Word(s)

  • The Sixth Sense

    The horror show that dug its way out of the grave

    Gary Collins and Catherine Ferrar in a S1 promo photo

    The ignominious fate of The Sixth Sense (1972) television series – butchered, derided and ultimately forgotten – is undeserved. I’m going to spend some time exploring the show and what makes it a candidate for rediscovery and love for fans of paranormal and supernaturally-themed titles. The series has its basis in the 1971 made-for-TV movie Sweet, Sweet Rachel (dir. Sutton Roley). A number of other television films of the time, like The House That Wouldn’t Die (1970) and A Taste of Evil (1971) – both directed by John Llewellyn Moxey and Something Evil (1972, dir. Steven Spielberg) – had popularised themes of hauntings and psychological horror. 

    Roley’s film features Stephanie Powers as the titular Rachel, grieving for the husband who killed himself and worrying that her uncontrolled psychic abilities drove him to it. But she’s not the only one in the family with such ESP powers as Dr. Darrow (Alex Dreier) will find out in this psychic-murder-mystery. As he investigates what actually happened he must also use his own abilities to stay alive long enough to discover the truth. The film was written by Anthony Lawrence, a well-established writer who had previously worked on shows like Naked City (1959-1963), The Outer Limits (1963-1965), Medical Center (1969-1976) and many others. It’s weird and creepy and even amongst the films mentioned above, stands out as something special.

    Newspaper advert for Sweet, Sweet Rachel

    Lawrence would go on to use the central concept of a doctor of parapsychology investigating cases of apparent hauntings, psychic attacks and murder to create a weekly series. The main doctor for the show would be Dr. Michael Rhodes, played by Gary Collins, and Rhodes would similarly have his own ESP powers and frequently use this ability to solve the case. Collins was a well-established television actor who would go on to his greatest success as a talk-show host in the ‘80s, and it’s this unusual otherness he has (convincing as both) that brings Rhodes to life.

    The Sixth Sense also has its roots in a popular subset of paperbacks of the time, that of the women-in-paranormal-danger and house-of-evil kind. Only a year before, that great gothic-romance-horror-science fiction soap Dark Shadows (1966-1971) had finished its run (as well as producing two feature films).  Marilyn Ross (a pseudonym for author Dan Ross) had written a series of novels that separated from the show’s ongoing arcs, usually involving Barnabas and Quentin solving a supernatural mystery that frequently involved a damsel-in-distress.  

    Cover image for Victoria Winters by Marilyn Ross

    Many of the ‘women running from houses’ subgenre titles featured a woman arriving at a large house for some reason or other and finding love and supernatural danger within. Or it would feature a house with a dark and violent history and sinister intent for its new, often temporary inhabitants, as can be found in titles like Richard Matheson’s Hell House (1971). Around this time we also got novels like Robert Marasco’s Burnt Offerings (1973) which were, like Matheson’s tale, quickly adapted into films. It’s a trend that would continue on for some years, with authors like Bernard Taylor, Michael McDowell and V.C Andrews twisting these basics into ever more threatening directions in their novels, entwining sex and death and horror.

    (If you want to know more, there’s more on this era of writing in Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ‘70s and ‘80s Horror Fiction (2017, Quirk Books) by Grady Hendrix and Will Errickson).

    Example of a women-in-paranormal-danger novel cover

    So it’s easy to understand how The Sixth Sense could have been considered a dead cert for success.  Its core elements – paranormal mystery and women-in-danger – were those staples of many television movies and popular novels hitting big at the time. As much as the series was inarguably a paranormal show (with that element of the plots never being in question) it was also designed around the standard procedural template of many other hit shows. Imagine that Rhodes is essentially another uniquely brilliant television detective solving a crime and it’s not substantially different in format. 

    A few things made it stand out at the time, however. Firstly, although recent series Night Gallery (1970-1973) had found some moderate success with television horror, it was part of a number of anthology shows that had used the tools of the paranormal and horror for its stories, and was not a continuing series. Though it is strictly horror as compared to The Twilight Zone (1959-1964), Thriller (1960-1962), The Outer Limits et al which used the genre occasionally, Night Gallery was different for each week’s instalments. 

    The Sixth Sense’s closest anthology relative is one of the first that specialised in such themes, Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond (1959-1961). The John Newland-hosted series told stories of possessions, hauntings and other such unlikely events and presented them to viewers as documents of truth about the unexplainable. Again, as an anthology every story was different and featured no reoccurring characters or situations. 

    Promo shot of Rhodes looking stylish and serious as fuck

    So in this respect, The Sixth Sense is one of the earliest paranormal-themed American series that featured the same characters involved in different plots each episode. The show also takes its premise completely seriously. There’s no late-60s style camp or arched eyebrow in delivery and unlike contemporary entertainment like the Carl Kolchak movies and the later Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974-1975) series it rarely uses humour to cut the tension. It is sincere, and expects its audience to completely buy in as well. There’s no cynicism involved and although the series regularly involves characters who refuse to believe or doubt Rhodes, they usually end up converted through the evidence of that week’s events they see with their own eyes. 

    The third element that separates out The Sixth Sense from simply being a procedural in different clothing is how the paranormal is presented. For an early 1970s show, it often goes out of its way with stylised jump-cutting, use of surprise, shadow, slow-motion and atmosphere-building to make the frequent paranormal events, deaths and attempted murders genuinely unsettling. And in this, the show does not make allowances for people – it’s actually out to unnerve. By today’s standards this is now tame of course, but the show was at the time using what often made one-off weekly movies scary for home audiences and attempting to utilise it on something that was also inviting you back each week for more.  

    Gary Collins as Rhodes in a promo shot

    There’s much to appreciate and enjoy in this show, especially if you’re a fan of the aforementioned anthologies and series or of subsequent shows like The X-Files (1993-2018) that deal in tales of the paranormal and the unexplainable. Not least in that The Sixth Sense had some outstanding episode titles: ‘I Do Not Belong to the Human World’, ‘Dear Joan, We Are Going to Scare You to Death’ and ‘I Did Not Mean to Slay Thee’ amongst many others through a 25-episode run. 

    As it’s a ‘70s series there is also a great list of guest stars who appeared in the run, including John Saxon, William Shatner, Joan Crawford (what an odd, format-twisting episode that one is), Henry Silva and many others. It took plots and inspirations from classic and contemporary films and novels and tried to do something at the time different with them. Though many of the plots are now familiar versions of common tropes from the paranormal the series was genuinely interesting in how it approached them. 

    Newspaper listing ad including Joan Crawford’s episode

    Sadly, the series is either not considered at all or remembered as part of the syndication butchery that affected Night Gallery. Both shows didn’t run for long enough for the syndication sweet spot (usually considered four full seasons or ideally a hundred or more episodes). The Sixth Sense had initially completed a short run of 13 episodes in the early part of 1972 and despite ratings that did not exactly scream hit it would come back for a final run of 12 more later in the year. 

    It didn’t fare well enough in the ratings against the likes of Mission: Impossible (1966-1973), itself nearing the end of its run and dipping in viewers, and so would not return for a third season. To make use of both Serling’s show and the total run of the Collins series, a thoroughly ridiculous idea was agreed: edit episodes of Night Gallery and The Sixth Sense together into half hour-long episodes and make Serling suffer shooting new introductions for the segments from a show he had nothing to do with. You could imagine that by cutting down two near-50 minute shows (at least in Gallery’s first two seasons) to 25 minutes and editing it into something totally unrelated it would cause problems, and so it did. Both the Night Gallery segments – often also edited down – and The Sixth Sense episodes became an unintelligible mess that benefited neither.  

    And this is how most people came to rememberThe Sixth Sense – a mess of a series that for decades after blighted Serling’s show. Its reputation became one of ruiner and failed in its own right and perhaps that is why the series has rarely been shown in its full form since the initial broadcast. That assessment of it, as a poor show that made worse a better show, is unfair. A French release in 2014 of the complete show on DVD, in its unedited and original sequence, was the first time that allowed us to rediscover a series that has much to offer (it had another DVD release in 2025 through Via Vision).

    It’s spooky, unsettling (those second season credits, damn), scary, often gripping and imaginative and absolutely entertaining fun. Seek it out, it is time very well spent.  I fucking love it.

  • “You’ve been looking behind you, Martin. Try looking ahead.”

    Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be

    Martin Sloan enjoying an impossible trip back to his youth in ‘Walking Distance’

    You’ve probably seen one by now, even if you very much didn’t want to do. A street scene somewhere, packed with people. Maybe it’s wintertime. There’s a Woolworths. Posted along with it, a deeply held wish we could ‘go back’ to when things used to be this way. Only they never did. The faces of the people aren’t right; empty, dead-eyed simulacrum of a million different faces pulled from a million different photographs. Unintelligible names on the front of buses for places that don’t exist. Something claiming reality that hasn’t earned it.

    And in this, AI accidentally gets it right about nostalgia. As Rod Serling explored in ‘Walking Distance’, the fifth episode of The Twilight Zone, the persistence and failure of nostalgia is yearning for a time that is not even gone, but one that only really existed in our minds, as we try and find safety in a time that we remember as easier, less emotionally battering or relentless than the present. Outside of ongoing attempts by bad actors to divide us, the forced nostalgia in those posts from people can also frequently be a cover for something else, an imagined time where they didn’t need to make space for other ideas or other people, particularly people who don’t look or think or acquiesce like them.

    Martin Sloan in ‘Walking Distance’

    Unlike ‘Walking Distance’, which makes Martin Sloan confront his desire to run away and hide in his childhood, there’s innumerable films and shows, and latterly social media influencers, that present idealised versions of decades past, that posit the implied suggestion that if we can only get back to those more sensible times, those more honest times, things will be okay. They knowingly smooth away the prejudices and realities of those years, presented in good faith by makers of those films and shows as window dressing for entertainment, or in bad faith by those who would reassert control and power of people they want to oppress like the good old days. 

    I have to engage with a debate about nostalgia with myself because I am, whether I like it or not (I do, it’s fine), relentlessly drawn to explore my particular interests, mainly the silent film period and American popular culture from (mostly) the 1950s to the 1980s, taking in television, comedy, talk shows and game shows. I might occasionally shrug them off for something else, briefly, but for whatever reason, they always draw me back to explore more, to read more, learn more. I am compelled. It should be obvious however, that one can’t really, possibly yearn for, or be wistful for a time one never lived through. I know enough about the period of silent film (approximately the mid 1890s to the late 1920s) to know that – while they had good times – it wasn’t a good time for most people.

    Likewise in the 1950s a writer could make a pretty good living from stories and articles in newspapers and magazines, but that doesn’t make the difficult times any less so. Sure, the 1950s was a decade of post-war abundance in lots of ways, the establishing of suburbia giving young families who had been living in a single room in a city the opportunity to own their own home with a garden in a Levittown, but William J. Levitt was a segregationist racist who refused to sell his dream houses to anyone who wasn’t white.

    Aerial photo of Levittown on Long Island in 1949

    Alongside this, the decade was wracked by anxiety and a shift from wars in other lands to the looming (mushroom)cloud of imminent annihilation. You can see this in the wild threads of barely concealed terror that work their way through several Sid Caesar sketches, or the unsettling appearances of monsters of malintent in shows like The Outer Limits, both examples a step removed from real life but often close enough to feed that anxiety. Both were intended to be entertainment, and they are, but it’s impossible – whatever Andy Weir might say – to separate that instinct from the time, climate and politics in which they were made.

    Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca

    I recently finished Kliph Nesteroff’s very good book Outrageous (Abrams Press, 2024), pitched as a history of the culture wars in entertainment. It is absolutely not, however, a history of cancellations or accountability, but more so entertainment (in this everything from comedy to film, television and music) and the arts’ constant struggle against and remodelling of what is and isn’t ‘acceptable’, and the stumbles taken along the way.

    The story Nesteroff tells shows we’re having the same arguments now that we were having then. ‘We won’t stand for this filth!’ ‘You can’t say anything anymore!’ ‘The children must be protected!’ I’d like to say the racism and prejudice of many of the arguments of why something should under no circumstances be allowed are different today, but really the language has been smoothed out or hidden behind layers of obfuscation, however the meaning remains clear. The dehumanisation and cruelty is dressed in more respectable clothing, but it’s still here.

    The cover image for Outrageous

    Nesteroff shows too that our worst bad actors, namely shallow, prickly, thin-skinned men of immorally large means, have spent decades ring-mastering governments, politicians, entertainment, news and latterly social media to serve their agendas, sow dissent and enrich themselves further. This leaves people with no sense of control, washing up on jagged rocks, wishing to retreat into a world that never existed and leave behind everything we have learned about ourselves, each other, and the planet as a result. I can understand the urge, that it’s too overwhelming in the here and now, that it would be easier not to care. But the here and now is all we have. The past is gone. 

    So, when I debate myself about whether it’s nostalgia or not, I decide I enjoy silent films or old television comedy because they are entertaining, or because the voices from then say something to me about now. I do so because art is a miracle, it outlives everything. The emotions it summons from us, generation after generation – happiness, sadness, joy, a voice for our pain – live longer than any argument or disagreement, any words spoken in anger. It connects me to people who lived in other times but experienced the same cresting and crashing on the waves as we do.

    This wishing for a world that never existed to take the place of the one we have now is a waste of imagination and energy. To paraphrase Robert Sloan, we’ve been looking in the wrong place. Let’s try looking ahead. Let’s believe in a better future that doesn’t have us retreating into a mythical never-was.

    The past is wonderful to visit for a while, but it’s no place to live. 

  • Gratuitously violent, fearfully sick

    Revisiting Peter’s Cushing’s agreeably grubby exploitation flick, Corruption

    Poster for Corruption (1968) which is NOT FOR WOMEN in case you thought it might be

    Peter Cushing brought a certain dignity to all of his roles, and a commitment to performance that marks him out as one of Britain’s greatest ever actors. In his career prime throughout the fifties, sixties and seventies, Cushing became inextricably linked with the horror boom that followed Hammer’s first colour forays into the genre. A practical sort with a fearsome work ethic, he knew here was a way to bring in the money he felt necessary to support his beloved wife Helen as her health deteriorated. Cushing also seemed incapable of giving a poor performance and even in the depths of his grief after Helen’s passing (notably 1972’s Horror Express), he always gave everything on screen.

    Helen and Peter Cushing looking smartly put together and happy

    As a result, we have a remarkable catalogue of great work to explore, from his leading roles as the Baron in Hammer’s Frankenstein series, to his cameo spots and his beautifully done running gag on The Morecambe & Wise Show. There’s also the more offbeat path to consider, where Cushing was the best thing about the film or series, or where the film doesn’t have the cultural impact of his appearances as Van Helsing. 

    Title card for Corruption

    Which brings us to his role in Corruption from 1968 (dir. Robert Hartford-Davis), an agreeably grubby exploitation riff on the comparatively refined Eyes Without a Face (1960) that qualifies in both the above categories. Is it a great film? Not really. Is in interesting and often entertaining? Definitely. Some spoilers now, even though most of the following takes place in roughly the first half hour of a 90-minute film that ultimately takes a left turn in a different direction altogether.

    Corruption pushes the dignified Cushing into a frequently hysterically-pitched cartoon of carnage as the wealthy doctor Sir John Rowan. Rowan is a pioneering plastic surgeon which proves immediately helpful when he accompanies his young, beautiful fiancée, the fashion model Lynn (Sue Lloyd), to a swinging party. John is uncomfortable around the hip kids of London as they ‘freak out’. When he tries to convince Lynn to leave early, a confrontation with the slimy photographer trying to convince her to undress for pictures in front of everyone else gets violent and she takes a hot lamp to the face.

    Sue Lloyd’s Lynn, in bed with half her face covered in bandages

    Rowan can’t fix her disfigurement with his conventional methods so decides to experiments of the dangerous kind with the pituitary gland of a corpse and a mix of ancient theories and modern science. It’s a success and the previously despondent Lynn is back on her feet hosting dinners and planning holidays. But wait! It doesn’t last and soon Lynn’s face has deteriorated and Rowan is desperately trying to refine the process.

    A frantic Lynn with Sir John as his handiwork unravels

    With the spotlight on Rowan from colleagues and his experiments in no way ethical, corpses being chopped up are out of the question so John takes what we can clearly all agree is the only other logical choice and takes up a parallel career as a modern-day Jack the Ripper, stealing the necessary gland from a sex worker he brutally murders (in significantly more unpleasant style in the alternative international cut).

    In David Miller’s book Peter Cushing: A Life in Film, Cushing gave his take on the finished film: “It was gratuitously violent, fearfully sick. But it was a good script, which just goes to show how important the presentation is. With any film you participate in, the company, if they so wish, can destroy your original interpretation of the role.” This comment says a lot about what makes Cushing special.

    Cover for the book Peter Cushing: A Life in Film by David Miller

    There’s an oft-told anecdote about how Cushing would carry around props that he thought his character would have in his pockets, even though they wouldn’t be seen onscreen. Cushing thought deeply about his characters, trying to understand their motivations. He never looked down on the work as beneath him, even while critics of the time largely sniffed haughtily at how silly the horror game was.

    Sir John staring in fear, panic and disgust at a knife he is holding

    If we compare Sir John to another of Cushing’s ‘good men doing bad things’ roles from just three years later, we get a picture of just how varied and nuanced he was in presenting this kind of complicated character. Rowan is inarguably a villain, just as Gustav Weil is in Twins of Evil (1971, dir. John Hough) but both do what they do because they believe it is their only choice. Where the steely, cold Weil uses moral superiority to underwrite as necessary the wickedness of his choices, Rowan kills out of love and guilt. It’s in his face during the murder of the sex worker, it’s in his cold stare on the train as drains his humanity to prepare himself to the task at hand, it’s in the small pause at the bedroom door of his cottage, knife in hand, as it hits him again what he has become. 

    Sir John on a train, preparing himself to kill

    As we’ve seen, Cushing was not kind to the finished film. It does everything to undermine the subtly of his performance, or the escalating panic that layers Lloyd’s unravelling Lynn. Largely  for this writer, it’s due to an appropriate-for-the-swinging-times but nevertheless wildly misjudged jazz score from Bill McGuffie.

    This is at its most egregious during a late-in-film argument between Rowan and Lynn, Sir John drowning in guilt and no longer able to justify his crimes and Lynn desperate for another chance to get the treatment right. Stripped of the score, this would be a beautiful, quiet moment between these two characters as they come to understand they have lost each other despite everything.

    That this still comes across, and that these two damaged people still compel us, is down to those two actors. Sir John Rowan is a villain. Peter Cushing made him human. It’s a fine example of what one of Britain’s most capable, most compelling, most powerful actors could achieve, whatever the quality of the film.

    The cover of the novelisation of Corruption by the pseudonymous Peter Saxon

  • Springtime for Coffins and Comedy: Things I Have Been Enjoying Recently

    There’s a theory around comedy and why we seek out funny things and find things funny being about the evolutionary need for play. Broadly, to enter into a state of being that puts you in a position to experience laughter, to play, to feel. The boundary between comedy and horror is a thin one, both taking our need for visceral experience, physicality, mental stimulation and the requirement for a release and responding to it. Horror and comedy are frequent dance partners. Horror is also about making us feel. And so, dear reader, here is a little rundown of some highlights of what has been making me emotional across both comedy and horror film in the first few months of this year.

    The Penalty (1920, dir. Wallace Worsley)

    Poster for The Penalty

    Based on a Gouverneur Morris novel, The Penalty joins 1919’s Behind the Door and 1921’s The Ace of Hearts as a trilogy of ‘hoo-boy’ Morris-inspired films that are wild in concept and execution in different ways. Behind the Door is, in its final quarter, firmly in exploitation film territory (it is still compelling and enjoyable, but undeniably unpleasant). The Ace of Hearts is perhaps most conventional, but still has as its premise a vigilante group who meet up to vote on who’ll get to murder the next rich piece of shit they’ve decided is too big a piece of shit to live.

    The Penalty meanwhile stars everyone’s favourite early cinematic purveyor of the criminally mad and the damaged, Lon Chaney, as mob boss Blizzard, who as a young boy had his legs hastily amputated following an accident. The adult Blizzard is a proper danger, harbouring two main obsessions: loot the city of San Francisco and get revenge on the doctor he believes mutilated him. The second involves him posing for said doctor’s daughter, an artist, as she uses him to create a bust of Satan. Things get even more wild from here in.

    Notorious for the lengths Chaney went to in order to convince as Blizzard (which included folding his legs into painful leather braces to create the look), it’s also intense, and shamelessly over the top, with some shocking bursts of violence and striking imagery. Lon anchors it all, taking things very seriously and giving it his all as one would expect. The rest of the cast are game too, it is frequently gorgeous, as well as transgressive and unsettling. A startling mix of crime film and horror influences.

    Sunset Boulevard (1950, dir. Billy Wilder)

    Poster for Sunset Boulevard

    Opening with a great hook (narrated by a corpse!) that draws you in, Sunset Boulevard is one of the great vampire films. But wait, you say, Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond isn’t a vampire. Perhaps not technically, but in some core ways (slowly taking the life from William Holden’s Gillis, haunting a decrepit mansion like a creature of the night that doesn’t understand she’s already dead) she absolutely is.

    Gillis, a screenwriter on the skids, crosses paths with the forgotten silent film star Desmond trying to hide from his debtors. Slowly absorbed into her pitiful dreams of resurrecting her career and stardom, when he tries to escape her grasping hands of cobwebbed living death, it’s all too late. As the film starts we know what becomes of him, but the how and the why are the gifts it reveals to us in getting there. It’s no simple journey either, eschewing easy villains and delighting in sophisticated character twists.

    Lovingly crafted and written, shot and directed about as well as you possibly hope for, this is one of the finest films about films and the weird people who make them and love them.

    One Week (1920, dirs. Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline)

    Sybil Seely and Buster Keaton as the the newlyweds in One Week

    Buster Keaton’s first-released independent film (though not first made), One Week tells of a newlywed couple gifted a kit house as a present. Calamity ensues when a jilted suitor messes with the construction order and Buster and his wife have to contend with a house that doesn’t make sense. As the titular week progresses, they try and live in and finish their new home, before nature – and life – makes that impossible and as much a circular nightmare as something like The Beyond (1981).

    A contemporary review of the film described it perfectly as “…two reels in length and every foot of the two reels is packed with comedy situations and ‘gags’ that would start cackles at an undertaker’s convention”. An extraordinary flowering of a unique and brilliant talent, it’s a film that is funny, thrilling and stuffed with events, stunts and gags that remain as potently entertaining now as they did over a hundred years ago.

    Cat People (1942, dir. Jacques Tourneur)

    Poster for Cat People

    John Carpenter famously thinks Cat People sucks because it should show the monster (it never explicitly does). But the monster in this isn’t the big panther Irena Dubrovna thinks she turns into when aroused. It’s repression and longing and self-flagellation and trying to live in a world that tells you there is something deeply wrong – immoral, dirty, ungodly – with who you are. We could read too much into the script being written by a gay man, DeWitt Bodeen, but it’s all – whatever Carpenter says – up there on the screen.

    Tourneur and cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca make a virtue of the film’s B-movie budget, using shadow and sound to create a feeling of unease, which extends to the character of Irena and how much of this is her torturing herself and how much might be, could be real. Editor Mark Robson builds on this with utilising the jump scare later known as The Lewton Bus. Inventive, involving and compelling, Cat People doesn’t offer easy answers or reassurance (sure, just be yourself, but it’ll probably turn out badly!) but does deliver intellectually gripping horror that moves and bewitches.

    Way Out West (1937, dir. James W. Horne)

    Poster for Way Out West

    In Way Out West, Laurel and Hardy are on an errand to deliver to Mary Roberts news she has inherited a gold mine. It brings them to Brushwood Gulch, a town out west, via journey that delivers mishaps and laughs. When they get to the town, the deed ends up in the hands of the wicked Finns, and the duo decide they must make things right for Mary.

    This is the skeleton to hang the comedy on, much of it made of gags and routines the boys had done before. It doesn’t matter here, of course, because not only are they effortlessly charming, they’re ably supported by their much-loved foil James Finlayson amongst others, and everything comes together for one of their most enjoyable full-length films. The best bit, and one of the sweetest, loveliest sequences in any of their films, is their joyful, entirely earnest soft-shoe shuffle outside of the saloon. Like the film itself, it’s leisurely and lovingly done.

    Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1973, dir. Brian Clemens)

    Poster for Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter

    Prolific television writer Brian Clemens (who wrote for, or created, or guided The Avengers, Thriller, The Professionals and many more) only directed a single film, but what a fucking outstanding movie it is, and one I enjoy more every time I revisit it. A late-period Hammer vampire film, this drops the tits and gore of the Karnstein trilogy and the lurid excesses of (the shamelessly enjoyable) Scars of Dracula (1970) for something more altogether more interesting.

    Impossibly hot, charismatic central couple Horst Janson and Caroline Munro lead a great cast including a heartbreaking John Carson. It’s brilliantly, thrillingly weird, stuffed full of beautiful frames, black humour, action and invention.

    A wilfully bizarre mix of swashbuckler, horror and adventure that’s beautifully designed, playfully restrained and kinky, unexpectedly moving, and with a thoroughly dark hearted centre, it’s a late flourish and unexpected tease that showed there was still blood in the studio’s creative veins.

    Dracula (1931, dir. Tod Browning)

    Poster for Dracula

    Much of the writing around Dracula (and holy shit there’s a lot) repeats the same old stuff. Yes, yes, it’s more of a drawing room thriller than a full adaptation of Stoker’s novel. Yes, yes, yes there was a Spanish version shot on the same sets at night.

    And yes, some people find this understandably creaky and halting, but I regularly revisit it because it is so much more than the cliches written about it. Bela Lugosi gives a phenomenally odd and compelling performance here, and not due to language barriers, but because he was – with the right material and space to work – an outstandingly good actor. His Count is sex and death and mourning and genuinely unknowable in a way no other vampire king has been allowed to be since.

    There’s also fascinating, beautiful performances from a manic Dwight Frye and a nicely pitched Edward Van Sloan. On my revisit this time, however, I was enthralled by the tragic Helen Chandler’s fragile, knife-edge Mina.

    For such a convoluted journey to the screen, we’re gifted with an incredible, splendid corpse of a film. It’s inarguably Browning not firing at his best BUT, it’s also thoroughly weird – yes, even the drawing room drama – a crepuscular journey through a dream of dying that holds beautiful imagery.

    Dracula is repressed sexuality, lust and the omnipresent spectre of death writ large as a fantasy horror film that rewards these return visits.

    Hey There! (1918, dir. Alfred J. Goulding)

    Bebe Daniels and Harold Lloyd in Hey There!

    Hey There! is a lot of fun. An early Harold-Lloyd-in-glasses short has the randy would-be shagger blagging his way into a film studio to return a dropped letter to Bebe Daniels, but not just the letter. A short film with so many good gags, great timing, and a solid company of actors, including Snub Pollard dressed in an enjoyable piss-take of the familiar director’s outfit. It’s a joy to see Lloyd start to step outside of Chaplin imitation into something more in line with where he would take his career in the next decade.

    That’s it for now, and so a closing reminder – finding joy in troubling times is an act of rebellion. Go enjoy some films.

    And should you want to, you can find more film guff from me here on Letterboxd.

  • Stuff I Have Enjoyed This Year

    It’s that time you’ve all been waiting for, a round-up of Stuff I Have Enjoyed this year, across film, television, books and, very occasionally, music. Some of it might have even been made this century! Although, almost certainly not. This isn’t everything for the year, instead a selection of (mostly) new-to-me highlights.

    2025 has been a year where I’ve broadly dropped self-imposed reading targets or anything like that (turns out they’re stressful and feel like a chore when other things preclude you from keeping to them, who knew?). I have replaced this with floating arbitrary goals (do Chaplin’s entire filmography, from the earliest Keystone days! Make lists of all of the films included in books like You Won’t Believe Your Eyes!: A Front Row Look at the Science Fiction and Horror Films of the 1950s!) because they seemed like a good idea at the time, dammit.

    That has led me to things like a return to and increased use of Letterboxd, the type of social media I can get behind (limited human interaction? Cool, good stuff) and moving away from pretty much all other platforms (is Bluesky next? Possibly). On Letterboxd I’ve been enjoying logging, reviewing and rating films, despite that being a largely pointless, arbitrary (again!) endeavour.

    On that topic, off we go with the round-up.

    Silent films

    I’ve been really enjoying widening my silent film experience, and this year has included some of my favourites yet.

    Poster for The Cat and the Canary (1927)

    The Cat and the Canary (1927, directed by Paul Leni) takes the familiar-in-1927, overripe tropes of old dark house mysteries and puts a more comedic spin on them, but Leni can’t resist some genuine chills and gorgeously dark imagery, so the film turns out to be one of the best examples of the very thing it is pastiching.

    Swedish poster for The Bat (1926)

    Roland West’s first go at adapting the stage play The Bat into a feature in 1926 is a similar mix of comedy and serious thrills, evocative imagery, and a good central mystery. Some of the frames in this film should hang in art galleries. Ben Model’s Undercrank Productions label gave this a Blu-ray and DVD release last year that shows it the love it deserves.

    Lon Chaney as Erik (the Phantom) at the masquerade ball

    For its 100th birthday, Lon Chaney’s The Phantom of the Opera (‘directed’ by Rupert Julian in 1925) was back in cinemas in October and I gained a new appreciation for the film and for one of Lon’s more unsubtle performances. Once his glorious make-up for Erik is revealed, the delirious journey to its brutal conclusion was grand big-screen fun.

    French poster for West of Zanzibar (1928)

    On the subject of Chaney, I also hugely enjoyed the utterly reprehensible West of Zanzibar, directed by Tod Browning in 1928, which was wildly inappropriate, grotesque and deeply suspect. It’s also great fun, with a phenomenal Lon holding the entire wild ride together.

    Cast members of Seven Footprints to Satan (1929) in costume

    Wilfully frustrating, nightmarish and oddly moving, Seven Footprints to Satan (directed in 1929 by Benjamin Christensen) is best come to knowing as little as possible about it. If the photo above of key cast members doesn’t make you want to watch it now, then I can’t help you.

    Short films and cartoons

    French poster for Haunted Spooks (1920)

    The actual haunted house part of Haunted Spooks (directed in 1920 by Hal Roach and Alfred J. Goulding) is decent, silly fun marred by a disappointing raft of racist gags. The first half, which finds Harold Lloyd trying to woo his current love, get rejected, and then decide to end things, only fail every time, is much better. Dark hearted but still delightfully silly, with some excellent gags and delivery.

    Posters for The Haunted House (1921) and The Goat (1921)

    Two favourite Buster Keatons from this year (where every Keaton was good to great) were The Haunted House and The Goat (both directed by Keaton and Eddie Cline, both 1921), the former an inventive run at…uh…haunted house cliches and the latter an at-times jaw-dropping spectacle that has some of the best stunt work and gags he ever did, which means some of the best anyone ever did.

    A poster/lobby card for Habeas Corpus (1928)

    It might be impossible for me to not enjoy a Laurel and Hardy film from the twenties or thirties, and it hasn’t happened yet, with Habeas Corpus (directed by Leo McCaret and James Parrott in 1928) quickly becoming a new favourite. Their first synchronised sound picture (here meaning a score with sound effects), it’s a classic of The Boys’ broad slapstick, drawn-out gags, silliness, and graveyard shenanigans that I loved.

    Mack Swain, Phyllis Allen, and Charlie Chaplin in A Busy Day (1914)

    Chaplin’s opening run of Keystone films range from the brilliantly inspired to the dismal, but special mention in this post for A Busy Day (directed by Mack Sennett in 1914), which is almost completely morally irredeemable (extreme violence, barrel-bottom misogyny, utterly formless), but on the day I put it on, Chaplin in drag hoofing the shit out of anyone within kicking distance for 6 minutes before meeting an unfortunate end made me chuckle when I really needed it. Don’t ask me to stand by this assessment in future.

    A bad poster for The Haunted House (1929), a good poster for The Mad Doctor (1933)

    I enjoyed several early cartoon classics this year, but two Mickey Mouse ones stood out, perhaps because of how far they are apart from modern Disney, but definitely because they function as some pretty wild, gnarly horror in their own right. The Haunted House (directed by Walt Disney and Jack King in 1929) and The Mad Doctor (directed by David Hand and Wilfred Jackson in 1933) are stuffed with extraordinary animated imagery and, for the first title in particular, stack up against any serious circular nightmare horror. But you know, for kids.

    Sound films

    Posters for The Man From Planet X (1951) and Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)

    A low key science-fiction minor classic and an outstanding television movie horror are first up. Veteran director Edward G. Ulmer’s The Man From Planet X (1951) functions as a kind of proto-Quatermass-y, horror-adjacent yarn in which a spacecraft lands on a foggy Scottish moor, intentions unknown. A journalist and scientist try to find, not that by the film’s conclusion we really know that much more for absolute certain. Game attempts at Scottish accents, solid direction and a properly alien alien are all good fun.

    Dark Night of the Scarecrow, directed for television by Frank De Felitta in 1981, is a leisurely paced, beautifully shot, frequently excellent tale of revenge that goes to some very dark places. A great cast is still dominated by a powerhouse, grotesquely villainous turn by Charles Durning as Otis P. Hazelrigg, a deeply unsettling, vile piece of work.

    Poster for House of Mystery (1961)

    Vernon Sewell had already made three versions of stage play The Medium by the time he had another go with House of Mystery in 1961, but let’s be glad he did. A pre-The Stone Tape riff on the concept of residual haunting, it’s mostly made up of flashbacks, and while the central mystery and final reveal are not exactly subtle, they are still effective, as is this rather wonderful little film, and it does it all in under an hour.

    Promo image for Murder by the Clock (1931) and poster for The Unholy Three (1930)

    Murder by the Clock, directed by Edward Sloman in 1931, is a macabre early talkie mystery thriller that has some of its stage-trained cast playing to the cheap seats with the advent of sound, but benefits from Lilyan Tashman having a blast as a scheming seductress after an inheritance. It also has an old, dark house (and graveyard!) setting, crypts, secret passages, murders and a flinty, blackly funny heart.

    The Unholy Three, directed by Jack Conway in 1930, remakes a Tod Browning film from only five years before, starring the same leading man, and sticking to the same story. Why bother? Well, this was the talkie debut of Lon Chaney, so a real event, and what better way than a story he knew and the audience already loved. Sadly, it would turn out to be his only talkie, and his last film, with Lon dying a month after The Unholy Three‘s release. We have just this one to go on, but it’s pretty clear from it Chaney’s career would have survived the transition to sound. He’s incredibly good in this, his performance charismatic, captivating and showing that he understood the new opportunities for film ahead. Lon Chaney is one of the greatest actors from the entirety of cinema history, and as a swan song for possibly the best to ever do it, The Unholy Three, and its final scenes, is pretty much perfect.

    Television

    Detective Murdoch and Doctor Ogden. And a brain.

    Highlights this year have been the always revolving schedule of shows like You Bet Your Life, The Jack Benny Program, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, The Twilight Zone, One Step Beyond, Dark Shadows, Upstairs, Downstairs and more, but the most surprisingly enjoyable experience has been a late-in-the-year start of Canadian detective series Murdoch Mysteries, based on the novels by Maureen Jennings, and currently at 19 seasons. Season one has had Murdoch meet Arthur Conan Doyle amongst others, alongside showing his fascination with the future of crime solving (‘finger marks’, lie detectors, forensic science). It’s all agreeably easy-going, but not undemanding, entertainment.

    Books

    Covers for The Story of Victorian Film and The Silent Film Universe

    Two excellent early film histories were published this year, and both combined scholarly insight with accessibility and a passion for the beginnings of cinema, establishing themselves almost immediately as key texts. Bryony Dixon’s The Story of Victorian Film and Ben Model’s The Silent Film Universe are essential reading for anyone who wants to know how we got from there to here, and why these eras of film are full of life and innovation and ever vital to explore.

    Cover of Hollywood: The Pioneers

    Kevin Brownlow had already written one of the definitive histories of silent film with his 1968 book The Parade’s Gone By… but just over a decade later, he did it again, this time putting together the definitive documentary on silent film, the 1980 Thames Television series Hollywood. The accompanying, highly recommended book wisely doesn’t try and retread his previous work. Instead, Brownlow collaborates with another film historian, John Kobal, to create a book that is equal parts informative text and beautifully done visual history, full of hundreds of often rare photos. You can find this for about £5 (or equivalent in other areas), so very much worth it.

    Covers of Fleischerei and Phengaris

    I’ve written about both of these books already (Modern horror writing at its best) and they remain two of the best pieces of fiction of the year. If you haven’t already read them, you really should.

    Music

    I’ve gone from being obsessed with music a couple of decades ago, to barely registering what is happening with it these days, so probably good for me that two favourite bands released their new albums this year, Deafheaven (Lonely People with Power) and Greet Death (Die in Love). Better still that both show each band at their peak. It’s been largely either very loud explorations of losing humanity in the lust for power (Deafheaven) or deceptively pretty explorations of the darkness and beauty of life (Greet Death) and I’m grateful for both of them.

    Covers of Lonely People with Power and Die in Love

  • A Wondrous Magic to Christmas

    Finding redemption with the festive spirit (and Rod Serling and Peter Cushing)

    ” The Night of the Meek” (The Twilight Zone Season 2, Episode 11)

    Henry Corwin in Santa costume, looking the worse for self-inflicted wear

    The Twilight Zone is inarguably one of television’s truly great series. For an anthology show it has a remarkable hit rate. Every such series had its duds but for this show, they are few and far between. Even the weakest episodes have something to them, a line of dialogue or a moment that sparkles. For this writer, Rod Serling is one of the most gifted writers the medium has ever had, and in addition to that was a compassionate person who used his work to connect audiences with their fellow humans, to illuminate the human condition, to encourage us to be better, to do better, to try again. The Twilight Zone often traded in stinging or stirring tales of fantasy, science fiction and sometimes horror. As with many shows, it also had its Christmas-themed episodes and it is one of them, “The Night of the Meek”, covered here.

    Title card for The Night of the Meek

    The macabre in Meek is people. The set up in the episode is following department store Santa and general sad sack Henry Corwin. Corwin doesn’t have much to look forward to other than his next drink. He lives in a ‘dirty rooming house’ and his world is one of hungry children and other ‘shabby’ people just like him. Corwin lives for his Santa routine but the shine has gone out of it.  His suit is old and worn and when he shows up too late and drunk with it for his gig, it’s over – he’s fired and ordered out of the store. Despite all of his woes, Corwin muses if he had one wish, it would be for the meek to actually see some rewards. When Corwin can’t even get back into the bar he frequents, he stumbles down an alleyway where the sound of sleigh bells are heard. 

    Corwin in his Santa costume in the department store, being berated by his boss

    In the alley, Corwin comes across a sack that he quickly discovers appears to have magical properties. It produces a seemingly never-ending stream of gifts. Whatever someone asks for, they get. His dream coming true, Corwin starts handing out gifts to the poor kids and down and out men nearby. The episode continues with this mix of melancholic reality and fantastical whimsy towards its hopeful conclusion.

    Corwin discovering a sack full of presents in a snowy alley

    In the episode, people are the worst. Everyone expects and looks for the worst in Corwin because that’s the type of guy they think he is. It’s the type of guy Corwin has come to think he is too, and it’s pretty obvious his idealism and hope is frayed and being drowned in a puddle of cheap booze.  Corwin is us – we want to believe in the best of people, but people make it pretty damn hard. Now, Serling had around 25 minutes an episode to do set-up, delivery and conclusion of his stories and so subtlety was not always the prime concern. The characters, Corwin included, are mostly broad sketches, with people like the shop manager Dundee being not much more than functional cliché. They’re ciphers for the point Serling is making about what Christmas can represent. 

    Corwin watching a young child enjoying a train track set up

    It can, if we let it, represent good will to each other, hope for the future and the unity such celebrations can bring.  If we let go of the hardened cynicism and the weariness, if we let such notions in, even if it’s only for one night we can believe that we’re more good than bad, that’s there something worth saving in us, that we can believe in magic. For many, that’s a hard thing to do in a world, in a world that tells us there’s no magic left, only bleakness and decline. In the time The Twilight Zone was first airing it was only 15 years or so since the end of WW2. It was before Vietnam, race riots, Watergate and innumerable other events conspired to convince even the most indefatigable optimist that we’re on a downward spiral as a species. 

    That’s not to say things were better then as many things were emphatically not. But it’s for this reason that we should arguably let a little magic into our lives. Believing in Santa Claus might have ended a long time ago for most of us but believing in each other, or that there is some goodness out there, is something we all need these days. And if anyone can convince you to believe in your bones that humans are redeemable, it would be Serling.

    Rod Serling in coat covered in totally real snow, speaking to camera

    As Rod himself puts it in the closing narration “There’s a wondrous magic to Christmas”, so here’s to Henry Corwin and here’s to The Twilight Zone and a momentary respite, a sliver of the brightest light in the darkness of winter.

    Cash on Demand

    Cash on Demand title card

    How does Cash on Demand (1961, dir. Quentin Lawrence) evoke a similar joy? Well, it’s not just the ideal Christmas movie but a reminder that, for those of us who might despair at humanity’s worst instincts more days than not, change is possible. Based on the play, it’s the tale of bank manager Harry Fordyce (Peter Cushing), a fussily fastidious man who rules over his branch not so much with a clenched fist but a puckered sphincter. The opening scenes set up the tight-knit team of staff in the bank as they await Fordyce’s arrival. When he does appear their anxious joviality is curtailed and it’s down to the business of money.

    Fordyce looking for flaws in the polished plaque outside the bank

    Not long after this, André Morell pulls up at the bank, his character Colonel Gore-Hepburn supposedly an insurance inspector but in fact a bank robber. Using threats and coercion, Gore-Hepburn forces the unravelling Fordyce to partake in robbing his own bank. Without giving anything away, the plot twists, new wrinkles are added and tension is ratcheted up. Throughout all this Cushing is wonderfully good, ensuring Fordyce is no cliche and imbuing him with humanity throughout. Morell matches him throughout as the smooth, assured, and ruthless bank robber. 

    Fordyce on the phone in his office as Gore-Hepburn looks on, his plan coming together

    Cash on Demand is a twist on A Christmas Carol. Fordyce might not be the wicked man Scrooge was, but he has forgotten what makes a person. He’s not mean to his staff so much as dismissive of their personhood and feelings, only focussing on the bank and profit. We know early on he has a child and wife he feels affection for, but that’s as far as human warmth goes for him. As Gore-Hepburn’s scheme to steal thousands of pounds unwinds, and Fordyce is forced to become part of the heist, he must confront what he has become, what is really important to him, and reconnect with the world he lives in. It’s an uplifting, very human film about hope and change and our ability for both that is just as needed in these modern times.

    Fordyce looking directly to camera, a concerned and unsettled look on his face

    The Christmas trappings aren’t window dressing either. The time of year the story is set is intrinsic to the mood and atmosphere of the piece and to Fordyce’s journey. Of course, it’s a fine film that could be shown at any time of year. But what it says about us as people is a classic Christmas message. If you want a beautifully judged thriller, full of quotable dialogue, with one great scene after another, excellent performances, and something to say about what it means to be alive, this is it.

  • Whitechapel: A bloody good time

    A Great British horror television series remembered

    Phil Davis, Steve Pemberton and Rupert Penry-Jones as the central trio of Whitechapel

    When we talk about the best British horror television, it seems there is rarely a mention of Whitechapel, which ran on ITV for four series between 2009 and 2013. Perhaps that is because Whitechapel was presented at first glance as An Other cop show, if ever so slightly more acquainted with the grimmer side of that genre. It was so much more than that in its finished form. And so, dear reader, it’s time to set things right and celebrate this glorious, pulpy, luridly compelling and emotionally involving show. Be warned, said celebration is slightly spoilery. 

    Created and almost exclusively written by the couple Ben Court and Caroline Ip, Whitechapel starts by taking us into the heart of darkness that is a copycat killer seeking to reenact the murders of Jack the Ripper, bringing a new reign of terror to the capital. Subsequent series explore the secret sons of the Kray twins following their fathers’ worst examples, and tales inspired by H.H. Holmes, the Marquis de Sade, London After Midnight, witch hunts, a killer who flays the faces from their victims and a deranged cult seeking to bring about the apocalypse. Then there’s the ongoing arc that bubbles away in the background about Whitechapel very possibly being a gate to hell. Add to that the mysterious Louise Iver, played to perfection by Angela Pleasence. Iver may be a sweet if somewhat rude old lady, but she also may be something even older and significantly more evil and dangerous. The clue might be in the name.

    One of the things that makes Whitechapel so enjoyable is the cast and characters. As the first series begins, Rupert Penry-Jones plays DI Joseph Chandler. Joseph is the son of a well-respected and long-dead police officer. The largely untested Chandler has been put on the fast track to promotion by his father’s friend Commander Anderson and is given his first big assignment when a woman is found murdered in Whitechapel. He arrives to lead the team charged with investigating it, a team in practice being lead by the old school copper DS Ray Miles, played by Phil Davis. Soon, and much to Miles’ displeasure, Chandler has enlisted the involvement of noted Ripperologist Edward Buchan, played by Steve Pemberton. Buchan suggests to Chandler that the murders that are afflicting Whitechapel are the work of someone trying to recreate Jack’s crimes in precise detail. So begins this unlikely and at times often uncomfortable trio’s journey into a hidden and deadly part of London.

    Joseph Chander in front of a crime board

    Whitechapel is a darkly violent series and doesn’t shy away from presenting the killings and the impact they have on those investigating and the community itself. So far, so lurid. And yet, through its minor characters and particularly Buchan’s character arc it balances this out by paying attention to the victims. From a writing perspective, Court and Ip are skilled at including the briefest of character moments that allow peeks into their lives beyond what is presented onscreen. Whitechapel takes place in a version of London that has violence seeping through its cracks at every turn, in later episodes almost apocalyptically so. The characters provide a counterbalance to this that allows the show to walk a tightrope between pulp, horror-soaked crime and retaining its humanity.

    Chandler ready to box, Miles ready to soak up the blood

    Our three nominal leads do some of their best work in this series. Penry-Jones’ Chandler at first threatens to be the cliched ‘untested’ but arrogant cop-in-charge but Court and Ip subtly subvert that early on and expand on it throughout. Chandler is the very image of well-presented modern policing: meticulous, smart and indefatigably moral. But he’s also riven by self-doubt and neurosis. There’s some short hand here in the way that is done, particularly with Chandler’s fixation on physical order, but it is thought out, sympathetic and never played for cheap laughs or at the expense of actual depth. Penry-Jones is excellent throughout, ensuring Joseph is a fully rounded character. Davis matches him as Miles, and although the two must initially play out the combative new vs old school methodology cliche, again Court and Ip subvert this. The relationship that develops between Chandler and Miles is the core of the series but it is never allowed to get stale or comfortable. These two men find something in each other, but it’s not as brothers or a father/son surrogate but instead something deeper and more satisfying.

    Buchan and Miles in a shadow filled room

    Pemberton has the flashier role, as the show begins. Buchan is a Ripperologist who runs walking tours of the area where Jack did his ‘work’. He has a deep knowledge of the criminal history of Whitechapel and considers himself an investigator. But Buchan is out of his depth and as the first series progresses is forced to confront his own relationship with the crimes and how exploitation and the distance of time has allowed him to disconnect from the real-life weight of grief. His desire to be clever and invaluable to the investigation has personal consequences that follow him for the rest of the series. Pemberton does some excellent work exploring Buchan’s moral and professional collapse and subsequent rebuilding.

    The rest of the cast, which shifts slightly before settling into a unit for the final two series, provide Chandler, Miles and Buchan with a solid, likeable team. Another admirable aspect of Whitechapel is Court and Ip avoiding the modern malaise of the workplace ‘family’, that cliche ignoring as it often does that families bicker, sometimes viscously so, and that peace is sometimes uneasy, just as it is here. It’s a mark of a good cast that every time a regular appears (like Claire Rushbrook’s Dr. Llewellyn) it’s not just to further the plot, we also want to learn a little bit more about their characters. The various guest performers that fill the series are excellent too, from Craig Parkinson’s Kray twins via Peter Serafinowicz’s unnervingly bad apple cop to Lydia Leonard’s doomed Morgan Lamb.

    Miles and Chandler in – surprise, surprise – a shadow filled room

    There are other crime dramas that have an affection for horror and pulp influences that are clear in their approach, notably Luther. But although such shows and films with flirt with these influences they are first and foremost thrillers. Whitechapel is a procedural, there’s no doubt of that. But it is equally pure horror and once it reaches the third series, goes full tilt into first slasher influences and then a run of witches, urban legend (killer pigs in the sewers anyone) and apocalyptic terror. The series loves its milieu and there’s a lot to enjoy in picking out these influences and the tributes and homages that fill the episodes and load it with atmosphere. There are some bravura, tension-packed set pieces throughout and the show is agreeably unafraid of the absurd and the overblown when it is needed, delighting in red herrings and left-turn plot twists.

    Amidst all of this, Whitechapel never forgets its characters or its humanity. It is a series that sets out to thrill, disturb, entertain and deliver heart too, something it succeeds in . Take this as full-blooded recommendation thatWhitechapel is one of British television’s finest, most enjoyable horror series, ripe for (re)discovery. 

  • A Peculiar and Beguiling Bleakness

    Casting the Runes (1979) and updating M.R. James for the Scarred for Life generation (this article previously published on the now-defunct Horrified website)

    Title card of the episode shows Casting the Runes written in red against a shot of fields and trees covered in snow, the sun’s rays raising from behind a hill

    The 1970s was a time of wild contrast in Britain. Wealth inequality was at its lowest but the country was beset by industrial action. Music, film and television had entered a period of creative fecundity that would continue Britain’s position as an innovator and leader in culture. Alongside this, the country was afflicted by power cuts, inflation, the rise of the far-right and the beginning of the slow death of that one-generation-only dream of the middle class. Parallels can be drawn with our most recent decade or so, one where it has seemed the good times are over and terminal decline is inevitable. 

    It is perhaps then not surprising that the horror produced throughout the decade had a peculiar and beguiling bleakness. Stories across books, film and television took us to dark places and often left us there at their conclusion, no happy endings or release. One of the towering achievements of these years was the annual BBC A Ghost Story for Christmas, a mix of filmed adaptations of M.R. James, Dickens and original screenplays (one of which, Stigma, was contributed by the writer of this version of Casting the Runes, Clive Exton). These haunting tales of a genuinely disturbing and dangerous ‘other’ lurking just out of sight are rightly hailed as classics of the genre. 

    A man and a dog crouch on snowy ground, looking around them, the man appearing to be concerned – behind him, on the hill, a stone figure of a demon can be seen

    All but one of these were directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark, a talented director with an unerring ability to present creeping dread onscreen. After he had finished with the BBC sequence, Clark wasn’t done with the supernatural. For the ITV Playhouse strand he took on the challenge of providing an updated version of M.R. James’ ‘Casting the Runes’. The story had been adapted some two decades before for the classic Night of the Demon (1957, dir. Jacques Tourneur), one of the great British horror films. A decade later it was adapted again for the anthology series Mystery and Imagination, an episode that is sadly lost to us.

    As with Jacques Tourneur’s film, Casting the Runes updates the story to contemporary times. It gives us a female Dunning (played here by Jan Francis) and an American Karswell (Iain Cuthbertson) and adheres loosely to the main beats of James’ chilling short story. It’s a version that isn’t particularly well remembered these days, or seemingly thought of highly, in comparison with its more elegantly mounted BBC relatives, or the 1957 film. We have a tendency to compare needlessly, and a low-budget 50 minute television adaptation shot on a mix of film and video has little chance of equalling the impact of a crisply produced black and white big screen version directed by one of Hollywood’s most skilled psychological horror craftsmen.

    Dunning and Derek Gayton in a room, looking a small slip of paper with runes on them

    And yet, there is much to enjoy in this production, starting with a glorious opening sequence which took full advantage of the blizzard conditions it was shot in. There’s a clear folk horror influence to this beginning, evoking memories of films like The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971, dir. Piers Haggard), finding as it does the menace inherent in indifferent nature. As we start, a man we later learn is called John Harrington is out walking his dog in the snowy countryside until the animal becomes unnerved by the presence of something out there with them, something that is slowly, inevitably hunting John. It benefits hugely from the snowy landscape and, in its un-retouched presentation on DVD, a scratchy film print as well as a menacing score. 

    In this iteration, Karswell is a cult figure, the self-styled Abbot of Lufford, and he has made somewhat of a name for himself as writer of a book called ‘A History of Witchcraft’ and as proponent of a philosophy that would have ‘Vice as the only true virtue, lust as the only true modesty, indecency the only true decorum and evil the only true good’. When Karswell is mocked by a television exposé on ‘mumbo jumbo’ produced by Dunning, he determines to take his revenge on her next. Our introduction to Karswell is the converted rectory where he lives, surrounded by grand gold ornaments. Karswell enacts his curse, manufacturing a meeting with Dunning. When Dunning is attacked in her bed by a creature created from Karswell’s magic, and she learns Harrington had written a scathing report of Karswell’s book and paid for his life with it, Dunning begins to understand her scepticism will not keep her safe.

    Karswell, a smugly mean expression on his face, holds a small figure with red clothes and dark hair

    The remainder of the play, whilst not overtly frightening or aiming to be, is equal parts unnerving and melancholy. Exton and Clark work together to create a world where the characters live in a definably real world that is being intruded by something ancient and unrelenting. There are some great performances, with Francis an anchor to everything as the unravelling Dunning. Cuthbertson has a grand time as the wicked Karswell, here a genuinely malevolent presence, a character who seems to revel in the power he wields. Being a production made in the 1970s and filtering through a decade of that beguiling, bleak approach the play also has a suitably harsh conclusion as it fades out, the wreckage caused by Karswell extending far beyond the final shot of a devastated Dunning.

    A man in a long coat and hat at the crest of a footbridge covered in snow

    Though not part of the BBC ghost stories, this adaptation of ‘Casting the Runes’ shows Clark learned well what worked for them and has much to recommend for those who appreciate the uniquely chilly, uncompromising horror the 1970s produced and acts as an effective chaser to much of what proceeded it. 

    (The version referenced throughout is from a now out-of-print Network DVD release, though the episode can be found in other places online)

  • Carl Kolchak: An Appreciation

    Darren McGavin as Carl Kolchak

    It’s my esteemed and correct opinion that Carl Kolchak is one of popular culture’s greatest characters. As brought to life by Darren McGavin in a shabby seersucker suit and straw hat, he’s a lovably shambolic, rough-edged crusader for the truth. The reporter started out life as the main focus of Jeff Rice’s novel The Kolchak Papers. It tells of a foul-mouthed drunk who had a remarkable story to tell about a vampire loose in Las Vegas, who used Rice to get his story out. As he was working unsuccessfully to get the book published Rice was also inking deals with those who could put his story on the screen. This was the early 70s and television movies were a huge deal, bringing in massive audiences. So when ABC optioned the book you can imagine Rice’s excitement at the prospect of bringing Kolchak to homes all across America. Ultimately it would be the hugely talented Richard Matheson who would write the script, slightly softening Carl’s gruff edges but keeping the humour and commentary that pops off the pages of Rice’s book (I don’t think Stephen King was a fan, however).

    Dan Curtis was onboard as producer and it might be hard to get just how big now, but Curtis’ previous project Dark Shadows which had finished in 1971 was huge. It turned the reluctant Jonathan Frid into an unlikely middle-aged sex symbol and had a generation of monsters kids running home from school to follow plots of vampires, werewolves and all sorts of supernatural chicanery taking place.

    Title card for The Night Stalker (1972)

    John Llewellyn Moxey was brought in to direct and in early January 1972 Carl made his screen debut. It was a smash hit and brought in the biggest ever audience for a TV movie at the time.  There’s a reason it was a hit: it’s near perfect, a mix of serious scares and humour centred around McGavin’s effortlessly charming performance, ably supported by Simon Oakland as his suffering editor Tony Vincenzo. At first here Kolchak is a beat reporter, using his police scanner to show up as quickly as possible at crime scenes and generally making himself a nuisance to the powers that be.

    When young women start turning up murdered, Kolchak thinks he’s got a killer on the rampage, but soon he finds out this killer might not even be human. Carl’s the type of guy who goes where the leads take him and so when the pieces start to fit that it’s a vampire that is killing these women, Carl thinks something must be done. Those powers that be aren’t buying it and they set about making Kolchak’s life even harder work. But that’s not going to stop him getting to the truth and doing what it takes to stop the bloodsucker from getting away with it. The thing about Carl is that he believes the people have a right to know and he’ll protect that right no matter the cost to himself. It’s not that he’s particularly noble, it’s more a compulsion that truths hidden should be revealed. If you haven’t ever enjoyed this classic go and find it now.

    Carl holding a cross up to repel something nasty

    When The Night Stalker was a huge hit, inevitably talk of a sequel followed. That talk turned to action in double time and in 1973 The Night Strangler followed this time directed by Curtis. In this one Kolchak has relocated (not through choice) to Seattle and comes into contact once again with a despondent Vincenzo. At the same time another killer is murdering people by strangling them (but of course) and using their blood to stay alive, something they have been doing for over a 100 years. Kolchak discovers the truth but again narrowly avoids getting killed for his troubles and is railroaded out of town for good.

    The same year Rice finally got his novel published as a tie-in to the first film. A reverse of the first film’s process next year found Rice adapting Matheson’s Strangler script for a tie-in book that would be published in 1974, the same year the series started. Before that Kolchak had nearly made it into a third film, in a script by Matheson and William F. Nolan called The Night Killers which would have had Carl in conflict with android replicas. McGavin was tiring of the formula and didn’t want to do it. Curtis wasn’t apparently impressed either and things cooled for a while, during which Curtis and Nolan went off to do spooky TV movie The Norliss Tapes, which could easily have been a Kolchak case. 

    A police sketch of the undead killer in The Night Strangler (1973)

    Eventually after negotiation, McGavin was tempted back for a weekly series which he could produce, although Curtis was finished with it and opted out. In September 1974, after multiple protracted negotiations and fallouts, and in a season ABC desperately needed success in, Kolchak: The Night Stalker hit small screens as a weekly show. The first episode was ‘The Ripper’, and it finds Carl now set up in Chicago, still working for Vincenzo. It’s almost a remake of sorts of the two films with its story of a madman killing people off who turns out to be THE Ripper, a maniac of unusual longevity.

    Like many an episode of Kolchak it has its good and bad elements. Plotting in the episodes is frequently perfunctory, low budget monster-of-the-week stuff that holds few surprises. But the series still had it’s star in McGavin and he’s reliably excellent no matter if he’s being chased around a cruise ship by a ‘werewolf’ who resembles more a guy who fell face first into some hair-restorer as opposed to a beastly lycanthrope, or sowing a zombie’s mouth shut and hoping it’s not going to wake up while he’s doing it. There’s many reasons to love McGavin but there’s a great little moment in ‘The Ripper’ where you just know he’s doing it the way you would too. Trapped in the Ripper’s room all Kolchak has to do is stay quiet and he’ll make it out unseen. But when the Ripper gets too close Kolchak lets out a yelp and makes a run for it, blowing his cover. By grounding Carl in recognisable flaws and humour, he became more real to us. Not an impervious hero but instead a dude who’s scared shitless but can’t turn away from the truth or doing what needs to be done.  

    Carl with microphone and puzzled expression

    When you go back to the series now one of its strengths is just how infrequently it chose to stick with the usual screen horror villains. Sure, there’s the Ripper and a werewolf and another zombie. There’s even another vampire but it links in with The Night Stalker in an interesting way and is one of the best episodes. But others included witches, prehistoric monsters, a haunted knight’s armour, robots, aliens and demonic spirits. This level of creativity always fought against the network drive to make every week’s entertainment broadly the same as the week before and is representative of what eventually brought the series down before it’s first season had finished, with a few scripts un-produced. Ratings were never massive and as the series went on McGavin got restless and the network could see it was not the hit they hoped for, with the various attempts at meddling causing friction between star and studio. In 1975 the episode order was cut by two and Kolchak limped to a sad end. But it was not the end really.  

    Reruns of the series would find more receptive viewers in the late 70s and this would continue through the 1980s until the series found a new home on the cable Sci-Fi Channel at roughly the same time a new series called The X-Files on Fox was moving from cult hit to mainstream sensation. Chris Carter has spoken before of his memories of Kolchak in part inspiring Fox Mulder and Dana Scully’s adventures and this helped continue to build an interest for newer viewers as to who this Carl Kolchak was. Home video releases of the first film and series started to surface too, along with the reruns allowing people to get to know McGavin’s intrepid reporter again. Mark Dawidziak, a critic for an American newspaper, wrote a guide book on Kolchak that arrived in 1991 called Night Stalking: A 20th Anniversary Kolchak Companion. This led in turn to a new deal between Rice and the same book’s publisher for new Kolchak novels. To kick it off Dawidziak was tasked with writing the third book (to follow on from the films and series) and Grave Secrets duly arrived in 1994. The deal for more faltered when the publisher was unable to actually get anything else in print and nothing more would arrive for some years. But thanks to Dark Shadows actor Kathryn Leigh-Scott’s publishing company Pomegranate Press an updated and now illustrated 25th anniversary edition of Dawidziak’s definitive book would arrive in 1997. 

    Cover for Jeff Rice’s The Night Stalker novel

    After this, the new century found Carl in surprisingly good health. Universal released a (sadly totally extras-free) box set of the entire series. The two TV movies came out on a dual disc release.  A book with Matheson’s three scripts (including The Night Killers) was released with introductions by Dawidziak. Moonstone Books began publishing comics based on the character in 2003 and these became almost an industry in their own right, covering Kolchak through comics (with adaptations of the first film and unfilled scripts), novels and short story compilations. More comic adventures have followed.

    In 2005, a short-lived revival series aired starring Stuart Townsend as Carl in an updated version taking in modern TV’s story-arc concerns. Low ratings and inevitable but unfair comparisons to The X-Files did for Night Stalker after only 6 episodes were aired, but it’s a remarkably good and interesting series in its own right. Frank Spotnitz was show runner and took influences from the original but filtered it through a style more influenced by Michael Mann that left us with an unfinished show that is significantly more interesting than its reputation suggests. It’s not all been good news. Back in 2012 Disney announced a film adaptation was in the early stages with Johnny Depp as Kolchak and Edgar Wright directing.  This (with or without Depp and Wright) turned out to be just an idea and so far Kolchak has yet to return to the screen. Perhaps this is for the best, given the debacle of Depp’s Dark Shadows film and…you know…everything else.

    Carl with a makeshift cross and an angry looking vampire

    But if his history has taught us anything it’s that Carl is a tenacious sonofabitch and it’s likely we’ll have him back on the screen someway, somehow. For now though, if you haven’t yet had the pleasure, go find The Night Stalker and get introduced.

    (Recent years also found the original films and series getting American Blu-ray releases, another resurrection for Carl)

    Further suggested reading:

    The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler by Jeff Rice (published variously as separate books and a one-volume compilation)

    The Night Stalker Companion by Mark Dawidziak (Pomegranate Press, 1997)

    The Kolchak Papers: Grave Secrets by Mark Dawidziak (Cinemaker Press, 1994)

    The Moonstone Books various comics, graphic novels, short story compilations and full-length novels.  

    Progeny of the Adder by Les Whitten (Doubleday, 1965).  This is a book at some points rumoured to have ‘inspired’ Rice as it tells the story of a modern vampire terrorising a city (in this case Washington DC) and the desperate attempts to stop the killings.  

  • Ghoulishly Good Times – The Shorts Edition

    We all love a long movie, right? Two hours, three hours, lost in the magic of cinema. Well…maybe not all the time. Fortunately, the art of the short film has been there since the earliest days of the medium. There’s a wealth of funny, moving, weird, creepy, thrilling and adventurous entertainment that won’t numb your arse or sap your will to live. And so, I welcome you to this spooky short (mostly) silent film specific edition of Ghoulishly Good Times.

    Bluebeard attempting to woo his entirely – and correctly – unenthusiastic bride to be

    Barbe-bleue (aka Bluebeard, 1901, dir. George Méliès) retells the French legend of a dubious – but very rich – old dodger courting his eighth wife, the seven before her having died ‘in mysterious circumstances’. His new wife is not impressed with being dumped with the danger, nor is she too happy being left bored in his castle while he buggers off. He does leave her, however, with the key to the place and instructions not to get curious, after which she stumbles on the truth of what befell his other wives. What starts as a broad comedy of over gesticulating takes a hard swerve into serious darkness about halfway through. Surreal nightmares, ghosts, a demonic sprite and some deeply unsettling imagery drive it to the reveal of whether wife number eight is destined for the same fate. What we have here, for me, is some of the first flourishing of narrative horror with a bravura shift in tone from ‘oh this is fun’ to ‘holy shit that’s dark’ that became familiar to movie-going horror audiences across the following decades, done here early and in style.

    A totally, absolutely convincing skull with a shroud hanging from it during a séance

    Alongside the development of photography and film and the tantalising prospect of recorded proof (or the lack of it), the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th continued a pronounced split between people who wanted to believe in an afterlife and that people we had lost could be reached there, and those that saw it as a grift designed to exploit vulnerability and grief. This can be seen in the differing beliefs of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini (two men who were nevertheless friends) as fraud and debunking entered into a new phase, and the urgency to believe was shaped by the scale of previously unimaginable loss of life world conflicts inflicted. The UK short Is Spiritualism a Fraud? – The Medium Exposed (1906, dir. J.H. Martin) isn’t really asking a question, but instead presents a couple of con artists getting caught in the act of faking communication with the dead, after which those duped take their revenge in an escalating sequence of slapstick violence. It’s not subtle stuff, but it is a fascinating and entertaining example of the innovation happening in Britain at the time, giving us some startling horror-informed imagery along the way. Enjoyably vicious too, reflecting the way some people felt about the cruelty of offering a bogus way of contact with people lost to them.

    The spectre of the title in his grotto, using magic to torment people and looking pretty pleased with himself.

    Le Spectre Rouge (aka The Red Spectre, 1907, dirs. Segundo de Chomón, Ferdinand Zecca) is a trick film, ostensibly comparable to the Méliès style. Though it’s easy to say everything followed his work, like D.W. Griffith inventing and perfecting every cinema technique you’ve ever heard of, it’s neither true nor fair. This one is its own thing, and has a demonic magician hanging out in his underground lair, dicking about with tricks that seem largely designed to torment women. His attempts are interrupted by a good sprite who intervenes, stopping or reversing the mischief he has wrought. That’s pretty much it, the premise being an excuse to have fun with tricks and special effects, something the film does well. It’s a frequently beautiful film that plays as an inventively crafted window into another world, full of splashes of vibrant imagination.

    Delightful French poster for Haunted Spooks

    Haunted house movie (and theatre) tropes were already well known by 1920 and ripe for comedic parody. Haunted Spooks (1920, dirs. Hal Roach, Alfred J. Goulding) does just that. But before we get to the titular spooky abode, the film starts with a remarkable sequence where Harold Lloyd’s would-be suitor fails to secure the affections of the woman he loves. This drives him to decide to <ahem> resolve the problem of life permanently through several failed attempts that escalate in a darkly amusing fashion. He’s distracted from any further tries when he runs into a lawyer working on behalf of a young woman who urgently needs a husband to claim her inheritance from her grandfather. Part of that inheritance is a beautiful house that the woman’s uncle covets, and so he does what any reasonable person would: fakes a haunting in the hope it will scare her off. When the couple arrive, we get another sequence of escalating events as the uncle’s ill-considered scheme unravels. There’s a lot to enjoy in this one, not least an intertitle A-game, which doesn’t only complement the action but enhances it (as the best examples did). Lloyd and co-star Mildred Davis make a winning central couple as things get truly hair-raising (makes sense when you see the film). It’s also fair to note that there are some disappointing, tiresome racial ‘gags’ in the second half, so be advised.

    Poster for The Haunted House, 1921

    Buster Keaton also got in on the haunted house parody gig in the following year’s…uh…The Haunted House (1921, dirs. Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline). In this one, bank teller Keaton has a day start badly (gluing cash to his hands) and get worse (on the run from the police, hiding out at a ‘haunted’ mansion). It’s not actually haunted, however, but instead the hideout of a gang of thieves using fake ghosts and ghouls to keep people away from their lair. The entire film is a great example of Keaton’s often bizarre, off-kilter humour. When we get to the hideout, it gets increasingly wrapped up in a building run of visual gags and repeated refrains that land in a final sequence that pays off beautifully. There’s one gorgeous frame after another along the way in this gem. I could write more, but I just recommend seeking it out and enjoying it.

    Herbert Stern as Roderick Usher

    The Fall of the House of Usher (dirs. James Sibley Watson & Melville Webber) was one of two adaptations of Poe’s tale in 1928, both of which traded in surreal visuals (the other a feature-length French version). This one was an American production and gives us an avant-garde take on the story, existing for the purposes of experimenting with imagery, mood and technique. It’s a remarkably close approximation of the recognisable feel of a nightmare. The narrative is still straightforward enough to follow but it’s not the point of the film: that is to use images to make you feel unsettled and unbalanced and it does this very well. I wouldn’t say it’s an enjoyable experience, but it certainly qualifies as horrific and, alongside the range of techniques used here, it’s definitely worth seeking out.

    Screenshot of an excellent intertitle from Habeas Corpus

    The first Laurel and Hardy film to be released with synchronised sound (here a musical score with sound effects), Habeas Corpus (1928, dirs. Leo McCaret and James Parrott) has the duo knocking on the door of an insane professor (in the hope of work or money, or in Stan’s case, a slice of buttered toast). He offers them $500 to bring him a body back from the cemetery, and despite their misgivings, they accept. They go down to the graveyard, but unbeknown to them, the police are also aware of the potential crime being committed, and head down there too, aiming to pretend to be a ghost and put the duo off. What follows is a film packed with arguably predictable gags and slapstick somehow, as so often the case with these two great performers, made fresh and appealing by the talent and chemistry of Ollie and Stan. There’s also a wilful drawing out of sequences like them trying to scale the wall into the cemetery that makes that something familiar become something fresh – like a different, more cuddly, less confrontationally weird version of the off-kilter Keaton approach. Again, a Laurel and Hardy hallmark. Great fun.

    Screenshot from The Haunted House (1929)

    At the end of the decade that started with Lloyd and Keaton encountering fake ghosts, Mickey Mouse ran into the real thing in The Haunted House (1929, dir. Walt Disney). During a storm, Mickey seeks refuge in an abandoned house, only to find himself forced to soundtrack (by playing the organ) a delirious dance-off between the skeletal inhabitants. When he tries to escape, things get weirder still. A horror-comedy building on the same year’s The Skeleton Dance* (1929, dir. Walt Disney), this comes from Disney’s emerging days, when it wasn’t tethered to its later image, and it’s pretty wild, nightmarish stuff. For me, much of this has the feel of a Fulci-esque circular nightmare of the seventies or eighties, where if you found out the mouse was dead and trapped in his own private hell, it would need no further explanation. A ‘happy’ conclusion is inevitable (it is a cartoon after all, you know – for the kids) but if it cut off a few seconds earlier, or ended with Mickey lost in the storm again, discovering the house, that could only make it (slightly) better.

    *That one, as the NYT reported in 1931, banned in Denmark for being ‘too macabre’

    A POV shot of the intruder from Suspense. looking up at the woman inside the house

    Though not a horror, a bonus mention for Suspense. (1913, dir. Lois Weber), an excellent home-invasion thriller which finds a woman and her young child in their remote house, abandoned by their maid, and menaced by a passing stranger who finds his way inside. With her husband alerted and racing back from work to try and get there in time, the stranger makes his way through the house, up to her room where she has barricaded herself and her child in. Like several of the above films, the elements are familiar but Weber makes stylish use of technique, frames the story imaginatively, and adds in little shorthand character notes that bring them to life despite the brief running time. An outstandingly good, and perfectly named, film.

Writing by Jamie Evans