Revisiting ‘Salem’s Lot…
Revisiting ‘Salem’s Lot… Back in the ‘seventies and ‘eighties the release of a new book from Stephen King was something of an event for me. It would have been on a par with a new movie from Sam Peckinpah or David Cronenberg. Yet as the sheer weight of his output grew to include such diverse forms as cinema, television and even comic books, I drifted away whilst still managing to pretty much keep up with what he was doing....
No Fun Playing With Oneself: The Lair of the White Worm
No Fun Playing With Oneself: The Lair of the White Worm (1988) I recall a TV interview featuring director Ken Russell just after his 1988 film The Lair of the White Worm was released. It was based on the final novel from Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. “Did you know,” the interviewer helpfully mentioned, “that Stoker was dying of Bright’s Disease at the time?” “Well, he certainly wasn’t too bright when he wrote it”, replied...
Seekers after Truth and a Taste of Heaven: Photographing Fairies
Seekers after Truth and a Taste of Heaven: Photographing Fairies Let me say right at the outset that this film is one of those overlooked gems; and certainly is amongst the most provocative, complex and downright baffling examinations of whether or not there is a life beyond this one. And whether you believe in an afterlife or, like me, just don’t have a clue, it is worth seeing just as a major work of Art. Dear oh...
Inside the Wicker Man The Morbid Ingenuities By Allan Brown
Inside the Wicker Man The Morbid Ingenuities By Allan Brown “It is a film about sacrifice which was itself sacrificed. It is also a film about the life force; it has been hacked, slashed, buried, written off and lost but it continues to live; indeed it refuses to die.” ...
Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story: Smoke
“What’s the matter? He run out of ideas or something?” “He ran out of luck.” —Smoke A couple of weeks ago a package arrived containing an early Christmas gift. When I opened it I was truly taken aback. It was a beautiful, slim little volume from Faber and Faber, written by Paul Auster and delicately illustrated by someone called Isol. It is a thing that is both lovely to look at and to leaf through, sent by a good friend...
Get Out or I’ll Hurt You: The Legend of Hell House
“Although the story of this film is fictitious, the events depicted involving psychic phenomenon are not only very much within the bounds of possibility, but could well be true.” That is the card that is shown before the prologue and the credits sequence of the 1973 classic The Legend of Hell House. [pullquote align=”left”][/pullquote]Oh dear. So portentous: ‘possibility’; ‘could well be true’? And that’s not the...
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