The Old Boys

A continuing and occasional series of short pieces featuring legends who have slipped into an alternative universe. This time - Polanski and Nicholson in Midnight Express.

Polanski dropped change into the drivers hand, thanked him, and watched while the old Ford, smoke belching from the rotten exhaust and the pistons beating through the block, disappeared into the darkness. He checked the smeared screen on the closed circuit TV and saw it was gone three. He sat down in the canvas fishing chair and felt his back twinge.

‘What were you just saying?’ his colleague said.

‘I said, I met Charlie Manson once.’

‘Seriously? Where?’

‘Just walked into my back yard and dipped his feet directly in my pool. Sharon wasn’t there, don’t recall where she was. But he just sat there and started talking. I gave him a beer.’

‘What the fuck for?’

Polanski looked up from where he’d been picking at the skin around his thumbnail. ‘Because it was 1968, that’s why. You aren’t that old, Jack. Don’t you remember all that shit? Free love, my man. What belongs to you belongs to your brothers, all that kind of thing.’

‘I remember. It seems like a lifetime ago.’

‘Not to me. Feels like only days since I last saw her sitting on the porch, sunlight in her hair, smiling as I drove away.’ Polanski looked back down at his hands, made as if to say something more, didn’t. Jack sat watching him for a moment, feeling sorrow for the pain his old friend still carried.

‘She was a beautiful lady, Ro,’ he said. ‘I know you still miss her.’

‘Everyday.’

A nearly new Taurus pulled up at the booth window, the steady throb of a hip-hop bass line coming from the vehicle. Jack pulled himself up from his stool and leant against the counter, his expanding belly pushing into the wood. The driver’s window rolled down and he saw white tattooed skin, wiry muscles, smelt the dope that came from the car. He suddenly felt hungry.

‘Evening fellas,’ he said. ‘Welcome to Ohio. Four bucks.’

The drawling voice on the driver suggested a long session had taken place. ‘Four dollars? That’s robbery, man.’

‘Take it up with the State Governor,’ he replied, giving the trademark grin that had lit the screen for the last forty years. ‘But if you’re driving across the border, I’m gonna need four bucks.’

A general grumble came from the Taurus and then the driver leaned out the window, the harsh sodium lights from the tollbooth making his skin gray, almost translucent. His smoke hazed eyes were a deep pink. ‘What say you just raise the barrier, old man, and let me through,’ he said, revealing gapped and nicotine-stained teeth.

‘Sorry, I can’t do that,’ Jack replied calmly. ‘It’s against the law, and I could lose my job.’

There was a quick movement, and a short, dull knife blade flashed in the drivers hand. ‘Better your job than your eyes, Granddad. Now raise the Goddamn barrier.’

Jack wasn’t shocked at the sudden threat. Work the midnight express for long enough and you saw the spectrum of human behaviour. He didn’t rush, didn’t change his expression, just reached down below the counter and bought the shotgun up and into position in one easy movement. The barrels had long ago been sawn off and the walnut stock fitted comfortably into his hand. He pulled back the cocks with his thumb and with his freehand carefully removed his sunglasses. ‘Four dollars.’ Behind him he heard Polanski sigh.

The knife disappeared, and Jack saw the whites of the drivers eyes, his trembling hands raised. ’Okay man, be cool. Be cool. I was just playin’ with you.’

Jack grinned, kept the gun raised. ‘That’s what I thought. Now pay or be on your way.’

The driver slotted the gear into reverse, his hands tight on the wheel, but before the car moved the passenger peered out the window, stretching across the driver. He was middle-aged, lank hair and equally stoned. ‘Hey, ain’t you the dude used to be in movies?’

Nicholson slid the dark glasses back onto his face. ‘Yeah, used to be. Now I’m just the guy who’s gonna fuck you up if you don’t turn around.’ He paused. ‘Now move.’

The Taurus backed quickly, tyres squealing, virtually spun on it axis and ground gears as it returned to the highway and headed back into Indiana. Jack watched for a few moments before sliding the weapon back into it’s leather holster and returning to his position on the stool. He felt good, felt the adrenaline in his muscles. Polanski looked at him with amusement.

‘What?’ said Jack, knowing full well.

‘Don’t you think you’re getting a little too old for this cowboy act, my friend?’

‘Hey, I’ve still got the moves, Roman. I’m still here.’

Polanski smiled and gave his head a small nod, reached for a well-used pack of cards on the shelf behind him and snapped the deck between his tanned fingers, started dealing. ‘We both are my brother. We both are. Let’s just stay alive long enough to enjoy it…’


(c) 2010 Rich Wilson

Fantasy Film Theory

I love the idea of alternative Universe. The theory that at some point in time the life we know so well split and fractured, and that in the vast expanse of the space-time continuum another world, the same as our own but slightly different, exists. In that world Bush never made it to the Whitehouse, I never pay taxes, 9/11 is just a date not a disaster. In my personal dream alternative, Hendrix and Morrison form a super group with Keith Moon, Lennon is Prime Minister, and Bruce Lee lives, taking bit parts in martial-arts epics and showing how it’s still done, even in his late sixties. In my dream world, a lot of movies would have turned out very differently. Sean Hartter obviously thinks so too, and as such has created a series of brilliant alternative film posters that have me dreaming about the possibilities that might have occurred, and probably did occur in another life. He’s a talented individual with an obvious love of the grind house and exploitation style poster art, as seen below. You can look at more of his output at http://hartter.blogspot.com/

Nothing at all wrong with John Carpenter’s original. But just for a moment imagine if Hitch, instead of ending his career with the lacklustre Family Plot, decided he’d take one more shot at the psycho drama. That was an alternative universe Oscar for Mitchum right there.


Ben Affleck as Daredevil was one of the more hideous movie experiences of recent times. Billy Friedkin would have done things much differently.


Wow. Waken, Bowie, Bava. Did someone just say the best film never made? Oh yeah, I did.


Peckinpah does the Marvel Universe? With Clint? I don’t need to say anything else, we’re talking motion picture nirvana right here.


Malcolm McDowell and Steve McQueen as Luke and Han respectively? Toshiro Immune in Obi-Wan’s robes? Udo Kier! With batshit-crazy Jodorowsky at the helm this could have been a drug trip for a generation. God, I would love to see The Star Wars.

Stephen King’s epic Gunslinger saga has got a television and movie green light under the wing of Ron Howard. I’ll give it a chance, but just imagine the violent, epic possibilities of a Walter Hill directed version, say from around 1978 with a post-Josey Wales Eastwood and a pre-Shining Nicholson…

Phillip K Dick meets Joe D’Amato in a Corman produced, Kraftwerk scored vision of the future.

This genuinely saddens me, because if a brain embolism hadn’t taken the fittest man on the planet this is the type of movie Lee would have been making.

I mean, I love Bill, Danny and Harold as the Ghostbusters, but C’MON! The titans of terror with Bette fucking Davis?

Nice to dream for a while, to think about what might have been. Until next time friends...

The Old Boys

A continuing and occasional series of short pieces featuring legends who have slipped into an alternative universe. This time - Quentin Tarantino in Nativity Massacre…

The child was maybe seven years old, dressed in a sheet with a messy crop of blonde hair and tears dribbling down his flushed cheeks. Other boys and girls stood around him on the bare stage, their eyes wide and their mouths open as the tall man in black paced back and forth, his arms wide and fingers spread as words spat themselves from his mouth at intense volume. Most of the words the children didn’t understand, but a few of the older ones knew they were words they would be punished for saying themselves. Swearing was very wrong.

‘Eleven times I’ve told you to walk across to the door and knock loudly,’ said the man, now standing with his hands on his hips and levelling his cold stare at Charlie, who was now shaking as well as crying. ‘Eleven fucking times! How hard can it be, really? Please, tell me?’

‘I, I, I duh-duh-duh-duh don’t kn-kn-’

‘Let me tell you something, Son, I had a crowd of Chinese extras on set at the Shaw Brothers who could take direction better than you, than all of you, and the only English they knew were the words for money and beer.’ The man stopped and sighed. ‘I assume you all understand what I’m saying?’

None of the children answered, just looked past the man to the sound of the gymnasium door closing, and the relief on many of their faces was obvious as heels clicked across the wooden floor towards them. Charlie ran his sheeted sleeve across his face and left a streak of tears and snot on the cotton. The man span around from his young cast and looked at Mrs Collins. Short and gray, plump verging on heavy, and the head of school drama. And since Miramax had pulled funding and every other studio had rejected his scripts and pitches, his direct superior.

‘Excuse me, Mr Tarantino.’

‘Yes? Can’t you see I’m working?’

‘I apologise. But do you really think this is the right way to approach this? Terrorizing the students in this manner. And I’m not sure some of this material is appropriate.’

‘What? ‘Vision’ isn’t always appropriate, Ma’am, neither is art. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t right.’

‘But I really don’t think the headmaster would approve of-’

‘Of what, exactly?’ Tarantino interrupted, pushing his cap back on his wide forehead.

Mrs Collins swallowed hard before she answered. ‘Of young Charlie Edwards calling the three wise men “motherfuckers”’.

‘Well, do you want to keep this play in the past, Mrs Collins, or make it fit for a modern audience?’

‘I can appreciate certain modern interpretations, Mr Tarantino, such as changing the stable for a drive-in motel, but I must protest over the use of the language.’

‘This is how people on the street talk, Mrs Collins.’

‘Perhaps so, but Joseph promising to penetrate the behind of the Innkeeper-, I mean, Motel Owner’s Mother is rather strong for six-to-nine year olds.’

‘It’s a strong world that we live in. People get fucked in the ass on a daily basis.’

‘Not at this school, Mr Tarantino.’

For a moment there was a standoff as they stared at one and other, their eye contact finally broken when one of the boys broke wind, perhaps with nerves. A small ripple of giggles began until Mrs Edwards silenced them with a practised stare. Tarantino took a step towards her.

‘What do you want?’ he said, his tone more controlled. ‘Tradition? Or cutting edge?’

‘What I want, Mr Tarantino, is for the parents of this establishment to buy a ticket, watch their little darlings, drink a glass of overpriced wine afterward and go home with a warm Christmas glow while the school counts the takings in the hope that we can buy new books next year. If we go down your route, we’ll have the governors rioting in the aisles and civil lawsuits bought upon us before we’ve got time to breathe.’ At this she also took a step forward, until they were almost nose to nose, and spoke in a soft voice. ‘Do we have an understanding?’

‘I’m going for lunch, I don’t need this.’

Mrs Edwards smiled as he strutted towards the doors. ‘I take it we do then? Don’t forget we have a staff meeting at one.’ She stopped, and then almost inaudibly under her breath, and purely for her own amusement, added, ’Motherfucker.’

Quentin Tarantino stepped through the doors and into bright sunlight, washing him in a wave of heat. His car was on the far side of the parking lot and he was already visualising the beer stashed beneath the seat. He started to whistle the melody to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly - that seemed to happen a lot recently. Cowboys liked guns, and a gun seemed like a very attractive prospect these days…

(c) 2010 Rich Wilson

The Seven-Ups

It’s been a while since I posted an entry of things that have caught my eye or that I’m looking forward to. That may have something to do with me filling this blog with bizarre and generally unwanted fiction that no-one wishes to read. Not this time, friends. Your humble narrator will now take a backseat to people with genuine talent, starting with this brilliant little short film from British director Matthew Savage and starring Noel Clarke. You may know Clarke from his on-off role in the latest incarnation of Doctor Who, but he is also turning into one of the most influential people on the UK film scene, having written and directed Kidulthood and the recent 4, 3, 2, 1. Reign of Death is a science-fiction noir in the classic style of Bogart, and shows real style and love for the genre. The good news is that with Clarke’s input Savage is seeking funding to turn his short into a full length feature, and based on this five-and-a-half minutes that would be a very good thing.



It may have a ridiculous name, but the trailer for The Cup Of Tears is a thing of visual beauty, showcasing gorgeous CGI blended with live action and coming over like the bastard love-child of 300, Sin City and Kill Bill. It’s the brainchild of Irish commercial and music video director Gary Shore, who worked for six months on the trailer in the hope of securing funding to expand his vision into a full length feature. And Universal and Working Title have picked it up for development. If done right, this could screw with your brain and polish your eyeballs. Although I will bet my right hand the title will change.



I know very little about Amock, apart that it’s from the artfx students of French university Montpellier and that it features much screaming and running about in the documentary style of Rec and Paranormal Activity. And there’s also some pretty nice creature effects in it.



This is nothing new, just a fantastic trailer for one of the very best car chase movies of all-time, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry. I saw this as a kid and instantly fell in love with Susan George (who was a staple of great 70’s genre cinema such as Straw Dogs, Fright and Venom) and desperately wanted to be the legend Peter Fonda. It’s a simple on-the-run tale as Larry and Mary pin the pedal across country in a beautiful, throbbing Dodge Charger with corrupt cop Vic Morrow in persuit. This story has been told a hundred times since, but never with this much style and just pure damn Seventies cool. Essential cinema for gear heads, beloved by Tarantino - a must-see action classic.



If you’re a fan of genre cinema, then you hold Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in the God-like status they deserve. While director buddy Edgar Wright has been putting together his adaptation of Scott Pilgrim Vs The World and preparing to go Global, Pegg and Wright have been making Paul, starring as two comic-book geeks who are on a road trip across America and pick up a friendly alien who has escaped Area 51. It’s directed by Greg (Superbad) Mottola and will be out early next year. All other details are shrouded in mystery, but if this first picture is anything to go by it should push all the film-nerd buttons - they’re at Comic-Con, for Christ sake…


If you’ve read my blog or social network shit recently you’ll know of my love for Canadian band Metric. Their Fantasies album from last year was a masterpiece of dreamy indie-rock, and Gimme Sympathy is the highlight, four minutes of the kind of music that moves the soul and makes you wonder why this four-piece isn’t playing everywhere. They’ve released a superb video to go with the song, and it perfectly captures the mood and spirit of this truly innovative band.



Finally, I know nothing of this except it’s about a young innocent who is drugged, brainwashed and abused by a corrupt clergy, receives a sign from God to seek vengeance on her tormentors with a huge arsenal, which she does, and then the church hires a motorcycle gang to track her down. IMDB say this is out next year. There hasn’t been a decent nunsploitation picture since MS.45, and I don’t care if this is so bad it’s good or just plain bad. I can be a cheap and easy date, and I’m sold on the title, that decription and this poster, and as such I WILL be watching a film called Nude Nuns With Big Guns.

Get Out Of The Water!

On June 20th 1975 Jaws was released into cinemas across the United States and Europe. It was the first film to ever open countrywide on thousands of screens, and was the first true summer event movie. In five months it become the most successful motion picture of all-time, a record held until the Star Wars came along in 1977.

Jaws, in my opinion, is a perfect movie. In the 35 years since it’s release a lot of box-office breaking pictures have come and gone, and very, very few have had the cultural impact that Steven Spielberg’s simple little monster movie has. I can clearly remember my first viewing. The movie had been re-released in 1980 and I begged to be taken along. My Father, a keen film fan and supporter of my blossoming obsession with films agreed. I was hooked from the opening bars of John Williams iconic theme, nervous by the time the skinny-dipping girl was pulled under the water, and terrified when Ben Gardener’s head came bobbing out of the hole in the boat. By the time the credits rolled I knew three things: I hated sharks. I was never going to go in the water. I couldn’t wait to watch it again.



It’s perfect because Spielberg knew that character was the key ingredient. In Roy Scheider’s police chief Martin Brody we get a sympathetic hero to follow - the audience is Brody in the film. He’s our anchor, and despite flaws one of the best leading characters on film in the 70’s. You see his fear of the ocean. You see his love for his family. We are given time to really explore these emotions before the second half where the film opens up with an impossibly young Richard Dreyfuss as Matt Hooper and the wonderful, grizzled old bastard Quint, played with utter perfection by Robert Shaw. They are total opposites - one studies sharks and one kills them - but they are constantly at odds on board the tiny fishing boat Orca, with Brody as the balance between them. As we’re drawn out to sea in pursuit of the monster we are drawn further into the story, and as with all the best films, drawn into the world. During the classic moment when Shaw tells the story about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis it’s like we’re sitting at the table with him. These characters totally take you along for the ride. You’re frightened with them, want them to live and survive.

And then there is that shark. You don’t need to see it to be scared of it. Quint fires three barrels into the animal and for a while all you see are those yellow barrels, bobbing menacingly along the waves, following the boat, and you know that whatever is attached to those barrels is seriously, deeply pissed off. Hooper goes down in the cage and the fish smashes it apart, effortlessly, like it was made of balsa. Salty sea-dog Quint gets bitten in half, and then there is just Brody… who hates the water, can barely swim, climbing up the mast of a sinking boat while that fin speeds towards him. The fish is a machine, unstoppable.

It’s perfect because Spielberg stripped Peter Benchley’s best-selling source novel (which is at best a poorly written pulp thriller with too much scientific explanation and cheese ball dialogue) down to the basics. The plot is one line: A giant killer shark is killing the locals of an Island and the chief of police has to stop it. From that simplicity is built an incredible film, which went drastically over-budget and over-schedule. Storms stopped production. The shark sank. The studio didn’t believe that a shark could be scary. Dreyfuss and Shaw clashed on set. But from chaos came genius - everything came together on this one. Steven Spielberg was firing on all cylinders, operating with the drive of a young man trying to make his mark. John Williams gave the film the perfect heartbeat. Carl Gottlieb gave it the perfect pace. Bill Butler gave it the perfect, real-world look. Every single actor was perfectly cast.

Jaws is lightning in a bottle. Spielberg couldn’t make that same movie today even if he still had Roy Scheider and Robert Shaw. It’s a product of its time that is, in its own way, timeless. It’s entertainment with brains, a summer blockbuster that is anything but hollow. In short, it’s a classic and will live long past its makers.

Happy 35th Anniversary, Bruce.

Dead Men Walking

The Walking Dead is one of the best comic books currently running at present. Robert Kirkman is the creator of this epic, on-going survival story set in mid-west America, which follows small-town police officer Rick Grimes, his family and a group of survivors who have banded together to survive an onslaught of zombies when the world is overrun by the dead. As the story progresses their personalities shift under the stress, particularly as their search for a new homes brings them into conflict with a crazed dictator called The Governor who runs a makeshift city and tortures Rick and his group, pursuing them when they escape and becoming more dangerous than the corpses they were originally trying to evade.

Of course, none of this is new. Zombie apocalypse is as old as horror itself, and the themes of man being more of a threat to one and other than the dead have been explored in everything from George Romero’s classic Night Of The Living Dead through to 28 Days Later. In fact Kirkman is unashamedly pillaging from the best of Romero for his tale. It works because if you get your kicks from the whole end-of-the-world scenario then you know pretty much what to expect, but it’s the ride that’s the fun part. And The Walking Dead is one hell of ride. Brilliantly illustrated and superbly written, filled with characters that are easy to like, villains that are easy to hate, enough pop-culture reference to keep the geeks happy, gore and violence, and a storyline that you constantly crave a new fix of. So far there have been 72 monthly issues and it shows no sign of stopping. It also shows no sign of fatigue - this is one book that can run and run.



Now cable channel AMC are producing a six-episode season based on the book, due to air Winter 2010, based on the first 12 issues. A Cable channel doing a horror comic? Which naturally means we can go down the True Blood/Dexter/Sopranos route of much sex, violence and splatter, essential if the book is to be done right. But the real ace in this bloody hole? It’s being written, produced and directed by Frank Darabont. Genius director of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, Darabont is a lifelong horror nerd who has searched for the right zombie material for years. And if you think the man who had Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman hugging on a beach can’t do horror, then you should go and watch his adaptation of Stephen King's The Mist again. Probably one of the most underrated movies of the last ten years, this was a (for Hollywood) low-budget production that could have easily passed for high-budget TV. It was also grim, bleak, nasty and didn’t compromise itself for a traditional happy ending. The Mist fucked with you, and I have no doubt that Darabont will be happy to let The Walking Dead do the same. Thrown in Gale Anne Hurd as producer (The Terminator, Aliens, Tremors) and no CGI, practical gore effects from the maniacs at KMB (Day Of The Dead, Kill Bill, and a hundred other films you’ve squirmed at) and this promises to be very, very cool indeed. AMC have released a few production shots that show some nice looking dead that could easily be lifted from the pages of the book. Your humble writer is, it’s fair to say, damn excited at the prospect of this on his tube.

Movies R Fun!

I love this. Pixar artist Josh Cooley has taken some classic movies and re-imagined them as children's books. These are very twisted and very cool...

Here's a thing

Feeling frustrated. Everyone but me is asleep and as usual the neurons and pulses that fire my brain are refusing to shut down for the night. I have a late 80’s/early 90’s rock mix coming from my stereo speakers - at the moment it’s The Pixies with Debaser - and all is quiet at Wilson Towers. I’m trying to write fiction and it’s literally like pulling teeth. It’s one word after another. Now I guess all writing is one word after another, but in my current condition it’s as if my fingers are pushing through syrup. I’m dragging the words out of my imagination, slowly, and the problem is what little is going down on the screen is, quite frankly, shit. Feeling frustrated. I really do wonder if this pursuit is worth it. Some days I can’t even write badly, and believe me, badly would probably be better than nothing - have you seen the money Stephanie Meyer is pulling in with the Twilight series of novels? Take it from one who has read a few pages with a mixture of grim fascination and a burning jealousy, Miss Meyer is never going to win the Booker prize. Feeling frustrated. I heard it once said that writing is the most solitary and loneliest of art-forms, that all those hours spent wandering around your own imagination can affect a person in unknown ways. Maybe it’s time I got out of the mind-station for a while, laid a cold flannel across my forehead and concentrated on the sound of silence. Maybe not. But I still feel frustrated.

Anyhow. I have a Blog and I write stuff here for people to read, and sometimes I put things on here that I like and I hope you will too. Tonights offerings are:

This amazing short film by Patrick Jean called Pixels. If you’re into old school videogames you’ll be grinning as Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Bomberman and much more attack and destroy NYC in two and a bit minutes that should make Michael Bay sit up and take notice before he pushes the go button on anything again. This is truly brilliant.



The Way Home by George Pelecanos. One of the writers on ace TV shows The Wire and The Pacific has been writing complex and emotional thrillers for almost twenty years, set in and around his hometown of Washington DC.. He’s one of my big influences and his latest novel is as good as anything he’s ever produced.

Letters Of Note is a fascinating website that will keep you engrossed for hours. Webmaster Shaun Usher describes it as “an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos.” The fact that most of the material on the site is from famous names throughout the 20th Century is a bonus, and the site has genuine and authentic scans and reproductions of the original material, like this letter below from Jimi Hendrix:



Finally, a fantastic remix from one of the best films of the last ten years. Shaun and Ed, dancing to electro at 4.00am makes Pete very, very angry. And makes me laugh a lot.



Until we pass by again. Goodnight sinners.

Dead Before Dawn

I watched Zombi 2 this morning (a.k.a Zombie Flesh Eaters a.k.a Zombie) for the first time in several years. My buddy Dan bought a super-cool DVD special edition a while back, convinced that due to his worship of Romero zombie flicks he’d love this one. He’d never seen it and I told him not to hold his breath, but if he hated it I’d give him the asking price. He did, I did, and now it’s the last movie on my DVD shelf. I can’t say I was surprised that he didn’t care for the picture. It’s cheap, incredibly dated, has routinely awful performances and is far removed from any form of style or finesse.

But I love the film. A lot of my affection comes from my age and the era I grew up in as a film geek. Zombi 2 was an Italian Exploitation rip-off designed to cash in on the hugely popular success of George Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead, which had been a massive hit, especially in Europe, in 1978. The Italians, ever quick to jump on the bandwagon, threw together a script, some gore and a clutch of actors and let hack-extraordinaire Lucio Fulci direct the whole mess. Stuffed full of lurid splatter and nasty violence, we get plenty of head explosions, throat rippings, gratuitous nudity, a splinter of wood in an eyeball and a superb underwater moment when a zombie attacks a shark. Seriously. It was sold at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival before it was even completed, was a worldwide hit and proceeded to make a fortune, revitalising Fulci’s career and kick-starting the new wave of Italian horror in the eighties.


Released in the UK on video in 1983 it immediately found it’s way onto the Department Of Public Prosecutions list of so-called Video Nasties that circulated Thatcher’s Britain and deprived many a movie fan of seeing what they wanted, as well as putting many small video stores out of business. I was eleven at the time, and already a huge movie nerd, and I can still remember the thrill of looking at the garish box cover art to Zombie Flesh Eaters (which was the UK title, and what a title) sitting on the shelf, realising that there was no way on Earth my Dad would let me see it. I’d been allowed to see Alien and An American Werewolf In London and The Omen, but extreme Italian horror? Not a chance.


But when you’re a kid, those boxes and those cool names burn their way into your fevered mind. I used to dream about Zombie Flesh Eaters and other flicks with titles like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Ilsa She-Wolf Of The SS, The Bell Of Hell, Cannibal Apocalypse, The House By The Cemetery, Tombs Of The Blind Dead… I visualised plots and scenes for these films, to such an extent that the actual watching and realisation of them could and mostly never did live up to my expectations. In fact, it’s true to say that by and large many of the titles that made their way onto the banned list are much more fun to read about than to watch. However, that knowledge only came to me in later years. As a pre-teen horror fan they rocketed to the top of my list of movies to see.

The DPP ban was successful and in 1984 many films were removed from shelves and my dreams died. But this young film fan was resourceful, and towards the late eighties I started to pick up film magazines like Deep Red, Gorezone, Shock Xpress and Sleazoid Express. Here was film journalism aimed directly at me, with promises of new films from Italy and Japan and appreciation of directors like Dario Argento, Jess Franco and Lucio Fulci. Writers who loved Zombi 2! It was also around that time that I discovered there was a network of like-minded fans who met at movie festivals, swapped lists of their personal collections, traded VHS tapes and didn’t let archaic releasing schedules or ‘banned’ lists preventing their love of cult and horror cinema. It saw a period of my life when my movie collection went from a couple of hundred titles to a couple of thousand, when I was writing to and trading movies with people from as far as Japan to Brazil (the internet was years away) and the rattle of the letterbox in the morning meant another crazed chunk of cinema, not the electric bill.

All that is a (long) story for another time though, because I’m getting away from where I started, which was with today’s viewing of Zombi 2. I couldn’t recommend this film to anyone whose love of horror cinema comes from the glossy, MTV-style product that Hollywood throw into the theatres these days. Movies like Saw and Final Destination have their place in this world, and I have seen and enjoyed them, but Fulci’s masterpiece (and I use the word carefully) is a different genre, a different world away. I suspect that if was a kid of this generation and I sat down in front of Zombi 2 for the first time, I’d hate it. It has all the negative elements that I described earlier.


But as I said, not only do I love it, frankly I think it’s fucking brilliant. A boat drifts into New York harbour appearing to be deserted, and it’s only when two shockingly dumb cops start nosing around the deck that a palid, crazed creature comes up from below and starts taking chunks out of them. Titles, then some nonsense with Tisa Farrow (sister of Mia) and the great Ian McCulloch as scientists who decide to head off to a weird island in the Caribbean to investigate the work of Richard Johnson (allegedly drunk throughout filming) who’s been experimenting on the dead. The first half of the movie comes on like some boys-own adventure with boats, islands and lost treasure, and then following an attack by the undead the second half picks up the pace with some relentless splatter as our heroes are eaten one-by-one until a fiery climax as waves of zombies are alternatively torched, get their heads blown off, or both. Farrow and McCulloch escape to their boat, but tuning their radio in they hear panic in New York. The zombies have made it into Manhattan, presumably off the yacht from the beginning (It‘s never really explained, and Fulci was never much of a one for continuity or common sense). The credits roll over a cracking shot of the dead shuffling across the Brooklyn bridge.


It’s such a mish-mash of a film. Italian production, an American actress with Farrow, two veteran British actors with Johnson and McCulloch (star of the classic Brit Sci-Fi series Survivors in the seventies and who would go on to appear in Fulci’s even more crazy The Beyond two years later). A film shot in 70mm widescreen but with shaky zooms and some dodgy focus, and in the case of the New York scenes shot completely illegally. But it somehow works. Lucio Fulci is still considered a cheap hack in the mainstream but he knew how to stage a scene and turn on the gore. Zombi 2 is always exciting and never, ever boring, which is something I can’t say about a lot of horror pictures I see today. It is of it’s time, and will never find new appreciation with a modern audience, but for genre fans of my age it is a true classic to be revered and treasured.

The only problem I have now is the burning urge to buy sparkling new special DVD editions of Fulci’s other classics and remind myself how much I love them all over again. In the old days it used to take weeks, sometimes months to get my hands on a film. I just took a look on Amazon. The Beyond, House By The Cemetery, City Of The Living Dead, New York Ripper, Don’t Torture A Duckling, Lizard In A Woman’s Skin… They’re all there, with re-mastered discs stuffed full of special features. And that’s great, really, because these movies deserve to be seen in the best possible prints by a new generation and by us old bastards who only ever had shitty third generation VHS copies to squint at.

These days collecting cult and strange cinema is so much easier than it used to be.

But nowhere near as much fun.

Sane Man

If you have no idea who Bill Hicks is, I strongly urge you to find his work. Head over to YouTube and watch as much of his stand-up work that you can find, or get your hands on his albums Arizona Bay, Relentless and Rant In E-Minor. I was exposed to Hicks around 1992 after seeing his live show on late night TV. It was a revelation, changing the way I thought about comedy in the same way that hearing The Pixies changed the way I thought about music. I was used to and enjoyed edgy, dark comedy that was being offered by the likes of Ben Elton and Stephen Wright, but Hicks was something else. This pale, lank haired, spec-wearing American was part-comic, part-revolutionary, part-preacher, screaming his diatribe at an audience who were laughing sometimes with humour and other times with nervousness. Hicks was funny but he was angry, attacking corporate business, the LA riots, the Kennedy assassination, mass marketing, abortion and George Bush Sr. Listening to his routine got me thinking about politics, about alternative music, about the importance of making a choice in my life that didn’t have to fit in with a certain crowd and about having my own voice. I may well have discovered those things on my own or with a different guide, but it was Hicks who pushed me onto the path. As I started to track down his work and find out more about the man, I also discovered that he was dying of pancreatic cancer.

Bill Hicks died in February 1994 at the age of 32. To say that his voice was cut short to early is an underestimation of biblical proportions. In the years following his death I have often wondered what he would have had to say about the current state of the America and life in general. Certainly seeing George Bush Jr in the White House would have incensed the man to a white-heat rage. I would have loved to hear his thoughts on 9/11 and our so-called ‘War On Terror’. Or the cult of Celebrity. Or Reality television. Or the Internet. There would have been so much for Bill to turn his intellect and genius towards.

American : The Bill Hicks Story is a new documentary that examines his too-short life taken from over 150 hours of footage from his early days on the comedy circuit, back through his teen years and right up until his death. Bill’s journey was similar to many artists. Drugs, alcohol, temperamental mood swings, the works. But unlike most such stories Hicks righted himself, kicked the booze, kicked the drugs (even though it seems that Acid was what took him to the next level as a person and comedian) and didn’t lose any of his edge because of it. The documentary reveals Bill to be a deeply complex individual who loved and hated the world in equal measures. There’s a particularly incredible piece where Hicks picks up a tape recorder and starts discussing his deep-rooted fears of having to live up to being funny. It’s a raw and honest moment of insecurity from someone who just oozes confidence in every bit of moving footage I’ve ever seen. Writing this entry and re-watching some of his old work made me realise just how much I missed the man, one of my true, genuine heroes. His words today are more essential than they ever were. As The Smiths once said, ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out…’

Mama

Andy Muschietti is a 23 year old Spanish filmmaker who has managed to get Pans Labyrinth genius Guillermo Del Toro to fund and produce his first film. How? By making a very impressive, creepy little movie called Mama, which has been playing at international festivals in the past year and causing fans to sit up and take notice. Rightly so - it's one of the best shorts I've seen in a long while, and it packs plenty into a little over three minutes. Muschietti is expanding this into a feature length fright fest that should definately be worth a look if he can keep the suspense and atmosphere seen below. Check it out and pay attention to just how long the main shot is and the environment it moves through. Damn impressive.

Lost In Translation

The TV phenomenon of the past few years (I found myself writing ‘the noughties’ and then realized that whenever I read or hear that phrase being used I feel like inflicting physical harm on the user, so I didn’t) returns tomorrow. Lost has had five (generally) brilliant seasons and I am very excited to see what happens in the sixth and final one. I’m also nervous. Nervous because I don’t see how J.J.Abrams and his crew can possibly wrap up every story thread and tie-up every loose end. We’ve come so far since Oceanic 815 crashed and washed it’s collection of survivors up on that beach. What started as a fairly simple Robinson Crusoe meets Lord Of The Flies tale has morphed beyond all recognition into a time-traveling, globe-spanning, mortality-changing morality epic of such scale, featuring so many major and minor characters with huge background histories and complex plot arcs that I fear the planned 18 episodes that remain cannot possibly have time to resolve everything.

Here, off the top of my head, are just ten of the many questions I’ll want answers to:

1) How is it that Locke is dead, and yet reincarnated as who-knows-what as the nemesis of Jacob?
2) What the hell happened to the Polar Bear?
3) The smoke monster, the island’s defense system, is…?
4) What actually happened to Clare and Christian Shepherd in Jacob’s cabin?
5) How come Richard appears to be the only Islander who is immortal?
6) Who used to be those skeletons that Kate found in the cave in series 1?
7) How come everyone has returned to the island except Charles Widmore?
8) The numbers. The six numbers that seem to tie everything together, mean what?
9) Who keeps dropping those Dharma food packages on the island?
10) Where did Daniel Faraday disappear to for three years, and what the hell was he up to?

I believe in J.J.Abrams. Before Lost he created Alias, a show that was equally twisted into knots, equally as brilliant and yet resolved itself before the final credits rolled. He resurrected Star Trek to fabulous heights and in doing so created the most entertaining blockbuster of 2009. He is a geek like the rest of us and would never knowingly short-change the fans of the show. However, I just feel that this is a show that is so loved, so adored and so scrutinized by it’s loyal devotees that nothing he does can actually live up to expectations.

Personally, I blame The X-Files for my worries. There was a show that I invested so much time in, and for the first six seasons it was fantastic, running stand-alone stories alongside an ongoing plot involving conspiracies, aliens, shape-shifters and God knows what. The problem was that the makers kept it going too long. Instead of bowing out at the top of the game they took the money and stretched the idea way too far. The leads left and were replaced, ideas and threads were dropped like a stone, and it all wrapped itself up in a tragic two-hour finale that tried to address eight years of questions in around an hour. If you rocked The X-Files, if you championed it and talked about it from the beginning when no-one else did, then it felt like a betrayal from a lover.

Lost will finish this year, at it’s peak, and it will go down as one of the finest television shows ever created. I’ll be with it every step of the way, and I’ll miss it when it’s gone. I just hope that the parting is sweet, and not tinged with bitterness. We’ve all come too far for disappointment…