Author Archive
Following Donna Condon’s rousing article on the apocalypse lurking just around the corner for horror publishers and writers, we are now giving away FREE HORROR BOOKS to cheer you up just before the end of the world really kicks in.
Several copies of each of these books are up for grabs if you can answer one inanely simple question (in fact, it took almost two weeks for us to think it up)…
That’s it. All over. Thanks to all those who entered. We gave a way a load of books. Might have to do it again someday soon!
November 2nd, 2010
Welcome back to The 9th Circle of Horror Reanimated….
On
this gloriously grim night, Alan Kelly lies bound and gagged in a sulphur pit! I, Adam Wolf, his blood-rag twin brother have replaced him! Horror Reanimated HQ think Alan is shooting his new TV spot ‘Alan K in the Mornin’ (those editors would believe anything I say - curse of looking sweet and easy I s’pose) but the truth is Alan Kelly’s got no talent. Wait ‘til they get a load of me!
Today’s guests are twisted twins and writer/director double act Jen and Sylvia Soska, whose debut feature ‘Dead Hooker in a Trunk’ is a genre bending, taboo-breaking melting pot of sexploitation/horror/grindhouse and just about every thing else. It’s one fucked-up adrenaline-fuelled ultra-ultra-violent psychosexual whodunit which has been making bloody waves on the underground film circuit and rightfully fucking so Sir. What makes this film more distinctive than any other are the iconic characters, the cleverly conceived storylines, and the talent attached who’ve delivered a high-concept action-horror thrill-ride that would make Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino go all girlish at the knees. Just check out the fast-paced and unapologetic narrative which undoubtedly has a resonance for perverts everywhere. Myself and the staff of HR included!
Jen and Sylvia had little more than an unconventional idea and a lot of odds stacked against them but persevered despite overwhelming criticism and accomplished their ambitious goal. They hope to inspire others to set out and take the bull by the horns and get what they most desire; not just filmmakers but folk from all walks of life and having checked out their film – twice – I wholeheartedly agree…
Adam Wolf: Good Evening Girls and welcome to Horror Reanimated, I hope your trip down here wasn’t too perilous?
Jen Soska: It’s our esteemed pleasure to be here. Thank you most kindly for having us.
Sylvia Soska: Thank you very much for taking the time to chat with us.
AW: You both wrote and directed your fantastic first skull-fuck of a feature ‘Dead Hooker in a Trunk’- when did you come up with the idea and how long did it take to successfully get it onto it’s feet, from your original concept to full-blown furious and frenzied film?
JS: Once upon a time, we were actors. We’ve actually been acting since we were itty bitty. We ended up going to a film school that had a kick ass stunt program, but little else. After the incredible stunt portion ended, we quickly realized that the film school wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. We had a short film project where our funding, which was supposed to be included as part of our tuition, was pulled. The school told us to just absorb into another group. But, as you may guess, that wasn’t going to happen. It was during the time that Rodriguez’s and Tarantino’s “Grindhouse” was in the theatres and we found ourselves leaving class more and more to watch the film and learn from the masters. We’d always been very inspired by both directors, especially Rodriguez with his “do-it-yourself” attitude and “ten minute film schools”. We decided we were going to make our own trailer as our short film. We came up with the title “Dead Hooker In A Trunk” before we had anything else.
We needed a title that would cause a strong emotional reaction, whether it be positive or negative. It had to be something that would make us stand out and be remembered. From there, we came up with several “trailer” moments that would be stand out moments in the film. Now our film school had a list of “inappropriate” content that was not allowed in our films. Not having the school back us up, we decided to pool our resources, get our own cast and crew, and pay for the whole thing ourselves. Additionally, we made damn sure to include EVERYTHING on the “inappropriate” list and even added a few things that weren’t on the list. They seemed to have left out bestiality and necrophilia… When the trailer showed at the school during our graduation, half the audience got up and walked out. The other half was laughing and cheering so loud you couldn’t even hear the trailer! We knew we had something special. Everyone kept asking when we were going to make the film and during the shooting of the trailer, we kept joking and saying, “we’ll do this in the feature” or “we’ll have to put that in the feature”. The feature was inevitable.
SS: After the initial trailer, we had more roles to fill and lost actors for various reasons – it was hard to find people who would commit to a project with our subject matter, even though it was mostly tongue-in-cheek, and with the knowledge that the only budget would be what we could get by maxing out our credit cards. That said, the people that we did get on the Hooker team are some of the best talents in the industry. In the end of 2007, when we started production, there was a writer’s strike in LA and all the work that usually trickles up to Vancouver disappeared leaving people that would usually have full schedules free to help out.
We started with four of the originals from the teaser – Jen and myself (writers, directors, producers, actors), Loyd Bateman (producer, stunt coordinator, camera, and actor), and Maryann Van Graven (producer, key-makeup artist, and stand-in) and started to build our team. The first was our Hooker, the incredibly tough and lovely Tasha Moth, our original Goody Two-Shoes left the film two days before shooting and we ended up rewriting the role as a male part and cast CJ Wallis who ended up not only acting in the film, but also cameraing, soundtracking, editing, and doing all the post-production with us, then we lost our second Junkie due to scheduling conflicts but found the ridiculously talented Rikki Gagne who is not only an incredible actress but also an amazing stunt performer. After that we started filling the rest of the cast and crew – we got the ultimate gentleman and wonderful actor John Tench (Intellegence, Brokeback Mountain, The Watchmen) to be our Cowboy Pimp, special effects master and great character actor David Barkes (District 9, Alice) to be our perverted Motel Manager, and in the brief cameo role of God, we were lucky enough to get one of the founding fathers of low-budget independent film, Carlos Gallardo (El Mariachi, Desperado, Grindhouse).
Carlos Gallardo and Robert Rodriguez worked together on El Mariachi which launched both of their film careers. While working on the film, Robert kept a journal that was later published as Rebel Without A Crew that illustrates how he made such a grand film on such a modest budget. It suggests that creative problem solving is your best tool on set and it really is. We came up against quite a few problems during filming that we figured out thanks to that book. I highly suggest it to any film maker that wants to make their own film – it saved us several times.
AW: You both involved yourselves in every aspect of putting the film together. From casting to stunt work to character craft and even gore clean-up. Was raising funds to get the film completed difficult and is there anything you would have done differently looking back?
JS: Ha ha, we kind of skipped the whole raising funds thing. When we were first approaching people, trying to get cast and crew members, getting all excited and saying this is what we want to do, a lot of people said it would never happen. They said it was WAY too expensive and there was no way to pull it off “our way”. We wanted to figure it all out creatively, but they told us we had to do it the “right way”. As you may guess, we weren’t dissuaded. Most of it came out of our own pockets. We produced the film with help from our fellow producers. It was important to us to not rely on anyone else or to go begging for money. It seems like something a lot of people get hung up on. No money doesn’t mean no film. It simply means that you have to be creative overcoming your obstacles and spend the funds that you do have wisely. I firmly believe that low budget doesn’t have to look cheap. We had things in DHIAT that we cut out simply because we couldn’t pull them off with the desired look.
As for what I’d do differently, that’s a hard one. Even the mistakes and hardships from the project I wouldn’t change because they’ve helped shape me into the film maker I am today. Sure, there were some very tough, valuable lessons learned, but in the end, I’d do it all over again. Also, it was important for us to do as much as we possibly could on the film. We doubtfully will be able to do so many jobs on a single set again and we wanted to show the world how many things we could do. We really put our everything into the film and wanted to be a part of it all.
SS: We applied for VISAs and Mastercards and maxed them out more than the traditional way of raising funds. We didn’t have the kind of budget that other films do, so we had to be creative and maximize what we could do. There were nights before filming where Jen, CJ, and I would go to the place where we would be shooting and spend the night set decorating so that it would look cool on camera the next day. There was one scene that takes place in a ‘Sketchy Building’ and we wallpapered the rooms with newspaper – cheap, but really nice on film. After filming was done, usually at a friend’s place, we’d stay to make sure it was back to its original form – clean and blood free!
There are so many more costs than I really knew about, not to dissuade anyone, but we had to choose between our personal costs (food, clothing, rent) and costs for the film. We chose the film every time, had cost-efficient meals (toast and peanut butter) for months, made arrangements for stacking up bills, but I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.
AW: Dead Hooker in a Trunk pays homage to the work of Quentin Tarantino, Greg Araki, Eli Roth and other members of ‘The Splat Pack’ and is a cool collage of Grindhouse, Sexploitation, Horror and Murder Mystery. Is that an accurate assessment, how much is your work influenced by other people?
JS: I think everyone is influenced by somebody, whether they let it reflect in their work consciously or not. Though we are very inspired by a number of film makers, Tarantino, obviously, and especially Rodriguez, we tried to ensure that our work would still be our own. We don’t want people looking at our work and saying, “That’s just some Tarantino rip off”. We have a very definite style and tastes. We try to make our dark senses of humor shine through in all our work. Since we were little reading Stephen King novels, it just seemed natural to us that some element of fun would exist even in horror.
Being twins, we talk to each other. A lot. Sylvie and I have a vast range of things that we like. Many of those things don’t seem to go together, but to us, they totally do. Our tastes do come through in our work. If we see something that disturbs or upsets us, we remember it and try to put it into our work.
SS: I have a huge amount of respect for the ‘Splat Pack’. There is something undeniably impressive about all of their styles – the culture-creating dialogue of Tarantino, the honest to goodness horror of a Roth torture scene, the gritty violence and harshness of Zombie’s films – I just love watching their work. I am definitely influenced by their work as well as my other favorite directors like Mary Harron, Takashi Miike, Robert Rodriguez, Paul Thomas Anderson, Dario Argento and so many more. Jen and I are total film nerds.
Since we were little girls, we have always been fascinated by horror movies and novels. I saw Poltergeist and got terrified. My mom rewatched it with me and made jokes the entire time; by the time the bodies were coming out of the ground we were killing ourselves laughing. We took humor and horror hand in hand. Whenever something actually awful happened, we used that humor to deal with it. Much later, it became fodder for scripts. I remember in elementary school a little boy getting hit in the back of the head by a baseball bat and it knocking his eye out of its socket. That’s in Dead Hooker in a Trunk and there are a lot of creepy things from our actual lives that make their way into our scripts. So, I guess, our story-telling is a mix between what we love and weird shit that we’ve been witness to.
AW: Each character (Badass, Junkie, Geek and Goody Two-Shoes) begins as a stereotypical template only to turn around and give you a good hard kick in the Jones. While filming did you do a lot of improvisation or work only with the original script?
JS: We wanted the film to have an epic, larger than life feel to it. Sometimes when you see an action movie or a horror movie, you have these characters that are the heroes that you never really get all that much time to get to know, but their personalities stand out big time and when you talk about them later you describe them as the cop or the slutty girl or the tough guy. We wanted to bring that element to our characters. We wanted them to be memorable. That’s also why they never change their outfits. You get to know that Badass will always be in dyed jeans, shit kicking boots, and a low cut black tank top. It helps people know them better. Look at any comic book hero. People like to know their super heroes. When Spider-man first changed his costume, everyone freaked out. Rituals like that are important.
SS: I love that no one has names, just the stereotypes that they would be labelled with. The only character with a name is Billy, the Hooker’s pug dog. The characters in a way are all stereotypes, but there’s so much more to them than that. As the story goes on, it’s nice to see how they interact with each other.
We stayed pretty close to the script. CJ is really funny, at the end of the scenes he would add a line or two to crack us up. There were some times that the batteries were dying or it would spontaneously start to snow and we’d have to tighten up the dialogue and change lines just so we could get what we needed. We had trouble finding a gas station to shoot in, so we had Badass get thread to fix her pants and find a clue in the locally famous Amsterdam Cafe. There were a lot of times like that where people would hear what we were doing and offer to help out. It’s like a warm, indie film-making hug.
AW: You both epitomise the creatively trigger-happy – well blow me, I’m bringing euphemisms back into fashion – and are working on something that is making me salivate all over my keyboard. Dogfight. Women are captured, broken and forced to compete in vicious death brawls? Tell me more please, spare no details?
JS: Yes. Dogfight is a project that we’ve written for two fellow incredibly talented femme fatales, Tara Cardinal (pronounced “Tar” like in heart, not hair”) and Devanny Pinn. Last year, during February’s first annual Women In Horror month (created by our now very dear friend and third Soska sister, Hannah Neurotica of Ax Wound zine), we started a Twisted Twins’ Massive Blood Drive as a way of giving back. We tried to encourage people to donate blood everywhere in the name of Women in Horror. Tara and Devanny organized a huge blood drive in California and we began talking back and forth. We met during this year’s Viscera Film Festival where their films, Song of the Shattered and Legend of Red Reaper, were previewed. If you haven’t checked them out yet, treat yourselves to a little google. These ladies are amazing and you just have to see these films.
Dogfight is and will be everything you’ll want it to be and so much more. Absolutely there will be very beautiful women tearing the living shit out of one another and being broken into submission, but there is, if we do say so ourselves, so gripping and deep of a story that you’ll be touched and sucked in not just by the babes. It will be totally horrifying and strangely beautiful. I wish I could give you every delicious detail, but for now, my wicked lips are sealed.
SS: Dogfight is going to be very different from what you’ve seen before. It’s quite a dark piece that really goes into the human fascination of blood sports and what it is like when these women are captured and trained as human dog fighters. The script has the undertones of the more brutal cinema you would see in European films like Martyrs or Inside. The women involved in the film are so strong and talented, we wanted to make sure that the story is captivating while the violence is shocking and horrifying. I think the common misconception would be that a film revolving around a female underground fighting rink would be more eyed-candy than horror film and I want to erase that idea. Think of any time you’ve seen two women fight or brawl. When I used to spar in martial arts class, I would partner with guys and girls. The girls were intense. Women can be vicious when they fight and that will be reflected in the film’s script. Unfortunately, we’re only able to participate in the script writing aspect of this film, but I have the utmost faith in the producing powerhouses, Tara Cardinal and Devanny Pinn, and their director, Sean-Michael Argo.
AW: Eli Roth and my dear friend Hannah Neurotica (of Ax Wound fame) have sung your praises and deservedly so! You were in Tarantino’s MTV Basterds competition. Is there anybody who is a mentor for you two? And also, what is Eli’s phone number?
JS: Eli Roth is a great friend and mentor. His support of us and our film have really meant the world to us. It’s incredible to know that someone at his level of success still cares about independent artists and work. He’s just incredible. Robert Rodriguez, who we always sing the praises of, is a big inspiration for us. We kept a copy of his book, “Rebel Without a Crew” on the set of DHIAT all the time and called it “the bible”. The way he creatively makes things work is just amazing. I love his “Ten Minute Film Schools”. At the end of his book he tells the reader to go out and make a film and he’ll bring the popcorn. I can’t wait for my popcorn, ha ha
As for Eli’s number, it’s 424-….hey, wait a minute!! You can’t hornswoggle me!
SS: Eli Roth and Hannah Neurotica are wonderful people. We sent Eli our trailer for Hooker to see if he liked it and he responded with interest in seeing the whole feature. He has been an incredible friend and supporter. He gave us advice that got us to our final cut of the film, he has passed the film along and promoted it, and he introduced us to Hannah – which was the start of our friendship. I feel so lucky to know someone who is such a strong voice for women in horror. Growing up, I felt like I was this weird girl who would never fit in and now it’s like I’m part of this whole generation of people who grew up loving the same movies I did. My mom was a big mentor to me – she and my dad were always very supportive of our love of horror.
We did compete in the MTV competition to parody Tarantino’s work to get tickets to the Toronto premiere, it was a lot of fun. We were one of the top three finalists. We didn’t get to go to Toronto, but we did get to meet up with Eli for the Vancouver premiere a couple of days later. He’s a really nice and down to earth guy. I’m really grateful for all that he’s done for us, his support has gotten Hooker far.
AW: For those of us who aren’t in the loop or too preoccupied by psychiatric assessments (I’m not being self-referential) could you give us all a bit of back-story on Twisted Twins productions and what are your plans for the future?
JS: Twisted Twins Productions is our company. All of our projects and scripts are made under the Twisted Twins name. When we were making Dead Hooker In A Trunk, it became very evident that we’d need to have a production company to do all the legal business under. Sylvie came up with Twisted Twins and I was dumb enough to disagree with her. I wanted Soska Sisters. She told me that we had to do Twisted Twins Productions because, aside from being overall better, it was a more appropriate name and, besides, our films would be called “a film by the Soska Sisters”, like the Cohen Brothers. What can I say? We’re suckers for alliteration.
SS: It is a good name, eh? We founded Twisted Twins Productions on December 11 of 2007 to do all of our film work under it. Jen and I have quite a few projects that we want to do with scripts finished – American Mary, Bob, The Man Who Kicked Ass – and a some that we’re been working on since we were fifteen – it’s a television series. We’re waiting to hear back on distribution for Hooker, complete our Youtube personalities documentary, Please Subscribe, and finalize funding for our next film, we’re really excited to start on a new project. Making movies is the best job ever.
AW: Like so many of the best of us, you both are possessed of such a wonderfully sick, smart and depraved mind(s) – is there sibling rivalry between you two? Do you have vicious sisterly clashes? Any graphic details you wish to divulge will improve our readership and raise my popularity (that’s what I’ve been told to say)
JS: Like all siblings and, I guess everyone for that matter, Sylv and I do disagree at times. Being so passionate about our work, it’s good that we care enough to stick up for what we love. It can get pretty heated, but we’ve discovered better ways of communicating and getting our feelings across to one another. We used to get in brutal cat fights when we were little. I think women are naturally more violent when they fight than men, but I digress. We’d throw each other into walls and tackle the other to the ground. Eventually we’d sort ourselves out and let up. The best thing to do was just let us work it out. If anyone ever tried to get in our way or get involved in our argument, we’d just turn our combined wrath to them. When we began training in martial arts, we made an agreement to never physically fight again (outside of play fighting which we both still engage in and would never dream of giving up!). We could probably do some serious damage to one another now. I collect weapons and have them all over my room, so it could get messy, ha.
Actually, that might make a good short film…
SS: There is a definite rivalry between us, but there is a greater camaraderie. When we have opposing ideas, there are raised voices and arm gestures, but I think that’s just our European background shining through. If Jen has an idea that I don’t like, I’m very blunt with her. She’s the same. We don’t waste time dancing around each other’s feelings – which is good practice for dealing with other people in the film industry who don’t give a shit about your feelings. Ha ha.
Before studying martial arts, Jen won any scrap – flawless victory. This will sound odd, but after training in martial arts, we talked through disagreements and scraps ended altogether. We do spar with one another to keep in shape. Jen’s kicks are brilliant whereas I’m more of a boxer.
AW: Well we’ve come to the end of our journey, She-Devils, and you’ve gained a loyal (and murderous, depending on the cut of the cheque) fan in yours truly! Would you like to offer us all here a parting shot or a shower of bullets?
JS: Thank you so much for having us! It’s been an absolute pleasure! We’ve been sending Dead Hooker In A Trunk to festivals everywhere and have been trying to get it shown in every place it’s requested. Please check out our site, www.twistedtwinsproductions.net and drop us a line! We’d love to hear your thoughts on DHIAT and our work and if you want us to send Dead Hooker to a city near you. We also have a blog on our site that we are constantly updating. You can get up to the minute details on all of our misadventures and upcoming projects. I’d like to send out a special thanks to everyone who’s seen and supported us and DHIAT. It really means the world to us every time you tell a friend about the film. All we’ve ever wanted was to make Dead Hooker as pure enjoyment for our audiences and share it with as many people as possible.
And we promise, the best is yet to come…
SS: You have two new twin friends, sir. Thank you so kindly for this opportunity to talk Hooker with you. Jen took my answer, so I just want to thank you, the reader, for checking out this interview. If you check out Dead Hooker in a Trunk please do message us and let us know what you thought – it’s rad to hear from you!
October 30th, 2010
Welcome back to The 9th Circle of Horror Reanimated!
Jovanka Vuckovic talks exclusively to Horror Reanimated today about her forthcoming six minute short film The Captured Bird. An otherworldly tale which promises to be told in the tradition of a Brother’s Grimm dark fable with nods to HP Lovecraft and has already attracted quite a lot of attention being accepted to the prestigious Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal, Mexico’s Morbido Film Fest, the UK’s Sheffield Horror Film Festival, LA’s Viscera Film Festival, and many others have expressed interest in screening the film, before it has even been shot. ‘The Captured Bird’ a film currently in pre-production already has some wonderful people onboard, including producer Jason Lapeyre, Academy-Award nominated production designer Anastasia Masaro (whose credits include Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Tideland and the Stephen King mini-series Storm of the Century) on production design, concept artist and art director Nat Jones (whose credits include 28 Days Later, The Devil’s Rejects and 30 Days of Night) and Guillermo del Toro (The Devil’s Backbone, Pans Labyrinth and H.P Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, which will be produced by James Cameron) and many others who will be delivering us to a place which will no doubt have an authentic sense of the otherworld.
A premise of the story is most intriguing: A little girl takes a wrong turn and finds herself in a realm which is presided over by The Shadow People. Folkloric entities which have also been the subject of numerous investigations into supernatural phenomenon and in the interview below Jovanka explains her reasons for using these chilling creatures in her first film. We also talk monster making, dreams, Guillermo Del Toro and lots more besides.
If there is anybody out there who’d like to get involved in letting This Bird fly, please go here: http://www.thecapturedbird.com/film/contribute/
In the run-up to production Jovanka will be interviewing genre luminaries over at The Captured Bird in her very own film school, getting advice from some of the greatest names in horror. I urge you to check out her website. I am very excited about The Captured Bird and know that you will be to.
So here are a few words from Jovanka and remember, once you’ve visited Horror Reanimated, you never know who’s followed you out, so mind how you go…
Alan Kelly: There are so many landscapes, the geographical and the psychological, the places of dreams, popular culture, personal mythology and memory. Will you be weaving together all the places you’ve seen, the dreams you’ve had and the art you’ve loved in your creation of The Captured Bird?
Jovanka Vuckovic: I’ll definitely be drawing from dreams – but they aren’t really mine. Let me explain: I have a twin brother. And when we were kids, we were definitely psychically linked. He was more of a “sender” and I was more of a “receiver.” We could sit in a room together and play these mind games where I would think of a word or image, close my eyes hard and Jovan (whose English 
nickname is “John”) would be able to tell me what the word or image is. I wasn’t as good as reading his thoughts, which is strange as I was for sure the more oddball kid. Anyway, he used to have these experiences from time to time that he’d share with me. Sometimes I would wake up after having dreamt people I didn’t know only to find out I was picking up on one of John’s dreams. He also had this experience – which I later found out is referred to as “Old Hag Syndrome” in which he would wake up paralyzed with what he described as a black, shapeless being floating above him, holding his body down so he couldn’t move. There was also the distinct impression that there was another one in the room, just off in the corner – watching. He’d cry out in terror but no screams would escape his lips. If I didn’t make it to his room first, he would come and sleep at the foot of my bed. He never had to explain what it was – I’d just ask, “Did you see them again?” Sometimes we see these beings in broad daylight as well. If you’ve ever seen those black, shadowy figures moving just out of your peripheral vision, you’ve seen them too. They are The Shadow People. What was especially terrifying about seeing them during the day was that, for us kids, it meant they were more than just nightmares. I still see them from time to time, but of course now I try to chalk these spectres up to the hallucinogenic effects of sleep paralysis. But you can imagine my surprise when I found out that many people all over the word have seen these beings. They appear in folklore and are a subject of modern paranormal research. As I got older, I encountered more people who claim to have had sightings or experiences with The Shadow People, sometimes in conjunction with “Old Hag Syndrome” – like my brother. An old boyfriend called me once in the middle of the night after awaking from a horrifying experience in which he was being held down by a black humanoid like figure while an old woman that he could not see but instinctively knew was there watched from the corner. I had never told him about my second hand experience via my brother. Later, the future father of my child recounted an experience he had with an old girlfriend in which they were both paralyzed in broad daylight while lying in bed. A shared hallucination? Perhaps, but either way I have been fascinated by these entities my entire life. They’ve imprinted on the folds of my psyche and I have to give them life in my own nightmare-like film.
AK: You wrote The Captured Bird which was, in part, influenced by a
nightmare you had as a little girl. Was channelling that purity of
emotion – the kind that exists only in dreams – and transfiguring it into
story difficult?
JV: The hardest part of channelling these creatures is describing them in
words but then a magical thing happens during collaboration with other
artists. Their interpretation of my words takes on a life of its own and
the creatures become a little more interesting. In their first
incarnation, they were more shadowy, but after discussing The Shadow
People with my partner, who has his own experiences with them, they
became more corporeal – our approach to them became more of a “what if
they really existed in a physical form” type thing. Then they just
evolved from there. Hopefully you’ll find them as creepy and unnerving
as we do.
AK: How did it evolve? Did it begin as a short story or treatment or did you
keep a diary of ideas and images prior to writing the script for the film?
JV: Believe it or not, this all started as a music video for my husband’s
band, Redeemer. We tossed around some ideas and they all kind of centred
on making it more like a short film than a typical video with a band in
it. Then, as I began writing, it really took on a life of its own. This 
story demanded to be told, so I ran with it. This short became a
platform for me to express myself as a filmmaker. I got my friend,
filmmaker Jason Lapeyre, on board to produce because I needed help
getting it made. Now, Redeemer is scoring the picture. I’ll direct a
music video for them in the future. A lot of people told me to
essentially alter my vision, reduce it in size and scope to something I
could shoot for 5 grand. But not Jason. Jason told me to just make the
movie I wanted to make, which is a $100,000 six minute horror fantasy.
It’s interesting when I look back on the script that came out of me when I
sat down to write. I’ll leave it up to the audience to interpret the
complex meaning behind the images in the film.
AK: “Calm, lasting beauty comes only in dream, and this solace the world had thrown away when in its worship of the real it threw away the secrets of childhood and innocence.”– Children, by their very nature are creatures who will seek out wonder, who will explore the dark corners without the knowledge of what might be waiting, just out of reach. By exploring The Shadow People I think you are tapping into very real fears, that dark shape which unfurls at the corner of our eye, the predators who linger in the shade, the uncertainty of making your way through a single day without our world being threatened. Why choose these particular beings and where/when did you first learn of their existence?
JV: Wow, you’re good. I love that quote from Lovecraft’s “The Silver Key.” You could definitely say that the little girl in my story has found Randolf Carter’s lost key. Lovecraft is most definitely an inspiration here. I started reading him when I was around twelve years old. I felt like I had discovered a secret only a few people knew about. It would be years before I encountered anyone else reading him. But back to your comment. Yes, children are creatures who will seek out wonder. They will often go where they are not supposed to – curiosity, temptation and devilishness is what drives all little boys and girls in fairy tales to take the candy from the witch or talk to the big bad wolf. This story is more inspired by the literature I read growing up. I wanted to write a gruesome fairy tale with my own very personal demons in the starring role. In this way The Captured Bird has more in common with stories such as The Steadfast Tin Soldier, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves or Heinrich Hoffmann’s Der Struwwelpeter than it does any modern horror film.
AK: Guillermo del Toro came onboard as executive producer, who else is on your team and can you tell me about what their place will be pre/post production and why you selected them?
JV: Guillermo is creatively shepherding the film, yes. He’s my Master Miyagi so to speak – his words, I can’t take credit for that awesomely fitting Karate Kid reference. To be clear, he has nothing to do with the financial fundraising aspect of the film – that’s all [producer] Jason [Lapeyre] and I. Jason is also a filmmaker and friend of mine and I can’t say this enough: there would be no Captured Bird without Jason. He has been a great mentor and producer – from helping me apply for grants to managing the budget and even day to day drudgeries of managing the social media aspect of our online community. He really commits 100% to a project, which is really a great quality to have as a producer. But most important, he never lets me give up. I’m immeasurably grateful for his friendship and guidance.
The rest of the team came together quite organically. [Cinematographer] Karim [Hussain] is a friend and filmmaker who’s got a great eye and Doug [Buck] is also a friend whose work as a filmmaker I admire very much. We were all having dinner during the FanTasia film festival in Montreal in 2009 when I told them about the film – back then it was a really vague idea that I described to them. We jammed out some ideas and in the process, Karim offered to shoot the film for me and Doug offered to edit it. To have such talented and experienced filmmakers as key people on my first foray into filmmaking is truly a blessing. I feel like with them around, I can’t screw up too badly!
Once those key people were on board, I made some phone calls to other friends such as [comic book artist] Nat Jones, whose work I am a fan of. He helped whip up those awesome concept designs that are on the website. I am convinced those drawings were a huge part of us winning the BravoFACT! grant. Everyone loves those illustrations. Then I called Tammy [Sutton], who’s going to do all the visual effects supervision and head up the VFX post production of the film. While I plan to do the creature effects as practically as possible, there are nevertheless a great deal of visual effects in the film. It’s just too ambitious to build everything as a set or puppet. Mike Elizalde’s Spectral Motion came on board on a recommendation from Guillermo. I was totally shocked when he said “yes!” [Production designer] Anastasia Masaro actually approached us after seeing our website, which is totally amazing as she’s an Oscar nominee – which brought the grand total of Oscar nominees on this project to three. [Storyboard artist] Rob McCallum agreed to help with the storyboards after a little begging. He’s hugely busy on big budget features and agreed to help out on my little six minute film. And last but not least, Redeemer. This whole thing began as a music video for them. My partner Shane and I were jamming out ideas on a plane for a video I could direct for them and we landed on this discussion about The Shadow People and it kind of went from there. It ended up becoming a much bigger thing and I still plan on shooting a video for them but they did some temp music for the film that I thought was totally amazing so they’re going to take a break from metal music and do their first film score. Based on the samples they’ve given us, Jason and I have all of the faith in the world that they can and will create some really creepy, atmospheric music for the film.
You know, I can’t tell you how grateful I am to have such a pro team on my first short film. It still surprises me every day.
AK: You won the Gemini Award for Best Visual Effects after working for CBS as a digital effects artist and you’ve decided to take the practical route with your creature effects in The Captured Bird. What will these monsters look like, have you already sketched/made miniature models of them? And how do you approach building your own monster?
JV: I’ve always been a fan of practical creature effects. In my view, there’s a lot of ways to approach monstermaking but for me, rubber is the only way to go. I mean, if you ask people what the great monster movies are, they’re not going to say Cloverfield or Monsters, they’re going to say The Thing, The Creature from the Black Lagoon or Alien. I did visual effects for a career so I know what looks good and what doesn’t. I can see seams and bad lighting from a mile away. So I think there’s a fine balance between using practical creature effects and computers together to create movie magic. It should not be simply one or the other exclusively. This film actually has a lot of visual effects in it – we simply cannot afford to build some of these elaborate sets so we’ll be using some matte paintings and other visual effects. But as much as possible, I want to stay away from 3D. I just don’t think it looks good enough. I’d rather see a guy in a suit than a soupy, digital monster any day. For the task, we’ve approached Spectral Motion, who has experience making practical monster suits on dozens of movies including Hellboy 2. The creatures in the troll market are amazing. Every time I watch that scene, I see something new. Taking my queue from “Master Miyagi,” I’ll try to shoot some practical monsters and enhance them with visual effects – a la the troll market in Hellboy 2. I think that’s the best approach to monsters these days. For the time being, the monsters live in my head, but through working with concept artists, we’re getting closer and closer to what they will eventually look like in the film. I have no doubt that Spectral Motion will nail the creepy, weird beings in my movie.
AK: What can you tell me about your heroine, this faery like waif who goes face to face with monsters? I don’t want to say too much more than she’s just like most of us: curious, tenacious and ultimately heading toward oblivion.
JV: I don’t want to say too much more than she’s just like most of us: curious, tenacious and ultimately heading toward oblivion.
All artwork: Nat Jones
October 18th, 2010
The title of my piece sums up the feelings of a large chunk of writers and publishers today: Are we doomed?
Within the book trade – both publishing and retail – the general feeling is that the grim reaper, with every mention of ‘economic downturn’ and every advancement in digital, gains more ground on the print book, which he stalks insistently and not so quietly. This coupled with an overwhelming sense of uncertainly means it’s a stressful time for all involved: booksellers, authors, agents, editors and publishers. The feeling is particularly prevalent for more niche areas of publishing, such as horror, and, within the more mainstream market, literary fiction.
The book industry has reached a point that is both exciting and terrifying. While there is a wealth of opportunity at the moment, it is, however, evident that said opportunity inevitably has its own consequences, which a lot of houses are feeling at the moment (such as Leisure Books). I don’t think it’s a secret that the book trade has been really struggling of late and that a lot of factors have elbowed it into its current position: the move from decentralised buying to centralised buying and the effect that’s now having; loss of the net book agreement without clear parameters in place to protect the industry from rampant discounting and, in essence, cannibalisation; the inevitable inability of the independents to compete on price, leading to the closure of many; Amazon; the recession and its inevitable effect across the industry; the collapse of Borders… I could go on.
Times are indeed tough. To summarise it briefly, the problem for an acquiring editor who has slots to fill and a minimal marketing budget to spend across the whole list in today’s climate is that it’s becoming increasingly impossible to acquire a host of debut novels from people who are unheard of and make them work in the current market. Therefore many publishers are now in a position where they are focusing much more. In other works, in the past where the editor might have acquired a few authors writing in the same area, they are beginning to be more selective, acquiring one with a really clear hook/usp (unique selling point) and putting their energy into making that author work. Subsequently there is a growing fear that new authors in these areas will find it more and more difficult to get published and I certainly see this being the case. However, I do think there are two things we should be dwelling on…
- a – focus is good, and although it does mean more money inevitably being invested in making already big authors even bigger, it does hopefully mean the quality of new fiction will increase as publishers strive to publish the best books they can in their specific areas
- b – with the advancements in digital being what they are, it is in an author’s power to make themselves go from unknown to known, prior to having their novel acquired
We’re also at the cusp of one of the most exciting times publishing has seen in its history. Three years ago, e-readers were something spoken about casually as a fad that may happen and now there are more than twenty competing versions. Sales of e-books currently account for less than 1% of market share, and publishers are admittedly struggling to figure out pricing, digital rights issues and how to market digital content (without making the same mistakes the music industry has), but it’s expected that this will increase dramatically over the coming years. Want it or not: change is coming to get us.
But now for the good news: I for one think the genre writer wanting to get published is in a much stronger position, say, than an author of a stand-alone general fiction novel, as there are very few communities to support them in the way that the horror community supports its own. Publishers want new authors to already have a presence. Coupled with the fact that there are now so many online opportunities for writers to enter into the communities that surround their genre, means that this is the perfect time for authors to say, ‘Right, what can I do to make myself attractive?’ I think rather than throw in the towel (or laptop, as the case may be) authors need to stop thinking, ‘the end is here’ and start thinking, ‘Ok, things are changing. What can I do to move with the times and work these changes to my advantage?’ The premonition that publishing is dead is a foolish one. What is about to happen is that publishing as we know it is about to enter a new age and those who evolve, and accept and embrace change are more likely to survive than those who don’t. If this is true of the industry, then logic dictates that it’s true of the very people who keep the whole industry going: authors. So in answer to the question ‘are we doomed’ I think, authors, it’s time to don the boxing gloves.
About Donna Condon:
Donna Condon is a commissioning fiction editor on the Piatkus list at Little, Brown Book Group where she has worked for three years. Prior to that she worked at Piatkus Books (when it was still an independent) and Virgin Books. She commissions commercial fiction across a whole range of genres.
And don’t forget, next week we have some of the titles Donna’s worked on to give away as competition prizes.
October 13th, 2010
In the next few days, we’ll have a cracking article on the future of genre publishing by Donna Condon, commissioning editor for Piatkus. Are we headed for a publishing apocalypse? Are horror writers damned? Get the inside curve right here.
Donna also provided us with some new Piatkus titles, so the following week we’ll run a competition, giving away copies of the following books:
Good luck to writers, publishers and competition entrants alike – the future isn’t what it used to be…
October 7th, 2010
Won Ton Baby is nothing if not a pertinent reminder that we should never reproduce; that anyone under four feet should be shackled to a wall with a cast-iron chain and their putrescent little bodies wrapped in razor wire – The Bad Seed, carrion-eating brats, caged here in The 9th Circle of Horror Reanimated would pose less of a threat than Suzi Lorraine’s Baby Won Ton. But enough about my neighbourhood; Baby Won Ton makes the kids in my neighbourhood look like ponies! Warm milk will never pass Baby Won Ton’s lips; he is more interested in making couture out of your entrails, that is, after he has choked you with his umbilical cord.
Suzi Lorraine first came to my attention when I picked up a copy of the horror magazine Gorezone, which was, at that time only a demented little fledgling. Her column Diary of a Scream Queen was the reason I began picking it up and it has since grown in popularity with sales of up to 90,000 issues sold per month. I can’t help but feel Suzi had a large part to play in the success of this rag. With over 40 films under her belt, most of which are in the horror genre, her acting career has allowed her to travel all over the world, filming in Italy, Canada, London, Germany, Argentina, Amsterdam, and the British Virgin Islands. She also co-hosted The Gorezone Film Festival in London last October and was honoured by fans in Torino, Italy during ‘Suzi Lorraine Night’ at the Empire Theatre with several of her films being screened that night as part of a Suzi film retrospective. Some of the films Suzi appeared in are Claang: The Game, Sea of Dust and Bikini Girls on Ice. Won Ton… sees her working both in front and behind the camera.
Suzi created the story idea for (and co-produced) Won Ton Baby, collaborating with James Morgart to develop the script. Together they’ve created a fusion of comedy and horror; a riotous celebration of the perverse, the ghoulish and the zany all done in spectacular bad taste. Suzi was kind enough to brave an interview with me – she is, after all currently devising sadistic torture techniques for serial killers in Hell – and answers all my questions with great honesty. For those who want to know more, read on….
Alan Kelly: Hello Suzi, welcome to Horror Reanimated. Could you tell me a bit about what first inspired Won Ton Baby?
Suzi Lorraine: Thanks! I’m thrilled to be here at Horror Reanimated. Couldn’t think of a better place to dwell, for a spell….
The idea of “Won Ton Baby!” was conjured up by yours truly about 3 years ago, when I was working on a short horror film. I was playing a maid, and the director had decided on a whim that he wanted my character to speak with a “sexy accent”. So being a goofball, I decided to start speaking with a broken Chinese accent. It amused everyone on set, and I said to everyone, “one day I’m going to make a film where I keep a quirky Asian accent throughout the entire movie”. During the same film shoot, my stomach was rumbling during one of the takes, and we started joking around about me spawning a devil baby who is also Asian. One joke led to another, and the idea of “Won Ton Baby!” was “born”.
I further fleshed out the idea, and drew heavy inspiration from my love of 80s killer baby movies such as “It’s Alive”, “Basket Case”, and “Child’s Play”. I wanted “Won Ton Baby!” to have the same campy, tongue in cheek vibe as these movies I grew up with and loved so much. I’m a huge fan of blending horror with black comedy. I was also tired of the rampant CGI that is prevalent in so many films nowadays, and I wanted to go back to basics – rather than special effects, our sfx team created a devil baby made from silicone that could be puppeteered. We still have the handsome little devil, although he’s slightly the worse for wear after all of his adventures in the movie.
AK: I think humour in horror is absent nowadays. Earlier I read that Marilyn Manson is to star in a retro slasher flick called Splatter Sisters, which was described as “sexploitation-serial-killer-movie circa 1989″. Do you think horror has had its funny bone ripped out? I ask this because Won Ton Baby is hilariously OTT and you have a flair for comedy (ala Goldie Hawn, the dipsy, cute, sexy and smart character) – I watched The Human Centipede recently and it was so unrelentingly bleak, it actually left a nasty taste in my mouth (no pun intended) – do you believe horror needs to be less…nihilistic?
SL: I know what you mean! The vast majority of new horror movies today are straight up and serious as hell! Even more serious than Tiger Wood’s obsession with hookers. These kind of movies certainly have their place, and are the backbone of the horror industry. However, for my particular odd tastes and offbeat strangeness, there are just not enough horror films with levity. I’m so grateful to directors like Sam Raimi, who is keeping the horror/comedy torch well lit. I was quite taken by “Drag me To Hell”. I’ve always been a fan of Raimi’s, and any true horror fan knows the Evil Dead series are classics!
As an actor and as a writer, I have to say I’m most in my element when I’m writing something that is off colour and amusing. Plus, let me tell you, it’s much more fun to make a horror/comedy than to make a horror film. More jokes and humor, less blood and anguish. Thanks so much for the kind words about my character in “Won Ton Baby!”. Do you know, it took me over a week to kick that accent after filming? 
You know, I can’t believe the buzz that “Human Centipede” is getting! I heard about it only a few weeks ago from a friend who was quite taken with the err…. unusual…. premise of the film. And just a couple weeks later, you must be the 6th or 7th person that’s mentioned it to me. I have got to watch this. It goes to show you how important word of mouth is, and how quickly buzz can spread, particularly in the viral video/internet obsessed society we live in.
AK: Did the Won Ton crew face many challenges to get the film completed, where you all working to meet a specific deadline – what problems did you find yourself up against, both in pre/post production?
SL: Our biggest challenge was that Baby Won Ton kept sneaking off to smoke weed and flirt with the extras.
Besides that, the time constraints were the biggest issue. For a few of the locations, mainly the restaurants, we had a very tight period of time in which we could film. The restaurant was not available until closing each night, so we began setting up around 11pm. Our production designer Jen Morgart worked tirelessly to convert the restaurant each night from Italian to full fledged Chinese! We shot thru the night, and needed to be wrapped by mid-morning so that the restaurant could get ready to start serving lunch that day.
Once the film was completed, we were working with a firm deadline to get the film completed in time for the Gorezone International Film Festival. The film festival committee had accepted a rough cut of the film, but we still had to work quickly to get the final cut finished in time. We had an amazing team, including our editor Ken Yankee, compositor James Todd, and composer Mars who worked long hours to ensure we met the deadline.
AK: That slimy, lusty little bugger. Special effects guru Ingrid Okola created Won Ton Baby and what a monstrous little fiend he turned out to be – really hope he was only flirting and not eviscerating those extras – did you have a clear idea of how you wanted Baby Won Ton to look?
SL: I really did. I pictured baby Won Ton very vividly in my head, even before the script was complete. I knew I wanted him to be very short and squat, almost Sumo wrestler like in appearance and girth. I knew he would have wild and wooly black hair/fur, and that he should have a definitive Asian resemblance. And of course speak with a gravelly Chinese accent. I wanted his teeth and claws to be gnarly and nasty. Ingrid Okola and Paul Mafuz of Wicked EFX did a phenomenal job creating the baby from silicone and literally bringing the li’l devil to life!
AK: Those teeth are pretty nasty! Like Emily Booth’s “Movie Massacre” you have your own sidebar w/ Gorezone magazine on serial killers. Can you tell us all a wee bit about this?
SL: I actually started the serial killer project on my own dark and twisted initiative, presented it to Gorezone, and they loved the idea! I’ve always been intrigued by serial killers – far from admiration – but simply amazed by the psychology behind what makes them do what they do. Every day people may have fantasies about killing someone, but the thought of getting caught usually stops them from following thru. But for these guys, the urge is so strong, that they readily off people with complete disregard of the personal consequences.
I decided to try something new with my Gorezone “Diary of a Scream Queen” column, and write short stories/editorials about particularly disturbed serial killers, focusing primarily on the less “famous”, less notorious whackos, such as Bob Berdella, Richard Chase, and Issei Sagawa. It’s opened up a whole new angle for me as a writer, and for the readers of Gorezone, and I think this content is entirely different than what you’d find in most horror magazines.
AK: When did the Divine Debbie Rochon come onboard?
SL: That’s an excellent question. We thought of Debbie even before the script was complete! James Morgart wrote the character of Madame Won Ton with Debbie in mind, and we hoped that she would dig the character and the script and would sign on. We got in touch with her, and were thrilled when she accepted the role. I’ve been a Debbie fan for ages, and it was a treat instead of a treatment to work with her! She’s so prepared, and she brought so much life, energy, emotion, and last but not least, comedy, to the character of Madame Won Ton. 
AK: You and James Morgart both worked together to put the flesh on the bones of Won Ton Baby and you’ve both collaborated before – have you any plans for a sequel?
SL: Indeed!
Delightfully twisted visions of “Won Ton Baby! 2″ are already dancing in our heads. Since Won Ton baby’s baby mama is part Cherokee Indian, we’re going to make baby Won Ton a Native American Indian in the sequel. He will have a drinking problem, a wigwam, and will own a casino. But as is customary with all things Won Ton, the white people will be the butt of the majority of jokes. Hey, we aim for equal opportunity political incorrectness.
AK: From the beginning I consider Gorezone to be one of the only horror magazines (I’m including genre magazines and excluding online magazines) to consistently champion underground and indie filmmakers/writers/artists. Would I be correct in saying that GZ waves -and will continue to do so – the flag for the underdog while simultaneously shining the torch on mainstream horror? What I mean is GZ puts cult/mainstream on an equal footing.
SL: That’s exactly it. The goal of the magazine is to help fans discover underground cult films, just as much as it is meant to help them discover and learn about mainstream Hollywood horror films. I think independent, lesser known horror films can be very exciting, in that they can really push the envelope and take risks that just wouldn’t be allowed in mainstream studio films. Often indie films are driven by passion, rather than the desire to make a buck. They’re grittier, often darker and more experimental. Indies can also step outside of the tried and true formula; you know the “paint by numbers” predictable formula that can be spotted in many mainstream films.
Gorezone is moving in a somewhat new direction, in that there is more of a focus now on substance, rather than just gore for the sake of gore. We don’t want to get pigeonholed into being a “blood and guts” only genre magazine. So we are definitely broadening our horizons, focusing on psychological thrillers just as much as slasher films. What’s interesting to me is that you can have a movie like “The Shining” or “Misery”, which in fact has very little onscreen gore, but your imagination runs wild. The things the viewer envisions are often even scarier than if the killings occur on camera.
AK: Won Ton Baby already seems to be generating quite a buzz — do you think horror filmmaking lacks a certain artistic or creative integrity. What I mean, there seems to be a lot of sameyness in commercial horror. Whereas Won Ton Baby, albeit very tongue in cheek – is a horror film where the viewer could see the love of the subject matter come through – it rivals and pretty much beats – or if Baby Won Ton had his way, chokes – all the other Bad Seed baby monsters that have come before (I am really hoping there isn’t a pun there, though I suspect there is — you’ve corrupted me Suzi) -
SL: I’ll grab your pun and run with it! Won Ton’s Baby’s bad seed will be the impetus for “Won Ton Baby! 2″, as the poor drunk girl he impregnated gives birth to a whole new generation of baby won tons in the sequel….
I agree – I see a trend of very similar themes in indie horror lately. Some filmmakers like to “paint by numbers” – i.e. scantily clad girl/s get chased by madman wielding ax, knife, etc. and then offed one by one. It’s a formula alright, but not terribly creative. With “Won Ton Baby!”, we wanted to of course keep the elements of suspense and horror, but focus on the hilarity and insanity of the baby. And the relationships between the Won Ton family members were paramount. James Morgart did a phenomenal job fleshing out the characters in the screenplay.
The true test of a movie is whether you care about the characters. If you’re half way thru, and you don’t give a “dalmation” whether the lead characters live or die, then the movie failed. It was really important to us to make the characters very robust and even heartfelt, so that people would relate to them, and hopefully root for them.
AK: When did you first fall in love with the horror genre, was there ever a time that you can remember thinking: “this is the dark twisted avenue I’m gonna go down”?
SL: I think it all goes back to Alice Cooper. There was just something about that first time I heard “Steven” from the Welcome to My Nightmare album. My brother played it at full blast, and I remember it echoing and resonating thru the walls, particularly lines like “Steven, it’s time to come home!” and then the baritone “I’m a little boy”. “No, I’m a great big man”. It was just so creepy, and yet so enthralling at the same time. I think during that one month, I must have run back to my brother’s room 6 times asking him to play that album.
In terms of actual films, the imprinting (ahem… damage) had to have been done while watching “When a Stranger Calls”, or “Halloween”, or perhaps “Carrie” or “Psycho II”. It’s so hard to pinpoint the first horror film that I watched that really made a hard imprint. I can’t honestly remember, I just remember them always being a part of my family. My brother and father are horror fans, so I literally grew up around that stuff. I remember being about 9 years old, and being incredulous when my friends told me their parents said they can’t watch a movie. I was like “Whaatttt?? Why can’t you watch “Nightmare on Elm Street” with me? Or even worse, the friends that would say, ‘Suzi, I’m scared to watch those movies”! I honestly didn’t get it, and felt bad that they were missing out so dearly. And therefore, they had to pay!! Mwahhhh!!!!
My cousin (decidedly a non-horror fan) can tell you stories about how I terrorized her (lovingly, of course) by scaring the living hell out of her at sleepovers. I would trigger some kind of creepy horror soundtrack/song that I had recorded, and then magically it would start playing and freak her out. Or I would cut all the lights and toss stuff around, telling her it was the ghosts. Or even better, I would dress up as a ghost, and scare the living daylights out of her! (Editor’s note: HR staff found this very amusing…)
AK: Could you give me three titles from film, literature and television which you loved and why?
SL: TV: “Twilight Zone”. Brilliant sci fi/horror tales, with an impactful moral message at the end of every episode. I love the creativity and originality of the series. Riveting, and fascinating. And I love the fact that an episode could be completely creepy and/or terrifying without showing a drop of blood onscreen.
Film: “The Shining”. An example of an all around perfect horror film. You have a picturesque and oh so creepy old mansion, feelings of complete exclusion and isolation from society (and reality), and of course, the one and only Jack Nicholson, who was simply brilliant in the role, as he becomes slowly unwound and homicidal. Not to mention the ground breaking cinematography and art direction of the master Stanley Kubrick.
Literature: “Solitaire”, by Kelley Eskridge. It’s a sci-fi styled fictional account of a young woman in a post modern time who was convicted of a crime she didn’t commit, and was setenced to many decades of solitary confinement. However, in this futuristic world, the justice system has been using a technique in which prisoners are put into a catatonic style “sleep” in which hours seem like days, even years. So an 80 year sentence feels to the prisoner like 80 years, but can be completed in a year or 2. It was a really riveting account of this young girl’s struggles and the way she dealt with the insanity of being isolated for such a long period of time. The book also details her return to society, and how many demons she had to deal with as a result of her solitary imprisonment time.
AK: What are you thoughts on horror on the small-screen, you mentioned The Twilight Zone above – I’m excited about The Walking Dead and really like True Blood and Being Human.
SL: I think horror on the small screen can have tremendous potential, however there really haven’t been too many lasting series dedicated to it as of yet. Of course there are a million and one forensics/crime dramas out there like CSI and Criminal Minds, which are fantastic in their own right, however they are more psychological thriller/forensics based than actual horror.
I have also heard great things about the TV series “Dexter”, although I have yet to check it out. I recently discovered the “Chiller Channel” here in the US, and am loving the content! Speaking of good TV series, they recently played an “American Gothic” marathon on Chiller. What an intriguing show, with outstanding characters. I love that great comedic character actor, Gary Cole, and young Lucas Black (“Swingblade”) is also outstanding in the series.
AK: Thank you Suzi for taking the time to talk to me…
SL: Thanks so much for doing this interview with me Alan! It has been a lot of fun. I loved all your questions!
August 7th, 2010
Many of you will be familiar with our guest today, Johnny Mains. His mission to resurrect The Pan Book of Horror Stories has made him an instant legend in the horror community. As I said to him in a recent Facebook exchange, he is at the forefront of Horror Reanimation.
I invited Johnny to join us here in the Hell-realms of Horror Reanimated where we could interrogate him properly – a chat on Facebook never quite satisfies, does it? At least down here, where the walls drip pus-thick sulphur and our interrogation equipment never fails, we could get to know each other…more intimately. He could barely wait to get his genitals through our mini-guillotine!
Unfortunately, Johnny pressed the wrong button in the lift (B is for Blowtorch not Basement!) and got a bit of a roasting.
Joseph D’Lacey: Hi, Johnny. Thanks for riding the elevator down to Satan’s crypt – where the resident bloggers are enslaved for all eternity. You’re looking a little crispy but I’m sure we can soon excise the excess dermis. Anyway, we’re delighted to have you here – Mathew’s been blunting his razors in anticipation.
Johnny Mains: Afternoon Joseph, and in honour of my recent holiday to Portugal, I shall call you ‘Senhor Slicer Pênis Pequeno.’
And Mathew needs to use those razors on his beard, or he needs to grow it out a bit. It looks like a snail with a bad belly has been
Mathew's beard, eating his face and drinking his beer
running all over his manly jaw. But it’s good to be at HR and thanks for inviting me!
JD’L: You must have a soul-level connection with the genre to be involved with it so deeply. Were your first feelings of horror caused by something in real life or by something from the world of entertainment? What got you hooked?
JM : When I was a child I lived not too far from an area where there used to be a Roman Fort called Trimontium. But even closer to me were the remains of a Roman Marching Camp – something I didn’t find out about until I was in my twenties. So, when I was around eight years old I was ill in bed, it was a Saturday afternoon and I heard what I believed to be the sounds of a deafening Roman Legion trample through my farmhouse bedroom. Scared the absolute shit out of me. The braying of hundreds of horses, clanking of light and heavy metals; (I hid under the covers as it was scaring me) people talking in a deep raucous foreign language.
For the obvious reasons I never told my parents, and as I grew up I truly believed that the ghosts of these Romans had walked through the house. Then one Christmas I was given an Armada Ghost Book and the connection with my experience and ghosts in these stories was made. I recieved many of these books and each story in their own way reminded me of my experience in which the terror I had felt duly morphed with time into a delicious thrill. I continued to be a fan of the ghostly tale until I discovered Stephen King (Carrie) at the age of twelve and the Pan Book of Horror Stories at the age of thirteen. Then that’s when my love of horror truly began.
JD’L: Horror is often described not as a genre but as a sensation or experience. This may make it harder to categorise but it strikes me as a useful distinction. As someone who’s involved so fundamentally, what are your thoughts on defining the genre?
JM: Something I might find frightening might be laughable to someone else, and this, while amusingly ironic, is the definition of the genre. Individual perceptions make it (horror) what it is.
JD’: Why do we have horror in the first place? Surely in a sane world, people wouldn’t want to be any more frightened than they already are. What’s the use of it, do you think, and why does it endure?
JM: As a collector of ghost/horror anthologies I am truly staggered at the books I come across that were published in the years immediately and following the First and Second World Wars. You would have thought that books of this kind would be almost impossible to track down – after the aftermath of millions of soldiers butchered on the battlefields, the traumas of the blitz, the understanding of what the Final Solution meant – would you want to read a horror story when there was this terrifying legacy to deal and to live with?
It goes to show that even though we may face real life horrors – sadly as relevant today as they were back then, we still like to be thrilled with the horror we can stop at will, the terrifying that we are in complete charge of. In this regard horror will always be with us, and that we can choose to be a part of it, or not.
JD’L: Has horror changed much or are we merely seeing the same old stories told in slightly different ways? I suppose what I’m wondering is, have the archetypes of horror developed or altered in response to changes in society?
JM: There are bound to be homages, rip-offs, re-treads, call them what you will of the core ideas, myths, and legends of the genre that are out there – but on that flip side there are startling new voices and even people who are firmly established – like say for instance Nicholas Royle who is always there with his new exciting spins on the genre. Stories for instance like Unfollow (marvellous Twitter inspired short story), The Children (a very creepy take on the package holiday) and others continue to prove that he is on top of his game.
JD’L: Film, literature, art, music and video games are all viable media for presenting Horror. There are probably many others I haven’t thought of. Which do you think has the greatest potential to scare people?
JM: I think literature, for me is the one that is scariest. Sitting on your own, late at night, reading a suitably creepy short story or novel…and the house starts settling down, making it’s noises, creaks and groans… something outside makes a noise, a twig snaps…
Most of all I miss being a kid and telling the most goriest stories while being on overnight excursions or hearing stories from other countries while on exchange. Each storyteller would try to outballs the latter one.
So yeah, Literature first, spoken word second, music third.
JD’L: Can you tell us a little about what prompted you to bring back The Pan Books of Horror Stories?
JM: I’ve been a fan of it since I was 13 years old and a few years ago I was looking for information on one of the authors to my favourite short story from the Pans and couldn’t find anything on him at all! So I started a research kick, with the aims of bringing out a history book of the Pan Horrors. I got sidetracked by several of the authors I got in touch with saying they had nice new unpublished stories. The book is now an anthology with a bit of history in it – I’ve been the first person to seriously look into the world of Herbert van Thal, the series’ original editor. He didn’t disappoint!
JD’L: What kind of experience has that turned out to be?
JM: Tiring, exhilarating, mindblowing. I’ve been in touch with around 40 odd authors, can now call quite a few of them friends, as a fan it’s been great because I now have every book from 4 – 30 signed! But it all culminated at the World Horror Convention with the Pan Horror panel which I fronted, a moment I will treasure for the rest of my life. And it’s ongoing, still uncovering facts, secrets and new (old) authors!
JD’L: Well, I and many others thank you for your perseverance and hard work, Johnny. I mean that very sincerely.
I recently read an article about Cory Doctorow’s approach to marketing his fiction. He’s big into making his work available for free on the internet as well as selling hardcopy. What are your thoughts about the future of publishing – particularly Horror publishing – with regard to the online/dead-tree split?
JM: Publishers are rightly shitting themselves, books can be produced cheaper now than they ever were. Of course, you have to wade through more crap to find the nuggets more than ever, but I think the small press (to a certain degree – see below) is in a healthy place. I think if you can afford to give out your stuff for free on the internet – then good for you, but why would I want to pay for something that you’ve already given me yesterday for nothing? You’re not a drug dealer, you’ve not got me hooked – I’ll just find someone else who is punting out free stuff and go and read them.
JD’L: In the UK, Horror literature appeared to go through a long slump between the 80’s and the turn of the millennium. Now, however, fans and authors alike are hopeful of a renaissance in the popularity and quality of horror fiction. Recent novels such as The Birthing House, Let the Right One in, Apartment 16 and The Leaping seem to point the way. Do you think such hopes are well-founded?
JM: Out there in mainstream land, I’m very happy with what’s happening – currently reading Tom Fletcher’s excellent THE LEAPING, love Lindqvist’s stuff and eagerly awaiting his third, I’m project editor on the Pan Horror 1959 re-issue which is going to be brilliant in terms of getting more anthologies out there, and I’ve also finished STORIES, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sorontonio – a knock out anthology which really took my breath away with how brilliant it is.
JD’L: What’s next for Johnny Mains? Will you always be a compiler and editor or do you have more personal creative projects lined up?
JM: I want to create books which will make people glad they put their hands in their pocket to buy them. Quality anthologies, quality collections with established authors, new discoveries and hopefully be able to be given the chance to write a few short stories myself.
JD’L: Visitors to Horror Reanimated are always encouraged to make two awards: The Sword of the Ultimate Darkness goes to the work of Horror in any medium which you consider to be a timeless classic. You may also banish to the Plague Pits the most astounding flop in Horror history. Go for it, sir!
JM: Right, the Sword shall go to…Dawn of the Dead – THE greatest film I’ve ever had the pleasure to see. Now have it on bluray – and my god it’s like watching it for the first time. I think the messages and themes weaved into a ‘shoot ‘em in the head’ movie are still as valid and as urgent as they were back then.
The Plague Pits…any of the SAW films after the first instalment. Or Pet Sematary 2. That stank.
JD’L: Worthy choices!
Johnny, it’s been an enlightening experience to have you strapped to a rusty iron chair while we show you how all our instruments work. You’ve been a real gentlemen about it. While we’ve been talking, Mathew has had your manly bits encased in Perspex as a Horror Reanimated souvenir for you. I hope you’ll display them prominently on the mantelpiece of your living room.
In the meantime, we wish you the very best of good fortune with all your dark endeavours!
JM: Much obliged, it’s been a pleasure and I’ve really enjoyed my time with you. Now give me my bits back. I have a buyer for them!
July 6th, 2010
I first discovered today’s featured artist when I stumbled across his blog. I’d been Googling my short story ‘The Food of Love’ to see if its ghost remained online. Instead, I found Nick’s site and his detailed explanation of an illustration titled ‘Brainburgers’. Nick had been commissioned to provide art for my story in an anthology now titled Darc Karnivale. His image of zombies queuing for ‘Brainburgers’ in a fast food joint appears in the book, as do many other fine examples of Nick’s work.
As you’ll glean from his frank responses to our questions, Nick has survived a lot to get where he is today.
Joseph D’Lacey: Welcome to Horror Reanimated, Nick. I’m glad you could make it all the way out to our quaint little corner of Hell.
Nick Rose: Joseph, I am very honoured. You know you’re Madison’s and my favourite writer, and you’re a wonderful man on top of that. Illustrating “The Food of Love” was probably my favourite assignment to date. And guess what? – This time next month everyone will be able to have a print or T-shirt with “Brainburgers” on it. And don’t worry, brother, if we sell a good many of these, we’ll send some money your way! After all, you gave me the idea…
Actually, this will be the very first time that fans and friends can buy prints of Nick Rose art. I really hope that I get the chance to work on more of your stories in the future.
JD’L: Thanks, Nick! It doesn’t matter about the money – you can buy me a beer next time I come to the USA!
Now, I see a lot of news about you on Facebook these days but I’m very curious about your past. How long have you been a professional artist and what kind of journey has it been?
NR: Well, actually I have been around for a long time.
My first published piece was for a fanzine called “Stellar Gas” way back around 1980. It was a Star Trek fan magazine. The picture I did was of Mr. Spock. From there I was published regularly in a Magazine called “Lost World”. Around 1990 my pro career started with a piece published in Dragon Magazine #203. I also had landed a few commercial accounts as well.
Publishing is great as far as building a fan base, but it pays very little considering the time you spend on it. Commercial art on the other hand is boring most of the time, but the pay-checks are awesome.
Now through all of this, I also was a carpet installer. It was the only way I could make ends meet. This went on until 1995. At the time computers were coming in strong and you could do an assignment in a 10th of the time. But two things were going on with me at the time.
One: I was against using computers to produce art. Two: I was growing sick of doing commercial work. I wanted to paint Dragons and Monsters, so out of frustration, I quit drawing and painting again. From 1995 to 2000 I gave up art. I packed up the studio and put it in storage.
Those 5 years where hell. I started drinking and smoking very heavy and I just didn’t want to live to be honest. I was killing myself.
Then in 2000, I got a computer for my then step-son, and he started showing me all the cool things like publishers websites. (Before this, you either had to mail your work into the publisher and pray that you would get it back, or you had to have an agent knocking on doors for you.) But now with the internet, all of that had changed. So I became inspired again, and unpacked my studio and got to work.
Everywhere I sent samples, I was getting work. This was mainly small press, but I was loving it. I was constantly getting magazines and books in the mail that either had a cover by me, or interiors. It was very exciting. I muddled along doing this until 2005 when a Master Artist offered to train me – Master Daniel Horne, and shortly after that fantasy legend Todd Lockwood decided to help me as well.
Sammy Unmasked - Based on the movie Trick 'r' Treat
As a young man, I could not afford to pay my way through an art school. After the Army, I went to a local community college where I took commercial art for a year. The sad thing is, everything I learned from the community college is totally useless these days. The computer has changed the world as we know it. So having Daniel and Todd train me was and is a dream come true. Daniel really opened my eyes to art and I started seeing it in a whole different light, and Todd really introduced me to contrast and perspective. He had me go down town twice a week and practice drawing buildings from all different points of views. I did that for about 5 months, and I remember mumbling every time I was sitting on a bench drawing and a wino would come up to me asking me for money. But after a while I started to get it and understood why he had me doing that. It really opened my eyes to how important it was to making a good picture. I haven’t used much of that knowledge yet but I will soon.
Through the years I installed carpet to get by, but there were some years I decided to try to go full time as an artist. Financially, those where tough times, but they were also a lot of fun. I don’t even remember how I got by, but I did. For some reason when I was young I thought I would get rich painting, but the truth is, you’re lucky just to get by. Being an artist is an act of love. Now don’t get me wrong, I know a few artists that are well off, mostly because they had a spouse with good business sense, like Elli Frazetta. She built the Frazetta empire by cutting out the middle man.
I know other artists who make $20,000 per painting, but those are few and far between. In my case, 2 of those a year and I would be living better that I ever have.
These days I paint because I love to, and last year people started noticing me on Facebook, and with in a year’s time I had 4600 friends, 2 fan clubs – one with 4800 fans, and the second one with 2000 fans, and my blog has 900 known followers. That’s about 12,000 fans in less than a year. It’s mind boggling if you think about it, me just being an artist. So I guess I’m doing pretty well these days.
JD’L: It seems that very few of those who set out to become authors are ever able to support themselves through their writing. How true is this of artists, do you think? I ask because I know several and only a couple of them make a living by their creativity.
NR: Good question Joseph, and you are right. A small percentage of artists like me can make a living doing this, but I have help. I have a health problem that I get money for, and Madison works a regular job, so all of that helps.
A couple of weeks from now we will start selling prints and other merchandise, and hopefully that will get Madison out of her job so she can write full time. But even the big names I know struggle. If their wives weren’t working, I don’t think they could make it either. Now there are a few that do, but they live modestly. For the first 50 years of my life, I installed carpet 37 of those years, and was able to retire from that at 50 years old. But the sad truth is that 80 percent of the artists you see in the field right now, will be memories in 3 years. Life pressures get to them, or raising a family, or they lack the 3 things it takes to be an artist which are Talent, Heart, and Soul, and/or they are in it for the wrong reason, like they want to be famous. If you want to be famous, you’d best learn how to play music or act.
JD’L: In your case has it always been the bizarre side of imagery that has drawn you or do you also enjoy what people might refer to as mainstream art?
NR: Now that is the first time I have ever been asked that, and I will do my best to answer it.
I didn’t take art seriously until I was in the army, but in the 4th grade, around the time “One Million Years BC” came out, I started drawing dinosaurs. I had always loved dinosaurs and had a big box of the plastic ones like army men that I used to play with. You heard it here first folks, Nick Rose used to play with toy soldiers and dinosaurs! Anyway, after I saw that movie, I started drawing dinosaurs in school. If I’d gone to a Junior high school that had an art program, I would have pursued art at a much earlier age. But we lived in Bigfoot country, so the best I could get was creative writing.
In high school I became a huge comic book fan and I loved Spiderman. So in the army, when I started to draw again, I was really into comics. After the Army, I went to a local community college to take some art classes, after that I found a book by Frank Frazetta and I knew then and there that I wanted to learn to paint like that man. So I moved into doing fantasy art.
But through the road of life, dark and evil things and people have been part of my existence. Not by choice, but imposed on me by certain step-family members. For instance my step father used to beat me and my mother senseless, and I don’t care how old you get, you never get over that. I had an asshole artist tell me the other day that he was friends with my ex Stepfather, and I remember thinking that this fool was proud to be friends with a man that would do that to a woman and a child.
He also allowed his younger bother to molest me. He was told about it but never did anything about it, except call me a “faggot”. This same artist told me that I was not allowed to come to my ex step fathers funeral when it happened. I would be physically removed if I did. I’ve got news for them: I am going to visit his grave often to pay my respects, if you know what I mean. So this artist is proud to be friends with him. I think that says volumes about his character.
But because I have had to live with these memories through the years, my work has become darker and darker, and I see them getting Darker as I go. There is no cure for what was done to me, talking about it just makes me angry, so in some way, painting these images has helped me slowly but surely.
In my early years I did try to do some mainstream art because family members would tell me “why don’t you paint something people will like, like barns or cowboys?” I did try, but it was like taking a pair of pliers and pulling the skin off of my face. So I went back to being the loser artist that everyone thought was weird.
JD’L: It’s very clear that you’re no kind of loser, Nick. Certainly not to survive such treatment and come out with so much positive spirit. What fascinating about what you’ve told me – apart from your honesty and candour – is that the darkness of your work has given you comfort. Horror has many functions!
Tell me, what is your preferred medium? Do you ever work outside of it?
NR: Joseph, I work in all mediums, including digital. I believe if you’re going to make a living doing this, you need to be able to do as much as possible. My favourites are pencil, oils, and Corel painter. I used to work in pen and inks a lot, but I don’t get much call 
for it anymore.
JD’L: I’m fascinated by the working practices of other ‘creatives’ – How does a typical Nick Rose work day go?
NR: Normally, I get up at 7:15 am, make a pot of coffee and head to the dungeon (studio) to go through my mail and Facebook. That takes from 1 to 3 hours, drinking coffee throughout. After that, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I head to the gym for 90 minutes, come home, shower and get to work. The other 4 days of the week, I shower after checking e-mail and start work immediately. Somewhere along the way I grab a bowl of oatmeal. I work to at least 7pm, sometimes as late as 9pm. It depends on the day. Then I pick out a good movie and enjoy that, have a snack and hit the hay ready to start all over at 7:15 the next morning.
Starting this week I am going to be redesigning the studio, buying new equipment and supplies. I am really looking forward to that. Right now a good portion of the floor is taken up by my movie collection. I am going to buy book cases to put them in and that will clear a lot of the floor. Then I will have space for a table where I can put together packages ready to be mailed or to matte my prints. I am also buying another drawing table, a medium size easel for Madison’s daughter to work on, and a light box for her. The dungeon is large and wide open, so I can do what ever I want down here.
Another thing is that I listen to music all day long, so I have about 11,000 c.d.’s most of them are on my iMac. I listen to every kind of music you could think of.
JD’L: Do you feel there’s a gap between your ideas and your ability to bring them into being? Arthur Machen once wrote: ‘One dreams in fire and works in clay.’ He also talked about ‘the horrid gulf that yawns between the conception and the execution’. Admittedly he was an author, not an artist. Nonetheless, what’s your personal view?
NR: At one time I would say that would have been true, mostly because my skills were not strong enough to paint what my mind sees. Now, it is the other way around, my hands can surpass what my mind sees, and improve upon it. I get excited now every time I do a new piece because I know that it will be so much more than what my mind sees. I have to ask myself, what is next, and that is a big part of why I love to paint.
JD’L: Is it only art that gets you out of bed in the morning – or, indeed, at any other time – or do you have other passions?
NR: Oh my, to be honest, there was a time I didn’t want to get out of bed several years ago at all. As a matter of fact I overdosed on pain pills, and somehow lived through that. After the Dark Angels disbanded and I realised my best friend had betrayed and stabbed me in the back, and my Step Father said he never wanted to have anything to do with me ever again, I was going to commit suicide, but as a last resort I went to the VA hospital and told them what I was going to do. They locked me in the Mental Health ward for 3 weeks, during Christmas, and worked with me to help me cope with what happened. When I went home, the girl I had been dating took almost everything I owned and vanished off the face of the earth.
I just existed at that point. I didn’t care anymore. I just drank and smoked all I could smoke in a day. Then a friend offered to move me up here to Michigan, where my home is now, and my life changed 100%. The first thing was I met Madison. We fell in love, and all of a sudden I wanted to live again. It has been a rough year. I quit smoking, drinking and started working out again. I found out I have COPD (Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) because of the smoking, and this last year I’ve had pneumonia 5 times. But each day I get stronger, and my will to live is amazing. Nothing gets me down anymore. I work all the time and spend time with Madison and the kids.
My career has gone through the roof and keeps going up everyday. This is the 9th interview I have done since Christmas, Joseph. I was on a world wide radio show last week and am going to be a regular on there – talking live a couple times a year – and they will be giving away prints of my work and promoting my name almost every week. You can’t beat that.
JD’L: If you had the time, money and support to do only your own work, which deeply-held, as yet unrealised idea, would you bring into the world? I suppose I’m asking, what is the piece or series Nick Rose was born to create?
NR: Actually that is coming very soon now. I am at the point where I can do what I want and turn down what I don’t want to do. I have two projects I will be starting as soon as I finish remodelling the studio this coming week. One is a series of oil paintings of my dear friend and scream queen, Ms. Suzi Lorraine. We will be selling prints, calendars, t-shits, and whatever with her image. Another is a series of books called “The book of Rose” which I am already working on. I can’t say anything about that now, because of all the thieves out there, and this is a one of a kind thing. It will have a role playing game and video game based around it, all done through my company. And on top of that, I will be painting my paintings, writing how-to book, and a book about my life including all the 
creeps and monsters I have met on my journey, names and all.
JD’L: Beyond that, what’s next for you, Nick? I have a sense there’s a lot of work in the pipeline. Is there anything you can tell us about without giving away too many secrets?
NR: Well, between now and January I have 20 covers to do, so that’s gonna keep me busy and it will get my work out there to a much larger audience. I hope by this time next year that the number will double and we will have our own market of buyers who are fans of my work.
JD’L: I hope so too, Nick. It’s been a pleasure to talk to you and share some of your artwork here at Horror Reanimated. Thanks for joining us and good luck for the future!
NR: Joseph, it has been my pleasure. You know Madison and I are two of your biggest fans, and it has been a thrill for me to do this interview with you. To my fans, “May the Darkness Comfort You.”
June 17th, 2010
Oh, joy!
Tonight, after months of scheming and dirty deals, I have finally snared the slippery and elusive Jasper Bark, author of Dawn Over Doomsday and Way of the Barefoot Zombie. We tracked him down using private detectives, crooked coppers and undercover prostitutes. After a failed blackmail attempt, we kidnapped his children. He said we could keep them. In the end, we had to resort to a large transfer of funds into his numbered Swiss account. There’s nothing we won’t do for you, the horror-lover, here at Horror Reanimated.
Okay, that’s a complete lie. We should have strapped Jasper into the ‘interview chair’ several months ago but I forgot.
Still, he’s comfortable now. Ears pinned to the backboard with carpet tacks, hands nailed to the armrests with a staple-gun. We removed his foreskin and eyelids – purely for reasons of hygiene, you understand; the filth of the dungeon just doesn’t enter the bloodstream properly if we don’t take certain precautions. Septicaemia should be setting in about now…
Joseph D’Lacey: Welcome to Horror Reanimated, Jasper. We’ve done our best to make you comfortable but if there’s anything else you need, don’t hesitate to ask.
Now, sir, I’m curious about the various Abaddon Books worlds. To write a Tomes of the Dead novel for example, what are the parameters? Similarly, what rules exist for The Afterblight Chronicles – both of which you’ve written for?
Jasper Bark: Okay, I’ll spill the beans on the Abaddon worlds as long as you promise to omit the sordid confessions of the last hour and sew my thumbs back on.
The parameters and the rules are slightly different for both series. The Afterblight Chronicles is a shared world series. The world was created by Si Spurrier who also wrote the first novel in the series The Culled. He was supposed to write the next instalment but around the same time he sold a novel called Contract to another publisher and decided to work on that instead, so Rebecca Levene got the job.
You’ve got a pretty free reign as a writer so long as you uphold the basic ‘post plague’ premise of the world and make certain you don’t contradict any of the events and timelines of the other novels in the series. My novel picked up on some of the events in Si’s novel and I stayed in touch with Scott Andrews and Paul Kane while I was writing it, as they were both working on their Afterblight trilogies at around the same time and we were all trying not to step on each other’s toes.
Tomes of the Dead is just an umbrella title for a series of contemporary and somewhat edgy zombie novels. The only thing that connects them is the defiant attitude of many of the authors and their general interest in subverting and experimenting with the sub-genre of the Zombie novel. When the series was first launched Matthew Sprange did write a shared world bible based around the back drop to his novel Death Hulk, which was the first in the series. Editor in Chief Jonathan Oliver soon fell out of love with the idea of the series having a shared world though and decided Tomes of the Dead would simply be a line of zombie novels.
JD’L: What attracts you to writing Zombie/Apocalyptic fiction?
JB: Although both those genres have become conflated thanks to Romero’s excellent Dead movies, none of the Zombie fiction I’ve worked on has been post apocalyptic. The appeal of each genre is quite different for me.
What I like about zombies is how malleable they are as a representative icon. As society trades old nightmares for new with each advancing decade the zombie keeps adapting and changing the things it stands for in our collective unconscious. In the 30s when the zombie was first introduced to western culture it stood for the western colonial fear of the nations it was exploiting. Over the years the zombie has come to represent mainstreams fears of everything from communism and terrorism to sixties radicalism and growing economic unrest. This makes it very appealing to writers like myself who have an interest in writing social commentary and satire.
The thing that appeals to me about post apocalyptic fiction, on the other hand, is that it allows you to study society as a whole in microcosm. As we view the shattered bands of survivors trying to rebuild their life in the aftermath of the collapse of civilisation there’s a huge opportunity to examine the everyday tensions and conflicts of our current society. The backdrop of a lost and ruined world allows us to view these opposing forces in a more naked and honest light, outside of the contexts and allegiances of our contemporary culture. This throws them into sharper relief and allows us a fresh perspective of the problems they’re causing us and the long term consequences of certain courses of action.
Plus err … zombies are totally awesome. They eat brains, they never wash and they always, always win. Vampires and Werewolves might be in an eternal conflict but Zombies can kick both their butts. A vampire or a werewolf can bite a Zombie as many times as they like and it’ll still be a zombie. A zombie’s only has to bite them once and you’ve got a zompire or a werebie. (Is it just me or does a ‘werebie’ sound like a creepy undead furby fetishist?)
JD’L: When a novel has a strong theme, it can be a tightrope act walking between what the story’s about and what it’s really about. Way of the Barefoot Zombie uses the walking dead sub-genre as satire. At times I found the message blazing as brightly as the story itself. Was that intentional? Once you knew where you were going, did you find it hard to keep a lid on all that social comment?
JB: You’re right it can be a tightrope act but I’m glad you said ‘blazing as brightly as the story itself’ and not ‘strangling the fecking story to death’. I think the writer’s ultimate responsibility is to the story itself but I think the story is strengthened no end if it is about more than just the characters themselves and what happens to them. As a writer you get incredibly close to your story and subject matter when you’re spending eight, nine and even ten hours a day working on it. You can’t help but ruminate a lot on your themes, so when the greater significance of certain parts of your story occurs to you, you want to point them out.
I was a lot more subtle about this in Dawn Over Doomsday and as a consequence a lot less people noticed. So I think this time around I was over compensating a little and trying to point out the subtext to the reader, possibly a little too much at times. But I’m only on my fourth novel and I’m still learning how to get the balance right.
I do aspire to write genre fiction that is fast paced, completely gripping but just as intelligent and significant as more weighty writing. This is a tall order though and sometimes you can fall between two stools. The sort of people who just want quick entertainment can get really annoyed when you start asking them to think a bit and the sort of people who might appreciate the more complex ideas you’re considering can be put off by the schlocky nature of some of the content.
Still, it’s not worth doing if it’s too easy is it.
JD’L: Course, WOTBZ was a lot of fun too. How important is humour in your work?
JB: I would say it’s extremely important where it’s applicable. It’s often highly applicable when you’re writing horror. In fact horror and humour are the two genres that are specifically geared towards getting a particular physical reaction from the audience, you either want them to laugh or hurl. Because of this it’s easy to get it wrong and get a laugh when you’re looking to horrify so, in a way, getting the laugh in first – where you want it – is a way of keeping the reader on side and not losing them.
For me it’s also a way of puncturing any possible pomposity. If you’re writing work that aims at some type of profundity and insight it’s very easy to get a bit full of yourself and to come across as sanctimonious or preachy. Humour is a great way of undercutting that and maintaining a balance in the tone of your work. It’s a way of showing that I take what I do very seriously, but not myself.
For many years I led a hand to mouth existence as a stand up performer and I wrote and performed comedy sketches for BBC radio and live theatre. So along the way I learned how to be funny. It’s another tool in my armoury I guess.
JD’L: The novel has a strong grip on the traditions and practices of voodoo. Is this something you’ve had personal experience with or did it all come from research?
JB: Initially it came from research. I knew from the get go that voodoo would be central to the plot and my conception of the zombie. I wanted to go right back to the root of the myth. However Voodoo is one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented religions in the world. Horror fiction has contributed a huge amount towards the misconceptions surrounding this belief system, so I decided I was going to treat it with due reverence and present as authentic a view as I could.
So I did a lot of reading and sought out practitioners. A lot of people were very generous with their time and shared their experiences with me and they also lent me lots of books. Research is key to my work. I also did a lot of reading about economics for this novel.
I didn’t have any practical experience of economics but I did sort of get quite up close and personal with Voodoo. Followers of the faith are known as ‘Servant of the Loa’. The Loa are the spiritual beings who act as intermediaries between us and God. The Loa commune with us by taking possession, or ‘riding’ one of their followers during ritual ceremonies where the followers go into trances and the Loa choose a ‘horse’ to take possession of, so they can talk to their servants.
Writing can be quite a ritual activity and it certainly sends you into a type of trance after a while. I write a lot about different religious beliefs and tend to steep myself in them to such a degree that I tend to convert myself as I’m writing. This means there are times when the lines between the world you’re writing about and the world you live in can blur.
When you’re writing scenes of authentic rituals that conjure up the Loa it does feel like they come and have a look over your shoulder. They also demand a co-writing credit. I didn’t really write any of their dialogue whenever they appeared in the novel I just sat and took dictation and wouldn’t have dared edit it either. So in that sense you could say I had a bit of a practical experience.
JD’L: There’s a growing trend for novelists to accompany their new releases with online video teasers but I have to say the teasers for WOTBZ are among the best I’ve seen. Who wrote them? And how and where were they made? Also, they looked expensive – did you get lottery funding???
JB: I wrote all three. They were made over a two day period across three locations here in the West country where I live.
We had next to no funding so although they should have cost in the region of £12,000 to £15,000 to shoot we managed to do all of them for under two grand. That’s mainly because I was able to talk the incredibly talented individuals at Level Films into working for nothing. In fact everybody who worked on the three short videos gave their time and talents for free. The make up and special effects artists, the actors, the sound and camera guys they were all fantastic.
I was very up front with everyone about the fact that I had absolutely no money but they all agreed to get involved because I can be very persuasive when I want to be and the project looked like a lot of fun. In fact we all had a blast. I hope that comes across when you watch them. If you’re reading this please do go watch all three. I promise you’ll laugh and you won’t have seen anything quite like them before.
JD’L: Are there more Abaddon titles to look forward to from your good – or should I say damnably evil – self?
JB: I am at work on something new for Abaddon at the moment, it’s for a new line of titles that hasn’t been launched yet. Nothing has been finalised at the moment, so I’m going to have sound all enigmatic and leave it at that.
JD’L: Now, I’ve heard Jasper Bark also writes books for children and is well known in the world of graphic novels. When did all this start and how do you fit it in around writing horror novels?
JB: Well the comics and graphic novels probably came first. While I was working as a music and film journalist I got in touch with The Losers creator Andy Diggle, who was then editor of 2000AD and offered to get him in to see any band or up coming film he liked for free. After a screening of the film Snatch I mentioned I was interviewing the cast and director the next day. Andy told me if I could get a quote from director Guy Ritchie he’d buy a script off me no matter how ropey it was. So in the middle of the interview I asked this drawn out question about 2000AD and got Guy Ritchie to endorse it. I let Andy out of the deal though and eventually sold a script to his successor, current editor Matt Smith.
After writing grown up comics for a while I began to notice there weren’t any really good comics for kids anymore and as I was a parent myself I felt impelled to try and write some so I moved into the kids comics market. From this I moved into writing kids books. Some of my kid’s books have been translated into nine different languages while others are used in schools all over the country to help improve literacy in senior school children. I’m even published in all sorts of new media now, with a series of books for young children being sold exclusively on the i-pad and the i-phone called The Recyclies and an audiobook about to be launched on i-tunes called Mr Woznotiz. I’ve also just finished a 30 part graphic novel series for Channel 4 Education for young adults too. It’s called Alien Ink and it’s available initially on line.
JD’L: Do you think horror has a purpose, above giving people a comfortable, entertaining scare?
JB: I really do believe it has. In my opinion the best horror stories use the weird and other-worldly as a metaphor for a deeper or more personal truth. I also think that the world is quite a scary place at the moment and because of this the tropes and motifs of horror are some of the best ways of addressing the contemporary world. A lot of the horror writers coming up at the moment seem to be interested in social commentary in the same way that the New Wave and the early Cyberpunk writers previously used science fiction as a vehicle for social comment. It’s one of the (many) things I like about your work actually.
JD’L: Regardless of whether you could sell it or not, what is the book you were born to write?
JB: The Scratch and Sniff Karma Sutra – don’t know why it hasn’t been done before.
Seriously, I have so many books and graphic novels that I still want to write that I haven’t the time or space to list them all here.
JD’L: As you may know, every Horror Reanimated interviewee is imbued with a temporary but godlike power.
You, Jasper Bark, may now bestow The Sword of the Ultimate Darkness upon the work of horror in any medium which you consider the pinnacle of ghastly achievement.
JB: Well I think the EC Horror comics work of Johnny Craig deserves an honourable mention, as do the short stories of Ramsey Campbell and many episodes of the original Twilight Zone.
But perhaps my favourite horror work in any medium is the 1945 portmanteau horror film Dead of Night, which has never been bettered.
JD’L: When you’ve done that you must cast forever into The Plague Pits, the worst work of horror in any medium.
Please exercise your power now…
JB: I had to think a long time about this having seen and read a lot of terrible horror. I did consider the movie Troll 2 but that’s now kind of famous for being unbelievably bad.
So I’m going to go with Guy N Smith’s second novel The Sucking Pit. And no, that’s not cockney rhyming slang but it ought to be as it would perfectly describe this novel. Published in 1975 it manages to be racist, sexist and atrociously written with moronic dialogue, almost no characterisation and a pitiful plot.
This said I have a grudging affection for it. In his excellent book On Writing Stephen King talks about the joy you feel the first time you read a book that’s so bad you realise you could easily do better. I was about 12/13 when I first read The Sucking Pit and I was so encouraged by the thought that if something this awful could get into print then I stood more than a chance myself, that I began work on my first novel the very next day.
Now here I am, (ahem) years later, talking to you writer to writer. So I guess when I’m done here I should really head up the apples and pears get on the dog and bone and thank Mr Smith for writing something so Sucking Pit.
JD’L: Thank you for joining us, Jasper, and from all the Horror Reanimated team good luck for a dark and dreadful future!
JB: Thanks for having me Joseph, I’ve had a brilliant time … now can you loosen that tourniquet round my nuts like you promised?
June 4th, 2010
Today our interview takes place in the attic of a derelict house far out across the moors. A long way from where anyone could hear if something happens to me. Who am I kidding? Something always happens to me, doesn’t it? The attic is strewn with dust and bones – I can’t tell whether their owners died up here or were brought along later.
Not to worry, though, it’s cosy as can be. And the shadows move as though something in the darkness is still alive. Home from home.
Joining me in the attic is Simon Bestwick, author of the inspiring short story collection ‘Pictures of the Dark’. It’s the best book of short fiction I’ve read in a long time. Simon sits opposite me, wrapped in a grey blanket edged with red, for all the world like some street-weary derelict.
What struck me about this collection was the fortitude of Simon Bestwick’s writing voice. Flawlessly genuine throughout the entire work, much of his strength seems to come from using the first person.
Joseph D’Lacey: Simon, thanks for suggesting this snug attic in the middle of nowhere. The air’s a lot…drier…than I’m used to in the basement of Horror Reanimated. Not so many uncategorisable things crawling the walls.
Anyway, welcome to the interview.
I wanted to know first of all why so much of the work in PotD is written in the first person. Is this your M.O. in longer fiction too?
Simon Bestwick: It’s just the easiest voice to slip into as a writer. I know some people say you should always switch it to third person unless you’ve got a really good reason, but I’ve never done that, although I have sometimes deliberately chosen beforehand to write a particular piece third person, just to break the monotony. First person’s particularly attractive in horror because of the nature of the field- it puts you right inside the character’s head and implicates you in their thought processes. That makes it harder to dissociate yourself if the character does something terrible- anybody is capable of just about anything, but we like to pretend otherwise and turn away, cop out by dismissing people who do certain things as ‘evil’. Plus which, of course, a first-person voice usually implies the character has lived to tell the tale, but that doesn’t have to be the case. And even if the character has survived, that’s not necessarily reassuring- just read Lovecraft’s ‘The Rats In The Walls’, or nearly any first-person narrative by Poe.
All my novellas have been first person- not deliberately, it’s just worked out that way. My first novel consisted of three different first-person narratives; my second one’s third person, although all from one character’s viewpoint, and the third’s going to be third person, and told from a lot of different viewpoints. Not planned beyond that yet…
JD’L: You’re very comfortable in the horror genre. I can’t help thinking you belong there. But you also write crime fiction – Never Say Goodbye, Starky’s Town and Vecqueray’s Blanket spring to mind straight away. If you had to write in only one genre for the rest of your existence (including eternity in hell, where we all belong) which would it be and why?
SB: Horror, because it encompasses all the other genres as well. The overlap between horror and the crime genre’s an obvious one, but it can just as readily go into science fiction or fantasy’s territory, and because it shares a lot of elements with magic realism as well, there are plenty of writers- Graham Joyce, in particular, springs to mind- who are just published as ‘mainstream’ authors.
I’d be lying if I said I’d never consciously sat down to write a horror story or ghost story, but I’d also be lying if I said I’d never just sat down to tell a story I really needed to tell and thought fuck genre labels. Genre categories are handy if you’re trying to sell fiction or analyse it, but if you’re trying to write it you need to treat them with extreme caution. Write the stories you want to write and worry later about who you’re going to sell it to or where.
There’s good genre writing and there’s good writing that happens to be in a particular genre. M.R. James’ ghost stories use language wonderfully and they’re great at giving you a pleasant shiver, but beyond that, there’s not really that much to them. Compare a few of James’ stories to any collection by, say, Raymond Carver and you’ll see what I mean. On the other hand, if you take a collection of Dennis Etchison’s short stories and compare them to Carver’s you’ll that they measure up, in terms of the quality of the writing and in terms of content. The best writing deals with whatever subjects, themes, issues are closest to the writer’s hearts and it does so with good prose, careful structure and sound characterisation; it combines all the tools of narrative art with actually having something to say.
JD’L: Can you cite any precursors to your writing style or have you worked hard to create an original voice?
SB: Both- there’s been a lot of writers whose work I’ve admired in different areas, and I’ve tried to learn from each of them. At the same time there’s a fairly definite goal in mind, and I think my style’s been shaped by aiming for that. Poe and Lovecraft both taught me how dark fiction can be and how to construct a story so it builds to maximum effect; Richard Matheson showed how clear, simple prose that tells a story smoothly and effectively could have poetry in it too; later Stephen King did much the same. Also, I came back to writing fiction from an acting background, and so there were playwrights as well, Edward Bond, Howard Barker and David Rudkin; they all dealt in very unsparing, often harrowing imagery and again, they were all trying to create a poetic language that was also very everyday, earthy, raw. I think that’s always been one of the main things I’ve striven for, and to use that to try and get as much as I can into everything I do- psychological depth, social comment, existential musings- but never forgetting a) to still tell a good, involving story and b) that horror fiction is supposed to unsettle, frighten or disturb.
Also, I’ve never bought into the idea that good writers have to starve in garrets and that only crap sells in large quantities. There are some people in the genre who get very sniffy about anyone actually wanting to make some kind of living as a writer, but I think the ugly truth is that commercial success and literary quality just aren’t related. There’s crap that sells by the barrowload (Dan Brown) while there’s good writing that gets overlooked (Joel Lane and Mark Samuels both deserve to be far more widely read and better known), but equally there’s crap that doesn’t sell and good work that does. I’d like, personally, to fit into the second category, but at the same time I’m not interested in fiction that doesn’t connect on an emotional level- anything I do has to become personal on some level or it’s a waste of time. The horror genre just happens to give me the best set of tools to do that.
Shakespeare wrote some of the finest dramatic literature and poetry in the English language, and he did so as a commercial dramatist; and he did that because writers had to cater for everyone- so his tragedies have these beautiful poetic passages after the style of the Latin dramatist Seneca for all the university-educated types in the ‘gods’, but also plenty of gore, poisonings and the sword-fights. And out of that, he synthesised something truly great, something that had both profundity and popular appeal. I don’t think that’s too shabby an ambition, and I think focusing on that has helped develop the style I’ve got.
It’s not just me, though; I think what we’re seeing more recently are different strands in weird fiction being drawn together, different traditions being integrated and synthesised. Conrad Williams is doing that, I think; Gary McMahon is another one.
JD’L: One thing I adored about PotD was your use of language. Partly because of this, the stories had depth and colour rarely found in any genre. Were you born a clever bastard or did you take lessons?
SB: You have a knack of asking questions I can’t answer without sounding like a vain git! I agree with the line about genius being the capacity for taking infinite pains- I’m not claiming to be a genius there, just that if I have reached any standard of quality it’s through a) reading widely in and out of the genre and b) being very tough with my own work. More and more now the first draft of anything is the raw material- the ‘brain barf’ as an American friend put it!- and the rest of the process as shaping and refining it. The first draft can be frustrating at times, but once the work’s completed it’s a hell of a lot easier to work out what to do next.
I’m about to start rewrites on the novel I’ve just finished, and there’s basically a long list of notes of all the things that need to be put right are improved, scribbled down at random and then sorted into some semblance of order to make the long process of setting things to rights a bit easier. Both parts of the process are a lot of fun, however knackering they can sometimes be.
I can’t stand writers who try to get away with second best when writing genre fiction- whether in prose, characterisation, plotting or whatever. I want to write the best fiction, the best work I possibly can. You’re a short time here and a long time dead, and when I’m gone, if I’m very lucky, the work might live on. In the meantime, I’ll be happy if it pays the bills.
JD’L: For your basic horror fan, PotD has got everything: Ghosts, Zombies, Vampires, Psychos, Demons and more Zombies. However, the themes in the collection make it far more than just a bunch of monster sketches. In PotD, story is everything and yet the resonance of each tale lingers. What comes to you first; story or theme? And if your theme comes first, do you worry that trying to explore it too fully will spoil the tale?
SB: Form dictates content, but content also dictates form. Most often the story comes first. Sometimes I can see the themes in there waiting to be pulled out; other times I’ve no clue what it’ll be ‘about’ until I actually start writing. When there is a theme in mind, the job is then to dramatise it, so the theme basically disappears into the characters and the action without needing any big Kevin Costner speeches, please god. And if you’ve done your job properly, form and content become the same thing, so exploring the theme fully will be the same thing as taking the story as far as it can go.
JD’L: What was the last piece of short fiction that blew your mind and why?
SB: ‘This Creeping Thing’ from Robert Shearman’s collection Love Songs For The Shy And Cynical. It’s a great collection; the nearest I can come to describing it is Raymond Carver writing magic realism for Jackanory. The stories start out light, almost whimsical. It’s only as you go on that you realise what he’s doing, and just how dark it is. ‘This Creeping Thing’ blew my away because it surprised me, not in a plot twist kind of way, but by going into territory I’d never have guessed it would, or could, go into. I can’t really talk about the story without spoiling it for people, but really, I can’t recommend it, or the collection as a whole, enough.
JD’L: I’ve always considered short fiction essential practice for novels. Yet some short fiction writers never touch the longer form and some novelists never write short stories. Sometimes, that middle territory occupied by the novella is where the most astounding things occur. Do you have a favourite form?
SB: I love them all! In the past year or so, I’ve been concentrating on novel-writing and haven’t written many short stories except when an editor’s requested one. Mainly it’s the time factor- not just the writing time, but also you have to mull over story ideas and let them brew up to a certain point before you can start writing them. Once the ball’s rolling, you can just come back to the desk each morning and jump back in where you left off. With a novel, that makes daily production an easy task. With short stories, on the other hand, they usually get done in one sitting, maybe two. And then you have to go off again and wait for the next one to rise to the surface.
The last couple of short stories were actually quite tough to write, because I kept thinking ‘this is for a professional anthology, you’ll get some real cash for it so it’s got to be good.’ And you can’t work like that. You can’t think of the money or the exposure at the time you’re writing it, just the work itself. It took a while to get my focus back on where it needed to be, which is writing something I wanted to write. Whether it’s a mass-market novel or a short story maybe a hundred people (if you’re lucky) will read, for god’s sake don’t write it unless you actually want to.
When I started out I wrote a story a week, which actually took a lot of pressure off; no-one was offering professional payment for it, the reward was the buzz of having written something you were proud of and seeing your work in print. Now there’s less time for them, so it tends to be about specific projects. And in the beginning it was easier to take chance and just discard the ones that hadn’t paid off. Now the emphasis is more on thinking through and reworking, so there are fewer individual pieces of work but hopefully the quality’s higher each time. So the old difficulties and challenges have gone and now instead there are new ones, but I can live with that- it’s part of growing up and developing as a writer.
It’d be nice to do some new short stories, though, just for fun. There are always those ideas that won’t leave you alone and have to be written. Maybe after the next novel I’ll have a blitz on them, start laying the keel for a new collection. I agree with you about novellas; they give you the focus and brevity of shorter fiction together with the additional depth, colour and range of a longer story. Some of the work I’m proudest of is novella-length, such as ‘The Narrows’ and in particular ‘The School House.’
JD’L: Have there been any supernatural or unexplainable events in your life that have shaped your creativity?
SB: No. Plenty of unpleasant non-supernatural ones though. Go to a private all-boys’ school for seven years if you really want a reservoir of painful memories to draw on. See ‘The School House’ for details; writing that fucker hurt.
JD’L: The sheer variety of ideas in PotD was a delight but I can’t help wondering about the things that you return to again and again, those rocks you can’t help but keep looking under. Are there any core themes that won’t leave Simon Bestwick alone? If so, what are they and why?
SB: Apocalypses, because there’s such a massive list of ways in which we’re fucked right now, or at least imperilled. Economic crisis, climate change, resource wars, peak oil, pandemics… They all basically serve to remind us just how fragile everything we take for granted, day to day, is, and how easy it is for everything to slip out of our control.
Sex and love keep cropping up too, probably because I’m male and single. Mind you, that happens even when I’m not. Not single, that is; my gender hasn’t altered (appreciably) in the last thirty-odd years, although… hm, there’s another potential story idea.
Also, I fear and loathe authoritarianism- fascism, fundamentalism of any kind, and I’m terrified of them having any power.
I think there’s a real danger of this country becoming an honest-to-god police state in my lifetime, and I just don’t know if there’s the will to fight against it. All you have to do to get a law passed is to say it’s a necessary measure to fight terrorism- six weeks’ detention without trial, bans on legitimate protest- and afterwards no-one notices when those laws are used to clamp down on people who disagree with their government. We’re living in increasingly interesting times, so that’s something that should scare everybody.
We’ve also got people trying to smuggle insane bullshit like creationism onto school syllabuses. We’ve got pharmacists who refuse to supply contraceptive pills and registrars who won’t conduct civil partnership ceremonies, all claiming religion as a defence. The head of the Catholic Church, who’s told his African congregation that condoms make the spread of AIDS worse and has worked to shield paedophiles from justice, attacks anti-discrimination laws for ‘restricting religious freedom’- presumably meaning the right to act like bigoted scum without consequence. People like this hold power. And this is in a world where we also have nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. The scary thought is not that those people might get access to those toys- under George W. Bush, they did. And it could- probably will- happen again, and we might not be so lucky. How that can’t appal and frighten somebody is beyond me.
JD’L: A fog of depression overtakes me…What projects can we look forward to from you next, Simon?
SB: I’ve just finished the first draft of a new novel,The Song Of The Sibyl, which I’ll be rewriting into its (hopefully) final form over the next couple of months. After that I’ll be writing the first of a planned quartet of novels set in Britain twenty years after a nuclear attack and incorporating Lovecraftian horror. There’s a couple of short stories in the offing- I have a tale called ‘The Sons Of The City’ in End Of The Line, a horror anthology coming out from Solaris Books and edited by Jon Oliver, as well as another that I can’t talk about as it’s still under wraps. I’ve also been invited to contribute something to Never Again, an anti-fascist anthology edited by Joel Lane and Allyson Bird, and another novella, Angels Of The Silences, should be due out from Pendragon Press at Fantasycon this year. I do my best to keep busy and have a lot of irons in the fire!
JD’L: No Horror Reanimated interview is complete without its incredibly bogus award ceremony. You have been given the power to make two nominations:
First, The Sword of the Ultimate Darkness goes to the work of horror in any media which you consider a timeless classic.
Conversely, you may banish to The Plague Pits the very worst example of the genre in any media.
Please make your nominations.
SB: The Sword Of Ultimate Darkness: Fuck. Never, never, never ask me to nominate a ‘best of’ anything. I should’ve told you before we started doing this. I’m hopeless at it. So hopeless, in fact, that I’m going to cheat. I’ll nominate Best Film, Best Novel and Best Short Story.
Film: Threads. You won’t find it in the horror section of your local HMV, but it still remains one of the most authentically frightening, haunting and distressing films I’ve ever seen. An ‘80s film about a nuclear attack on Britain, incredibly realistic, harrowing and bleak. (Similarly, I’d also recommend Peter Watkins’s 1965 film The War Game.) Threads terrifies while engaging the brain and the emotions, and it goes, again and again, way beyond what you hoped would be the cut-off point.
Novel: The Grin Of The Dark by Ramsey Campbell. There’s some bloody stiff competition, not least among Ramsey’s own work (The House On Nazareth Hill and Incarnate both came close too.) A friend told me a couple of years ago that while he still thought Campbell the finest living horror writer, he didn’t think he’d write anything again that’d blow him away like Incarnate had. I took great pleasure in giving him Grin as a Christmas present and he took great pleasure in eating his words.
Short Story: ‘The Masque Of The Red Death’ by Poe. Do I really need to say anything else? Not really. Other than, imagine reading that for the first time aged about nine (if that) and getting to that final line… Yes. Exactly.
The Plague Pits: this one’s even tougher, actually, because I’ve got less and less time for shit writing or films. I’d rather leave it and watch something else! Of course, sometimes you can find and extract a good idea from the awful mess…
Even though it hasn’t been released yet, I’m strongly tempted to nominate Michael Bay’s remake of The Birds because a) it’s (another) pointless remake of a classic and b) it’s Michael fucking Bay. Remakes in general- with certain honourable exceptions- are usually an appallingly bad idea and proof of the movie industry’s intellectual bankruptcy and contempt for both its audience and its own history.
But if I’ve got to pick one existing example… OK. Let me draw your attention to a film called Necropolis (1987, dir. by Bruce Hickey), which I saw back in the ‘90s. Time has mercifully blurred the memories, but not enough. Back then, my best mate and I would watch his enviable collection of shlocky ‘80s horror videos into the small hours. (And without seeing all those naff zombie movies, I’d never have had the idea for ‘Starky’s Town’ among others.) We’d usually be a wee bit intoxicated as well, so we weren’t exactly hard to impress.
The main character of Necropolis is a punky, black-leather-jacketed witch with spiky blonde hair. And six breasts. Which she gets out. More than once, as I recall. And still, we switched the film off after twenty minutes, which gives you some idea of what a steaming pile of half-digested llama guts it had to be. The main actress (I use the term advisedly) appeared to be a dance student on her summer break; every few minutes came footage of her doing a completely pointless dance routine to godawful ‘80s synth-pop. There were no good reasons to put that in the film and plenty not to, so I can only assume she was blowing the director between takes. Occasionally I wonder if I should watch it again just to check we didn’t switch off just before it turned into one of the great lost masterpieces of Western cinema, but so far I haven’t. I’m going those twenty minutes of my life back on my deathbed as it is without adding on Necropolis’ full running time of 77mins.
JD’L: It only remains for me to say a big thank you for talking to Horror Reanimated – albeit on your own rather unusual terms. There’s certainly been a lot of weird activity up here in this attic, much of it XXX rated!
On behalf of all of us, may I also wish you very much success with all your future work. There’s absolutely no question it deserves a much wider audience.
SB: Thank you.
Simon’s other fiction includes:
March 24th, 2010
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