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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 5h

"Darling, Death has a product recommendation. This can only end well, surely?"

Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 5h

The Jack Benny Program would incorporate its sponsor Lucky Strike's adverts into each show's performance. My favourite remains this not-at-all ominous Halloween-themed one, in which a Jack-o-lantern figure and...uh...Death compel a young couple into smoking.

A couple - a woman and a man in smart clothes - are surprised when sat at a bench by a carved pumpkin (in a cigarette box design)

A close-up of the pumpkin inside the cigarette box's picture design.

The couple are talking to each other now, surprised, but this time in the cigarette box design it's a Death-like figure with a skeletal face

The couple sat at the bench talking and smiling at each other. Behind them, the Jack-o-lantern figure and the Death figure stand staring coldly down at them. On the wall behind them is part of a slogan: Be Happy - Go Lucky!

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Reposted by Jamie

Rose Ruane @regretteruane.bsky.social · 10h

Had a great time chatting to @robinallender.bsky.social
Do please have a listen loves💖✨💕

Robin Allender @robinallender.bsky.social · 13h

This month on The Allender Calendar I’m delighted to be joined by the fabulous author @regretteruane.bsky.social to discuss her brilliant novels Birding and This is Yesterday. Lots of Manics chat too!

The Allender Calendar: Episode 14: Rose Ruane

This month on The Allender Calendar I talk to the fabulous writer Rose Ruane. Rose has published two novels, Birding (2024), which was longlisted for the 2025 Women's Prize for Fiction, and This is...

pod.fo

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 6h

Thanks for reposts, lovely people who have done that, very much appreciated

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 9h

I really should also make a point of highlighting just how great the artwork by @raynewman.bsky.social is. Referencing 60s and 70s horror and thriller paperbacks, it's beautiful.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 10h

Brought to you as another instalment in my occasional series 'Maybe if I mention my book, people might buy it and read it 🤔'

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 10h

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0DY...

A Row Of Open Graves: And Nine Other Stories Of A Macabre Persuasion: Amazon.co.uk: Evans, Jamie: 9798307530351: Books

Buy A Row Of Open Graves: And Nine Other Stories Of A Macabre Persuasion by Evans, Jamie (ISBN: 9798307530351) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

www.amazon.co.uk

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 10h

Find yourself an old radio (doesn't need to be working) and read these stories aloud in your best gently lilting Karloff voice for the full effect 👀

Boris Karloff, his hair neatly combed, in a suit and striped tie, looking ahead with an NBC radio mic in front of him.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 10h

This Halloween month I think you really should read some stories about shitty bosses, scumbag dads, fake ghost hunters, religious hypocrites, and thieving crooks getting what's coming to them. This and more (cannibalism! exploding body parts! grave robbing!) across ten tales perfect for the season 🎃

Cover for a book called A Row of Open Graves (And Nine Other Stories Of A Macabre Persuasion) by Jamie Evans. The cover image is an illustration of bodies in open graves with a beam of torchlight illuminating them. It is set against a light blue background.

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Reposted by Jamie

Lisa Grimm Grinning Ghosts Come Out to Socialise @lisagrimm.com · 13h

This BBC Archive bit on a haunted nightclub in Sheffield in 1970 is a delight…but does anyone have more details on the spot and what it might be now (if anything)? Does it still have a spooky reputation? Relevant to all my interests!

youtu.be/6TyStko8pxo?...

1970: The Ghost that Terrified Big Derek | Nationwide | Weird and Wonderful | BBC Archive

YouTube video by BBC Archive

youtu.be

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 1d

Quite. He either knew *exactly* what he was doing, or he was monstrously ignorant*. Either way, he deserved the reaction and reassessment and doesn't need people trying to "He's a genius, not a big ol' racist" their way into justifying BOAN for a century-plus now. Bah. *First one, always first one.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 1d

Read Timothy Egan's A Fever in the Heartland a couple of years back too, and holy shit, just read some history, guys. DWG getting interviewed by Huston in 1930 pretty much underlines the unrepetance, in plain sight. The dude was exactly who he told people he was with his art.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 1d

Tangential, possibly unfair to the writer of this particular bit (not Griffith after all) but when getting into silent film and reading about it, one book, which contained this, was very quickly a big old 'nope'. Significant pockets of DWG apologists/attempted rationalising to avoid in film circles.

The first American film of any real size and scope and certainly, at three hours, the longest up to that time (1915), The Birth of a Nation dramatizes the events leading up to, and following the Civil War of 1861-65. Part One includes a prologue depicting the
introduction of slavery into America in the seven-teenth century, and the rise of the abolitionist movement. From there it goes into the outbreak of the Civil War, and finishes with Lee's surrender and the assassination of Lincoln. The second part of the flm-the half that has always aroused so much controversy over its alleged anti-Negro bias concerns the effects on the South of Lincoln's death, the exploitation of the newly-freed Negroes by unscrupulous Northern politicians and
industrialists and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan to save the old South from anarchy. It is essential to point out that the Klan of that period was vastly different, both in conception
and activities, from the sheeted bigots of today. Whether or not the Klan of the post-
Civil War period was justified is something that we leave to the historians, but it was
essentially a patriotic and not a terrorist force.

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Reposted by Jamie

Movies Silently @moviessilently.bsky.social · 1d

taps sign

Movies Silently @moviessilently.bsky.social · May 23

DW Griffith directed BIRTH OF A NATION (1915), a virulently racist film (and neither his first nor his last one of those) that saw racist violence follow wherever it was screened.

So, naturally, there are film bros and gals who think we should "ignore the racism" and keep it in the canon.

Thread

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Reposted by Jamie

Kim Newman @annodracula.bsky.social · 1d

One of Peter Cushing's best performances - a terrific crime movie spin on A Christmas Carol.

Talking Pictures TV @talkingpicturestv.bsky.social · 1d

Our brew ☕ and biccies 🍪 classic matinee today stars #PeterCushing #AndreMorell in the #HammerFilms thriller

💷 CASH ON DEMAND (1961) 3:40pm #TPTVsubtitles

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 1d

Ha ha, I imagine you can quite easily stand by your reading, it's not everyone's favourite after all

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 1d

Is it good or shameless trash? It's both. From its brutal opening to its fiery conclusion (and in-between having a former Doctor humming a tune while cutting up a corpse), it's just *desperate* to entertain. Easy to dislike, easier still to love.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 1d

Scars of Dracula (1970, dir. Roy Ward Baker) is cheap and nasty Hammer. But these are compliments. Like each of the films in the series, this tries to do something different. Here, it's a wild, unsubtle but effective pitch-black blend of Hammer tradition, European horror and comedy farce. Great fun.

Close-up of Tania, a vampire, her mouth open to reveal fangs, her eyes wide with hunger and madness

Dracula, stood in front of a large fireplace (just out of shot), holding a sword with the blade heated and glowing. He has a cruel, wrathful expression on his face.

Close-up of Dracula resting against a red cushion. He looks asleep, with eyes closed, but a red glowing eye hovers over each eye.

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Reposted by Jamie

Ray Newman @raynewman.bsky.social · 2d

I should probably read more books about the craft of writing but, honestly, there are just a few works of fiction I keep handy and dip into to remind myself what good looks like. The same copy of Robert Aickman's 'Cold Hand in Mine' has been near my desk for about 30 years, for example.

Leslie Farnsworth @lesliefarnsworth.com · 2d

Writers among you, is there a craft book you return to at least once a year?

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Reposted by Jamie

Jon Dear @accordingtojond.bsky.social · 2d

I'll be at this year's Square Eye TV, introducing an ultra rare screening of the 1975 adaptation of Poe's Imp of the Perverse, starring Michael Kitchen and Lalla Ward.

Also screening is the magnificent A View from a Hill from 2005, followed by a Q&A with writer Peter Harness.

Details:

A Birmingham Ghost Story + Q&A | Midlands Arts Centre

The BBC became well known in the 70s for producing popular anthology series Ghost Stories For Christmas, but Birmingham’s Pebble Mill had its own anthology

macbirmingham.co.uk

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 2d

On the subject of that ending, too: it's enjoyable how brutal 60s television could be, and that note of something that is otherworldly wicked happening is unnerving and seriously unsettling. Questions go unanswered, leaving us flailing. Anyway, it's *great* television.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 2d

What if we get the entitled DW 'fan' contingent and the entitled Hammer Horror 'fan' contingent together in a room and let them duke it out as to who is the fanniest fan of them all? Give the rest of us a break

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 2d

Director Richard C. Safarian and cinematographer Robert Pittack do a good job of keeping the central concept moving and well-paced. Savalas is great, and the script (by Charles Beaumont but actually by his pal Jerry Sohl) is clever, lean, and nasty. Not everyone loves the ending, but I do. Great tv.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 2d

The Twilight Zone fifth season ep 'Living Doll' is one of the show's rare tips into full horror. Miserable stepdad Telly Savalas finds his kid's new talking doll doesn't take kindly to his cruel ways. The script hints the doll would hate him even if he was nice. Creepy, malevolent, one of the best.

Living Doll title card, the title overlaid on an image of Savalas' hands winding the doll.

Christie, a young girl long hair and a hairband, holds up Talky Tina, a plastic doll in a dress. Christie is smiling and happy.

Talky Tina sat on 'her' own on a shelf, looking ahead blankly. The shot is half in shadow and something about Tina appears off.

Savalas as Erich, in his workshop. He has Talky Tina's head in a vice and is attempting to light a blowtorch so he can burn the doll.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 2d

Frothy horror-lite where predecessors Dracula, Frankenstein et al were all dark-hearted gothic splendour, it has several actors doing their best with not much, a sublime few minutes of Bela Lugosi, and an agreeable abandonment of logic or coherence. Under the suds, it's also quite tragic. Good fun.

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