Mark Valentine: An Incomplete Apocalypse

The Dark Side of J.B. Priestley

Over at the excellent Valancourt books one can find all sorts of interesting things. Among them is this volume of short stories:

By coincidence, a few weeks ago Radio 4 Extra ran a series of readings of weird tales, and among them was Priestley's 'The Grey Ones'. I had always assumed that, while his famous Time Plays flirt with the paranormal/mystical, Priestley was mostly concerned with what might loosely be termed social realism. But it turns out that he ranged rather widely and - in a very prolific and long career - often tackled horror, science fiction, and the supernatural.

My ignorance of Priestley's contribution to genre fiction is a bit embarrassing, as I really should have known that his novel Benighted was the basis for a classic horror movie.

Overall, the Valancourt site is well worth perusing if - like me - you have a mental file of titles you once read and really would to read again. 

For instance, there are the novels of John Blackburn. Blackburn is almost forgotten today, but he was a kind of proto-James Herbert (it's hard to believe that Herbert didn't take Blackburn's novels as a template for his own, so striking are the parallels). His books combine the horror, thriller and sci-fi genres, and he was an early exponent of what is now termed body horror. 

I read Bury Him Darkly (1958) as a wee lad when I encountered a dog-eared paperback edition in the early Seventies. A strange artefact is unearthed in a family crypt, and it has terrifying powers to alter the minds and bodies of unwary meddlers. There's a quite loopy plot strand dragging in the Holy Grail, which isn't bad for what is in fact an alien invasion story. This is a book in which the idiot who opens the crypt, as is the form in these cases, 'dies a horrible death, raving mad, and whatever he has unleashed is not done killing. Four unlikely allies—a clergyman, an ex-Nazi scientist, a journalist, and a historian—must come together to stop it before it destroys all of humanity.'

Cor! It's thrilling stuff. I can't help wondering if Blackburn was born slightly out of his time, as his work might have gone down better in the Fifties - the Quatermass/Hammer & B-movie era - or the late Seventies/early Eighties, when there was a horror boom. The Sixties was a fallow patch for horror, at least in the English-speaking world - too much love and peace, man. Had it been otherwise, Blackburn's work might have found its way to the small and/or big screen, and so become part of our pop culture. The literary life is, as has been remarked so many times, very chancy.

RIP Ray Harryhausen

Fraudsters and Families

I love supernatural fiction, which is why I publish it. But I have no time for those who tout their supposed real-life expertise in the paranormal as a way of conning vulnerable and/or foolish people. So-called psychics are particularly contemptible in this regard. And this week's startling news item about three young women rescued from captivity in a house in Ohio has only underlined the point that psychics and mediums can do tremendous  harm.

You probably know the basic facts. Three teenagers were kidnapped about ten years ago. They were rescued when one of them managed to attract the attention of a neighbour in Cleveland. (And the interview with that neighbour, Charles Ramsey, is well worth seeing - he may be the coolest person in the world right now.) 

For me, though, one of the saddest aspects of the case is that the mother of one of the victims found alive this week was told by a psychic that her daughter was dead. The psychic, Sylvia Browne, was just playing the odds, of course. A teenage girl vanishes, no clue is discovered by the police or the FBI - chances are she's dead. So she told a distraught, vulnerable woman she would see her daughter 'in heaven'. Louvana Miller, Amanda Berry's mother, died from heart failure in 2006. I've no idea if she would have lived to see her daughter rescued if she hadn't put her faith in a psychic's assertion that Amanda was dead.

It's easy to dismiss psychics are mere entertainers who provide us all with a bit of harmless fun. Cases like this prove that they, are at best, deluded, publicity-hungry idiots. At worst they are cold, manipulative people who make their money by preying on the emotional frailties of others. And that makes them psychopaths, not psychics.

Trailer Time

I'm pleased to announce that one of the stories in ST#24, due out at the beginning of August, will be 'The Wife's Lament' by Lynda E. Rucker. It's an intriguing and (I think) moving tale of a young American who moves to England with her husband, only to find herself isolated and confused. Surely the wood she found at the end of her suburban street can't be a figment of her imagination? And what is the significance of the ancient artefact she discovered?

The rain lessened once she found herself under the canopy of trees, and then stopped. If the forest had seemed sickly and diseased earlier, now it was all but dead. Its misshapen trees had gone white and ghostly, thin fingers of leafless branches pale against the storm-wracked sky. The earth reeked of decay. Thick ropy briar fences replaced the vegetation that had once grown there. Only her panting breath stirred the silence. The brooch hurt her hand; she was gripping it too tightly, cutting into her own flesh, but she could not let it go.

'The Wife's Lament' is based on the early English poem of the same name, which is fascinating in its ambiguity.

The Kingston Brooch

The Ward (2010)

So, there I was on Saturday night, quaffing what might be termed a amusing little vintage (Chateau Demented Wallaby), and wondering what film to watch. I decide to give The Ward a try, with nothing but a very brief online synopsis to go on. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a John Carpenter film I'd never heard of. And, yes, it has some characteristic Carpenter touches.

So, what's the deal? The film begins with a girl called Kristen (Amber Heard) setting fire to a farmhouse. The police drag her away and she is taken to a Big Spooky Mental Hospital, where - as it's 1966) she is subject to mid-20th century treatments i.e. lots of drugs and voltage across the frontal lobe. However, thanks to the apparently enlightened policy of Dr Stringer (British thesp Jared Harris), Kristen and the other girls on the special ward are allowed to draw, watch TV, listen to music, and even go outside.

From the start, questions abound. Why can't Kristen remember anything before the fire? What happened to 'Tammy', the previous inmate of Kristen's room? Who is the ghost-girl on the ward? Who are 'the sad people' seen with Stringer? When the ghost starts killing off the patients with variations on Stringer's treatments (i.e. an over-enthusiastic lobotomy), it seems we're in fairly conventional territory. Will Kristen be able to escape from North Bend hospital before she, too, is killed?

The first hour and a bit of The Ward is a well-crafted, well-acted movie that offers a few shocks, but is more interesting as a psychological thriller. Then comes Kristen's escape attempt, which is a bit of classic Carpenter - feisty girl takes on a bunch of authority figures and isn't afraid to punch them out when required. The escape goes wrong when the ghost intervenes, however, and this leads to a revelation about the sad people and the nature of the ghost, Alice.

I enjoyed The Ward not because it is radically new and daring, but because it's a fine example of a film that achieves what it sets out to do. The pace doesn't flag, the performances are good, and the look of the thing is what you'd expect from Carpenter - sometimes excellent, never dull.