Goth Girls' Detective Club

There are many scary things about childhood; almost everything else is bigger than you for a start, that’s very scary, and then you’ve got strangers, parked cars (according to Dave Prowse), maths, impending acne, and the fact that seemingly every other week you are taken to the doctor to be jabbed with needles to guard against an endless variety of terrible diseases that are apparently constantly trying to kill you. And, as if that wasn’t enough, sometimes, people, with absolutely no thought to future consequences to the innocent children who are, indeed, our future, make the illogical decision to insert the most terrifying characters and imagery into seemingly harmless pieces of co-called children’s entertainment. A prime example of this is Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s The Child Catcher. I mean really, who thought this was a good idea? Eeep Like the unholy offspring of a spider and an undead funeral director, The Chid Catcher stalked onto our screens 43 years ago and has filled ...

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...

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 ...

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...