Yes, it was late, and yes I was tired, and yes I had been drinking. And there is certainly an element of pareidolia (the phenomenon where we see faces in clouds and Jesus in a bit of toast) in what I saw.
So I have to take comfort in the fact that the washing instructions on our new hand towel aren’t really telling me to OBEY.
Because gods know, that’s all I can see now when I look at that tag.
For any horror fan that knows the genre, The Exorcist is the alpha and the omega. A dark, brutal trap of a film, and one of the few whose reputation remains unsullied and potent.
But the book, published in 1971, came first. A sensation on it’s release, a large part of the success of William Friedkin’s adaptation is due to how closely it cleaves to the original story. Now a fortieth-anniversary edition has been brought out, with tweaks and tidying by William Peter Blatty – an excuse, as he says in the foreword, to polish “the rhythms of the dialogue and prose throughout.” The original, as he admits, was rushed, and subject to editorial meddling. We have been presented with something closer to a director’s cut. Although fear not – there’s no George Lucas-style redecoration here.
Blatty began his writing career as a screenwriter, and those skills are obvious in the book. The story moves like a runaway train, at a pace that becomes ever more hectic. The purple prose that he uses in the prologue, set in Northern Iraq, is something of a red herring – the main body of the book uses a cool, distant style. Reportage that only makes the horrifying events in the book that bit more awful.
Do I need to tell the story? In broad strokes: actress Chris McNeil lives in a rambling house in a suburb of Washington with her daughter, Regan. The girl, a sweet-natured creature, starts to talk about an imaginary friend, Captain Howdy. The good captain gradually takes over, slipping into Regan as if he was shrugging on a suit. Howdy is no friend. Regan has become possessed by a demon.
The book is soaked from the first lines in a thick sense of dread. We’re never sure where Howdy comes from. A relic bearing his likeness is unearthed at the Iraqi dig that begins the book. Regan has been playing with a Ouija board. It’s never clear. It doesn’t need to be. All we need to know is that the girl has been taken, and that she will not be easily recovered.
In some ways, the story unfolds like a police procedural as Chris, and later the priest who becomes entangled in the case, the conflicted Damian Karras, try to find evidence that Regan is sick, suffering from delusions, somehow self-hypnotised. Like Sherlock Holmes, they eliminate the impossible to reach the incredible truth. The exorcist of the title, the haunted Father Merrin, only appears three-quarters of the way through the book. Before then we, like Chris and Father Karras, are struggling to make sense of the senseless.
The book still holds the ability to shock and unsettle. Sweet Regan’s transformation (is it any coincidence that her nickname is Rags? Howdy treats her as a puppet, throwing her around like a rag doll) is rapid and terrible, her foul language a shock when we have witnessed how her mother can’t even swear properly. Blatty’s clear, uncoloured description of what the possession is doing to Regan brings us to horror and revulsion in equal measure. We are rarely out of the Georgetown house, and as the focus becomes more claustrophobic, the tension builds. When Merrin arrives, in a moment that is the most memorable image of the film, the relief is palpable. But the worst is yet to come.
Blatty delivers his shocks like a swordsman’s coup de grace, leaving them to the end of a chapter, often in the space of one line. Then away again, leaving the resonance of what we’ve just read to clatter like a man thrown down a set of steps. It’s key to the pacing of the book. He doesn’t dwell on the horror. He knows that we’re more than capable of doing that ourselves.
The Exorcist remains a remarkable achievement in modern horror, a book that transcends any danger of pulpy exploitation in favour of something much darker and richer. Seen at the time as harsh commentary on the corruption of the American soul during Vietnam, it stands today as an allegory on the ugliness that lurks in everyone, and how it can infect even the most innocent of victims.
Howdy may be otherworldly, but he takes a lot of his material from the people around him. The book digs more deeply into the characters than the film can, drawing you more deeply into their suffering, into their conflicts, and into the awful understanding that is The Exorcist’s black heart. The sacrifice at the end of the book is almost inevitable – you can see it coming from page one. Evil has a price that has to be paid before any form of salvation can be reached.
I love a wedding. Any excuse to get dressed up and drink too much and dance like a fool. Friday saw us at a lovely hotel in the heartlands of the country, at the nuptials of TLC’s mum and her long-time beau.
It was one of the most joyful occasions I’ve ever been to, and I’ve not laughed so hard or so freely at a social occasion in a long time. The bride was consumed in fits of giggles through the ceremony, and I’m still not convinced that she repeated all the vows. Once the papers were signed, the bride and groom danced back down the aisle (I’m taking the blame for that; I did, after all, show them the JK Wedding Dance). The first dance was livened up by the bride going a-over-t during an attempt at a pirhouette. And I don’t even think she’d been drinking that much up to that point.
And yes we danced and yes we drank and yes we laughed. And yes we chased off a bunch of wedding crashers and yes we all had headaches the next morning. But oh my word, you want something like that to be memorable, and this is a wedding that will live on for quite some time. You sometimes forget that a solemn occasion doesn’t have to be without joy.
Pam, Joe, the future is yours. That’s one hell of a way to kick it off.
So, after our last post, this popped into my inbox. That damned elusive DocoBanksy has been busy with Final Cut, it seems. Our adventures in the tunnels of Leake Street, condensed into thirty seconds. And it honestly felt like it went that quickly as well…
Making graffiti is like playing the guitar. It’s very easy to pick up and do very, very badly. Getting it right and creating something that people might find pleasant to the eye takes a lot of skill and practice. I discovered this for myself when that damned elusive DocoBanksy lured me down to the free-spray zone at Leake Street, near Waterloo, to do a bit of promo work for his film.
Turns out he had a much more realistic idea of his skill level and the likely end result than I did.
Continue reading Paint Under Skin: On Becoming A Graffiti Artist
Dark fictions flourish in dark times. As we lurch from financial crisis to social meltdown, our reading habits change and our idea of what constitutes light relief gains some weight. This is a simple truth that the editors of new anthology title Noir Nation understand all too clearly. It’s the perfect time to launch, and the premiere issue is stuffed as full of hardboiled treats as an old fashioned sweetie shop.
A well-curated genre collection will take pleasure in the display of a wide range of voices, opinions and stories. Noir Nation hits all the buttons hard. It’s broad, wide and deep in scope, which suits a journal with a truly international remit. Standout stories for me include Tristan Davies “Surgeons”, which introduces us to a doctor who makes Gregory House look like that nice English actor Hugh Laurie, and RF Warner’s “Dog Of A Different Breed”, the story of a drug run gone bad, an unfortunate incident with a dog, and a serial killer with a yen for poetry and gameplay.
Speaking of poetry, there’s also room for a piece by Bonnie Parker. Bonnie and Clyde Bonnie Parker. Seems like she could shoot better than she could sling a rhyme, but it’s a fascinating curio from a famous gun moll.
The first ish also gives us a fascinating discussion on what constitutes contemporary noir (Alan Ward Thomas, the Eastern Hemisphere editor, pulls together a fascinating take that includes transhumanist SF, Alvin Toffler-style future shock, Cubism and Jung) and a forum on whether the genre has a moral compass. The jury’s out on that one, but there are equally compelling arguments for and against.
The one misfire is Jon Danko and Danda’s graphic novel, Fired On Deadline. It’s muddled, and text-heavy, with none of the bite of the prose pieces. It also, at least in my preview copy, looked as if it had been inserted at too low a resolution, leading to blurry, rasterised artwork. That’s a real shame, considering my predilections. It also does Danda’s lovely expressionistic art (he did the cover, shown above, which is a much better showcase of his talents) no justice. It’s apparently the first part of a larger work, and I’d be interested to see where Danko and Danda take the idea of Flamenco Noir. But for now at least, the whole thing looks like something of an afterthought.
But that’s a minor quibble regarding a strong anthology bulging with good stuff. You can pick it up at the Kindle Store and still get change from a poorly cephalopod. Noir Nation shows a genre that is in very rude health indeed. Live and goddam kicking.
The Beeranauts have been pretty quiet this year. The Great British Beer Festival had to manage without us, and it was a minor contingent that made it to the London Drinker gathering back in the spring. Apart from that, nish since Battersea. A bit of a poor show, frankly.
We made up for that on Friday, with a trip up to Nottingham for the Robin Hood Festival. Held in the grounds of lovely Nottingham Castle, it’s perhaps the biggest British Beer Festival after the Earl’s Court spectacular. And it’s far and away the best.
I wanted to make it work this year, I really did. But the pressures of three blogs plus re-write duties on Habeas Corpus and other pipeline works means that something just had to give.
That something, alas, is Nanowrimo.
I will be buckling down and writing, sure, just not on a new 50,000 word project. It will be interesting, I think, to try and do 1700 words a day across all the projects I have on the table this autumn, and this is certainly not goodbye forever.
This will be no break for me. If anything, I will use the Nano excuse to up my game in solidarity with all the word warriors out there. Expect some big posts this November.
To everyone, and especially the Oxfordshire Nanos, good luck and be magnificent. Let’s be verbose out there.
Some very good news from Leading Man Clive about his short film The Vanished, which he wrote and directed for maritime charity Seafarers UK.
The film has been nominated for one of the Martime Foundation’s prestigious Maritime Media awards. It’s up for the Donald Gosling award for Best Television, Film or Radio Contribution.
It’s a big old longlist, but it’s worth pointing out that The Vanished is the only film there that’s not from a broadcasting heavyweight. It was put together on a tiny budget in a very short period of time. It’s the talents that Clive and his producer Keith rallied to the cause that have made The Vanished such a satisfying, emotive and chilling piece.
Read more about the Maritime Media Awards.
And here’s my original post on The Vanished (declaration of interest: I have a colourist credit on the film).
The awards are announced on November 22nd, at the Institute of Directors, Pall Mall, London. More news as we get it.
The Voice Control on the iPhone has been broken for as long as I’ve tried to use it. There’s an entertaining random element to what happens when you ask it to dial a number, and it’s pretty much guaranteed that you will not be getting the call you need.* If Siri fixes that problem then there’s a step forward right off the bat. If Siri works as well as Apple claim, then we have a genuine game-changer in all kinds of ways.
My sis-in-law Sandi is blind, and has become an Apple fan over the past year or so on the strength of the accessibility that’s baked into OSX at a core level. She’s excited about Siri for the same reason. A phone that you can use effectively without the need to look at the screen is a pretty big deal. Paired with a Bluetooth headset, there’s no reason for it to ever leave her handbag or pocket. This is a step towards the idea of the hardware vanishing into the cloud. If you can order your phone around, then the barrier between interface and user pretty much disappears, especially if, like Sandi, that barrier has prevented you from using the phone in the first place.
Although, as numerous wags on Twitter have pointed out this week, if the Siri developers don’t put an April 1st eater egg in where Siri will, just once, respond to a query with “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that,” then they’re missing a trick.
*TRUSTOREE: I once asked VC to phone home, and it responded by playing the Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Equal parts hilarity to creepiness.
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 