Hunting Captain Nairac

 

I was at the Queens Film Theatre this afternoon for the last day of the Docs Ireland festival. The showing was "Hunting Captain Nairac" a documentary about the search for the human remains of people disappeared by republican forces during the troubles, in this instance an army intelligence officer who famously walked into a bar in South Armagh full of 200 people and was never seen again. It was an interesting and well made documentary it answered a lot of questions and debunked some old myths but it did leave me with a few questions. 

1. It did a lot to humanise Nairac and present his complexities as a person. Fair enough I suppose but I feel like they might be overegging things a little. It presents his Catholicism and seemingly genuine hibernophillia as being in contradiction with his role as an army intelligence officer. That is very simply not the case as anyone who is familiar with British colonial practice can tell you, that just made him better at his job, the British founded the SOAS to train their cadre in the complexities of the cultures they were sending them out to imperialise.

2. Fair play for trying to dispel 2 big myths you'd hear about Niarac, that his body was "fed to the pigs" as my aul Uncle Danny (RIP) used to say (and that was way before Snatch put that particular method of body disposal into the public consciousness). And that the rumours of his involvement with The Miami Showband massacre (which I also heard and believed once) was probably flack generated by the PIRAs counter intelligence machine. That said the extent and nature of his actual activities isn't really touched on. Troublingly, what he was literally said to be doing in the bar that night was to "Further a relationship" with the sister of an IRA activist. I'm sorry but to me that sounds like the very common practice in intelligence circles of undercovers getting in with a particular situation through a sexual relationship, which is rightly considered to be a form of SA as you can't meaningfully consent to sex with someone who is misrepresenting themselves at that level. That's an implication that seems rightly obvious to anyone familiar with these issues. Not that if it was the case that it justifies what happened to him, corpse-napping is a horrible thing to happen and its no more cool when the 'Ra were doing it than when the  CIA trained secret police were doing it across Latin America in the 70s and 80s or when Israel do it today, it just seems odd that that's put out there and handwaved very quickly. 

My take away from it was that it seemed oddly in step with the Werner Herzog documentary Grizzly Man that was also featured at the Docs Ireland festival the night before (with live commentary by the editor!) about another eccentric wee man with terminal Main Character syndrome who intentionally put himself in the line of danger doing something he was passionate about and paid the ultimate price for it.

I do sincerely hope that his body is found and returned to his people. Its good that for the future generations here to heal properly we need a full reckoning with the past. I just don't want that to come at the cost of downplaying the seriousness of any aspect of the conflict in the name of "balance".

Things I Enjoyed in 2024

 

Having made and successfully kept my New Years resolution of last year (which I’ll get onto) this years is to write more and actually use the blog. Even if at this point blogging is a dead art form and nobody is reading this stuff or likely to make me even a modicum of “internet-famous”, it’ll at least alleviate the mild guilt I feel about not having written. This is essentially just for me, but I hope it’ll be something at least a couple of people might get something out of. 

This is going to take the format of a SuperEyepatchWolf season roundup video. Maybe not as good (I wish I had the work ethic that guy has tbh). This is really more about cataloguing and recording where I am with certain things. It will contain a mixture of things that are brand new in the sense that they came out this year, as well as a few things that will be noted as such that came out in previous years but I only got to experience this year for the first time.

In No Order:

Gaming:

So I’ve kind of stopped playing new computer games. I got back into gaming over the pandemic, got a PS4, played everything I’d been hearing about and wanting to play for years. It was great, but before the start of last year I kind of ran right out of steam. All I want out of games now is something diverting I can do with my hands while I listen to the sort of podcasts I actually want to listen to beginning to end and not use as a sleep aid. I’m still playing Streets of Rage 4, always the Survival Mode from the DLC where you have one life and have to fight your way through increasing hordes of enemies in an enclosed environment while levelling up your core attributes or adding buffs to types of attacks. I’m also playing a cheap Pool simulator (its just Pool in an Unreal 4 engine) and Slay The Spire. To this I have very recently added Balatro, a game with Poker and making poker hands at its core. 

I did get back briefly into playing Magic The Gathering on Arena for a couple of months but that software is a piece of janky shit that after a certain update just became crash-y and unusable on both the devices I was using it on, and is basically unplayable on a mobile phone anyway, like how small the text is makes it functionally unusable unless you already know the cards by the cover art and don’t need to read what anything does. Yeah you fucked up there Wizards, you could have had me back suckling on your milky duds for the odd fix that beating up on people from across the world at Magic can give me, but you bollocksed it.

Podcasts:

Yeah I ought to say what podcasts I’ve been into listening to while gaming since I literally just mentioned they’re my entire reason for continuing to game. Chapo Trap House, I don’t agree 100% with everything they say but we hate a lot of the same things and they are genuinely good crack. They called the US election correctly and their coverage of the proceedings has been sterling in terms of making that whole mess explicable to someone like me over here with the rest of the world looking on at the absolute mess happening over there. TrashFuture, a podcast with a similar bent and humour but by queer Brits. The Only Podcast About Movies, slightly lighter fare but good analytical takes on mostly contemporary cinema. I also like, though don’t listen to quite as much as I did, RevLeftRadio – a Marxist podcast on a variety of subjects including; History, Current Affairs, Theory, Philosphy, Esoterica and hosted by a Canadian Maoist called Brett with a blessedly ecumenical approach to intra-left factionalism.

The ones I do listen to for sleep I do so not because they are boring or anything (it actually has to be interesting or it won’t hold my conscious attention, which is part of the trick I’m playing on myself), but because they are soothing and not likely to get me angry or excitable the way listening to stuff about politics generally will. These include; The Blindboy podcast - which I’ve been on since pretty early in the day, Ghibliotheque, A Podcast About Studio Ghibli - but has actually come to encompass all sorts of animated media and this year has covered the works of Makoto Shinkai, Linklaters animated films and the work of Nick Park, and The French Whisperer ASMR. Ghost Notes, a podcast broadly about music of all sorts from the two guys that do the Polyphonic and 12tone Youtube channels is the real best of both of those projects and the guys bounce off each other nicely.

YouTube:

This seems to follow on neatly from talking about Podcasts. Feels like I’m not coming across many new channels that are really grabbing my attention but I’ve got more than enough established favourites now to eat up as much of my spare time as I can throw at it. Novarra Media continues to be a good news resource. Iconic early video-essayist Every Frame a Painting returned after an 8 year hiatus with a whopping two new videos over four months, and it being an oldschool Youtube channel, these have been ten and five minutes respectively. Better than nothing, still great quality, one can hardly complain. 

Overly Sarcastic Productions and Extra Credits / Extra History continue to be an absolute joy in terms of delivering a weekly fix of good informative history and media-analysis. Red of OSP (the team don’t use real names, just colours like in Reservoir Dogs) is an absolute super-star, like if I could get to live in a house and hang out and just have the crack all day with anyone off the internet right now it would be Red by miles, hands down. 

Super Eyepatch Wolf, my distant cousin (maybe) whom I’ve already mentioned, continues to be one of the best things on the platform. I only saw his guest appearance on the Trash Taste Podast (not to be confused with Trash Future, a different trashy thing altogether) this year for the first time and it was an absolute joy and also got me into watching their stuff again which I had done in the past but bounced off for some reason. 

Fiq The Signifier's ongoing coverage of and eventual long form video essay on the Kendrick V Drake Beef that went on last spring and summer was absolutely magnificent. 

The Leftist Cooks, only managed 4 essays this year, fair enough considering they managed to conceive and birth a child between them and their essays are all feature length these days. Still killing it, really insightful and heartfelt with a lot of intellectual heft. This is maybe best exemplified in the video essay where they announce their good news itself, that sends Neil into a deep dive on the topic of anti-natalism to the point where he writes a book length refutation of David Benatar that you can buy from their patreon. Based.

Georg Rockall-Schmidt, the man is out here doing gods work. Some media analysis, just him talking movies or about stuff on TV with a reasonable amount of anti-corporate videos where he just goes ham on some particular set of capitalist bastards, be they Shein, Temu, The Sacklers, American Healthcare in general. I’m living for how snarky my boy is.

Less on the political side, the music channel Trash Theory (again, not to be confused with either Trash Future or Trash Taste) continues to be one of the most consistently entertaining and informative things on the platform. Its kind of a 90s nostalgia channel but he does cover other eras and some contemporary music. He always sounds genuinely enthused about whatever it is he's covering,  in a way that brings you along with him even if you're not mad into whatever the topic is yourself.

Music:

(Sigh). Y’know. I’ve not been on top of music at all. I’ve barely listened to anything new. I think when I stopped DJing or their being any prospect of me DJing much ever again, even for myself or to post online, that just lost my focus on finding new stuff. What I have been listening to, Cerys Matthews and Mark Radcliffe’s Blues and Folk shows on BBC Radio 2, Sherelle’s Saturday night shows on Radio 6 and other random bits and pieces on the BBC digital radio stations which I’ll generally have on as background when I’m doing my breakfast or dinner.

I loved the ØXN debut LP that came out in 2023. ØXN are a side project by Radie and the other non-Lynch member of Lankum that is if anything even darker and more Lankum-y than Lankum itself. I missed opportunities to get to see them play live this year, I literally didn’t make any festivals this year, to my shame.

What I did enjoy also that was actually from this year was Chelsea Wolfe’s latest album She Reaches Out to She where she’s still bringing the dark doom-metal-y goodness but has gone more industrial and a little trip-hop-y. She played Belfast on the tour for this one and I did get to see her, and she was great.

I did manage to get to a fair few nights and gigs about Belfast, and over to Glasgow with my sister to see Max Cooper’s big AV show. I think the best one might well have been getting to see Caribou live in the Telegraph building, which luckily for me has now been immortalised forever as it was a Boiler Room event.

TV: 

I’ve been on quite an animation tip this year. I’ve managed to finally get around to Star Vs The Forces of Evil and Amphibia on Disney as well as the masterful OK KO, Lets Be Heros!, of which I will not say too much other that they were really good since a couple of them may or may not feature on the return of a regular segment that has long been in hiatus on this corner of the internet. Arcane came through with a second and final season which while not quite up to the standard set by season one still fucking well kills dead near enough any other western animation series. 

I watched and mostly enjoyed The Dragon Prince, like I only started it this year not knowing that the final season was dropping in December. If I’d have known it was written by the Avatar The Last Airbender (which I did rewatch and loved all over again) team I probably would have got to it sooner tbh. If has what are for me some rough edges, the world is nowhere near as interesting or unique as Avatar, its just some guys DnD campaign – which is fine just not that original, I don’t like the occasional segues into goofy naturalistic dialogue. The tone shifts are jarring, to me at least, but not enough that I bounced off. It also falls for some ball achingly obvious tropes in storytelling. Its actually decent though and worth seeing. The animation style is really class, really pleasing to see something in 3d that is that old and doesn’t look like ass.

Speaking of tone shifts and a “some guys DnD campaign” setting, The Legend of Vox Machina was a whole heap of fun once again. The tone shifts were seamless and yes, this is literally a DnD Campaign turned into a series but they nailed the transition its just great fun.

Anime; I feel like I’ve rinsed the well of classics from the OVA era that I would care about. At least until Angel’s Egg makes it back to the big screens (maybe this year?). I have actually been enjoying some new stuff. NGL, those are some really basic picks for those in the know and will probably appear on most if not all anime commentators Best Of The Year lists. I will mostly just watch a small selection of the stuff I think sounds interesting from the handful of people I follow in the space and maybe see getting recommended on my socials. I’m not out here seeking out the really obscure stuff, I don’t think they still make much of the type of anime I like anymore, but the odd thing that filters through I get a lot of joy from.

Dan De Dan is one of the big anime series of this year and its not hard to see why. On paper the plot my make it appear to be more typical shonen weeb trash but it was done by Science Saru, the studio led by the guy that did Mind Game and who also did the Devilman Cry-Baby series a few years back. It scratches that itch for the genuinely unhinged shit that Anime has been lacking for a while. 

I really liked Frieren: Beyond The Journeys End, a very meditative and mostly glacially slowly paced fantasy series about an Elf mage who is, as elves are in fantasy, extremely long  lived, going on immortal that does have some great high fantasy magical combat in it but is mostly about the idea of human connections and what its like to live long enough to see your mates live and die while you stay essentially the same person. 

Less serious but equally good (better imo), Delicious In Dungeon. Like some of the other stuff I’ve been talking about it’s a very DnD-esque setting but it dares to ask questions that DnD players rarely ask in these last 50 odd years of the game, like what does dragon taste like? Does a gelatinous cube have any vitamins and minerals or is it just empty calories? Are the giant mushroom monsters that you have to fight some times going to kill you or get you high if you try to eat them or are they just a good source of zinc to the weary dungeon-crawling murder-hobo? You wouldn’t ear a person, probably not an Orc either but would Merefolk be more like fish or people, and is it ok to eat them? Its really just a good sprawling adventure fantasy with some great characters and also some interesting dissections of the notions of taboo and the value of good nutrition.

In terms of live TV, yeah there’s been some fire stuff out there. Something I only watched for the first time this year though it’s been out for a while; Wu Tang: An American Saga with the kid from the middle section of Moonlight as RZA I found and watched earlier in the year. Yeah it takes some liberties with the truth and leaves some stuff out for dramatic purposes (like RZA and ODB both had kids by the time the main plot starts, this does not come up at all) but it does their whole story and schtick really well. There’s three seasons, the third season isn’t quite as good just because the story itself IRL is less compelling than the coming together and coming up of these outsiders from Staten Island, seeing them get rich and famous and fall out with each other is not nearly as much fun. We are spared seeing Ason’s fall into madness and self destruction though that does somewhat hang over the narrative its not handled in a way that’s prurient or anything. 

Say Nothing, is yet another somewhat controversial take on actual historical events. This is about Sinn Fein / The Provos, the Finucane murders and the life of Dolours price. It managed to recreate the old Divis tower block accurately enough, down to the vibe, that it retraumatised my Mum who lived there during the events dramatized in the series. It’s good seeing something made about here with that sort of attention to detail and period accuracy, that also treats all sides reasonably fairly. Like there’s literal Gerry Adams in there as a low-key villain in the piece and he’s not some sort of moustache twirling cartoon. Shame that they blew a lot of the good will in a completely unnecessary plot point in the last episode that only seems to be in there for the sake of a Bad TV Writing climactic reveal involving one of the few players in the narrative that’s still alive and as I write is in the process of suing Disney. Worth watching in spite of all that.

The new series of Interview With A Vampire kept up the quality of the first and was if anything even better than the first. That show does a lot right, the fifth episode about the circumstances of the actual first interview that fills in a lot of Molloy’s character and story was just edge of the seat stuff from beginning to end. Like if you know the book or the film, you know exactly what happens to Claudia and Louis in Paris and you just spend the season waiting for the other shoe to drop, but this was unique to the series (afaik) and made for really gut-wrenching emotive TV. 

Books:

I was mostly using Duolingo to learn gaeilgé in my down time this year. I got the paid version after getting my first bit of paid work of the year and have finished the Irish course (standard Irish though, not Ulster unfortunately). That and The Mists Of Avalon being a long slog, and not just because of the length of the book or the writing style (see my review), I didn't really get reading nearly as much this year as usual. I did hit my years reading goals of finishing the three series I'd stated in the previous couple by reading the final books in the series. These were Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky (a good cap to the trilogy but the first book definitely rocks the others, okay to read on its own), Ancillary Mercy, which finishes the trilogy out well but doesn’t add a whole lot to the last ones in terms of world building and Emperor of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay which is the second of his books about Sarantium, the Byzantium of his fictional universe that runs analogous to our own medieval and ancient history but isn’t and so gives him license to tinker with the world building and throw in some magic and supernatural elements. It was pretty good, probably best read straight after part one Sailing To Sarantium and not a year-ish apart like I did it. 

Other things I read and liked included Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, the latest Blindboy Boatclub collection Topographia Hibernica which only came out 2023, and the collection of shorts by Norman Spinrad from the 1960s No Direction Home.

Comics / graphic novels, wise I read Bone for the first time. Its cool, like very a typical high fantasy that just happens to have three Fleischer Bros. / Old Disney cartoon characters as the Hobbits that bungle their way into the scenario. I also started Berserk, completed the first volume of the big over-sized collected editions just before the end of the year. I am already digging the vibe and we’re only just getting to what most people agree is The Good Bit, the first part of The Golden Age is what that edition finishes on.

Best book though was Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle. A new book from this year that is not his first non-Tingler as in actual proper novel but is the first one I’ve read and its incredibly good. Easily as good an exploration of Queer people’s relationship with certain types of media and place in that media as I Saw The TV Glow (which tbf I also liked a lot, even if it didn’t make my top 10). The prose is a constant pleasure, readable while also being wry and funny, scary or disturbing where it needs to be. It has a lot of heart in it too. Its also low-key based AF, as in the subtext is almost pure Marxism. I’m not sure if that’s exactly where Chuck is coming from but I see it and even if unconscious its definitely in there.

Movies:

I already have a top ten for the year up on my Letterboxd. Just to reiterate what I said there, Kneecap was my favourite of the year closely followed by The Substance. When I get to my favourites of this decade these will definitely both be in there. I am very much the target audience of Kneecap, or course I’m going to love it. I have been semi-adjacent to that life in my own city for parts of my own, some of the stuff in the film literally happened to my mates, I’ll not say what so as not to implicate anyone living or dead but it is very close to my heart, even if I know for a fact that they aren’t the complete spides they make themselves out to be or the best rappers on the local scene (though they are definitely the best at doing it bilingually and best at promoting themselves). The Substance gave me everything my body-horror loving degenerate arse could ever wish for in a film, a very straight-forwards feminist allegory that goes bat shit in the last act and is really gross, people were leaving. People left my showing like 20 minutes before the end, that never happens but they must have just been like “yeah I’m already two hours into this thing and we are close to the end but this is already way past my comfort zone and is just going to get worse from here – I’m out”. Normally I would decry such behaviour as weakness but in this case I say fair play to those people. It did just keep getting worse.

We had a lot of other great films this year, see the list. A few of the big Awards-bait movies from last year that dropped in January here were, right enough, some of the best most interesting, medium pushing and generally great films of the year, Poor Things, Zone of Interest, All Of Us Strangers, The Holdovers really had us spoiled. It was a good year for horror - Oddity, Longlegs, In A Violent Nature, Stop Motion. Big Popcorn actioners gave us Furiosa: A Mad Max Story, Dune 2 and Deadpool Vs Wolverine (which was essentially a Zucker Brothers screwball comedy set in the current Marvel comic book movie landscape). Not such a good year imo for animated features, 2022 and 2023 really had us spoiled, but The First Slam Dunk was very enjoyable, we got a new Wallace and Gromit film which was awesome and my favourite animated film of the year Robot Dreams was an absolute joy. It was though a good year for Irish cinema. I’ve already sung Kneecap’s praises (did I mention just how viscerally funny it all is? No? Well it’s hilarious), but we also did have Small Things Like These and That They May Face The Rising Sun, which was incredible and will hopefully bring John McGahern’s legacy and work to a new generation of people across the world.

 

I think that just about covers everything I feel it’s necessary to say. As I said up top I’m trying to get back into updating this thing a bit more regularly. I have a steady enough job now I could see going for a wee while that could give me the sort of schedule I could see myself building a decent routine around that might lead to me being able to do more writing. Here’s hoping anyway so watch this space. 

My #31daysofhalloween challenge 2024

 31 days of Halloween, 2024

Its been a good one this year. This time I had the aid of an Arrow subscription. Have been meaning to try it out for years and I really like the service. Might get one on a longer term when I can afford it again.

There are well over 31 films and other forms of spooky media on this list so I don't feel the need to number the list this time. I will say a little about each one though. All of these are first time watches unless stated otherwise.

Oddity - new Irish feature film. Great start to the month, creepy and unsettling.  (Shudder and elsewhere)
Blood of My Blood - Italian gothic, very atmospheric and creepy but not scary. (Mubi)
Imprint - Takashi Miike's spot on the Masters of Horror anthology. Was considered to extreme to broadcast and never made it to TV. A disturbing period piece in the tradition of Teruo Ishii that draws on some of the darker parts of Japanese social history that get too easily romanticised. I loved it. (Physical)

Dracula's Ex-Girlfriend - a 30 minute short from Abigail Thorne of the Youtube channel Philosophy Tube. The idea of Dracula as an abusive ex partner is fun and they do a lot with it. (Nebula Exclusive)

Bubba Ho-Tep - Re-watch, but considering that the last time I watched it was probably about 20 years ago, and all I could really remember was parts of the ending I might as well have been watching it fresh. Thoroughly enjoyed it, Campbell here is the best he's ever been outside of The Evil Dead franchise. (Amazon)

In a Violent Nature - I didn't really enjoy it. I was thoroughly impressed with it and get what it was trying to do but it left me a bit cold. Still, nice to see something fresh being done with the Slasher genre. (Physical)
Boys From The County Hell - A horror comedy from my own neck of the woods, well Northern Ireland anyway, and it's good and it does our sense of humour without being cringe. Shocking. 

Stopmotion - Recent British horror film about a woman making one of my favourite types of film, creepy stop motion! And it drives her to obsession and madness! Hell yeah! Good show (Shudder)

Images - An old one from Robert Altman. A woman may be in the grip of madness or possibly the victim of an elaborate conspiracy or some supernatural 'tings are going down. Hard to say and either way its a disconcerting experience that uses the edits and cuts to put you in the head of someone who might be loosing it. Good stuff.
El Conde - As you know I like to try and watch a film from each of the habitable continents when I'm doing this. This is from South America, Chile to be exact. Its a darkly funny political satire on the idea that Pinochet was a literal vampire. It's funny enough, the narration from Margret Thatcher is a clever touch. (Netflix)
Manborg - Canadian retro-90s comedy action horror. Same team that did Fathers Day. This was a lot of fun. (Amazon)

Childsplay - This is the 2019 one. I really like this, its a sci-fi about the horrors of AI instead of a questionable Voodoo explanation for the murder-doll. Chucky isn't evil, he just has the safeties off. (Netflix) 
The Purge - Rewatch, chosen by my Sister. I liked it before and it was fine on a rewatch. I like the setting and the premise, could do with watching the whole series but I can't mind which ones I have and haven't seen. (Netflix)

Carrie - Another rewatch, again its been ages so it was fun watching it again. Knowing the ending doesn't make it any less impactful as it all plays out. Also funny watching it now since seeing Phantom Of The Paradise, you can see all of DePalmas stylistic touches, except its not as balls to the wall mental as that film, its all there but paired down and directed. Deserved classic status. (Amazon)

House - Probably the worst horror film to be simply titled "House". Its the American one that was the start of an ongoing series. (Arrow)

Wolf Guy - Now this is more like it, the sort of thing I got the Arrow sub for. Weird Japanese stuff, nonsensical plot, some cool gore effects and tits. I'm easy pleased. (Arrow)
Juju Stories - The token African film for the list. Nigerian Urban-Folk horror anthology. Good stuff, each of the three sections was well executed and the acting and writing were all on point. It's always nice getting a window into another culture. (Amazon Prime)
Over The Garden Wall - Rewatch of this eminently re-watchable animated mini series which can be consumed in 10 minute bites or all at once as a 2-hour ish complete story. It's great. Lots of detail and depth, you get a little more on each rewatch. Every section is a joy in itself. (Amazon Prime)
Hellraiser: Bloodline - I've heard that the Hellraiser sequels from 3 onwards are hard going. This wasn't great but it does some interesting things with the mythos.
Run Rabbit Run - Our trip to the Antipodes of the season. Unoriginal Ozzy spooky-kid movie. (Netflix).
The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures - Another South American price, this time Brazil's Coffin Joe. Neither as horny or as fun as it sounds unfortunately. (Arrow)

The Last Matinee - An international co-production of Uruguay, Mexico and Argentina this time, more recent and much more enjoyable. A killer on the loose in a movie theatre that is showing a slasher film, set in the 80s. Its very meta and has some fun kills. Decent. (Arrow)
DellaMorte DellAmore - This was great. Italian giallo horror comedy-satire. It looks gorgeous and has a great turn from Rupert Everett as a town cemetery employee who has to fight the undead every night. The satire element would probably be more apparent if you know Bava's work like The Beyond but I defy anyone to watch this and not get something out of it. (Amazon Prime)
Madhouse - I don't mind admitting that it was Movie Bob's youtube channel video on this that got me to watch it. This was amazing, dark mystery / horror with Vincent Price and Peter Cushing, its about the horror movie industry which gives them an excuse to do a bit of meta commentary on the genre. Price is amazing as always, this tme playing a version of himself. If you like the old Corman Poe adaptions or Hammer / Amicus etc era British technicolour horror you need to see this. (Physical)
Tales That Witness Madness - Speaking of which, this is an old Amicus anthology film with Donald Pleasence in the framing story. It has a lot of charm. (Recorded from TV)
The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane - wasn't sure whether to include this. Its not really a horror film though it does have some touches of horror. The scariest thing in it is Martin Sheen being a nonce to a very young Jodie Foster. Its really good though. Like an episode of Colombo meets We Have Always Lived At the Castle. (Amazon Prime)

Shaun Of the Dead - Rewtach. One of my favourite films ever. Just a stone cold classic of horror comedy. 10/10 no notes. (Netflix)
Queen of The Damned - I wasn't expecting much and thats what I got. Stuart Townsend was a good choice and could have been a great Lestat in a better film. Good for a cheesy Nu metal is Good Actually 00s nostalgia kick. (Physical)
The Platform 2 - loved the first one. This was okay but sort of undoes some of the interesting subversive / radical messaging that the first one had without adding much of interest. (Netflix)
The Rocky Horror Picture Show - Rewatch, of course. Love it. 10/10 no notes. (Disney+)
Black Rainbow - Supernatural Thriller about a dodgy medium who might actually have other worldly powers, enough to seemingly predict murder. Very well done, the seance scenes were suitably creepy. One of the good finds of this season. (Arrow)
Hocus Pocus 2 - Terrible. Not even a cameo from Omri, like FFS. (Disney+)
Grim Prairie Tales - Rewatch. Western Horror anthology, James Earl Jones and Brad Dourif telling scary campfire tales to each other. It looks like a TV movie, but its fun and the second story has a memorable ending which is worth the price of admission alone. Nice to revisit after nearly 30 years. (Its just on Youtube)
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice - Was intending to see this in a cinema this month but missed out and ended up skinning in with my mum and sister for the stream on Halloween night. I am a huge fan of the original, found it genuinely creepy an unsettling when I was wee. The other people I watched it with really liked it, I wasn't that enamoured with it. Glad I watched it though. (We got it through Prime)

And thats it. I only got to read through one horror novella, Coraline by Neil Gaiman. I've not been reading as much this year. Not a bad selection over all.

Monkey Man (Dev Patel, 2024) A Review

Of all the various genres of contemporary popular culture the superhero origin story feels like the most played out, with the action-revenge thriller not far behind it. So it seems odd that last weeks release Monkey Man, which is decidedly situated in both and playing the tropes of each fairly straight, might be one of the freshest and most exciting releases of the year.

The film is a passion project from the British-South East Asian actor Dev Patel and marks his directorial debut. Some readers may remember him from his start on the TV series Skins as part of the first gen, or from later more prominent roles in Slumdog Millionaire, C.H.A.P.P.I.E. and the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel series, or my favourite, David Lowery’s Art-House fantasy adaption of The Green Knight. He has definitely done some good work over the years and worked with some of the most interesting directors working at the moment. However as a martial artist since childhood, long before he was interested in acting and fan of action cinema he’d always wanted to be in one of those films, preferably as the lead. Problem was though that the film industry doesn’t tend to see him in that sort of role, and his only way to be in that sort of film would be as “the guy who hacks the mainframe or the comedy side-kick”, unless he made the film himself, which is what Monkey Man is.

 

As much inspired by the classic Hong Kong Kung Fu films, post 2000s South Korean revenge thrillers and The Raid series moreso than anything from the various ‘x’-ywoods of the Indian sub-continent, the film nonetheless wears its status as a product of Indian culture on its sleeve. The titular Monkey is based off of Patel hearing the stories from the Ramayana from his Indian grandfather, specifically that of Hanuman, the Monkey King who assists Rama over the course of the epic, mostly by fighting various gods, mortals and demons with his magic club and martial arts abilities (and yes, if that sounds familiar, this is also widely thought by scholars to be a major inspiration for Sun Wukong, the King Monkey from the Chinese literary classic Journey to the West). 

 

As well as the references to Hindu mythology, authentic Hindi dialogue in some places, the Indian trad elements in the score and OST, and the general aesthetic which does a brilliant job of depicting the modern Indian city as a hellish neon-lit cyberpunk dystopia, it also shows its cultural specificity in the social commentary and messaging. It seems that conscious of this being his first directorial feature and possibly his only, Dev Patel threw every single thing he had at the screen and made sure he said everything he could conceivably want to say, and the top of that list was to stick two middle fingers up at the BJP.

The story of the film concerns a nameless protagonist who infiltrates an exclusive club for the ruling class of a fictional Indian city in order to enact revenge on the corrupt head of Police responsible for the destruction of his village when he was a child. Along the way he tries and initially, fails, succeeding after finding community with other among oppressed to fight not just for his own personal vengeance but for all those dispossessed by the ruling Hinduja elite. The club not-for-nothing is called Kings (the icon styled after a European coronet) in a fairly obvious nod to the Raj and India’s postcolonial status and is full of portraits of the co-opted rulers through which the British exercised control over India. It is full of not just the criminal elites and dirty cops, civil servants and politicians but religious figures, one in particular Baba Shakti who over the course of the film becomes emblematic of how the corruption of the Hindu religious traditions by capital plays into everything.

The story behind the scenes seems to have been as interesting as anything we see in the film itself. The shoot took place during the pandemic and was fraught with practical difficulties and setbacks, including Patel injuring himself several times and running out of money in the middle of production. Even after it was completed getting distribution was a whole other saga. Initially meant to be a Netflix release, they seem to have not reckoned with the political themes and shelved it fearing alienating one of their key markets for distribution. It was eventually picked up thanks to Jordan Peele, who one imagines must have seen an affinity between his own work which explores contemporary political and social issues through a populist genre while also being a solid example of that genre on the black (in both senses of the word) horror comedies Get Out, Us and Nope. Both those things work in its favour, the scrappiness of the production is appropriate for a hard as nails action thriller, that getting a cinematic release and not going straight to streaming is very much appropriate to a movie such in incredible visual sensibility. There is an absolutely gorgeous psychedelic sequence right at the heart of the film that would thoroughly satisfy any fan of Jodorowsky, Russell, Noe or Panos Cosmatos that for my money, as one myself, is worth the door tax on its own.

 

So, if you like action films, prefer them with good politics and you can handle a bit of the old ultra-violence (the 18 cert is exclusively for that, some of which to be fair borders on body-horror) this could well be among your more enjoyable cinematic experiences of the year.

Black Metal Veins

Lucifer Valentine, probably best known for *Slaughtered Vomit Dolls* made this documentary in the late 00s. It was supposed to be a chromicle of one of his fans lifestyle in the Virginia Black Metal scene but ended up being much more about him and his friends substance abuse. Personally I think the intention was to make a shocking gonzo exploitation / snuff film that used the realist elements to root the horror scenes and make them more impactful. It fails in those terms because the grisly stuff where (minor spoiler) some of the participants apparently die on camera are clearly faked, come off as a bit cheesey. What he does manage to do, somewhat paradoxically, is capture the reality and the despair of the front line of the class war in late capitalist America. These kids, this doomed generation are the product of the opiod crisis and this could well be watched along with a good documentary about the Sacklers and the opiod crisis in general. The fake OD looks like balls and is not scary but just hearing these people talk about their lives and seeing their mental and physical deterioration under the strain of the junky / crack head lifestyle is fucking terrifying. Worth a watch, probably more so than any of Valentines other stuff. Worth getting the DVD with the directors commentary and extras.

If they made The Crow today.....

 

What bands and artists would you think would be on the soundtrack? That OST for The Crow is still just a great alternative music compilation album, some big acts and some slightly more obscure ones but all good repping different parts of what the scene was back in the mid 90s.  But if they were doing one now, with the dearth if not the death of MTV and alt radio its hard to really say whats big or current in underground music, unless you're in a major urban centre with a healthy live scene (or like, usually when the apocalypse lurghy isn't haunting us around every corner). I myself have a few ideas of what I'd like to see which I will share but I'd like to hear from other people (assuming anyone actualy reads these things which doesn't appeear to be the case :)).

What artists do you think would be a good representation of where the scene is at right now, or what alt music have you heard recently that you think would match any of the emotional beats of the comic(s) if you're familliar with the source material (O'Barr himself said the music he was listening to which fed into the vibe of the comic book as he was creating it was Iggy Pop, and all your classic 1st wave goth and alt rock groups, Joy Division, Bauhaus, The Cure)?

The following is my personal recreation of what I personally think would / should be on there.

1. 3Teeth

                                   

Yeah? I mean in terms of bands that have come up in the last decade or so are really flying the flag for our thing and doing it well 3Teeth have been at the forefront of a revivial of the old WaxTraxx sound and returning a bit of cred to a scene mired down in cheese.

2. She Wants Revenge

                                

This track has been used on AHS and is I think a recognised classic and their stuff is mostly pretty good (decent live too). Seems like a no-brainer. Probably the closest non-legacy band to the sounds that inspired O'Barr, mostly for the fact that they're just straight up doing the goth post-punk formula really well.

3. Chelsea Wolfe

Just as the original had some slower more emotional moments and some transcendently pretty female vocal led tracks to bring the punch of those moments out, if we're looking at contemporary artists I think a bit of Chelsea would do rightly for capturing the more melancholy emotional beats of the story.

4. Ghostemane

I feel like this is an artist that should be on there as much because he represents something genuinely new thats happened to the scene and something very current because he's fucking sick and has a range of tracks already that could be inserted into that narrative.

5. Adam X

 

Hearing some genuinely good contemporary techno during the nightclub scenes in The Batman when I went to see it last weekend is one of the things that had me on the train of thought that led to this post, like if there was something simmilar happening in The Crow, what would be appropriate? I was thinking some german EBM-Techno like this or some Ancient Methods, Vatican Shadow, Regis or something like that, or maybe something a bit harder like:

6. Paula Temple

which bangs a bit more, is more discordant, abstract and aggy in general.

7. Bob Vylan

Coming back around to more guitar led music, RATM had a track, as did the Henry Rollins band so you'd want some sort of punk represented and Bob Vylans grime inflected-punk, usually with very angry political messaging would seem like a good succesor

8. Turnstile

These lads dropped one of the big scene albums of last year and they've done some really interesting electronic crossover stuff with Mall Grab so you could go that way instead?

9. Spirit Box

Feels like this group could be part of the conversation here as well, since they blew up pretty big very recently and represent a more contemporary sound in Metal that feels very now

10. IDLES

Harking back one again to contemporary takes on the sounds of Post-Punk that inspired the comic. IDLES is one of the groups out now taking on and pushing that sound. 

11. Rein

Now, getting abck to the more traditionally Gothic. There's been an explosion of bands that have given this old genre a shot in the arm, Linea Aspera, Boy Harsher, Azar Swan, Drab Majesty, Perturbator, Riki and so on, but this girl, who's concept album is very much a cyber-punk conceptually oddessy about life and coming back from death. Sounds like our girl if you ask me.

12. Petbrick

Something that wouldn't have been on the original because it wasn't a thing at that point but could be now, I feel, would be the metal-fusion stuff in the far left field of the electronic music scene. Projects like Drumcorps, DJ SkullVomit and Igorrr have been leading the way but of all that sound the best thing I've come across recently was Petbrick, a side project of the drummer from Sepultura Iggor Caldera and Wayne Adams who's been doing simmilar music for years. This is good aggy fight scene music, perfect for a stand off with a major villain.

 

13. Roly Porter (for the score)

 

The original fampusly also had an excellent score even aside from the OST by Graeme Revell of the legendary pioneering Industrial Noise music group SPK. Few there are who would be a worthy successor, though one could make a case for Merzbow or maybe Orphyx, personally I think Mr Porter here, formally of the dubstep bassweights Vex'd who I personally feel have been responsible for some of the absolute best and most industrial music of the last couple of decades and Roly's ambient works could do absolure wonders on the film score.

14. Ice Nine Kills

And finally, this has all been pretty speculative so far, these guys already have one in the bag waiting to go. BTW the video starts with a bit of a skit and the actual track is about halfway through the video if you're watching the link. I dunno how much I like this band in general, feels a bit gimmicky because thats exactly what it is, but it also is kind of good, so....? eh. People do seem to like them though.

If we're talking about bringing anyone back, of the artists that were on there originally The Cure and Nine In Nails (or Trent paired back up with Atticus Ross) would be great. Trent would indeed be worthy and experienced candidate for just score duties.

You know its going to happen one day, in fact the latest seems to be that its on its way out of development hell and looking like a real prospect for some time before the middle of the decade (not that we haven't heard that one before, but still). Lets hope at least one of the producers will get to read this (Lily, or Lana, girls, I know at least one of yous got a secret account here, c'mon lets make this happen!), or at least that as much care is taken with the OST and score and any other musical content with the new one as was with the original.

If anyone reading this has suggstions, feel free to comment!

Jordan Peele's Us, discussion and analysis (spoilers, lots of them)

Please don't read this unless or until you've seen the film. If you're in two minds about whether to see it or not, go watch it. Its great.

Coming out of the film, which I'll say off the bat that I really enjoyed for the most part, I had a lot of questions. I don't have answers to many of them and I reckon a second pass at some point in the future may help but for now this is just a collection of thoughts rather than my concrete conclusions.

So, the biggest question I had was, what the fuck did I just watch?

Well, the plot is pretty mental, but its not nonsensical either.

From imdb: "A family's serenity turns to chaos when a group of doppelgängers begins to terrorize them." Thats basically it, a creepy twist on the home invasion scenario, then we get into the second act wherein it turns out that this isn't just happening to the family we're following, there's some weird apocalyptic shit going down. Everybody has a double, who in the film are called The Tethered, tonight is the night of the untethering and everyone's other self is out to get them. The family survives after a certain amount of high-jinx and having to kill their other selves, presumably to escape, but everyone else is fucked.

So that's it, that's the story.

But what it this film about though? Jordan Peele has gone on record as saying that there isn't a single detail in the film that doesn't have some significance. This is no more a film merely about creepy dopplegangers that It Follows was merely about a demon or The Babadook was about a haunted childrens book. There's a lot here that demands to be unpacked.

He's also said that the film is about duality, and yes that is the core motif that holds the film together visually and thematically but that on its own doesn't say a whole lot.

Well I don't know about the rest of you but coming out of the cinema I was mostly confused. I was expecting it to be about racism in a more direct fashion. From the premise I thought the obvious place to go, would be internalised racism, an actualisation of the conflict inherent to W.E.B. Du Bois's concept of "double consciousness" which he discusses at length in "The Souls of Black Folk" - i.e. the idea that for a person of colour one must adopt an almost schizophrenic concept of the self, both being oneself in the world while always being conscious of how you're perceived by the dominant white society. That is kind of in there but its not the main focus (unless I'm missing something, I'm not African American myself so there's a fair bit in probably not getting) as I had been expecting it to be.

Since watching the film I've seen a few interviews with Peele and he's said categorically that that isn't what is about anyway. It seems to be partly inspired by his own personal fear of Doppelgängers. Which fair play, is a creepy concept and works well. But obviously it has been loaded with a lot of symbolism. There are a few lines in there that are clearly meant to be ominous. When asked "what are you" the Mother doppelganger says "We are Americans". Earlier in the little girl of the family says "oh yeah, that's right nobody cares about the end of the world". So there you have the notion of America literally tearing itself apart while the younger generations fears for the future go unheeded.

When you get past the home invasion stuff and realise that this is going on everywhere that seems to play into the notion of social upheaval, revolution that classic gothic trope of The Return of the Repressed. When you find what The Tethered actually are, this horrible dehumanising thing that's also necessary to maintain the world that we know, one can't help but think of the exploitative relationship between the 1st and 3rd world, the fact that the most basic decent standard of living that the least of us enjoys is predicated on unspeakable horror that's always just beyond our field of vision.

The whole thing as well of The Tethered in their own environment: human beings just mindlessly going through the motions without real choice or active thought, speaks to fears about the atomisation and alienation inherent to modern living too.

I think there's another level where this is about trauma and mental illness. Adelaide seems to be suffering PTSD, The final reveal the final reveal seems to speak to the idea that real trauma takes away a part of who you once were. Through the set up she displays depressive, paranoiac and magical thinking. Reading profound significance into coincidence is again something that is not uncommon in people with mental health problems. That the whole home invasion kicks off just after her having that conversation with her partner is not insignificant.

Is there a connection here between the personal and political? I feel like the answer is yes but I'm not quite sure how.

Now all of the elements above are in the mix but none of them are the focus of the film. So maybe that's fair enough. Get Out was very on the nose as to what it was about. This isn't but actually, its cool, it doesn't have to be. There's still a lot in there I don't get like what the significance of the Rabbits or the Scissors are. I look forward to hearing what anyone else has to say and unpicking the various threads that have been so deftly woven in there. And what's with all the Micheal Jackson stuff? Well, at least we have that from the horses mouth.

If anyone has any alternative takes or wants to expand on anything I've brought up I'd be really interested in hearing it.

Edit:

A couple of good analysis vids on the film up now on YouTube. I liked the RedLetterMedia one because the lads were pretty much spot on and my feelings about the film over all are quite similar both in terms of what I thought was good and was critical of. The ever reliable Wisecrack did some excellent work teasing out some of the complexities inherent to the imagery. The overall take which was that as a film it is purposefully oblique and multifaceted enough to be meaningful in different ways to anyone watching it is spot on imo.

My Top Films of 2018 (Kinda)

My pick of the top films I saw for the first time in 2018 (which may or may not have been released in that year) in no particular order:

(Also please note that I have purposefully not linked any trailers as there's a few of these that are best experienced going in cold.)

Wonder

 It is not often that one sees episodes of ones own childhood rendered on the big screen in a full hollywood production and yet here we are. This was one of the first films I saw at the cinema last year and I don't think anything else really topped it, but then like the kid in the film I suffer from Treacher Collins Syndrome, I've never seen the condition in a film before so this film was basically made for me. I loved everything about this, not least that it had my home boy Daveed Diggs of the industrial hip hop crew clipping in it, of whom I've been a fan for quite some time and am enjoying watching him blow up at the minute. As someone with TCS I liked the messaging in this, particularly the scene late on where the kid who is sort of the antagonist is confronted and then you see why he is the way he is. I honestly think everybody should watch this film, the earlier the better, like they really should be showing it in schools.


Spring

 I'm not usually one for romantic films about young Americans abroad finding love amidst the beauty of a picturesque town in rural Europe, but this was one of the best written films of any genre I've seen in ages. It is legit a great romance film, a timeless meditation on life and love, men and women, sex and romance, the wisdom and charm of old world vs the optimism and cute naivety of the new, and also a boss monster film with charm, humour, subtle observation, real heart and some pretty solid SFX on what looks like quite a low budget. The lads that did this also did The Endless which is on Netflix at the moment, they are 3 for 3 in terms of making solid good films and I love their style and can't wait to see what they do from here on.



Baskin

I went on a bit of a horror binge after feeling somewhat let down by Hereditary, looking all the time for something genuinely unsettling. I watched a lot of stuff and some of it was good but never quite got what I was after. Then this came on TV one night and delivered in spades. Not a perfect film by any means  (doesn't quite stick the mark at the end) but it was a wild ride and got right under my skin as I was watching it and even thinking about the scene: "No, really look and tell me who else is here.... You've seen it. You've always seen it, running in the woods with grandma...." gives me the shivers.


Last Shift

Brought to my attention in a conversation between RedLetterMedia and Max Landis, I was very impressed with this. Proper fucking straight up horror that goes hard in all the ways a horror film should. Lots of nice gotcha moments, slow dread, some really creepy shit and unrelenting escalating intensity. Good stuff.


World of Tomorrow Parts 1 & 2

Two short films from Doug Hertzfeldt, in his  typical doodle-esque /  line drawing style of animation, now with some beautiful moving colourful backgrounds. With dialogue provided by his 4 then 5 year old neice this weaves some truly dank existential sci-fi with the whimsy and innocent optimism of childhood. Both parts are truly masterful, deep, hilariously funny and profund. This was the highlight of the (generally well curated) Belfast Film Festival this year for me.


The Shape of Water

Okay, it won an oscar and shit but seeing this and Get Out win big at the academy awards and beat off obvious oscar-bait and pseudo-intellectual garbage was for me like seeing my local team bring home the European Championship cup or something. Get the fuck in there Guilermo my son! Personally I'm a sucker for a good monster romance and anything vaguely lefty so this hit a few of my buttons, great central performances all round and a good happy ending. Actually an interesting one to watch in contrast with Spring for various reasons, for both how they are and aren't alike yet are completely brilliant.

Climax

The New European Extremity is still alive and well, one of the most singularly satisfying films I've seen at the cinema this year. It did its bit and did not outstay its welcome, delivering something truly unique along the way. There are no other films like this in the world, and its nice to be able to say that.

A Mother Brings Her Son To Be Shot

There have been some really excellent local documentaries that I would think are sufficiently good as films in their own right that I'd recommend them to anyone: No Stone Unturned, I, Dolores, Unquiet Graves and Massacre At Ballymurphy. No doubt we'll see many more in the near future. One could surmise  that since the 30 year rule now extends to the early troubles and we are far enough away from the hot part of the ongoing conflict here (which hasn't gone away you know...) that the immediate physical danger to its protagonists means that certain things are now accessible and can be said in public that we're ripe for a golden age of documentaries and books that actually tell the truth about what happened here. That said the best (or for me at least the most entertaining) of the current crop is this one, which is about what is still going on in the shitty wee estates on the edges of our metropolitan sprawl, the people that live there and how they live with  the local 'boys', the paramilitaries that are supposedly staunch defenders of their communities against Them 'Uns but are essentially just the same gangs and hoods that run 'tings on estates all over the western world, but in our unusual context. This was about a notorious incident in the Creggan on the edge of Derry and was tragic, shocking and very very funny in a way that is uniquely Northern Irish. Also a dire warning for the future that nobody else seems to be willing or able to deliver.

Best Worst Movie

Documentary about the legendary Troll 2 and the weird fandom that's grown up around it and the general social phenomenon of getting together with your mates and watching bad movies for the crack. A thoroughly entertaining and well made documentary in its own right worth watching as part of a double bill with the film itself if you've got company and that sort of time to kill.

Annihilation

Dumped unceremoniously on Netflix at the start of the year it kills me that this wasn't watchable on the big screen this side of the Atlantic. Boss special effects, lots of really dark creepy stuff and moments of beauty, in that grey area between art house and schlock that I love. This is everything Sci-fi should be on the big screen. Obvious visual and thematic nods to Tarkovsky, Kubrick and Alan Moore (like if you're going to borrow borrow from the best), yet very much its own thing.

Blindspotting / Sorry To Bother You

Two films. Two passion projects from directors with a background in hip-hop. Both star young upcoming African-American actors whose careers on the small screen in the states are blowing up into super stardom partly through their supporting roles on extremely well received situation comedies. Two films dealing in their own way with race and class, white privilege, gentrification. Both employ elements of satire to get their points across and are both incredibly funny, while being quite serious with some heavy moments. Both are masterpieces of modern cinema. Yet, one landed this side of the Atlantic with the hype and aplomb behind it it rightly deserved and got a wide cinematic release and the other didn't, and I can't for the life of me tell you why. If anyone knows do please fill me in.

A Dark Song

Absolute belter. As someone with a bit of an interest in though not a practitioner of magick this hit a lot of my happy places, like I've never tried doing anything like the stuff in this film myself but I know enough about it and the people who do do this IRL to appreciate that the writer and director knows his shit. Also nice to see some more great cinema coming out of my own country (albeit with and all English cast and pretending to be rural Wales). Does tone and atmosphere masterfully, big surprise for a first time director.

Mom and Dad

Yeah, we all loved Mandy but the Nicholas Cage performance of the year for me was this absolute gem. Picked it up from John Waters end of year list. Definitely one of the funniest films I've seen all year (is it just me or is it hard to find a good comedy these days?) again good sci-fi, nice central pleasingly Ballardian) conceit that's used to the fullest to explore something IRL and milk it for thrills, scares and dark dark humour. I look forwards to watching this with my own parents. (Not to be confused with Mum and Dad which I haven't seen yet but intend to).

The Untamed

Mexican cult cinema is really going off at the minute, in the wake of Guillermo Del Toro there is some really brilliant stuff being done, usually using a genre conceit to explore some IRL horror. Tigers Are Not Afraid was another one which was excellent and worth seeking out. The Untamed gets mad props from me for being an example of using a particularly trashy subgenre of sci-fi / horror with genuine thoughtfulness and seriousness. Would seriously recommend, best watched sight-unseen as its one where the less you know about it going in the better.


Spiderman: Into The Spider Verse

The very last films I saw in a cinema last year. I went in reckoning that it was going to be good. It wasn't long in before I started to feel like it was going to be the comic book adaption of the year, in what was quite a good year for that sort of thing came out thinking that it was the best comic book feature film  adaption of the current crop, possibly of all time and one of the best animated films ever full stop. I always say that the mark of a good comic book adaption is if it captures on screen the essence of what makes the comic good, down to the formal conceits employed. This did that like few others I've seen. The whole alternate universes being represented by different art / drawing styles is an old trick on paper (the earliest I remember seeing it was in 2000ADs Hewligans Haircut which is from the 80s but I don't doubt it had been done well before that) but this is the first time I've seen it on screen (aside from a throwaway gag in the otherwise shitty Hitchikers Guide film) and it made it a central plot point. That was cool, as was the brilliantly realised character work, the cutting edge animation, the meta inter-textual referential stuff that was just the right level of nerdy to please the die-hards endlessly while never disturbing the enjoyment of anyone else who wasn't in on it, the humour. Every element popped individually, and yet this managed to be more than the sum of its parts, even as good as those parts were.

Iconic Horror Cinema + my introduction to the genre

I came across an old 2000AD "Chilling Winter Tales" special of mine from 1994. It contains a short article by an anonymous features writer under the by-line Roxilla. It was a run down of their favourite horror films. Now these weren't deep cuts by todays standards at all, Starts with King Kong and runs through, Bride of Frankenstein, Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Nightmare on Elm Street etc through to the 80s, providing some interesting detail about the production and special effects along the way. Entry level stuff for sure but to a 13-year-old-me it was quite important and my first introduction to The Haunting, Suspiria, Near Dark and others which remain firm favorites of mine. 

Actual cover of that 2000AD Winter Special

Now the reason why I'm posting this is that one thing that always stuck with me from the article was the last paragraph: "Its sad that since Near Dark there's not been a horror film released that has come up to the standard of the 13 classics covered here. On the law of averages, you'd expect at least two cracking horror films in a decade. Maybe the classics for the 90s have yet to be made. Here's hoping that's true." 

Now, that's a bit of an exaggeration, by then Braindead had been made and some of the choices seem a bit arbitrary in retrospect (The Shining is a glaring omission for example) no doubt due to the limitations of the format, intended audience (I'm assuming there's no body horror or weird sexy stuff because its for kids / teens so no Hellraiser, Cronenberg etc.), a set word count, etc, but it does raise a question, what were the iconic, ground-breaking, trend setting horrors of the last couple of decades? 

Personally, I'd say for the 1990s Ring and The Blair Witch Project. Ring opened the doors of Asian horror onto an unsuspecting world, Blair Witch wasn't the first Found Footage film but it was the one that broke the genre into the mainstream, doesn't quite hold up today on its own as a piece of cinema so maybe not but as a method and a sign of where horror films were at at the turn of the century its pretty important. 

For the 2000s - 28 Days Later for bringing the zompocalypse survival horror genre up to date with aplomb and doing something new with the zombies and Martyrs for being both viscerally disturbing and thoughtful. This decade, I could be wrong but I can't think of anything that has been able to land with the sort of impact of any of the above. There's been some good ones and some interesting ones but I'm struggling to think of anything that's going to spawn its own subgenre or anything like that. The only thing I can think of is Under The Skin for being the first to bring an abstract art-house sensibility to horror. Maybe Get Out? Horror has always had an element of social commentary (sometimes unconscious) but that is very much what the film is from the surface down, while still being an effective horror film in its own right. 

Or I dunno, maybe the 2-per-decade premise was just a conceit to give a loose structure to the article and doesn't hold up at all under examination. Still, it was a decent introduction to Horror films, and while it wouldn't be defining of my taste in horror gave me a decent grounding in the history of horror cinema on which I would build later. 

For reference the 13 films covered by the article are as follows: 

King Kong 

The Bride of Frankenstein 

I Walked with a Zombie

Invasion of the Body Snatchers 

Psycho 

The Haunting 

Night of the Living Dead 

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 

Suspiria 

Hallow'een 

The Evil Dead 

Nightmare on Elm Street 

Near Dark

On Novel to Film adaptations

Film and Prose fiction are very different medium, so even when you're talking about the same story, characters and content you are never comparing like with like. Films, like music, are an experience to be absorbed. Prose, words on a page, that's you hacking the source code of your own consciousness and doing so at your own pace. I think a lot of the time its unfair to compare the two.

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 Sometimes a good movie can be made out of a book, Chuck Palahniuk rated the Fight Club film over his own book because Fincher was able to improve it by picking up on things that were inherent in the novel and bring them out and do justice to the plot. Some types of plot and themes are better suited to film, action and violence are really hard to do well in a novel. Theres things you can do in a book you can't do on screen and vice versa, a lot of it is to do with perspective, Shutter island was a great book but the twist at the end of the film makes absolutely no sense if you can actually see what the main character is looking at, so to my mind the film was terrible, and Leonardo DiCaprio was horribly miscast. Sometimes the difference between the mediums is just too much for a straight adaptation and the film becomes a very different beast, I thought the movie of The Unbearable Lightness of Being was a lot better than the book because I find the authors "tell then show" style of framing the story to be really heavy handed and you can't really do that in a film without an all consuming voice over that sits heavily on the narrative or loads of "inner voice" stuff like in the David Lynch version of Dune.

I don't mind differences between films and the books or comics they are adapted from as long as the differences are appropriate to the medium and aren't just part of the process of shoehorning a thing from one medium into the other to make money even though its completely inappropriate and just not right for the medium.

The Johnny Depp version of Alan Moores From Hell was a conspicuously bad offender for that. Turning a really long and well researched peice of quasi-historical fiction into a film of appropriate length was just never going to work and what you ended up with was a stylish mess with tons of plot holes and none of the depth of the original. The original was about taking this really stupid bit of conspiracy literature and elevating it into an elaborate metaphor and exploring the nature of history, consciousness and our perception of reality, in the film it missed all that and you ended up with just the stupid conspiracy theory and the sort of trashy sensationalism that the original critiqued.

A good adaptation on the other hand would be something like Blade Runner. The book Blade Runner was based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was quite a good bit of weird 70s Sci-Fi, it had a good story, well told and the ideas in it were quite interesting, but the film made a lot more out of it, streamlined the plot, added a brilliant set of visuals (the special effects absolutely rinse Dicks functional descriptive prose - difference appropriate to the medium) and add a bit of emotional complexity and Philosophical depth that was inherent in the book but wasn't quite present on the surface. Dick was firmly of the on the side of the 'people > replicants' Roy batty is less sympathetic baddie in the novel that Rutger Hauer made him and the whole "is Deckard a replicant" thing is a minor plot turn that goes on for a couple of chapters in the second act before being given the definitive answer - i.e. no, rather than an elaborate subtext, subtly and delicately woven into the film in a way that you wouldn't pick up on if you weren't paying attention. Bladerunner was a class film that did justice to its source material and more.

My favourite film is actually an adaptation of a book, but the versions are centuries apart and come from quite different contexts, I have to say as well that I haven;t read the original but I know enough about it and the author to have an appreciation of it and how it informs the adaptation. That film is Salo, or the 120 days of Sodom by the Italian director Pier Paulo Pascolini. It manages to be an adaptation of a book that ought to be unfilmable, a blinding dissection of fascism and also a really harsh look at post industrial capitalist culture at the same time. Its every bit as horrific as the source material, bordering on hardcore porn, the only real difference between it and a hard BDSM porno is that its not really meant to be sexually arousing. Honestly, if you are going to watch it I'd recommend watching it a couple of times, you need to do that to get over the horror of what's actually in front of you before you can really start engaging with it. Because of the real fucked up nature of whats happening on screen it is easy to miss the depths of what Pascolini is saying. Its all about observation and the desecration of the human body, one of the themes was what Pascolini called the death of sexuality (his pessimistic take on the sexual revolution of the 1960s) I think the way that the thing prefigures and sort of critiques reality television shows that he was absolutely spot on.

To illustrate why its so good and how it works, there is a fairly infamous scene in it called The Shit Feast, that is pretty much what it sounds like. The shit feast is consumer culture in general, as well as a comment on fast food, and its the fucking Bush Tucker Trial on I'm a celebrity get me out of here and its every way that the system perverts your natural need to ingest. Everything that happens in it is significant and multifaceted in its meanings, within the overarching structure of meaning, i.e. that the Republic of Salo is actually Society.

 Thats part of why i love it, that and the madness of the stories that surround it, the possible role of the film in Pascolinis death the year after it was released, the bannings and unbannings (James Ferman passed it uncut for viewing in the UK as a "fuck you" to the BBFC on his last day on the job). I think you could argue that its one of the most significant works of art by a Marxist working in any of the arts. Getting back to why its a good adaptation too, DeSade was an extremist, a revolutionary spirit of his age just as Pascolini was of the post modern age. Its a story with its roots in European royalist absolutism, set in a Fascist puppet state, but meant to be about contemporary society. The way it is both a critiques fascism by equating it with older versions of absolutism and then equates Fascism with Bourgeois liberal democracy. This in itself mirrors (deliberately I would say) the Marxist conception of society, political power and class struggle.

Its a brilliant film, and a reinvention of the source that brings it up to date and makes it understandable and relevant. Its the way you should so an adaptation of any book, be true to the substance of the work even if you have to rework the specifics.

 I'll finish up with a short list of the films I haven't mentioned yet that I've enjoyed in spite or because of the original:
 The Lord of the Rings (Jackson and Bashki versions)
American Psycho
Dredd
Tank Girl (inferior to the original but still quite good)
The HBO TV adaptations of the Sookie Stackhouse novels and George RR Martins Game of Thrones.
Pretty much any version of Dracula but especially Murnau's Nosferatu
 Ringu (I read an English translation of the novel and the film is so much better, the plot is just a lot better suited to the screen)
 A Clockwork Orange (both film and book are amazing and done magnificently in a way suitable to its own medium, each perfect in their own way).
Interview With a Vampire
The Princess Bride

 Can't think of too many more, and if I started listing all the adaptations that have profoundly disappointed or even annoyed me I'd be here all night.