Happy Halloween!


“Wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin, 
Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!” 

- John Greenleaf Whittier 

Happy Halloween everyone!

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Experiment IV – Kate Bush

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A couple of years back I wrote a piece about the influence of horror cinema and literature on the music of Kate Bush. I recently acquired The Whole Story, a ‘best of’ compilation released by Kate in 1986, and have since become rather ‘obsessed’ with one of the tracks featured on it: Experiment IV. Said track was written especially for the compilation and released to promote it. Along with the accompanying video it once again demonstrates Kate Bush’s singular vision as a musician, an artist - and a lover of horror. Taking the ‘storyline’ from the song quite literally, the video tells of a top secret and highly dubious government experiment to create a sound that can kill. That sound is, of course, portrayed by Kate in the video – initially as an alluring siren-like wraith (underpinning the notion of deadly music at the heart of the song; sirens lured seamen to watery graves by bewitching them with their irresistible but deadly voices), and then as a nightmarish spectre reminiscent of …
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Thanatomorphose

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2012
Dir. Éric Falardeau

A young woman awakens one day to find her flesh beginning to rot…

The title of this unsettling low-budget film comes from the French word meaning the ‘visible signs of an organism’s decomposition caused by death.’ Moodily shot and with very little dialogue, Falardeau’s feature debut is an unsettling rumination on the fragility of the flesh, and an uncompromising exploration of the dark realm where sex and death interlock. With it’s rather Cronenbergian concept of someone essentially trapped inside their own body as it rots away before their eyes, Thanatomorphose boasts an unflinching ‘body horror’ narrative that doesn’t shy away from depicting all manner of disturbing imagery and worrying ideas.

The plot, so to speak, follows a nameless young woman’s downward spiral into madness, as her already seemingly fragile mental state begins to unwind as her body decomposes. Kayden Rose delivers a suitably detached performance that enhances her character’s dissociative …
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Book Update: FrightFest Review

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The latest review of my Devil’s Advocates book on The Company of Wolves comes courtesy of the lovely folks over at FrightFest, and it’s another really positive one. According to critic Steven West, book is a ‘multi-faceted, intelligent and highly accessible study’.

I’ve copied the full review below, and you can also check it out (along with a wealth of other film related reviews, news and features) over at FrightFest…

Review

The early 80’s saw a mini-boom of werewolf movies reflecting the revolutionary advances in transformative make-up effects, which ensured that David Naughton did not have to disappear behind a conveniently placed desk while morphing into AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. The John Landis movie and Joe Dante’s THE HOWLING brought a substantial degree of self-awareness and knockabout character-based humour to the sub-genre and have endured as modern horror classics. Other wolfman movies from the same period have enjoyed less latter-day attention, including Michael Wadlei…
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