Goth Girls' Detective Club

Prepared for the zombie apocalypse armed only with a fruit knife and a veg hat. I returned home last night to find that my husband (The Boycat) has started his own blog . Although I feel obliged to warn you that nothing good can possibly lie therein, please stop by and say hi and be his friend anyway. But don’t like him more than me.

Sarah Waters’s 2009 novel The Little Stranger is a gratifying concoction of psychological mystery and gothic ghost story set in the post war English countryside. It follows in the grand gothic tradition of such tales as The Fall of the House of Usher and The Castle of Otranto pursing the familiar themes of psychological decline trapped within the confines of a symbolically deteriorating abode. Hundreds Hall was once a grand sprawling estate owned by the Ayres family that has systematically declined along with the decline its family’s wealth. The book’s narrator, Dr. Faraday is a small town country doctor with a curious affinity for a house he encountered only once before as small child when attending a fete with his mother a former house maid at the hall. He recalls that shortly after this visit the Ayres tragically lost their then only daughter Susan, After some thirty years absence events conspire to bring him back to Hundreds Hall when he finds himself back at the house profess...

Apologies for my recent absence, on a whim I took much needed week off work and I am now trapped on my couch apparently unable to stop watching American Gladiators . I don't know why, but, seriously, it's becoming a problem, I may need help. To make up for my recent uselessness here's a picture of me taking on Mr. Bitey in a titanic battle (during the ads in American Gladiators obviously).   Be back soon. x

Once again the super awesome The Mike over at yon From Midnight With Love has sounded the battle cry to call together his Midnight Warriors so we can answer the important questions that need answering and address the issues that lesser mortals cower before. Responding to his call, much like so many Thundercats calling ‘Ho!’, we have crawled our way out of our moldering crypts and cellars, our dark, dark woods and cobwebbed attics, our green-lit, bubbling laboratories and our sinister, abandoned amusement parks, or, in my case, from where I was lurking around the back sneaking a sly cigarette. And so it was that we were all gathered, swathed in moonlight, an eager sweat beading our brows and our collective hearts beating a furious, cold tattoo against our chests, until The Mike strode atop his stone promontory, beheld us all and proclaimed: "What's guaranteed to make you happy when it comes to Horror, Genre, or Cult cinema?" And we all knew what we must do. Well, mo...

Joan Fontaine is one of the last surviving stars of Hollywood’s golden age; at the height of her career in the 1940s she was a huge star excelling in the kind of melodramas that earned her multiple award nominations. We almost certainly remember her from the Alfred Hitchcock classics Rebecca (1940) and Suspicion (1941), the latter securing her the only Academy Award won for a Hitchcock performance. By the 60s, however, Hollywood being notoriously limited in roles for the more mature lady, she was finding film work harder to come by and admirably took the matter into her own hands securing the rights to 'The Devil's Own' by Norah Lofts (writing under the pseudonym Peter Curtis). The concept found its way to the Hammer Studios which resulted in it being brought to the screen in 1966 under the title The Witches . The Witches introduces us to Gwen Mayfield (Joan Fontaine) who in the opening sequence is working as a teacher in a small school in Africa. Unfortunately the loc...

On paper there’s not really anything original or innovative about CUT , it’s essentially the tale of a group of friends trapped in an isolated location while a sinister killer stalks them. However, what is remarkable about CUT is that it is ambitiously presented in one long, continuous 60 odd minute take. Now while I’m aware that this isn’t thoroughly original technique, I know Hitchcock experimented with the concept in ‘Rope’ and I’m fairly certain I have previously heard mention of another more recent horror movie that utilised the same principle, I do still have to admire the audacity and skill of the attempt and the divinely bold claim of it being ‘The World's first single continuous shot Horror/Thriller Feature Film’. Awesome! Also, I’m a bit enamoured of the fact that, really, CUT operates like theatre, super scary killer theatre. It does a remarkably successful job of employing aspects of the two disciplines to create an experimental, yet accessible, piece of cinema that...

I don’t know about you, but for me, when the weather warms up and we’re starting to be dimly threatened by summer, all I want to do is watch sea creature related peril movies, particularly if they primarily involve beaches and bikinis. So in celebration of Britain's brief attempt at not being bleak and drizzley, last week I watched: Piranha (1978) Still awesome. Completely silly, completely B Movierrific, completely camp and completely wonderful. Piranha Part Two: The Spawning (1981) Clearly James Cameron’s finest film. It’s got Lance Henriksen in it and it taught me several valuable lessons: 1) Having sex underwater is stupid. 2) Piranhas can fly. Not glide in a favourable wind like lesser fish, literally fly. 3) It’s remarkably easy to make a waterproof time bomb. 4) A torch is an inadequate weapon against piranhas. 5) I hate Titanic , it still sucks. 6) I’d probably watch anything with the word ‘spawning’ in the title. It’s a great word. Piranha (19...