Interview: Johnny Kevorkian, Director of The Disappeared
Back in August 2008 I managed to get in to the UK premiere of Johnny Kevorkian’s excellent and chilling urban ghost story The Disappeared at the Frightfest in London. (Review here and film website here – from whence I purloined some of these images). The film went down a treat and was a highlight of the festival, IMHO.
A few weeks later I managed to catch a busy, somewhat relieved and very amiable Mr. Kevorkian, (no relation), for a coffee and a chat to discuss this very British film, which is currently enjoying a well-deserved run at the ICA cinema throughout June and July. Read more
Film review: The Disappeared
Six month’s after his brother Tom’s disappearance, Matthew Ryan is released from the care home his father placed him in to recover. But life is no easier for Matthew now he’s back in the family council flat on a grey South London estate. His father, Jake, silently seethes, a violent man staying just this side of violence, blaming his oldest so for the loss of his youngest. Matthew was partying whilst his brother wandered off. The local paper’s reporter is trying to dig up some dirt on the unsolved case; the social worker and local vicar are putting in the tuppence-worth, and all Matthew wants to do is to be left alone to do… well, what does one do when you don’t know if your brother’s alive or dead, and you know you were to blame?
Reading Seems Only Right
My piece that won the 2008 British Fantasy Society‘s Short Story Competition finally sees the light of day this month – some three and a half years after it was originally written.
I wrote Seems Only Right for entry into the 12th Chiaroscuro short story contest back in 2006, which was won by Gemma Files. Chiaroscuro, or Chizine, is a great online horror and weird fiction magazine sponsored by Leisure Books in the US. There were first, second and third placed stories, and Seems Only Right was given an Honourable Mention along with five others, out of a total of 307 entries, so I was pretty pleased. For a moment; until I realised it wouldn’t be seen by anyone, as only the first 3 stories were published. So near and yet so far!
Book review: Red, by Paul Kane
Paul Kane’s an author I’ve kept my eye on ever since his short fiction began appearing regularly in the genre small press in the late 1990s. Over the last few years his output has been unnaturally prolific and of a very high standard. This is evidenced by a strong showing on the Long List of the British Fantasy Society’s latest Awards: Kane’s first novel The Afterblight Chronicles: Arrowhead is up for Best Novel; two titles, Reunion, and Red are up for Best Novella, and no less than four of his short stories are up for that particular Award: A Chaos Demon is for Life, Lifelike, The Suicide Room, and Wind Chimes, (which I thought was the outstanding story in the third Bloody Books’ Read by Dawn anthology from last year).
Red is a contemporary take on the classic fairy tale, Little Red Riding Hood. Far removed from the quaint childhood we imagine for the little girl in the original tale Rachael Daniels, an aspiring actress, lives in a grey urban environment, just about making a living as a careworker whilst enduring the frustrations she understands will come her way at the onset of her chosen career. Already a little jaded, she’s recently broken up with her boyfriend, and dreads walking the streets after dark as the city is a threatening place wit its hoodies and vast concrete estates, such as the Greenham Estate which is where her favourite client lives, the 80 year old Miss Tilly Brindle. Read more
Fear – Issue 2
Welcome to the Dark Playground, part two…
Onto the second issue of Fear, dated September/October 1988, this time with 84 pages, eight more than the launch issue. A bright pink marbled background supports a wonderful portrait of James Herbert and his rats by Oliver Fry.
A stellar list of names enticed us helpless disciples of darkness to part with our cash: Stephen King, Dean R Koontz and Clive Barker. And towards the bottom of the cover, a keyword from the end of the alphabet that today, pretty much guarantees I would purchase said item without a second thought – ZOMBIES! But 21 years ago this sub-genre didn’t hold as much interest or excitement for me, as my exposure to and knowledge of the flesh eating apocalypse was naively under-nourished; and these zombies were certainly not Romero’s gut-munchers anyway…
In his lengthy editorial, Dark Playground, John Gilbert discussed the lack of funding within the British film industry and the lack of entrepeneurial flair in the film-makers themselves. He wonders if there are people out there who can take advantage of the perceived new opportunities for the horror genre in film, and in fiction, ‘as several of Britain’s larger publishers are desperate to sign-up horror writers this year, ready to exploit another bubble in the genre which they believe has started to – yet again – expand and can only grow bigger during next year’.
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