Neil Willcox Cursed With Beauty

More stories I read this year. Does this complete the series? No it does not as I still have more so this will spill over into 2024.

1. Little Red Hands by Jonathan Louis Duckworth in Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Loaf arrives at Ree’s cottage. Ree keeps sheep. She says she has two sisters but Loaf doesn’t see them. Loaf says he’s a wood splitter but he doesn’t have an axe. On the night of the hands when the two pieces of the moon match up she locks him in her bedroom while strange things happen outside.

Loaf used to be with the Kai-Oats. They were a gang, reavers, and Loaf would go in and put people at ease before they came. Then he left them, the betrayer betraying them. Now they’re back and they might have more revenge than they can cope with.

Read This: For a bloody tale of acceptance rather than redemption
Don’t Read This: The backgrounds sounds fascinating, while the story itself mostly hints and winks

2. Oven Fresh by Luis Paredes in Crow And Cross Keys

Mother bakes batches of children in her oven. They all have gifts, but most of the gifts are of no use to mother. She can’t keep unuseful children around, not in her conflict with father. Matthias’s gift is to see the gifts in other children, so they can be assessed as soon as they come from the oven.

This latest batch has little until he comes to one, Celeste Morningstar, his sister. A Seer, whose gift is to see the future. And if she can see the future then Matthias, who can see one thing in the present, is redundant.

He may not be the only one.

Read This: Pitch black golem child fantasy
Don’t Read This: A Mother who destroys her creations is not for you

3. Harborville by Robert Lopresti in Tough

A man comes to Harborville (there’s no harbour, it’s named after Josiah Tiberius Harbor who founded the town in 1893). He looks like a bear. He goes into the inn and asks for someone, showing around a picture.

Harborville’s a long way from anywhere. There’s no signal, or at least not for strangers. And the man he’s looking for, well Mace says he’s been buying camping equipment. Maybe he’s out with one of the cabins out in the hills.

The Bear will make it worth his while. He really wants to find the man. So he’ll need the right gear as well.

A clever, layered crime story, about greed and survival.

Read This: The story comes together, as various characters saunter deeper into crime and darkness
Don’t Read This: It’s just bad people doing worse things

4. Life Wager by Lucy Zhang in Apex

A daughter is gambled away to a stranger. The stranger is a dragon who takes her away to the heavens. She is a superlative dancer and so makes her way there, gaining blessings of longevity and wealth.

They have a child.

The child chooses to leave the heavens. On earth she plays mahjong, the very game that her mother was lost at. She’s good at it.

One day the Emperor comes to challenge her. He is a superlative mahjong player, who wagers his life. He discovers in her a player who can offer him something new in the game.

She lacks desire, lacks avarice or ambition, lacks the ability to love. He takes her to his palace to play mahjong.

Read This: A tale of mahjong and mistakes from before people were born
Don’t Read This: The game as metaphor belies the central concern and difference of the protagonist, and maybe you don’t care about mahjong

5. The Canterville Ghost

Hiram B Otis the American Ambassador (“Minister To The Court Of St James”) buys Canterville Chase. He’s warned by Lord Canterville that there is a ghost, and several people have had horrible deaths after being haunted. Otis says he will take the ghost along with the furniture at valuation. None of the Otis family – Mr and Mrs Otis, eldest son Washington, teenage daughter Virginia nor the younger twins – believe in ghosts.

When Sir Simon Canterville begins his haunting campaign they deal with it matter-of-factly. The bloody stain they remove with patent stain remover forcing him to put it back every night, eventually running our of red. When he rattles his chains Mr Otis offers oil to lubricate it. When he tries to frighten or play pranks, the twins terrorise him in turn.

After several rounds of this Sir Simon becomes depressed at these Americans who not only can’t be scared but actively haunt him back. Then he encounters Virginia and this light-hearted tale of spooks and hard-headed Americans turns into a sincere story about forgiveness, devotion and the mystery of death.

Read This: A classic story of fun spooky hi-jinks and a serious if conventional meditation about death and the afterlife
Don’t Read This: They’re all silly caricatures, so the final section falls flat

6. Burst Balloons And Sugared Milk by Marie Louise McGuinness in Gone Lawn

There are two children and their mother is wrapped up in grief. They tried to break through it, tried and tried until they could not.

There was another child once, Jamie. And it’s not Colly’s fault for walking on the cracks, it’s the fault of the woman in the 4X4. The woman on the phone.

The mother is wrapped up in grief. The father grieves outside the house. Colly and the other, the narrator, they know that Jamie was the brightest one, the shining balloon. “It was difficult to accept that one child was worth more than the sum of their siblings but we could not deny it was fact.”

Read This: The brokenness of grief so beautifully summed up in vivid scenes and metaphors
Don’t Read This: Death, child neglect, and insufficient answers

7. The Travelling Fayre Of Señor Monteluz Comes To The Occidental Archipelago by J M Cyrus in Swords And Sorcery

Mino sees the flotilla arrive on the island. The travelling fayre. It’s a mismatched fleet, some drawn by sea cows, from all over the long continent. They come ashore, obviously strangers, and strange, and with odd skills and performances.

It’s there for one night only. And MIno has dreamed of this. It’s like the Long Continent in microcosm. He’s dealt with the goats and he’s going to visit. It will be magical.

An excellent magical fair story and if it’s more about the description than the plot none the worse for it.

Read This: To find out, with Mino, what the Travelling Fayre has to offer
Don’t Read This: You were hoping for a mystery or plot or something

8. Something Beautiful by Cathy Ulrich in Ghost Parachute

Someone is dead. Someone has been killed. Someone has been murdered and abused and had everything taken from them.

Still, what if we didn’t let that happen. What if we took it back. What if we took all the hate and fear and death – and the guns – what if we took them away.

And gave everyone involved something beautiful.

Read This: For the story to be told in the negative space of what is being erased
Don’t Read This: Someone got killed

9. The Final Girl Wolfs Down Red Lobster by Chelsea Stickle in Passages North

In slasher films, the horror sub-genre which involves a group being stalked by a single guy with a knife, the Final Girl is the one who survives, the one who puts down the monster*. This Final Girl has escaped the hospital, still in the gown, and is eating in the Red Lobster car park.

Red Lobster is an American seafood chain restaurant.

The Final Girl has had to face down men before, tell them to back off, tell them to leave her alone. There was always the question. What if they didn’t? What if they insisted? What would she do?

A guy came at her and she’s alive, eating seafood in the parking lot.

Read This: For a meditation on what the idea of the final girl means
Don’t Read This: It’s horror movie tropes and chain restaurant seafood

• Oh hey, did you know there are entire books written about slasher films and the construct of the final girl, and how genres get created and prescribed imperfectly, as those from before it was codified always contain elements outside the bounds, and those later are influenced by the description? And if you disagree with my working definition of slasher films, final girls and genre then I feel you; still I’m here trying to orient people who don’t know anything about this stuff in a single sentence. Work with me.

10. The Magazine Of Horror by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki in Apex

There is a horror magazine. It only has one story in it, the greatest horror story in the world at the time. And it pays $100,000 if the story is accepted.

There’s some other requirements, the story stays up so long as the author is alive, and they’ll die if another, greater horror story is published, but that’s hardly worth worrying about. I mean $100,000 and being acknowledged as the greatest horror story. It’s got to be worth submitting.

Read This: A very funny and creepy story about submitting stories to magazines
Don’t Read This: You don’t know or care about how stories get into magazines

More films I watched earlier this year. As I'm not done yet, there will be more catch up posts in the New Year.

1. Carry On Screaming

In Edwardian Britain, Doris is abducted in the woods by a hideous Frankenstein-ian creature called Obbbod. Her boyfriend discovers a finger and takes it to the police. After some comedic character introduction they search the woods and stumble across a gothic mansion inhabited by a giant butler, Sockett, and a dark haired, white-faced, deep-cleaveaged woman, Vampira. She in turn wakes her brother, Dr Orlando Watt, who is being electrically re-charged. Learning nothing and scared when Dr Watt vanishes due to running out of battery, they leave.

The next day they follow some leads to various comic sketches. Meanwhile the police surgeon uses electricity on the finger and grows a new, smaller Oddbod, Oddbod Junior, who kills him. He goes to the mansion, where the plot is revealed; they’re kidnapping people and turning them into mannequins to be sold to shops in town.

The film goes through a few more twists and turns. It mostly works as a less-coherent than average period horror movie of the period, such as Hammer were putting out, with one or two actual scares. A Carry On film interested in it's supposed topic! Meanwhile the best jokes are at least as interesting as the period romance and red herrings that take up the middle of those films.

Watch This: An amusing parody of 1960s horror and gothic films and TV
Don’t Watch This: Actual 1960s horror and gothic films can be more interesting and occasionally have better jokes

2. Baal

Bertholt Brecht’s first play, before he’d fully come into the style known as Brechtian. This BBC version stars David Bowie as Baal, a poet and minstrel. Baal is introduced in a posh house where the people want to promote his work. But he isn’t going to become respectable, a voice of the working class to the bourgeoisie.

He continues, drinking, borrowing money, having affairs with women. He seduces one woman, who drowns herself. He abandons his pregnant mistress. Eventually he kills his friend in a drunken quarrel and leaves to wander the countryside. Baal is aloof from society that he despises, his actions do it no harm (though he does to the people around him) and he dies alone in a woodcutters’ hut.

A response to the idea of the lone genius who strives against the bounds of society, the casting of Bowie is inspired. Yet in the end it’s a deeply depressing play, as Baal throws away everything he’s offered, the crowd pleasing songs of the music hall as useless as the higher minded poetry.

Watch This: A very interesting bit of theatre history, brought to the screen by Bowie
Don’t Watch This: Grim, nihilistic and frankly filthy in appearance

3. Assassin (2023)

Alexa goes to confront Valmora (Bruce Willis). Her husband Sebastian has been left in a coma after a secret mission. He was supposed to be a drone pilot. They are interrupted when a woman tries to kill him.

Alexa is brought in to the unit; they have a way to pilot human beings. Unfortunately so do their enemies. They’re in a secret war. The man Sebastian was piloting was killed by a criminal called Adrian (Dominic Purcell). They send Alexa in, piloting an artist that Adrian is buying from, to try and discover who has the human-piloting secrets, and maybe how to restore Sebastian. To her surprise, not only is Adrian actually interested in the art (it was assumed that it was money laundering, or maybe some nouveau riche style thing, the film isn’t quite clear on this) but also the artist.

This leads into twists and turns, lies and betrayal and a few cool action sequences – both violent ones and misdirection/stealth ones where they get access to and inject people with the chips to take them over and pilot them. In the end it’s not as clever or interesting as might be hoped, and Willis, in (reportedly) his final film due to ill health, doesn’t shine compared to the energy of Nomzamo Mbatha, playing Alexa. Yet even she and Purcell only manage to convince for one long scene, the rest is just another high concept, mediocre effect thriller.

Watch This: Gritty action thriller with one or two clever extrapolations of ideas
Don’t Watch This: The idea of piloting someone else is barely explored and the rest is forgettable

4. The Magician (1926)

In Paris sculptor Margaret Dauncey in working on a monumental faun when a big chunk falls on her, injuring her spine. The famous surgeon Arthur Burdon manages to repair it, preventing paralysis, this is in a surgical theatre with lots of people watching including both scholar Dr. Porhoët, Margaret’s uncle, and Oliver Haddo, the titular magician. Margaet and Arthur fall in love and plan to marry.

Haddo finds a book in a library, which contains the secrets of creating human life. One of the ingredients is the “heart blood of a maiden.*” He removes the page before handing the book to Porhoët, who has also been looking for it (though for scholarly rather than evil reasons).

Haddo meets Arthur and Margaret at the fair. Haddo shows off with a snake charmer. Porhoët claims the snakes are harmless. Haddo lets one bite him, then heals the wound; while everyone is distracted a performer is struck by the snake and Arthur has to rush her to hospital.

Margaret is repulsed by Haddo but unable to resist him. He visits her in her studio and hypnotises her. The faun statue comes alive and looks over a scene of diabolical decadence, the black and white film becoming black and red. On the morning of Arthur and Margaret’s wedding they learn that Margaret has married Haddo and they have left Paris.

Later they come across Haddo and Margaret in Monte Carlo. Margaret wins at uncannily at the casino under Haddo’s influence. Arthur and Porhoët attempt to rescue her. Margaret confesses that she is Haddo’s wife in name only, and so a maiden (with the heartblood of one), and this leads to a violent and diabolical conclusion in Haddo’s laboratory, which he has inconveniently placed on top of a spooky tower on top of a hill.

Based loosely on W Somerset-Maughn’s 1908 novel of the same name, this loses the bits where Haddo is charming, interesting and boldly acting against societal conventions. The bits where it’s based on Aleister Crowley in other words. Whether this is the limitations of film making at the time or for legal reasons it’s unfortunate; the [SPOILERS] loss of the pitch black ending even more so.

Watch This: Spooky film with a few moments of interest from the source material
Don’t Watch This: It’s silent and everything is over-emphasised while the most interesting bits have been attenuated
Thought Lost: But since discovered, the film appears to be in the public domain and is available to watch online

• I’d misremembered this as the heart of a maiden, in which case Haddo would have been wildly confused, the book saying “You want to create human life? Have you considered getting married to a woman?”

5. Ajaka: Lost In Rome

Ajaka is a legendary Oyo Emperor, reimagined in this animated short as a powerful warrior with mystic powers. Usurped by his brother he is enslaved and made a gladiator in Rome, there becoming champion. But despite his success he yearns to return to his own country.

A high energy version of the legends, the discontinuous timeline and magical elements, combined with some excellent fight scenes, sketch in the plot and character.

Watch This: Exciting adventure from an underserved set of stories
Don’t Watch This: It’s an outline of an interesting story focusing on confrontation
A Short Film: Available to watch online

6. I’m All Right Jack

Stanley Windrush has decided to get a job in industry, is rejected from eleven interviews in ten days with a few comic sketches. His uncle and an old army pal, Stanley DeVere Cox, (presumably national service as this is from 1959) offer him a job at his uncle’s firm Missiles Ltd. He’ll have to start at the bottom though.

They’ve just signed a deal with a middle eastern country. But they’re planning a scam. Stanley, obviously of a different class to most of the workers, and without a union card, will cause the workers to walk out with industrial action. Then they can transfer the contract to Cox’s company, Union Jack Foundry, at a higher price, and split the extra money three ways (uncle, Cox and Mr Mohammed the diplomat).

This doesn’t quite work as Windrush charms Fred Kite, the militant shop steward, to the extent of inviting him to be a lodger – which Windrush accepts after meeting Kite’s daughter Cynthia. However the introduction of a time-and-motion expert does work after he fools the naïve Windrush into showing how well he can handle the forklift. In an effort to prevent their rates being cut unless they perform to a higher standard the workers go out on strike.

This gets out of hand as other workers go out on sympathy strikes – including Cox’s factory. When they discover that Windrush gave the time and motion man information the union sends him to Coventry (ostracise him). Then Cox and Windrush’s uncle leak to the press that he is being punished for being a hard worker; later he crosses the picket line to go back to work and is hailed a hero in the newspapers. Kite throws him out and then Kite’s wife and daughter go on strike, leaving the home. The whole country comes to a standstill as strikes break out everywhere.

The manager and Kite negotiate a deal but Windrush has made them all look bad and has to go. They try to bribe him but it doesn’t work and he reveals all on national television (on a program chaired by real journalist Malcolm Muggeridge and real TV presenters).

It’s quite a black satire, presented in a jaunty and fun way. Bosses, workers and union officials are presented as self-interested and unwilling to change at best, deeply corrupt at worst. Although old fashioned, the quality of the performances stands out, with several great actors doing fun bits and character actors doing their thing.

Watch This: Classic comedy, good performances, still relevant
Don’t Watch This: Under all the light-hearted fun and zany characters it’s deeply cynical and bleak

7. Interview With The Vampire

It’s San Francisco in 1994 and journalist Daniel Molloy (Christian Slater) is interviewing Louis De Point Du Lac (Brad Pitt). Louis claims to be a vampire, proves he has supernatural powers. He tells his story; that despairing after the death of his wife and unborn child he was turned into a vampire in 1791 by Lestat De Lioncourt (Tom Cruise). For a while they live on his plantation near New Orleans, Louis refusing to drink human blood. Then when plague comes he feeds on a girl, Claudia (Kirsten Dunst), who Lestat then turns into a vampire.

Lestat trains Claudia to be a killer, while treating her as a child. Frustrated that she won’t ever grow up she tricks Lestat into drinking dead blood, and cuts his throat. Shocked, Louis agrees to help by throwing him into the swamp, then the two of them embark for Europe.

They look for vampires everywhere they go, eventually finding them in Paris. They hide in plain sight at the Théâtre des Vampires putting on horrific theatricals. Learning that Claudia killed Lestat they kill her, and the woman they’ve turned to be her companion. Armand (Antonio Banderas) releases Louis who kills all the other vampires in revenges, destroying the theatre. Armand helps him escape, offers to be his companion, Louis refuses.

Returning to America, Louis drifts, never quite recovering, a century of grief. Eventually in 1988, in New Orleans, he comes across Lestat, regretful, weakened and living on rats blood; Louis refuses his offer of companionship too. We return to the present day (1994) and Molloy has missed the point entirely, thinking that being a brooding goth vampire is rad as hell, to Louis’s disgust.

The film of course tells us both are true. Being a brooding gothic vampire in the period 1790-1870 is extremely cool. It’s also gutting, emotionally devastating, psychically draining. Don’t do it kids!

Watch This: Cool gothic vampire film
Don’t Watch This: Being a vampire sucks, also the book is better

8. The French Connection 2

“Popeye” Doyle is back. After crime boss and drug smuggler Alan Charnier got away at the end of The French Connection, Doyle goes to Marseille to try and catch him. The local police aren’t impressed and Doyle can’t speak the language. After finding them following a false lead, Doyle ignores orders and manages to get an informant killed. He’s given a desk outside the toilets, because the French police have realised he doesn’t do subtlety.

Doyle is being followed. It turns out it’s the French police, and he gives them the slip, unfortunately just after Doyle has been spotted by Charnier (while Doyle is ogling women on the beach). Doyle has been very noticeable and they’ve been using him as bait. Charnier kidnaps Doyle, addicting him to heroin.

There’s a long sequence of Doyle being kept prisoner and addicted, Charnier questioning and tormenting him, then another after he’s dumped at the police station where he goes through withdrawal. Finally recovered there is a last confrontation.

This sequel, placing Doyle outside his own patch, makes his violent, boorish ways less effective, and so plays up his unpleasantness as a character. We almost get some insight into Marseille* and crime there, but on balance the film isn’t very interested. The film slows down when Doyle is captured, and then fails to regain momentum while he spends time on cold turkey.

Watch This: Grim and violent 1970s crime thriller with a good central performance
Don’t Watch This: Not as good as the first one

• The non-fiction book The French Connection explains the link, as heroin was brought from Turkey to France and then on to North America. Ironically by the time this film was made in 1975, a combination of the real busts in the book, other law enforcement action, and Turkey banning opium poppies, this route had dried up.

9. Bulldog Drummond’s Peril

Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond is getting married to Phyllis Clavering at her aunt’s house in Switzerland. One wedding present is from Professor Goodman, father of Gwen, the wife of Algy, one of Drummond’s comedy sidekicks. It’s a synthetic diamond, he’s managed to discover the process to make them*. This is of great interest to Sir Raymond, head of the London Diamond Syndicate.

There’s a break in, the diamond is stolen and the Swiss policeman guarding the presents (“the loot” as Drummond calls it) is killed. Clues suggest the perpetrator fled for London so Drummond abandons his bride-to-be and heads back there.

Colonel Nielsen inevitably poo-poos Drummond’s theory that Sir Raymond is behind it – after all how could someone involved in the diamond trade be a rogue? An explosion at Professor Goodman’s house appears to kill him and destroy his process, but Drummond follows his rival to discover Professor Goodman has been kidnapped. Unfortunately they capture Drummond, and then his comedy sidekick manservant Tenny. That’s intended though; Tenny has the tools to escape. They do, only to discover Phyllis, following Drummond back to London, has been kidnapped in time for a finale.

There’s a lot of silly business with kidnapping and so on, but the central plot is clear from the start and although they keep bringing in new characters the thrust of it actually makes sense. Drummond, again, abandons his fiancée, and again Colonel Nielsen bans Drummond from the case. It’s like he does this to get him to solve it and not (as he claims) because there’s always chaos when Drummond is involved.

Watch This: Another swift pacy adventure, with a little more sense and edge than usual
Don’t Watch This: Everyone is a ridiculous caricature and the lengths people go to are bizarre

• In actual history, although this was an active field of research, the first synthetic diamond was not created until 1953

10. The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976)

Based on real events (The Texarkana Moonlight Murders) this film takes place in Texarkana on the Texas-Arkansas border in 1946. A lot of men are coming home from the war and making up for lost time by dating women*. However this is interrupted by the “Phantom Killer,” a man with a knife and bag mask, eye holes cut out.

In the first instance the man is injured, the woman also attacked and mutilated, but not raped. Three weeks later a second couple necking in a car in a secluded lover’s lane are attacked, and a sheriff’s deputy gives chase, but loses the attacker. The man is killed, again, and the woman discovered tied to a tree.

The town becomes paranoid. Gunshops sell out, people build all kinds of home defence things. The city police, and the county start making regular patrols of the lover’s lanes. The Texas Rangers send in their top criminal investigator, Captain J D Morales.

The attacks being 21 days apart, they plan decoys for the next time they expect it, which is also the high school prom. Some scenes of policemen in drag ensue. Despite this there are more attacks. Also a car chase after a man with a gun robs and forces a driver to drive him; after he’s caught he confesses to being the Phantom Killer but the evidence doesn’t stack up.

They nearly catch him during his last attack, but he escapes. The film eventually peters out, because, just like in real life, the Phantom Killer is never caught.

Watch This: Period slasher with some true-to-life elements
Don’t Watch This: The Phantom Killer is frightening because we know nothing of his motives or background, and also uninteresting as we don’t even have any suspects

• Because it gives ages, at one point we learn that Howard W. Turner, age 29, a former Seabee (the Navy’s construction engineers) is dating Emma Lou Cook, age 17, a high school dropout. This is, if not precisely encouraged (the police are patrolling the lover’s lanes at night to tell anyone there to clear off), certainly accepted.

"I didn't just fall off the turnip wagon," me jumping off the rutabaga cart