Number 46 - TV Snorted my Brain - Bradley Sands

With a cover as batshit crazy insane as this one, how could I refuse when I found it in my favourite second hand book shop for only a fiver.

Let's face it, this cover fucking rules.

The book opens with a long list of things that fucking rule - including anarchy, riots and peewee girls  football, and riots at pee wee girls football.

Our narrator is Artie Pendragon, a young man who epitomises teenage angst and anger.  A well he might.  His little sister is literally the epitome of evil, and the daughter of his uncle - thanks to a swingers party we're informed about, said uncle is now his step-dad after marrying his mom less than three months after his dad died in a riot at a pee-wee schoolgirl's football game.

As we're informed of this point Artie also tells us that crying isn't very anarchist and actually riots at pee wee schoolgirl's football matches fucking suck.  they don't fucking rule.

Thus ends chapter one.

Back home, the tv remote control - the excalibur 3000 doesn't work. Not that Artie has tried it, TV isn't anarchist.  When he tries to rob the batteries out of it to help make a pipe bomb to blow up his school and all the kids that pick on him on a daily basis, he accidentally pushes a button and is sucked into the TV set along with his mum and uncle/new dad and his sister.

Merlin informs him that he is the king of TV land as the only person who can operate the Excalibur 3000. from then on in, things get weird.  I would have been disappointed if they hadn't - with that cover on the book.

After his Uncle usurps his throne and his beautiful new wife, he has to go on a quest to find the holy grail in order to learn how to properly use the remote.

It's written in very short and snappy sentences for the whole novella. This does wear a bit thin in places.  The repeated lines throughout the story just about stay as a fun stylistic thing and avoids tipping over into being an irritating feature.

I raced through this in a few hours. It's weird and bizarre fun. I will be ordering his other works as they look to be great litte cheat reads. Hardly great literature, but certainly great fun.

Number 45 - My Best Friend's Exorcism - Grady Hendrix

My choice of book group book for Halloween.  Also my first Grady Hendrix novel.

You could accuse it of being a bandwagon chaser, following on from the success of the 80's nostalgia boom in horror at the moment, epitomised by the recent It chapter 1 movie and Stranger Things, but if it is, it's still damned good. And, looking at the copyright date, it was actually published in 2016, which means written the year before, so theaccusation doesn't hold water in any case.

I'm clearly late to the party on this one and this book could well have been one of the instigators of the current craze.

That cover is a thing of beauty and perfectly captures the spirit of the book. It's a glorious tribute to all the old teen horrors of the 80s.  A great coming of age story, centered on a likeable if occasionally bitchy group of friends at the top of the school's popularity charts.

Of course it's a posh school and our central character (Abby) is only there on a scholarship, her best friend of the title (Gretchen)  is one of the richest kids in the school, with extremely overprotective parents but still a bit of a rebel. With two more friends, Margaret and Glee, to round out the quartet of school queens, the scene is set.

After a disasterous experiment with some stolen drugs, Gretchen vanishes for the night.  When she's found in the morning she's not quite herself. And things get a lot worse before they get better. Gretchen complains of things touching her all the time and voices following her. It's so bad she can't bring herself to change her clothes or shower because of the invisble things touching her.  Then suddenly, she's better. She seems to recover and indeed is hotter and more confident than ever before. That's when the evil really hits top gear.


There's little to no real gore in this book, but a revelation regarding milkshakes was truly repulsive in an excellent way.  it's a while since a book has grossed me out quite as much as on of the chapters here.

Every chapter heading is the title of a classic 80s tune and the whole thing has the atmosphere of those old movies captured to the t.

This is deeper than it sounds, and amidst the mayhem and the betrayals, there's a moving examination on friendship, how it forms and how far will you go for friends? Particularly when they're doing the things happening in this book.

I genuinely wiped a tear or two away when I finished this. It could well be a contender for book of the year. I will certaily be tracking down evrything I can find by mr Hendrix. This is right up there with the best of Stephen King.

Number 41 - A Prescription for Murder- Norman Robbins

OK, so this is the play I was just involved in.  It probably counts as books forty one through seventy something considering how often I've read it in the past six weeks or so.

The story follows Barbara Forth,  a doctor's wife in a quiet village in the south of England. She's been constantly ill since the wedding although all experts say there's nothing wrong with her.  One day a stranger pops in for a visit (this was my character) wanting to speak to his ex fiance who he believes is married to Dr Forth. Except his ex fiance was called Grace Walker and no one in the house has heard of her.  He assumes he found the wrong Dr Forth and leaves, very embarassed. The good doctor also claims never to have heard of  Grace and is angry at the insinuation.

So why does Barbara then find a book on their shelves with an inscription that reads "To my darling Richard, lots of love Grace"?

That's the starting point for an entertaining enough story in which Barbara becomes more and more convinced that her husband is a bluebeard type character, leaving strings of dead women in his wake and collecting the insurances or just emptying their bank accounts. Is she his next victim?

The story is interesting and has some difficult to spot twists and turns. It is rather too wordy in several places though which makes it rather more difficult to learn than many plays I've been involved with.

Some examples of over-wordiness - when Dr Forth is telling his potential lover/stalker/(red herring?) about Barbara's illnesses and all the tests she's been through, instead of saying, "I've had every expert I know check her out, from Hospital A, Hospital B and even hospital C", the doctor lists six different doctors along with the hospital that they each work at - making for a long speech with a ton of totally irrelevant information in it.

In my first scene, I had to repeat the same information twice in a sequence of fairly long and quite similar speeches but just different enough that getting them mixed in my head was an issue.

When Eric returns the day after his embaressment, he tells of a misadventure the previous night where a car nearly hit him and drove off. In response to this, instead of saying "Oh well, at least you weren't hurt. I'll just go make the tea", Barbara gives a whole Daiily Mail editorial about the way the state treats criminals too lightly before going to the kitchen.

In fact pretty much every character in the show has at least one Daily mail editorial that they spout randomly at some point. I think the author's own politics may well be on show in this play and not subtly.

In the final scene, the village gossip comes in and gives information to the housekeeper.  After she leaves, the same information is repeated to Barbara by the housekeeper.  It felt like padding and the scene would have been so much tighter if both characters were told by the gossip at the same time. The housekeeper also goes from being suspicious of the doctor while the gossip is talking to her, to defending the doctor's name when Barbara repeats the same suspicions a few minutes later. It felt like clumsy writing and out of character for the housekeeper.  Fortunately, the actresses in the roles were convincing enough I don't think the audience will have shared those concerns and I'm probably just overanalysing the scene.

Overall it's not the strongest piece of writing, but a talented cast can (and did) make it work.

Number 44 - End of Watch - stephen King

Late to the party on this one.  I'm playing catch up on King's more recent work.  Which is difficult since he's still putting out at least two books a year.

This is part three of the Bill Hodges trilogy - Mr Mercedes, Finders keepers and obviously this one.

Whilst the first two books were primarily non-supernatural detective thrillers, this one picks up on the couple of hints to abnormal possibilities and runs with them.

The villain from book one, Brady Hartsfield, was despatched by means of a sock full of ball bearings to the back of the head in the first book. However he survived, and, thanks to illegal drug experiments by his doctor, has developed powers to move items and psychically inhabit others. If you can get over that plot detail then this is a tense and fast moving thriller.

The characters are mostly familiar to us from the previous novels, although Jerome seems underused in this one. It's written in Kings usual easily digestible prose and doesn't let the pace flag.  The last 150 pages are up there with the best of King's pageturners.

Brady is a thoroughly detestable villain and Bill Hodges is a fine King hero, flawed but basically a good guy. The rest of the supporting cast are well drawn, although I think we could have been made to feel more sorry for Library Al if he'd been properly introduced in the previous books.

The only thing missing from this book was the sympathetic villain - like Cujo, who despite being terrifying was sympathetic throughout as we knew this wasn't his fault. Library Al would have filled that role admirably.

7/10

Grimmfest final day

 Final day was yesterday.  It's taken till now to almost recover.

First up was Dead Dicks

This sounds like a knockabout comedy with its joky title and that tag line. There are some laughs in it, that can't be denied. The opening half hour is really quite funny and strange. Richard has discovered that every time he kills hismelf he is reborn in his bedroom through a giant vagina/butthole that has appeared from nowhere on his wall.

However, from a personal perspective, suicide is a very raw nerve with me because of events earlier this year so this film, however well made and acted it is - and it certainly is both well made and well acted.  As a result I was quite upset in all the wrong ways by this film - the ending  in particular seems to suggest that Richard's suicide is actually a good thing and will set his sister free to live her own life. I know I wasn't the only person who picked up on that vibe from conversations with other festival-goers later on.

Next up was a this little slice of surburban horror. A young woman moves into what eems to be a dream apartment complex. Unfortunately, as there always is in these situations, there's a darkness at the heart of this community.
It features good solid performances and some real shocks in among the melodrama. At least the assisted suicide in this one is portrayed as part of the darkness and therefore not a good thing.A nice Bodysnatchers meets urban gothic feel to this one. An easy 4/5


Next up - not strictly speaking a horror film, though it uses aspects of the horror genre.  It starts with a child cycling through the woods and mysteriously flying off his bike.  In the house belonging to the lead detective in the boy's subsequent disappearance, which is close by, strange tthings are happening. It appears to be the work of a poltergeist, or is the teenage son just playing up? Or is there more going on?

About halfway through the film switches tracks and rewinds brilliantly. We then see the key events of the first half all over again, but from fresh eyes. This totally changes our perspectives as we realise what's really happening.

The cleverest and most twisty turny film of the weekend.

 Then came Harpoon. Three friends on a boat to try out the new spear gun two of them have given the other as an early birthday present. What could possibly go wrong?

In the very capable hands of writer/director Rob Grant (Frenemies(Mon Ami) - and Fake Blood) anything that can do does, and with great prejudice. The boat breaks down leaving them adrift in the Atlantic with no supplies. Secrets that should best stay hidden come to the fore and nastiness of many varieties from sarcasm to psychological torment to flat out vioelnce ensues.

The story twists and turns nicely and a good sense of schadenfreude is built. Rob Grant gets better with every film. I hope he continues to make many more.
Easy 4.5/10

Penultimate movie - the Soska twins' remake of Rabid.  The original of this by Cronenburg is the stuff of legend.  If you haven't seen it, you really should.  It's one of DC's best early films and boasts some great performances.

This is a very diffrent film although it has many many easter eggs and name drops etc to the career of Mr Cronenburg.  It feels more like DC than the Soskas to be honest - which is probably a good thing - to be more honest.

It follows the plot of the original to a large extent, but set in the fashion world so they can incorporate some modern day satire and bitchiness into the mix. It's not as good as the orignal. There are screamingly large plot holes. I suspect there was some budget slashing went on somewhere because it does seem to lack the big set pieces hat come as standard for this type of film. We're told the contagion is widespread but we only ever see a few victims in the hospital. there's no sense of scale of the emergency.  In fact a fashion show is allowed to go ahead in the middle of this allegedly locked down and infested city.  Still an entertaining enough effort 3.5/5

Then there was a half hour short called Loom. It looked pretty enough - but the story of two city types heading out to the country for some outdoors excitement and meetig unfriendly locals is fairly pedestrian and held zero surprises after the first glimpse of fangs. A decent throwback to 80s monter movies.

And finally we had Little monsters - a feel-good zombie comedy following a typical waster character who's joined his 5 year old  nephew's school day trip to a local theme park to try to cop ff with the teacher. Instead, the army labs next door lose some specimens and they find themselves holed up and surrounded by flesh eating monsters.

Good hearted and funny.  It will probably be a bigger hit than I personally think it deserves to be. Enjoyable but fairly forgettable 3.5/5






So Hoghlights of the festiva after a day to let it all settle - Extra Ordinary, Why Don't you Just Die and either Every Time I die or I see you for my top three films.

Least favourite - Artik and Dead Dicks.

Grimmfest Day 3

To start the day we had the brilliant short Asparagus Tips.  An ogh so pleasant dinner party is in progress, when the new guest - the eponymous Miss Tips arrives. The reason for her extraordinary name is quite literally the root of a brilliantly funny joke. More of a comedy sketch with a really dark heart than a horror film but a great great start to the day.

The first full length film was Tone Deaf - an absolutely brilliant film - Robert Patrick (who you may remember as the first shape shifting terminator) stars as a Trump inspired redneck renting his house out to an entitled,  vaccuous, and shallow millenial with the intent of killing her to make an example and Make America Great Again.

It's one of the most unpredictable films of the festival so far - never quite going in the direction you'd expect. I've never seen the fourth wall broken quite this well since Haneke's Funny Games (although this is altogether more comic than Funny games and nowhere near as disturbing)

To say much more would mean spoilers.  An easy 4.5 out of 5

Next up was this Russian film.  About as black a comedy as comedy can get before it becomes something else entirely. A girl asks her boyfriend to kill her father. He tries.  Things don't go particularly well for anyone. This was one of the most gruesome films of the weekend so far, more blood thrown at the set than I've seen for a very long time. Subtlety is not this film's strong point.

Not particularly witty but laugh out loud funny for 95% of it. The other 5% even made me squirm. 4.5/5








The Shorts programme -

Much better shorts today than yesterday. Despite a technical glitch on the last couple of films these were thoroughly enjoyable.
Stop - a well acted and alll too plausible tale of a police stop with two black guys and a white girl in the stopped car. Only fault was that the story just kind of stopped rather than ending.
Changeling - Surreal and disturbing imagery throughout this one and a weird story indeed when a struggling mother sees strange visions  and transformations.
Bedtime story - proof that "It was only a dream or was it?" can actually produce a damned good and scary film.
The Third Hand - weird and witty, an office based dream happening becomes a nightmare. Fabulous prosthetic work on show in this film.
The Glowing - a great looking monster in this, but disappointingly it doesn't really do anything particularly interesting and felt a bit pointless - fantastic effects work though
Feed me death - another good looking but ultimately a bit pointless feeling film.
Turn - A trio of women go to an osolated cabin where they receive some strange visitors.Really well made film from Iceland - once again though, the story doesn't finish - it just kind of stops at a random point.  Still a damned good little film though.
Limbo - A good example of circular stortelling. Lovely looking film too -

After the shorts, we had this.  Well acted, good looking interesting concept behind it.  However it felt like there was a reel missing from it somewhere. It started in the same vein as Frailty (Bill Paxton's directorial debut)  and moved off in its own direction, or would have done if the script wasn't quite as aimless. Some lovely touches in here but this one was the least successful of the festival so far for me 2/5

Next up was the best comedy at the festival since What We Do In The Shadows several years ago. This shares the same droll sense of humour, but this time from a talented group of Irish film makers.

Rose is a driving instructor in small town Ireland who can see ghosts.  These ghosts are somewhat more mundane than we are used to seeing which is the source of much of the humour.  The script is so laid back it's almost horizontal. A one hit wonder musician is trying to make a deal with the devil - this involves the sacrifice of a virgin - cue the daughter of a local man whose dead wife still tells him how to dress.

Can or will Rose be able to come to the rescue. Fantastically witty and understated film. Imagine the exorcist if father Callan was a shy woman in small town Ireland and the whole thing was scripted and directed by the makers of Father Ted. This deserves to be huge. An easy 5/5

A vampire trapped in a shed, a bullied boy, a fair amount of behind closed shed door bloodshed. Those are the key ingredients in this one. It's good to see vampires that don't sparkle, that don't fall in love with the lead actress and don't moralise endlessly about their unlives. The vamps in this just want to eat people. That alone makes for an entertaining 86 minutes.  It might not be quite as scary as it wants to be, but it's fun and never boring. 3.5/5

Another unruly teenager facing off against a vicious monster. This time it's a 1000 year old witch that wears the skins of its victims. It can also make people forget that their closest relatives exist.

The film has a 35 years ago prologue which was never referenced again.  before leaping to "today" where we see the unruly teen being held underwater, and then it leaps to 5 days ago where we see the build up to the drowning attempt. It's all pretty well done, well made, competently acted.

Certainly no classic, but worth watching.  another 3.5/5.






The strongest day of the festival so far despite having the weakest full length film.

Grimmfest day 2

Film 1 - A Russian film that started brilliantly.  It was creepy and surreal with some really strong imagery and strong central performances.  Then at the halfway point it went totally off the rails.  Instead of following one character that we'd got to know well, we suddenly had 4 characters running round being threatened.  Three of them with no back story to make them interesting - at least up until just before they each met their demise. Also all the tension vanished.  After the amazing start - very disappointing.

Then we had the short films -I didn't rate these as highly as last years to be hinest. The Stray was very good. Road Trash was reasonably amusing. Boo was pretty good, if a touch predictable. The others ranged from pretty forgettable to pretty bad - Lost Films of Bloody Nora should have been permanently lost.  It was bloody awful.  Thank god it was only 9 minutes.

Film 2 -This was an absolute belter. Difficult to say much about it without spoiling it.  Sm is a young man suffering from blackouts.  He's having an affair with a soldier friend's wife. Things start from that fairly standard beginning and change to a tragic metaphysical drama. Brilliantly shot, written and acted.

Another belter of a film - similar in tone to Sightseers - this is a black comedy with a pair of women travelling around the south of England murdering self help gurus as their own personal therapy. I'm not sure the final twist actually works for reasons I can't say without giving spoilers.  But it's good enough I think I can let the huge plot hole slide for now.

This was preceded by a short film The Cabinet - which was easily the best short film of the day.

Pollyanna McIntosh's follow up to The Woman.  Well written and acted with a strong social commentary going on in the midst of the psychological and occasionally slasher horror. It bugged me that a killing spree seemed to get no attention in the town or the local school - but that may have been a sideline cut for timing purposes.

I love a good punny title and this is no exception.  It's also IMHO a pretty damned good film. A group of survivors from a sunken hospital boat are floating on their liferaft, close to the end of their supplies. Good news, a boat appears close by.  bad news, it's a nazi warship. Good news, there's no nazis on it.  Bad news, the thing that killed them is still stalking the corridors.  With some excellent practical monsters and  a really creepy looking vampiric pair of villains, this was a great fun creature feature in an unusual location.

Final film of the day - this had the makings of a good feature length twilight zone episode. However at 88 minutes it felt that the story was stretched a bit too thin and the ending almost didn't belong on this film. Having said that, it was never boring and the lead actor was good enough to carry the majority of the movie by himself.

It starts when he breaks into a 4x4 parked on a side street and gets locked in remotely by the owner. You need to accept that a car can somehow be soundproofed so when you hit the windows no one can hear you outside. If you can swallow that, then this is an entertaining enough way to spend your time, but, as I said on the top of this, possibly could do with being 20 minutes shorter at least.

Grimmfest Day 1

Film 1 - Tales from the Lodge - a reasonably funny portmanteau horror with a twist. A group of friends from University all now pushing 40 meet at a lodge in the middle of nowhere to scatter the ashes of one of their old friends. Whilst there they share horror stories that possibly reveal too much about themselves. Secrets are revealed and there's a big daft violent ending as events take a swing for the more unpleasant.

Johnny Vegas made for a very memorable guest.

The tone of the film is all over the place, there are some really creepy moments in there amongst the slapstick of the characters's relationships. And the ending is just asking for controversy. All in all I enjoyed it

3/5

Second film - She never died. 

A few years back, they showed He Never Died - with Henry Rollins in mesmerising form as some type of immortal - apparently Cain (as in Adam and Eve's murderer son) living in modern America struggling to keep his cannibalistic instingts in check.

She never died is basically a gender swap on the central idea. Very good looking film and very well acted, but I'm not entirely sure why they tried to tie it in with the other film as they are very different films. Olunike Adelyi is a badass indeed in the central role but whereas Cain in He Never Died could function in normal society, Lacey (our immortal being this time round) is homeless with almost zero social skills learned in the millenia the character has supposedly lived.

It's all very gritty and violent and the ending was a direct lead in to a sequel - maybe They Never Died where Cain and Lacey team up for more of the same.

Another 3/5 If they hadn't tried to link the films, maybe I'd have had less high expectations on it.

Final film of the day - Satanic Panic

This was great fun from start to finish. a pizza delivery girl accidentally walks in on a satanic coven and becomes the target for their upcoming sacrifice. It had a nice retro feel to it, whilst still finding some good original touches all of its own. Gruesome, gory and funny.  What more can we ask for.

Bonus on this was I noticed the screenwriter was Grady Hendrix - and the next book on my reading list is My Best Friend's Exorcism - by Grady Hendrix. On the quality of this, Im in for a treat.

easy 4/5

Grimmfest

This isn't a book.  This is an event happening down the road in Manchester starting tonight and finishing Sunday evening. Twenty brand new horror films and many short films to go with them. It will impinge severely on my reading time. However, as it's one of the highlights of my year, I will be posting updates on my thoughts on the various films and shorts on show over the next 4 days.

Watch this space