THE MAN WHO CHANGED HIS MIND. (1936) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

THE MAN WHO CHANGED HIS MIND. (1936) GAINSBOROUGH PICTURES. DIRECTED BY ROBERT STEVENSON. STARRING BORIS KARLOFF, ANNA LEE, FRANK CELLIER AND JOHN LODER.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

This is a sort of sci-fi-and-horror-by-numbers film, of the kind that the legendary Boris Karloff probably could have churned out in his sleep. It’s not the greatest film he ever made, but it’s still great fun to watch and a lot of the tropes we’ve come to expect from this kind of movie are present and correct.

Boris Karloff himself plays the ‘mad scientist,’ Dr. Laurience, pronounced ‘Lorentz.’ Tall, imposing, chain-smoking, wild-haired, with the famous beetling eyebrows and those iconic glowering eyes, used to such good effect when he played Imhotep in THE MUMMY in 1932, he’s the very picture of the introverted academic, driven half-crazed with the need to work, work, work every hour God sends on his kooky projects. Well, they’re not kooky to him, of course…!

He’s working on a very kooky project indeed at the moment. He honestly thinks that he can transfer the thought content of a human brain into another human, and vice versa. Apparently, it can all be done in a few minutes, and just by pulling a few levers, as well.

There’s no need to saw open the skull with one of those pizza cutter things we see in films; it all happens pretty much by magic- scientific magic. He’s practised it on some really adorable chimps, so, if it works on monkeys, could it not work on human beings, as well…? That’s the sixty-four million dollar question, isn’t it?

When a wealthy entrepreneur in the form of one Lord Haslewood offers to fund all of Dr. Laurience’s experiments (without knowing what they are, I hasten to add), in return for which Haslewood’s newspapers will get all the scientific scoops as they happen, Dr. Laurience feels like all his birthdays and Christmases have come together. Woo-hoo! Now to practise swapping people’s brains around to his heart’s content without anyone guessing what he’s up to…

One person does guess what Dr. Laurience is up to behind closed doors: the film’s eye candy, his assistant and a budding surgeon herself, Dr. Claire Wyatt. A blonde bombshell with studio-tamed eyebrows and red lipstick, she’s engaged to Dick, Lord Haslewood’s son. That’s if he can persuade her to stop working or thinking about work for a minute, that is. She’s quite the bluestocking, is Claire. She probably votes in local and national elections as well, just like a man, the brazen hussy.

When Claire finds out about the doctor’s unethical plans for willy-nilly brain-swapping, she freaks out and begs him to cease and desist from all further experimentation. But the doctor is on a slippery downwards-leading slope now that he’s going to find it difficult, if not impossible, to come back from. With a power like the one he’s got his nicotine-stained mitts on just now, he could quite possibly end up ruling the world.

When an audience of his peers rejects Dr. Laurience’s findings and ridicules him as well, Lord Haslewood wants Dr. Laurience out of the snazzy new laboratory currently being funded by Lord Haslewood’s enterprises, but the mad scientist runs amok with rage.

Then he remembers that he has the power to swap people’s brains, including the essence of their personalities, around. Could Lord Haslewood find himself in the power-mad Dr. Laurience’s hot-seat?

And, if he does, who could his brain be swapped with? And will the ravishing Claire, now the object of the frightening Dr. Laurience’s scary romantic affections as well as Dick’s, be able to somehow foil his crazy, mad scientist-type plans for world domination? Answers on a postcard, please, folks…

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books.

As Writers and Bloggers How Can Studying Top Writers Improve Our Writing. — Writer & Writing Coach

Top writers are where you want to be. They gain this title because they put in consistent effort in their chosen niche. They have worked hard and found a formula that works. Through their posts, you can analyse their work and learn a great deal about writing. It is important to recognise that when I speak about studying what they do, I do not mean copying their work. I had a writer plagiarise my work six months ago and it was the worse experience. Rather than looking at their content, I mean study their style. Whether you are a writer of blogs, articles, or books the advice is the same. It is an advantage to pick up a leading writer’s work, in your genre and study it.

As Writers and Bloggers How Can Studying Top Writers Improve Our Writing. — Writer & Writing Coach

A BOOK OF HORRORS, EDITED BY STEPHEN JONES. (2011) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

A BOOK OF HORRORS. (2011) EDITED BY STEPHEN JONES. PUBLISHED IN ENGLAND BY JO FLETCHER BOOKS, AN IMPRINT OF QUERCUS BOOKS.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

This is my favourite anthology of horror short stories ever, with Stephen King’s NIGHT SHIFT coming a close second. I’ve read A BOOK OF HORRORS several times now, and it still retains its power to spook me and to make me go to sleep at night facing my bedroom door, rather than with my unsuspecting back to it.

Anyway, it’s fitting that I’ve already mentioned the undisputed King of Horror, Stephen King, because he’s the guest of honour here and his story is first in the book. Entitled THE LITTLE GREEN GOD OF AGONY, it’s the story of a billionaire called Newsome, the sixth-richest man in the world, who survives an horrific plane crash, but broken limbs and daily agonising pain is the price he pays for his survival.

Kat is his nurse, and she’s a little brusque and brisk with her billionaire client, because he seems to think that all his fabulous wealth should really entitle him to live a charmed, pain-free existence. For this reason, Kat is a little less sympathetic towards him than she should be, considering she’s his nurse, or, as he calls her, his ‘Queen of Pain.’

When we come in, a minister from the sticks called the Reverend Rideout, has come to ‘cure’ the billionaire of his constant pain. ‘He was tall and very thin, maybe sixty, wearing plain grey pants and a white shirt buttoned all the way to his scrawny neck, which was red with overshaving. Kat supposed he’d wanted to get a close one before meeting the sixth-richest man in the world.’

The sceptical and battle-hardened Kat, whose gig with Newsome is the best-paid job she’s ever had in this or any other life, doesn’t believe for a second that this ascetic-looking minister from the sticks can alleviate the billionaire’s pain for a second.

In fact, she thinks he’s just another charlatan, come to fleece the rich man of a few million bucks in exchange for some muttered words of spiritual mumbo-jumbo over his shattered limbs. She couldn’t be more wrong…

The book features some really gripping horror stories by such esteemed authors as John Ajvide Lindqvist (LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, 2004), Ramsey Campbell and Richard Christian Matheson, the son of screenwriter and fiction writer Richard Matheson.

Richard Matheson Senior was a ridiculously talented man, who wrote numerous film and television scripts as well as the novel, I AM LEGEND, which has been filmed under its own name and also as THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (1964), starring horror legend Vincent Price.

My three favourite stories in the anthology, apart from the Stephen King one that opens the proceedings, are as follows: A CHILD’S PROBLEM, by Reggie Oliver, in which a young boy called George St. Maur is sent to live with his horrible old uncle in pre-Victorian times while his parents live abroad for a bit.

While at the uncle’s country mansion, wee George uncovers a mystery that seems to involve a black man, Brutus, a black spaniel called Dis, and the most beautiful woman that the young George has ever seen, the late Lady Circe St. Maur, his nasty uncle’s deceased wife, a woman from the West Indies of whom very little is known. A never-ending chess game seems crucial to the mystery also.

George’s life is endangered, the closer he comes to the heart of this chilling mystery. But, child or not, he displays a courage, strength of character and even a coldness, rather like his uncle’s, far beyond his years: ‘He considered whether he could live with the possibility that he might have imprisoned a man alive in a coffin with a corpse. It did not take him long to decide that he could…’ Good for you, Georgie boy, lol.

SAD, DARK THING by Michael Marshall Smith puts me in mind of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and other similar films, not because any kind of massacre takes place but because it features a lonely man, driving round the back roads of America with no particular goal, coming across a rather odd ‘attraction’ in the backwoods that at first fascinates him, but which he may just live to regret ever clapping eyes on…

Finally, NEAR ZENNOR by Elizabeth Hand is a sort of folk horror tale set in Cornwall. It scared me so much when I first read it that I immediately gave the story to my daughter to read, with the words: ‘Do you find this story terrifyingly scary too?’ After reading it, she agreed that she did, and I felt so vindicated that I now re-read the story every summer as a mark of respect for its ability to put the willies up me anew, smoothly and effortlessly, with every reading.

This really is a superior horror anthology. Some of the stories I didn’t really get, but even these ones still scared me and made me really ‘see’ them in my mind’s eye, a very impressive feat, as I hope you’ll agree.

There’s no sweeter feeling than having the heart put crossways in you (Irishism, lol) by a creepy story in a book or by a scary film, when you’re not in any personal danger yourself. It’s why we watch horror films and read horror stories. We get all the thrills, but none of the spills, see? Happy reading…

‘George identified the coffin at last because it was the newest and its wood was covered in green baize pinned down with brass tacks, almost untarnished. Jem would not look, so George lifted the lid and peered in by himself.

The figure in its winding sheet was slender and still retained the vestiges of her beautiful shape. The features, too, were almost intact, though the eye sockets were empty. Black lustrous coils of hair hung down on each side of a face whose exquisite bone structure was covered by a delicate membrane of golden skin. Over the folded skeletal hands, on one finger of which a sapphire ring still sparkled, had been laid a pair of common iron slave manacles.

George picked them up, then gently closed the coffin lid on the Lady Circe’s remains…’

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books.

VISIT MY AUTHOR PAGE AND BUY MY GOODIES…!

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Review of “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” by Stephen King — Bemm

Title: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft Author: Stephen King Genre: Nonfiction Pages: 351 Published: 2001, Hodder & Stoughton My Grade: 5 out of 5 GOODREADS’ DESCRIPTION Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer’s craft, […]

Review of “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” by Stephen King — Bemm

DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE. (1971) A SEXY HAMMER HORROR REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE. (1971) A HAMMER FILM PRODUCTION. DIRECTED BY ROY WARD BAKER. BASED ON THE WRITINGS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. STARRING RALPH BATES, MARTINE BESWICK AND GERALD SIM.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

This is one of Hammer’s slickest, sexiest and most stylish offerings. Ralph Bates and Martine Beswick are two incredibly charismatic and bewitching performers, who incidentally bear a considerable resemblance to each other, so it’s not at all a stretch to imagine them as the two sides of the brother/sister coin here, Bates as Dr. Jekyll and Beswick as his female alter ego, Mrs. Edwina Hyde.

Dr. Henry Jekyll starts the film by being one of the good guys, a doctor intent on finding cures for various of the diseases that plague mankind, the plague being one, lol. But when his womanising chum and fellow medical man, Professor Robertson, makes a throwaway remark about how poor old Dr. Jekyll will be dead long before he sees his efforts come to fruition, because every cure takes so long to find, Henry freaks out.

Terrified that he will die before he gets to finish his life’s work, Henry frantically starts drinking a potion made from female hormones (his reasoning being that women seemingly lived longer than men; I wouldn’t have thought so, in the London of Jack the Ripper’s times, but whatever…!) obtained from female corpses.

Yes, that’s right, corpses. He’s got quite a nice little sideline going with Byker, the local mortuary attendant. (Henry: I want them female, no older than twenty. Byker, salaciously: That’s ‘ow I likes ’em too, Doctor…!) The suggestion of necrophilia hangs heavily in the air.

To Henry’s utter amazement (and the really amazing thing is that he didn’t see this coming…!), the hormones have the effect of turning Henry periodically (no pun intended) into a stunningly beautiful woman, an alter ego he calls Mrs. Edwina Hyde, his ‘sister,’ to anyone who asks.

Martine Beswick is truly ravishing as Mrs. Hyde. She dresses mainly in striking red gowns and black cloaks and adorable little hats (when she’s not cavorting around in the buff, that is!), and her long glossy black hair, red, cruelly sensual lips and razor-sharp cheekbones all combine to create one hell of a beautiful, sexually desirable (and sexually forward!) woman.

Certainly, Howard Spencer, her gallant upstairs neighbour, is totally smitten with her, and even Henry, her male alter ego, seems thrilled about having a female side to his nature. Look at the way he laughs delightedly when he finds he has breasts, lol. No man who wakes up and finds he has breasts, even if he didn’t ask for them, is going to miss out on the chance to cop a good long feel…!

There’s a downside to Mrs. Hyde’s charming existence, however. A deadly struggle for supremacy between Henry and Edwina begins, in which Sister Hyde has the edge, as she seems to have the stronger and more determined personality.

Well, women are the stronger sex, of course. We birth the babies and we pick up the pieces when the men who run the world screw up and need our assistance, but naturally we don’t boast about it…

Also, when Burke and Hare get nicked by an angry mob and they can’t any longer supply Henry with the female corpses he needs for his work, Henry has to go out and kill ‘live’ women in order to achieve his goals.

Poor old Jack the Ripper gets the blame for Henry Jekyll’s diabolical work, but it won’t be long before the bobbies of Whitechapel put two and two together and figure out the similarity between Saucy Jack’s handiwork and Dr. Jekyll’s.

Is it curtains for Dr. Jekyll then? And what about the evil Sister Hyde, who also now has a taste for killing? Let’s hope she doesn’t croak before she gets to murder Sappy Susan, the insipid sister of Howard-from-upstairs, who’s set her frilly cap at the handsome Dr. Jekyll, who might be easy on the eye but he has no time for wimmin, not now he’s splendidly embroiled in the search for the elixir of life…

Bates and Beswick are an example of one hundred percent perfect casting. They were exactly the two people who should have been cast in the roles of Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, being both gorgeous, a bit mysterious and immensely sexually attractive to the viewers, whichever way we swing, lol.

The Hammer sets and costumes are glorious as usual, and I loved the inclusion of the real-life bodysnatchers, Burke and Hare, and good old Jack the Ripper, all three of which were part and parcel of the fabric of Britain’s history.

I loved the Bill Sykes in OLIVER!-slash-Christopher Lee in I, MONSTER-style ending, too. This is a story we horror fans never tire of seeing re-made, and you’ll certainly never tire of watching the deuced attractive Ralph Bates morphing into the sexy-as-hell Martine Beswick. Happy viewing.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books.

8 Most Common Book Marketing Mistakes Authors Make – by Penny Sansevieri… — Chris The Story Reading Ape’s Blog

on A Marketing Expert: People often love to talk about book marketing mistakes, and believe me I’ve seen a lot of them. I don’t mind talking about what authors are doing wrong when it comes to marketing their books, but it’s also helpful to offer a solution to what is generally considered a consistent issue. […]

8 Most Common Book Marketing Mistakes Authors Make – by Penny Sansevieri… — Chris The Story Reading Ape’s Blog

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE: THE 2018 NETFLIX TV SERIES. ©

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE: THE TELEVISION SERIES. (2018) CREATED AND WRITTEN BY MIKE FLANAGAN. BASED ON THE BOOK BY SHIRLEY JACKSON.

STARRING CARLA GUGINO, TIMOTHY HUTTON, MICHIEL HUISMAN, ELIZABETH ANN REASER, OLIVER JACKSON-COHEN, KATE SIEGEL, VICTORIA PEDRETTI AND ANNABETH GISH.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

‘Whatever walked there, walked alone…’

Wow. This ten-part series makes for excellent television drama, but I suppose we’d better start by saying that it’s not as good as the original film of Shirley Jackson’s superb horror novel; how could it be? But it’s pretty damn good television viewing, even though it wasn’t as scary as I’d been led to believe and there’s an awful lot of talking and repetition in it.

It’s a ghost story, told in a non-linear fashion, so a bit you see in one episode might not make sense at all until another episode repeats the thing and explains it to you. Yes, that might be annoying for some, but the plot is really well written and complex and, even though it seems to have a million things to keep track of and an equal number of loose ends to tie up, it doesn’t do a bad job at all of tying everything up in a nice big bow at the end.

Okay, so it’s the summer of 1992 and the Crain family- the parents, Hugh and Olivia, and their five sprogs Stephen, Shirley, Theodora and twins Luke and Nell, come to live in the titular Hill House to do to it what the Americans call ‘flipping,’ that is, they’re going to do it up a bit and sell it on to make a fortune. That’s the plan, anyway.

But Hill House is haunted to buggery, as we all very well know, and it isn’t long before the house begins to exert its evil supernatural pull over the family Crain. Little Luke has an ‘imaginary’ friend called Abigail, who comes out of the nearby woods to play with him.

He is also haunted by a terrifyingly tall man with a walking stick, who floats a good twelve inches above the ground. His twin, Nell, is tormented by visitations from a scary-sounding someone she calls ‘the Bent-Neck Lady.

Theodora learns that she has a ‘psychic’ touch: if she touches something or someone, she can derive psychic information from it. She takes to wearing gloves every day, however, to prevent this from happening. Well, not everything she learns is necessarily welcome information, so you can’t really blame her, can you?

Dad is severely disturbed by the sounds of scraping, banging and tapping he hears in the basement he’s trying to de-mould, and as for Mom…! Mom probably has a sign tattooed across her forehead that only ghosts can see, a sign saying: ‘Haunt me, please!’

She’s a drippy, hippy-dippy spiritual type to begin with, gliding through the rooms in a succession of fabulous long nighties and robes, with her long dark hair streaming out behind her, but when the house starts to impact on her already fragile-seeming emotional state, she becomes a million times flightier.

She sees dead people and chats away to them as if they’re real, and she’s extremely susceptible to the ghosts’ warped mind games, being highly suggestible when they plant ideas of evil-doing in her increasingly damaged mind.

Something happens in the house in 1992 that sees the family (well, nearly all the family) fleeing for their lives, like the family in THE AMITYVILLE HORROR. The story moves back-and-forth over the ten episodes between the past and the present, and it won’t be until the very last few frames in the very last episode that we discover just what happened in that cursed house that fateful summer.

The Crain siblings are very messed-up adults. It’s pretty obvious that their stay in Hill House has impacted upon them big-time in different ways. One is a funeral director and a control freak. One is a heroin addict. Another is a child psychologist, responsible for working out if children have been sexually or otherwise abused. Her job makes her miserable. It’s a good group so far, isn’t it?

Another of the siblings is a flaky mess whom everyone in the family feels is a suicide waiting to happen, and yet another writes books about hauntings in general and Hill House in particular, books that get their entire family’s back up. I told you it was a good group…!

The siblings haven’t had any answers from their parents, in particular from their father, regarding what exactly happened in Hill House to tear the family apart that summer. Now, their lives are so messed-up and mixed-up that they’re going to need some answers, whether their parents want to give them these answers or not. Why not start by asking what was behind the locked door of the Red Room, for which they never had a key when they lived there…?

There are definitely references in the series to the original book by Shirley Jackson. Two of the sisters are called Theodora and Nell, there’s writing on the wall and banging on the doors, and the weird caretaker couple, the Dudleys, won’t stay on in the house in the night, in the dark, when it’s night, after dark, lol.

Some of the scares are extremely effective; others less so. I’d definitely recommend this Netflix series. It’s good writing and good acting; it’s a bit annoying and confusing in places, full of dreams and fantasies and with all the females in it sporting identical hairstyles, but it’s mostly good scary fun that puts me very much in mind of Stephen King’s THE SHINING.

I believe that Stephen King, master of horror and a huge fan of Shirley Jackson’s book, gives THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, the series, his seal of approval. It has mine too, for what it’s worth, so go forth and watch it and enjoy it, and just make sure the Bent-Neck Lady doesn’t find you alone in the house, in the night, in the dark…

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books.

You want to write but don’t know how to begin… — Kanchana Banerjee

I must begin with an apology. With only 2 published books to my name, I’m no authority to guide aspiring writers but given the limited experience I have, I want to share some of my learnings. Hence, this post. In another life, I used to be a freelance writer , writing for publications & companies. […]

You want to write but don’t know how to begin… — Kanchana Banerjee

5 Quotes by R.L. Stine to Make You a Better Writer —

R.L. Stine (born in 1943) is the bestselling author of the Goosebumps and Fear Street series. Here are five of his fantastic quotes to inspire your writing! 1. If you want to be a writer, don’t worry so much about writing. Read as much as you can. Read as many different writers as you can. […]

5 Quotes by R.L. Stine to Make You a Better Writer —