THE CRAFT. (1996) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

THE CRAFT. (1996) DIRECTED BY ANDREW FLEMING AND CO-WRITTEN BY ANDREW FLEMING AND PETER FILARDI.

STARRING ROBIN TUNNEY, FAIRUZA BALK, NEVE CAMPBELL, RACHEL TRUE AND SKEET ULRICH.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

Bus driver- Watch out for weirdos, ladies!

Nancy- We ARE the weirdos, mister…

Light as a feather, stiff as a board…

This is a terrific, highly entertaining cult horror film from the ‘Nineties. It gave me such a huge nostalgia buzz to re-visit it this weekend. It’s a supernatural horror-drama set in and around a private, mixed-sex high school run by nuns.

The ‘popular’ girls who attend the school are absolute bitches and the ‘popular’ boys, the good-looking lads hoping to get into college on a football scholarship because they’re usually too thick to get in on intellect alone, are utter jerks. If one of these boys and one of these girls sleep together, the girl is a slut and the boy is a massive stud who’ll shout his triumphs and conquests all over school.

Moving to a new area and a new high school is bad enough, but having to move to a bitchy American high school (those are the bitchiest!) must be tough. Sarah Bailey has just relocated with her father and stepmother from San Francisco to Los Angeles and has to do the new school thing, and she’s not exactly happy about it.

Sarah is beautiful but slightly unusual in that she has psychic powers. At school, she is immediately drawn to three other girls of similar inclinations.

These are Nancy, who’s fed up with living in a crappy trailer with her alcoholic mum and abusive step-father; Bonnie, whose body has been horribly scarred by fire; and Rochelle, a black girl who is subjected to racist taunts by one of the pretty and popular white girls at school, Laura Lizzie.

These three school outcasts have been secretly worshipping a Satan-like god they call ‘Manon.’ It’s not until they combine their powers with Sarah’s that Manon finally starts kicking ass for them, and the quartet of would-be witches realise that their greatest desires might just be only a magic spell away…

Nancy, the mouthy one with the bad attitude, wishes not to be white trash any more. Bonnie wants to be rid of her scars and be ‘beautiful outside as well as in.’ Rochelle wants to be free of her tormentors, and Sarah works a love spell on Chris, a guy from school whom she fancies but who was a total douchebag to her and about her in front of his awful friends.

Remember these lines from WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY?

Willy Wonka to Charlie Bucket: Did you hear what happened to the boy who suddenly got everything he ever wanted?

Charlie, spellbound: No, what?

Willy Wonka: He lived happily ever after…

Well, that doesn’t happen in THE CRAFT, thank heavens, or the movie would only be about half its length. Things seem to be going along swimmingly at first, with the girls getting their wishes granted and more by the mighty and powerful Oz, sorry, Manon, but then everything just seems to turn to crap, with a dangerously love-struck Chris trying to rape Sarah on a deserted beach one night.

Sarah, realising that things have gone too far, wants out of the coven. But there’s a price to pay for leaving the coven, and, for Sarah, it might just be more- way more- than she’s prepared to pay. Strap yourself in and get ready for the witchy face-off to end all witchy face-offs…

You’ll recognise Neve Campbell (Bonnie) and Skeet Ulrich (Chris) from the SCREAM movie franchise (1996-present). And if the doctor who operates on Bonnie’s scars looks familiar, it’s because she used to play Mary Alice Young, a character but also the narrator, in the comedy-drama soap opera series, DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES.

The film has a memorable soundtrack, with songs on it that were written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Harry Nilsson, Johnny Marr from the Smiths, Peter Gabriel from Genesis, Ric Ocasek from the Cars, Marianne Faithfull and Justine Frischmann from Britpop bands Suede and Elastica. The only thing I can ever remember about Justine Frischmann is that she dated your man from Blur for a while, Damon Albarn.

Father Damo to Father Dougal in ‘Nineties clerical sitcom FATHER TED: ‘Here, who’d’you prefer, Oasis or Blur?’

Father Dougal: ‘Erm, Blur…?’

Father Damo, roaring: ‘Wha’?’

Father Dougal, placatingly: ‘I mean, Oasis, Oasis…!’

THE CRAFT is still a popular film years later, with a cult following of its very own. There are some really good spooky scenes in it, and its moral of not tampering with things that are bigger and more powerful than you is pretty clear.

Our four little witches thought they could employ witchcraft to summon up this fella Manon and use him for their own ends. But, once they start abusing this power, Manon, like any self-respecting Satan-like god dealie, has to step in and take it back. There’ll be tears before bedtime for sure…

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.

THE TERROR OF THE TONGS. (1961) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

THE TERROR OF THE TONGS. (1961) A HAMMER FILM PRODUCTION DIRECTED BY ANTHONY BUSHELL. WRITTEN BY JIMMY SANGSTER.

STARRING CHRISTOPHER LEE, YVONNE MONLAUR, MARNE MAITLAND AND GEOFFREY TOONE.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

‘Have you ever had your bones scraped, Captain Sale?’

This film provided Christopher Lee with his first ever top billing, despite the fact that he had already acted in three of Hammer’s most famous films: THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957) as the Creature; DRACULA (1958) as the titular Count; and THE MUMMY (1959) as Kharis/The Mummy.

And his role as Dracula became the one with which he remained most identified, right up to his death in 2015 at the tender age of only ninety-three. Well, I was convinced he’d make it all the way to a hundred and even beyond, but sadly, it wasn’t to be.

And, just regarding his lack of top billing in these films, it was said of Hammer at the time that Peter Cushing was its star; Christopher Lee merely its monster. Well, never mind; he certainly came into his own in the end.

Having said that, action-adventure movie THE TERROR OF THE TONGS, despite its lush settings and gorgeously sumptuous costumes, is not my favourite Hammer film, nor yet is Chung King my favourite leading role of Christopher Lee’s.

I much prefer him as Dracula, as that sexy midnight lover from the coldness of the crypt who died, yet lived; as that sexually magnetic and dominant lover who makes real women out of Melissa Stribling’s Mina and Carol Marsh’s Lucy in the original Hammer DRACULA film of 1958.

In THE TERROR OF THE TONGS, he plays Chung King, the undoubtedly dominant and austere but at the same time oddly sexless leader of a terrorist organisation of organised criminals known as the Tongs, a name to strike horror into the hearts of Hong Kong dwellers in the early twentieth century. They’re the Chinese triads, the Japanese yakuza and the Italian-American mafia all rolled into one, they’re so feared and abhorred and, dare I say it, opium-raddled.

Chung King, while undeniably a dominant and cruel leader, just as you’d expect from the head of such an organisation, is sort of strangely asexual, with sadly not much going on behind the voluminous folds of his black kimono.

Why doesn’t he get to have sex, even implied, with any of the beautiful women who attend at his court? Or even with Yvonne Monlaur as Lee, the stunning sexbomb heroine of the film? Christopher Lee as Fu Manchu, in another series of films, not made by Hammer, doesn’t get any sexual action either.

Once the make-up people slap the old ‘epicanthic fold,’ apparently his least favourite of all the prosthetic enhancements, over his eyes to give him an Oriental look, they might as well be de-sexing him, it seems.

Makers of both THE TERROR OF THE TONGS and the FU MANCHU films both gravely under-used the sensuality and sexuality of their handsome heart-throb of a star, methinks. The films could have been so much more memorable if they’d only allowed him to be the man we know he could be in them.

Anyway, the plot of THE TERROR OF THE TONGS is relatively straightforward. Set in British-occupied Hong Kong in 1910, it sees Geoffrey Toone as maritime Captain Jackson Sale revenging the murder of his teenage daughter by the terror organisation known as the Tongs.

They didn’t kill her willy-nilly; they did it to protect their identities from becoming known, but Captain Sale is beside himself with grief nonetheless. He won’t rest until he tracks down the head of this brutal organisation and cuts it off at its source, so to speak.

The head is Chung King; he won’t react well to being tracked down and killed…! He might even despatch one of his infamous ‘hatchet men’ to treat Sale (Sale/Sail- geddit???) to the solemn splendour of a so-called ‘ceremonial killing.’

Don’t be worrying on Sale’s behalf, though. The hatchet men announce their presence well in advance. They holler at you from across a crowded street once they clap eyes on you, then they wave their hatchets in the air and advance upon you slowly across that crowded street.

This gives you plenty of time to assess the situation, light a cigarette, chat with a friend, escape into a waiting rickshaw or even kill your would-be assailant as he approaches.

Even if, by some miracle, he actually manages to wound or even kill you, you’ll have plenty of time to put your affairs in order while waiting impatiently for your would-be assassin.

Maybe, just maybe, if the Tongs had concentrated more on the killing element and less on the ceremony element involved, they may have lasted longer as an organisation of terror. It’s just a thought, that’s all. Make of it what you will.

Man: ‘Oh look, that hatchet-wielding Tong over there is hollering menacingly at me. Looks like my number must be up, so. Have I time to get that haircut at all? Oh yes, that looks much better. Brings out my eyes, you say? Why, thank you! Still coming over here waving his little thing, is he, that Tong fellow?

‘Oh well, in that case, I might just try to fit in that show I’ve been dying to see. Is there time for a bit of dinner too? Oh, time for dinner and a few pre-show cocktails, how spiffing! God, I’m tired now after all that smashing grub and booze. I think I’ll just have a nice little lie-down while I’m waiting…’ And so on. You get the picture.

Anyway, Sale has two allies in his desperate mission. Ally One is Marne Maitland (he plays the mysterious Malay in one of Hammer’s most magnificent films, THE REPTILE, 1965) as the Beggar, who is in reality the leader of a resistance movement against the Tongs.

Ally Two is Yvonne Monlaur as Lee, the former enslaved mistress of a Tong debt collector, who now has decided she loves Captain Jackson Sale, because he has accidentally freed her from her bondage by seeing off her captor-owner.

Yvonne Monlaur could just be the most beautiful of all the Hammer women. Her face, her voice, her body! She’s perfect in every possible way. Her performance as Marianne Danielle in Hammer’s THE BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960), in which she plays a young finishing school teacher breaking her journey to the school at the sinister, vampire-ridden Chateau Meinster, is an absolute joy to behold.

How her dresser must have enjoyed putting her in those fabulous gowns and dressing her gorgeous chestnutty hair for THE BRIDES OF DRACULA. Am I in love with Yvonne Monlaur? A little, yes, what of it? Do you blame me? What a beauty! She wears some stunning Chinese dresses with matching shoes in THE TERROR OF THE TONGS.

She’s pictured with Christopher Lee in some publicity shots for the movie, but they don’t have a joint love story in the film, more’s the pity. They could have made her Chung King’s unwilling mistress who falls in love with the dashing and much less cruel British maritime captain, Jackson Sale.

Two of the best-looking people on the planet having an on-screen romance or even some hot and steamy rumpy-pumpy? Phwoar. Ah well. Probably not in 1961. Think of the kerfuffle down at the Censor’s office…! And anyway, who am I to tell Hammer what they should or shouldn’t have done? It is what it is. Enjoy.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

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

MICHAEL ARMSTRONG’S ‘DELIVER US FROM EVIL.’ (1969) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

MICHAEL ARMSTRONG: THE SCREENPLAYS.

DELIVER US FROM EVIL. (1969)

PUBLISHED IN 2020 BY PAPER DRAGON PRODUCTIONS.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

‘Michael Armstrong is creating history by being the first film-maker to publish his entire screenwriting output. With the original uncut screenplays in print for the first time ever and peppered with a mixture of wildly entertaining anecdotes, astounding behind-the-scenes revelations, creative and educational insights and brutal ‘no holds barred’ honesty, these books are guaranteed to provide a completely new kind of reading experience while offering a unique insight into the movie industry. Starting from his first professional screenplay written in 1960 when he was only fifteen and which he subsequently directed in 1968, the books will ultimately encompass a career that has spanned over fifty years. The books will include not only those screenplays which made it onto a cinema screen but, for the first time ever, all those that didn’t- and the reasons why…’

http://www.michaelarmstrong.co.uk

http://www.paperdragonproductions.com

‘… but I guess you knew I’d come back once we were both older.’

‘I’ve run things far too long to see them jeopardised by anyone- including you! The past’s the past, Nikki! What happened is over; gone! This whole neurosis about your childhood- it’s all in your head! That’s all!’

‘Blackmail? How can you accuse me of that when you know why I’m really here… that I’ve finally come back for you after all these years!’

Downstairs …

The darkness of the hall …

The empty rooms …

The stairs …

Upstairs …

The closed bedroom doors …

Silence.

I’ve been reading and reviewing Michael Armstrong’s gorgeous glossy-covered film script books for about three years now, and, next to HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS, I actually think DELIVER US FROM EVIL might just be my favourite, for reasons I’ll explain in a minute.

But for those who might not yet know (what’s the weather like up there on Pluto, by the way? Not too inclement for the time of year, I hope!), HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS, the screen-writer’s addition to the canon of ‘Old Dark House’ movies, is one of Michael’s most well-known films.

Not just because it’s brilliantly written and full of terrific comic turns and horror movie references that’ll make you feel very pleased with yourself for spotting them, but because it’s the only film ever made that features horror icons Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Vincent Price and John Carradine all under the one roof, so to speak.

Incidentally, former BROOKSIDE actress Julie Peasgood, who has penned the foreword to DELIVER US FROM EVIL (all the forewords are written by movie industry insiders, including ME; I did the one for SCREAMTIME!), was the sexy blonde love interest in HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS.

Her co-star was Desi Arnaz Jr.. He played an American writer who agreed to hole up in the titular ‘House’ for a weekend, in order to speed-write a novel and thereby win a bet with his literary agent. But he didn’t, of course, reckon on the fact that four of the greatest horror actors on the planet were going to drop by and grievously interrupt him…!

Anyway, now we move onto DELIVER US FROM EVIL. Like Julie Peasgood, I devoured it in one sitting, because it’s just so easy to read (all the books are supremely reader-friendly) and a fantastically gripping storyline. It’s the story of the beautiful young Nikki Wynter, a woman who’s had rather more of a traumatic childhood than most of us can lay claim to …

Nikki: ‘If- if Mommy ever got better … if they ever let her out of that place …?’

And, later … Doctor: ‘You’re still worried it’s hereditary, aren’t you?’

Heh-heh-heh. The plot reminds me a little bit of John Carpenter’s fantastic serial killer horror film from 1978, HALLOWEEN. In this movie, a man who murdered his teenage sister when he was a little boy escapes from the mental institution in which he’s been incarcerated for years and returns to his hometown, where he immediately starts stalking a teenage babysitter and her unfortunate group of friends.

(Did I ever tell you that I met John Carpenter back in October 2016 when he played the music from his films live at Vicar Street in Dublin? Well, I say I met him, and I WAS there, but it’s probably closer to the truth to say that I glimpsed a teensy bit of his black jumper from my seat near the back while hundreds of big hairy male John Carpenter fans, every one of them wearing black movie T-shirts and holding up phones, blocked all but a tiny percentage of my view. Bastards, lol.)

Anyway, Michael’s story, which, incidentally, was penned nearly a whole decade before the release of HALLOWEEN, sees the return into Nikki’s life, not of an escaped mental patient, but of someone whom you’d imagine would have an even tougher time materialising back in someone’s life than an escaped lunatic.

All the lunatic has to do, if horror movies have taught us anything, is to slip his and his fellow inmates’ sleeping pills into the cup of tea or coffee of the orderly in charge of the ward. Wait a few minutes, then bada-bing bada-boom, Bob’s your uncle and a nod’s as good as a wink to a blind horse and so on.

But to come back from where Nikki’s unwelcome visitor has been, well, I can’t even imagine what you’d have to do. At the very least, the paperwork you’d have to fill out …!

After her horrific start in life, Nikki is now a rich privileged heiress to the fortune of her deceased adoptive parents, the Wynters. The action moves from a New York tenement in the ‘Fifties to Nikki’s swish villa in Nice in 1967.

Nikki’s adoptive parents are now dead and gone, and she has no-one to look out for her but her devoted boyfriend Ben Anderson and the family solicitor, Howard Doyle.

One fateful night, as they say, she goes for a solitary walk on her very own private beach, the lucky cow!

The twilight before dark …

A half-real, half-unreal world …

In which Nikki stands, deep in her own thoughts.

She moves further along the beach …

Enjoying the seemingly timeless solitude and the stillness …

Only the sound of the waves soothingly caressing the beach.

She glances back-

To see a figure approaching her some distance away;

Indistinct in the fading light.

Nikki turns

And tries to make out who it is in the onrushing darkness-

The figure draws nearer to her

Across the darkening and deserted beach.

Nikki struggles to make out his features-

This is the beginning of Nikki’s nightmare. And I don’t mean the nightmare of having some peasant trespassing on your personal beach, possibly just yards from where your own private yacht is moored. God knows, I’ve had terrible trouble with that type of thing myself. And don’t even talk to me about servants …! Can’t anyone starch a collar properly nowadays?

I mean the nightmare of knowing that someone who couldn’t possibly be there is nonetheless standing right in front of you on a darkened beach at night. And they don’t have any intention of going away now they’re back. And that’s all I’m going to say, even though my fingers are itching to type more. And more and more and more, lol.

DELIVER US FROM EVIL is a cracker of a story that would have played so well on the big screen had it been filmed. It would make a fantastic Christmas present for the film fan in your life, as indeed would any of Michael’s collection of gorgeous film-script books. DELIVER US FROM EVIL and all of Michael’s books are available to buy from the following links:

http://www.michaelarmstrong.co.uk

http://www.paperdragonproductions.com

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

36 Poetry Writing Tips – by Melissa Donovan… — Chris The Story Reading Ape’s Blog

on Writing Forward: Poetry is the most artistic and liberating form of creative writing. You can write in the abstract or the concrete. Images can be vague or subtle, brilliant or dull. Write in form, using patterns, or write freely, letting your conscience (or subconscious) be your guide. You can do just about anything in […]
36 Poetry Writing Tips – by Melissa Donovan… — Chris The Story Reading Ape’s Blog

The Dog Journal That Became a Diary of the Sky — BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog

By Jeanne Bonner Our new puppy has upended my careful writing schedule. No more early morning writing, no time to myself first thing to revise. For the first time in years, my internal marching orders at dawn don’t lead me to the Italian Moka on the stove filled with espresso powder, and then my laptop. […]
The Dog Journal That Became a Diary of the Sky — BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog

MICHAEL ARMSTRONG’S ‘REGIONS OF DARKNESS.’ (1971) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

MICHAEL ARMSTRONG: THE SCREENPLAYS.

REGIONS OF DARKNESS. (1971)

PUBLISHED IN 2020 BY PAPER DRAGON PRODUCTIONS.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

http://www.michaelarmstrong.co.uk

http://www.paperdragonproductions.com

‘Demons are our bad desires that have been suppressed.’ Sigmund Freud.

‘Within every human being, suppressed deep in his sub-conscious, lie the impulses of his own demonic origin. They are latent, always unwholesome and intensely horrific.’ Geoffrey Harding.

Simone looks at the closed door, half-hidden in the shadows at the end of the corridor…

I love REGIONS OF DARKNESS, originally intended to be one half of a Michael Armstrong/Hollywood horror movie double bill along with his screenplay THE LAMIA, but unfortunately this idea never came to fruition, for reasons you can read about in A History of the Screenplay in the REGIONS OF DARKNESS film script book. The book is out now from Michael’s publishers, Paper Dragon Productions.

I also love that screen-writer Michael Armstrong researched his screenplay by boning up, if you’ll excuse the rather obvious pun, on the works of that shy, retiring character known to history as Donatien Alphonse Francois, the Marquis de Sade.

De Sade’s oeuvres abound with graphic depictions of sexual fantasies involving violence, often extreme violence, sado-masochism, rape, sodomy and other, erm, things like that. Not the type of thing you’d read aloud to a blind and infirm aged aunt, in other words, not unless said aged aunt had been quite the swinger in her youth. Ahem.

Just to say, incidentally, that graphic depictions of sexual fantasies involving violence, often extreme violence, sado-masochism, rape, sodomy and other, erm, things like that, are also to be found in REGIONS OF DARKNESS, but naturally, here, none of it is gratuitous and is all done purely for the sake of art and the furtherance of story. Ahem again. Naughty Michael Armstrong…

This is the creepy tale of a beautiful young Frenchwoman called Simone Rangod, who comes from France to live in a gorgeous but spooky English country house where she has been engaged by a Mrs. Alice Harding to work as an au pair.

Alice Harding’s three sons, who all still live with her, are grown-up and not likely to need tucking into bed with a bottle of warm milk and a re-telling of Peter Pan, so Simone can take it that she’s here to help with the housework and not with the rearing of the sons, Peter, Roger and Eric Harding.

That’s not to say that the sons are oblivious to her not inconsiderable Continental charms. Eric, in particular, the widowed Mrs. Harding’s adopted son, takes a shine to Simone and she to him. She leaps willingly into Eric’s bed, but it’s not long before Simone is asking herself some pretty serious questions.

Why does Eric never leave the house? (Eric: I never leave the house.) Why do his mother and brothers keep such a close eye on him? Why is one half of the mansion closed off? (Okay, that could genuinely be just a housekeeping issue, but still…?)

Why do the family still set a place at table for the deceased paterfamilias, and why, in general, do they act as if Geoffrey Harding, the dad who died, is still alive when he’s, erm, not? ‘Sometimes, the way they all carry on, you’d think he was still alive.‘

Why are his paintings so gruesome, depicting nightmarish scenes of torture and cruelty the way they do? Was Geoffrey Harding, Esquire, sick in the head or what? Does this upcoming snippet of conversation shed any light?

Alice: My husband was a painter…

She notices Simone’s face, as she stares at the collection of ghoulish paintings.

Alice: He never seemed interested in doing landscapes or bowls of fruit like most artists.

Simone stops by one wall, on which hang portraits of young men interspersed with several nightmarish faces.

Alice: He met Austin Spare once- the painter- who got him interested in atavism.

Simone: Atavism?

Alice: … It’s to do with discovering one’s previous existences. My husband actually wrote a book on it called: THE DEMON IN MAN- hardly a bestseller but if you’re interested I can lend you a copy- provided you’ve got a strong stomach and don’t frighten easily?

Simone: Thank you, but I think these paintings will give me enough nightmares already…

Demons, eh? The plot thickens. And the more Simone tries to find out things about the Hardings and her beloved Eric, the murkier things appear. Doors open and close in the house, but no-one’s there when Simone goes to investigate. Demonic-looking faces peer in at her from the windows.

Eric’s self-portraits (yes, he’s an artist like his adopted Pops, Geoffrey Harding) are almost more horrific than his father’s…

Simone: … Why are they all so cruel?

Eric: Then that’s me. It must be. Through painting each one, I discover more and more about myself.

Simone: They’re like his (Geoffrey’s) paintings … They’re just like his paintings.

Eric: He taught me …

A shiver just ran through me there when I re-read that bit. Shades of Dorian Gray, much? Shades of M.R. James too, later on, when the young rent boy encounters the dust-sheets in the deserted part of the house doing that thing that sheets in ghost stories do. Here’s another snatch of conversation between Simone and Eric:

Simone: Eric, tell me? What is it you dream about that’s so frightening?

Eric: Myself … my previous existences, the torment of my soul … my death …

Okay, so, either he’s a giant narcissist, who could benefit from going out into the world a bit and seeing that there are other things out there to obsess on besides himself, or a raving lunatic. I’ll give you just one more clue to the mystery that’s unravelling chez Harding, and it’s Peter’s answer to Simone’s question, what is atavism?

Peter: It’s a way of tracing back all your previous existences … earlier existences … back to the point of pre-human consciousness … to the time of creatures that were half-human, half-beast … and then even earlier … to our very beginnings. And that’s when he (Geoffrey Harding) found the source within those dark secret regions of his sub-conscious.

Well, I’ve said too much. This is another terrific, atmospheric story from Michael Armstrong that would have made a great horror film. I know that Michael had his own ideas as to whom he would have cast in the roles of Eric and Simone, but I’ve had a couple of brainwaves too.

For Eric, Shane Briant, a posh blonde frilly fellow best known for his performances in four Hammer horror films, including one aptly called DEMONS OF THE MIND, in which his frilliness and incestuous brain-sickness know practically no bounds.

A Hammer actress for Simone, a beautiful Frenchwoman called Yvonne Monlaur, whose sexy accent would charm ze birds from ze trees, and no fooling. I wonder what Michael would make of my two choices?

I love his own choice of the legendary Diana Dors for the part of Mrs. Ellesmere, the astonishingly well-read cook and charwoman to the Hardings: I like a bit of Dostoyevsky now and again. Doesn’t take so long to read as Tolstoy…!

REGIONS OF DARKNESS is available to buy now at these links:

http://www.michaelarmstrong.co.uk

http://www.paperdragonproductions.com

‘Let us speak of unwholesome things. Let us speak of our inner desires and private fantasies; our secret impulses. For a vision of hell, look into the deepest regions of your own being.’

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

THE HOLE. (2001) DIRECTED BY NICK HAMM. BASED ON THE BOOK ‘AFTER THE HOLE’ BY GUY BURT.

STARRING THORA BIRCH, KEIRA KNIGHTLEY, LAURENCE FOX, DESMOND HARRINGTON, DANIEL BROCKLEBANK AND EMBETH DAVIDTZ.

I absolutely love this film. It’s one of my favourite horror films of all time. That’s because it feeds into some very dark fears of mine about finishing my days walled up or trapped somewhere from which there’s no escape.

First the food supplies get eaten. Then there’s no more water to drink. Then the lights go off and you’re left in the dark, alone and frightened. Then the horrific process known to us as ‘death by starvation’ moves in and sets up camp.

Hi, I’m your body literally eating itself. Pleased to meet you. I’m sure we’re going to have loads of fun together. This would be a good point in the process to wake up screaming and discover you’ve been dreaming all along, having a nightmare. If you don’t wake up screaming, then, I guess, may God have mercy on your soul…

This story concerns four teenagers from a super-posh, super-expensive English boarding school (thirty thousand buckaroos a year in school fees alone!) who willingly go down into an abandoned old war bunker on school property for several days, rather than go on a stupid old geography field trip.

To them, the bunker is just a really cool place to party and smoke weed and have illicit sex for three days, in much the same way as they’d enjoy having a rave in a crumbling old deserted warehouse down by the docks for an evening.

Liz, who arranges the whole escapade with Martyn, the school’s computer genius and hacker, is ordinary and mousy-looking and desperately in love with Mike Steel, the handsome, rebellious son of rock guitarist Stevie Steel. That’s why she’s so desperate to spend a few uninterrupted days in the hole with him.

She can’t let on to him, though, that she’s in love with him, so Frankie and Geoff have to come too, for cover purposes. Frankie, played by the gorgeous Keira Knightley, is the undisputed Queen of the School. All the guys want her, all the girls want to be like her. Frankie and Liz are only friends because, well, as Frankie says, ‘My coursework doesn’t write itself, you know…!’

Posh boy Geoff, played by Laurence Fox from LEWIS with Kevin Whately, is Frankie’s big admirer. Martyn the hacker is in love with Mousy Liz, and is deeply hurt that she prefers Mike Steel, the Hollywood heart-throb, to him. But he’s still prepared to help her spend several days in ‘the hole’ with her idol, as she seems to want it so much. And here begins the nightmare…

I literally won’t tell you anything else that happens for fear of spoiling the movie for you. As the truth comes out bit by agonising bit, it’ll leave you tense and all shook up, like it did me when I watched it for the first time.

I genuinely think this is a superior horror film, and I don’t know why it isn’t more talked about. Have fun when you watch it. Oh, you’ve got a fear of enclosed spaces, have you? So much the better…

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

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

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BOYS FROM THE BLACK STUFF. (1978/1980/1982).

TELEVISION DRAMA SERIES WRITTEN BY ALAN BLEASDALE.

DIRECTED BY PHILIP SAVILLE.

STARRING BERNARD HILL, MICHAEL ANGELIS, ALAN IGBON, TOM GEORGESON, PETER KERRIGAN, JULIE WALTERS AND JEAN BOHT.

‘Gissa job. Go on, gissit. I could do that.’

‘I’m desperate, Dan.’

I was blown away by this magnificent television drama series, which I only watched for the first time this year. It’s the story of five working-class Liverpool men, trying to get by in the Britain of the late ‘Seventies/early ‘Eighties, their progress hampered by mass unemployment and the loss of life savings.

The loss of the live savings was their own fault. They were diddled by some Irish ‘gyppos’ while doing a sneaky job known as a ‘foreigner’ on the side of the job they were meant to be doing on a building site, which was unlawful as well because the lads are all claiming the dole. It’s complicated, but that’s the way it was. Here in Ireland, we’d call a side job or ‘foreigner’ a nixer.

The ‘black stuff’ is the tarmac the lads use when they’re laying the roads. It’s a hard, dirty job, but it’s what the five lads are used to, and they want to do it; it’s just that the jobs aren’t there. The dole offices are packed to the rafters with depressed, demoralised, even suicidal men who want jobs but can’t get any.

Dixie Dean and his wife, who has a little side job delivering leaflets, are being watched and followed by the dole people, nicknamed ‘sniffers,’ whose main pleasure in life seems to be shopping people who need the little illegal side jobs to supplement their dole, which is barely enough to keep body and soul together.

Dixie, whose ‘nixer’ is a job working nights as security on a ship in the docks, is so strapped for cash he has to send his eldest son Kevin out of the house and out into the world to make his own way, as there are simply no jobs round their way.

His wife is scared out of her wits to answer the door, because, in this world, knocks on the door are always bad. They come from bailiffs and repo men, social security ‘sniffers,’ social workers, rent and debt collectors, pissed-off landlords, school attendance officers and the people who come to cut off your gas or electricity. It’s no way to live, is it? Afraid to answer your own door.

Chrissie, whose wife (played by a very convincing Julie Walters) and kids are in very real danger of going actually hungry, homeless and worse, is pursued for doing ‘nixers’ by a savagely punitive and unsympathetic social security system. His mate, the younger Loggo, who at least has no hungry dependants to feed, is similarly witch-hunted.

Jean Boht plays Miss Sutcliffe, the woman in charge of Chrissie’s and Loggo’s dole cases, but it’s clear from her capricious nature, given to unaccountable, bizarre mood-swings as she is, that all she’s fit for is caring for the plants she obviously prefers to humans.

Okay, so she has a senile elderly mother whose behaviour is a nightmare, but that doesn’t give Miss Sutcliffe the right to play God with her clients the way she does. They are people too, a fact she appears to forget.

Incidentally, David Neilson, better known now as anorak-wearing, shopping-bag-carrying and trainspotting Roy Cropper, Hayley’s bloke, from CORONATION STREET, plays one of her minions down at the dole office.

Back to the tarmac-laying lads. George is very old now (he still wants to work, though, even at his age) and is terminally ill. He was a political activist for the working man in his day, and will be missed by everyone who knew him when he goes.

His ‘last ride,’ when Chrissie wheels him around his old work haunts in his wheelchair, is very sad indeed. As is the bit where he loses one of his sons, Snowy, in a tragic accident caused indirectly (or directly, depending what way you look at it) by the social security sniffers.

Yosser Hughes is the loudest, the most aggressive and the most unpredictable of the group. He’s also the one who most wants to be ‘someone,’ to be rich, respected and ‘noticed’ in his life, and his ego literally can’t handle the collapse of all his hopes and dreams when it happens.

He seems to be a man literally driven out of his mind and his sanity with the loss of his life savings, gainful employment, his wife (she’s an auld bitch, but then he was very violent to her), his home and finally his children, in some very harrowing scenes of violence, terror and heartbreak.

Yosser, whose catchphrase is ‘Gissa job. Go on, gissit,’ and who is accustomed to headbutting his problems away, is so desperate for help, solace and guidance in his predicament that he even turns to the church in his hour of need, but there’s nothing doing there either.

What we’re witnessing here is probably the total breakdown of a man’s mind, after he’s lost everything in life that anchored him to his place in the world. Can Yosser ever be helped? God knows. The breakdown seems pretty absolute.

Ricky Tomlinson (Jim Royle of THE ROYLE FAMILY) turns up here as the doctor who attends George when he’s in the hospital, and so too does Janine Duvitski (Pippa, Patrick’s wife, in sitcom ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE), as a student hitching a lift who gives Yosser a well-deserved piece of her mind on a journey into Leeds.

The writer, Alan Bleasdale, has his own kids play Yosser’s poor little long-suffering sprogs. Yosser’s dream sequence, in which a park full of people, including his mates, watch him and his kids drowning in a lake, is an extremely powerful one, and gives you a direct insight into the man’s life: he’s going under at the rate of knots, and everyone around him can see it, but they either don’t care (the dole office, the ‘system’ itself, the medical doctors) or they have their own troubles (his pals from the ‘black stuff.’)

This series has won a ton of awards and accolades. It’s gritty realism at its finest. You must see it, if you haven’t already. There’s a stand-alone episode from 1981 called THE MUSCLE MARKET which is not on the box-set I own and which I therefore haven’t seen, so if you can find that one too from somewhere, more power to your elbow.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

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

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Fun reviews of films of all genres

Month: November 2020

THE CRAFT. (1996) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

THE TERROR OF THE TONGS. (1961) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

MICHAEL ARMSTRONG’S ‘DELIVER US FROM EVIL.’ (1969) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

36 Poetry Writing Tips – by Melissa Donovan… — Chris The Story Reading Ape’s Blog

The Dog Journal That Became a Diary of the Sky — BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog

MICHAEL ARMSTRONG’S ‘REGIONS OF DARKNESS.’ (1971) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

THE HOLE. (2001) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

How Is Your Writing Coming Along? — Fractured Faith Blog

Wrestling With My Inner Muse — Fractured Faith Blog

BOYS FROM THE BLACK STUFF. (1980-1982) A SUPERB TV SERIES REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©