The Animals Praise the Antichrist

Alex Older
Crashed Moon Press

It's time to write it all down. I don't know how much longer I'm going to stay. I'm writing it for me and I'm writing it for you, even though you'll probably never see it. I'm talking to you, Christa, and to no one else.
Filled with yearning for lost love, writing against the backdrop of a world in chaos, Alex records an intimate account of his time with Christa, his half-Swedish girlfriend, who disappeared seven years earlier in opaque circumstances.

I was first alerted to this book via David Tibet (of Current 93) enthusing about it on his Instagram page after which Alex very kindly sent me a copy for review and I'm so very glad he did.

With it's roots in the stories of the likes of, in particular, Alan Garner and also in the work of folks such as M. John Harrison and Joel Lane and in the post punk politics of the late 1980s Older has constructed a poignant, supernatural love story of the doomed (not a spoiler) romance between two outsider teens both from neglectful homes who find common ground in their shared love of music and their animosity towards the casual cruelties of the world around them.

As the two - Alex and Christa - meet and develop their relationship and as their mutual alienation from their peers and their families deepen other forces are gathering in their town, grey clad figures with a seemingly intense interest in the two, and in Christa especially, move into the area en masse and the inevitable crossed path becomes a revelatory experience for the couple.

Older takes a refreshingly sedate approach allowing the pair's romance time to establish and develop before its eventual severing (still not a spoiler) and the cataclysmic events that surround it.  The peripheral characters are lightly sketched with just enough detail to intrigue and their motivations, actions and the events they instigate remain as enigmatic as they are catastrophic.

It's a remarkably mature first novel that wears it's influences, or perhaps I should say heritage, on it's sleeve and incorporates it's more unusual elements into the mundane with very satisfying subtlety in what is a spellbinding read.

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The Trials of Koli: Rampart Trilogy 2

M.R. Carey
Orbit

The Trials of Koli is the second novel in M R. Carey’s breathtakingly original Rampart trilogy, set in a strange and deadly world of our own making.
Beyond the walls of Koli’s small village lies a fearsome landscape filled with choker trees, vicious beasts and shunned men. As an exile, Koli’s been forced to journey out into this mysterious, hostile world. But he heard a story, once. A story about lost London, and the mysterious tech of the Old Times that may still be there. If Koli can find it, there may still be a way for him to redeem himself – by saving what’s left of humankind.

I loved the first book of this new trilogy from Mike Carey and had high hopes for this second one that were well met.

Set in a post-apocalyptic 'Ingland' where the population is greatly reduced following 'The Unfinished War' and live in increasingly isolated villages in a country covered in genetically modified plants and animals all of which have a hankering for fleshy, tasty humans.

Thrown out of his village in the first book for purloining some very rare tech - a (subsequently sentient) music player - from the vaults of the controlling family, Koli falls in with a travelling medic and a young girl who'd previously been part of an apocalyptic death cult.

Book 2 continues their travels towards London and we get to meet more of the denizens of the world in the form of the army of the powerful village of Half-Ax and the gentle fisher folk of the lagoon.  We also get to see what was happening back in Koli's former home as Carey flips the narrative over to tell Spinner's story as Koli's childhood friend also finds herself at odds with that self same controlling family and the soldiers of Half-Ax.

What we have is verty much the middle book in a trilogy that tells a solid and enjoyable road story in the same warm, affectionate and engaging style of the first that drops in just enough hints of what's to come to whet the appetite for the series finale.

Buy it here - UK / US.

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City Under the Sea

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave, there is a movement there!
As if their tops given death
His undivided time.

Known in the US as 'War-Gods of the Deep', 'City Under the Sea' is a Vincent Price helmed movie from American International Pictures home of Price's Phibes movies as well as Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe movies to which this owes much of it's genesis, parts of it's title and flashes of it's script including that opening quote above which paraphrases Poe's poem, 'The City in the Sea' and was one of a number of movies produced by the studio that was lumbered with a Poe related title - see also 'The Conqueror Worm' the entirely irrelevant US title of 'The Witchfinder General'.

Tab Hunter plays mining engineer Ben Harris who along with (Mary Poppins' David Tomlinson) Harold Tufnell-Jones FRA (Fellow of the Rooster Association) is plunged into the submerged city of Lyonesse in pursuit of landlord's daughter Jill Tregillis (Susan Hart).  There they meet Sir Hugh (Vincent Price) and his band of  smugglers who along with their subservient 'gill men'  have been hiding in the sunken city kept alive by the rejuvenating gases of the increasingly active volcano upon which the city is built.

It's an engaging enough romp and there's a decidedly low budget feel to the movie that rarely ventures beyond the confines of the studio. Price is uncharacteristically subdued here leaving much of the scenery unchewed whilst John Le Mesurier cuts a delicately sympathetic figure as the Rev Jonathan Ives. Hunter in his first starring role makes for a clumsy lead as does Hart but Tomlinson is well within his comfort zone as the buffoonish Tufnell-Jones.  The movie makes a valiant attempt at replicating the appeal of Jules Verne stories such as '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea' but ultimately falls far short thanks to a lacklustre script and some uninspired direction from Jacques Tournier, here making his last film after a career that included such highlights as 'Cat People' and 'Night of the Demon'.

 

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Queens of the Abyss: Lost Stories from the Women of the Weird

Mike Ashley (ed)
British Library

It is too often accepted that during the 19th and early 20th centuries it was the male writers who developed and pushed the boundaries of the weird tale, with women writers following in their wake—but this is far from the truth. This new anthology follows the instrumental contributions made by women writers to the weird tale, and revives the lost authors of the early pulp magazines along with the often overlooked work of more familiar authors. See the darker side of The Secret Garden author Frances Hodgson Burnett and the sensitively-drawn nightmares of Marie Corelli and Violet Quirk. Hear the captivating voices of Weird Tales magazine contributors Sophie Wenzel Ellis, Greye La Spina, and Margaret St Clair, and bow down to the sensational, surreal, and challenging writers who broke down the barriers of the day. Featuring material never before republished, from the abyssal depths of the British Library vaults.

I've read a fair few of these British Library anthologies now and generally (as is often the case with anthologies) they've been a bit of a mixed bag but leaning towards the good and this one is no exception.

Firstly let's address the word 'Lost' in the title. Yes, for the most part these are all pretty damn obscure stories buut I'm not sure you could ever describe Marjorie Bowen's tale of selfishness and indolence, 'The Bishop of Hell', which I probably have in at least a dozen anthologies in my collection.  May Sinclair's 'The Nature of the Evidence' whilst certainly being more obscure than Bowen's tale again hardly counts as a 'lost' story.  The others though are far less anthologised, some deservedly so, but some proved a real treat.

Mary Braddon's 'A Revelation' opens the book in classic Victorian style all familial intrigue and visions from beyond the grave.  It's a solid but fairly uninspiring sort of story. Marie Corelli has a more religious side on display with her story of love, betrayal and forgiveness in the naively charming 'The Sculptor's Angel' whilst Edith Nesbit follows a similar route but with the forgiveness spurned in 'From the Dead'.  Frances Hodgson Burnett's 'The Christmas In The Fog' is a purportedly true Xmas tale of her travel across the Atlantic, it's very Dickensian and very dull whilst Marie Belloc Lowndes gives us a love story that's too convenient by half.

Alicia Ramsey's 'A Modern Circe' is a slight folklorish tale of seductive witchcraft and murder which would probably have been dragged out to novel length these days but it's quite long enough here.  Greye La Spina's vampire tale 'The Anti-Macassar' on the other hand would have benefitted greatly from more room as what is a sprightly and enjoyable story is almost spoiled by a jarring ending.

We slip into science fiction for Sophie Wenzel Ellis' 'White Lady' as a young man falls in love with a plant he's invented much to the dismay of his fiance.  It's suitably silly but if that premise sounds your sort of thing then I'd rather direct your attention towards Valancourt Books' reprint of Ronald Fraser's fabulously bonkers 'Flower Phantoms'.

G.G. Pendarves - who I'm sure I've read before but can't quite place - provides a real highlight with the creepily brutal 'The Laughing Thing' whereas Lady Eleanor Smith's 'Candlelight' was a witty but ultimately rather pointless farce.  Jessie Douglas Kerruish provides a fun tale of 'The Wonderful Tune' that raises the dead but Margaret St Clair's science fiction tale 'Island of the Hands' just felt out of place.

'The Unwanted' of Mary Elizabeth Counselman's rural Alabamatale is enjoyably daft but with a gentle heart before the book ends strongly with Leonora Carrington's fabulously odd 'The Seventh Horse'.

As I mentioned it's another strong entrant into this series but as has been the case with each of the others I've read it's a little patchy although as I've said often before what didn't work for me may well prove to be your favourite and if you've an interest in strange tales of the early 20th century then you really should be exploring this series.

Buy it here - UK / US.

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Legend of the Werewolf

One of the very few films made by Tyburn Film Productions,`The Legend of the Werewolf ' is a fun and occasionally funny romp very much in the tradition of the classic Hammer films but made at a time (1975) when such films were already seeming pretty old hat alongside US contemporaries such as 'The Exorcist' and 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre' as well as UK movies like 'Death Line'.

Found running wild in the French woods as a child Etoile had been raised by wolves before being adopted by a circus family and displayed as the 'Wolf Boy'.  As an adult Etoile (David Rintoul - who I think many parents among you will recognise as the voice of 3 Peppa Pig characters including 'Dr Brown Bear') runs away to the city and finds work in a zoo alongside the keeper (Ron Moody).  There he falls in love with a prostitute (Lynn Dalby) but develops an irritating habit of growning hair, fangs and claws and snacking on her clientelle.

Directed by Hammer (and Amicus) veteran Freddie Francis from a script by Anthony Hinds (son of Hammer's founder William Hinds) who also wrote 'The Curse if the Werewolf' for, well, I'm sure you can see the pattern for yourself by now, starring Peter Cushing and with a cameo from Michael Ripper the links to the venerable studio were numerous and overt and the end result is an enjoyable last gasp of the classic British horror.

 

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V for Vendetta

1st March 2022 marks 40 years since the publication of the first issue of Warrior magazine featuring, amongst others,  the very first episode of Alan Moore and David Lloyd's groundbreaking 'V for Vendetta'.

Telling the story of the anarchist revolutionary 'V' as he unleases his plan to take down the fascist 'Norsefire' government that's come to power in the UK following a limited nuclear war that's left much of the world in ruins. He does this concealed behind the iconic imagery of the Guy Fawkes and with the (often unwitting / unwilling) help of his young protege Evey.

'V for Vendetta' was to live long past Warrior's demise in early 1985 with DC comics reprinting and completing a coloured version of the story between September 1988 and May 1989 and then of course there was the movie adaptation in 2005. 

Despite the superhero trappings 'V' is a far more complex character than was the norm in comics at that time and his actions throughout the book are often, at the very least, morally ambiguous as Moore led the charge to drag mainstream comics kicking and screaming out of it's comfortable little rut. Indeed one of the things that made Moore's work on 'V for Vendetta' so impressive is that he was writing it at the same time as he was writing other pioneering strips such as 'Marvelman' (later 'Miracleman') and 'The Bojeffries Saga' for the same magazine, 'D.R. & Quinch', 'The Ballad of Halo Jones', 'Skizz' and a barrel full of 'Future Shocks' for 2000AD, 'Captain Britain' for Marvel UK and 'The Saga of the Swamp Thing' for DC.  He even made time to release a 7" single with David J of Bauhaus as 'The Sinister Ducks'.

So, Wyrd Britain would like to take this opportunity doff our capotain hats to thank Moore, Lloyd and the team at Warrior and then DC for bringing us one of the seminal stories of modern comics.

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