvellous posts celebrating a whole host of horror’s greatest gals. For my part, today, I would like to take a pictorial amble through a gallery of some of those fabulous ladies who make our hearts beat a little bit faster, for a multitude of reasons.

For Doctor Cyclops

For The Mike, and me.

For Matthew

Thank you, ladies!

That was just a small selection of the ladies who have my heart, the ones who came to mind in five minutes as, if I'd given myself any longer, we'd have been here all day, it would have been ridiculous. Please though, if you have any other amazing women to add do drop them in the comments box, or, even better, celebrate them on your blog and add the link.

I really can't stop staring at Ingrid Pitt now.

Women in Horror Month: Bad Girls of Horror

2011-02-02T11:50:00.001+01:00

Heck yeah, it’s Women in Horror Month! I love women and I love horror so this month I’m going to be more excited than the time I thought I saw Charlie from Casualty in Sainsburys. And, to make things even more exciting, gentleman hero, The Mike, a fellow champion of the ladies, particularly the ladies who make horror great, is rallying his Midnight Warriors to share their Women in Horror Month posts and celebrations at his den of coolness From Midnight, With Love.

Yup, this is a good month, and to kick off the festivities here I’d like to pay tribute to a group of ladies I feel a special affinity for; those devilishly delectable dames we all know and love, The Bad Girls of Horror.

Baby Firefly, (Sheri Moon Zombie), House of 1000 Corpses (2003) and The Devil's Rejects (2005)

With her blonde hair and angelic face you may be forgiven for thinking that butter wouldn’t melt in this baby’s mouth, but you’d briefly live long enough to regret that abysmally bad call. Beneath that candy sweet exterior beats the heart of a cold, unrelenting killer who will giggle maniacally as she performs unspeakable acts of torture. She kills with the gleeful innocence of a child experimenting with the limits of her favourite Barbie’s plastic limbs and never for a second do thoughts of mercy or remorse occur to her. Demented, childishly psychotic and divinely white trash this hillbilly hellraiser is a brutal, beautiful addition to the bad girls of horror.

Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly) Bride of Chucky (1998) and Seed of Chucky (2004)

*Whether in doll or human form don’t mess with Tiffany because Tiffany will take you down. Obsessive, single-minded, completely crazy, nothing is going to stop Tiffany getting what she wants. The lady may look blonde, curvy, sultry and cute, but under that immaculate made up façade Tiffany is taking no prisoners. As a woman I’m always supportive of women determinedly striving to get what they want, whether it’s education, a career or the love of a serial killer trapped in a doll’s body. Tiffany not only keeps up with Chucky every bloody step of the way, she also dresses better, is more creative, is unquestionably smarter than her male counterpart and has the voice of an angel.

*My abject apologies for shamefully just blatantly copying this bit from a recent post I did for The Mike for his '12 Days of Christmas' feature. It’s ghastly and lazy and I’m very sorry, but I love Tiff and wanted her in again and it seemed silly to rehash it. Please forgive me I’m horrid.

Julie Walker (Melinda Clarke) Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993)

Like all the best stories Julie’s real bad girl story begins after she dies. Attempting to initiate sex on the back of a moving motorcycle is a bloody stupid thing to do and young Julie finds this out quite abruptly when she hits a tree at speed and dies on a grass verge. But, luckily for Julie her boyfriend Curt has access to Trioxin gas and is able to use it to re-animate her. Unfortunately it isn’t too long before Julie begins exhibiting the symptoms of her newly zombified state. As the pain of rigor mortis kicks in and the agonising desire for human flesh becomes apparent, Julie tackles the situation by becoming punk rock to the max. She discovers that the only way she can assuage her hunger is by scarifying her flesh and while Curt sleeps sweet Julie indulges in some DIY body modification carving up and piercing her flesh with glass, nails, blades and needles. It also turns out that driving a shard of glass through your hand and threading a leather strap weighted down by rock through the other can be very useful as it provides you with instant weaponry for hand to hand combat.

Julie Walker (deceased) is a hardcore ass kicking babe; she’s also a gorgeous redhead which definitely qualifies her for a place as one of horror’s baddest girls in my book.

Julia Cotton (Clare Higgins), Hellraiser (1987) and Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

Although initially seemingly seduced and manipulated by Frank, Julia was always her own woman and her bloody journey sees her progress from beautiful dissatisfied housewife to vicious predator and ultimately queen of hell (not a hundred percent sure how that last bit happened though, admin error maybe).

In order to resurrect her foolhardy lover Frank, Julia embarks on a mission of seduction and murder luring lonely middle aged men with the promise of wild, uncomplicated sex only to beat their brains in with a hammer. Seriously not a lady to cross, or try and have sex with. Julia Cotton is one bad, bad girl, and later even skinless and sticky fresh from hell her sexual charms are still as potent

Like any self-respecting bad girl Julia Cotton is a slave to her id, her desire for forbidden physical pleasure sees her become a cold blooded killer and her lust for revenge sustains through hell and sees her rebirthed through the same bloody mattress that began the whole mess to begin with. Beautiful, deranged and deadly Julia Cotton is one hell of a killer dame.

Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe) Lair of the White Worm (1988)

Mysterious, seductive and beautiful, Lady Sylvia Marsh is a skull stealing, Boy Scout bothering, snake worshipping, virgin sacrificing ball of hot, fanged bad assery.

When she’s not stalking about her rambling mansion sporting an array of fabulous outfits and exotic lingerie, smart, sassy noblewoman Lady S. is otherwise occupied in being the reincarnation of ancient snake god, Dionin’s high priestess, and plotting to bring about Dionin’s return by sacrificing Catherine Oxenberg of of Dynasty.

This lady is enigmatic, eccentric, sensuous, and a resplendent vision in thigh high boots, the fact that she’s also reptilian and can spit venom ten plus feet just adds to her bad charm.

Oh, yes, ladies, you are some wicked, wonderful, wild women who play by no one's rules but your own and I love you for that, however deranged and mental you may be.

Wrestlemaniac (2007)

2011-01-24T09:55:00.001+01:00

When I was a kid I used to love Saturday afternoons. Saturday afternoons meant The Incredible Hulk, The A Team and Wrestling. Now, there’s probably a vast difference between how you understand wrestling and how I do. Wrestling to me means good old fashioned Her Majesty’s British wrestling which roughly translates to overweight middle aged men who wouldn’t look out of place propping up the bar in the local pub wearing leotards and bashing into each other a bit. Our wrestlers looked like your uncle just before he went in for a heart bypass, they were the legends Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks, Mick McManus and big screen stars like Pat Roach and lovely Brian Glover and they were gods among men. They ruled Saturdays like majestic lycra clad warriors and Saturdays have never been the same without them.

With this in mind I was naturally delirious with excitement when I came across Wrestlemaniac and while I had a vague suspicion that wrestling had changed since my early Saturday afternoons sprawled on the carpet in front the TV cheering for Giant Haystacks memories I was confident that this was going to be the best film ever. So confident was I of this fact that I immediately texted everyone I knew (three people) proclaiming that I, Jinx, had found the best film ever and that they better ruddy well get themselves over on Friday night to watch the heck out of it. You may know by now that I’m prone to irrational overexcitement, most days are like Christmas Eve for me, so when Friday night finally rolled round my overexcitement was finely tuned to a pitch only dogs hear and by the time we all settled down with our pizzas and whiskies to watch this cinematic gem my head was almost ready to explode.

Wrestlemaniac begins with a van full of clichés heading out into the Mexican desert to make a porn film, this annoyed me from the outset, not because they were clichés or even because they were largely un-likeable clichés, but because this, from square one, shows a shocking amount of fiscal irresponsibility. Sadly I don’t produce porn of a living, but if I did I’m fairly certain that I wouldn’t be wasting my valuable time and bloody hard earned cash driving a load of people unnecessarily to Mexico when I could stick a cactus in a motel room.

Our merry band of pornmongers are made up of Alphonse (Adam Huss), team arse and hat wearer, his badly structured beard offends me, pointless stoned friend only included on account of it being his van, Jimbo (Zack Bennett), chubby guy, Steve (Jeremy Radin), who obviously knows about the holy lore of wrestling because he’s a chubby guy, this proves to be useful later, and, of course, every porn film needs its lovely ladies so we also have Daisy (Catherine Wreford), largely unconscious, could do with a good meal, Debbie (Margaret Scarborough), her curiously shaped implants alarmed my BFF Kev, and Dallas (Leyla Milani), final girl, contortionist and manicured mechanic. (It took a surprisingly long time for me to realise that the two lovely ladies were called Debbie and Dallas, it made me snigger, eventually).

In a shocking and completely unprecedented turn of events the porn gang find themselves running out of petrol on an isolated stretch of road with still a hundred miles to go to their intended destination and things only get worse when they stumble upon a dilapidated petrol station that doesn’t have any petrol but does have liberal supplies of cocaine and a local nutcase (Irwin Keyes) who thinks the best way to make friends is to jump out people wearing a wrestling mask. Local nutcase points the porno kids back to the road and portentously adds that they will have to pass La Sangre de Dios to complete their journey.

Fortunately the team have a chubby guy so he is able to explain that La Sangre de Dios is a ghost town where the infamous wrestler and insane killer, El Mascarado (Rey Misterio), was banished for, well, being an insane killer. This raises my first question; how exactly does one banish someone to a ghost town? I can only assume that the banishee isn’t keen on this arrangement so how precisely is the banishment maintained? This first question pales into insignificance when the rest of the tale comes to light. El Mascarado, it turns out, was assembled from the miscellaneous body parts of the world’s greatest wrestlers in order to create the ultimate, unbeatable wrestler to compete in the ’68 Olympics. (So many questions). He never made it to the Olympics because before he even made it through the qualifying stages he went somewhat mental and started tearing people’s faces off rather than making the concerted effort necessary to secure Olympic gold.

Exercising phenomenal stupidity, but marginally better fiscal acuity, Team Sexy Times sagely decide that this ghost town will be the ideal impromptu location for their pornographic extravaganza and wasting no time they run over a rock (a rock not The Rock) suitably ensuring their crappy van is going nowhere fast and get right down to amateur porn hour in the ghost town bar.

Amateur porn hour goes badly to say the least, again, I’m sadly not a producer of porn, but if I was I’m fairly certain I’d have utilised my given space and time in a better manner than a bit of girl on girl writhing, I’d have also probably suggested that, given her semi-conscious state, Daisy probably isn’t best placed for anything requiring coordination like climbing atop a ghost town bar, or walking and I definitely wouldn’t have allowed the arse with the badly constructed beard to join in the action. Fortunately for everyone this erotic interlude is short lived as poor scrawny, semi-conscious Daisy comes over all queasy and makes a run for freedom. To her credit she manages to run a fair old way before she finally succumbs to some violent vomiting, less to her credit she then proceeds to stumble about bare foot in some wasteland littered with broken glass, but ultimately this is really the least of her worries as, before she has time to worry about tetanus, El Mascarado proves himself less of an urban legend and more of a crazy man in tights and swiftly puts her out of her misery, and rips off her face.

From here on in it’s fairly easy to predict the course of events; El Mascarado, still governed by the rules of wrestling for which he was created, continues to systematically engage ‘opponents’ in combat and once triumphant doles out the ultimate wrestling humiliation; the ritual removal of the mask, or face, he not really fussed on this score. As our wrestling madman methodically limits the potential of any decent porn being made there that day, chubby guy, Steve, commits cinematic suicide by working out that El Mascarado can be defeated by using the rules of wrestling to their own advantage and then merrily tells everyone this information to ensure that he now serves no tangible purpose and can be freely slaughtered so maybe some more attractive people can live.

To be perfectly honest, while Wrestlemaniac may not have been quite the best film ever, it was certainly the best film I saw that night, and I actually did enjoy watching it, whether the whiskey and the good company had anything to do with this conclusion is probably best not mentioned. It did give me everything I was expecting; blood, boobies, ample silliness and a little bit of crassness. It was also surprisingly well made, the direction and camerawork was unexpectedly competent and for the most part it looked like a much better, classier movie than it actually was. I am reliably informed that Rey Misterio is a big name in the wrestling world (though apparently not as big as his nephew Rey Misterio Jnr.) and I would imagine that he pretty much conducts proceedings here as he would do in the bona fide wrestling arena. While it’s partially a little difficult to take a man in white tights seriously I’m still reasonably sure that I’m sufficiently scared of him for him to make a decent enough villain, but of course he’s no Giant Haystacks and it would be silly to pretend otherwise. Ultimately I’m glad that I got to see Wrestlemaniac, even if it was only for the happy memories of childhood Saturday afternoons, it does have some good things going for it and frankly, considering, it could have been a lot worse. If you’re easily excitable like me I’d recommend you give this a go, you’ll probably have a bloody good time, if you’re more reserved and discerning then you probably haven’t even made it this far and are mostly likely already reading/watching something much better.

Two Kittens Creeping

2011-01-19T11:51:00.001+01:00

While I brew up a proper post I thought I'd post some Christmas kitten pictures, because everyone loves kittens, right?

Opie and BeBe destroying the Christmas tree

Opie and BeBe pretending they're not destroying the Christmas tree

Lounging and clearly plotting more mischief

Needless to say the Christmas tree spent most of the season on the floor and we're still finding baubles under the furniture. Presents were also something of a lucky dip as they ate all the labels. I was thrilled to receive my Lynx gift set and limited edition Dinobot. I now smell like an adolescent boy and can turn a plane into a pterodactyl in less than 11 seconds, thanks kittens.

Jinx, Links, Drinks and Kinks

2011-01-17T11:37:00.002+01:00

Well, hello there, gorgeous cats and kittens!

Just stopping by to apologise for not having been around as much of late. I’ve been a bit under the weather. Well, actually, no, I’ve been feeling a bit sorry for myself is a more accurate way of putting it. I’ve had a rubbish gammy foot for about six months which has been increasingly causing me ungodly amounts of pain, and while the pain is indeed ungodly, it’s been more the fact that hobbling around the place half of the time has made me feel old and decrepit and that has made me a bit low (except for briefly during the bad snow when I quite genuinely looked like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining on my home from work each night, that amused me). After finally relenting and visiting a doctor (and then a biomechanical specialist, seriously made me feel like the Six Million Dollar Man) it turns out have Morton’s Neuroma which is a tumour that grows on a nerve in the foot, hence ungodly pain. The name and the description actually sound more alarming than it really is, it’s really just a pathetic complaint most commonly suffered by people who wear high heeled shoes constantly. As I am not one of these people this really pisses me off. Anyway, I may have to have a crappy operation which I’m none to thrilled about, but as an interim measure I have been issued with special inserts for the only pair of boots I can actually suffer wearing, so essentially I am now wearing ‘special shoes’, just a small step away from orthopaedic corrective footwear. I am not exactly thrilled about this either, it’s the principle not necessarily the aesthetics. I am reluctantly forced to admit that the inserts have made a hell of a lot of difference. And that’s what I’ve been up to. Hope you’ve been having more fun.

In other news I seriously can’t stop watching Metalocalypse. I love it so much. My husband and I have started narrating the kittens giving them the voices of Skwisgaar and Toki. ‘Stops copyings me, BeBe.’ We find this hilarious. We’re not getting out much at the moment.

For reasons best known to myself I’ve started ploughing my way through the Children of the Corn series. I guess I’ve been self medicating with whiskey too much. To prove this point further my sister and I spent Christmas threatening to start writing Midsomer Murders fan fiction. I've also been thinking I’d rather like a really fancy blog banner to stick up at the top there, only I suck and am incapable of anything that technical, if anyone super clever would care to make me one you will have my undying adulation. Sorry, I’m just wittering now.

One thing that did cheer me up recently was that the unbelievably rock and roll Matthew Coniam sent me the most awesome Christmas present and I now have Vincent Price and Robin Askwith goodness to cheer me over the coming week. (I didn’t get it till just last week because Royal Mail suck and can’t cope with a little bit of snow). Thank you so much, Matthew, you are the very best!

Also another piece of good news that pleased me heartily was that gorgeous The Mike has been nominated in Total Film’s 2011 Best Movie Blog Awards in the category of Best Fan Blog. Hell, yeah! Please, please, please stop by and give him your vote.

click for voting goodness

I would also like to thank the very lovely Jenny B. for kindly bestowing on me her ‘You Make Me Scream Award’. I utterly love it, Jenny, and thank you so much for honouring me with it. I promise to pass it on when I’m feeling a bit less old and rubbish.

Sorry, I’ve been unpleasantly whiny this post, that’s rubbish. However, I’m very grateful that people like Matthew, The Mike, Jenny and many others here make me super happy on a daily basis with their wit, wisdom and general all round awesomeness. I will finish now on a lighter, less whiny, note and offer up some of the more amusing searches that have brought people to my blog recently and made me smile:

Heroine in her underwear – Yes I am! Love this.

Burt Ward penis - I get variations on this a lot. Really, a lot. What’s wrong with people?

Removal of jinx for alcoholism - Shut up!

Daddy shirtless - even by my standards that’s just a bit creepy

For god's sake will somebody help me - not sure if this was a cry for help that got misdirected. My review of Somebody Help Me probably didn’t help matters. Sorry.

At the recess queen mean jean push velma who wears glasses – nope, no idea what that means, but I’m fairly sure someone somewhere is taking the piss out of me.

jynx fuck puppet: I ruddy beg your pardon!

Jinx to make my son behave: Yup, you’re in the right place, I make all the boys behave.

Horror tit grab – Hell yeah!!!

Sex with octopus – I both love and fear this one all at once. Unfortunately I’m not entirely surprised though; I do discuss sex with marine life disturbingly often here.

Happy New Year and Heck Yeah, Sharks!

2011-01-04T12:23:00.001+01:00

I had vaguely thought about doing one of those 2010 best/worst rundown posts, but I’m rubbish and lazy and instead spent my time drinking whiskey, cuddling kittens and, as it turned out this morning when I sat down to write some stuff, thinking about sharks. It’s fairly common knowledge that I love a shark movie. Oh, boy, do I love a shark movie! I barely even discriminate, I’ll watch anything and I pretty much love them all in one way or another. There’s a lot of work and effort goes into loving shark movies so to save you all the blood, sweat and the tears, little naps and distracted nail painting that I go through on a regular basis here’s a brief peek at seven of the most awesome. (I am for the most part using ‘awesome’ in the broadest sense it’s possible to use it, ever).

Jaws (1975)

The undisputed daddy. I don’t even feel the need to write anything here. It’s Jaws. It’s awesome. And it’s still bloody terrifying.

Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (2002)

I care not what anyone says about this film, I love it. It’s a great big steaming pile of awesomeness with a great big John Barrowman shaped candle on top.

Carcharodon Megalodon is making it very difficult to install/repair very important underwater cables off the coast of Mexico, so security man Captain Jack takes it upon himself to sort this ruddy mess out, with the help of marine biologist, paleontologist, pretty lady Cat Stone. Much toothy chaos ensues.

Among the many finer points of Shark Attack 3: Megalodon are: prehistoric shark managing to always look utterly and convincingly real and not in the least like stock footage of a normal shark with things added that are smaller than they really are. John Barrowman, just generally, but in this instance as a lady loving, jet skiing playboy who can hunt supposedly extinct giant sharks, still crack wise and get lucky while doing it. It turns out that megalodons are perfectly able to subsist on a steady diet of boats seasoned with a little sailor and/or diver. I won’t hear a word said against this movie, it’s probably one the greatest motion picture extravaganzas ever. I’m going to put my fingers in my ears now and go la la la la la very loudly.

Raging Sharks (2005)

Quite genuinely the stupidist plot I’ve ever heard in my life.

Two alien spaceships crash into each other, (yes, you heard me, alien spaceships) and some manner of spacey type generator thing from one of the ships falls into the Bermuda Triangle (yup, that’s alien spaceships and the Bermuda Triangle). Said super spacey device is, it turns out, powered by magic space crystals,(space crystals, people!) which strangely enough have a devastating effect on the local sharks making them go all extra mental and kill crazed that. Mental, crystal crazed sharks attack then proceed to attack an underwater research lab, cleverly and systematically cutting out the power and oxygen because, naturally, space crystals make them smarter than your average shark. Fortunately for humanity, the Navy sends specialists to rescue the scientists trapped inside, however, little do they know there is already a covert black-ops team within the lab that have their own nefarious agenda. So essentially all Steven Spielberg’s early films sliced up and shaken around in the wacky pot until they congeal into one giant ball of craziness; Heck yeah, Nu Image!

Utter and complete madness presided over by Corin ‘Parker Lewis, I Know My First Name Is Steven, Jonas Quinn’ Nemec. I think if I had sharks that were not just angry or a wee bit miffed but actually raging then I’d send in Parker Lewis, he can’t lose apparently. Raging Sharks is one of those movies where it’s best to start drinking earlier, you may then find that as Parker Lewis negotiates his way through sharks, aliens, spaceships, treacherous assassins, nuclear submarines, cosmic crystals, Corbin Bernsen and some footage from Shark Attack 3: Megalodon that you actually start to enjoy yourself in the midst of the stupidity.

Deep Blue Sea (1999)

On a remote research facilities in the middle of the ocean scientists try to cure Alzheimer’s by experimenting on the brain make up of Mako sharks. Unsurprisingly this ends in tears before bedtime. Under the noble but stupid impression that by increasing the brain capacity of the sharks they can then harvest the tissue as a potential cure for Alzheimer's disease scientists prod about in shark’s heads until all hell breaks loose. It turns out that the increased brain capacity also makes the sharks faster, more dangerous, more intelligent and more angry so naturally they begin to engineer their escape and their bloody revenge on dratted scientists who have imprisoned them.

When this was first out at the cinema I paid a good £6 in good faith to see Samuel L. Jackson take on some bloody big crazy sharks. Let’s face it, if anyone can do that, (after Scheider), it’s Sammy L. This is not what I got. My incredulous cry of ‘…the fuck!’ at a particular part of this movie was heard echoing through the theatre and I was seconds away from demanding my money back from someone. Fortunately for all involved, especially my mum who was at that stage fearing a scene, the whole thing picked up and I got carried away with the exciting shark action, and LL Cool J. Instead of curing Alzheimer’s the sharks decide that their time would be much better served in systematically taking down a deep sea science facility and eating a load of people. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Megashark vs. Giant Octopus (2009)

A megalodon and giant octopus are conveniently flash frozen amid a titanic battle a long time ago, in the olden days. Much like a really long game of musical statues, the two colossal beasts remain in their mid battle frozen state until the present day when pesky global warming begins to thaw them out and it’s not long before they are back swimming free in our modern waters unleashing carnage and devastation in their mighty wakes. The kind of carnage a megalodon and a giant octopus wreak turns out to be largely eating improbable things like bridges, off shore oil rigs and goddamn, bloody airplanes, in flight. Eventually scientists, mainly Debbie Gibson, come to the conclusion that the only way to stop these mighty killers is to pit them against each other in one final battle of prehistoric proportions, kind of like Gladiators. I entirely misinterpreted the scientific plan for the destruction of the beasts on first viewing and for quite a long time genuinely thought that the plan was to encourage them to have sex with each other until they both died. I was disturbingly disappointed when I learned this wasn’t the case.

From the concept alone I knew this film was going to be a winner with me. While I was inexplicably a little disappointed by the lack of interspecies prehistoric sex, the whole affair was ultimately worth it for the opportunity to see a shark take down a flying plane, and Debbie Gibson, it was nice to see Debbie again after all these years.

Hell yeah, shark films rule! They manage to all at once be horrendously disappointing (mainly just on the basis that they are not Jaws, except for Jaws which is obviously Jaws) and being unbelievably exciting and satisfying simply because, irrespective of all else, they’ve got great big sharks eating stuff in them. I bloody love them. Stay tuned for my further adventures beneath the sea and in the depths of my DVD collection where I will explore such important issues as; what happens when you cross a shark with an octopus and can you actually fit sharks in Venetian canals.

Merry Christmas!!!

2010-12-24T12:49:00.000+01:00

I know I posted this last year, but it's awesome so here it is again. What is this freaky Christmas visitation? The Lord our saviour? The Grim Reaper? Gandalf? Or Vigo the Carpathian? What do you reckon?

I would like to wish you all the very merriest of Christmases and wish each and every one of you joy, love, success and splendour for 2011. I'm off slap some rock 'n' roll on the old record player, watch Die Hard and try to stop the kittens destroying the Christmas tree and opening all the presents before tomorrow. I shall see you all very soon, when I've recovered from my very special Christmas whiskey hangover.

FBD Blogathon: A Tod Slaughter Christmas

2010-12-20T10:34:00.000+01:00

Tod and Me: A Very Personal Retrospective or A Self-Obsessed Reflection on Misunderstood Genius and Why Me and Tod Rule and The World Simply Wasn’t Ready For Us Because It Sucks.

About a hundred years ago when radios were called wirelesses, CDs were considered witchcraft and Jesus was still in short robes, I went to drama school and studied the noble craft of acting.

Any actor worth their fancy trousers will tell you that there is a book that is the actor’s Bible and they also tell you that that book is ‘An Actor Prepares’ by Constantin Stanislavski. ‘An Actor Prepares’ was first published in 1936 and is the first volume of translations of Stanislavski’s books on acting , it is intended to be a learning tool that indirectly teaches the aspiring thespian by example. It is constructed as a fictional diary of a naïve young drama student named Kostya and charts his progress through his first year of training in Stanislavski’s ‘system’. Predominantly the book is concerned with the inexperienced Kostya and his classmates, under the tutelage of their teacher and director Tortsov, learning that every preconceived idea they had about the nature of the craft is wrong as it fails to align with the Stanislavski ‘system’.

Broadly, the Stanislavski ‘system’ strives to achieve truth in performance by drawing on the inner creativity and imagination of the actor to allow every action to be stimulated by the inner machinations of the given character. Essentially what this means is that the average drama student spends the vast majority of his or her time scrabbling about looking for a ‘brooch’ that, however well meaning, a ‘friend’ shouldn’t have stuck in a curtain and trying to find the essential truth of that action. The rest of their time is taken up with sitting around while their fellow students discuss all the reasons why they sucked at the exercise.

I think all this is bollocks. I’m fairly sure that Tod Slaughter never read ‘An Actor Prepares’, but even if he had I’m fairly sure he’d have thought this was bollocks too. Tod never strove for realism and truth in his performances, his acting style was not concerned with the miniscule internal motivations that took his character from a to b to c, what Tod did was different, Tod just took his character and ran with it, exploded all over it, began acting and just forgot to stop. With the unstoppable momentum of a runaway cartoon snowball Todd just got bigger and bigger gleefully obliterating all in the general vicinity with the sheer gusto of his own theatrical creations. You see, Tod knew something Stanislavski didn’t, Tod knew joy, he appreciated the delight that could be found in unabashed, bombastic, melodramatic theatrics and simple, uncomplicated entertainment. There are those who say Tod was a bad actor, but they’re wrong, I prefer to think of him as enthusiastic, and charming, eccentrically, irrepressibly charming.

Tod and I clearly have a lot in common, (I mean aside from just our testicular views on Stanislavski and our ‘enthusiastic’ acting styles), I feel a special kinship with the T-Man and naturally, therefore, I am a fierce advocate of his work and largely unappreciated genius.

Tod , like me, was born to a working class family in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the North East of England, and, like me, he aspired to something greater and more fulfilling than his working class roots. He (we) found the perfect creative escape in theatre. and his (our) ambitions led to teenage years spent treading the boards in the North East’s finest fleapits. At the age of just twenty, Tod’s inherent verve and entrepreneurial spirit saw him found his own theatre company to showcase his prodigious talent. (In my early twenties I founded my own theatre company because no director in their right mind would employ me ever under any circumstances so I had to employ myself and showcase my alarming ‘talent’). Naturally, Tod and I were both destined for better things and with spectacular cross century symmetry we both wound up in London (he running a series of theatres including ones in Elephant and Castle and Chatham, and me, less impressively, circumstantially forced to dress as the bloody teacup from Beauty and the Beast at the opening of Disney stores to pay my drama school debts.)

What Tod did on stage was essentially what he did film (what I did on stage is best not mentioned). Although he did initially begin his career playing, somewhat bizarrely, romantic leads and comic roles, it wasn’t till he began producing and performing in the kind of macabre, garish penny dreadful theatre that appealed to audiences of the era that he really found his niche. He cackled, he strode, he crept, leered and lurked and joyously perfected hand wringing and moustache twirling all over the stages of the day. Tod essentially created the archetypal villain.

In order to bring the greatest frightfests to his stage Tod wisely ravaged the literature, folklore and real life events of recent history in order to show his talents to greatest advantage. During his stage career he brought such tales and legends to life as Jekyll and Hyde, Spring Heeled Jack, Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper, Burke and Hare and, of course, his arguably most famous theatrical creation, Sweeney Todd, and some of these roles he would later reprise in film.

While my ‘career’ progressed to alarming kids all over the country, and quite frequently mutilating selected works of Shakespeare, in a variety of ghastly Theatre In Education productions, Tod’s took him onto the silver screen where he could rightly shine as the nefarious star he was, and in film he was as theatrical and larger than life as on stage. With a blithe disregard for the change in form Tod commendably continued ACTING (I think his style warrants the capital letters) as only he could.

From his debut in 1935 Tod went on to delight movie audiences for many years as he brought to life a whole host of memorable ne'er-do-wells on the big screen. His most notable movie performances of this period included; Maria Marten/Murder in the Red Barn (1935), The Greed of William Hart (1948), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936), The Face at the Window (1939) and Crimes at the Dark House (1940).

And this is where our careers (please insert your own inverted commas in relation to me) diverge slightly. Now, and I’m sure you’ll agree, although our lives have been all but identical up to this point, while I, enraged at not getting my own way enough of the time exited the theatrical profession in an epic internal hissyfit of epic proportions and quietly sulked, Tod continued to work in film, TV and on stage right up until his death in 1956.

Tod provides an important link between British horror on the stage and British horror in film, he practically invented Hammer before Hammer was even conceived and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that he paved the way for what Hammer later achieved. I meanwhile provide the vital link between whiskey and quasi bitter diatribes about how my career could have been if only I had the breaks and people weren’t so stupid, the Great Midsummer Night’s Dream Whiskey Frenzy of 1993 could also never have happened without me.

It ludicrous that Tod Slaughter is so little known. He’s a horror star and his name is Tod Slaughter, for Christ’s sake, people should be all over that. Yet, in the grand scheme of general horror history he is all but ignored and the mass populace would not recognize his name or image. (I feel his pain, it’s hard being me and Tod.) It was alleged that whilst filming Marathon Man Sir Lawrence Olivier in reference to Dustin Hoffman staying up all night in order to play his character as having stayed up all night in a scene said, ‘why don’t you try acting, darling, it’s much easier.’ Tod Slaughter tried acting. He tried acting with glorious abandon. He tried acting with every limb, every muscle and with every fibre of his being. He tried acting so hard and so big that there was really wasn’t a screen or stage anyway capable of containing him. And while he may not be that well known, may not be lauded and may not receive the accolades that go to his peers, those of us lucky enough to see him never forget him and love him for it, and that is his legacy.

Homegrown Horror: Dead Frequency

2010-12-13T10:39:00.001+01:00

I’m from Newcastle. For those of you that don’t know, Newcastle, or ‘The Toon’, is a city in the North East of England predominantly famous for:

I’m sorry about most of those things.

I’m very fond of Newcastle. After much travelling I made a conscious decision to return here because I missed it, and while, in the current season of bone aching cold* and bitter winds and relentless rain, I quite often wonder what the hell I was thinking I do still love it and just the sight of Tyne Bridge on my way home every night makes me warm inside, even when I can’t actually feel my extremities anymore because its so bloody horrifically cold. (*Note on cold for any non –Newcastle residents or other aliens: People from Newcastle do not feel the cold, they are just that damn hard. In Newcastle, irrespective of the temperature outside, it is forbidden to wear a coat/jacket/any manner of protection against the elements. One must only wear a t shirt if male or a very small piece of fabric that could be described as a ‘dress’ if female. It’s just how things are. I’ve been wearing furs (faux, of course) since August. I’m an anomaly in my city).

So then, as an established resident of the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and lover of all its foibles and wonders (I sadly fear I can not call myself a Geordie due to the majority of my life having been spent away from the fair city and the shocking lack of the fantastic Geordie accent) I was very excited to learn of a new Newcastle based horror film, Dead Frequency. Dead Frequency is a thoroughly modern, gritty tale of vampiric love set against the backdrop of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and I can’t believe it took me so long to find out about it.

From the Dead Frequency website:

'Sam Stewart (Mason) has to battle with depression and Alcohol addiction, while holding down his job as a night-time radio presenter.

He also strives to maintain a relationship with Emily (Marshall) as he struggles to conceal his true feelings.

A mysterious new manager Diane (Ormston) arrives and the group question whether she is who she says she is and who she is really working for.

However Diane has questions of her own and reveals a dark and deadly secret. Her intervention causes stress to the group that takes them to breaking point, resulting in a dramatic conclusion…'

Bloody marvellous!

The trailer can be found here.

Curiously Newcastle appears to have a mysterious association with vampires. Perched atop an office block in our fair city sits this little fella:

The vampire rabbit leers ghoulishly at passersby from the doorway of a cathedral building, no one knows why.

Midnight Warriors: Mama Weer All Crazee Now

2010-11-30T10:04:00.002+01:00

You have no idea how much it pained me to mutilate the English language in that title. Damn you, Slade!

When From Midnight With Love's The Mike challenged his Midnight Warriors to pay tribute to the mums of horror I was totally down with that plan. Hell yeah, mums! Mums rock! Mums in horror do generally get a bad press; it kind of sucks to be a horror mum because basically everything is your fault, you’re either absent, psychotic/evil, abusive, neglectful or uninvolved to the point of blindness. Now while I could drone on in a pseudo intellectual manner about the implications of this for a very long time (oh, I really could), I’m instead going to restrain myself and let the mums speak for themselves. A while ago I did a picture meme in which I chose to celebrate the daddies of horror so for the sake symmetry (and the blessed relief of less talking on my part) I’m going to present the mummies of horror in the same format. So here they are in all their glory; the beautiful, crazy, awesome, killer mums of horror.

Only kidding, the last one's MY mum! Lily: rock chick, seer, dancer, Dachshund wrangler, counsellor, rebel, warrior, goddess and best damn mum ever. I love you, mummy!

So there were the horror mums, weren’t they great?

Thanks to The Mike for coming up with this excellent idea. And Thanks to The Mike’s mum The Masha from coming up with the idea of The Mike. And to all the mums out there, thanks for being awesome.

Horrific Beards I Have Known – The Sci-Fi Edition

2010-11-22T09:51:00.000+01:00

Brian Blessed
Prince Vultan
Flash Gordon (1980) and just generally, in everything, in life, always

Brian Blessed is quite definitely one of my absolute favourite actors, no people, on the planet ever. My husband and I quite often in everyday life spontaneously decide to have ‘Talk Like Brian Blessed Hours’. The man is a clearly a great big, mountainous, booming bloody genius, and that’s before we get anywhere near the beard. Brian is a beard devotee. Brian’s beard is a constant, it’s a life choice, it’s a personality all of its very own, and, frankly, it’s the kind of beard that you could trap bears in.

Flash Gordon epitomises everything I love; it’s brash, it’s camp, it’s kitsch, it’s bright and colourful and it’s full of British character actors and pervy costumes. It’s pretty much exactly how I see the world and how I want it to be. It’s also soundtracked by the pantomime dames of rock, Queen.

As Prince Vultan leader of the Hawk People Brian steals the show. He is a winged vision in metal pants. There aren’t many men who can carry that look off, but Brian does with dignity and aplomb. The might of his beard in this performance is undeniable, surrounded by glittering, regal gold the beard gives the impression that if left to its devices not only could it merrily take down Emperor Ming the Merciless it could quite easily give him a good shouting at, straighten him out and get him a job with good prospects in the Mingo City civil service. The beard is that authoritative and mighty. It sits about Brian’s face saying: yes, I am wearing a combination of leather, lamé and feathers, what are you going to do about it?

It would be remiss of me, in any discussion pertaining to the man, the legend, Brian Blessed not to include at least a mention my favourite performance of his as Richard, The Duke of York in The Black Adder. There can’t ever have been a role more perfect for any actor than this one. Brian is comedy perfection in this, the most underrated of the Blackadder series, he gleefully hams it up as the warmongering Richard IV who likes nothing more than fighting, banqueting, hunting, drinking and bellowing. In The Black Adder Brian’s beard takes the bold step to allow the hair to join in the fun, the result – a level of hirsute insanity never before, or since, witnessed by the eyes of man. If there was ever an actor you could believe defeated an entire Turkish horde armed only with a small knife used for peeling fruit it’s Brian.

A hundred years ago when I thought that the theatre was an appropriate profession for me I quite often found myself turning to Brian and the lessons learned from him, and I became a proponent for the ‘if in doubt shout’ school of acting. Now, obviously Mr. Blessed, despite being the figurehead of this school that I made up in head, is never in doubt, he’s a great British actor of immense talent and experience and his characteristic booming voice comes not from any incapability but from skill and his very nature, the power and dynamism he embodies that allows him to command audiences the world over. However, for the less accomplished actor, this is a very useful technique as you can quite easily pass off a lack of talent for deeply considered character development resulting in uncontainable volcanic emotion and passion with very little actual thought or effort. (While I generally got good reviews, I was quite often called ‘dangerous’, ‘combustible’ and ‘an alarming presence’ as an actor and I’m fairly sure these weren’t really compliments).

Apparently you now can get Brian on your satnav. I can’t think of anything better than that. TURN RIGHT NOW!!!!

Brian Blessed has committed himself to the beard probably more than any other man before him. And his beard is the best, it’s a tremendous specimen envied the world over. I’d go as far as far as to say that God is jealous of Brian’s beard. In hundreds of years when societies have fallen and what remains of the earth is a sparsely populated blasted wasteland the survivors will huddle round fires into the night and they will tell tales of Brian’s beard and it’s glory and it will give them hope.

Brian Blessed: actor, adventurer, author, protector and shelterer of animals, legend, may you continue adventuring at high volume for years to come and may your beard remain as bushy and as magnificent.

Psychomania (1971)

2010-11-15T10:32:00.002+01:00

Psychomania is one of those movies that I first saw long, long ago in childhood and never forgot. It clung to the recesses of my mind like an odd, deranged dream, a better calibre dream, but an odd and deranged one nonetheless and I always remembered it. A lot later I met my husband and, disturbingly frequently, I would mention Psychomania in conversation and recall all its little oddities to him; zombie bikers, Beryl Reid, frogs and incongruous folk singing, and he quite honestly thought I’d made it up. He genuinely believed I was the flavour of crazy that invents bizarre, low budget British B-Movies and is so utterly convinced by the delusion that I try force other people of their existence too. He married me anyway, and finally after all these years I got to sit him down and make him watch it, so I got the last laugh. Who’s crazy now, husband? Hmmm?!

Tom (Nicky Henson) has pretty much got life in the 70s sorted, he’s a child of privilege with a big fancy house, George Sanders as a butler and Beryl Reid as his mum, he is also, as any self respecting upper middle class child would be in the 70s, the leader of the local group of rowdy toughs who make up the notorious (by the standards of a small, predominately upper middleclass, rural village) biker gang The Living Dead. The Living Dead are cool. They care not for your stuffy old rules, granddad. They laugh in the face of society’s conventions with their customised skull helmets and their assortment of leather and denim that’ll make your old eyes bleed because it’s so out there and you can’t understand it because you’re so old and square. Yeah, they’re cool, and groovy, yes, they’re probably groovy too.

Late one night, after some hellraising, Tom and his girlfriend Abby (Mary Larkin) are hanging out in a graveyard because they’re so cool and that’s what you do after running an old square off the road of an evening. Whilst basking in the warm afterglow of roadside carnage and the death of random members of the 70s public, Tom finds a frog and decides that he will take the little fellow home to his mother (aforementioned British comedy icon Beryl Reid). Now this may seem like an odd gift for a mother (or indeed a British comedy icon), but, it transpires that Ma Latham (Beryl Reid) is in fact something of an occult dabbler and frogs are like boxes of chocolates or Heartbeat DVDs to her, so when Tom arrives home to the stately family pile old Ma fresh from a séance is thrilled with her son’s thoughtful gift. Equally impressed, family butler Shadwell (George Sanders) helpfully comments that this particular frog is a rare kind of frog that is particularly advantageous to black magic rituals and we then learn in a spectacular display of confusion and vagueness that the family home has a mysterious locked room that his father once raided in order to learn the secret of immortality, and then he died there, presumably without learning any secrets pertaining to immortality. Like any decent teenager this kind of jive is like whining guitar music to his ears and despite things not ending well for Da Latham Tom badgers Beryl Reid until keys are handed over and he then enters the locked room to discover the secrets for himself. More confusion and vagueness follows in the form of a series of unspecific visions involving Beryl Reid probably selling baby Tom’s soul and some other suitably 70s stuff and then Tom triumphantly exits the room of devilish magic proclaiming he now knows the secrets of life beyond death.

Turns out the secrets of life beyond death aren’t all that completed, all you have to do is kill yourself with the complete conviction that you will return and, piff, paff, poof, you’re back riding your rubbish motorbike and harassing Sunday shoppers.

So young master Latham promptly kills himself and, in what is probably one my favourite scenes in any film ever largely because of the sheer ill-conceived absurdity of it, his faithful gang bury him in the manner he would have wanted. Apparently the manner in which Tom would have liked to have had his passing from this mortal coil marked is by being buried in a crappy field sitting upright on his bike in a hole that isn’t even deep enough to accommodate his full height while one member of his crew sings a particularly frightful and vomit-inducing folk ballad at everyone whist they pick flowers and make garlands. I’d ruddy well come back if my friends did this to me, and I’d be bloody furious. Needless to say it’s odd end for someone who appeared to spend the majority of his life terrorising the English countryside and its largely crinkly inhabitants.

Fortunately for Tom he doesn’t have to spend the rest of eternity in a hippy grave with his head sticking out above the surface as it turns out his transcending death plan actually works and he is able to ride his way to undead freedom, stopping briefly to mow down a passer-by and to get some petrol.

Naturally the rest of his gang are suitably surprised and amazed by his miraculous return and, being teenagers, don’t need much persuading to follow suit. Queue stunt sequences as the gang members commit some unimaginative (but amusing) suicide; jumping off bridges, ploughing into trucks, etc. So soon the gang is all back together again, they’re young, they’re wild, they’re undead and they can do what the hell they ruddy well want and no one can stop them and what they ruddy well want to do, apparently, is trash a small supermarket and steal and an umbrella, those crazy kids. All would be going swimmingly for the merry band of zombie bikers if it wasn’t for the fact that Tom’s girlfriend, good girl Abby, is strangely not altogether sold on this whole dying malarkey, and even if she was she just doesn’t have time to die she has to help her mum with the shopping, for criminey’s sake . This reluctance forces Tom to do a little artful persuading, artful persuading in the sense that he tells her if she doesn’t blummin’ well go and kill herself now he’ll just about blummin’ well have to kill her himself. Sounds reasonable, Tom. Meanwhile Beryl Reid is also beginning to get a little concerned about her son’s behaviour and with the help of her faithful butler Alfred, I mean Shadwell, decides that she’s really going to have to do something about it; presumably before some civic minded member of the local community composes a stern letter to The Times. (Dear Sir, When, oh when will the government wake up and realise that something really needs to be done about all the deceased youths who seem to be currently tearing up Her Majesty’s countryside on noisy motorcycles apparently with the sole purpose of distressing my wife and the local herd of cows. My wife, like most wives, is of a nervous disposition and hasn’t slept in months and, frankly, the fact that her evening milk is consistently sour and curdled isn’t helping matters.)

Psychomainia is charming in its ridiculousness and so idiosyncratically British it makes you want die, actually die, or have a cup of tea. I really do still have a huge affection for it, it’s a strange and bizarre piece of British cinema that has achieved cult status precisely because of its absurdity and I would encourage you to give it a go even if only for the sake of a few giggles and some nice English countryside. It really is difficult not to warm to it as it’s clearly trying so hard to appeal to the young generation and be down with kids yet getting it so badly wrong that you just have let your heart go out to it and praise the effort, it’s kind of like The Fonz of the movie world, actually come to think of it, it’s kind of like me, if I was a film I’d probably be Pyschomania: not a bad idea though a bit cheap and dated, but still trying hard and loveable in its short comings and foibles, and I’d have Beryl bloody Reid and George blummin’ Sanders in me keeping it together (possibly the most disturbing sentence I’ve ever written, let’s never speak of this again). Sorry about that, what I mean to say is that Psychomania is a terrific blast, it’s a little cult window into 70s Britain that should be peeked through to see all the peculiarities and hilarities that lie within. It also stars the sister of Yvette (Vicki ‘Oooh Rrrrenéééé’ Michelle) from ‘Allo ‘Allo. But the real point is, it does exist and I’m not mad, and I think I’ve proved this quite satisfactorily here today. I thank you.

For a more sensible, and altogether better, review of Psychomania please see Steve Miller’s marvellous blog Terror Titans.

Demonium (2001)

2010-11-08T10:07:00.002+01:00

Firstly, I’m just going to put it out there, I like Andreas Schnaas. He is an unashamed purveyor of gore and sleaze and his low budget, badly dubbed gorefests are big and brazen and delicious, and they’re also unapologetic and I appreciate that honesty. And how can you not appreciate a filmmaker who merrily names his first feature Violent Shit? And follows it up with a sequel.

So this brings us to Demonium, Schnaas’ first ‘proper’, ‘grown-up’ film, made with ‘proper’ actors and in filmed in the ‘English’ language’ to reach a wider market, well, wider as in us, the UK.

Demonium begins with successful businessman Rasmus Bentley and his lover, Maria, having some largely unattractive sex. This goes on for quite a while. Quite a while. His lover Maria happens to be blind, this probably helps with the largely unattractive sex, generally that is, not with the longevity I wouldn’t imagine. When they finally tire of this messy enterprise businessman Rasmus sets out to negotiate some manner of important business type deals at his strangely shabby, gloomy and full of unpacked boxes office. (Apparently I’m somewhat obsessed with the inappropriate state of people’s ‘offices’ at the moment, see London Voodoo. Weird).

Left alone blind lady Maria potters about helpfully demonstrating all the tasteful indicators an audience needs to appreciate the fact that she really is blind; eyes perpetually rolled back in head, stumbling over pretty much everything and the apparent lack of ability to utilise the basic sense of tactition as a compensator. Meanwhile, we, the audience, learn that while love and this wife may well be blind sinister knife wielding psychotics are, in fact, not, and a prime example of such a sinister knife wielding psychotic is in fact quietly following Maria’s every move as she goes about her morning’s blind business, her sense of hearing apparently also impaired along with her vision.

Back at his shabby office Rasmus concludes his terribly important business and endeavours to call his good lady in order that she can congratulate him on his success. When he is unable to elicit a satisfactory response from Maria to his important news he immediately rushes home. (The last time my husband called me with important news of his success it was because he’d completed Metroid: Other M. Our lives are clearly very different to Rasmus and Maria’s).

Unfortunately Rasmus’ haste proves to be his undoing, as he bounds into their bedroom to find the fair lady (probably assuming that she’d locked herself in a cupboard or something due to the special nature of her affliction that renders her completely helpless as opposed to all other blind people who somehow manage to lead full, satisfying and independent lives) only to find that she’s bound and gagged and tied to the bed and that by entering the room he has unwittingly triggered the firing mechanism on a crossbow that’s aimed at her throat. Oh, dear, Rasmus. But he needn’t be too concerned because his guilt at inadvertently causing the horrific death of his lover is mercifully short lived when the sinister knife wielding psychotic rushes him and slices off his head.

And now the movie really begins! Well, sort of. It’s now one year earlier and we meet obligatory wealthy and eccentric Arnold Berger, but only briefly as he is currently preoccupied with the messy business of being hacked into an assortment of little wealthy and eccentric pieces by an unknown party. If this wasn’t thrilling enough his body is customarily discovered by none other than Maria, (she of the unfortunate crossbow mishap earlier) only now (or rather then) she not demonstratively blind. The plot does indeed thicken.

And now the movie really begins! Honestly, it does now. Everything gets reassuringly old school. The wealthy and eccentric, and deceased, old man Berger, it turns out, has a large and equally eccentric family and all of whom are extremely interested to discover the contents of his wealthy and eccentric will. We meet the various family members of old man Berger (deceased), all of whom are seemingly scattered at random all about Europe engaging in a variety of suitably eccentric activities and behaviours. Hastening the plot, they all learn of the wacky old gent’s demise and temporarily cease their eccentric European activities in order to charge off to Berger’s stately, spooky and very, very eccentric mansion.

I’m guessing that everyone knows where this going now. We’ve got a creepy old house, a mysterious murder, sciencey secrets, a full compliment of crazy and avaricious relatives and some somewhat unhinged serving staff. There’s only one course of action when you’ve got a set up like this; systematically slaughter everyone with merciless abandon with careful attention to inventive weaponry and all the due gore.

Fortunately for our psychotic killer at large that crazy Berger helpfully left a clause in his will stating that all beneficiaries must stay in the house for at least three days in order to claim their inheritance. Really all we have to do here is sit back and watch as the various members of the eccentric, and briefly, for some them, wealthy Berger family are customarily dispatched in a variety of ingenious ways with a variety resourceful weapons until eventually we get the answers to some of the important questions, like how did Maria become afflicted with super serious, and comically depilating, blind? Who is the sinister knife wielding psychotic and why did he return a year later to finish off Rasmus and Maria? What exactly are ‘sciencey secrets’ and why did I write that anyway?

Demonium is rip roaring delight of chainsaws, blood, gore, decapitations, dismemberment, nudity, throat tearing, crossbows, perplexing blindness, bad acting, show tunes, torture, meat hooks and deadly cups of tea. While I’ll confess I quaffed a few whiskies in the lead up to (and during) (and after) the feature presentation I still maintain that Demonium is a cracking B-movie gem (I maintained this rather vociferously on my initial viewing and in fact went so far as to proclaim it ‘my new favourite movie ever’, as I said, there was some quaffing of whiskey, it was probably also my best friend later too, but I’m fairly certain I didn’t drag it off to listen to me cry in the toilets). Anyway, I digress, what I meant to say is that Demonium is a goretastic treat, it’s jam packed with schlocky goodness, bloodsoaked silliness and nudey bits, it’s jubilantly unashamed in its crassness, and these are qualities that I love.

Comic Book (Anti) Heroes

2010-11-03T10:54:00.001+01:00

John Constantine: The Beginning

John Constantine is arguably one of the greatest and most loved characters in modern comic history. He is a magician, an exorcist, a demon hunter, a con-artist, a consummate cynic, an acerbic wit, a scouser, a complex loner and an inexorable chainsmoker. Although lacking in any of the characteristics that would traditionally define a hero, John is driven by a deep desire for redemption and the need to do some good with his life.

The chain smoking trenchcoat wearing John Constantine was created by Steve Bissette, John Totleben and the legendary comic book genius Alan Moore, and reportedly, Alan Moore created the character after the artists expressed an interest in drawing a character that looked like Sting. Later Jamie Delano became responsible for Hellblazer and its subsequent popularity as he took John into a real world environment aging in real time and defined the character into the loveable, flawed anti-hero.

Constantine made his first appearance as a recurring character in the horror comic series Swamp Thing in 1985, but it wasn’t until 1988 that Constantine finally got to star in his own comic with the DC publication of Hellblazer (in 1993 when DC launched Vertigo the consistently popular Hellblazer became its first title and remains its longest running series).

The morally ambiguous mage John Constantine was born in Liverpool on 10th May 1953 and his entry into the world is typically violent and dramatic. His mother, as a result of a reluctant abortion years previously, died in childbirth and we learn that the foetus John strangled his own twin in the womb with his own umbilical cord. Interestingly, later in the series a parallel universe reveals that in its reality the twin survives and becomes the well-rounded, balanced and respected magician that John couldn’t possibly be.

John and his father Thomas spend his childhood harbouring deep resentment for each other and their troubled relationship comes to an abrupt end when John runs away from home and in a final farewell he places a curse on his father that results in his becoming withered and frail.

By the time he is fourteen, Constantine had developed a serious interest in the occult (an inevitability as as far back as the 6th century his ancestors have been occult dabblers) and, partly as a means to avoid the harsh realities of his troubled, unhappy childhood, spends his time immersed in any books he could find on the subject. This obsession results in a pivotal confrontation between father and son that is ultimately the last nail in the coffin of their already fraught relationship. When John is expelled from school for initiating a chant of “Out Demons! Out!” in morning assembly, his father, furious with the child’s actions, takes his son’s books outside and begins burning them on a bonfire. Enraged at the act this moment becomes a catalyst and inspires the young John Constantine to use his magic as a means to avenge the wrongs that he perceives to exist in the world.

In grand old style John runs off to London and sets up house with Francis "Chas" Chandler, the character who goes on to become his closest, most trustworthy and longest surviving, friend. Finding himself as settled as he gets in 70s London John begins to explore his fascination with the occult. While honing his skills he also becomes obsessed with emerging punk scene and begins his own band Mucous Membrane.

Despite the great name John eventually realises that his band is in fact the worst band ever, and he dispenses with punk music as a career, but holds onto the attitude and remerges as self-styled punk rock magician. Having heard reports of mysterious going ons at the scene of Mucous Membrane’s first ever gig at the Casanova Club in Newcastle John, along with his ramshackle band of friends, set off to investigate matters further.

It transpires that the club’s owner Alex Logue, an infamous ‘sex and drugs magician’, has been using the club’s basement for satanic orgies, sacrifices and other all manner unsavoury practices. Rambunctious and over confident John is perversely thrilled to discover that a fear elemental is responsible and comes up with the foolhardy plan to summon a demon to destroy it. Unsurprisingly this course of action ends in tragedy leaving the Newcastle Crew emotionally and psychically scarred and Logue’s abused young daughter’s soul consigned to hell. The incident haunts him

Driven almost to insanity by what he witnessed in Newcastle and the resulting guilt of the incident John winds up being incarcerated in the ‘Ravenscar Secure Facility For The Mentally Deranged’ where he suffers even further torment as the staff and inmates believe him to a child killer. Ravenscar becomes a recurrent ‘home’ for John and he spends the next two years in an out of the facility. It isn’t until powerful East End gangster Harry Cooper intervenes that John is finally released for good, but at a price, Cooper wants John to wanting John to bring his son back from the dead. And that’s the just the beginning of his troubles.

Essentially John Constantine is a reprehensible bastard; he’s bitter, twisted, cynical and self-obsessed, he merrily puts the entire human race in jeopardy to pull off the world’s greatest con and cheat death from lung cancer and he is often responsible for the horrific deaths of those close to him. Ultimately he can never be relied upon to do the right thing, though occasionally he’ll do the wrong thing for the right reasons, but yet, he is still intensely likeable and you always remain on his side.

Predominately against the gritty backdrop of London’s underside, JC remains constantly locked in grim conflict with; demons, vampires, angels, serial killers, evil cults and The First of Fallen and often himself and his own self-induced madness, and that’s just a few of problems. But the deeper identity of Constantine is that no matter how self-serving and amoral he is by nature the wrong choices he makes are often in terms of some greater good and frequently he becomes the underdog’s sole champion, albeit a reluctant one and not necessarily the one the particular underdog might have chosen given the choice. Quintessential everyman, Constantine is the figurative shadow of humanity itself; he’s selfish, flawed, underhand, petty, desperate, arrogant, malicious, he’s all of us on a bad day, but yet, despite who is and where he came rather than because of it he still manages to achieve the small triumphs for good that offer hope and these achievements despite of all his serious flaws give us hope that we can be better too.

If you haven’t read Hellblazer you really, really must. I mean really, I’m serious, go buy the trade paperbacks now.

Wedlock and Roll!!!

2010-10-27T16:01:00.002+02:00

At the end of this week my husband and I are celebrating four years of wedlock and roll. As it's Halloween we shall be marking this occasion by getting all zombied up and probably whiskied up too. Yup, marriage rocks. Speaking of marriage, our own Matthew Coniam got all wedded up last weekend, stop by and congratulate him.

As after four whole years I'm clearly an expert at this marriage lark, I feel I'm entitled to start handing out unsolicited advice. However, as marriage clearly does rock I can't see why any advice would be required, be in love, have fun, easy. So instead I will impart anniversary advice, and here it is: traditional anniversary gifts relating to each particular year of marriage are stupid, change them. My husband and I have celebrated our leopard skin, tattoo, and PVC anniversaries and we feel it makes gift giving a much happier and more personal experience. By god I'm good at this. Right, now my wisdom has been well and truly imparted I'm off to anticipate our plutonium anniversary. Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. C!!!!

Jinx's Choice for Halloween: Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

2010-10-25T11:31:00.002+02:00

As you’ve probably noticed Halloween is coming up (nowt gets by me, hell no). I had intended on posting a lot more in the lead up to the big day, but unfortunately I got somewhat distracted by stuff, and kittens, mainly kittens. However, a lot of other people have been flying the Halloween banner in fine style, (Mother Firefly, The Mike, Cynniegurl to name but a few) and doing a much better job of it than I would have, so I think we’re all winners there. Anyway, I did decide, between kitten wrangling, to contribute my own little bit to the Halloween madness so, without any more unnecessary rambling, I present to you my number one recommendation for a Halloween movie: Arsenic and Old Lace.

Arsenic and Old Lace is a deliriously brilliant black comedy directed by Frank Capra and starring a rubber limbed Cary Grant demonstrating a genuine knack for slapstick comedy. Though originally filmed in 1941, as it was running on Broadway at the time and continued to run with an impressive 1,444 performances, the movie was not released until much later in 1944 and is arguably one of the funniest films of its period, actually, I maintain it is one of the funniest film ever.

Cary Grant plays Mortimer Brewster, drama critic, confirmed bachelor and author of anti-marriage literature. We join him as he is, surprisingly, about to get married. Mortimer has fallen in love with the preacher’s lovely daughter, Elaine Harper, and given the nature of his public reputation their impending nuptials have remained something of a closely guarded secret. However, before they can slink off for their Niagra Falls honeymoon there remains the small matter of informing their families of their recently wedded state and so they plan to make a brief stop in Brooklyn where, conveniently, Elaine’s preacher dad and Mortimer’s loving aunts live right next to each other their houses only separated by a cemetery.

Mortimer’s aunts, the Brewster sisters, are two sweet, kindly elderly ladies who live with their brother Teddy and as testament to their all round niceness they keep a room thoughtfully available for rent for any gentleman travellers who might be in need of a bed for the night. They are naturally thrilled at the news that their favourite nephew has finally settled down and married the lovely girl next door.

Unfortunately for the newlywed Mr. and Mrs. Brewster things are about to get complicated and more than a bit messy. First off, there’s the small matter of Uncle Teddy. Uncle Teddy thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt, really, really thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt, and the neighbours have been complaining. There have been threats of Happydale Sanatorium. The situation has been terribly trying for the kindly and patient Brewster sisters, and it is now causing them to consider what would become of Teddy if they were no longer around.

Now, you may think that that would enough to deal with for one newlywed gentleman eager to get away on his honeymoon with his beautiful bride, but things are only destined to get worse for Mortimer when he accidentally stumbles upon a fresh corpse hidden in one of his aunts’ window seats. Initially, he suspects crazy Uncle Teddy until his aunts guilelessly explain that they are, in fact, responsible referring to it as ‘one of their charities’. It turns out that his lovely spinster aunts have been taking pity on the lonely old gentleman that come to take up the offer of their rented room and have been ending their perceived misery by bumping them off with homemade elderberry wine dosed with arsenic, strychnine and ‘just a pinch of cyanide’. This dubious endeavour, phrased charmingly as ‘a very bad habit’, has, it transpires, been going for a considerably long time and the aunts have amassed a sizeable graveyard in the basement, the bodies ceremoniously buried by Teddy under the impression that he is digging locks for the Panama Canal and burying yellow fever victims.

Naturally Mortimer is a bit taken aback by this revelation, not to mention beginning to become a tad concerned about what might be festering in the family gene pool. This suspicion is soon to be compounded when, in a further complicating turn of events, Mortimer’s criminally psychotic older brother Jonathan (Raymond Massey) pitches up towing his accomplice, drunken plastic surgeon Dr. Herman Einstein (Peter Lorre) along with him.

Adding to the family album, Jonathan is a psychotic murderer on the run from the police and looking for a place to dispose of his most recent corpse Mr. Spenalzo. To keep himself free from prison Jonathan has undergone extensive and repeated plastic surgery at the hands of the unhelpfully perpetually tipsy Dr. Einstein. As a result of the repeated surgeries, and his pet surgeon alcohol issues, Jonathan now resembles Boris Karloff, or, more specifically, Boris Karloff made up as Frankenstein’s monster, a comparison that becomes a recurrent gag as the movie progresses. (This was originally a self-referential joke as Karloff himself played Jonathan Brewster in the stage production and it was the original intention that he would reprise the role in the film, but he was too much of a draw to be able to leave the stage production for the filming period.)

When Jonathan discovers his aunts’ little secret, he reacts better (well, worse really, but better in the sense that it causes him considerably less anxiety) than Mortimer. He considers it to be nothing more than a perfect opportunity to dispose of Mr. Spenalzo amongst the aunts’ bodycount of gentleman callers Aunt Abby and Aunt Martha, however, take umbrage to this plan on the basis that their gentleman were nice, respectable men and they don’t want their eternal rest marred by the presence of common criminals. Sound reasonable. Jonathan cares not, however, and as he’s stumbled upon a rather nifty little set up ideal for the up and coming psychotic about town, all that there remains for him to do to claim it as his own is to dispose of Mortimer.

The comedy of Arsenic and Old Lace operates within the tried and tested parameters of classic farce. It presents us with a keenly played situational juggling act performed by a man struggling to stay in control of the increasingly crazy circumstances that are continually presenting themselves to him. Mortimer’s increasingly manic and fevered attempts to manage proceedings are hysterical, and let’s face it he’s got a lot of balls of crazy in the air; well meaning but murderous aunts, an impatient new wife whom he must placate and protect from the truth of his bonkers family, and then, for good measure, there’s also some incompetent cops and the impending arrival of a representative from Happydale Sanatorium eager to commit Teddy (whose probably the sanest of the lot). Not to mention, as his own severely tried wits begin to unravel, the dawning realisation that there’s probably more than a little heredity history of insanity in the Brewster family that he might need to contend with.

Arsenic and Old Lace is a perfectly paced farce; it’s hilariously funny and marvellously macabre and easily up there on my list of favourite films ever if I could ever commit myself to something so binding as a list of favourite films ever, my love is too wide and all encompassing for such a thing, I’m just a big, ole cinematic slut. If, God forbid, you haven’t seen Arsenic and Old Lace rush out and buy a copy now then snuggle up with someone you love on Halloween and watch the heck out of it. And love it. Please love it.

The Horror of the 80s

2010-10-19T13:15:00.004+02:00

Oh, the 80s, how I love you, with your shiny, shiny outfits and your big hair and your eyeshadow that, some might say, unnecessarily always matched the bulk of the colour in your shiny, shiny outfits. I wouldn’t say that, obviously, because I love you. I love your trash and your glitter. I love to watch you strutting about in your power suit and your naughty stilettos while a power ballad plays behind you. The only thing I don’t love about you is Thatcher, but that’s not your fault, you didn’t know what she was up to marching in your direction in her sensible shoes with her bouffant of evil clutching her handbag of lies and destruction. No, that wasn’t your fault. Mind you, 80s, I do still know all the words to the Wham! Rap, that is, kind of, a little bit, your fault. I get ridiculed a lot for that, it’s my only party piece for when I’ve had a few drinks and it strangely never elicits the kind of awe and wonder and undying respect you’d imagine it would. But never mind 80s, you rule, the world just wasn’t ready for camp white British boys rapping.

Sorry about that. What I was trying to say there was that I love the 80s. I did a significant amount of my growing up in the 80s and that minxy little decade and its various cultural influences, have, for better or for worse, been largely responsible for the well-rounded, well-balanced adult I pretend to be. Given this, it is probably unsurprising that I love, love, LOVE, 80s horror, and lately I have been indulging that love and so the House of Jinx has been staging its own little 80s film festival. As this little enterprise has been, and continues to be (the current obsession shows no signs of abating any time soon, I’m a child of the 80s, I’m prone to fads, what can I say?), so much fun, I thought I’d share a small portion of my recent viewing treats with all of you, because you’re gorgeous, even though some of you weren’t even born in the 80s ( you know who you are), but that’s ok because the 80s forgive you and love you anyway, the 80s are good like that.

Return to Horror High (1987)

In 1982 Crippen High School was the scene of a series of brutal murders. And the killer was never caught. Several years later a film crew pitches up at the school intent on making a trashy movie about the murders. But when members of the crew begin disappearing, it seems the killer has returned.

I must have seen Return to Horror High at least three times and still find myself unbelievably confused by quite a lot of it. I ultimately understand what happens I’m just not at any point terribly sure of how we got there. I’m fairly sure I’m not an idiot, I’m fairly sure it is just actually confusing. But, confusing or not, it’s a hell of a lot trashy, blood soaked fun for a Saturday night and we all know that trashy and blood soaked is the best kind of fun. Highlights include the most 80s, soft focus, music video sex scene ever and a lady cop who appears to find dismembered corpses incredibly arousing. Oh, and there’s a five minute cameo from a baby George Clooney, but I’m one of those odd women who don’t really care about that, I’ve nothing against the man, I’m sure he’s a lovely gent, I’m just not really fussed.

Saturday the 14th (1981)

A family inherit an old house that turns out to be infested with monsters and chaos and ‘hilarity’ ensue.

I’d completely forgotten about this horror ‘comedy’ until Matthew reminded me of it. Has to be seen to be believed. Really it does.

Slaughter High (1986)

Eight people are invited to attend their 10-year high school reunion at their now-dilapidated high school only to find that a former classmate, whom they disfigured ten years ago in a prank gone wrong, has returned to seek revenge.

By God I love this film! I don’t know if I love it so because it’s so 80s it hurts or because of British people affecting bad American accents or simply because Caroline Munro is a goddess, but I would quite happily roll around naked with it if the opportunity presented itself.

The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

Bumbling medical supply warehouse workers Frank and Freddy accidentally release a noxious gas into the air while messing about in the basement. It soon becomes apparent that the vapours of this gas cause the dead to re-animate and soon Louisville, Kentucky is besieged by hungry zombies seeking their favourite food, brains.

I have to love The Return of the Living Dead even its only because I apparently subconsciously adopted Linnea Quigley’s character Trash as my style icon during my late teens and quite a lot of my twenties if I’m honest. (Feel obliged to point out that by that statement I don’t mean I wandered around starkers for a good ten years, this would be silly, especially given the British weather). But, even if that hadn’t been the case, and frankly I probably would have been included in a lot more family photos if it wasn’t, I still love The Return of the Living Dead because it’s just generally awesome. It’s deliciously 80s, terrifically funny, has some fantastic gore and is just plainly and simply all out, unabashed fun. It’s impossible to watch it without grinning constantly, it makes your face hurt but it’s worth it.

I've had so much fun this week, thanks, 80s, we must do this again. Soon.

Somebody Help Me (2007)

2010-10-11T11:22:00.008+02:00

Although I’m loath to admit it, I’m probably not as young and vital and ‘street’ as once I was. The very fact that I used ‘street’ there to exemplify the cutting edge of gritty, urban youth culture almost certainly proves that original point. With this in mind Somebody Help Me probably wasn’t targeted at me, a geeky thirty five year old from the North East of England whose idea of a good time is a nice cup of tea and a Miss Marple on TV. For the benefit of better understanding, and to fill in my own cultural blanks of things that happened post 1986, I have conducted some research:

Somebody Help Me is directed by Chris Stokes, Chris Stokes is a record producer, manager, and film director. He wrote and directed the 2004 dance-drama film You Got Served (???) and House Party 4: Down to the Last Minute (slightly firmer ground here, I am aware of the work, and the hair, of Kid ‘n’ Play, though I had no idea House Party was a franchise. To make matters worse House Party 4: Down to the Last Minute is the only film of the franchise not to star Kid ‘n’ Play so I’m still no more culturally hip).

The movie’s two leads are Marques Barrett Houston and Omari Granberry. Marques Barrett Houston is an R&B singer, rapper, and actor and was a member of the R&B singing group Immature/IMx until 2002, he went solo in 2003. (I know what some of these words mean). Omari Granberry, better known as Omarion, is an R&B singer, actor, songwriter, record producer, dancer, and former lead singer of the boy band, B2K. He is currently a judge on America's Best Dance Crew. (I know what dance is).

Now, while I strongly believe the many assorted accomplishments of the cast and crew, listed above, to be valuable and impressive in the wider cultural sphere, these accomplishments, however, do not qualify them to make a credible horror film.

The thing about Somebody Help Me is that it could have pretty awesome. It makes an attempt to challenge the stupid stereotypes that shouldn’t exist in the 21st century film making, or indeed society. Our main protagonists happen to be black and this quite rightly isn’t treated as any kind of issue, but within the context of the horror genre it is addressed and our heroes and the white supporting cast are seen to challenge the assumptions of the horror viewer. Unfortunately it’s a half hearted attempt and this then leaves us in a cinematic no man’s land between the non issue of the these nice young people who happen to be black and this half formed challenge to horror genre expectations that doesn’t really go anywhere and that the film makers just seem to be coyly skirting round. So ultimately the viewer is left confused, we are not allowed to simply accept that protagonists happen to be black and get on and enjoy the film, but equally once the challenge is set and we’re aware of it we are not provoked enough to gain anything from the experience. Either way it’s a shame.

Anyway, on with the drama. After a confusing flashback to three years previous involving girls, dog cages and a crazy person, the action proper begins with two nice, young couples driving into the wilderness for weekend birthday celebration. Our two heroes, Brendan (Houston) and Darryl (Granberry) and their respective girlfriends are LA city types, they are headed to Darryl’s ‘Uncle Charlie’s’ cabin, but as LA city types they are a little apprehensive about the country adventure, however, by the time they arrive and everything seems deluxe cabiny fresh they happily resolve themselves to having a jolly good time. Although there is the small disconcerting of neighbouring creepy guy who seems intent on giving them a good staring at, but that’s probably perfectly fine.

Brendan and Darryl gallantly head off into town to stock up on the necessary party supplies, Battenberg cake and fizzy pop I can only assume, and there they run to the friendly local sheriff who spends a little time quizzing them on the nature of their visit. Here we learn two things; firstly that Darryl’s uncle is named Charles Bronson (honestly, he is) and secondly that sometimes young people staying in secluded horror movie locations are nice, friendly and polite and not just all about the drinking and the drugs and the sex. The sheriff seems taken with these nice young chaps and gives them his card for emergencies and reassures them that the neighbouring creepy guy is really quite harmless.

What happened next actually made me feel better about my whole lack youthful vitality and street cred. Back at the house our two couples are joined by three of the oddest, whitest couples in the world (seriously, one of them was dressed as an approximation of Velma from Scooby Doo and one had such chronic asthma she apparently can’t even blink without a demonstration) for the birthday bash. Now the gang are all assembled the dullest birthday party ever can finally kick off. If I was Brendan’s girlfriend and this was 21st birthday party I’d be praying for crazied up psycho killer to liven things up. Our hip young things blow up some balloons, listen to some surprisingly, given the pedigree of those concerned, bad pop music and drink some shots until Velma from Scooby Doo falls over a bit. On my 21st my friends and I woke up on the Albert Dock in Liverpool, 200 miles from where we started, because at some indistinct point in time the previous evening we’d thought it was good idea to commandeer the This Morning weather map and sail to Ireland using an AA road map as a guide. Now while this might not exactly be the epitome of rock ‘n’ roll it’s a damn sight better than balloons and pop. Well, kind of, I believe there was some singing of show tunes involved as well, but we’ll gloss over that.

This Morning: A soul destroying late morning magazine show watched predominantly by students, the unemployed and bored housewives.

The This Morning Weather Map: 'Fred the Weatherman' would jump about on this in a variety of ‘hilarious’ jumpers in an ill-conceived attempt to make the weather more interesting and dynamic.

Me: Drunken idiot

When the evening eventually grinds to its tedious end some of the participants do make an attempt to rescue the monumental boredom of proceedings by making the sagacious decision to stumble out into the woods to have sex. I question the logic of this for two reasons: 1) they appear to be staying in a luxury cabin that probably has a ton of beds and 2) asthma lady doesn’t need woodland debris and vigorous exercise to add to her already apparently life threatening problems.

The rest of the revellers then head of to their respective beds for some nice wholesome sleep and the most exciting nocturnal action that goes on after that is Brendan having a nightmare about small child on a swing.

The next morning, after breakfasting and a mild asthma attack, the friends are alerted to the fact that the two adventurous young couples have failed to return. Now, it may look like things are heading towards some action now, but they’re not. What actually happens now is the six remaining couples wander aimlessly around in various configurations between the woods and the cabin, discuss why they can’t call the police like normal people and realise there is no phone signal in the woods. After much pointless meandering the final white couple also disappears.

Now that six people have gone missing our surviving four decide that now might be a good time to call the police and risk the unspecified wrath of mysterious Uncle Charles Bronson. So, once the friendly local sheriff is notified of goings on and once him and his deputy have had the necessary ominous conversation about whether this can possibly have anything to do with what happened three years ago to which the sheriff insists it can’t, no, and that had better not mentioned again, then we finally get to some action, well, not action exactly but more wandering around and harassing of the creepy neighbour.

Sporadically between the inept search party action there are glimpses of the plight of the missing friends. Apparently a deranged plastic surgeon has kidnapped them and locked them in dog cages and is performing some fairly bloodless and prosaic unnecessary surgery on them. This is all well and good, but my main concern here is that we have a dog cage not dissimilar to those of our psychopath and our pretty but dim daschund Lou Lou can get herself out of it with minimal fuss and much tail wagging. But apparently the three captive couples aren’t as bright as our somewhat mentally challenged daschund Lou Lou and they remain cramped up and screaming some weird guy’s shed. My second slightly lesser concern is if you are a deranged cosmetic surgeon you’d think that if you then went to lengths of kidnapping unwilling clients to perform your ghastly surgeries on that you would at least invest some of the skills you presumably posses into something more impressive and imaginative rather than just lopping an odd ear off, pulling a few teeth and fingernails and a quick scalping. Now I’m no fan of torture flicks but all I’m saying is: if you’re going to put that much effort into a convoluted backstory (and some considerable effort is put in, newspaper clippings and scrapbooks and everything) it should at least tally with the presented results.

Bright young things trapped in crazy killer cage

Lou Lou: Cute but dim escape artist

Unsurprisingly it is not long before Brendan and Darryl manage to lose their girlfriends to the lackluster nutcase. They are then left no other option than to engage in a little more wandering about in the dark and some amateur detective work.

On the off chance that you still want to see this movie I will refrain from divulging any more of the plot. However, before I stop talking there are a few notable moments that I simply can’t let slide:

1) Darryl Gets Gassed: Our hero Darryl receives an unexpected spray to the face from an inexplicably booby trapped telephone and then falls over. I had to spin this back because I missed it the first time. The first time all I saw was Darryl pull a sickened ‘something smells funky’ face and say the there was no dial tone. I just put this down to an unusual acting style, but on closer examination it did transpire that he had indeed been on the receiving end of pooft to the face from the mouthpiece of the phone. A man who merrily snatches young people from anyoldwhere and scoops out their eyes had taken the time to set a fairly elaborate booby trap on his damn house phone.

2) The Exciting Adventures of Brendan and Small Blonde Child: Left on his own after all his friends have all thoughtlessly gotten themselves locked up by an insane person, Brendan teams up a mysterious small blonde girl (you may recall her from Brendan’s earlier dream: she likes swings and singing in a sinister fashion) to continue his investigations. The best thing about this little union is that on meeting said small blonde child Brendan apparently sagely decides that the shotgun he had found previously in an abandoned police car is superfluous to his current being stalked by a murderous psychopath situation and a small blonde instead offers adequate protection.

3) Most Incompetent Serial Killer Ever: Crazy surgeon can’t find three whole people hiding behind a couch in his own bloody house.

4) Whathisface Who?: Despite living in a apparently small town where, judging by their interest in strangers and new arrivals, everyone presumably knows everyone the locals still manage to miss that a national news worthy on the run serial killer is living down the road. He’s got his medical certificates with his name on them on the wall for God’s sake!

Somebody Help Me could have been so much better than it was. The two male leads were very likeable and gave competent performances especially considering what they were working with. It could have easily been a clever even humourous comment on outdated conventions with regard to race within the horror genre, but instead it simply teased us with this concept then got distracted by something shiny. I would hazard a guess that what ultimately killed Somebody Help Me was that it was born from commercialism and not from a genuine love of the genre. I’ll happily watch and defend all manner of ‘bad’ movies, but only if I can see the heart in them, if I can tell that somebody loved that baby so much and loved the genre that cradled it then they have my heart too. Unfortunately here I think a list was drawn up of ‘what the kids are into these days’ and this was the result. As far as it being a horror film concerned it’s subgenre confused and shambolic. It meanders through slasher, torture porn and even nonsensically rubs up against the supernatural without ever really committing to any of them. Somebody Help Me is a horrifically laboured, soulless piece of film making, and to top it all off I spent an hour and half waiting for Charles Bronson to show up and he didn’t.

Pills, Thrills and Interviews

2010-10-07T17:54:00.002+02:00

I've been super sick this week and so my abject apologies for not being around to appreciate all the great posts that you've all been sharing. I promise to catch up with all I've missed next week so expect a series of belated comments from me in the near future.

In better news on the Jinx front, whilst I was in the midst of my disease induced delirium I discovered that the gorgeous Joe Monster had posted an interview we did a little while ago which was super cool and cheered me up no end. I had the pleasure of having a Demented Dialogue with Joe in which he asked me some seriously awesome and hilarious questions and I tried my very best to do them justice with my responses. If you would like to read Joe's genius questions and my silly ramblings in response to them please find them here. Be warned that you may learn more about me than anyone really needs to know. Don't hold that against Joe though, he's the best and the cutest, coolest prince of all things creepy and you should read From Beyond Depraved avidly and tell him how awesome he is.

I'm off for a Lemsip (with whiskey, purely for medicinal purposes) now, but I promise to be back very soon (no, that isn't a threat).

Horrific Beards I Have Known and Loved

2010-09-20T12:39:00.002+02:00

Captain Dallas (Tom Skerrit)
Alien (1979)

I have long believed that Tom Skerritt’s moustache leads a secret life of its own independent of Tom Skerritt. I’m fairly certain that when Tom is asleep, his moustache is actually sneaking off to its other life as a happily married small business owner raising two kids in Missouri. When you add a beard to that moustache, well, I'm fairly convinced it could then take over the world, if it was so inclined, if it wasn't too busy doing its tax returns and helping the kids with their homework.

As Captain Dallas in Alien Tom Skerrit is the captain of the Nostromo, and how can you tell that he’s captain? Well, because of his coarse and rugged dependable captain’s beard, of course!

My favourite thing about Captain Dallas’ beard is that it is always appears to be just millimetres away from turning feral. For the most part it clearly asserts: ‘I am a god damn captain of a class M starship I haven’t got time for such trivialities as a regular shaving routine, I have buttons to press, a computer to talk to and a god damn galaxy to save!’, but, despite this just barely contained on the trimmed side of respectable appearance there is always the suspicion that at any given moment the beard could suddenly experience one infinitesimal, microscopic unit of growth and then all anarchy would ensue, and it’ll be all naked corridor running, guttural screaming, setting fire to stuff and redecorating the Nostromo in his own faeces.

Fortunately the Dallas beard doesn’t get time to reach critical growth and instead remains solid, reliable and authoritative, the kind of beard that you not only expect to be in charge of a spaceship, but you want it to be.

Although it didn’t end too well for brave, hairy Captain Dallas, his beard is still the kind of beard you want to have your back in any kind space/alien disaster type scenario, you want to cling to it and ride to safety amid its robust foliage. Tom Skerritt’s Captain Dallas in Alien I salute you!

Birthday Bonanza: Megalodons, Camp Hamlet and Last Years’ Post-Apocalypse

2010-09-14T13:07:00.001+02:00

As I may have mentioned, by mentioned I mean whined like a small irascible child, it was my 35th birthday at the end of last month. Like any self respecting 35 year old I regarded the day with maturity and balance and conducted myself throughout with the appropriate grace and dignity. Mmmm. Ok, what I actually did was cry, curse God, stuff myself into age inappropriate clothing and then got drunk and forced my friends to let me beat them at Mortal Kombat. So, essentially what I had was my 15th birthday again, only with slightly more wobbly bits around the midsection, a more ‘lived in’ face and considerably more friends. Anyway, the point is I got loads of prizes and I thought I’d share my favourites.

Since acquiring this beauty I have spent a lot of time poncing around in a billowy shirt like the campest Hamlet ever. Love it!

It’s a god damn megalodon tooth, well tooth fossil, but hell, a MEGLODON tooth nonetheless. My gorgeous husband gave me this because he’s awesome and he knows that this wife ain’t no flowers and chocolates kind of wife. I have decided that this is now my number one murder weapon of choice, obviously only if pushed, I’m not going to go bumping people off left, right and centre with a prehistoric shark tooth, I’m not mental or anything, but, if I absolutely have to kill someone (who probably deserves it) then they’re going down Carcharodon style.

I also got a Hellraiser boxset from my BFF Kev and his beautiful girlfriend Lizbet. To make it extra special it had a packet of cigarettes and a can of Jack Daniels and coke stashed inside. Jack Daniels and coke in a can! The wonders of modern technology never fail to amaze me.

I didn’t get any pictures of this birthday, largely because we just got a kitten and the camera was full of pictures of BeBe Gunns doing stuff and being cute. Hundreds and hundreds of pictures of a small cat sleeping, eating, playing, sleeping, hiding, investigating and mainly sleeping. We’re pathetic. So instead here are some pictures from my 34th post-apocalyptic punk birthday. Sorry, it’s the best I can offer.

Jinx and Kev Beyond Thunderdrome

This is me and BFF Kev. I’m looking mournful because I’m 34, this is laughable now. (Apologies for the obtrusive nature of my breasts in this pictures, while I wholeheartedly believe boobies should never be apologised for you didn’t sign up for this from me, I mean it’s probably early in the morning for some of you). The awesome steampunk goggles Kev is sporting in this pic were my birthday present from husband that year. They are fantastic, I wear them while piloting my dirigible and keeping the world safe from suave cape wearing criminal genii and deranged scientists.

There was also drinking:

Lizbet making drinking cool

Pleather:

And 3am Guitar Heroing:

Kev giving his best Cherry Pie

Big Matty is unimpressed by Kev's rendition of Warrant's Cherry Pie

My husband the morning after

And to finish, here's a picture of BeBe Gunns being cute. We have many, many more of these.

So I guess 35 isn't that bad, especially when you still behave like and have the same tastes as a 15 year old.
Right, I'm off to carry on growing old disgracefully.

Everything's Better With BeBe

2010-09-10T16:29:00.000+02:00

No more Carpathian kitten loss for Viggy

Wascally Wabbits

2010-09-01T12:55:00.004+02:00

I have been very kindly awarded the fantastic Zombie Rabbit Award by the delightful Jenny B from Memoirs of Scream Queen. I have only just discovered Jenny’s wonderfully quirky blog and I’m very glad I did. The gorgeous Ms. B. offers her own unique perspective on all things horror from reviews to fashion, and there’s music too. What more could you want? Check her out.

Now, I believe what I need to do on accepting this cute and fuzzy and rabid accolade is to pass it on to ten other fabulous blogs (do correct me if I’m wrong here, Jenny, I hope I’m not).
So without further ado, I infect:

Carfax Abbey
Post-Mortem Depression
From Beyond Depraved
Lavender Lair of Horror
(Please indulge me with this little show of favouritism, the above guys were really my first horror blogs and pals and I adore them. Aside from that they are awesome writers and contributors to the horror community and deserve all the awards. Go give them smooches).

Porkhead’s Horror Review Hole (Joel is an awesome guy and his blog is so smart and so killer funny I am in awe of it. Also, just to prove even further how much Joel rocks, in October he will be running a mini-marathon. Please do stop by and sponsor him and show your support for this fantastic endeavour for a fantastic cause).

From Midnight, With Love (Everything Mike does is beyond awesome. He’s a supercool horror avenger and I adore him. Everyone wants to be like Mike).

Mother Firefly’s Faster Pussycats! (Mother Firefly is, quite simply, an über cool lady and her blog is a delicious den of horrifying goodness. Love her.)

Fear of Fiction (I’m loving Oriel and her blog so much. The most recent example of her powers of awesomeness is a post about being stalked by plastic carrier bag that made me spurt tea out of my nose. Oriel completely rules!)

Never Sleeps Again (Another newish blog to me that I feel deserves some recognition. Cynniegurl is a delight, she posts reviews peppered with adorable personal stories and observations and I find her totally irresistible.)

The Celluloid Highway (Shaun is a super smart blogger and every post he shares is a wealth of information and insight. Paying him a visit is an enriching experience, he’s remarkable.)

Dr. Blood's Video Vault (Sorry, I had to include the Doc. The Doc is not only way, way cool, he also has a remarkable talent for steering me in the direction of films I would never have known existed otherwise. Plain and simply: The Doc rules! Pop over and pay him a visit - The Doctor is in and he's good for what ails you.

So there you are, consider yourselves infected (in the nicest possible way). Thanks once again to Jenny B and apologies to all the people who now have to reduce their favourite blogs down to just ten (especially the first four gents who probably hate me right now, sorry guys).

Introducing...BeBe Gunns!

2010-08-31T12:21:00.001+02:00

So we got a kitten.

Her name is BeBe Gunns and she's the cutest little bundle of mischief and joy.

We weren't planning on a kitten, but my sister's boyfriend's cat unexpectedly had kittens and my sister couldn’t stand the thought of loosing them to strangers so, because I’m a pushover and I can’t bear to see my baby sister cry, I said we’d take her favourite until she had a place of her own where she could keep her. This was nice of me. However, there was then one kitten left and after it rapidly became apparent that my husband was so unspeakably excited at the prospect of getting my sister’s kitten I realised that we were destined for trouble down the line when my sis eventually wanted said kitten back so as a result I agreed to take the last kitten as well to save my husband from heartbreak. Needless to say I wasn’t particularly thrilled by this arrangement at first (I’m a dog person) but the second BeBe showed up I turned into an embarrassing ball of mush and I now adore her completely. So that’s how we came to be the proud owners of BeBe Gunns and are soon to be kittysitting my sister’s little fluffy monster who may or may not be named Opie (my sister is indecisive).

If you want to know more about cats, or simply wish to view more cats, please visit: Evil Cats.

Happy Birthday to Jinx!

2010-08-27T18:48:00.001+02:00

Today is my birthday. I'm thirty sodding five. This displeases me. However, I do share this birthday with:

Mother Theresa

Pee Wee Herman

Ed Gein

I like this odd mix of people. It suits me.
If anyone wants me I shall under the duvet crying, cursing God and clutching a bottle of whiskey.

London Voodoo (2004)

2010-08-23T10:21:00.002+02:00

There is something a bit retro about London Voodoo, it feels like it belongs a different generation of chiller, or maybe it just errs in the direction of a 90s TV drama, either way this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it acquits itself remarkably well for a straight to DVD film, especially considering I paid a mere £1.50 for it.

Americans Lincoln (Doug Cockle) and Sarah (Sara Stewart) have recently relocated to London where Lincoln has taken a high powered new job (though judging by his rubbish office I would suspect he’s been thoroughly had) as an analyst (I don’t know what this means). This possibly made up job title and crappy new office will apparently afford Lincoln more money and more time to spend with his wife and their baby daughter, so things are looking swell for this upwardly mobile young couple.

Immediately on arrival, for some reason known only to God and presumably Lincoln’s now even less credible employers, they install a fax machine which is odd for 2004, but then who am I to judge, I don’t even know what analyst is. They also decide that there is some unutilised space in their basement that could be put to some much better yuppie purpose and builders are promptly engaged.

The 2004 pinnacle of yuppiedom, apparently

Moving the plot forward, it turns out that having a child to raise and not having to work is actually quite stressful and Lincoln insist that Sarah be furnished with perfect yuppie accessory a nanny/home help and so young, pretty Kelly (Vonda Barnes) pitches up (maybe Lincoln is so much of a mug after all) and now Sarah has all the time in the world to potter about, probably eat hummus and visit farmer’s markets and interfere with the supernatural.

When one of the bad examples of British tradesmen, despite not having actually done any visible work, manages to injure himself in a spectacular basement floor, lightbulb, dark related incident, Sarah, because she’s clearly got too much time on her hands, decides to investigate the scene of the mishap and promptly unearths a voodoo grave complete with the requisite charms and idols and the mummified remains of two voodoo dignitaries.

Marigolds and obstructing the course of justice

Sarah and Lincoln decide that, even considering that they are guests in another country, they really don’t need to bother with such trifling matters as the police and that instead the little grave will be a good project for Sarah now she doesn’t have to work or look after her child, thus proving beyond any reasonable doubt that too much money and too much time is not a good combination.

Not worth bothering the authorities about

Unfortunately for Sarah, and everyone else involved, it turns out that her self-designated pastime has some nefarious intentions. Rather than just staying dead the mummified folk would much prefer to get hold of some brand spanking new bodies to set up home in and the priestess makes a prompt play for Sarah’s warm womanly form. Soon Sarah begins to experience some unusualness. She finds herself having blackouts and memory lapses, begins hoarding her husband’s toenail clippings, attempts to seduce workmen and starts performing odd rituals with miscellaneous food products. She also finds she has drawn the attention of an unusually knowing charity worker and some members of the local voodoo community. These kindly souls, clearly in possession of the kind common sense that passed both Lincoln and Sarah by, give the partly possessed mother ample and explicit warnings of the danger that she putting herself and her family in, and she ignores them.

When voodoo goes bad

As Lincoln is far too busy brokering the kind of business deals you’d expect from a high powered executive in a crappy office he barely notices that his wife has gone all peculiar which is fine behaviour from a man who just five minutes ago promised his stupid new job would allow him much more time for his family. The young nanny meanwhile is also beginning to display signs that she too is slightly unhinged, albeit a more mundane variety of unhinged, and appears to be mainly occupying her time painting her nails, scrawling her employer’s husband’s name into her flesh with items cutlery and endeavouring to persuade her young child charge to call her mummy. Needless to say we now begin wandering into a relatively pointless Fatal Attraction type subplot that never really goes anywhere.

Saucy nanny

Naughty nanny

With Sarah swiftly on her way to achieving full possession and all offers of help thoroughly dismissed it falls to the hapless Lincoln to rescue what is left of this dysfunctional family, this is presumably particularly important to him as it transpires that Sarah’s internal priestess’ deceased male counterpart now has designs to make Lincoln’s businessman’s body his very own. He eventually decides to contact the kindly charity worker who also happens to be a voodoo aficionado and together they plan to save Sarah and foil these naughty voodoo ne’er-do-wells.

The yuppie face of voodoo

London Voodoo is strangely enjoyable despite having some script and pacing issues. The lead cast do a competent job and there are also some nice ensemble cameos from a supporting cast appearing as a voodoo sect in all their ritualistic glory that alone make it worth a watch. It is nicely shot, has an effective soundtrack provided by Steven Severin of Siouxsie and the Banshees and, although the script is little uncertain and problematic, first time writer/director Robert Pratten demonstrates some directorial capability, I was particularly taken with the juxtaposition of the primal and the domestic in the voodoo ritual scenes. The end unfortunately is a bit of an anti-climax, but there is certainly something oddly compelling about the tale of largely unpleasant yuppies in crisis that is enough to sufficiently hold your interest through this flawed but watchable chiller. The DVD also comes with a ‘making of’ feature, which I’m sure would have been interesting and I did try to watch, but it began with a progressive series of direct to camera confessionals from the writer/director in which he appeared to be building up to some kind of minor nervous breakdown and it made me uncomfortable and I had to switch it off after five minutes.

A Bit of a Cult

2010-08-18T12:54:00.000+02:00

Once again our glorious Midnight Warriors leader The Mike has projected The Warrior signal skywards to bring us together once more this time to tackle 70s cult films. The Mike intends to compile ‘The Midnight Warriors' Most Essential Cult Films of the 1970s’ and he needs our help with the super exciting project. Initially he would like us to create our own top five list of films of the decade. I urge you all to take part in this and you can find full details here.

So then, my list. I purposefully steered away from horror films here because, frankly, that would be too easy, I could go on about my favourite 70s horror films for days and most of them would probably qualify as cult. So instead this list will be my top five favourite non-horror cult films of the 70s. Also, I’d never ever have been able to pick only five. I love cult films, I really do, so I found this really difficult, I’m also quite changeable so am naturally disinclined to commit to favourites, and I get terribly carried with new ideas so, given the right circumstance (mood, amount of whiskey, company), almost anything can find itself proclaimed my favourite film EVER on a Friday night (this dubious honour currently belongs to Demonium). Also, while we’re on the subject, I like saying cult. It’s a fabulous word and feels good on my tongue. Cuuullllt. And it sounds a bit rude, especially if you say it in a French accent.

Sorry, enough of this rubbish, I will now stop messing about and present my Top Five Essential Cult Films of the 70s. (Still giggling at ‘cult.’).

1. Pink Flamingos (1975, John Waters)

2. Fritz the Cat (1972, Ralph Bakshi)

3. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970, Russ Meyer)

4. The Warriors (1979, Walter Hill)

5. Electra Glide in Blue (1973, James William Guercio)

Ok, some are a little predictable there, but I decided it was best not to think about it and went with my gut and that's what came spewing forth. (Not one of my nicer mental images there, sorry). I really do urge all Midnight Warriors to take part in this, and if you're not a Midnight Warrior yet, become one, it's easy, and super fun. Thanks to The Mike for being the king of all things cool and coming up with this. Now I'm just going to say cult one more time: 'Cult!!'. Awesome. I'm like a twelve year old, a really embarrassing twelve year old.

Daddy Dearest: A Meme in Pictures

2010-08-16T13:09:00.003+02:00

Gorgeous Howlin’ Joe Monster from the incomparable blog From Beyond Depraved has tagged me to take part in a splendid little Me Me. I love these things and this one is particularly exciting because it’s all about the pictures.

From Joe’s information, and he’s sure to be correct, this smashing project originated on the blog Checking On My Sausages and it requests the tagged participant to come up with screen grabs from films that all share a common theme. Awesome.

It took me quite a while to come up a theme, not least because every time I thought of one I found someone else had beaten me to it. Eventually I decided to go with ‘images of fathers in horror’. I didn’t have a dad. Well, obviously I did biologically; I’m not suggesting I’m the Immaculate Conception or the second coming or anything, but I didn’t have an actual present father in my life and as a result the idea of them intrigues and fascinates me and probably also explains my obsession with Ron Perlman and other gentleman of a certain age. Err...right....before I turn into a Freudian wet dream or start using this post as some kind of therapy here is a selection of the good, the bad, the misguided and the just plain scary dads of horror.

So those were the dads and hurrah for them! Most of them. Well, some of them. If you're a dad, hurrah for you! And if you've got a dad go find him or give him a call and give him a rousing hurrah too. And Ron Perlman, if you happen to be reading this, would you like to adopt me? I can provide a detailed list of the reasons why this would be a great idea. I'm also house trained, make a wicked cup of tea and come in a variety of colours to match your decor.

Now I have to pass it on. I would very much like to see what Jack over at Lavender Lair of Horror makes of this. I bet it's something great.