Behind the Couch

Situated on Stranmillis Road, Friar’s Bush cemetery is Belfast’s oldest Christian burial site. Hidden from view behind a huge wall and the Ulster Museum, it is quite a small graveyard - roughly two acres - but is the final resting place of a deceptively large number of people. The city’s official famine site, part of it is a mass grave of over 2,000 victims of hunger and cholera. Dating back to the 13th century, it is also said to be the site of the medieval friary of St Patrick himself. Every grave tells a story; most of famine and plague, some of bloody murder and body-snatching. The entrance to the cemetery - a beautiful old arched gothic gate lodge, was built by the Marquis of Donegal in 1828. One of the first things you see as you pass through the gate is a sizable mound looming up from the earth before you. Dubbed ‘the Plaguey Pit’, this mound marks the final resting place of thousands of unfortunates who died during a major outbreak of cholera in the early 1830s. Too poor t...

2008 Dir. Glenn McQuaid The night before he is due to face the guillotine, young grave robber Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan) confides in Father Duffy (Ron Perlman), recounting his years of misadventures in the ‘resurrection’ trade. Beginning as a young boy stealing trinkets from corpses, Blake eventually became involved with seasoned ghoul Willie Grimes (Larry Fessenden) and the dastardly duo set about making a living by selling the dead. And as it turns out, sometimes the not-so-dead… Dublin born Glenn McQuaid’s directorial feature debut, a wonderfully evocative and atmospheric period horror-comedy, follows on from and expands upon his short film The Resurrection Apprentice , which charted a young boy’s entry into the murky but oh so lucrative world of grave robbing. The same boy, Arthur Blake, is now grown up and has been imprisoned for his dubious career choice. The film opens with Blake’s former partner in crime Willie Grimes being executed with the guillotine as Blake waits...

As part of this week's Boris Karloff blogathon , we continue to take a look at the Uncanny One's work with distinguished producer Val Lewton. With work on Isle of the Dead coming to halt only days into the shoot due to Karloff needing to have a spinal operation, Lewton began working on his next film – The Body Snatcher . In early 1944, the ‘period thriller’ began to gain popularity again. Titles such as Gaslight and The Lodger had proved immensely popular with wartime audiences who relished the opportunity to step back in time to find their chills and thrills. After the 1930s cycle of horror films, Lewton had helped ‘Americanise’ and modernise horror with the contemporary Cat People , and many other filmmakers had followed suit; however it soon came to pass that period films were hot again, and Lewton, not content to just remix past glories, was eager to try and make his own mark on the period horror film. Lewton thought it appropriate to return to the world of literatu...