Best New Horror 29

by Stephen Jones

  Richard E. Grant read ‘All Hallows’, Toby Jones read ‘Seaton’s Aunt’, Kenneth Cranham read ‘Crewe’, Anthony Head read ‘A Recluse’ and Julian Wadham read ‘The Almond Tree’ for Ghost Stories of Walter de la Mare, while Paul Danemen read the 1852 mystery ‘A Terribly Strange Bed’ for Mysterious Tales by Wilkie Collins.

  The fifteen-minute Charles Dickens—Tales of the Supernatural included ‘The Trails of Murder’, ‘Chips Bargains with the Devil’, ‘The Signalman’, ‘Madman’s Manuscript’ and ‘The Queer Chair’.

  Radio 4 Extra also presented a forty-five minute adaptation of Dickens’ festive 1848 tale The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain, which was originally broadcast in 1990.

  The Ghost Stories of H.G. Wells featured David McAlister reading ‘The Moth’, ‘The Temptation of Harringay’, ‘The Inexperienced Ghost’, ‘The Stolen Body’ and ‘The Door in the Wall’, and The Darker Side of the Border adapted stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson and James Hogg.

  Angela Thorne read ‘I’ll Never Know’ and Stephen Tompkinson read ‘The Game’ in September, and in November Keith Drinkel read ‘The Dress’, Jill Graham read ‘The Paradise Garden’ and James Bolam read ‘You Have to Laugh’, all by A.L. Barker, from the 1992 series Five Strange Stories.

  Through the Wardrobe featured three fifteen-minute readings by Kerr Logan, Michelle Fairley and David Troughton of, respectively, Lucy Caldwell’s ‘The Belle Dress’, Glenn Patterson’s ‘Tilly’s Tale’ and Frank Cottrell Boyce’s ‘The Rosy Rural Baby’ in tribute to the work of C.S. Lewis.

  Sherlock Holmes with Carleton Hobbs featured Michael Hardwick’s half-hour adaptations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short stories ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’, ‘The Beryl Coronet’, ‘The Blanched Soldier’, ‘The Copper Beeches’ and ‘The Noble Bachelor’, all featuring the now-forgotten British stage and screen actor who received an OBE for his services to drama.

  Originally broadcast in 1978, Anna Massey starred in an adaptation of Neville Teller’s The Horror at Bly, a reposte to Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, and James Laurenson, Jennifer Piercy and Patrick Troughton starred in Wally K. Daly’s three-part science fiction thriller Before the Screaming Begins, from the same year.

  BBC Radio 4 Extra aired a welcome repeat of Robert Holmes’ six-part drama Aliens in the Mind from 1976, starring Vincent Price and Peter Cushing and set on a remote Scottish island. It would have made a terrific movie or TV series.

  Katie Hims’ ‘Enoch’s Machine’, about a Victorian scientist who created a mechanism to record the voice of his dead daughter, was featured in Listening to the Dead, and Graham Padden and Natasha Pyne starred in a repeat of Trevor Walker’s supernatural thriller And When You Sleep You Remind Me of the Dead, from 1987.

  Jon Strickland’s adaptation of Susan Hill’s novel The Woman in Black was repeated over four half-hour episodes from 1993 featuring Robert Glenister, John Woodvine and Jane Marlow.

  David Wade’s adaption of Alan Garner’s The Weirdstone of Brisingamen from 1989 was also repeated in four half-hour segments, while Wendy Baxter starred in a five-part repeat of Wally K. Daly’s The Children of Witch-wood.

  A ninety-minute version of Horace Walpole’s 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto—widely considered the first Gothic novel—from 1996 featured the voice talents of David Burke, Gerrard Murphy, Alfonsia Emanuelle and Sylvestra La Tousel, and Tim McInnerny, Mia Soteriou and Ben Onwukwe starred in Hattie Naylor’s two-part adaptation of H. Rider Haggard’s 1887 novel She.

  To tie in with the three-episode TV revival, The League of Gentlemen Night from 2005 featured co-creator and star Reece Shearsmith presenting the original radio series from 1997.

  David March starred as M.R. James in a revival of the 1989 drama The Lodestone, based on the story by Sheila Hodgson. On New Year’s Eve, Radio 4 Extra repeated a 1993 version of Jonathan Miller’s Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, based on the story by James and starring Michael Horden, who was also in the 1968 TV production.

  BBC Radio 3 celebrated the centenery of Anthony Burgess’ birth in October with a live, two-hour production of the author’s own stage musical adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, starring Samuel Edward-Cook as “Alex”.

  In the lead-up to the Christmas episode, the two-hour Jo Whiley—Access All Areas Doctor Who Special on BBC Radio 2 featured the radio presenter talking with actors Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie, Matt Lucas and David Bradley, along with showrunner and executive producer Steven Moffat.

  Mike Redman’s independent label Redrum Recordz of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, described itself as “Beneath the mainstream, on top of the underground”.

  Many of its vinyl and CD releases were of interest to horror fans, including Deformer’s The Living Dead Deformed, a limited-edition homage to George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) with cover art by Graham Humphreys, and Full Moon Deformed, presented by singer/musician Redman and movie producer Charles Band.

  Redrum’s other releases included The Travel’s Nyctophobia, another Redman project, while Mü and Mike Redman’s Mentalmorphosis from PRSPCT Recordings featured apparently Lovecraft-inspired sleeve art.

  Waxwork Records issued Jed Kurzel’s soundtrack to the 2014 Australian horror film The Babadook on deluxe vinyl in a package that included old-style tip-on gatefold jackets and pop-up Mister Babadook, heavyweight printed inserts featuring all new artwork by Jessica Seamans of LandLand.

  The late movie composer Roy Budd created a new score for Lon Chaney’s 1925 Phantom of the Opera, which was performed by the Docklands Sinfonia Orchestra at a screening of the movie on October 8 at the English National Opera’s London Coliseum.

  Successful stage shows such as Harry Potter and The Cursed Child helped increase London theatre audiences past the 15 million level for the first time since records began more than thirty years ago, with 2017 being a banner year as box-office revenues topped £700 million.

  In January, the Charing Cross Theatre presented the European premiere of Thom Southerland’s musical version of Death Takes a Holiday, which was first staged Off Broadway in 2011.

  Based on the classic 1977 record album by Meat Loaf, Jim Steinman’s Bat Out of Hell: The Musical had its world premiere at the Manchester Opera House in February and transferred to the London Coliseum in June.

  Nigel Harman’s Big Fish, based on the novel by Daniel Wallace and Tim Burton’s surreal 2003 movie, was a sentimental musical production at Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 312-seat venue, The Other Place. Making his London stage debut, Kelsey Grammer took over Albert Finney’s role as the dying father who told his son (Jamie Muscato) fantastical stories about mythical creatures.

  Following sold-out runs at the Southwark Playhouse and Edinburgh Festival Fringe, a revival of David Bryan and Joe DiPietro’s The Toxic Avenger: The Musical moved to The Arts Cafe in London’s West End for a strictly limited three-month season in September. Based on the 1984 cult movie, The Edinburgh Evening News called it “Blatant, bonkers and brimming with brio”, while The Telegraph newspaper said it was “Gloriously silly, perfectly executed”.

  Mel Brooks brought a slimmed-down revival of his 2007 Young Frankenstein Broadway musical to London’s Garrick Theatre in September. It starred Hadley Fraser, Summer Strallen, Lesley Joseph, and comedian Ross Noble as Igor, while Shuler Hensley played the tap-dancing Monster.

  As a follow-up to their stage production of Attack of the Giant Leeches in 2016, four-person comedy troope The Lampoons opened a parody version of William Castle’s 1959 movie House on Haunted Hill at London’s Leicester Square Theatre on Hallowe’en.

  Sean Mathias’ 2016 stage production of William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist finally transferred to London’s Phoenix Theatre in November. Rated 18+ for containing material “which may shock and offend”, the critically-acclaimed production starred Jenny Seagrove, Peter Bowles, Adam Garcia, Clare Louise Connolly as Regan, and the pre-recorded voice of Ian McKellen (whose name mysteriously disappeared off the advertis
ing) as the demon Pazuzu. Illusionist Ben Hart created the head-turning special effects.

  From December 3 through to January 27, 2018, London’s acclaimed Almeida Theatre presented the world premiere of Richard Jones’ skilfully staged production of The Twilight Zone, which blended adaptations of eight episodes written by Rod Serling, Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson into a single narrative. At once both funny and poignant, the production concluded with not only a wonderful validation of the original CBS-TV series, but also the whole field of imaginative fiction itself. The souvenir booklet included a brief article by Neil Gaiman.

  Louis Maskell portrayed the hideously-deformed Grinpayne in The Grinning Man, Tom Morris’ stage musical based on Victor Hugo’s 1869 novel L’homme qui rit (aka The Man Who Laughs), which premiered in Bristol before transferring to London’s Trafalgar Studios.

  Matthew Kelly starred as the mysterious magician Cole Hawlings in the first stage adaptation of John Mansfield’s 1935 Christmas-themed novel The Box of Delights at London’s Wilton’s Music Hall.

  Also aimed at Christmas audiences was the first revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Woman in White at the Charing Cross Theatre. Based on Wilkie Collins’ 1859 Gothic mystery novel, Thom Southerland’s new production was a newly revised version of the troubled 2004 musical and featured Greg Castiglioni as the villainous Count Fosco.

  Another revival was Gaslight at Birmingham’s New Alexandra Theatre. Kara Tointon, Rupert Young and Keith Allen starred in this new production of Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 psycholigical chiller.

  Brother Wolf’s production of Kim Newman’s first full-length dramatic work, Magic Circle, had a limited run at Harrogate Theatre from July 25. Directed by Phil Lowe, the two-handed mystery play was set in the early 1970s—the Dawn of the Age of Ophiuchus—and starred James Hyland and Michael Shon.

  Producers of the New York production of George Orwell’s 1984 considered hiring a nurse after audiences reacted badly to the torturing of Winston Smith (Tom Sturridge) during performances at Manhattan’s Hudson Theatre. There was already an age restriction policy, barring children born after 2004 from seeing the play.

  Meanwhile, following Donald Trump’s Counselor Kellyanne Conway’s use of the phrase “alternative facts” during an interview in January, Orwell’s original book went back into the best-seller charts in the UK.

  Game of Thrones: The Rock Musical—An Unauthorized Parody opened in February at the Macha Theater in Los Angeles and had a run of eight shows in San Diego before enjoying a three-week run at the Off Broadway Jerry Orbach Theater at the Theater Center in Manhattan in October. Created by Steven Christopher Parker and Steven Brandon, who previously worked together on a musical based on Lost, the show revisited the first season of the TV series.

  Andy Karl recreated Bill Murray’s role in the Broadway production of Groundhog Day, based on the 1993 movie about a weatherman trapped in the same day of the year.

  For Hallowe’en, Hammer created its own immersive theatrical experience at a former London music hall with Hammer House of Horror Live. ‘The Soulless Ones’, co-written and co-directed by Oscar Blustin and Anna Söderblom, allowed up to 200 audience members each night to follow the undead Queen Carmilla and her thirteen vampire followers.

  Following on from its new Harry Potter attraction The Forbidden Forest in March, the Warner Bros. Studio Tour in London presented a temporary Hogwarts After Dark exhibition for Hallowe’en.

  On November 10, “Even Stranger Things: A Night for Robert Aickman” was held at the British Library in London to mark the arrival at the Library of the author’s literary archive. Introduced by author and editor Richard T. Kelly, the evening featured readings and discussion with Ramsey Campbell, Jeremy Dyson, Reece Shearsmith, Aickman’s literary agent Leslie Gardner and his US editor Victoria Nelson.

  Phil and Sarah Stokes’ ongoing The Clive Barker Archive launched “The Clive Barker Playscripts” series with The Magician: A Farce in the Style of the Commedia Dell’arte (1978) and The History of the Devil or Scenes from a Pretended Life (1980). Both of the attractively produced and keenly priced paperbacks featured cover paintings by Barker, along with photographic histories of the original stage productions and other bonus material.

  In early July, Warner Bros. and the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien finally resolved their long-running £62 million rights dispute over the digital exploitation of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in video games and apps. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

  Based somewhat loosely on Tolkien’s mythical world, Monolith’s Middle-Earth: Shadow of War was the follow-up to the 2014 hit Shadow of Mordor, as the player controlled an army of orcs in the war against Sauron.

  Capcom’s first-person perspective Resident Evil 7: Biohazard was set in a creepy Louisiana farmhouse and was a distinct improvement over the survival horror franchise’s previous installment. The company opened a forty-five minute pop-up immersive experience for four days in an empty house in London’s Shoreditch to promote the new game.

  Bathesda Softworks’ third-person sequel game The Evil Within 2 returned to the virtual world created by psychopathic serial killers, as Sebastian Castellanos had to rescue the daughter he thought dead from the digital framework.

  MachineGames’ Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus was a sequel to the 2014 reboot set in a Nazi-occupied world, which allowed the player to “Make America Nazi-Free Again” in an alternate version of 1961.

  A mercenary’s attempt to rescue a kidnapped girl went disastrously wrong in The Farm 51/Bandai Namco’s realistic-looking Get Even, which featured a haunting musical score composed by Olivier Derivière.

  Players had to take on alien abilities to survive in an interstellar research facility over-run by extraterrestrials in Prey, while players hunted giant robot dinosaurs in a world reclaimed by nature in Guerrilla Games’ Horizon: Zero Dawn.

  Celebrating the game’s tenth anniversary, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Origins moved the action to ancient Egypt.

  EA’s Star Wars: Battlefront II, a sequel to the 2015 reboot video game series, featured both a single-player and multi-player campaign that was set after Return of the Jedi and followed Imperial special-forces squad leader Iden Versio (voiced by Janina Gavankar) and her Inferno Squad avenging the death of the Emperor.

  Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite was the sixth incarnation of the 2-D console game, in which the player could control characters from Capcom franchises like Resident Evil, Nemesis and Street Fighter to slug it out with Marvel superheroes such as Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Rocket Raccoon.

  The Stranger Things Ouija Board could have put you in touch with the Upside Down, while around fifty fans queued up in a rainy London in October for the launch at Topshop of a new fashion range based on the Netflix show.

  Fright Rags released T-shirt and mask boxed sets of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps characters “The Haunted Mask” and “Night of the Living Mummy” in limited editions of 500 units each.

  The Wand Company, who started up with a remote-control replica Harry Potter wand, released The Twelfth Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver universal remote, which allowed you to change TV channels while pretending to be Peter Capaldi’s Time Lord. From the same manufacturer, the Star Trek Original Series Communicator connected to a mobile phone thanks to its bluetooth technology.

  For Halloween, Target stores in America partnered up with Universal Studios for the usual selection of masks, costumes, door greeters, make-up kits, vampire teeth, and home decor items all themed around the Universal Monsters. These included a talking animatronic head of The Mummy and plastic-domed animated cloches of the Burning Windmill and the Monster and his Bride from Bride of Frankenstein.

  From the Narragansett Brewing Company came the H.P. Lovecraft-inspired Unnamable Black Lager—“a roasty and robust Black Lager with notes of toffee, caramel, coffee and chocolate,” finishing with a slightly juicy hop bite.

  £42,000 was paid for a French poster of King Kong (1933) during Sotherby’s inaugural
online auction in September, which was the highest amount for a movie poster sold by the London auction house. The event also included a one-of-a-kind British poster for The Wizard of Oz (1939).

  A convicted drug lord’s collection of movie figures was sold at a Belfast auction house in October under the Proceeds of Crime Act. Martin Fillery kept his collection of life-size figures—from Star Wars, E.T., Terminator 2, Gremlins, Back to the Future II, Iron Man, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, Batman and many other movie and TV series—in a former Cold War nuclear bunker in the south of England, which he also used to grow cannabis. Although the collection cost Fillery more than £1 million to accumulate over two decades, it sold for just £340,000.

  In November, a rare “Style-A” one-sheet poster for Universal’s Dracula (1931) set a new world record when it sold at auction in Dallas, Texas, for $525,800. It was one of only two examples of the poster known to exist. At the same auction, a “Style-L” poster for the same studio’s The Phantom of the Opera (1925) realised $95,600, a six-sheet for The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) went for $38,240, and Albert Kallis’ original gouachepainting for the poster for AIP’s Invasion of the Saucer-Men (1957) sold for $107,550.

  At the “TCM Presents…Out of This World!” auction, held at Bonhams auction house over November 21-22, the original seven-foot tall Robby the Robot suit and jeep from MGM’s Forbidden Planet (1956) sold for $5.375 million (£4 million). It was a new record for classic movie memorabilia, beating the $4 million paid for the original Maltese Falcon statuette in 2013. At the same New York event, a lobby card for Bride of Frankenstein (1935) went for $9,375.00, while director Tod Browning’s dog’s ashes and his dog-related scrapbook realised $1,187.00!

  That same month, a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, inscribed and signed by author J.K. Rowling, sold for a record £106,250 at a Bonhams sale in London. The previous record for the book was £60,168, which had been set earlier in the year in Texas.