Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

One of the best films I have watched recently must be Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, courtesy of having a DVD of it loaned to me by Jim Pitts.
This really is an excellent film, a bizarre slice of life of three people following the rape and murder of Frances McDormand's daughter. Woody Harrelson plays the well-meaning local sheriff who is charged with investigating the crime, though he struggles against a lack of evidence that can be used to track down the killer - and who is also suffering from terminal cancer. The other main character is played by Sam Rockwell, one of Harrelson's deputies, whose character develops during the course of the film in a surprising direction.
This is a fascinating movie, unlike any other I can think of - which is like a breath of fresh air.
Heartily recommended.
And Frances McDormand certainly deserved her Oscar for her role in this - as should the others, especially Sam Rockwell.

Now TV

Just signed up for Now TV, mainly to watch the new series of Game of Thrones. But a bonus has been a box set of Dexter, so I am now rewatching the very first series. After the rather poor final series, I had forgotten just how brilliantly good Dexter was iat the beginning - right up until just after the 'Trinity' storyline, in fact.

How did The Shape of Water win so many Oscars?

It was a long time after most other people that I recently got round to watching The Shape of Water. And while it was beautifully filmed from a photographic angle, I cannot understand how such a dire mess of a story gained so much attention and respect.
Even (spoiler alert for anyone who has still not watched this film) the scars on Elisa (Sally Hawkins) Esposito's neck were an immediate giveaway about what would happen at the end. That they would turn out to be gills was the biggest non-surpise in the film! It was so obvious it was ridiculous - and unexplained. And if she was somehow kin to the "creature" how come she otherwise looks so human? And, apart from the gill slits, so unlike the "creature" in every way, apart from having two sets of limbs, a head with the usual placement of eyes and mouth, etc, like virtually every other creature on the planet?
Michael Shannon, an actor I don't particularly care for anyway, gives a phenominally one-dimensional, almost comic-strip portrayal of the jailer in charge of the "creature", pantomime-style in its grotesquery. I must admit that didn't surprise me. It's in line with virtually every other role I've seen him play.
Indeed, for me, this is one of the film's underlying and most common failings - all the portrayals are one-dimensional, almost pantomime in style - and unconvincing. As is the basic plot - which makes me look back with increasing fondness on the comparatively subtler stories and portrayals in the three "Creature from the Black Lagoon" movies of the 1950s! At least in them you could begin to feel empathy towards the "creature" and its plight, something I felt incapable of doing for this CGI version.
So, again, I am left wondering what it was about this film that gained it so many Oscars - and I'm baffled.

The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp

Just discovered The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp on amazon prime, a TV series from 1956. It's surprisingly good, with some excellently written scripts, some good acting and, probably unusual for that time, a continuous story that moves along and develops, with occasional references to previous episodes.

At the beginning of the series Earp becomes marshall for the small, unruly, cattle town of Ellsworth, Kansas. Several episodes later, when his reputation as a lawman has started to spread, he is offered the job of marshall in the city of Wichita. I dimly remember watching this program when I was a kid, though it was probably by that stage up to the sixth series in 1961.

I very much doubt the strict historical accuracty of the series, but I don't mind that. It's still great television - and much better than many western series that came later.

Phantasmagoria Magazine - next issue

The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors - reviewed in Phantasmagoria Magazine

Below is my review of The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors which has been published in the current issue of Phantasmagoria Magazine.

 

THE ALCHEMY PRESS BOOK OF HORRORS

Edited by Peter Coleborn and Jan Edwards

Anthologies like this used to be commonplace once, back in the day when they were a regular part of the output by major publishers like Pan, New English Library, Sphere Books and Corgi, etc., often by editors like August Derleth, Peter Haining, Kurt Singer, Michel Parry and others. Today it is virtually only the small independent presses that keep the flag flying, though few come close to The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors for giving us such a bumper crop in nearly 400 pages of 25 outstanding stories. Congratulations must be offered to the editors for achieving this!

It would, I’m afraid, be too lengthy a task to discuss every single story, and some worked for this reader better than others, though I would vouch for there not being a single dud amongst them, so I will just highlight a few that I particularly liked. Ramsey Campbell reliably opens proceedings with Some Kind of a Laugh, which is different to but inevitably brings to mind his brilliant novel The Grin of the Dark, where laughter becomes menacing and the make-believe world of entertainment hides a terrifying horror. Samantha Lee goes visceral with a vengeance with The Worm, which would have been a worthy entry into any of the old Pan Books of Horror (of which she was once a contributor!) Marie O’Regan’s Pretty Things very soon belies its name, where masks play a key, sometimes gut-wrenching part. I’ve always enjoyed Mike Chinn’s stories, and Her Favourite Place, which is SF horror,  is one of his best, set in an undersea farm. Tony Richards’ The Garbage Men has an engrossingly claustrophobic nightmare effect and a great climax. It’s a while since I read anything new from Stephen Laws but Get Worse Soon is a cleverly plotted tale about an overly thrifty pound shop customer who literally gets more than he bargained for! It’s a very cleverly told tale. Scarecrows are often frightening creations, and Adrian Cole’s Broken Billy uses one to great and horrifying effect. John Grant’s Too Late shifts reality and perception of what is going on to great effect – and has a truly grand guignol twist at the end. These are just a few of the stories which for me stood out, though the standard throughout is consistently high. It is definitely one of the best anthologies I have come across for quite some time and I would highly recommend it. 

If the stories weren’t enough, the book is also illustrated throughout with finely drawn headers for each of the stories by the talented Jim Pitts, adding that extra touch of quality to this book, which concludes with an informative set of Contributor Notes.

Into the Dark - price reduced to £5.50 for limited period

I have changed the cover of Into the Dark to show that it is actually written by me "as Andrew Jennings".

For a limited time only paperback copies can be bought from Amazon for only £5.50 (or only £1.99 on kindle).

Paperback: £5.50

Kindle: £1.99

"There's a serial killer at loose in London. Janice, who has a chronic fear of the dark, stumbles into a relationship with the man who may secretly be the murderer. Nedither know that in the North of England, in a place previously owned by his dead mother, activities are taking place that may unleash a horror that could spell the end of civilisation in Britain - an ancient evil that would make the activities of any serial killer look like child's play by comparison. Could a psychotic killer be the only man capable of ending this?"

'No Sense In Being Hungry, She Thought' reprinted in Russia's Darker Magazine

Great to have a second story in the Russian Darker Magazine, edited by Artem Ageev. This time it's No Sense In Being Hungry, She Thought. This story originally appeared in Peeping Tom in 1996 and is included in my collection Their Cramped Dark World and Other Tales.
 

Charles Black RIP

I was shocked and saddened to be told today by a nurse at St Michael's Hospice in Hereford, where he was staying, that my friend Charles Black (real name Michael Duggan) passed away yesterday, peacefully, surrounded by his relations. I was planning to drive there to visit him, knowing it would be for the last time, as he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, but the end came sooner than expected.

Charles was a writer, editor and publisher, who ran Mortbury Press, who brought out eleven volumes of his brilliant anthology series, The Black Books of Horror, which published some of the best names in the horror genre in the UK. He also had two collections of his own stories, the first, which I published under my Parallel Universe Publications imprint in 2015, was Black Ceremonies. The second appeared under his own imprint, A Taste for the Macabre (2018). He also brought out a collection of tales by Anna Taborska, For Those Who Dream Monsters 2013), illustrated by Reggie Oliver.

Charles on a panel of fellow editors at the World Horror Convention in Brighton, 2010

Charles, second from the right, enjoying a drink with friends

Charles at Fantasycon in Nottingham shaking hands with Johnny Mains

Some of The Black Books of Horror

 

Into the Dark

I can now reveal that the horror novel Into the Dark, which I published under my Parallel Universe Publications imprint as by Andrew Jenning is in actual fact by me. I wanted to see just how well it would do under an unfamiliar name. The answer is, alas, not so well - it has pretty well been completely ignored by everyone. Which is why I have abandoned this experiment and am admitting the true authorship.
No more games!
The details will be altered online in places such as amazon, etc over the next few weeks. 

Cover reveal for Terror Tales of Northwest England edited by Paul Finch

This is the cover for Terror Tales of Northwest England, which will include a reprint of my story Writer's Cramp, which originally appeared in Fantasy Tales.

Terror Tales of Northwest England will be published in June by Telos and is already available for pre-order.

Fauda

Got to watch the final episode of the second season of Fauda today, which started with our hero Doron in perhaps the stickiest postion an Israel counter-terrorist agent could find himself! I love this series. The main characters actually for once look the part. In other words they're not your usual Hollywood pretty-faced heroes and action men (and women). The photography and shots of the Israeli and Palestinian areas are fascinating glimpses into what it looks like there, and I particularly liked the interplay between the many, sometimes overlapping factions at work in the area. Very much recommended - and thanks again to David Dubrow for putting me onto this.
I hope there'll be a third series eventually - though I might take some time to recover from the stress and trauma of watching the first two seasons one after the other!

Voice from the Stone - film review

Just watched Emilia Clarke in Voice from the Stone.
At first sight this looked an intriguing supernatural movie set in Tuscany. But what a boring one and a half hours it was! The direction was so wooden and so slow-paced it made its 94 minutes feel twice the length. This might have worked as a TV feature of around 50 minutes or less, though the director gave little scope for any of the characters to spring to life, so perhaps it wouldn't even then.
Definitely not a movie I would ever watch twice!

Hereditary

Just watched Hereditary on amazon prime. Excellent production values, well scripted, very well acted and definitely well cast (it was great to see youngsters in a family without the usual overly pretty Hollywood faces), but that ending really let the whole thing down. The last few minutes and the climax broke the tension entirely and were not far short of laughable. What a damn shame.