A Smidge of a Poem for the Day, most days really...

 

I wish I had something to say

I wish I had words for this day

But my voice is raw

And yours matters more

So I’ll sit here quiet, out of the way.

 

©Wendy Harding, March 2022

Psychological and other Horrors I Watched Last Year, Part 2

                           

A clue to one of the films...But this pic is Richmond Park, Photo by Tom Shakir on Unsplash

Welcome  to Part 2 of the weird horror/psychological dramas I watched last year.  

**

Feeling sad today.  Watching and tracking the course of the Ukraine invasion, for days now.  So angry, so sad.  And Twitter, in particular, can’t help but give you a massive sense of how many Europeans hate all of England now, and will never have us back.  I miss Europe so. Ukraine fights so hard to save itself, and to get into the EU; which is righteous.  And then there’s England – now thought of everywhere as small minded, a joke, a dangerous unsettlement – and I meet enough of us that are. It’s enough to make you lose hope.  Ukraine is this shiny example of caring to fight for your people and your freedom, and we just suckered ours away. Look at the laws the Tories push through Parliament, just yesterday for example… 

I hope the Ukranians win, somehow. They have more spirit than we do. here in this whiny country. Ashamed to be English, so much of the time.

**

To the unreal horrors. As usual, there may well be massive spoilers.

The Assistant (Julie Garner - 2019)
About Harvey Weinstein and men like him without saying so.  ‘Him’.  A horror film about the normalisation and everydayness of dehumanisation, in circumstances where we cease to see certain people as people.  The heroine loses her soul.  Also, offices helped take it; as they do. Hardly any soundtrack, just the drone of office equipment; enough to steal your mind on a good day, let alone a morally ambiguous one.

Saint Maud (2019)
Hmmmm.  Seriously weird, and very watchable.  Adore that God spoke in Welsh.  As of course, God should.  Soundtrack reminiscent of Hereditary, in that it was disturbing and I loved it. Very very strange film about religious nutteriness, and how you shouldn’t believe omens and portentous sexually repressed feelings that start off as sightings of hallucinatory big beetles. It’s only a horror film because of the last 7 minutes. Really it’s a psychological drama, a beetle on the wall about a psychotic break.

Innocence (2013)
Another random rather excellent film watch.  I liked the picture on Prime. The minute it started, with a girl going to an elite boarding school, and it having a sort of overly atmospheric air to it, I was thinking – Suspiria, they’re all witches – I wasn’t far wrong: lamias, stealing youth from virgins with their blood.  With a premise like that, you just have to go a bit gothic, and very floaty and Story of O pastels all at the same time.  And Tomandandy did the music – you can’t really go wrong.  This was both shallow and extremely silly and totally and utterly beautifully filmed and a bit wonderful.  Based on a book.  I wonder if the book is as good.  [No, I didn’t find it so – later that year.]

Emma Wants to Live (documentary - real, 2016)
Interesting and so sad look at a Dutch girl dying of anorexia.  There’s no happy ending, there’s just her thin bone body and what ends up as the shape of her face: these huge eyes and skull with flesh only really in any muchness around the side of her eyes.  She had no muscle, no tissue. The disease that made her not eat, ate her. Those taking care of her, survivors themselves – and how strong and solid of them to be able to do it, they commented on the power of the disease, controlling her till the last.  And, tellingly, how merciful it was she left home to die, so her family could live, as her disease ran them as well as her, as diseases do.  I knew anorexia was powerful, but just this very unmedical look at it, and I feel I understand more. I wonder if this film will save any lives?  If it maybe has?  Or if for everyone who watches it it’s already too late? Like Thinner?

In the Earth (Ben Wheatley - 2021)
(Bat shit.  I wonder if it will offend other pagans or witches? It was good, but not as good as it could have been.  Pacing problem after the very funny Reece Shearsmith segment.  Music not as immersive as it could have been.  Me worrying if they actually played all that loud noise to the woods, and did it piss off or upset the woods? Everyone was a great actor in this, and loved that the main 2 characters weren’t white.  Nice change. Was Alma possessed by the woods at the end or was she simply doing her job in a traumatised situation when they were still having mushroom flashbacks, offering to lead him out of the forest? Weird and not quite as wonderful as I had hoped considering how much I love A Field in England.  Midsommer was better.

Censor (2021)
(Really mad.  Used the same Chernobyl theme as A Field in England; and had Michael Smiley [amazingly creepy cameo], which In the Earth also didn’t, but A Field in England did, so it was a good pairing of films, they felt related.  Niamh Algar was amazing, her thinking acting was …strong! I enjoyed this a lot, very atmospheric. A film about video nasties and a woman disintegrating from guilt at the incident of her sister disappearing when they were children, and she thought it was her fault.

Dark Eyes AKA Satan’s Mistress AKA Demon Rage AKA Demon Seed (but not that one)

Saw this back in 1982 when it was released, though it was made ‘78 or ‘79. I remember loving it hugely, though watching it now I’m not totally sure why.  Much chestiness from Lana Ward, and how could I forget Britt Ekland and John Carradine were also in this? Kabir Bedi almost does the best acting just looking pent up and longing/cross. I like the totally overdone music and the endless sea shots?  Maybe it’s overdoneness was why I liked it? I think I was mentally a very melodramatic teen.  Mentally mental.

Carmilla (2020, Hannah Rae)
(Amazing!  Really dreamy and strange, 70s-ish. Really felt like it was one of those BBC2 Christmas horrors from the early 70s, except it wasn’t and had many sensibilities of now. Why the lonely girl wasn’t just allowed to get on kissing the other girl and being actually happy, and was instead punished so permanently by the sex starved governess companion….grrrrr, in WendyWorld that woman …well, I would have had a really long conversation with her about why she’s so nasty and judgemental. It was all so needless.  And beautifully filmed – full of countryside and ideas of England from my childhood: lanes with overhanging trees, dreams of the south, warm sunshine, leaves in the wind.  It was its own little world, that went wrong for all the characters.  English people: never satisfied!

The Thing (1982)
AGAIN! Icky perfection.  I am Clarke, in it, I realised.  I would be consistently more concerned about harm to the dogs. Stanley  pointed out how large Mac’s hat is – I had never noticed how huge it is, now I can’t unnotice. It’s going to pull my attention every single time I subsequently watch this.  Tsk.

The Nanny (1965)
Quite sad.  The boy was wrong, but then right about the nanny being a killer; it was more a psychological horror about consequences.  Pamela Franklin is always good to see, and was very perky and unflappable here. Had never seen Wendy Craig do serious; felt sorry for her character – I identified with her givey-uppy floppiness.

The Omen (1976)
AGAIN! Still excellent.  Though can’t help thinking of the child abuse angle watching it now, and that maybe Damien wasn’t the Antichrist, and maybe Billie Whitelaw was the sanest person in the whole film, ferociously protecting her charge from the insane nutters that his parents and other adults became…! Though have to note this interpretation doesn’t explain her turning up unannounced; or the telepathic dogs…

Itsy Bitsy (2019)
A film only incidentally about a really big spider.  (But Fry still wouldn’t watch it with me; he really hates the Large Spiders.)  Mostly it was actually about PTSD and grief and pill addiction.  And it made me cry near the end, very sad.

Nocturne (2018 – not the one about the school)
This was really a good surprise – it was excellent!  Echoes of The Evil Dead, of Triangle and the Buffy Halloween episode where they got stuck in the horror house; and the episode in the basement of the school where Spike could see Buffy but the others couldn’t, so that he was having 2 conversations.  Also, the possession wasn’t about effects but manner, behaviour and creepy Bible quoting. Really impressed, everyone was excellent.  And it didn’t explain what was going on at all, you just had to work it out.  What was Hank to Jo?  Boyfriend, step dad? How long does Jo get stuck in the loop – does she remember it after she goes in the house the second time?  And Liam and Jo weren’t together at any point, they were friends only, yes? Still wondering – may watch again.

*

And that’s it for the horror/psychological stuff I saw last year – there was more, but I didn’t note enough to remember them by. Hope you enjoyed and were made curious by what you read.  Despite my shameless spoilering, they are all worth watching – go see for yourself…

 

Next up, some art I think - but not this one.  This one is here simply for beauty, and topicality...  See you next time.

 Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers', attrib: Bibi Saint-Pol, 

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Psychological and Regular Horrors I watched last year, Part 1

 

                                    © Raimond Spekking - on Wikimedia Commons

                                    Wheatfields in Ukraine

I wondered if today was a shite day to post about horror films.  You know what, it really isn't.  It's a mirror, its an appropriate day.  The real world is full of obvious horrors today, and I can totally tell the difference between what I watch and the real life tragedies and suffering out there.  At least what I watch isn't real.

I haven’t been watching so many old classics lately, from the 70s or 80s.  I’ve been watching lots of newer things, and films/series that are sort of horror, psychologically speaking, but maybe not entirely. So it’s a strange list – I just went where the fancy took me. If horror films seem too trivial or upbeat (mad, eh?) for the real world as it is today, feel free to tut at me and click away. I'm doing my best to carry on as normal (ish), and this is what I had planned today. Come back later for unreal horror if the real world's horror has made you feel too ill.  I get it.  Or just don't read this.  More book reviews and some articles about art coming soon (after Part 2).  If its not about art and beauty and the peace and passion they give you, what the fuck is all this about anyway?  Life?  Fighting for independence, against invasion? Fighting for life, to just be here?

Sometimes horror films are the truest things I can find in a mad world.  And some of them are downright beautiful art.  Maybe none of these, but some.

**

Let’s go.  As usual I’ll be RANDONLY SPOILERING LIKE CRAZY, and also in some cases barely describing the plot at all.  I comment on what I thought, if I liked characters or what the films made me think of or about.  I should probably mention the sexual assault in real life that one of the series’ made me think of, in case you’re not wanting to read about such a real thing.  But here you are on a post about horror and psychological strife, posted on the day Europe did not much to contain the start of a continent wide war, so –  well, some things are real in my life too.

I’ll list them in the order I watched them…

Deadline (Brittany Murphy – the 2009 one; not the much weirder Italian influenced 1980 one)
I don’t think I’ve seen this before . Found it in a tatty old charity shop I’d not seen before years ago, and it only just called me to watch it, finally. I thought it was a horror film, but it’s a psychological ghost story with a little bit of a confusing end. Did she become David?  And why did they let her look so heroin chic through the whole film, was she ill while making it, why didn’t they take better care of her? I really wanted to feed her some toast and jam, on a regular basis.  Marc Blucas was good, but no one has got him repeating the intensity he brought to the role of Riley in Buffy, since.  I cheer him on though.

Haven, Season 1 (2010)
Excellent, kooky and strange.  I want to live where it was filmed in Canada.

Haven, Season 2 (2011)
Getting darker and sadder. Audrey Parker’s Day Off was the saddest day repeating episode I’ve ever seen. The Wendigo episode was also sad, but because everyone seemed cross with her for killing the Rev, who was a total shithead we can all do without.

Haven Season 3 (2012)
After Audrey finds out she is going to disappear in 2 months; manipulates Duke to kill a troubled man, and refuses Nathan’s love…it goes all dark and relationship-py.  He meets Jordan of The Guard who he can touch because he feels nothing so she can’t hurt him, Clare the psychiatrist starts popping up in every episode but I don’t know whether to trust her, and the Black police guy…who’s side is he on? He turns out to be the Bolt Gun Killer – I did not see that coming at all.  (I’m stalled in season 4 now, in 2022.  I’ll come back to it.  I was annoyed Audrey isn’t being Audrey at the beginning.  Much the same as they do with the new Twin Peaks – when Agent Cooper isn’t himself for far too long; and when you add that up with what they did to his character at the end of the original…well, I walked off.  Stanley finished the new one, but I wanted Cooper as Cooper, I really missed him – so I left. They should be careful with beloved characters.)

The Serpent – 2021 series
The genius that is Tahir Rahim, and how much hair can change your head.  Amazing performance.  And helped me understand my exhub better. Possibly exhub too was a narcissist.  Though it seems Charles Sobrahj was maybe a sociopath, and maybe a narcissist too.  A lot of ego and a LOT of anger – I don’t think sociopaths have anger, as it’s an emotion, so…maybe …I would like to know what made him tick – it seemed to me to be all about racial anger and society owes me and my mum didn’t love me and I’m sneaky and sly and a liar but she should love me anyway…

Jenna Coleman – also incredible.  She just fell in love with someone who made her insides glow with belonging and dreams and the present moment. Mmm. 

And Amesh Edireweera who played Ajay – should have had an episode of his own about how he was found, and also why he was abandoned and not killed by Sobrajh.  He was an important and oddly overlooked character in terms of development. What happened to him after?

And the Billy Howle playing the Dutch man….all those disparate European actors speaking languages not their own beautifully, such dedication.  Such a multinational performance in these tiny days of little England bullshit.  I loved it.  And the music was so good I’ve bought it.  100/10.

Dietland (2018 series)
This was really original, very varied in tone – funny, sad, moving over a whole mass of issues that face women every day, some we are so used to that we barely think about them – they’re just things we have to do before going out. 

I know, that one of the reasons I overate to begin with, was that I’m not comfortable with my body when it’s properly slim because of the way men look at it.  As if it’s theirs and as if my body’s slimness means something, a message, to them, of availability, of willingness, of a loss of my space.  By looking a way that pleases them I invite them in, they think; I feel.  I remember thinking these things very clearly.  And it’s not a big part of why I got fat, but hiding inside this fatter body is definitely part of how I got this way.  Feeling that my body wasn’t mine, that its boundaries became less as I became slimmer.  The trouble is, you take it too far the other way and again, you’re property of anyone: they see your fatness as a message too. A call to attention in a different way. 

It was coincidental but interesting, that I was watching this while the Sarah Everard case was all over the UK news, and women were wanting to do vigils and being denied by the police because of Covid regulations – but it sparked a whole ‘Reclaim The Night’ thing.  Women speaking up about how unsafe it is, just to walk about after dark.  And it is, just is. And Sarah Everard was dressed anything but provocatively.  Totally warm, ordinary clothing.

Street harassment has become an issue – as it is in Plum’s life. It’s odd, while this was on the news, I was agreeing this was true – I remembered the boy who just came up to me and groped my boobs in the street when I was with a friend as a teen, outside Edgware Road Station, on a sunny day in May; the way I carried a little old man’s shopping home for him when I was 14 as he seemed in difficulty getting off a bus, then he got a lot taller – unwound somehow – when we got inside his house, and then groped my breasts and more of me, and I almost felt like I should let him, as what did it cost me, and he was so alone and thought them ‘so soft’. I felt dead and sideways to myself while he did it, like my body was not mine at all. Not my property. I was lucky to get out of there. After I recorded my creepy arse message on his tape recorder that he directed me to do.  ‘My name is Wendy, and I’m Gilbert’s friend’. Things you say to get out of places and situations. No good deed…I never went back, of course.

But many issues raised in Dietland.  A terrorism group called Jennifer. What a  great name, would never have thought of it.

Friday the 13^th (2009 remake)
Actually very good – there was a whole mini plot in the teaser at the beginning.  Jared Padalecki acted better than usual – I’m pretty sure he can act really well, he just keeps getting parts that constrain him massively…brilliant to see Amanda Ringhetti, loved her in The Mentalist. The whole underground area – what was that supposed to be – why would it be there under Camp Crystal Lake?

Honourable mention to the 2 awful guys – the ‘your tits are stupendous – perfect nipple placement’ guy, and the miming behind you sex guy…it just makes Jason’s work so much easier and more fun for the rest of us!

The Void (2016)
Rather insane Canadian horror film with Kathleen Munroe and – yay – Art Hindle, that was a bit The Thing, a bit Hellraiser, a bit bodyhorror/The Brood, a bit a double episode from Supernatural and several other things with nods at Lovecraft all over the place.  Very absorbing and imaginative.  I did feel the end was too talky; despite having a deep gravelly voice, you really have to be something special to pull off the word ‘apotheosis’ seriously.  Totally happy to have spent time making faces of WTF at this J

Devil’s Diary (2007)
Excellent piece of trashy horror – brilliant music, excellent acting and Brian Krause [Charmed] was in it as a priest.  It was oddly well made for schlock.  Totally enjoyed.  Wish this combination of people had made more films. Ah, quiet little Canadian horror films: they so totally rock.

The Seasoning House (2012)
Feels familiar – maybe I saw it before?  Hard hitting. Like 28 Days Later but with militia trained rapists and one deaf mute girl in the walls of a house.  Excellent acting, excellent atmosphere, heartwrenching, and horribly plausible set up situation.  It’s a year later and it’s still in my head, this film - and its horribly relevant re Eastern Europe, today.

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)
Well, the first one was classy and good; the second was insane and enjoyed itself.  Erica Leerhsen seems to turn up in my favourite sequels to things – even better in this than Blair Witch 2.  This film led even more to my recent, sudden and should have had much earlier in life realisation that Backwoods Horrors/Inbred Cannibal genres are deeply political – all about haves and have nots and left behind communities in rural areas.  This one had chemical waste from a closed paper mill in a now dead town, causing birth defects as explanation for the whole family of odd looking, nimbly dislocating enemies.  It’s actually a fascinating genre if done well.  I think I missed its obvious messageyness before as I was just so creeped out by the faces of people.  Flashbacks to original watching of the Hills Have Eyes and its brutality. And that insane X Files episode where they kept the mother under the bed on a trolley…

Girlhouse (2014)
Disturbingly well made – and stuck in my mind because it was slick enough to feel plausible.  You understood why the killer did it; you weren’t on his side, but you weren’t hating him either.  I felt odd for several days after watching this and The Seasoning House – and I think they both gave rise to the first fully formed character pair and plot that has shot into my head for years. 

I honoured it by writing it down; but I don’t actually want that story to be what I write. Horror is one thing, sleazeporn another.  I blur the lines a lot and often with horror, specially 70s horror, Eurohorror…but those characters and plot that appeared in my head made me wonder what chemicals I percolate without realising it.  Which demons do you feed? I might let these characters turn up in another story, but I don’t want them to have their own one.  I don’t want to feed them too much.

 

And that’s it for Part 1.  Part 2 in a day or so...what other horrors will have hit the real world by then?

#StandWithUkraine

Crying All Day...

 

 

Photo by Yura Khomitskyi on Unsplash 

 

This was the first thing I heard when I got up this morning.  That Ukraine had been finally invaded in a way that people couldn't deny. (People like Farage are, but that wanker is in the pocket of the oligarchs.)

Feel powerless about this.  We should be helping them, sending anything they need.  

Not delaying sanctions long enough to give Boris's friends time to move their money from the tax havens here.  

The Ukrainian people are so brave, you see them on TV, so prepared to defend; they must be as as scared as I imagine, but lots of them are standing. 

Its sad for the Russian people that don't want this, of which I am sure there are many. They don't want to fight their neighbours and friends.

The Ukrainian people just want to live their lives, freely, as much as you can in today's world.

We are such a destructive species, I thought we were already doomed due to climate change (that the rich will do nothing to stop - wonder where they think they're going?), now it seems we're set on all out war over Europe, or even a nuclear issue.  Oh yes, and Ukraine gave up its nukes necause WE and the US and RUSSIA guaranteed them their safety and security.  BETRAYAL.  I'm so ashamed.

I am so angry our government is being so weak and doing so little to help them.

I have nothing inspirational to say, nothing hopeful.  I just support the Ukrainians.  I am so angry we are letting them down when they need us. I wish I could do something.

#StandWithUkraine #DefendUkraine 

Addendum, 14th April 2022

After watching a lot of coverage this month, a lot of vile stuff before it got collared by Twitter or Youtube, and reading a lot of Ukraine journalistic work...I have to say...much of Russia seems under the thrall of their propoganda machine, which seems as imperialist and superiority based as anything the vile British Empire ever spewed out (yes, I'm English and my country is going a bit fascistic itself right now, it sucks; and its past sucks too - I'm not proud at all).  

I understand there are people there in Russia protesting and I understand everyone else is scared to, so bowed down by lies or beleives it all (like idiots here beleived Brexit rhetoric)....but.  But.  

I've rarely seen a case of one country so blatantly peaceful then invaded and now being razed to rubble, senselessly, before.  Yes, I should have paid a fuckload more attention to Aleppo, and now to Yemen.  Yes.  I'm paying attention now.  Even more strongly I say give Ukraine what they need, anything they need.  

If Russia is brothers with Ukraine - as I ignorantly thought, before I read more - then they are the viciousest most abusive of dysfunctional brothers.  The kind you free yourself from and never want to see again ever.  The Ukrainians will never forgive what they've done even in only this short time, and I don't blame them, I won't foregt either and I'm not even there. 

Glory to Ukraine.

Quick review of Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler (2021)

 This was the best novel I've ever read for showing how routinely performative we all are in every aspect of our dealings with others, both online and in person.  The shameless scale of the lying for no real reason other than to hide our true and often shallow thoughts about things was scarily accurate!  A very honest book about routine dishonesty in social interaction.

It also had a very unexpected and sudden twist at the end, dealt with coldly and inconclusively, which made me feel sad for the isolation of all the characters and how no one was honest with anyone.  In the end, everyone was rendered more and more alone, despite the illusion of constant contact.  It simply led to more dishonesty and more performativeness.  Very real depiction of failed communication in the digital age.

In some ways hugely fun to read, wonderfully Laurence Sterne/Samuel Richardson-esque long rambly sentences and playing with form and language; but as a whole, the message was sad. 

(Review also up on my Goodreads account.)

A tiny review of the tiny book, The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide

 

This was a wonderfully quiet calm book.  A couple meet a neighbour's cat and slowly become friends with it, welcoming it into their house and lives as an 'honoured guest'.  The minutiae of the cat's activities, and the joy in watching it, are described.  The story moves slowly and quietly through the seasons and years, telling me much about the sort of area the writer and his wife live in; the Japanese society they inhabit, and how you can come to love an animal that just wanders into your life, that you never touch.  Beware, it gets sad.  But there's hope at the end too.

This book proves that nothing much needs to happen, that there's no great need of 'conflict' in books, contrary to current wisdom and expectation.  Just hearing about this small string of shushy events was enough.  It was thoughtful, and spare and very real. And at the end there is a confusion of events and timings that puzzles and pains the author - and that was perhaps the realest moment in the whole book.  Knowing there are some things you will never never understand, and that time has taken them, they're gone, you can't search for 'the truth' or evidence or reasons.  You will never *know* some things. So human. This book was a tiny gem.

(Also posted on my goodreads feed.)