Goth Girls' Detective Club

There are many things us Brits are good at, and there are quite a few of those things that we even mange to make look cool and sexy, like Italy based gold bullion heists and Mini Coppers, for example. One thing us Brits aren’t good at, and we definitely don’t’ make either sexy or cool, is caravanning. For one thing, British caravans are rather like badly decorated sardine tins, sardine tins who’s interior design sensibilities invariably ground somewhere around 1987, this is immediately a problem. Also, we don’t have the weather for it, when caravanning in the UK the average person is wearing three pairs of socks, stout Wellington boots and as many jumpers as they can fit under their cagoule. Non of these factors make for sexy or, indeed, cool. When I was a child caravanning holidays were very much the done thing. I can’t even begin to recall the amount of time I must have spent as youngster in what we laughingly refer to as the height of British summer listening to the rain hammer ...

Psychomania is one of those movies that I first saw long, long ago in childhood and never forgot. It clung to the recesses of my mind like an odd, deranged dream, a better calibre dream, but an odd and deranged one nonetheless and I always remembered it. A lot later I met my husband and, disturbingly frequently, I would mention Psychomania in conversation and recall all its little oddities to him; zombie bikers, Beryl Reid, frogs and incongruous folk singing, and he quite honestly thought I’d made it up. He genuinely believed I was the flavour of crazy that invents bizarre, low budget British B-Movies and is so utterly convinced by the delusion that I try force other people of their existence too. He married me anyway, and finally after all these years I got to sit him down and make him watch it, so I got the last laugh. Who’s crazy now, husband? Hmmm?! Tom (Nicky Henson) has pretty much got life in the 70s sorted, he’s a child of privilege with a big fancy house, George Sanders as...

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...