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Post by dem bones on Nov 17, 2017 7:22:14 GMT
'Harry Adam Knight' (John Brosnan & Leroy Kettle)- Bedlam (Gollancz, 1992) Tom Stimpson Blurb: They called him the Bone Man. . .
For months he terrorised London, after the police found his hideout - with its decorations. Then they nailed him, and put him away. Forever. But then the dreams started coming. And the dreamers started dying. For one policeman, his nightmares told him that the Bone Man never really went away. Soon nightmares become reality, and the streets an hallucinatory maelstrom. It's true. The Bone Man is back. And there‘s nothing anyone can do about it.
"If you like your horror in ten-foot high blood-red neon capital letters, then this is definitely the book for you" — Time Out "Another superior chunk of splatter. Weaving in and out of drug-induced alternative realities, is as ingenious as anything by Philip K. Dick" — Anne Billson “The well-told story of a sadistic homicidal maniac. But he warned. You need a strong stomach for Harry Adam Knight" — Sunday TelegraphNobody need tell me I got too many books and mags on the go, but soon as I realised this one is set in and around a place holds a wealth of personal memories, there was simply no resisting. Prologue. HAK novels tend to hit the ground running - his outrageous 'Simon Ian Childer' outing, Worm, being a perfect example - and hear he steams straight in with a snapshot of the Bone Man taking sadistic pleasure with a young couple. We cut to the present day. One night all the residents of Hillview House dream of being rogered stupid by a young stud name Derek. Reactions are mixed. Douglas Scott, fiercely homophobic, is distraught, not least because he loved every micro-second of the experience. Emily and Peter Stanton are so turned on that, on waking, they launch into spontaneous grapple for the first time in months, thereby setting a troubled marriage far on the road to recovery (their teenage son and daughter are unusually sheepish at the breakfast table). Dr. Stephanie Lyell merely laughs off the squelchy episode. Dr. Lyell is a scientist at the Harrow Institute for the Mentally Insane (aka "The Looney Bin" or "Bedlam") off Tyburn Lane near Lowlands College. Star patient: Marc 'The Bone Man' Gilmour. The Home Office have approved his transfer from Broadmoor to bench test the institute's exciting new anti-psychotic, BDNFE. It's perfectly safe. Dr. Lyell has been injecting the drug and no harm done. The following night Douglas Scott awakens to find his flat ablaze and no means of escape bar the bedroom window. He breaks his neck in the fall. Detective Superintendent Terry Hamilton of Harrow Division is suitably baffled. All the neighbours smelled smoke, Scott's body is badly burned, but forensics can no evidence of a fire. Could it be a case of spontaneous human combustion (see also 'James Blackstone' Torched!). When Hamilton learns that Gilmour has been transferred to this neck of the woods, he takes it so badly that the Chief Super demands he take a month's leave. The DS gets plastered in the Timber Carriage (RIP) then, fighting drunk, pays Dr. Lyell a midnight visit to warn her that what she's doing is wrong. When he attempts to break her door down, she calls the police. Hamilton is dragged off to the cells. An embarrassed DC Thomson apologises to Stephanie on his behalf. Hamilton has every reason to hate the Bone Man after what the bastard did to his wife and kids .... That same night Highview resident Delia Coope hangs herself. [to be very continued].
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Post by andydecker on Nov 17, 2017 17:58:30 GMT
I don't have enough HAK.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 18, 2017 10:35:17 GMT
In the wake of his whiskey-fuelled meltdown, D.I. Terry Hamilton is suspended indefinitely on half pay. He spends a night on the piss with Josie Welch, an unscrupulous hack reporter on The Harrow Examiner and voracious cop groupie. As things turn out, Terry's will be Josie's final conquest. The Bone Man reacts rather too positively to the synthetic neurotransmitter. It liberates his mind to the point where he can control those of everyone in the immediate vicinity. All he need do is visualise a situation and it will happen. Our torture-murderer is essentially God of Harrow-on-the-Hill and with huge reserves of BDNFE at his disposal, ain't nobody can stop him. As the populace set about raping and killing one another, Gilmour demolishes St. Mary's church and replaces it with 'Bedlam' by levitating the complex to the top of the Hill. "I'm the King of the castle and you're the dirty rascal!" he taunts Stephanie, whose recent self-administered injections of BDNFE render her immune to his control ... until her supply is exhausted. Now that she's introduced Terry to the drug, there's only enough to keep them going for 48 hours, but they'll likely be dead by then anyhow.
A reeking yellow cloud shrouds the hill. Harrow, isolated from the rest of the world, fast degenerates into a killing field. Cop on cop gang rape in the shopping mall; wholesale castration and lynching in the park; the Chief Super is fucked and butchered by his twelve year old daughter; a loving mum fillets hubby and the kids in their beds: a cat eats itself alive ... on a loop. There's a special treat for BAD SEX fans when the charred remains of Jeremy Scott return from the grave to have it out with stuck-up neighbour, Dr. Lyell. Only Terry's last minute heroics spare her the indignity of choking to death on Jeremy's flame-grilled whopper.
Hamilton faces his own horrible ordeal when his seven-years-dead wife shows up in the flesh and picks up where she left off, nagging him about his smoking and out-of-control drinking.
And Gilmour is only warming up.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Nov 21, 2017 14:37:48 GMT
Genius! Is this the one that was filmed (rather badly and, judging by the comments above, in an incredibly watered down fashion)as Beyond Bedlam, with Keith Allen and Liz Hurley?
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Post by The Lurker In The Shadows on Nov 21, 2017 15:16:14 GMT
Genius! Is this the one that was filmed (rather badly and, judging by the comments above, in an incredibly watered down fashion)as Beyond Bedlam, with Keith Allen and Liz Hurley? It is, though I can remember very little about the film beyond thinking Keith Allen had made a better Hannibal Lecter knock-off in The Comic Strip Presents... Gregory: Diary of a Nutcase. It appears that the film was renamed Nightscare for its US release; www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBUOMUr1kDA
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Post by franklinmarsh on Nov 21, 2017 15:59:03 GMT
Cheers, Lurks! If BB qualifies in the Agadoo Cup at t'other place, I may have to subject myself to its dubious charms once again - not purely for Elizabeth's clothes-shedding, but that'll help. I've the Comic Strip box set too - hope Gregory's in there - I've never seen it.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Nov 22, 2017 19:52:44 GMT
Well, I've now seen Gregory : Diary Of A Nutcase and very good it is too, contrasting Henry : Portait Of A Serial Killer with Silence Of The Lambs via a mundane British camcoder obsessed would be serial killer with a (lampoon of) a glossy glamorous Hollywood airbrushing of a mass murderer. Great! Looks like I could be rewatching Beyond Bedlam too.
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Post by The Lurker In The Shadows on Nov 23, 2017 9:37:15 GMT
Well, I've now seen Gregory : Diary Of A Nutcase and very good it is too, contrasting Henry : Portait Of A Serial Killer with Silence Of The Lambs via a mundane British camcoder obsessed would be serial killer with a (lampoon of) a glossy glamorous Hollywood airbrushing of a mass murderer. Great! "I can smell her chips!"Glad you enjoyed it, FM. I haven't actually seen it since it was broadcast in the early 90s, so wasn't sure if I was misremembering that Allen was part of a film within the film. I think that, despite Keith Richardson's needless faff-arsing around with re-editing some of the films, I really need to pick up that Comic Strip Presents set sometime and revisit some of these. Peter Cook's blood-spattered contract killer from Mr Jolly Lives Next Door is a long time favourite.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 24, 2017 20:02:06 GMT
Bedlam doesn't seem to have received the same rave notices as, say, Slimer or The Fungus which is a puzzle as it's no less exciting and horrible (especially for phobophobics). HAK puts the eerie St. Mary's churchyard to excellent use, even finds time to sick up an ultra-violent and unusually gripping episode of Neighbours. Then there's Sister Romulus, the epitome of creepy nun. Pop culture references include The Sunday Sport, The Late Show, Hannibal Lecter, golliwogs, and "Ever read The Rats by the horror writer James Herbert? It's about this plague of rats. They eat people in all sorts of really gross ways. You'd love it." There is - or was - a Private Clinic-cum-Convalescent Home atop Harrow-on-the-Hill. Worked there as a painter-cleaner-rubbish burner-dogsbody for a year during my teens. The old cliché holds true: it really was often difficult to tell patients and staff apart. Among the kitchen team was an ex-member of child pop "sensation," Our Kid (though, to be fair, he was among the least visibly deranged persons wandering the premises). Will likely have to track down the film now, even if it doesn't sound the least promising. A pilgrimage up the hill is a definite.
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Post by kooshmeister on Jan 29, 2019 23:55:44 GMT
That cover. It's at once terrifying and strangely hilarious. Bedlam: Or, How Not to Use a Condom. "Am I doing it right?"
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