Goth Girls' Detective Club

I have issues with Clive Barker. In theory I should love him, the gore factor, the homoeroticism, the 80s, etc., but somehow I find his books inherently forgettable and that annoys me because I really want to love him and he insists on making that so hard for me. I keep being surprised by books of his, they jump out at me from nowhere and I discover I’ve read them and just couldn’t remember a damn thing about them. (Actually the reason CB keeps cropping up in my house at the moment is that my husband has suddenly developed something of a big boy crush on him and his novels keep dropping through my letterbox with alarming regularity and startling me with their familiarity). When I read the blurb about Coldheart Canyon I thought that it was going to be right up my street: A Hollywood Ghost Story, it promised me, I love old Hollywood, I love ghost stories, this has to be the Clive Barker book for me! Also, one irate Amazon reviewer described it as: ‘far from what I would call horro...

Apparently I’m all about movies I remember from my childhood at the moment. Bunny Lake Is Missing was originally a 1957 pulp fiction novel written by author Merriam Modell under the pseudonym Evelyn Piper. In 1965 it became a black and white movie somewhat surprisingly starring non other than giant of stage and screen Laurence Olivier. Bunny Lake is Missing begins with young American single mother Ann Lake (Carol Lynley) relocating to England to be nearer to her brother Stephen (Kier Dullea) who works in London. From Anne’s interactions we learn that she has a four year old daughter named Felicia though she is commonly known as Bunny. Since arriving in the UK Bunny has been sick and confined to bed rest but it is now her first day at her new school the marvellously christened ‘The Little People’s Garden’ In a stunning feat of parenting, on arriving at ‘The Little People’s Garden’ and finding it currently bereft of teaching or administration professionals on the advice of the ...

I never really got the Jay and Silent Bob/Clerks thing. Sacrilege to many, I know, but despite being a quintessential under achieving product of Gen X (I blame Kurt Cobain) I just never got the joke. However, if Jay and Silent Bob had been a bit more like the boys from Necroville I might have appreciated them more. Jack and Alex are BFFs. They’ve grown up together in the same small town and now work together in a video store and spend the vast majority of their time indulging in the appropriate level of BFF type banter. Alex is chubby and is surprising skilled with weaponry, Jack isn’t chubby but is inexplicably involved in a toxic relationship with obnoxious live-in girlfriend, Penny. For her part, Penny mostly sits round the house eating, smoking and whining, calling Jack to pick up cigarettes and food for her and waiting for money for massage classes in much the same way actors wait for Godot, she also likes to round out her days with a little more whining. Needless to say she’s ...

About a hundred years ago, when I was in my early teens and dressing a bit like a chubby Cyndi Lauper, in the good old days of VHS when remote controls had strings and you could tape anything you liked off of the old tellybox with impunity, I recorded something late at night in said manner (I’m fairly certain it was the boobilicious Hammer film The Twins of Evil) and after my film of choice the tape ran on gave me the tantalising beginning of another film, then promptly ran out before I could find out what happened. This drove me mad for years. In a sad testament to my own stupidity it was only recently that I thought to try and track it down, which turned out to be a lot easier than I had anticipated, it took me about two seconds , which was a bit embarrassing as I’d already prematurely resigned myself to hours of fruitless internet trawling. The result was 1960’s The City of the Dead . Hurrah for modern technology! And it turns out it’s in the public domain too. Once more, hurra...

The Last of Sheila isn’t really a horror movie; it does, however, have an impressive horror pedigree. It was conceived and written by none other than Anthony ‘Norman Bates’ Perkins abetted by composer Stephen ‘Sweeney Todd’ Sondheim, starred James Mason (as seen in Salem’s Lot) and even gave us Joel Schumacher (Lost Boys) as costume designer. I find it somewhat surprising that The Last of Sheila isn’t better known; it boasts a terrific all star cast, has an intriguing and fascinating storyline, beautiful locations shown to advantage in every shot and at its heart it is a well-crafted, sophisticated whodunit. In T he Last of Sheila the protagonists are assembled under the ruse of Mediterranean pleasure cruise aboard the yacht of movie producer Clinton Greene (James Coburn), the specially selected guests include Christine, an agent (Dyan Cannon), struggling screenwriter Tom Parkman (Richard Benjamin) and Lee Parkman (Joan Hackett), his wealthy wife, actress Alice Wood (Raquel Wel...

Charlene ‘Charlie’ McGee (Drew Barrymore) Firestarter (1984) Under different circumstances the McGees probably would have taken over the world. Unfortunately their particular circumstances were not inclined toward that possibility and were instead inclined more in the direction of their suitability as lab rats. Charlene ‘Charlie’ McGee is a young girl whose tiny wee little body potentially possesses a myriad of psychic abilities, the most blatant, or most developed, being pyrokinesis. It seems poor little Charlie inherited these abilities from her parents after they, some might say foolishly, participated in a clandestine government sponsored experiment whilst in college whereby they allowed themselves to be injected with an undisclosed drug known as ‘Lot Six’ which apparently had the capacity to alter chromosomes and pituitary glands. Although her parents developed some powers following the ‘Lot Six’ debacle really they were quite embarrassing and probably best not mentioned ...

Ghoul School (1990) In 1990 we finally managed to get Thatcher out of No. 10, Nelson Mandela was at long last freed after 27 years in captivity, we were vogueing and rioting in response to the poll tax and I kind of wanted my hair to look like Tawny Kittaen’s or that bird from The Bangles, not Hoffs the redhead. And Ghoul School was released. Ghoul School is a campy little entry into the zombie cannon that tries its ardent little best to make up for its quite shockingly low production values with some gory special effects, which is a nice thought and I appreciate the effort. The plot isn’t a complicated one, I had a couple of whiskies and I managed to keep up, a couple of delinquents accidentally unleash a peculiar toxic substance into a high school's water supply while indulging in a spot of late afternoon janitor worrying. Predictably, the first people to happen upon this noxious chemical cocktail are the school swim team, who promptly turn an unhealthy shade of blue and...

Andrew ‘Andy’ McGee (David Keith) Firestarter (1984) Andrew McGee and the soon to be Mrs. McGee, Victoria (Heather Locklear, sporting the kind of eighties hair one usually only witnesses in dreams), saw fit to participate in a secret government experiment whilst in college where they consented to be shot up with unknown quantities of an unknown drug referred to as merely ‘Lot Six’. Now, frankly, this sounds like a bloody stupid thing to do, but those crazy sixties kids didn’t seem to think so and consequently the elder McGees scored themselves nice little powers, most notably Andy McGees acquired brand of mind control, a kind of telepathic hypnosis that he refers to as the ‘push’ an ability which seems to allow him implant strong suggestions into people’s mind thereby allowing him to bend them to his will. While you might think that this would be a super awesome power to have and your naughty minds might run away with the untold possibilities it could offer you, it turns out that...