Praise for Twisted Tales Events

'In the past few years Twisted Tales has become a major force in the promotion and appreciation of horror fiction. As well as putting on author readings and signings at bookshops it has expanded into organising larger events, bringing authors and critics together for discussions of the field. I've been involved in quite a few of both and have found them hugely enjoyable and stimulating - I believe the audiences did as well. May Twisted Tales continue to grow and prosper! If you love the field, support them! I do.' - Ramsey Campbell

‘Twisted Tales consistently produce well-organised events for writers and readers of horror. What really distinguishes Twisted Tales for me is the intelligent themes and investigations they pursue, and the high quality of the discussions they always stimulate. As an author I've been invited to three of their events and have been pleasantly startled, to near shocked, by the attendance levels - two out of three were even sold out. I salute anyone who contributes so much to the literary and cultural life of horror fiction.’- Adam Nevill

'Twisted Tales events are wonderful... a great way of promoting 21st century horror fiction. Supported by Waterstone's Liverpool One and really well organised, Twisted Tales brings together established names in the genre as well as new voices and of course readers. Looking forward to much more to come...' - Alison J. Littlewood

Monday 28 February 2011

Dorothy reviewed by Alison Littlewood

Dorothy
Directed by Agnes Merlet
Released in 2008
Certificate: 15


Dorothy is an atmospheric, intriguing and disturbing film that revolves around a young girl – the eponymous Dorothy – and the question of whether she is the subject of multiple personality disorder or supernatural possession. Billed as the new exorcist and with taglines such as ‘evil chose her’, the film is actually a thoughtful exploration of the conflict between science and faith as expressed in an isolated and repressive community.

It seems particularly fitting to re-examine this film in the context of Women in Horror Recognition Month, since it is the product of a female director Agnes Merlet and female writing team (Merlet, and Juliette Sales). Their vision results in a quietly haunting film which keeps the viewer unsettled; which examines what it is like to be a woman with no allies or connections in a society with a prevailing sense of masculinity, where both male and female roles are warped by a cold, unforgiving authority. The film also centres on the relationship between two women, Dorothy (Jenn Murray) and her psychotherapist, Jane Van Dopp (Carice van Houten), with fine performances by both lead actresses. As Dorothy, Murray demonstrates an incredible range, portraying a multitude of personalities of different ages, genders and types. It’s a challenging role, and one which she acquits with considerable aplomb. 

The film is set on a small island off the Irish coast and the opening, with its views of bleak, windswept cliffs, creates a sense of loneliness. This cuts to a small community church, where the pastor is talking about God’s presence being everywhere on this earth and in the heavens. The dour faces of the congregation and relentlessness of the message give a sense of claustrophobia and threat, one that suggests the impossibility of escape rather than spiritual comfort: “Where can I flee from Your presence?” In a neat counterpoint we cut forward in time to see the psychiatrist, Jane, talking about her placement in Ireland. She talks of it as a need, somewhere she had to go “before the city smothered me,” and we have a sense of her seeking her own escape. The resulting sense of foreboding builds, as we see her clearly placed as an outsider even while still on the ferry to the small island community where the young Dorothy has recently attacked a baby in her care. The brutality in this act, of a child choking another innocent, is naturally shocking; it also raises, more explicitly, the concept of being smothered.

Jane herself is almost overwhelmed before she even reaches Dorothy. Upon arrival on the island, she is driven off the road and into a lake by a bunch of wild youths and a girl who are taking part in a reckless car chase. The islanders arrive at the scene of the crash and their response is cold and bloodless: “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away”. However, Jane manages to survive and is taken to the local inn.

When Jane meets Dorothy she finds her a withdrawn and unhappy child who doesn’t want to speak because “no one listens to me.” She has no memory of hurting the baby and denies even being there. Jane concludes that Dorothy is scared to death – she just isn’t sure what she’s afraid of, or even whether the child is only afraid of herself. At Dorothy’s next session she says she is now Mimi and that she is three years old. The way Dorothy then begins to switch between different personalities is disturbing to watch: one moment she is an infant, the next an older individual whose hostility and latent violence hover just beneath the surface. The sense of mystery at her core is unsettling, particularly as it seems there may be a supernatural cause. This is coupled with the way the islanders close in around the child: this is a community that takes care of its own. Dorothy lives with her aunt, who at one point tries to take the child away from Jane. Interference is not appreciated, no help required. At the same time we see the influence that Pastor Ross has over Dorothy: even as the Mimi personality, she looks to him rather than to her aunt for instruction.

The islander’s influence over Dorothy doesn’t stop there. Jane discovers that they believe the child to be special, one who has been granted access to the “realm of the dead”. Far from protecting her, it seems each person has their own reasons for wanting to exploit Dorothy. We see them gathered around her, calling down divine light onto the child so that she can be used to channel the dead back to the living. We see one mother using Dorothy to try and speak to her dead son. This raises parallels with Jane, since she is in the process of grieving her own son, David, who drowned before she came to the island.

Even while the sense of Dorothy’s strangeness grows, the viewer gains sympathy for her. At her ‘channelling’ sessions she is physically restrained, distressed and protesting. When her other personalities surface, one says that Dorothy is asleep inside her and “the others” don’t let her out because she only tries to kill herself. Even wild child personality, Mary, says that Dorothy is probably “moaning or praying or something in here”. Where Dorothy surfaces she expresses a longing to escape. In a rare moment of brightness we see her poised on a cliff edge, the camera panning around her to show a clear blue sky above, the sea crashing on the rocks below: there is a sense of freedom but also of being hemmed in, showing the impossibility of getting away other than through her own death.

Director Agnes Merlet sustains the uncertainty between natural and supernatural explanations for Dorothy’s condition until well into the film, with moments of revelation being undercut by countering viewpoints. Breakthroughs in Dorothy’s therapy sessions are undermined by increasingly mysterious events. Supernatural developments are given a scientific explanation, revolving around Dorothy’s ‘flighty’ mother and childhood trauma. Jane’s own desire to help and her belief in science is balanced by her grief and longing for her dead child, resulting in an internal conflict that intensifies as events unfold.

Above all, though, Jane is a seeker of truth, and it is this that brings her into more overt conflict, with the islanders. The pastor’s lesson to the local children is “curiosity – sin or flaw?” For him, there is no other possibility, nothing that would justify any risk to the community. Belief and obedience permeate society: even on the wall of the inn it is written, ‘God alone is lord of conscience’. As a setting, the island raises comparisons with Summerisle in The Wicker Man (1973), with its isolation and strange, insular ways. Everyone seems to know more than they are letting on, at least to an outsider like Jane, and the islander’s commitment to faith above anything else not only forms the bedrock on which their community is built but is the foundation of the pastor’s power and influence. There is a similar sense of being trapped, with Jane beholden to the irregular ferries and frustrated by her inability to contact the mainland.

As well as conflicting with the community norms in her role as a scientist, Jane becomes a counterpoint to its emotional sterility by becoming a friend to Dorothy. She is the one who wants to listen to and understand her, to give the child a voice. Both enter the situation with their own need, and ultimately, each finds a connection in the other. This female bond also contrasts with the pervading masculinity; on the island women hover about the edges and men hold all the power.

The threat of violence increases throughout the film, with warnings from the local garda (policeman) and indeed from several of Dorothy’s personalities that Jane’s actions are placing her in danger. As Jane finds out more about the child’s various personalities, events from the past are being uncovered and another story is being told, of secrets kept and the need for revenge and revelation; of more voices crying out to be heard. In the climactic scenes of the film, it becomes clear that there will be no escape until the past is faced and dealt with.

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Alison J. Littlewood is a writer of dark fantasy and horror fiction. Her short stories have appeared in issues 7 and 16 of Black Static and issue 11 of sister magazine Crimewave. She recently contributed to the charity anthology Never Again, edited by Allyson Bird and Joel Lane.

Other publication credits include the anthologies Read by Dawn Volume 3, Festive Fear II and Midnight Lullabies, as well as magazines Ballista, Murky Depths, Dark Horizons and Not One of Us. Her life writing has appeared in The Guardian. Alison is currently seeking a publisher for her first novel, A Cold Season. Her website is www.alisonlittlewood.co.uk.

Alison also gave a reading at Twisted Tales #3 in January 2011.

Monday 21 February 2011

[•Rec] reviewed by Laura Bettney

[Rec]
Directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza
Released in 2007
Certificate: 18

Zombies have enjoyed a resurgence in recent times, with a barrage of films and novels dedicated to returning the flesh-munching, walking dead to their rightful place as one of horror’s most beloved archetypal monsters.  However, whereas the comparable current fascination with all things vampiric has produced a bewildering array of different approaches to the children of the night, only a few new zombie texts have brought something fresh and exciting to this archetype, whilst the majority have opted to rehash the template created by George Romero in the 1960s and 70s. Two of the most innovative additions to the subgenre to emerge over the last few years are: John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Handling the Undead (2005, translated into English in 2009), in which the shambling revenants disturb through their mere presence, without any innate bloodlust; and Charlie Brooker’s gloriously bloody Dead Set (2008), a hilarious post-apocalypse story of a zombie plague that the inhabitants of the Big Brother house remain blissfully ignorant of until the danger reaches their enclosure. [•Rec] is another step forward in exploring the possibilities offered by the zombie. Tying into the reality TV theme [Rec] follows a presenter and her cameraman as they go about filming a show before facing a flesh eating horde. However, whereas Dead Set found humour in this scenario, the events that we witness in [Rec] make it one of the most fast-paced, terrifying horror films of the 21st century.

[Rec] begins with Àngela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) and camera operator, Pablo (Pablo Rosso), filming and interviewing a local team of firemen for their television show, ‘While You’re Asleep’.  She meets the two firemen who she will accompany if they get called to an incident, Alex (David Vert) and Manu (Ferran Terraza). The atmosphere in the station is jovial as we see Àngela eating and playing basketball with the men, waiting for something worthy of filming to happen. The events to come are deliciously foreshadowed as she talks to Alex about the possibility of them being called out. He says that most nights are “monotonous” and many calls are routine, often involving “burst water pipes” and “pet rescues”.  Àngela, obviously thinking about her viewing figures, says that she really hopes something exciting happens. Later that night they get a call: “Person trapped in apartment, in need of rescue”.

As soon as Àngela, Pablo and the firemen enter the building they have been called to, it is clear that the situation is more serious than they had been led to believe. The hallway is filled with panicked residents, all talking about the screams they have heard coming from one of the apartments. A sense of claustrophobia starts to build as the attendant policemen struggle to keep the residents confined to the small entrance hallway, insisting that they do not go back up to their homes. On investigating the apartment of Senora Izquierdo (Martha Carbonell), after grudgingly allowing the film crew to accompany them, the firemen find the old woman standing at the end of a corridor, silhouetted against the light coming through her window. She does not speak, and does not respond when they call out to her and begin to approach. The lighting here is repeated throughout the film to sustain its sinister atmosphere. Much of what we see occurs in semi-darkness, illuminated entirely by light from the streets provided by the windows and/or the spotlight on the hand-held camera.  Izquierdo remains obscured in darkness until the crew get closer, revealing her to be wearing a white dressing gown covered in blood. It is only when this becomes obvious that she strikes, with alarming speed, attacking one policeman and biting him, tearing huge chunks of flesh from his face.  Àngela’s priority is clearly still to provide exciting footage for her viewers, as she whispers, “Pablo, don’t miss a bloody thing.”

So far, so 28 Days Later (2002). However, from this point on Àngela, the firemen and the terrified residents of the building find themselves trapped with the monstrous threat within the building by the police and other authorities outside, who will not let them leave and refuse to give any coherent explanation for their behaviour. One of the announcements is particularly ominous: “Do not try to leave the building. All exits have been sealed. A BNC protocol situation has been declared. Shortly a health inspector will come to assess the situation.  Thank you for your cooperation.” Manu explains to them that a BNC is a protocol used in a biological, nuclear or chemical threat situation, suggesting to the savvy viewer that the zombies are some form of bio-weapon.

Interestingly, Àngela seems to understand the deadly implications of the situation before the others, and although her main priority is still to keep the camera rolling it is not for the sake of entertainment. She comments, “I don’t care what they say, we have to tape this. We have to show what’s happening.” When a younger police officer draws his gun and threatens to use violence unless the camera is turned off, César, an older resident of the apartment block, states: “It’s the only proof we have. You’re locked in here, just like us. They don’t care about you either.”

From here things spiral out of control rapidly. It is no great spoiler to say that the reason for the aggressive behaviour of Senora Izquierdo is revealed to be an infection, spread through saliva. Once bitten, people change (at different speeds seemingly) to become psychotically violent; the portrayal of this change lies somewhere between the infected in 28 Days Later and something much more bestial and primitive. The one aim of these creatures seems to be biting others to spread the disease and again the setting adds to the sense of claustrophobia as there is not far to run and very few places to hide in the small building. As such, by the time we get to the last half hour of the film the stairwells are slippery with blood and the distinction between those infected and those simply blinded by panic begins to blur. At one stage we see Àngela running around an apartment frantically searching for keys, the guttural sounds she is making as she throws objects out of her way in her single-minded quest to find some way of escaping are eerily reminiscent of the sounds of the infected as they move about the building searching for those who are left. Similarly, we see Manu become increasingly brutal in his attempts to dispatch the infected and protect those around him; at one stage he seems to garrotte one infected woman and he pulverises another’s head with a mallet.

It is not for nothing that this film is certified 18. The violence is frequent, brutal and very messy. However, although the attacks are violent they are also fast and often, due to the hand-held camera technique employed throughout, shakily shot (no doubt as Pablo’s main desire at these points is to drop the camera and run rather than stay and film). For me, it was not the visual impact of the attack scenes that was so affecting, but the sounds. Throughout, the viewer is beset by the screams and bestial noises the infected make as they go about their business, at once otherworldly but also horribly reminiscent of a human in agony, making them profoundly disturbing.

I must admit that I was almost dissuaded from seeing this film on its release by the importance placed on its hand-held camera cinematography. It felt to me that it was simply the ‘hippest’ thing to do at the moment, following the success of The Blair Witch Project (1999) and it’s infinitely superior but overlooked predecessor The Last Broadcast (1998). However, though it may be hip, it does not always make for a good film; as for example, in the disappointing Cloverfield (2008). To make this style work there must be a compelling reason for one of the characters to keep picking up the camera and shooting despite what is happening around them. In Cloverfield the reason just was not there, particularly so at the very end after the crash-landing of the rescue helicopter. However, [Rec] cleverly provides reasons for Àngela and Pablo to be invested in filming throughout; at first, of course, they are professionals working for a television company and their reason for shooting is to make money; then the reason becomes to document the behaviour of the authorities towards them should they not make it out alive. The endings of horror films are difficult to pull off using this style, as the action characters are embroiled in at this point is often so horrific that any sane person would ditch the camera at the first opportunity and make the speediest getaway possible. Again, [Rec] comes up with a plausible way to integrate the camera into the story, making a virtue of necessity.

In the final scenes, Àngela and Pablo find themselves in the penthouse of the apartment building. The electricity is suddenly turned off, leaving them in complete darkness; they must use the spotlight on the camera in order to see. When they manage to illuminate the room, they find a chaotic mess of what looks like scientific, experimental equipment. The walls are covered with Catholic symbolism and newspaper articles related to a Vatican-led investigation called the ‘Medeiros Case’.  This bizarre intrusion of religious imagery so late in the film is disturbing, making us wonder how what we are seeing fits with what has gone before (which is explained in the brilliant sequel). Our two main characters, thinking they had managed to find the one safe and uninhabited place in the building, are now trapped in a dark room surrounded by strange paraphernalia and quite understandably begin to panic, searching wildly for another way out. When a door to the attic space falls open without obvious cause Pablo decides to go up and look for a way out; it is this action, along with his fall from the attic space and the subsequent damage done to the camera spotlight that again sees the characters pitched into total darkness, but now with the distinct impression that something else is in the penthouse with them.

The very final sequence here is reminiscent of the famous ‘night vision’ scene in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), but is infinitely scarier. The two filmmakers must find a way out of the penthouse with no light, without disturbing the occupant, and thus have no option but to keep rolling the film with the night vision turned on; the camera at this point is acting as their eyes and their only possible chance of escape. To describe the thing that Àngela and Pablo find themselves sharing the small space with would do these scenes a massive disservice. However, I can tell you that, even after all the blood and gore earlier in the film, this scene significantly escalates the threat and is one of the most singularly horrifying in the history of the genre.

[Rec] is an excellent reinvigoration of the, now in danger of becoming over-exposed, zombie subgenre. It is fast-paced, tightly scripted, with great structure, and, once the action begins, relentlessly delivers shock after shock over its short run time. It is one of the greatest examples to date of how effective hand-held camera work can be when properly written into the story rather than used as a USP marketing gimmick. Most refreshing of all is that it clearly embeds the groundwork necessary for its strong and equally innovative sequel, which moves even further towards redefining the cinematic zombie and reclaiming its power to deeply disturb.

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Laura Bettney is an Assistant Psychologist with a degree in Psychology with Criminology. She is a lifelong fan of horror working on her first short story. Laura also reviews albums and gigs for the American Indie (in the original Pixies, My Bloody Valentine, and Dinosaur Jr sense) online magazine, Delusions of Adequacy. This is her second review for Twisted Tales.

Monday 14 February 2011

Women in Horror Recognition Month

We've put aside normal content this week to pay tribute to Women in Horror Recognition Month.

From Mary Shelley to the late Ingrid Pitt. Horror would be a pale imitation of what it is today without the work of fantastic women such as Allyson Bird, Poppy Z. Brite, Angela Carter, Mary Harron, Susan Hill, Shirley Jackson, Tabitha King, Sarah Langan, Tanith Lee, Sarah Pinborough, Cherie Priest, Ann Radcliffe, Anne Rice, Alexandra Sokoloff, Barbara Steele, Lisa Tuttle, and of course Twisted Tales friends and supporters Laura Bettney, Alison Littlewood, Amanda Norman and Sharon Ring. And those names merely skim the deep, dark lake of women in horror, to all the legions of other authors, artists, bloggers, reviewers, directors, actors, and fans - we salute you!
(From left to right) Mary Shelley, the Godmother of Gothic Horror; Ingrid Pitt, one of the great Hammer Horror actresses, who sadly passed away last year; Mary Harron, director of one of our favourite horror films of the 21st century: American Psycho; Sarah Pinborough, one of the most talented horror writers working in the UK at the moment - in any gender.
Alison J. Littlewood entertaining the masses at our most recent Twisted Tales event
Find out more about Women in Horror Recognition Month at the official website. Also, follow the cause on Twitter and Facebook

Monday 7 February 2011

Paul Finch interviewed by David McWilliam

Paul Finch is a former police officer and journalist, who has been working as a full-time author since 1998. He first cut his literary teeth during the 1980s and 1990s penning scripts for the ITV crime drama The Bill but he also wrote extensively in animation and for children’s television. However, it’s probably in the fields of horror, fantasy and sci-fi wherein he’s best known. To date, Paul has had over 300 short stories and novellas published on both sides of the Atlantic. He’s also had nine collections published, and two novels: Stronghold and Sparrowhawk. His third novel, Hunter’s Moon, is a Dr Who adventure, and will be published by BBC Books later this year. Paul’s other forays into Dr Who include three audio dramas for Big Finish. Again, two of these will be issued later this year. Paul’s horror movie work is also extensive. He co-wrote the cult horror film, Spirit Trap, which was released in 2005, while his most recent movie, The Devil’s Rock, is now in post-production and will be released in spring. In addition to these two, Paul has 11 other projects currently under movie option. Paul has won the British Fantasy Award twice – for his collection After Shocks in 2002, and his novella, Kid, in 2007, and won the International Horror Guild Award for his short story ‘The Old North Road’ in 2007. Paul lives in Wigan, Lancashire, with his wife, Cathy, and his two children, Eleanor and Harry. His regularly updated blog and webpage can be found at: http://paulfinch-writer.blogspot.com/


DM: What made you want to write horror fiction? What do you consider to be its attractions over other genres and mainstream fiction?
PF: It’s difficult to recollect a time when I didn’t like horror fiction, though my interests within horror range widely – from the Jamesian supernatural, to the cerebral nightmares of Robert Aickman, to the cosmic weirdness of Lovecraft, to the 60s and 70s slasher-pulp of the Pan horrors – and maybe that emphasises the ultimate strength of the genre. It’s a massive field. Truly massive. There’s almost no limit to what you can write about, and how you write about it, under the horror umbrella. Of course, darkness is endemic throughout horror, along with the fear factor. Without darkness and fear, it wouldn’t be horror. But I don’t see those as necessarily negative things. We all like the quick thrill of the Ghost Train ride or the Big Dipper. Fear has often been used as entertainment, so long as it’s in a controlled environment, and, at the end of the day, we read horror stories or watch horror movies to be entertained. As a writer, I definitely view it that way – I’m in the business of putting my readers through the emotional mill. The more frightening I can make it, the more satisfied I am with the job. Likewise, as a reader – who started at a relatively early age (at my dad’s suggestion, I began reading Lovecraft, and the violent fantasies of Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs when I was about seven or eight, and I was an avid Dr Who fan long before then) – I saw it in exactly the same way. For some reason, I needed that raw edge of fear, that heart of darkness. Nothing else seemed to give me the kick I desired.

That said, if, as a horror writer, you can edify as well as entertain, then all to the good – and horror most certainly can edify, because there are some excellent literary practitioners working within it. That’s one area where I get a little bit pugnacious. Even at small and medium publisher level, there is some staggeringly good writing in the horror field. Without thinking too hard, I can throw a handful of names at you right now, which the mainstream book buyer is unlikely to be familiar with – Reggie Oliver, Steve Duffy, Simon Bestwick, Gary McMahon, Mark Samuels – and, purely as authors, I reckon they’re the equal of almost anyone you’ll find on the ‘bestseller’ shelves in the average high street bookstore. I’m not whining about some kind of injustice here – that’s the way the cookie has crumbled, but the general public’s perception of horror as something dingy and designed to appeal to our basest instincts is hugely inaccurate.     

Of course, the worth of any field of creative endeavour is entirely subjective. So I don’t think you can sit there and say: “Horror deserves better.” In some ways, horror’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. It’s a very busy genre. You only need to look at how many horror movies are made each year – vastly more than in other fields. Likewise, the majority of the small presses tend to turn out horror and science-fiction first and foremost. But inevitably, when you get an awful lot of material, quite a bit of it is going to be poor quality. Even as a horror fan, there are times when I’m watching yet another bad movie or reading yet another disappointing story, and I wonder for how long I’m going to waste my time on this sort of thing. Something keeps drawing me back to it, though – something deep rooted, and that, I guess, is the rule right across the horror fan-base. So to answer your question somewhat less long-windedly, what are the attractions? … I honestly don’t know, but they’re there. Despite the genre’s problems, certain among us have an innate need to venture into that dark unknown, and not be fazed by what we discover there, no matter how horrible it is.

DM: Which writers influenced your early work and how, if at all, have your influences changed throughout your career?
PF: I think it’s more a case of which ones haven’t? Try as I may, there are certain authors in the genre who always leave me cold. Not because they’re bad writers, but because they just don’t deliver what I’m looking for. But those are an exception rather than a rule. The vast bulk of the field I find inspirational. I’ve always kept a detailed list of my favourite horror stories, adding to it on a regular basis – and it’s now 85 pages long! On my blog, I have a weekly feature called ‘The Power of Three’; each week, I focus on three particular stories that have affected me over the years. It’s no more than a thumbnail sketch in each case – a token gesture really to try and draw people’s attention to these tales. But the names of horror authors who’ve impressed me are so many and varied, that I wouldn’t know where to start if it came down to lining them up in order of preference. I think the two authors most responsible for ‘bringing me back to horror ‘– after my years in the police service, when there were far too many distractions for me to sit down and enjoy any kind of reading – were Clive Barker and Ramsey Campbell.

The short horror stories I’d read before then, when I was college age, were mainly in the Pan and Fontana series. Though there was much more literary merit in those books than many give them credit for, folk will remember that later volumes increasingly comprised lots of short, nasty vignettes, which didn’t leave a lasting impression. When I finally returned to horror after such a long break, things had moved on significantly from that. The Books of Blood had been published, which I found startlingly visceral. They were far more violent and sexually explicit than the Pan stories had ever been, and yet the pace of the narrative and the quality of the writing were outstanding. Likewise with Ramsey – I’d never read anything quite like it before. The unreal nature of his settings, the isolation of his heroes, the eeriness of their predicaments – they made for compulsive reading. The other thing about Ramsey was his ‘kitchen sink’ quality. Nearly all his stories were set in his native Merseyside, and took place in recognisable inner city areas and on drear housing estates. There was nothing exotic about them, and yet their depth of weirdness and their sense of a world off-kilter was amazing. It genuinely made you believe that strange and ghastly things could be going on in the house next door, and you would never know.

Campbell and Barker were certainly a driving force behind my shift towards horror, but it was a neat switch-over. After I left the police, initially I wrote solely about crime and ‘broken Britain’, which wasn’t far removed from what writers like Campbell and Barker – and other writers who were really up-and-coming around then, like Joel Lane, Chris Fowler, Nick Royle, Simon Clark and Mark Morris – were also doing. That was in my early days. My first horror stories tended to be urban nightmares, often with grotesque psychological undertones. Later on – now, I suppose – though I often still use police officers and journalists as key characters (go for what you know, as they say), I’ve developed wider but not unrelated interests – such as folklore and mythology, particularly with regard to the UK. My 2008 collection, Ghost Realm, consisted entirely of new horror stories set in specific UK locations and drawing on their history and legends. My 2010 collection, Walkers in Dark, followed a similar path. I’m not sure what the inspiration behind this is, except that I’m fascinated by the history and geography of Britain. There’s probably a Jamesian element in there too – many of my settings, these days, are rural, and many of my evil forces are now drawn from the supernatural rather than the damaged psyche of my characters.

DM: In consideration of your increasing involvement in the horror film industry, which writers and directors currently working today provide you with inspiration and open up new ways of exploring the genre?
PF: Sad to say, I’m not blown away by the general standards I’m currently seeing in English language horror movies. This is not because there’s a lack of talent here and in the States. But as I touched on in another answer, it’s because we – and I mean US film companies primarily – really churn them out. There are so many horror movies made each year that a huge percentage of those will inevitably be trash. That’s the risk you always run with indie, ultra low-budget, sometimes even guerrilla film-makers. Some of them have got enthusiasm but very little else. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some gems produced, but outside the major Hollywood studios I’d be surprised if anyone – no matter how talented and well meaning – would be able to raise more than three million dollars for a horror movie project. That may seem like a lot to us, but it’s startling how little it buys you in film terms. But enough of that. Let’s concentrate on the positives.

At the big budget end of the spectrum, I still regard Guillermo del Toro as the great hope for horror and fantasy. I thought Pan’s Labyrinth was pure artistry on celluloid, and not only that, it made for cracking scare-fare as well, incorporating all kinds of elements from the genre. Further back, I enjoyed his Mimic, though it gained minimal response from the general public. I hear he’s now working on Frankenstein and At the Mountains of Madness. I’m looking forward to the second one more of the two, though that’s only because the former has been made and re-made so many times, but if del Toro can’t put the flat-headed fiend back into the public’s imagination then no-one can. I should also mention James Wan, who I suspect has now moved into this higher price bracket. I haven’t a great deal of time for the Saw franchise – I think it’s quickly become very samey, but there was no doubting the quality of the original, and I thoroughly enjoyed Dead Silence – pretty much a straightforward ghost story, which passed under many people’s notice, but very stylishly made. I look forward eagerly to seeing what his vampire opus, Nightfall, will be like.

At the lower budget end, it’s not all bad news. Plenty of indie films have caught my attention. I loved Greg Mclean’s Wolf Creek, though it pushed the slasher envelope about as far as I, personally, like to go. I was impressed by Gareth Edwards’s Monsters – how could you not be given what he had to spend and the product he eventually conjured from it? Other relatively low budget movies that hit me hard in recent times were Jaume Balaguaro and Paco Plaza’s [Rec] (without doubt, one of the best horror films I’ve seen in ages), Brad Anderson’s Session 9 (bone-numbing chills in broad daylight), Juan Bayona’s The Orphanage (another very classy ghost story, beautifully written by Sergio Sanchez) and the tautly scripted Them (or Ils, as it is in French), which I’ll be reviewing soon for Twisted Tales. It’s no surprise, but it’s a comment on our industry that three of those last four were European productions. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: we don’t lack the talent over here in the UK, but we do seem to lack the finance. As such, my most recent script, The Devil’s Rock, has been put on film with New Zealand money. The director of this one, by the way, is an English guy, Paul Campion. He learned his trade at the knee of Peter Jackson, working on The Lord of the Rings. He has great artistic flare, and is another one to look out for in the near future. He’ll definitely be going places.

DM: You have an incredible range of experience as a writer: short stories, novellas, novels, scriptwriting for television and film, tie-in fiction, etc. How do you think that this has helped you develop as a writer and do you consciously draw techniques from one form to use in another?
PF: The answer to the second part of that question is a definite yes. I first started writing for The Bill in the 1990s, a period during which I learned an awful lot about the disciplines of television. Film, of course, is very different – it’s far leaner in terms of dialogue and much more concerned with visual elements. I’ve now been writing movie scripts at what I hope is a professional level since about 2000. Only two of these movies have thus far progressed into actual production, but half a dozen others have been in full development for several years, which means they’ve gone through numerous drafts and have been work-shopped with script editors, producers, directors, etc. Film writing has become a style I’m very comfortable with, and it’s definitely had a positive effect on my prose. I’ve been told several times that my stories, novellas and novels have a ‘filmic’ quality, in that they’re delivered to the reader on what’s almost a scene-by-scene basis, and that much of the exposition – thought processes, and what-not – which sometimes can drain the energy from a story, are dealt with through snappy dialogue. Not every reader prefers this, of course, but it’s served me well generally. Likewise, having a background in prose can prepare you to write film. The director is the creative genius who will eventually make your ideas real, but if you can do half the job for him, by scripting quick, concise scenes with regard to atmosphere, visuals and so forth, and not overload it with extraneous chat, then he’s going to want to work with you again. A solid schooling in short-form prose gives you an excellent grounding for writing film.

Yes, the most important lesson I’ve taken from my script work is to say as much as possible with far fewer words. Okay, we all overwrite now and then – we’re often the worst judges of our own work, and we can’t be sure if we’ve got the message home – but there’s no more instructive an exercise for an aspiring writer than to find that he or she has to tell an intelligent and entertaining story, with a beginning, a middle and an end, at the same time introduce and maybe dispose of a dozen fully-fleshed characters, and also wow the audience with the sort of meaning and subtext you’d normally find in a full-length novel, in a script no longer than 100 pages (which is usually about 20,000 words). If you can even half-master the level of imaginative discipline that requires, then you will definitely come out of it a better writer. Whether I have or not is another question, but at a personal level I feel I’m writing better now than I ever have, and one of the tricks I use is to mentally approach each project – short story, novella, whatever – as if I’m writing a script.

DM: I’d like to discuss your forthcoming movie, The Devil’s Rock. What is it about, how have you found the development process and, if you have seen a near-finished cut, are you happy with the results?
PF: The Devil’s Rock sprang from lengthy conversations I had with the film director, Paul Campion, while we were working on two other projects of mine – Voodoo Dawn and Dark Hollow – both of which are still in development, though hopefully they’ll soon be in pre-production. For various reasons, Paul was looking for a period horror movie, which we could make at a relatively low budget. Initially we discussed several Roman and medieval projects, and though we advanced one of these to treatment stage, it soon became apparent that, no matter how clever we tried to be, it was still going to cost an arm and a leg. We finally knocked the idea on the head, but then – in the same conversation (over bangers and mash in my local) – Paul wondered about the possibility of developing a World War Two story. I was up for it, and at first we discussed the potential of a novella I’d recently had published called The Retreat, which concerns a German unit falling back from Stalingrad and blundering into a supernatural trap. It seemed like a goer to me, and Paul was quite keen, but a few days later he came back with this idea set in the Channel Islands on the eve of D-Day. Apparently, he’d uncovered some information related to witchcraft and black magic on Guernsey in the seventeenth century, and had even flown down there to research it. We got our heads together, and quickly thrashed out a storyline concerning an Allied commando raid which uncovers a Nazi plot to unleash dark forces.

That’s about as much as I’m allowed to tell you at present, but I wrote a detailed synopsis, and Paul put feelers out to see what kind of financial interest we could kindle. There wasn’t much in the UK, but he has good contacts in New Zealand, where he worked on Lord of the Rings and King Kong, among other blockbusters, and it was a different story down there. I was finally commissioned to write the script shortly before Christmas 2009. If you remember, we had hellish weather – heavy, prolonged snow and bitter temperatures. This curtailed my normal method, which is to take long walks and dictate copious notes. Instead, I was stuck in my office most of the time, but by the end of January we had a first draft. We workshopped it a bit – occasionally meeting up at neutral venues, occasionally emailing it back and forth between the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere – probably producing another three drafts before we were happy enough to send it to our potential financiers. That’s always a nerve-wracking moment, of course, though to sweeten the pill Paul had done something he’s very, very good at, which was produce a detailed selling document, full colour, laminated and packed with pre-production artwork, sketches, mood photos, letters of intent from actors, plans for locations he’d scouted, and so on. Even so, after making the approach around April, we only got the green light in July. My job normally ends at that stage. All I usually do from them on is sit at home and watch my computer screen jealously as I’m copied in on all the on-set gossip, but this time there were still some last minute rewrites to do – often a necessity when the financial reality of actually putting your ambitious dreams onto celluloid kicks in. But, despite the odd moment or two of panic, we still brought it home on time. Principle photography commenced in early August, and had wrapped by September.

Post-production has been underway ever since, though it’s now nearing completion. I’ve been in more or less constant touch with Paul (we have plans to work together again, hopefully this year), and in late November I got to see some of the early rushes. These were lacking special effects, music etc, but I got a positive vibe from what I saw. Paul is a terrific visual director. He comes at film from an artistic perspective, so it looked absolutely great. The acting also was exceptional, though it’s not very easy to appreciate how your dialogue is being handled when you have to listen to it via computer in a noisy London pub. But hey, that’s the movie business.

DM: What are your writing plans for 2011 and beyond?
PF: That’s a more difficult question than it may sound. Given the financial climate, my programme this year will be similar to my programme of last year, in that I’ll be concentrating on higher-paying projects, even if some of them are purely speculative. Unfortunately, this means that, yet again, I won’t be submitting short stories to anthologies or magazines with anything like the regularity I used to. Someone queried this at the end of 2010, saying that they hadn’t seen as much from me as usual. All I can say about that is that it’s nice when your absence is noticed. But alas, though I love writing shorts – they’re the horror form I cut my teeth on – it’s just not cost-effective to write them all the time. That said, I am actually putting together a new collection of stories, which will be published by Gray Friar Press at the end of the year. Some will be reprints, but most will be originals. I’ve no title for this yet, but it would be pretty neat if it was all done and dusted in time for Fantasycon in September. So I won’t be completely absent from the short story scene.
Now that Hunter’s Moon, my new Dr Who novel, is finished, my next major gig will be The Upper Tier. That’s my ghost story presentation at Haigh Hall (Wigan’s own version of Borley Rectory), in Easter. That’s now been fully green-lit and must be considered a live operation, so I’m working full-tilt on that. In addition, I have a book-signing at Wigan’s branch of Waterstone’s in late February – mainly I’ll be inscribing copies of my novel Stronghold and my novella Sparrowhawk, which both came out late last year – and I have several Dr Who-related events a little later: two conventions, where I’m a guest, and the recording of my next Big Finish audio. I’m hoping to pick up another Big Finish in 2011, but that hasn’t been confirmed yet. I also have several pitches with publishers, for novels both inside and outside the genre. As I mentioned previously, the movie front is ever active. I have several scripts at various stages of development, all of which are under option. Two are likely candidates for pre-production in 2011, but you can never say for sure until it actually happens.

You’ll notice that I’m a bit hesitant to put names to these projects. You’ll have to forgive me, but I’m only usually forthcoming on this sort of thing if I think it’s a real goer. That way, my blushes are spared if it doesn’t happen, and it’s so often the case that it doesn’t. It’s a stressful way to run your personal business, I suppose – when you’re never sure what your next earner is going to be until the day it suddenly arrives. But the upside is that good things can happen at any moment, and usually you never see them coming. Sew enough seeds, and sooner or later the flowers bloom.