| Author | Message | ||
     Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 143.238.239.100 |
The BBC are adapting 'The Secret Of Crickley Hall', to be shown around Halloween 2012. Three 60min episodes, directed by Joe'Ultraviolet'Ahearne. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
'Crickley Hall' has the dubious distinction of being the only James Herbert novel I was unable to finish. Tedious stuff, which is something I never thought I'd say about his work. Not convinced it'll be any better on TV, but I'll give it a shot. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.40.152 |
I read The Ghosts of Sleath. That did it for me, with Herbert. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.40.152 |
I mean, I've never tried anything since. Not that it was great. Quite the opposite. | ||
| Matthew Fryer (Matthew_fryer) Username: Matthew_fryer Registered: 08-2009 Posted From: 94.12.171.50 |
I wasn't bowled over by Crickley or Sleath. Of his relatively recent stuff, they should do '48. But then I'm a sucker for apocalytica. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.40.152 |
I liked his early work: The Fog. The Spear. Haunted. Sepulchre . . . But then he got all Hollywood SFX on our asses. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.40.152 |
Also, he does something I really hating reading about: describes in some detail punch ups. What's the point? Save punch ups for the films. They don't work on paper. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
I agree, Gary. James Herbert's early pulp horror works have a great energy and readability about them that I'm enormously fond of - he was the master of that type of fiction, imo - but when he went more mainstream and his books became more ambitious and less punchy (har, har) I completely lost interest. My favourite of his was 'Shrine' (1983) but then I'm a sucker for finding horror in religious imagery... blame the Irish Catholic upbringing. | ||
| Matthew Fryer (Matthew_fryer) Username: Matthew_fryer Registered: 08-2009 Posted From: 90.200.140.60 |
I loved his Rats trilgy, particuarly Domain, and the Fog is probably the best of his lurid slaughterfests. Shrine was great, which probably owed something to my religious upbringing as well. And although I haven't read it for 25 years, I still starkly remember the scene of the bloke pushing his way through the melting window of a burning car. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.40.152 |
Sepulchre has the unique distinction in Fryworld of giving me a genuine nightmare. The few other books that have worked that trick include: Rose Madder Misery Grin of the Dark Midnight Sun In The Skin Cold Moon Over Babylon Very few others. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.23.40.152 |
Er, when I say unique . . . OK, I meant 'rare'. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.159.145.243 |
Uniqueness can be relative. | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.5.47.7 |
Stevie - I'm with you on this. I think SHRINE is screaming to be adapted for film. I don't care that half the population doesn't believe in God any more. I still think that book has the potential to make a very frightening horror movie, and is possessed of some powerful and disturbing images. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Once that imagery is in your psyche it's there to stay, Paul. I always found the life-size statues of Mary, Joseph & assorted Saints deeply disturbing as a child - I felt there eyes following me around the church. But worst of all were those gorily explicit displays of the crucified Christ - an utterly terrifying image and one we were supposed to kneel down in front of and worship!  All this came to a head for me during the mad summer of 1985 when I witnessed my entire country (it seemed), including my family, neighbours and many friends, go stark raving mad - believing they could see these same statues actually jumping about in front of their eyes and would stare horrified at anyone who denied they could see the same. At one time I was physically attacked with an umbrella, by a girl I was dating, who proceeded to declare me "in league with the Devil" because I had the temerity to say they were all nuts in her company! I think it was that year that my rejection of my religious upbringing became complete. Books like 'Shrine' helped me see the horror behind the hypocrisy. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I distinctly remember—and it was somewhere here in soCal!—a Roman Catholic cathedral (oh, yeah: I was raised a fundamentalist RC) with a life-sized statue of St. Lucy, standing there holding a dish with her self-gouged-out eyeballs resting in it. I should ask my parents if they remember where that particular church was, now it would be awesome to see that ("awesome" as in, "Dude! That's friggin' awesome!"). What an odd thing, Stevie—people thinking they can see the statues moving? Was this a thing going around then?... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
It was a few things going round. The statue of Mary, the statue of Joseph etc... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
Yes, Craig, a collective delusion swept Ireland in the summer of 1985 that had perfectly sane people believing they could see holy statues cavorting in front of them. I kid you not! Tell you what... if one of them had as much as winked at me I'd have shit my pants on the spot!! | ||
| David_lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 92.22.28.28 |
I remember reading about the moving statue thing, though it must have been another outbreak in the 90's as I was only a kid in 85. Apparently it's all to do with the natural small movements of your head - if you focus on one thing long enough, especially if your head is tilted backwards, it'll eventually look like that object is moving around. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
That's right. The official explanation is that these people hypnotised themselves in mass groups of praying devotees, all staring at the one spot, until some would experience the optical illusion/hallucination you speak of, David, and the rest would convince themselves they could see something too by a mixture of mass hysteria and maniacal peer pressure. The phenomenon has burst out again in small pockets since but the first and most widespread manifestation was in the summer of '85. It started in Ballinspittle, Co Cork and rapidly spread throughout the country. It is one of the most fascinating case histories of mass delusion of modern times and I experienced it at first hand. Twas bloody terrifying! | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.197 |
So I rewatched HAUNTED last night and rather enjoyed it. I seem to recall it being really bad first time I saw it. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Some films are like mumps or measles: the second time round you have partial immunity and it's a less painful experience. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Fandom is all about antibodies that make us partially immune to crapness. That's why we can see sophisticated irony, homage and intertextual references where the non-fan can only see crap. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
'Haunted' is one of the most underrated horror movies of the 90s. I've been saying this for years. It plays much the same trick as '1408' but is by far the superior ghost movie, imo. I found it genuinely creepy and with a marvellously paced escalation of surreal weirdness. Very well acted too and it really stood out at the time compared to all the other horror drivel that was being produced. | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.5.47.7 |
Stand-out memories of HAUNTED for me are: Aidan Quinn's permnently surprised expression, Kate Beckinsdale looking impossibly desirable - especially in the scenes where she is naked, which come with satisfying regularity - and one very spooky moment, when the hero tries to open his bedroom door in the middle of the night, finds he can't because someone else is hanging onto it from the other side, and when he finally does get it open, discovers an empty corridor. It's cetainly an oddity, a period ghost story made in the mid-1990s, especially as it's adapted from a novel which wasn't a period piece at all, if I remember correctly. I actually quite liked HAUNTED the first time round, but for some reason have never felt motivated to add it to my collection. I think possibly that's because it's a bit of a one-trick-pony - i.e. once you know the ending, there isn't much point watching it again. I never bought THE SIXTH SENSE for the same reason. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I remember it as a pleasingly atmospheric and creepy period ghost story of a kind they'd stopped making at that time - with great production values and a quality cast all treating the material seriously. From there it grew with unsettling deliberation into something much weirder that completely confounded my expectations - and I thought the nightmare pay-off was excellently contrived. A real overlooked gem in my opinion. I hated 'The Sixth Sense' because I basically twigged the twist in the opening scene and found the rest of the film laborious in the extreme, and not at all scary, as a result. 'Unbreakable' is the only Shyamalan movie I've completely enjoyed. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.14.22 |
Stevie, what puzzled me about The Sixth Sense is that people thought there even was a twist: I assumed that the audience was meant to know what the protagonist doesn't (rather as in Lovecraft), and rather felt that those stunned by the ending must have sat through Casper the Friendly Ghost saying 'How come he can walk through walls?' But yes, The Sixth Sense is what people who can't understand supernatural fiction call 'subtle': gentle, inoffensive, but as obvious as a prawn sandwich with a picture of a prawn stuck to the packet and the word PRAWN stencilled in the bread. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.103.100.52 |
On the plus side, it has a kid called Joel in it. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.21 |
Joel - I think we have to distinguish between well-versed horror fans, and those who go to the cinema as a form of entertainment. Of course so do we, but we must bear that in mind when discussing The Sixth Sense. Yes, for us, undoubtedly obvious from the moment he is shot. And perhaps for many cinema-goers, too. BUT, I think the film is a very fine film, that treats its subject with style and genuine love of the material. Once we discover that the ghosts are not vengeful or there to terrify (remember the fantastic scene in which the young girl who died of poisoning by her mother shows up in the tent in the house), the film becomes a different kind of story, one in which empathy and involvement are its biggest draws. That's what we need in horror films, emotional currents strong enough to pull in the most cynical of anti-horror fans. |