Supernatural Tales

It's been a while since I blogulated here, partly because I've been working (moderately) hard on ST11 and related matters. The other reason is that I can't get this damn thing to load up the content I want! The existing ST web page, maintained (very kindly) by Chico Kidd, seems to be paralysed. I would like to make this blog the site, as I don't need anything too elaborate. However, anything beyond basic text seems unloadable. This may be due to my obsolete computer, which is starting to fall apart. So my next job is buy a nice, new PC and see if I can't get this show on the road. If anyone has been looking at this, sorry it's been dull. I will try harder.

I recently bought the DVD of 'Bedazzled' - the original film, not the remake with Liz Hurley. Obviously. Anyway, it's a very uneven but still highly entertaining effort. I'd forgotten how significant a role Eleanor Bron played - or rather, how many roles she played, bringing some much-needed thespian skills. Dudley Moore could act, Peter Cook quite obviously couldn't. Since he plays Satan aka George Spiggott this isn't such a severe handicap as it would be in later films ('Supergirl', anyone?) as the Devil is obviously not human. But it does produce some flat scenes, making the film seem like a series of TV sketches cobbled together. It is more than that, but only just. Still, some of the set pieces are very good - Drimble Wedge and the Vegetations surely anticipated today's bloody miserable art-school 'rockers'. And it's always nice to see leaping nuns. Pity we've lost so much of Pete 'n' Dud's very best work. Well done a...

Admittedly, I'm a day late, but I'm sincere, and if you can fake sincerity... etc. So, what excitement looms for 2007? Here are some of my irrelevant and pointless predictions... 1. George W. Bush will be replaced by an actual lame duck. The dollar will rally strongly against the pound. Fewer people will shout at the TV as ducks are cute. 2. The Charleston will become the dance craze of the under thirties in Luxembourg. (There are four of them.) 3. Fewer species will be become extinct, but many will be seriously inconvenienced. 4. Hollywood will 're-imagine' every TV show I loved as a child and ruin it by making it a mindless marketing opportunity for toys and video games (this process has already begun). 5. David Tennant will continue to gurn and squawk his irritating way to ratings triumph in Doctor Who, and do very well without my patronage. 6. Battlestar Galactica (the last best hope of good sci-fi telly) will arrive on DVD very, very late in the year... 7. I might ...

I only watched half of the BBC's absurd Christmas production of Dracula. 45 minutes or so was quite enough. It's one thing to play fast and loose with Stoker's plot, which does have a few holes. It's another to add more holes... So we are supposed to believe that poor Lord Holmwood, having inherited his dad's syphilis along with his estate, decides to recruit a bunch of Satanic loons in black mitres to 'cleanse his blood'. Said loons tell clap-ridden lord to bring their beloved Count to England. Lord Holmwood does not seem to have inquired into the precise method whereby the medical miracle is to be performed. Give me a break. And then we get the Buffy stuff, with Drac lifting up his lordship by the throat, one handed, and slamming him against his bookshelves. And I gave up because it wasn't going to get any better. It's not as if it was particularly well played. What is it about modern actors? They are totally incapable of conveying a true to sense ...

Right then, what can the discerning reader expect from next spring's issue of ST? Well, stories from the following authors... 'Andie' by Adam Golaski - a man on a US internal flight is snow-bound and dances himself dizzy in bizarre masquerade. 'Still Water' by Joel Lane - the Seventies, Manchester, criminals, cops, insects, sexuality, horror... 'Nostalgia, Death & Melancholy' by Peter Bell - on the Isle of Man, a quest for artistic rarities becomes very strange indeed. 'Numina' by Tony Lovell - you know those little roadside shrines...? 'Going Back' by D. Siddall - you really can go home again, but you shouldn't. 'Ramoth-Gilead' by Mark Nicholls - superb variant on a classic theme. 'The Sea Change' by Helen Grant - diving onto an ancient shipwreck is spooky enough in itself, but that's just the start. Plus reviews, quizzes, and the winner of the readers' poll from ST10. Yay!

25 years ago a schoolfriend of mine committed an act of great moral turpitude on a crazy golf course in Whitley Bay. It was all very sordid, and proved to have consequences of almost Hardyesque grimness. The novelty puttery in question was owned by a sinister cult, the Oscillating Brethren of Minsk. They put my pal in a granite cell where he was held incommunicado and forced to subsist entirely on moistened string shoved through the keyhole. Nasty. Fortunately, due to a clerical error by a work experience girl, my old friend escaped a few weeks ago. Naturally, it's taking him some time to readjust to normal(?) society. Especially difficult, he felt, was catching up with popular culture. Before his incarceration he had, like me, been a great fan of sci-fi and horror. But how could he catch up with 25 years worth of TV shows and films? Where to start? X-Files or Buffy? Firefly or Stargate: Atlantis? Okay, that last one's a no-brainer, as they say, but you get my drift. Fortunatel...

Here's a sneaky preview of the cover of ST11. It's all a bit provisional at the moment, but I think it's okay. The format is returning to the original, twice-yearly issues, hence the reference to spring. I was wrong to switch to an annual format, and I'm truly sorry.