My Week On The Web

On The Mixtape Lives On this week I played more songs about teachers from The Smiths, Leonard Cohen, The Trashcan Sinatras and Madness. I was also Keeping It Peel with Billy Bragg and agreed with Half Man Half Biscuit that Hell Is Other People (in French). I also saluted one of my favourite albums of the year and the greatest recorded ever recorded.

Over at Thoughtballoons, I chose this week's character: my ultimate cartoon hero, Wile E. Coyote. Read my 1-page story here.

Elsewhere on the web this week...

There's a nasty Halloween story from Steve Green's Twisted Quill...

Rob started making Halloween masks (collect them all!)...

Larissa from Condemned To Rock & Roll returned to the blogosphere and launched a new music blog with her friend Laura, From A High Horse.

Nobody wants to play paintball with The Punisher...

Two legends of the music blogosphere finally meet face to face...

The Sagittarian snaps flying teddies in NZ...

And Chris meets some interesting people on the bus.

Top Thirteen Ghost Songs

I celebrated Halloween earlier this week with my Top Twenty Horror Films, but I also wanted to do something to mark the day itself so I started collecting ghost songs with the aim of compiling a Top Ten. Then I realised there were more than 10 essential ghost songs, so I bumped it up to 13 in honour of the day. As mentioned previously, I'm a supreme triskaidekaphobic, but this is the one day of the year that such bad luck cancels itself out. You remember how on Buffy, no self-respecting vamp or ghoul would be seen dead causing trouble on Halloween? It's the same principle.

Even with 13 positions in my Top Ten, I still had to leave out a bunch of great ghost songs, including haunted offerings by Aimee Mann, Gene, Tom Waits, Prefab Sprout, the Manics, Richard Thompson, The White Stripes and others. Not to mention Cherry Ghost, the Ghosts and Phil... Spector.

If you're interested in Ghost Rider songs, I suggest you click here.




13. The Beautiful South - Woman In The Wall

A man murders his wife and plasters her into the bedroom wall... but the wife gets her revenge, driving him mad with ghostly screams and a wall that drips blood. If only all relationships were that simple.

12. Orange Juice - What Presence?

In the moth eaten gloom of his shabby room, Edwyn Collins sees the strangest manifestiation...

It may just be his imagination.

11. The Smiths - A Rush And A Push And The Land Is Ours

In which Morrissey becomes the Ghost of Troubled Joe, hung by his pretty white neck some 18 months ago, then travels to a mystical time zone...

There's too much caffeine in your bloodstream
And a lack of real spice in your life

Yeah, man, I know how that goes...

10. Stan Ridgway - Camouflage

In which a young soldier in Vietnam is saved from an ambush by an awfully big marine who cries "Semper Fi!" and then turns out to have died the previous evening.

He was an awfully strange marine.

9. Bruce Springsteen - The Ghost Of Tom Joad

In which Bruce calls upon the spirit of Steinbeck's classic hero to stand up for the disenfranchised of modern day America. Not so much a ghost story as a requiem for an age long gone...

8. Godley & Creme - Under Your Thumb

A man takes refuge from a storm in the last compartment of a stationary train... but someone follows him on board... the spirit of a woman whose only escape from an oppressive relationship was to take her own life...

7. Laura Marling - Ghosts

These are just ghosts that broke my heart before I met you.

6. Jellyfish - The Ghost At Number One

I will defend Jellyfish as a great 90s rock-pop institution, but on reflection the lyrics to this song are very silly.

5. Ray Parker Jr. - Ghostbusters

I ain't 'fraid of no ghosts

4. John Leyton - Johnny Remember Me

Joe Meek's finest 2 minutes 38 seconds?

One of many so-called "death discs" from the 60s (see also Leader Of The Pack, Dead Man's Curve, Last Kiss et al. ... I've got a whole album of them at home), although this is one of the few wherein the crash victim comes back, with haunting consequences.

3. R Dean Taylor - There's A Ghost In My House

Another rave from the grave by Holland Dozier Holland.

See also The Fall's version.

2. Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff - it's me, Cathy, I've come home... let me in your window...

1. The Specials - Ghost Town

Not a town full of ghosts, but a town that's a ghost of its former self... this is still one of the spookiest records you'll ever hear...

Top Twenty Horror Films (Part 2)

(Click here for 20-11.)

OK, we're back with my Top Ten... and I'm sure it'll have you screaming at your computer screens. "WHAT - NO DRACULA 2001? ARE YOU AN IDIOT?" Etc. Etc.



10. Paranormal Activity

9. The Amityville Horror

I still remember watching this on TV late one night when I was a kid and not being able to sleep afterwards. For a long time. I became obsessed with the Amityville story and read the three novels and anything else I could find on it. Marketed as a true story, I still hate the idea that it was all a giant scam. I want to believe!

The movie doesn't have a great reputation among horror fans, but I think it stands up well, with excellent performances from James Brolin, Margot Kidder and (especially) Rod Steiger and a creepy score by Lalo Schifrin. The sequels are a waste of time and the remake misses the point, despite a half-decent cast... but then, it does suffer the stench of Michael Bay.

8. The Exorcist

Another movie that could have sunk under the weight of expectation once I was finally allowed to watch it, but thankfully didn't. A much better film than Texas Chainsaw Massacre, though not quite as shocking. Still, it's Mark Kermode's favourite flick, so it deserves its position here.

The sequels are drivel, particularly the recent, supremely dreary prequels.

Your mother cooks socks in hell.

7. The Descent

Crammed with twists, claustrophobic tension and genuine jumpy bits, Neil Marshall's best film delivers - as long as you're watching the original UK version. The "it was all a dream, happily ever after" ending grafted onto the US version was a kick in the horror-nads. And it led to the sequel, which was worse than pointless.

6. The Haunting

The movie that showed Paranormal Activity how frightening a few slamming doors could actually be, this is essential viewing for anyone who ever plans to direct a horror flick.

The Jan De Bont remake from the 90s is essential viewing for anyone who ever plans to ruin a horror flick. Truly ghastly.

5. Jaws

Part of me didn't want to include Jaws in this list, because part of me doesn't think of it as a horror film. Part of me thinks it's too good a movie to be considered horror. Which is snobbish and silly. Chief Brody rules.

I actually like Jaws 2. 3D and The Revenge are bobbins though. Were there any more? I'm sure they were offal too.

4. Halloween

Ah, John Carpenter. The man responsible for two of my top five horror flicks. The man who invented the handheld camera following you down the street routine. The man whose weird, self-composed synth music was more effective at delivering shivers than any big orchestral score. The man who created one of the truly great screen monsters... using a William Shatner mask.

Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Myers, Donald Pleasence... what's not to like?

I think I probably liked more of the Halloween sequels than any other horror franchise. H20 was particularly good. Rob Zombie's remake was bobbins though.

3. Psycho

Alfred Hitchcock. Anthony Perkins. Janet Leigh. Bernard Herrmann. Who's the bigger star of Psycho?

Actually, the thing that impresses me most about this film is the way it changes direction in such a startling manner midway through. I guess that's down to Robert Bloch, who wrote the original novel, and Joseph Stefano who did the screenplay.

She wouldn't even harm a fly.

I like the sequels purely for Perkins' hammy performance. The Vince Vaughan / Anne Heche shot-by-shot remake was an exercise in utter futility though.

2. The Shining

Which is better, Stephen King's novel... or the vastly different Kubrick movie? The author obviously believes the former, but as much of a King fan as I am, and as much as I can take or leave just about everything else Kubrick's ever committed to celluloid... the atmosphere of this film is unrivalled. Jack's just-the-right-side-of-mental performance, Shelly Duvall's wonderfully insipid support, the creepiest horror movie kid ever, the scene in room 237, Scatman Crothers' botched rescue attempt, all that snow and isolation, Delbert Grady and Lloyd the bartender... a horror movie I never grow tired of. Hoping to watch it again this weekend on the big screen.

Heeeeere's Johnny!

1. The Thing

For anyone wondering why there's no room for Alien in this list, the answer is simple - everything Alien can do, The Thing can do better. All the crimes against horror committed by John Carpenter in the latter half of his career matter not one whit. This movie is perfect, I won't hear a word said against it.

I have low, low hopes for the upcoming prequel.


This week's Thoughtballoons strip features my tribute to The Thing, starring its more Fantastic namesake. You can read it here.

Top Twenty Horror Films (Part 1)

In preparation for Halloween, everyone's listing their favourite horror flicks. Well, Final Girl is, and Ryan 'Stinkbrown' Lindsay is too. I'm sure a bunch of other people are thinking about it. Show me a barrel and I'll scrape it...

Runners up included Evil Dead 2 and 3, Final Destination (any of the first three, not the rubbish 3D one), Rec (Spanish), The Fly (Goldblum), The Hitcher (Hauer) and The Ring (Japanese). Which should give you an idea of how bad my taste in horror films really is.

Here's 20-11 then... come back tomorrow for part 2. You just know it's gonna piss you off some more.


20. Friday The 13th

It's well over twenty years since I saw the original, and I'm sure it wouldn't stand up after all this time, but I still remember the impact this movie had on me - particularly the ending. Diluted to death by a dozen inferior sequels, this stuck a spike through my heart like an arrow through Kevin Bacon's throat. And Jason wasn't even the killer!

19. 28 Days Later

What if zombies could run really, really fast, Christopher Eccleston was a right hard bastard, and Manchester looked like LA from a distance...?

The sequel is... OK.

18. The Strangers

17. Cube

Some ignorami consider this to have invented the torture porn genre and spawned a million Saws, Hostels, et al. The difference being there's more invention, imagination and genuine tension in the first five minutes of Cube than there was in the whole Saw franchise.

The sequels are good too.

16. An American Werewolf In London

Another of those horror films that defined my youth, and not just for Jenny Agutter in the shower.

Keep off the moors and stay on the road.

The sequel is rubbish, despite Julie Delpy.

15. Them (Ils)

Because, it seems, only the French truly understand there's little scarier than a bunch of unruly hoodies. Inspired The Strangers, Eden Lake and a bunch of other "aren't kids bastards?" flicks, none of which were quite as efficiently brutal.

14. Frailty

The film that made Bill Paxton scary. That's some achievement! (He directed it too, so it was all his own doing.) Great twists and a black-as-pitch ending.

13. Duel

The horror film that reminds you you're not as indestructible as you think you are in that little tin box you drive about in every day. Dennis Weaver does the everyman routine perfectly, Spielberg's direction has never been grittier, and the fact we never see the trucker makes him the perfect boogeyman.

I was tempted to include copycat 70s movie The Car in this list, if only for the scenes where the eponymous driverless vehicle refuses to go onto consecrated ground... and then explodes in a fiery devil explosion at the end. In my memory, I often get the two films confused and have that devil explosion tear up the sky after the Duel lorry tumbles over the cliff too. I'm always vaguely disappointed when it doesn't happen.

12. The Blair Witch Project

All you people who hate Blair Witch, sorry, but you're wrong. It may just be a lot of silly running about in the woods, but woods are scary places... and that facing the wall ending haunted me for weeks.

The sequel is bollocks.

11. Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Since it was banned in the UK as a video nasty throughout my youth, I expected to be disappointed by TCM when I finally saw it. Disappointed, I was not. Disturbed, I was. Not by the expected scenes of chainsaw torture - which turned out to be mercifully few and actually quite restrained - but instead by the scene at the dinner table where Grandpa's corpse starts sucking the girls finger and she screams... and screams... and screams... and screams.

The remake was far too glossy.



Click here for part 2...