Ghouls on Film Zine


Ghouls on Film is a Belfast-based feminist horror zine ‘for scream queens of all genders’, the contents of which aim to investigate the world of horror from a feminist perspective, ‘exploring how women can find agency in a genre that is traditionally male-dominated.’ Editor Isabella Koban, the founder and programmer of the local film society the zine takes its name from, organises screenings and events in the Black Box (an arts and performance space in Belfast's Cathedral Quarter). These events typically showcase underrepresented voices within the horror genre, both onscreen and from behind the camera, and contributors to the zine are largely comprised of women and non-binary folk. The first issue features an in-depth essay on the classic Stephen King adaptation Carrie (1976), a think-piece on horror networking events, book recommendations from Victoria Brown - founder of the Readers in the Rue Morgue horror book club - and an interview with Belfast drag artist King Phisher.

Inspired by the Ghouls on Film society’s Autumn 2022 programme, issue two (my favourite of the bunch so far) is built around the theme of 'Hysteria and Lunacy.' Within its pages lurk pieces on Alice Sweet Alice (1976), Gaslight (1940) and Emma Tammi’s creepy prairie horror The Wind (2018). There’s also an interview with Irish film composer Die Hexen - who is emerging as the official ‘sound’ of Irish horror cinema having scored the likes of Fréwaka (2024), You Are Not My Mother (2021) and Double Blind (2023) - and an in-depth piece on Kier-La Janisse’s fantastic tome House of Psychotic Women, an autobiographical exploration of female neurosis in horror and exploitation films. There are also collages by Ann Upton, and a short comic by Kit Rees exploring various horror tropes through a transgender lens.


Issue three is structured around the Autumn 2023 Programme, ‘Hell is a teenage girl’, and includes pieces on Karyn Kusama’s cult horror Jennifer’s Body (2009), I Was a Teenage Serial Killer (1993), Indian period horror Bulbbul (2020), and an essay on coming-of-age cannibalism in Raw (2016) and Bones and All (2022). There’s also an interview with Irish director Kate Dolan (the chilling You Are Not My Mother) and a photography feature by Kathryn Webb, 'The Final Ghouls of Rainbow High', which reimagines various horror classics through a Queer lens. 

Ghouls on Film provides a vital space for underrepresented voices in horror, and looks to be the heart of a small but thriving community in Belfast. While beautifully designed and professionally printed, each issue still retains the passionate, punky, DIY spirit of homemade fanzines - self-published, low-budget, expressive magazines created by fans of particular subjects, and circulated within niche fan cultures. To keep up to date with Ghouls on Film events and screenings, check out their website, where you can also pick up copies of their zine. Support independent publishing! 

Popular posts from this blog

The Hallow (2015)

Image
When a conservationist encroaches upon an old wood to study a species of invasive fungus, he invokes the wrath of the Hallow – a clan of “faeries, banshees and baby-stealers” – igniting a terrifying chain of events and plunging his family into a hellish nightmare. Written by Corin Hardy and Felipe Marino, and directed by Hardy, The Hallow is a mean, moody, thoughtful creature-feature with strong elements of folk, eco and body horror. In the grand tradition of folk and fairy stories, Hardy’s film warns of the dangers of trespassing in places we have no business being, as well as offering commentary on the importance of protecting the environment and respecting the myriad other species – known and unknown – which co-habit this planet with us. Hardy and Marino’s screenplay eases us into the story, establishing the characters and spending time with them, thus ensuring later, horrific events are reinforced by a strong emotional core and skyward-rocketing tension. Adam (Joseph Mawle) and Cl...
Read more

The Sorcerers

Image
1967 Dir. Michael Reeves An ailing scientist and his wife create a device that enables them to control the mind of a young man and share the sensations of his physical experiences. It isn’t long though before the wife, drunk on power and obsessed with experiencing new things, begins to indulge her increasingly perverse desires, including murder. Reeves’ penultimate film is a curiously irresistible blend of horror and sci-fi, filtered through a cynical snapshot of swinging sixties London – and the moral vacuum of the characters – spiced up with various ‘mad scientist’ tropes. While it may be overshadowed by his last film The Witchfinder General , The Sorcerers exhibits as idiosyncratic and bleak an outlook on the corruptible nature of humanity as the Vincent Price starring classic. Both films peer into the depths of what causes normal people to do corrupt, despicable things, and due to its then-contemporary setting, The Sorcerers makes an especially powerful impact in this reg...
Read more

Whistle and I’ll Come to You (2010)

Image
Dir. Andy de Emmony After placing his wife Alice (Gemma Jones) in a care home, retired astronomer James Parkin (John Hurt) heads for the coast to revisit their ‘old haunts’, including the now out-of-season hotel they honeymooned in. By day he is stalked along the windswept beaches by a spectral figure dressed in white, and by night he is terrorised by strange sounds and someone, or something, attempting to enter his room… In the 2000s BBC4 attempted to reignite the old Ghost Story at Christmas tradition by adapting MR James’s A View from a Hill (2005) and Number 13 (2006). This series was short lived though, as their next outing wasn’t until 2010, and another reinterpretation of James’s classic chiller Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad . De Emmony’s direction captures the atmosphere and tone of James very well, and this film differs significantly from Jonathan Miller’s supremely unsettling 1968 take  due to a disarmingly emotional core. Neil Cross’s screenplay incorp...
Read more