Best New Horror #26, page 9
Sky Arts’ half-hour short film series Playhouse Presents included Peter Straughan’s black comedy Nosferatu in Love, which starred Mark Strong as an actor on location in the Czech Republic who had a nervous breakdown when his wife left him and went on a journey of self-discovery dressed as a toothy vampire.
As part of the same series, Richard Wilson and Simon Callow’s elderly space explorers found themselves at the mercy of their ship’s computer (silkily voiced by Robert Vaughn) when their mission turned out to be no longer relevant in Lawrence Gough’s Space Age.
Despite featuring on-screen interviews with Christopher Lee, Douglas Wilmer, Nicholas Meyer, Benedict Cumberbatch, the ubiquitous Mark Gatiss and others, BBC 4’s hour-long Timeshift documentary, How to Be Sherlock Holmes: The Many Faces of a Master Detective featured some surprising omissions, and an annoying narration by veteran Peter Wyngarde.
The independently produced Doc of the Dead was described as “the definitive zombie culture documentary”. It featured interviews with, amongst others, Charles Adlard, Max Brooks, Bruce Campbell, Alex Cox, Stuart Gordon, Robert Kirkman, Simon Pegg, George A. Romero and John Russo, but nothing about the Italian zombi movies of the 1970s and ‘80s.
Emily Vancamp hosted ABC-TV’s Marvel: 75 Years, from Pulp to Pop!, which looked at the success of the comics publisher turned mega-movie studio.
Produced for the BBC by Oxford Scientific and narrated by Claire Foy, Frankenstein and the Vampyre: A Dark and Stormy Night was a drama-documentary recreation of the night in 1816 that led to the creation of Frankenstein and the first modern vampire story. Hannah Taylor Gordon portrayed Mary Shelley, and Miroslav Zaruba played her literary Monster.
Smugly presented by historian Dominic Sandbrook, the BBC’s four-part series Tomorrow’s Worlds: The Unearthly History of Science Fiction (aka The Real History of Science Fiction) gave the impression that most SF was based on films and TV shows, despite commentary from the inevitable Neil Gaiman, William Gibson, Kim Stanley Robinson, Brian Aldiss, Audrey Niffenegger and Ursula K. Le Guin. My Life in Science Fiction was a series of three spin-off shows, narrated by the indefatigable Mark Gattis.
During the lead-up to Hallowe’en, historian Andrew Graham-Dixon led viewers through the BBC’s three-part series The Art of Gothic: Britain’s Midnight Hour, which looked at the literature, art and architecture of the period.
TCM premiered the documentaries Edgar G. Ulmer: The Man Off-Screen and George Lucas & the World of Fantasy Cinema. In the latter, the film-maker looked back over a century of fantasy movies, with clips from A Trip to the Moon (1898) to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011).
In February, BBC Radio 4 broadcast Robert Forrest’s two-part adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, starring Robert Glenister as Father Karras, Iain McDiarmid as Father Merrin and Lydia Wilson as the possessed Regan.
Sebastian Baczkiewicz’s cursed immortal wanderer (Paul Hilton) helped an old friend who was being haunted by a malevolent spirit in the four-part Afternoon Drama: Pilgrim.
In Baczkiewicz’s ‘Ghosts of Heathrow’, broadcast in the same slot, Paul McGann’s businessman encountered various phantoms at the busy London airport. The forty-five minute drama was interspersed with interviews with real Heathrow workers. A young woman (Indira Varma) discovered that there were legal consequences to using pixie blood for her tattoos in Ed Harris’ fifteen-minute Afternoon Drama: ‘Pixie Juice’.
Good Omens was a six-part dramatisation by Dirk Maggs of the comedic fantasy novel about the son of Satan by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. The voice cast included Mark Heap, Peter Serafinowicz, Josie Lawrence, Phil Davis, and the two authors themselves playing policemen.Maggs also reunited original radio cast members, including Simon Jones, Stephen Moore and John Lloyd, to relive their adventures for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Live at the BBC Radio Theatre in March.
In Sean O’Connor’s re-imagining of Blithe Spirit, fictional characters from the Archers radio series were cast as characters in Noël Coward’s classic wartime supernatural comedy. Real-life cast members included Julian Rhind-Tutt and Eleanor Bron.
BBC Radio 4 also presented a five-part serialisation of Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise, featuring Daphne Alexander as Modesty and Neil Maskell as Willy.
Having appeared in the 1969 movie version, actress Joanna Lumley was back as the lethal henchwoman to Alfred Molina’s Blofeld in Martin Jarvis’ ninety-minute production of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which once again featured Toby Stephens as James Bond.
Meanwhile, an episode of The Reunion was devoted to the Roger Moore era of James Bond films, with contributions from Britt Ekland, Richard Kiel and Moore himself.
Brian Sibley dramatised an epic six-part retelling of T.H. White’s The Once and Future King for BBC Radio 4’s Classic Serial, starring David Warner as Merlin.
Book at Bedtime: The Bone Clocks was a fifteen-part serial based on David Mitchell’s time-spanning metaphysical novel, read by Hannah Arterton and Luke Treadaway, while Ian McKellen read a ten-part adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1914 Sherlock Holmes novel The Valley of Fear in the same slot.
James Purefoy starred as bounty hunter “Rick Deckard”, alongside Jessica Rain and Nicky Henson, in Jonathan Holloway’s two-part adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, part of the summer “Dangerous Visions” series on BBC Radio 4.
As part of the same thematic stream, Brian Sibley dramatised Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man into an hour-long radio show starring Iain Glen in the title role, while Richard Kurti and Bev Doyle’s adaptation of Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles starred Derek Jacobi and Hayley Atwell.
The “Dangerous Visions” season continued in Afternoon Drama, which presented a series of short plays that explored future dystopias. These included Anita Sullivan’s The Bee Maker, which was set in the year 2020, when artificial insects were used to help pollinate fruit trees across the planet; Miranda Emmerson’s Iz took place in the segregated world of 2091, ravaged by Avian flu; Trevor Preston’s two-part The Zone unfolded in a world where the criminal elite controlled the trade in body parts, while Stephen Keyworth’s The Two Georges looked at how paranoid SF writer Philip K. Dick (Kyle Soller) was investigated by the FBI in the early 1950s.
Robert Powell played Ebenezer Scrooge in Saturday Drama‘s festive musical version of Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’.
Film expert Matthew Sweet investigated the creative rivalry between British film studios Hammer and Amicus during the 1960s and ‘70s in the half-hour Radio 4 documentary Houses of Horror.
In November, BBC Radio 4 Extra presented a welcome repeat of Robert Holmes’ creepy six-part drama Aliens of the Mind, originally broadcast in 1977 and starring Vincent Price and Peter Cushing.
A month later, the same broadcaster presented a rare repeat of the 1981 production of Gregory Evans’ The Hex, loosely based on M.R. James’ ‘Casting of the Runes’ and featuring Conrad Phillips and Kim Hartman.
The free weekly horror fiction podcast Pseudopod marked its 400th episode with a classic story by James Tiptree, Jr. and partnered with John Joseph Adams’ Nightmare Magazine for its “Women Destroy Horror” project. It also offered readings of work by such contemporary authors as Joe Hill (available to North American subscribers only), Daniel Mills, Silvia Moreno Garcia, David Nickle, Christopher Fowler, Elizabeth Hand, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Terry Dowling, Paul Finch, Reggie Oliver, Mark Samuels, Kim Newman and Darrell Schweitzer, along with classic authors like Charles Dickens, Irvin S. Cobb, Gertrude Atherton, Elliott O’Donnell and Alfred Noyes.
On May 27, film legend Sir Christopher Lee celebrated his 92nd birthday by releasing a heavy metal album. Metal Knight featured seven tracks, including two covers from the musical Man of La Mancha.
Veteran British-born actress Angela Lansbury returned to the London stage after thirty-nine years to portray muddled medium Madame Arcati in Michael Blakemore’s impressive revival of Noël Coward’s supernatural comedy Blithe Spirit at the Gielgud Theatre. Jemima Rooper played the seductive but irritating ghost accidentally called up by the flamboyant clairvoyant.
Acting scion Jack Fox starred as the eponymous immoral immortal in Linnie Reedman’s reworking of Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray at the Riverside Studios in London, alongside Vanessa Redgrave’s granddaughter Daisy Bevan.
Risteárd Cooper, Brian Cox, Dervla Kirwan, Peter McDonald and Ardal O’Hanlon starred as five men telling ghost stories to each other in a remote Irish pub in Josie Rourke’s revival of Conor McPerson’s 1997 play The Weir at Wyndham’s Theatre.
Robert Icke and Duncan MacMillan’s new adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 ran for twelve weeks at London’s Playhouse Theatre in April, while Jennifer Haley’s The Nether at the Royal Court took place in an Internet-obsessed future.
Mark Hollimann and Greg Kotis’ Urinetown: The Musical was set in a dystopian future where private lavatories were banned because of ecological drought. It had its UK premiere at the St. James Theatre.
Natascha McElhone, Mark Bazeley and Kristin Davis starred in Trevor Nunn’s production of Fatal Attraction, based on the 1987 movie, which had its world stage premiere in March at the Theatre Royal Haymarket.
In July, Benjamin Britten’s opera The Turn of the Screw, based on the short novel by Henry James, was performed at the open air Opera Holland Park in London.
The Theatre Royal Plymouth’s production Grand Guignol, a revival of the 2009 black comedy by the aptly named Carl Grose, played a five-week run from September at London’s Southwark Playhouse.
The live-action musical production Scooby-Doo! The Mystery of the Pyramid toured the UK throughout the summer,
The Marvel Universe LIVE! played arenas in eighty-five cities across America from July, while Disney’s musical version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, featuring music by Alan Menken and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, had its American premier at San Diego’s La Jolla Playhouse in October.
Halo publisher Activision Blizzard reportedly spent $500 million (£300 million) creating and marketing Destiny, another multi-player alien shooter game and the first in a series that will span ten years. The impressive voice cast included Peter Dinklage, Bill Nighy, Gina Torres, Nathan Fillion, James Remar and Claudia Black, while Sir Paul McCartney was one of several music composers.
Detective Sebastian Castellanos investigated mass murders at a mental hospital and found himself battling nightmarish monsters known as “The Haunted” in Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami’s new survival game, The Evil Within, while gamers were armed with just a video camera as they investigated the horrific events that occurred at Mount Massive Asylum in Outlast for PS4.
Following its successful origin reboot in 2013, Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition had a 3-D graphics upgrade, while Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris saw the kick-ass heroine (once again voiced by actress Keeley Hawes) battling the evil Egyptian god Set.
With the franchise getting its second reboot since 2009, Wolfenstein: The New Order was set in an alternative 1960 where Nazi robots won World War II.
A companion to the big PS3 horror game of 2013, The Last of Us: Left Behind was a downloadable new sequence that was available for the remastered version for PS4. It featured Ellie and Riley exploring a mall and trying to stay out of the way of the fungally-Infected.
Filling the gap before the release of Dead Island 2 in 2015, Escape Dead Island was a cartoon zombie adventure, while The Walking Dead: Season Two allowed players to control a young girl in a world full of zombies.
Watch Dogs was set in an alternate Chicago where everything was linked by a network of computers, and a bespectacled witch used her magical hair and bullet-shooting boots to battle evil angels in Bayonetta 2, which also included the original game as a free download.
Sigourney Weaver reprised her role as “Ripley”, along with original stars Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphet Kotto in Crew Expendable, a free downloadable extra for those who pre-ordered Alien: Isolation.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 video game was just as good as the movie it was based on, which wasn’t saying much.
Set between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor featured a ranger of Gondor’s attempts to revenge the killing of his family by the dark lord Sauron’s armies, while Christopher Lee narrated and also voiced “Saruman the White” for LEGO the Hobbit: The Video Game.
In November, a boxed copy of Atari’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial—widely considered to have been one of the worst video games ever produced—raised $1,537.00 (£980.00) at a charity auction in America. It was one of 800 unwanted Atari 2600 cartridges recovered from a New Mexico landfill site seven months earlier.
As part of its Pop! Movies series of cute vinyl figurines, Funko released big-eyed versions of Dracula, Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Mummy, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Metaluna Mutant and The Phantom of the Opera, which were also available in “metallic” painted variations.
Funko’s series of moveable ReAction Figures also included licensed Universal Studios Monsters versions of all the above, except for the Metaluna Mutant, which was replaced by The Invisible Man.
A nicely sculpted figure of Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein’s Monster was issued as part of Hallmark’s 2014 series of Keepsake Christmas tree ornaments.
LEGO’s Ghost Busters Ecto-1 car set celebrated the movies 30th Anniversary, and the US Post Office released a set of stamps in October featuring Batman, to mark the Caped Crusader’s 75th Anniversary.
On October 30th, a life-size bronze bust of Edgar Allan Poe, created by Bryan Moore, was unveiled at the Boston Public Library. It was funded by a Kickstarter campaign, with Guillermo del Toro as the project’s largest financial supporter.
The British Museum’s “Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination” exhibition ran in London from early October until January 2015. It featured more than 200 rare objects—including posters, books, films and even a vampire-slaying kit—tracing 250 years of the Gothic tradition. Amongst the highlights were hand-written drafts of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
In July, one of only four known one-sheet posters of a specific design for The Phantom of the Opera (1925) sold at auction for $203,150. It had formerly belonged to the actor Nicholas Cage.
At the same auction, a 1931 German poster for Fritz Lang’s M sold for $50,787, a rare 1941 insert poster for The Wolf Man went for $47,800, a “style B” half-sheet from War of the Worlds (1953) realised $35,850 and a French grande for King Kong (1933) made $25,095.
Four months later, the only known version of a stone litho American one-sheet for the lost Lon Chaney movie London After Midnight (1927) sold for $478,000, making it the most expensive film poster ever sold at public auction.
The same sale also saw a French four panel King Kong realise $65,725 and a Ghost of Frankenstein one-sheet sell for $26,290.
In August, one of only 100 known copies of Action Comics No.1 (June, 1938), featuring the first appearance of Superman, sold through an online auction to an unnamed bidder for £1.95 million—more than £600,000 over the previous record realised for that issue. The 9.0 graded copy was initially listed by its owner for just .99 cents.
Earlier in the year, Fred Guardineer’s original cover art for Action Comics No.15 (August, 1939), depicting the Man of Steel lifting a submarine off the ocean floor, sold at auction for £175,000.
In April, Pan Macmillan and the Serendip Foundation announced that they were creating the James Herbert Award for Horror Writing, in memory of the late author. Open to horror novels written in English and published in the UK in 2014, the winner received a £2,000 prize and commemorative statuette. The judging panel, chaired by Tom Hunter, consisted of Herbert’s eldest daughter Kerry, authors Ramsey Campbell and Sarah Pinborough, Total Film acting editor Rosie Fletcher and academic Dr Tony Venezia.
The 24th Annual World Horror Convention was held in Portland, Oregon, over May 8-11. Author Guests of Honor were Nancy Holder, Jack Ketchum and Norman Partridge, Artist Guest of Honor was Greg Staples and Editor Guest of Honor was Paula Guran. Special Guests were John LaFleur, John Shirley and Victoria Price (Vincent Price’s daughter), Edward Gorey was Ghost of Honor, and artist Alan M. Clark made an excellent Toastmaster in light of a convention committee who were barely around.
Brian Keene was the previously announced recipient of the convention’s Grandmaster Award, and the Horror Writers Association presented its 27th Annual Bram Stoker Awards at a buffet meal on the Saturday night, hosted by Jeff Strand.
Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep won for superior achievement in the Novel category, Rena Mason’s The Evolutionist picked up First Novel and Dog Days by Joe McKinney collected Young Adult Novel.
Long Fiction went to ‘The Great Pity’ by Gary Braunbeck and Short Fiction to ‘Night Train to Paris’ by David Gerrold. Eric J. Guignard’s After Death… won Anthology, Laird Barron’s The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All and Other Stories won Collection, and William F. Nolan’s Nolan on Bradbury: Sixty Years of Writing About the Master of Science Fiction won Non-Fiction.
The Poetry award went to Four Elements by Marge Simon, Rain Graves, Charlee Jacob and Linda Addison, Graphic Novel went to Caitlín R. Kiernan’s Alabaster: Wolves, and Screenplay went to the ‘Welcome to the Tombs’ episode of TV’s The Walking Dead by Glen Mazzara.
Gray Friar Press won the Specialty Press Award, The Silver Hammer Award for outstanding service to HWA went to Norman Rubenstein, while J.G. Faherty won The President’s Richard Laymon Service Award.
Horror Writers Association Life Achievement Awards had been announced previously for R.L. Stine and Stephen Jones.
The British Fantasy Convention was held in a nicely old-fashioned railway hotel in the city of York over September 5-7. The Guests of Honour were authors Charlaine Harris and Kate Elliott, scriptwriter Toby Whithouse and digital artist Larry Rostant (even though there actually wasn’t an Art Show).
