HAMMER HORROR WEEKEND/SUMMER OF SATAN: The Devil Rides Out

A quick search on the Waterstones website before I sat down to write this article showed very few of Dennis Wheatley’s books still available. Two or three out of the 70 odd titles he published during a five-decade literary career. As such, it’s easy to forget just how popular Dennis Wheatley was; how prolific; and how varied an output.As well as the occult novels for which he is chiefly remembered, he wrote historical fiction, espionage dramas and...

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HAMMER HORROR WEEKEND: Quatermass and the Pit

In his own quiet way, Professor Bernard Quatermass has proved as durable and reliable a British hero as Sherlock Holmes or James Bond. Created by Nigel Kneale for the BBC drama series ‘The Quatermass Experiment’ in 1953 and played by Reginald Tate, the show was a precursor of ‘Dr Who’ and proved so popular (‘Quatermass’ was to audiences in the ’50s what ‘The X Files’ was in the ’90s) that ‘Quatermass II’ made debuted on television in 1955, the same...

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HAMMER HORROR WEEKEND: Frankenstein Created Woman

The fourth of Hammer’s seven Frankstein films, ‘Frankenstein Created Woman’ follows on from ‘The Evil of Frankstein’ (the odd-film-out in the series, with its awkward flashbacks which contradict the continuity of the earlier movies) and gets the franchise back on track.As with the final entry, ‘Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell’, a lurid title gives the lie to a script that engages with metaphysical considerations. Perhaps the film’s greatest...

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Cars 2

When ‘Cars’ opened in 2006, the critics were lukewarm. The main bone of contention seemed to be that it wasn’t as good as ‘The Incredibles’. Which it wasn’t. That said, I preferred it to ‘A Bug’s Life’ and ‘Finding Nemo’, the brilliance of which is punctured, in scene after scene, by the irritant that is Dory (the second most annoying character in the Pixar canon; we’ll come to the first in a minute).‘Cars’, ultimately, is a decent film with a terrific...

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SUMMER OF SATAN: Hard Ride to Hell

In what is basically ‘Ride with the Devil’ for the torture porn generation, a group of twenty-somethings are heading through Texas in an RV and make an ill-advised overnight stop in a remote location. After an evening of drinking, one of their number heads into the woods to take a leak. He stumbles upon a group of Satanists engaged in a ritual that involves naked women and flesh-eating. Next thing he’s running pell-mell back to the RV shouting at...

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Silent Movie

If it was a medical condition, you’d call it John Carpenter Syndrome. A run of great movies – fucking great movies – almost back-to-back within a very specific timeframe. Then an incremental quality department decrease from the merely decent to the average to the mediocre culminating in the type of product we’d rather not talk about (in medical terms ‘Ghosts of Mars’ by proxy).Let us consider Mel Brooks. 1968 – 1974, the classics: ‘The Producers’,...

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Confession is good for the soul

“Forgive me, blog, for I have sinned.”“When was your last confession?” “Er, dunno. I only confess when I think I’m not going to get away with it.” “Fair enough. What is your confession?” “Well, I coveted my wife.” “That’s allowed. It’s your neighbour’s wife you can’t covet.” “Oh, got you. What about the guy three doors down; can I covet his wife?” “No. Just your own. Now what’s your confession?” “I kind of haven’t watched any movies for a couple of days.” “Get the fuck out of my confessional!” “But, blog, I was reading. And … and … I was working...

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SUMMER OF SATAN: Asylum of Satan

There’s a scene about half an hour into ‘Asylum of Satan’ that’s been done a million times before – a big fat movie cliché, but something that’s generally effective if staged by a filmmaker with even the vaguest sliver of talent. This is the set-up: the heroine, Lucina (Carla Borelli) wakes up after being hospitalized and finds herself in an asylum. The doctor is not her usual practitioner. The nurses and orderlies are vaguely threatening. She’s...

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Elizabeth McGovern

The very lovely and always excellent Elizabeth McGovern - pictured in the TV drama series 'Downtown Abbey' - celebrates her 50th birthday tod...

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Irene Jacob

A glass is being raised at chez Agitation to the very lovely Irene Jacob - pictured in her most famous (dual) role in Kieslowski's hauntingly beautiful 'The Double Life of Veronique' - who is 45 tod...

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SUMMER OF SATAN: Race with the Devil

Rounding out an unofficial “six Satanic degrees of Sam Peckinpah” trilogy, ‘Race with the Devil’ – starring Peckinpah alumni Warren Oates and R.G. Armstrong – is pretty much the ne plus ultra of backwoods 70s devil-worship movies … even if the devil-worship itself is restricted to one scene and what follows is more in the nature of a chase movie informed by a city-types/rednecks mutual antipathy dynamic.In other words, it’s more like ‘Vanishing Point’...

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THE SILLITOE PROJECT: Key to the Door

Sillitoe’s first novel of real length (its word count arguably exceeds that of his first three books put together), ‘Key to the Door’ is an epic and assiduously observed family saga. And if the expression “family saga” makes you want to run screaming from the room, stick with me for a few paragraphs. This novel is the family saga as it should be written.The protagonist is Brian Seaton, elder brother of the hell-raising Arthur from ‘Saturday Night...

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SUMMER OF SATAN: The Devil’s Rain

Following on from ‘The Brotherhood of Satan’, here’s another slice of low-budget 70s small town gothic starring a couple of Peckinpah alumni, this time Ernest Borgnine and Ida Lupino. I’m thinking I might make ‘Race with the Devil’ – featuring Peckinpah alumnus Warren Oates – my next Summer of Satan pick and consider it a trilogy of sorts. The “What I Did in Backwoods America with a Bunch of Satanists When I Wasn’t Making Movies with Sam” Trilogy....

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Warren Oates

It would have been Warren Oates's 83rd birthday today. If there is an afterlife, I'd like to think he's doing tequila shots with the ghost of Sam Peckinpah at the Alfredo Garcia Bar & Grill right now.There's sure as hell a few glasses being raised at chez Agitation tonig...

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Frenzy

Reposted from 8 February 2008 as a tribute to Anna Massey, who died yesterday.'Frenzy', Hitchcock's penultimate film, is often dismissed as one of his lesser works, a violent and misanthropic little number, a disappointment that was mercifully superceded by the playful plotting and 'Trouble With Harry'-style humour of his swansong,'Family Plot'.It's also cited for its controversial aspects. 'Frenzy' contains what no Hitchcock film that came before...

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THE SILLITOE PROJECT: website news

The Alan Sillitoe website has undergone a major overhaul today: plenty of new content, including the winning stories from the recent short fiction competition.There's now also a PayPal "donate" button for anyone who would like to make a contribution to the statue fund.Stealing an idea from Tim at Antagony and Ecstasy, who raised over $1,100 towards cancer research by taking requests for reviews in return for a minimum $15 donation, I'm throwing it...

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Lindsay Lohan

Celebrating The Agitation of the Mind's banner girl du jour's 25th birthday with some top notch cheesecake shots. A glass is being raised here at chez Agitation, but I'm throwing in the towel if it comes down to a drinking contest...

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SUMMER OF SATAN: The Brotherhood of Satan

Until I settled down to watch it last night, I didn’t know much about ‘The Brotherhood of Satan’ other than it was co-written and produced by Peckinpah alumnus L.Q. Jones, co-starred fellow Peckinpah alumnus Strother Martin, and had what a friend of mine described as “a bit of a crazy ending”. Turns out my friend is a master of understatement.The film opens with a toy tank clacking away on a hillside while the real thing crushes a station wagon....

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Coming attractions / devilish delights

Last year, in a moment of midsummer madness, I threw open a poll on the sidebar and asked the good and great (ie. my readers) what they’d like to see in terms of a big 2011 retrospective on The Agitation of the Mind. There were five alliterative options:Summer of Song: anything with a musical connotation, from classic Hollywood musicals to biopics of composers or musicians and documentaries about same.Summer of Sin: anything seedy, sexy, sultry or...

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