A Ghost Story for Christmas

For many years the BBC had a tradition of showing a dramatisation of a classic ghost story at Christmas. This tradition is being continued this year with Whistle and I’ll Come to You being shown tonight staring John Hurt. An adaptation of the same classic MR James story was shown in 1968 staring Michael Hordern beginning the tradition

Shoot ‘em in the head

Every zombie kill in The Walking Dead in 69s (NSFW)

Yay, the clown’s here!

Two commercial directors make a fake trailer for an ‘Eli Roth’ film called Clown. The real Eli Roth finds out about it… and he likes it so much he is now producing an actual film version.

No creaking gates, no gothic towers, no shuttered windows… Ghostwatch

Broadcast on Halloween night 1992 Ghostwatch – a live investigation into a haunted house – was one of the most controversial and terrifying programs the BBC has ever shown.

Saw I to VI in six minutes and sixty-six seconds

“Increasingly illiterate, disgusting and meritless.”

‘We feel that the stories in this book are such that if your nerves are not of the strongest, then it is wise to read them in daylight.’

For a certain time, in every second-hand bookshop in the UK you would always be able to find a musty and dog-eared copy of one or more of the Pan Books Of Horror Stories edited by the splendidly named Herbert Van Thal. Now the first is being re-printed.

Breaking the Fourth Panel: Neonomicon and the Comic Book Frame

Alan Moore’s recent Lovecraftian comic dissected.

Servalan in a sari plays the sitar

Jacqueline Pearce, from The Reptile, one of the Hammer horrors I’ve not actually seen, but after this I think I’ll check it out…

The Kneale Tapes

“Not suitable for children, or those of you who may have a nervous disposition.”

The Kneale Tapes, a documentary about British science fiction screenwriter Nigel Kneale.

The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue

Better get back to the car

The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue was an Italian/Spanish originally know as Non Si Deve Profanare Il Sonno Dei Morti (literally ‘Do Not Speak Ill Of The Dead’) and is known as Let Sleeping Corpses Lie and Don’t Open The Window in the US.

Made in 1974 it sits, both in content and style, on the border between old school Hammer-type horror of the 60s and the video nasty era of the 80s. There’s plenty of gut-ripping lurid special effects set within something that harks back to an earlier age, plus it’s non-British origins give it a strange, pretty much unique tone.