Writing by Jamie Evans

Tag: Horror fiction

  • Stuff I Have Enjoyed This Year

    It’s that time you’ve all been waiting for, a round-up of Stuff I Have Enjoyed this year, across film, television, books and, very occasionally, music. Some of it might have even been made this century! Although, almost certainly not. This isn’t everything for the year, instead a selection of (mostly) new-to-me highlights.

    2025 has been a year where I’ve broadly dropped self-imposed reading targets or anything like that (turns out they’re stressful and feel like a chore when other things preclude you from keeping to them, who knew?). I have replaced this with floating arbitrary goals (do Chaplin’s entire filmography, from the earliest Keystone days! Make lists of all of the films included in books like You Won’t Believe Your Eyes!: A Front Row Look at the Science Fiction and Horror Films of the 1950s!) because they seemed like a good idea at the time, dammit.

    That has led me to things like a return to and increased use of Letterboxd, the type of social media I can get behind (limited human interaction? Cool, good stuff) and moving away from pretty much all other platforms (is Bluesky next? Possibly). On Letterboxd I’ve been enjoying logging, reviewing and rating films, despite that being a largely pointless, arbitrary (again!) endeavour.

    On that topic, off we go with the round-up.

    Silent films

    I’ve been really enjoying widening my silent film experience, and this year has included some of my favourites yet.

    Poster for The Cat and the Canary (1927)

    The Cat and the Canary (1927, directed by Paul Leni) takes the familiar-in-1927, overripe tropes of old dark house mysteries and puts a more comedic spin on them, but Leni can’t resist some genuine chills and gorgeously dark imagery, so the film turns out to be one of the best examples of the very thing it is pastiching.

    Swedish poster for The Bat (1926)

    Roland West’s first go at adapting the stage play The Bat into a feature in 1926 is a similar mix of comedy and serious thrills, evocative imagery, and a good central mystery. Some of the frames in this film should hang in art galleries. Ben Model’s Undercrank Productions label gave this a Blu-ray and DVD release last year that shows it the love it deserves.

    Lon Chaney as Erik (the Phantom) at the masquerade ball

    For its 100th birthday, Lon Chaney’s The Phantom of the Opera (‘directed’ by Rupert Julian in 1925) was back in cinemas in October and I gained a new appreciation for the film and for one of Lon’s more unsubtle performances. Once his glorious make-up for Erik is revealed, the delirious journey to its brutal conclusion was grand big-screen fun.

    French poster for West of Zanzibar (1928)

    On the subject of Chaney, I also hugely enjoyed the utterly reprehensible West of Zanzibar, directed by Tod Browning in 1928, which was wildly inappropriate, grotesque and deeply suspect. It’s also great fun, with a phenomenal Lon holding the entire wild ride together.

    Cast members of Seven Footprints to Satan (1929) in costume

    Wilfully frustrating, nightmarish and oddly moving, Seven Footprints to Satan (directed in 1929 by Benjamin Christensen) is best come to knowing as little as possible about it. If the photo above of key cast members doesn’t make you want to watch it now, then I can’t help you.

    Short films and cartoons

    French poster for Haunted Spooks (1920)

    The actual haunted house part of Haunted Spooks (directed in 1920 by Hal Roach and Alfred J. Goulding) is decent, silly fun marred by a disappointing raft of racist gags. The first half, which finds Harold Lloyd trying to woo his current love, get rejected, and then decide to end things, only fail every time, is much better. Dark hearted but still delightfully silly, with some excellent gags and delivery.

    Posters for The Haunted House (1921) and The Goat (1921)

    Two favourite Buster Keatons from this year (where every Keaton was good to great) were The Haunted House and The Goat (both directed by Keaton and Eddie Cline, both 1921), the former an inventive run at…uh…haunted house cliches and the latter an at-times jaw-dropping spectacle that has some of the best stunt work and gags he ever did, which means some of the best anyone ever did.

    A poster/lobby card for Habeas Corpus (1928)

    It might be impossible for me to not enjoy a Laurel and Hardy film from the twenties or thirties, and it hasn’t happened yet, with Habeas Corpus (directed by Leo McCaret and James Parrott in 1928) quickly becoming a new favourite. Their first synchronised sound picture (here meaning a score with sound effects), it’s a classic of The Boys’ broad slapstick, drawn-out gags, silliness, and graveyard shenanigans that I loved.

    Mack Swain, Phyllis Allen, and Charlie Chaplin in A Busy Day (1914)

    Chaplin’s opening run of Keystone films range from the brilliantly inspired to the dismal, but special mention in this post for A Busy Day (directed by Mack Sennett in 1914), which is almost completely morally irredeemable (extreme violence, barrel-bottom misogyny, utterly formless), but on the day I put it on, Chaplin in drag hoofing the shit out of anyone within kicking distance for 6 minutes before meeting an unfortunate end made me chuckle when I really needed it. Don’t ask me to stand by this assessment in future.

    A bad poster for The Haunted House (1929), a good poster for The Mad Doctor (1933)

    I enjoyed several early cartoon classics this year, but two Mickey Mouse ones stood out, perhaps because of how far they are apart from modern Disney, but definitely because they function as some pretty wild, gnarly horror in their own right. The Haunted House (directed by Walt Disney and Jack King in 1929) and The Mad Doctor (directed by David Hand and Wilfred Jackson in 1933) are stuffed with extraordinary animated imagery and, for the first title in particular, stack up against any serious circular nightmare horror. But you know, for kids.

    Sound films

    Posters for The Man From Planet X (1951) and Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)

    A low key science-fiction minor classic and an outstanding television movie horror are first up. Veteran director Edward G. Ulmer’s The Man From Planet X (1951) functions as a kind of proto-Quatermass-y, horror-adjacent yarn in which a spacecraft lands on a foggy Scottish moor, intentions unknown. A journalist and scientist try to find, not that by the film’s conclusion we really know that much more for absolute certain. Game attempts at Scottish accents, solid direction and a properly alien alien are all good fun.

    Dark Night of the Scarecrow, directed for television by Frank De Felitta in 1981, is a leisurely paced, beautifully shot, frequently excellent tale of revenge that goes to some very dark places. A great cast is still dominated by a powerhouse, grotesquely villainous turn by Charles Durning as Otis P. Hazelrigg, a deeply unsettling, vile piece of work.

    Poster for House of Mystery (1961)

    Vernon Sewell had already made three versions of stage play The Medium by the time he had another go with House of Mystery in 1961, but let’s be glad he did. A pre-The Stone Tape riff on the concept of residual haunting, it’s mostly made up of flashbacks, and while the central mystery and final reveal are not exactly subtle, they are still effective, as is this rather wonderful little film, and it does it all in under an hour.

    Promo image for Murder by the Clock (1931) and poster for The Unholy Three (1930)

    Murder by the Clock, directed by Edward Sloman in 1931, is a macabre early talkie mystery thriller that has some of its stage-trained cast playing to the cheap seats with the advent of sound, but benefits from Lilyan Tashman having a blast as a scheming seductress after an inheritance. It also has an old, dark house (and graveyard!) setting, crypts, secret passages, murders and a flinty, blackly funny heart.

    The Unholy Three, directed by Jack Conway in 1930, remakes a Tod Browning film from only five years before, starring the same leading man, and sticking to the same story. Why bother? Well, this was the talkie debut of Lon Chaney, so a real event, and what better way than a story he knew and the audience already loved. Sadly, it would turn out to be his only talkie, and his last film, with Lon dying a month after The Unholy Three‘s release. We have just this one to go on, but it’s pretty clear from it Chaney’s career would have survived the transition to sound. He’s incredibly good in this, his performance charismatic, captivating and showing that he understood the new opportunities for film ahead. Lon Chaney is one of the greatest actors from the entirety of cinema history, and as a swan song for possibly the best to ever do it, The Unholy Three, and its final scenes, is pretty much perfect.

    Television

    Detective Murdoch and Doctor Ogden. And a brain.

    Highlights this year have been the always revolving schedule of shows like You Bet Your Life, The Jack Benny Program, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, The Twilight Zone, One Step Beyond, Dark Shadows, Upstairs, Downstairs and more, but the most surprisingly enjoyable experience has been a late-in-the-year start of Canadian detective series Murdoch Mysteries, based on the novels by Maureen Jennings, and currently at 19 seasons. Season one has had Murdoch meet Arthur Conan Doyle amongst others, alongside showing his fascination with the future of crime solving (‘finger marks’, lie detectors, forensic science). It’s all agreeably easy-going, but not undemanding, entertainment.

    Books

    Covers for The Story of Victorian Film and The Silent Film Universe

    Two excellent early film histories were published this year, and both combined scholarly insight with accessibility and a passion for the beginnings of cinema, establishing themselves almost immediately as key texts. Bryony Dixon’s The Story of Victorian Film and Ben Model’s The Silent Film Universe are essential reading for anyone who wants to know how we got from there to here, and why these eras of film are full of life and innovation and ever vital to explore.

    Cover of Hollywood: The Pioneers

    Kevin Brownlow had already written one of the definitive histories of silent film with his 1968 book The Parade’s Gone By… but just over a decade later, he did it again, this time putting together the definitive documentary on silent film, the 1980 Thames Television series Hollywood. The accompanying, highly recommended book wisely doesn’t try and retread his previous work. Instead, Brownlow collaborates with another film historian, John Kobal, to create a book that is equal parts informative text and beautifully done visual history, full of hundreds of often rare photos. You can find this for about £5 (or equivalent in other areas), so very much worth it.

    Covers of Fleischerei and Phengaris

    I’ve written about both of these books already (Modern horror writing at its best) and they remain two of the best pieces of fiction of the year. If you haven’t already read them, you really should.

    Music

    I’ve gone from being obsessed with music a couple of decades ago, to barely registering what is happening with it these days, so probably good for me that two favourite bands released their new albums this year, Deafheaven (Lonely People with Power) and Greet Death (Die in Love). Better still that both show each band at their peak. It’s been largely either very loud explorations of losing humanity in the lust for power (Deafheaven) or deceptively pretty explorations of the darkness and beauty of life (Greet Death) and I’m grateful for both of them.

    Covers of Lonely People with Power and Die in Love

  • A Peculiar and Beguiling Bleakness

    Casting the Runes (1979) and updating M.R. James for the Scarred for Life generation (this article previously published on the now-defunct Horrified website)

    Title card of the episode shows Casting the Runes written in red against a shot of fields and trees covered in snow, the sun’s rays raising from behind a hill

    The 1970s was a time of wild contrast in Britain. Wealth inequality was at its lowest but the country was beset by industrial action. Music, film and television had entered a period of creative fecundity that would continue Britain’s position as an innovator and leader in culture. Alongside this, the country was afflicted by power cuts, inflation, the rise of the far-right and the beginning of the slow death of that one-generation-only dream of the middle class. Parallels can be drawn with our most recent decade or so, one where it has seemed the good times are over and terminal decline is inevitable. 

    It is perhaps then not surprising that the horror produced throughout the decade had a peculiar and beguiling bleakness. Stories across books, film and television took us to dark places and often left us there at their conclusion, no happy endings or release. One of the towering achievements of these years was the annual BBC A Ghost Story for Christmas, a mix of filmed adaptations of M.R. James, Dickens and original screenplays (one of which, Stigma, was contributed by the writer of this version of Casting the Runes, Clive Exton). These haunting tales of a genuinely disturbing and dangerous ‘other’ lurking just out of sight are rightly hailed as classics of the genre. 

    A man and a dog crouch on snowy ground, looking around them, the man appearing to be concerned – behind him, on the hill, a stone figure of a demon can be seen

    All but one of these were directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark, a talented director with an unerring ability to present creeping dread onscreen. After he had finished with the BBC sequence, Clark wasn’t done with the supernatural. For the ITV Playhouse strand he took on the challenge of providing an updated version of M.R. James’ ‘Casting the Runes’. The story had been adapted some two decades before for the classic Night of the Demon (1957, dir. Jacques Tourneur), one of the great British horror films. A decade later it was adapted again for the anthology series Mystery and Imagination, an episode that is sadly lost to us.

    As with Jacques Tourneur’s film, Casting the Runes updates the story to contemporary times. It gives us a female Dunning (played here by Jan Francis) and an American Karswell (Iain Cuthbertson) and adheres loosely to the main beats of James’ chilling short story. It’s a version that isn’t particularly well remembered these days, or seemingly thought of highly, in comparison with its more elegantly mounted BBC relatives, or the 1957 film. We have a tendency to compare needlessly, and a low-budget 50 minute television adaptation shot on a mix of film and video has little chance of equalling the impact of a crisply produced black and white big screen version directed by one of Hollywood’s most skilled psychological horror craftsmen.

    Dunning and Derek Gayton in a room, looking a small slip of paper with runes on them

    And yet, there is much to enjoy in this production, starting with a glorious opening sequence which took full advantage of the blizzard conditions it was shot in. There’s a clear folk horror influence to this beginning, evoking memories of films like The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971, dir. Piers Haggard), finding as it does the menace inherent in indifferent nature. As we start, a man we later learn is called John Harrington is out walking his dog in the snowy countryside until the animal becomes unnerved by the presence of something out there with them, something that is slowly, inevitably hunting John. It benefits hugely from the snowy landscape and, in its un-retouched presentation on DVD, a scratchy film print as well as a menacing score. 

    In this iteration, Karswell is a cult figure, the self-styled Abbot of Lufford, and he has made somewhat of a name for himself as writer of a book called ‘A History of Witchcraft’ and as proponent of a philosophy that would have ‘Vice as the only true virtue, lust as the only true modesty, indecency the only true decorum and evil the only true good’. When Karswell is mocked by a television exposé on ‘mumbo jumbo’ produced by Dunning, he determines to take his revenge on her next. Our introduction to Karswell is the converted rectory where he lives, surrounded by grand gold ornaments. Karswell enacts his curse, manufacturing a meeting with Dunning. When Dunning is attacked in her bed by a creature created from Karswell’s magic, and she learns Harrington had written a scathing report of Karswell’s book and paid for his life with it, Dunning begins to understand her scepticism will not keep her safe.

    Karswell, a smugly mean expression on his face, holds a small figure with red clothes and dark hair

    The remainder of the play, whilst not overtly frightening or aiming to be, is equal parts unnerving and melancholy. Exton and Clark work together to create a world where the characters live in a definably real world that is being intruded by something ancient and unrelenting. There are some great performances, with Francis an anchor to everything as the unravelling Dunning. Cuthbertson has a grand time as the wicked Karswell, here a genuinely malevolent presence, a character who seems to revel in the power he wields. Being a production made in the 1970s and filtering through a decade of that beguiling, bleak approach the play also has a suitably harsh conclusion as it fades out, the wreckage caused by Karswell extending far beyond the final shot of a devastated Dunning.

    A man in a long coat and hat at the crest of a footbridge covered in snow

    Though not part of the BBC ghost stories, this adaptation of ‘Casting the Runes’ shows Clark learned well what worked for them and has much to recommend for those who appreciate the uniquely chilly, uncompromising horror the 1970s produced and acts as an effective chaser to much of what proceeded it. 

    (The version referenced throughout is from a now out-of-print Network DVD release, though the episode can be found in other places online)

  • Modern horror writing at its best

    I want to write a little bit about two recent book releases that share some thematic crossover and urge you to check them out. Both books are remarkable pieces of writing and deserve a wide audience. A fair warning: the books deal with gnarly subjects and this piece references them throughout, so if you’re put off by mentions of grief, illness, gore and the like… read no further. No spoilers, however.

    In Phengaris, we meet 17-year old Mark, a young man adrift. He is looking after his terminally ill mum, a parent with whom his relationship is conflicted to say the least, his dad disappeared years ago, and all Mark really wants to do is get high and tune out of the relentless noise of his life. He thinks he’s found the perfect spot in nearby Thurstrop Wood and an abandoned workshop yard. Unfortunately for Mark, something no longer human there has seen him and doesn’t want to let him go.

    Phengaris opens with a visceral description of a body mutilated by disease and something disturbingly unnatural. It sets the tone for what follows, as Mark becomes consumed by the mystery of Thurstrop Wood and how it connects to his family, revealing secrets that have been buried for years. There’s other things buried in the woods, too, and they are coming to the surface. Orridge writes with skill and empathy about the burden of youth, and of illness, and about the unforgiving way bodies attack themselves at the same time as the world around us weighs down on us. There’s a thread of ecological awareness, too, and a focus on the nature of parasitical behaviour.

    It’s also concerned with what it means to be human, and how family connections not even escapable by death bond us together for good and for ill. Orridge has a beautiful way with phrasing and illuminates the secondary and minor characters in a way that brings them vividly to life. Sadness and melancholy and loss knot their way through Phengaris, as does a quietly effective rage. It’s ambitious, passionately alive, and makes the personal deeply political.

    Fleischerei by Saoirse Ní Chiaragáin has some complimentary themes but is a radically different experience. In it, we are introduced to Órfhlaith, living in Berlin and working as a content moderator. Órfhlaith is a bloody ball of grief, guilt and self-loathing, punishing and exciting herself with masochistic fantasies. When she moves their focus onto her sickly, compellingly unreadable colleague Arnaud, the wall between her interior darkness and the world around her unravels. As their romance develops, they find in each other a shared yearning for emotional dislocation and physical mutilation. Órfhlaith just wants to know Arnaud, but is it ever really possible to know someone else, no matter how much a part of you they become?

    This is a troubling, affecting work. Intimacy throughout is a transgression that leads to violence and permanent scarring. It’s a confrontingly visceral book and will make you look at the concept of ‘meat’ substantially differently afterwards. It is also fearless about making bodies and consumption and grief defiantly, unapologetically political and challenging us to think about what that means.

    Fleischerei is putrid as it builds its grotesque concoction of smells, tastes, sensations and consumption. It’s about the interior as pungent reflection of what is outside of us, what is done to us. Again, this is a book concerned with what makes us human and what it is to be human, and offers no easy answers, preferring instead challenges to expected narrative conventions. An unrelentingly brave, compassionate work of art.

    Phengaris and Fleischerei are both outstanding, personal, feminine, bleakly beautiful works of modern horror writing at its best. I highly recommend you experience them.

  • Motherfucker

    (A short fiction)

    I have been waiting too long for you to come and pick me up. It’s cold and wet; this mist rain is papercutting my eyes. Getting darker too, and the cars passing by now have their headlights on. The change from day to night usually creeps up on me, so I don’t notice until I look up and everything is shaded with black. But headlights jar my brain into paying attention in a way I don’t care for. 

    Where are you? 

    I don’t want to get into another stranger’s car, but I’ll do it if you’re not coming. 

    If you’re trying to hitch a ride and you’re not pretty, it’s hard fucking work. I stick out my thumb and try to look as pathetic as possible. My shirt jacket is getting soaked through and my hair is getting welded to my forehead. The rain is making me blink, like I’m crying. It’s going to be some fucking psycho that picks me up, but if he’s got a warm heater running, I’ll take my chances.

    Where are you?

    A few cars drive by me, splashing my boots and the bottom of my jeans with water, until a flatbed truck pulls over. I run up to the door and don’t even look in before I open it and slide into the seat, slipping my backpack between my legs. I look over at whatever abomination took pity on me. He’s twice my age, hair growing out of every hole in his head, even his eyes, I swear to God.

    “Not a good road to be thumbing a lift on, buddy,” he says. 

    “I know, I know,” I say, looking down at my hand gripping the bag’s top loop. “I’m just glad someone stopped. Thank you.”

    I look up and catch him giving me a disgusted appraisal. He turns his head to the road and pulls the truck back into the descending night.

    “Been a few people killed along here. I mean, there’s been lots over the years, but more than a few recently.”

    I let his statement hang in the air long enough for both of us to move on.

    “I only need the next town along, if you’re going that way?”

    “I’ll drive through it,” he says, and it sounds like a threat somehow.

    Where are you? 

    I was sick of waiting but I think this is a bad idea.

    This guy isn’t a talker, thankfully, and we slip into silence. The sound of his windscreen wipers scrapes the glass like some doomsday metronome. 

    I sweep my hair back with one hand and rub my palm down my damp jeans like it’ll somehow dry it. I’m starting to get warm now, my clothes still clinging to me, but not enough now I can’t feel I haven’t had a shower or bath in days. Not since we argued. Not since you told me it was done. We were done. You said being with me was like a slow suicide. 

    Do you remember when we were new and I got lost so easily? You told me whatever happened between us and wherever I ended up, you would find me. Come get me.

    Where are you?

    I hear the guy trying to clear his throat like a fist is stuck in it. He can’t do it. It starts to sound like choking. When I look over at him, he’s already going purple. The truck drifts to the side of the road, running over gravel towards the ditch. I feel the lurch in my stomach as we tip into it and grind to a halt, the truck deep enough in to nearly be on its side. 

    Dirty water starts collecting around me. The guy is gone now, slumped towards me, looking down at me like some distended old ventriloquist puppet, only his seatbelt stopping him from crushing me down into the black water that’s filling up the cab, reaching up for my head. I don’t know how I’m going to get out of this one. 

    I have been waiting too long for you to come and pick me up. 

    It’s cold and wet; this mist rain is papercutting my eyes. Getting darker too, and the cars passing by now have their headlights on. The change from day to night usually creeps up on me, so I don’t notice until I look up and everything is shaded in black. But headlights jar my brain into paying attention in a way I don’t care for. 

    Where are you? 

    I don’t want to get into another stranger’s car, but I’ll do it if you’re not coming. 

    (This story inspired in part by Greet Death’s song ‘Motherfucker’)

    https://greetdeath.bandcamp.com/track/motherfucker