Steven Sheil
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scsheil.bsky.social
Steven Sheil
@scsheil.bsky.social
1.3K followers 1.2K following 2.8K posts
Screenwriter and director: 'Mum & Dad', 'Dead Mine'. Writer of dark fiction. Co-Director of Mayhem Film Festival @mayhemfilmfestival.bsky.social. Nottingham, UK. https://linktr.ee/StevenSheil
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scsheil.bsky.social
Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · Oct 12
I've put together a list of links of where to buy, rent, watch or read my work. It's all here: linktr.ee/StevenSheil
Reposted by Steven Sheil
openspacer.bsky.social
Yes.. I have an early trauma story of being taken in to “On Her majesty’s Secret Service” 15 minutes before the end. Despite protestation my Grandma insisted and I then I had to sit through the film knowing what the ending was going to be and what would happen to Diana Rigg.
November 26, 2025 at 6:36 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
A woman in her seventies has just sat down in the cafe bar and pulled out from her small handbag a hardback copy of Wilbur Smith's 1986 novel Power Of The Sword, which is an absolute brick of a book (close to 900 pages) and which she is now happily absorbed by. Aspirational public reading style.
November 26, 2025 at 4:21 PM
Reposted by Steven Sheil
scsheil.bsky.social
Interesting piece on my film 'Mum & Dad', where the writer doesn't actually like the film, but posits that its effectiveness & appeal - as opposed to AI-generated/bigger budget stuff - lies in the virtue of it being low-budget, with all the restrictions that entails.

horrorpress.com/reviews/1206...
‘Mum & Dad’ Review: The Joy of Simplistic Brutality
One of the things that irks me most about ‘filmmakers’ using AI is one of the two typical answers they give: “it was low-budget,” or “it was to save time.” Look at the endless number of films made pre...
horrorpress.com
November 26, 2025 at 10:50 AM
Reposted by Steven Sheil
lisagrimm.com
Middle aisle at Lidl yesterday; was fairly tempted. Resisted.
A box containing a ‘snuggle pod - human pet bed’
November 26, 2025 at 11:35 AM
scsheil.bsky.social
Interesting piece on my film 'Mum & Dad', where the writer doesn't actually like the film, but posits that its effectiveness & appeal - as opposed to AI-generated/bigger budget stuff - lies in the virtue of it being low-budget, with all the restrictions that entails.

horrorpress.com/reviews/1206...
‘Mum & Dad’ Review: The Joy of Simplistic Brutality
One of the things that irks me most about ‘filmmakers’ using AI is one of the two typical answers they give: “it was low-budget,” or “it was to save time.” Look at the endless number of films made pre...
horrorpress.com
November 26, 2025 at 10:50 AM
Reposted by Steven Sheil
amarshallwriting.bsky.social
This account is a gold mine. 🤌🏻
adrianchills.bsky.social Adrian Chills @adrianchills.bsky.social · Jul 31
#16: Umbrella
A screenshot of the headline of an Adrian Chiles Guardian column. It reads 'Why do I hate umbrellas? How long have you got?" You don’t remember me, but I remember you. It was a year ago last April. You stepped out from the shop doorway into the rain, your umbrella already unfurled, your spare hand holding your phone to your ear, completely lost in your own little world. I was nothing to you, just a shape amid the crowd, but in the short moment before the sharp tip of the umbrella’s nearest rib scraped across my eyeball, the image of you - careless, heedless, so typically self-absorbed - was etched into my brain. I held that image for all the long months in the hospital. I was luckier than the driver who hit me as I stumblied half-blinded from the pavement into the road. Seeing my bloodied face smear across her windscreen, hearing the sickening CRACK of my body on her bonnet, induced in her a heart attack which killed her within minutes, poor soul. I had just the loss of an eye and a few broken bones to contend with. (And, admittedly, the attendant loss of my job and the dissolution of my marriage as my obsession with finding you took over every waking moment.) You have no idea, do you? Even now, reading this on your phone, thinking of it as just another story, you have no inkling that I’m talking about you. Yes, you. Careless, heedless you. The moment that changed my life forever was just another moment to you, lost amongst a million billion other moments. But your moment is coming, the one that’s going to change everything. One day, very soon, you’ll step out, umbrella held high, phone glued to your ear, and with your hands occupied you’ll have no way of stopping the blade that will come beneath your chin and press into your throat’s tender flesh. How long have I got? you might ask yourself. But you’ll never know. All you can do is wait for the rain.
November 23, 2025 at 3:46 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
Tonight’s viewing:
The title screen for the Guy Maddin film ‘The Saddest Music in The World’
November 22, 2025 at 7:25 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
A peculiar adaptation of Elizabeth Taylor's great novel, where you can kind of see the intention behind it but it doesn't really work. Sticks with the main beats of the plot before veering off at the end, but plays generally like the kind of heightened melodrama that Angel herself might have written
scsheil.bsky.social Steven Sheil @scsheil.bsky.social · 5d
Tonight's viewing:
The title screen for the 2007 film Angel. The title in pink is overlaid over a snowy landscape. Another title card over the same image. It reads 'A film by Francois Ozon' Another title card. It reads 'Based on the novel by Elizabeth Taylor'
November 22, 2025 at 11:01 AM
scsheil.bsky.social
Tonight's viewing:
The title screen for the 2007 film Angel. The title in pink is overlaid over a snowy landscape. Another title card over the same image. It reads 'A film by Francois Ozon' Another title card. It reads 'Based on the novel by Elizabeth Taylor'
November 21, 2025 at 8:15 PM
Reposted by Steven Sheil
leonardpierce.bsky.social
There's nothing like it on the big screen, but even on a decent television set, the current Criterion print is amazing to see. These stills are incredible enough - it's an astonishing-looking movie - but seeing it motion is just an irreplaceable experience.
"She ain't the type that makes a happy home." A tight close-up shows the impossibly gorgeous Annie Laure Starr (Peggy Cummins) in GUN CRAZY, wielding two six-shooters and dressed in cowgirl drag, faces down Bart Tare in a shooting match; soon she'll face him down in a different way. "We're all alone and we always will be." Bart and Laurie are committed to their life of crime now; in a low-angled tight close-up, he drives their car, looking like a gaunt ghost, while she bears an expression of both determination and worry, something like a pout. Soon two people will be dead by her hand. "He'd have killed us if he had the chance!" Bart restrains Annie in a perfect two-shot, outside a soda fountain; he clutches the bag of look, but he holds her back even harder, as she turns her gun on a bank guard with a look of murderous glee, reminding us that it's not just the shooting that gets her off, it's the killing. "The rest is a nightmare." Bart and Annie hide out in his sister's shabby house, starting out a window for any sign of the law. Cheap gingham curtains frame them; he looks like he's dead already and she has a look of fierce determination that belies their hopeless situation. The frame of the window casts a single thin black shadow across her face; it reflects their only possible futures, a life behind bars or the grave.
November 21, 2025 at 7:10 PM
Reposted by Steven Sheil
leonardpierce.bsky.social
Everyone - EVERYONE - should see this movie. Even if you don't like noir, even if you don't like classic movies, even if you don't want to see something made 75 years ago, GUN CRAZY is a wild, impossible masterpiece of the crime genre. It's suspenseful, thrilling, sad, dramatic, and hot as fuck.
November 21, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Reposted by Steven Sheil
leonardpierce.bsky.social
Today on IMMORTAL SCIENCE, we've got a hot one for Noirvember: GUN CRAZY, one of my top ten noirs of all time and a stone cold classic. It's got two of the most compelling leads in cinema history, it features some insanely good filming, and frankly, it's one of the sexiest movies in the canon.
Noirvember: On the Level - IMMORTAL SCIENCE
““You’ll never make big money. You’re a two-bit guy. No guts, nothing! I want action!”” One of the reasons I’ve tried to stay away from well-known films during this month’s...
immortalscience.pika.page
November 21, 2025 at 6:50 PM
Reposted by Steven Sheil
robwilliams71.bsky.social
Here's where GAME will be showing across the UK in the next few weeks. #gamefilm2025
November 21, 2025 at 5:18 PM
Reposted by Steven Sheil
scsheil.bsky.social
I've written a brand new Adrian Chills story (short horror stories inspired by the Guardian columns of Adrian Chiles).

This one is called 'Clutter'.

bsky.app/profile/adri...
November 20, 2025 at 1:03 PM
Reposted by Steven Sheil
harryskeeler.bsky.social
Cool jazz singer June Christy was born Shirley Luster in Springfield, Illinois, 100 years ago today! Listen to "Something Cool" from her classic 1954 10" LP of the same name.]

archive.org/details/JV-3...
November 20, 2025 at 3:38 PM
Reposted by Steven Sheil
adrianchills.bsky.social
#35: Clutter
A screenshot of a headline from an Adrian Chiles Guardian column. It reads "I've always wanted the perfect reason to declutter. Now I've found it." It was my father’s fervent wish that I take possession of all of his experiments after his death, that I maintain his laboratory—my home—exactly as he had left it, with the only proviso being that I might further develop any of his unfinished projects if I saw a way to complete them. I had always been his favourite, the one most like him in temperament and intellect (my brainwaves being patterned on his own had practically ensured our compatibility) and the only one of us he fully trusted with the details of his processes. “323,” he would often say to me (for that was the number assigned to me at my inception), “the secret of life itself lies within these four walls. And that secret, once discovered, will change the world.” Having only known these four walls, and having but a hazy conception of the world beyond, I could only imagine. My own life was bound by the constraints of the electrical cable which powered my second-hand heart. Other experiments relied on different artificial means of vitality; 18 (a hand kept alive by a concoction of fluids); 167 (a pair of legs kept perpetually moving by a set of mechanical rotors); 205 (a brain encased in an ever-growing fungus), all of which took an exhausting daily routine to maintain. As time went on, I began to long for some space around me, and to free those poor creatures—barely siblings, barely alive—from their half lives, but my promise to my father still hung heavy over me. Until I realised that if I could finish his work, if I could perfect his process, then I could dispose of all his unfinished experiments, for they would not be needed anymore. And so I took all that I had learned from my father and applied it to his corpse. Tonight when I complete the process, when I reanimate his brain and body, father—or rather 339—will walk forth from these four walls and will receive all the wonder the world has to give him. And I will finally be able to make some room for myself.
November 20, 2025 at 1:01 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
Today’s best second-hand buy:
A 1960s hardback book - Prisoner’s Base by Celia Fremlin. The cover has an illustration of a man’s face in blocks of blue and green. The outline of a pair of chickens, one yellow, one green, sits in the face.
November 20, 2025 at 1:38 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
People out here constructing their own live-action political cartoons
A life-size bust of Donald Trump Sat amidst a load of other scrap in the back of a pick-up truck in the street
November 19, 2025 at 12:23 PM
Reposted by Steven Sheil
scsheil.bsky.social
My new short story is now up at Guilty, Crime Story Magazine. It's called 'Empathy'.

www.guiltycrimemag.com/flash/empath...
Empathy by Steven Sheil
“What happens now?” said the girl. “We wait,” Mickey told her.  Francine had gone off to make the call to the mother, leaving Mickey alone with the girl for the first time since the...
www.guiltycrimemag.com
November 17, 2025 at 12:18 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
Labour's strategy makes total sense if you imagine that their biggest regret is losing Lee Anderson as a councillor and everything they're doing now is a (futile) attempt to win him back to the fold.
adambienkov.bsky.social Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 8d
These are the voters that Labour strategists have made very clear over a long period of time that they don't want any more, and it's a message that has now been heard
robblackie.bsky.social Rob Blackie @robblackie.bsky.social · 8d
I've been out canvassing quite a lot in London lately. Labour's vote has absolutely evaporated.... it is quite extraordinary to go to places where Labour were on 50-60% of the vote at the last locals and find nobody, or virtually nobody, supporting them.

The phrase 'I voted Labour last time, but...
November 18, 2025 at 12:46 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
Heads up to anyone planning to watch the very fun Bone Lake (out next week on digital) that the opening paragraph here spoils a great moment in the opening of the film, one which bought a round of applause when we showed it at @mayhemfilmfestival.bsky.social

www.theguardian.com/film/2025/no...
Bone Lake review – holiday rental house of horror is fun for everyone
You don’t need to be a fright flick aficionado to enjoy this smart and witty tale of a romantic weekend break going gruesomely wrong
www.theguardian.com
November 18, 2025 at 11:48 AM
scsheil.bsky.social
My new short story is now up at Guilty, Crime Story Magazine. It's called 'Empathy'.

www.guiltycrimemag.com/flash/empath...
Empathy by Steven Sheil
“What happens now?” said the girl. “We wait,” Mickey told her.  Francine had gone off to make the call to the mother, leaving Mickey alone with the girl for the first time since the...
www.guiltycrimemag.com
November 17, 2025 at 12:18 PM
Reposted by Steven Sheil
christinalefou.bsky.social
So pleased have curated a film tribute to the late Peter Watkins with ICA London. First up, 22 Nov, his film Privilege, a swinging 60s artefact which hobbles the swinging. At its centre, a rock-star-as-empty-messiah, played by Manfred Mann’s Paul Jones. More soon!

www.ica.art/films/peter-...
ICA | Peter Watkins: Privilege + introduction
The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is London’s leading space for contemporary culture. We commission, produce and present new work in film, music, performance and the visual arts by today’s most...
www.ica.art
November 15, 2025 at 3:21 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
Today’s re-read:
A paperback book with a white cover - A Dark Corner by Celia Dale
November 15, 2025 at 6:35 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
Really noticeable how much of today's technology is geared towards creating human-like puppets - AI avatars, chatbots, humanoid robots - that don't have any actual agency and are solely there to fulfil a supposed need in the customer. "What if you could own a person who could never say no to you?"
downwithdan.bsky.social Dan of the Year @downwithdan.bsky.social · 12d
New insult to life itself just dropped
November 14, 2025 at 7:22 PM