It was all a dream.
I wish I’d slept through this dull film, like the main character did. Dull story, awful script, no tension, no excitement, and only connected to the fairy tale by the presence of an evil stepmother.
Available from Amazon.
An ancient evil looks down on the city of Manchester. But there are things even immortals fear.
Manchester’s newest tower is home to a coven of vampires, headed by the woman known only as Mistress. They have corrupted local government, and prey on the city’s most vulnerable.
When Mistress turns a homeless boy, to take as the latest in a long line of lovers, she sets in motion events that could destroy the coven, and will scar the city.
As the boy’s sister tracks him down, another, hungrier, kind of undead creature has been raised. Zombies stalk the streets, heading for the tower and Mistress.
Northern Gorehouse is available now.
How I made the cover for Northern Gorehouse.
The book is out on 24th October through Amazon. Buy it now.
This five film series- based very loosely on a Yakuza member’s prison memoirs- traces gangland conflicts in Hiroshima and neighbouring Kure from the late forties to early seventies. Shozo Hirono is the character based upon the author, but not the lead in every one of the films. Calm and honourable, he’s permanently being undermined by the hot-headed behaviour and back stabbing of Yakuza in his own and others’ families.
The Yakuza life is presented as less than glamorous, shabby, even. Violence, when it breaks out, is realistically gritty, clumsy and brutal, more scuffle and brawl than bullet ballet. If, like me, you have problems keeping track of characters’ names, it gets tricky following exactly which factions are working with or against each other. But that’s just me.
The series is- Battles without Honour And Humanity, Hiroshima Death Match, Proxy Wars, Police Tactics and Final Episode. Special features on the Arrow Video releases include some interesting featurette documentaries, interviewing the series’ fight co-ordinator, one of the script writers and an assistant director, as well as revealing the ‘Piranha Army’ of bit players who kept the backgrounds full of activity.
A rare escape from the flat this week, to have a quick look at a new cafe opening on Oxford Road.
A blast from the past in today’s video, but also a hint at things to come.
I’ve been avoiding the Di-fest marking the twentieth anniversary of her death, but I just remembered this post I wrote back in 2008- The Dis From Brazil.
Extrapolating from a conversation last night.
There must have been enough genetic material to be swept up from the Parisian tunnel that someone could have got a decent bit of DNA from it. Replicate that, stick it in a few dozen eggs and set yourself up with a baby farm somewhere in South America (or certain parts of eastern Europe, where they’d be even less obvious) and wait. Then, in 2016, when they’ve all turned 18 break out the bowl cuts and let your army of simpering blondes loose to be bedded by older toffs, rugby players and cads. They will also steal the hearts of Britain whilst you carry out your nefarious deeds unnoticed. We won’t even have Gregory Peck around to sniff out the conspiracy.
(2012 would make a more dramatic year for them to be released, what with the Mayan calendar ending and the London Olympics, but they’d only be 14 and that’s wrong.)
(There’s a listing in imdb for The Boys From Brazil due 2009, but no information. What’s the betting it’s yet another unnecessary remake?)
My 2016 deadline came and went, and the girls didn’t appear. Maybe whatever shady cabal created them thought they’d have the wrong effect on the desired result of the EU referendum.
The Boys From Brazil is still listed as ‘In Development’.