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Post by bushwick on Aug 11, 2008 20:19:19 GMT
I used to watch tons of horror/exploitation movies but have slowed down recently (more books). I still have a heap of stuff to watch, a good couple of hundred films - torrents, old VHS, cheapo DVDs and a couple of those 50 film horror packs you can get off amazon for a few quid. Saw Brain Damage the other day, had never seen that before. Not as good as Basket Case and slightly cut but was alright.
The film that's really kicked my arse recently though is a French film called Inside. It's got Beatrice Dalle in it (playing a not very nice lady) and it's insane, a real unrelenting nightmare. Very well acted, fast-paced and absolutely brutal. If you've seen Irreversible, it's not a million miles from that in feel, but not QUITE as disturbing. Highly recommended. The French seem to be the new blood in horror cinema, some great stuff coming out of there recently.
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Post by bushwick on Aug 5, 2008 19:54:11 GMT
Found this in a chazza shop recently, coincidentally very soon after this was posted, not heard of it before, nice condition too. Ain't read it yet though. (Have just finished 'Doomsday Warrior 3: The Last American' and am now onto Gerald Suster's 'The Handyman', out of interest)
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Post by bushwick on Aug 5, 2008 17:18:35 GMT
Got one of these Lew Archer books out from a library years ago... I loved it. May have to revisit.
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Post by bushwick on Aug 3, 2008 12:32:49 GMT
No, never have, but I mean to - have always liked the title. Like I say, haven't read much by him. Have always enjoyed any essays and non-fiction bits by him - the piece in TFTMD about his mum is very honest, moving and brilliantly written. He comes across as a good sort, not pompous. I also have 'Scared Stiff', that collection of 'sexy' horror tales - read a couple and they're pretty good. Unfortunately I don't have the hardback though, which has some good illustrations.
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Post by bushwick on Aug 3, 2008 9:24:34 GMT
Yeah, I have the Panther one, read it a few months ago. Some great covers there - I prefer the Fontana I think. Greatly enjoyed this book - thought the details in characterisation were really nice, and the setting in the publishing industry was really well observed and I assume pretty accurate. The little bit of Campbell I have read seems to sit somewhere between pulp and 'proper' literature - I remember this and 'The Face That...' being fairly soberly written and constructed, with some evocative prose, but pulpy endings.
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Post by bushwick on Aug 1, 2008 14:56:26 GMT
Might have a trip to the Smoke for this...never actually been to a book fair. Do you think I'll be able to pick up 'Chainsaw Terror' and all the Caleb Thorns I need, for bargain prices?
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Post by bushwick on Jul 29, 2008 13:02:06 GMT
Hmmm...
As for book, it couldn't be a pulp novel as I'd read it in a couple of hours. I think I'd take a good encyclopedia or even the latest comprehensive OED.
Film: As I'm stuck on a desert island with natives and all, I'd go for Ruggeros Deodato's unsavoury masterpiece Cannibal Holocaust. Would take on a whole new terrifying dimension...I'd be watching my back for cannibals constantly.
Album: Would probably have to be either 'Static Age' or 'Walk Among Us' by the Misfits. Will never tire of those two. Failing that, maybe a Ramones anthology?
And as for the book that I would lay waste to....it's a hard one...but I'd have to say, probably Robert M Pirsig's 'Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance'. A 'worthy' book...but tiresome, self-indulgent and really hard to get into. Remember reading Kerouac's 'On The Road' in an afternoon around the same time, but this was the opposite. Took me weeks of putting it down, leaving it for ages, then plucking up the courage to pick it up again. One of those 'pivotal' books you're supposed to read in your late teens. My advice would be, don't bother...read Bukowski instead, a far better (and way less pretensious) role model for youth!
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Post by bushwick on Jul 23, 2008 12:52:58 GMT
I couldn't believe this was for real...
To recount...a guy in Winchester lost an eviction battle, or something, and was cheesed off enough to want to do himself in.
So...
He got a chainsaw (an electric, plug-in one), a plug timer, and a bottle of sleeping pills. He set the timer, necked a load of sleeping pills so he knocked himself out, then rested his neck against the blade. Unconsciousness set in, the timer went off and the blade went straight through his goddamned neck! What a guy!
Now, they say suicide is the way of the coward...but I dunno, that guy sounds pretty fucking brave to me!
And before anyone gets any ideas, I've bagsied that to put in a story! it's more convoluted than one of the daft killings in Michael Slade's 'Ghoul'!
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Post by bushwick on Jul 10, 2008 17:42:19 GMT
Just checking that Empire Of The Claw site and it's excellent so far, by the way. Interesting that these Eerie mags were mainly just reprints of 1950s EC ripoffs - have read a little about these in Martin Barker's "A Haunt Of Fears" - they're the Lucio Fulci to EC's George Romero, I guess. Great pulp/exploitation/drive-in ethics. The stories looked crude compared to the work of Jack Davis, Graham Ingels etc, but they look pretty damn good now! Like, I said, no-one draws like this anymore...maybe it's just not possible, in the way that it's just not possible to write a 'sincere', non-ironic Richard Allen or 'animals on the rampage' novel these days...a point i shall ponder...
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Post by bushwick on Jul 10, 2008 17:19:53 GMT
These are brilliant! Can't believe I've not heard of these before. The covers are kinda generic, lurid and tasteless, which is a good thing obviously. Nice anatomy and draftsmanship though. You don't see much of that style these days, do ya?
(FM if you are reading this, book will be with you by beginning of next week, cheers for the Herne [read it already], i am the world's slackest man)
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Post by bushwick on Jun 25, 2008 15:11:36 GMT
Got this Italian Western one from the market a few months ago for 50p. Have not read it in full but it looks excellent.
Think I had another of these Lorimer books when I was very young, can't recall which one right now. And somebody mentioned Denis Gifford's Pictorial History of Horror Movies?? Damn, that brings back memories. Used to spend hours with that book. The axe-in-head shot used to freak me out. And the pic from 'Horror Of Malformed Men', which I found fascinating - still haven't seen that movie...
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Post by bushwick on Jun 23, 2008 20:05:17 GMT
" Valuing human lives as little more than a meal ticket, Track is still on the trail, four years after the Civil War. Far more than a soldier's pay can be earned from head-down over Track's saddle.
This time the ruthless bounty hunter has the gleam of gold in his eye. Prospectors like Frank Dawson found and lost more fortunes than most men. But, untroubled by conscience or compassion, Track follows no man's rules.
With a head of blond hair which would grace any Apache's lodge pole, Track resists the temptation of April Jacob's lithe body in his quest for higher reward.
Exacting a long overdue war debt from Colonel Taylor, he seizes the Apache war chief and sets out to pack his saddle bag with gold. The head count will be high, because killing is Track's business and business is good..."I've got a fair few Shaun Hutson books, as every charity shop in the world seems to have them (see also: Richard Laymon). I'm ashamed to say I've never actually read one (see also: Richard Laymon), so having found this little number at the market for eighty English pence, I got involved. I would have never actually known this was by Hutson if it wasn't for this board so, cheers for that. Apparently Shaun is known for his lovingly realistic medical descriptions of gore and the effect of a bullet, and whaddyaknow, this is all in abundance here. This is a real meat-and-potatoes PC Western, with a very basic plot with little in the way of twists (SPOILER ALERT: bloke finds gold, partner gets killed by injuns, gets Track on board, injuns try to get them, army helps a bit, loads of people die, they kill injuns and get gold, bloke tries to cheat Track and kill him at the end and obviously dies - that's literally it, no sub-plot apart from one scene where a floozy tries to bed Track and he throws her in the street). Track is a nondescript ex-Cavalry man who now cares little for his fellow man and earns his living as a bounty hunter. The whys and wherefores of how he came to be such a cold mofo are not elaborated upon - he just is, because he killed lots of men in the Civil War. Supporting characters are also distinctly unmemorable, ciphers with little in the way of Harknett or James-style quirks. I loved it! Really pacey, simple writing, everything set up nice and quick, cardboard characters - bring on the incredibly gratuitous violence. It's pretty witless - Track's obligatory puns aren't as clever as Edge's and there's no grim ironic Laurence James type humour either. The basic nature of the characters and writing give it a cartoon quality, but it's mean-spirited as hell. A little girl gets her throat cut so badly that her head nearly comes off, in front of her mum who is then bothered by about 7 Apaches in a row. He'll spend a good few lines on a really loving description of a shotgun wound to the head, or a disembowelling. There's lots of genitalia getting mashed up along the way (akin to a Breed book I read) - a coyote eats a dead guy's cock and balls near the end! I am definitely becoming desensitized to extremely nasty pulp (the same way I did with Italian cannibal movies etc a few years back!) - but this definitely ticks all the boxes. Great entertainment, highly recommended for antisocial dumbasses like my good self. To use a punk analogy, if George G Gilman is the Stooges or the Dead Boys, Samuel P Bishop is the Exploited!
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Post by bushwick on Jun 21, 2008 13:42:36 GMT
Wasn´t this written by John Shirley? Apparently not. Fantastic Fiction reckon it's one fella under a pseudonym ( www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/s/ryder-stacy/ ) and this site reckon it's two ( everything2.com/e2node/Doomsday%2520Warrior ). The names sound Scandinavian...which maybe gives these books a different angle, knowing they're not written by an American. If you look on Amazon, Jan Stacy and Ryder Syvertsen have also written a few books about movies. I like the sound of the 'Body Smasher' series! hahaha...you can imagine what they're like! haven't managed to find hide nor hair of either of 'em anywhere though...
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Post by bushwick on Jun 21, 2008 13:20:16 GMT
So, in the last few days I've read Crow 2: Worse Than Death, and Edge 4: Killer's Breed. I've seen a catalogue of atrocities - a dog being beheaded and eaten, a woman knocked out by a black-haired man, a one-year old baby being shot in the face, a blind girl being raped, numerous bloody murders. With all this fresh in my desensitized brain, I finally read this notorious book...
FM's review is bang on the money, not much I can add to that. The sex scenes are full on and straight out of a porn mag's letter's page - no 'throbbing manhood'-type euphemisms here, it's XXX all the way. Absurdly jingoistic sentiment, really wooden dialogue, zero characterisation, and full on sexual violence. If anyone here has seen any of the Ilsa films, or any of the Italian nazisploitation flicks of the 70s and 80s, you'll know what to expect here. The battle scenes are very reminiscent of Edge, tightly paced and plenty of shards of bone, brain matter etc. What's Guy's opinion of this book, does anyone know? He didn't really write anything else of this ilk, did he?
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Post by bushwick on Jun 17, 2008 19:15:00 GMT
Nice review chap. I picked this up last year sometime, it's the only one of his werewolf books I have.
Mentioning the characterisation, and the quality of writing in generally, I am ashamed to say I was a bit disparaging re: Mr Smith's skills on the old board. The first things I read by him were Origin Of The Crabs then The Sucking Pit, which are of course great, but hilarious, ludicrous cheese. I've read a few more since then and have been very impressed by the way his writing progresses over the years. Really enjoyed Satan's Snowdrop, and The Black Fedora's a very unusual book with some really well written passages. He's a true original, and strikes me as kind of old-fashioned and 'establishment' in some ways but very rebellious and anarchic in others...
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