Conrad Williams's Blog, page 17
August 24, 2013
My top-ten horror films #6
6 – THE OMEN (1976)
There’s plenty to like in this film. The performances, by some real heavyweights, are excellent (David Warner as the doomed photographer Jennings is a standout). It’s played straight and seriously despite some dialogue that would sound terrible coming from lesser mouths (Troughton: His mother was a jackal!). Jerry Goldsmith’s score alone supplied goosebumps. And Damien, played by Harvey Spencer Stephens is seriously creepy, making Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick in the pallid 2006 remake seem like Basil Fotherington-Thomas…
Billie Whitelaw as the nanny Mrs Baylock is utterly terrifying. She carries something malevolent in those big eyes of hers (whoever cast this film deserves some serious plaudits) and seeing her partially obscured by fabric in Katherine Thorn’s hospital room, as if viewed through Thorn’s eyes, is, for me, one of the greatest moments in horror film history.
I was deeply troubled by the way Lee Remick’s character dies plunging out of a hospital window, having already watched her seriously injured in a fall (I felt the same kind of discomfort watching Bo Derek’s demise in Orca when the killer whale crunches off at the thigh her broken, plastered leg). The final image of Damien turning to smirk at the camera is perfect. A throwaway line near the start of this film – ‘He has his father’s eyes’ – comes back to give your heart a jolt when you watch it again.


August 22, 2013
Head Injuries
For a limited time only my first novel, Head Injuries, is available for the Kindle at a reduced price of 77p (99c for my American friends). You’ll also find two short stories bundled with the novel: The Return and MacCreadle’s Bike. Grab a bargain!
“I loved it. His portraits of everyday loneliness are brilliant. Altogether I thought it one of the finest and most haunting modern spectral novels I’ve read.” – Ramsey Campbell
“Incendiary stuff… marks Williams out as a writer of rare if warped imagination.” – Time Out
“Lean, compelling prose marks this out as a thriller of real distinction.” – Crime Time


August 20, 2013
My top-ten horror films #7
7 – THE THING (1982)
Along with Eraserhead, this film elicited the most WTFs from me when I first watched it. It retains its power 30 years on. Few films can be set in wide open spaces and produce an unbearably claustrophobic atmosphere. A huge influence on my novel The Unblemished – I was deeply scared by the idea of the monster that looks like us in order to get close to us – The Thing is a story drenched in paranoia and tension that builds and builds. You find yourself swearing at the cast when they lose track of the alien again. Back to square one and another agonising wait to discover who’s it. Solid performances all round, including the dogs… And what was Rob Bottin on? The incredible effects he created for the film (he was what… 21… 22 at the time?) were ahead of their time and one of the main reasons the film merits revisiting. For me, John Carpenter’s finest moment.


August 18, 2013
My top-ten horror films #8
8 – JACOB’S LADDER (1990)
Absolutely terrifying. Tim Robbins plays Jacob Singer, a Vietnam vet with a filthy chuckle who is suffering from hallucinations. It becomes likely these are post-traumatic flashbacks, incited by his experiences during the war, a suspicion enforced when ex-Army colleagues begin to show up, convinced they are at the heart of a grim conspiracy. The truth behind the mystery is shocking, but by the time you find out, you’re almost grateful for it, so intense and claustrophobic and downright horrifying are the assaults on Jacob’s psyche.


The Best Horror of the Year
July 23, 2013
My top-ten horror films #9
9 – THE GHOUL (1975)
God knows how I got away with it, but I remember very clearly staying up to watch the horror double bills that played on BBC 2 on Saturday nights. Maybe my parents were unusually liberal; maybe I watched from the stairs… but anyway, I was just eleven years old in 1980 when I first watched The Ghoul. The BBC would show a black-and-white film before a more lurid, colour broadcast. This particular week, unless I’m mistaken, included the magnificent Night of the Demon before this Peter Cushing feature. I went to bed as scared as I’ve ever been. The Ghoul is definitely my favourite of all the movies of its ilk that appeared from Hammer and Amicus, though this was created by Tyburn Film Productions, and was one of only three horror films made during its lifespan. Cushing is excellent as the tortured father to the thing in the attic. John Hurt plays a wonderfully creepy gardener. Very violent. Very red. Those sandals… that dog bowl… A film that really got under my skin.


July 20, 2013
The Best Horror of the Year
Volume 5 of The Best Horror of the Year, edited by Ellen Datlow and published by Skyhorse, will contain my short story The Pike. The book will be available from the beginning of September. You can pre-order it here in the UK or here for US customers.


July 19, 2013
Obligatory cat post
I’d always wanted a cat and when I bought a flat in Stamford Hill in 1997 it felt as though the time was right. It was a Maine Coon or nothing for me. I have always admired them, and was enchanted by their inquisitive nature, the odd sounds they produce and the sheer size of them. That and the tendency they have to follow you around. So I did some research and found a breeder in West Croydon who had a bunch of kittens for sale. I took a trip out there and was greeted by four little Maine Coons from the same litter, six weeks old. Two immediately caught my attention. The first one was a ginger tom, and it was flying around, a wild look in its eyes, as if it had a propeller in its backside. The other was a smoky grey female, calmly observing this lesser mortal with an almost amused air. I plumped for the grey, and took her home in a box.
I called her Redknapp, after my favourite footballer at the time, but since his retirement (and realising anyway that it was a pretty dumb thing to do) we now call her Reddie. When she was a kitten she developed a number of lifelong habits which include licking the edges of glossy magazines or paperback books and chewing plastic bags.
I feed her dry food, mainly Science Plan (she has always turned her nose up at human food but loves tuna and chopped-up tiger prawns). She’s a bit timid with strangers, and it’s taken her years to get used to our boys (when our first son was born she hid under the bed and did not emerge for two entire days) but when everyone’s out at school or in bed at night, she will come and find me and curl up next to me while I write, or while I unwind in front of the box.
She’s getting on a bit now (13 is pretty old for Maine Coons) and last year she was very ill for a spell. The vet discovered that her kidneys were failing so now she takes a tablet every day. She’s been fine since, but despite retaining a healthy appetite she’s getting a little boney and ragged around the edges (but that didn’t stop her from escaping yesterday and spending the whole night outdoors). She sleeps a lot, but when she wakes up we have a little chat (Maine Coons love to chat) and part of me suspects she’s asking me how the writing’s going and why the hell are you talking to a cat when you should be getting back to it, numb-nuts?
So excuse the writer-has-cat cliché, but I just wanted to show her off. And why not? She’s prettier than all of you…


July 18, 2013
My top-ten horror films #10
So having polished off the ‘mainstream’ movies, I might as well share with you my go-to films when I want to get my creep on…
10 – THE PEARL OF DEATH (1944)
Is this a horror film? Probably not in the conventional sense. But it was for me when I first watched it, aged around seven or eight. It was part of a series of fourteen films made for both Fox and Universal, starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes. They were very short, sometimes hovering around the hour mark (as does this one), anachronistic (but for the first two Fox-made films, set in Victorian era, the later films were invariably set during the wartime years and some contain associated plots) but they were gripping and atmospheric.
The Pearl of Death is an adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s story The Six Napoleons. At its heart is the ‘evil’ pearl of the Borgias, a “miracle of horror” as Holmes describes it. The pearl is stolen by Giles Conover (Miles Mander) who manages to hide it before he is apprehended. The rest of the film deals with Holmes and his companion Dr Watson (Nigel Bruce) as they attempt to track down the pearl. But someone else is on the trail too: Giles Conover’s henchman, The Hoxton Creeper (“the chest of a buffalo… the arms of a gorilla”), played by Rondo Hatton. The Creeper is a monster who kills his victims by breaking their backs. You only see him in silhouette, or glimpse his shadow, or see his too-tight gloves on too-large hands, but in the final frames he is revealed. And it was sleepless nights for me for quite some time after that.
The ‘Queen of the Screamers’, Evelyn Ankers, appears in this film, having already appeared in 1942′s The Voice of Terror. Perhaps most memorably, she starred alongside Lon Chaney Jnr in The Wolf Man.


July 15, 2013
Non-horror films… bubbling under
Ten films that might once have been on my list, and are still important to me (in no particular order):
There Will Be Blood
Blue Velvet
Barton Fink
2001: A Space Odyssey
North by Northwest
The Deer Hunter
Into the Wild
Glengarry Glen Ross
The King of Comedy
Spartacus

