My Favourite Two Movies From My Birth Year to 2017

1963: The Haunting, or The Great Escape

1964: The Killers, or Onibaba

1965: Repulsion, or The Hill

1966: Blow-Up, or Fahrenheit 451

1967: The Fearless Vampire Killers, or The Graduate

1968: Night of the Living Dead, or 2001: A Space Odyssey

1969: Midnight Cowboy, or The Italian Job

1970: A Man Called Horse, or Little Big Man

1971: The Andromeda Strain, or The French Connection

1972: Frenzy, or Silent Running

1973: Don’t Look Now, or The Wicker Man

1974: Young Frankenstein, or Dark Star

1975: Jaws, or One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

1976: Marathon Man, or In the Realm of the Senses

1977: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or Slap Shot

1978: Halloween, or Dawn of the Dead

1979: Phantasm, or Alien

1980: The Shining, or Kagemusha

1981: Scanners, or Das Boot

1982: John Carpenter’s The Thing, or Blade Runner

1983: Trading Places, or Scarface

1984: Amadeus, or The Killing Fields

1985: Cocoon, or The Goonies

1986: Manhunter, or Aliens

1987: Near Dark, or The Princess Bride

1988: A Fish Called Wanda, or Die Hard

1989: The Abyss, or Driving Miss Daisy

1990: Misery, or Goodfellas

1991: The Silence of the Lambs, or The Commitments

1992: Raising Cain, or Glengarry Glen Ross

1993: What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? or Schindler’s List

1994: Once Were Warriors, or Heavenly Creatures

1995: Se7en, or The Usual Suspects

1996: Fargo, or Trainspotting

1997: L.A. Confidential, or Life Is Beautiful

1998: Saving Private Ryan, or Blade

1999: Fight Club, or American Beauty

2000: Battle Royale, or Final Destination

2001: Donnie Darko, or Frailty

2002: 25th Hour, or Road to Perdition

2003: The Life of David Gale, or Identity

2004: Shaun of the Dead, or The Machinist

2005: Sin City, or Hard Candy

2006: Pan’s Labyrinth, or Perfume: The Story of A Murderer

2007: I Am Legend, or Planet Terror

2008: In Bruges, or Slumdog Millionaire

2009: The Lovely Bones, or Sherlock Holmes

2010: The Book of Eli, or Red

2011: War Horse, or Sucker Punch

2012: Argo, or The Dark Knight Rises

2013: Django Unchained, or Snowpiercer

2014: John Wick, or Guardians of the Galaxy

2015: The Revenant, or Ant-Man

2016: Doctor Strange, or Deadpool

2017: Not seen any movies made in 2017 yet

Review of “Stranger Companies”, by Linda Angel

145 pages of words that drip with honey, yet are laced with powdered glass and a tasteless corrosive that will shred your insides, Stranger Companies is a small volume of 20 stories that, according to Linda, were an exercise in freewriting. All I can say is that if she is capable of producing work of a standard to which most writers can only aspire when simply freewriting, what is the woman capable of when she sits down and actually plans what she writes?
I experienced a gamut of emotions from purest joy to absolute despair as I slowly digested each story, and was left open-mouthed after the final tale and had finished the book. I still feel drained, yet strangely euphoric.
Linda’s prose is simply beautiful; she has a unique way with words, and her words will have their way with you, the reader! You’ll love how she combines words to create new words, words that you will want to use yourself, yet know that you never will, because Linspeak is unique to this particular writer, and her “voice” is one you will never forget!
Highly reccomended reading.

Review of “Man Eating Fucks”, by David Owain Hughes

Graphic horror, high tension, brutal rape and juicy scenes of cannibalism, delivered to you by David Owain Hughes as the descendants of Sawney Bean’s clan move furtively around South Wales, stopping to bring death and destruction to the community centre in Pontycymer, Bridgend, where a heavy metal gig is about to take place.
Storm Davies and her policeman father, D.I. Huw Davies are in for a long night, a night that will forever change their lives – if they live to tell the tale!
The edition available to buy on Amazon is different from the copy that I own; on Amazon, the book is published by Movement Publishing, whereas my copy was published by Hellbound Books. My copy has some glaring errors that should have been spotted before going to print. I can only hope that these errors have been corrected in the edition available on Amazon, hence my review overall is one of only 4 stars, though the story itself is worthy of 5 stars.

Plenty of references to some classic rock tracks throughout, which made me smile as I was reading. David Owain Hughes is METAL! m/

Review of “Flanagan”, by James H. Longmore

Chris and Helen Sewell, married for ten years, are High School teachers who have no children of their own and, after undergoing tests to determine their suitability for fertility treatment, they are informed that there is no chance they will ever conceive; Chris’s “swimmers” are immotile, and Helen’s body was ravaged by chlamydia years before they got together.
Desperate to reconnect with each other and recharge their sexual batteries, they decide to use their Spring Break holiday to visit a retreat, and as it is a long drive, they decide to stop off overnight at a motel in Flanagan, a one-horse town without a horse.
The following day, the couple are taken hostage by an unsavoury group of locals and are subjected to a series of twisted “games”, and are forced to perform increasingly nasty and perverse acts of physical, mental and sexual torture upon each other, and also have brutal sexual acts performed on them by their captors.
To top it off, Chris and Helen are informed that when the bells ring on an old alarm clock that is placed nearby, they will be killed.
The tension mounts as the clock ticks, and as the reader reaches what they think is the end, that’s when James H. Longmore throws in the plot twist, which you won’t see coming, and it’s a doozy!
This is extreme horror, extreme sex, and it’s an extremely good read, spoiled a little by more than a few grammatical errors.

Review of “The Fourth Monkey”, by J.D. Barker

Detective Sam Porter has taken time off from work as Lead Investigator on the 4MK case to heal emotionally after suffering a personal tragedy, but is called back to duty when a notebook believed to have been written by the Fourth Monkey Killer is found on the body of a man who was hit by a bus and killed. Has the 4MK Killer’s reign of terror finally come to an end? Also found at the scene is a white box tied up with black string containing the ear of an as yet unknown victim, meant to be delivered to the address of a prominent local businessman.
As the box is the first in a series of boxes usually delivered to the families of previous victims, it stands to reason that there is a girl somewhere who is still alive, and the race is on to find her before she succumbs to her wounds.
Porter and his team must use the notebook to solve the case that has baffled them for over five years and prevent further loss of life.
Masterfully written, this page-turner will keep you guessing right up to the end.

I read an uncorrected proof ARC of this book, and the opinions expressed in this review are my own and are unbiased.

Expected publication: June 27th 2017 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Review of “Snatched”, by Ian Woodhead

A deliciously depraved extreme horror short read (97 pages) by Ian Woodhead, Snatched opens the door to the inner workings of the mind of James, a seemingly upstanding pillar of the community, history teacher and soup kitchen volunteer, who has taken it upon himself to rid the world of the hidden evil within all young boys, by the means of kidnap, torture both physical and mental, and using any and all tools in his tool bag and items he finds in the homes he invades. He’s also not averse to violating, mutilating and butchering members of his young victims’ families, and even the odd homeless vagrant!<br /> Flashbacks to James as a young boy reveal how he had no choice but to grow up to be the dysfunctional, psychopathic, broken man who believes that he is the next step in human evolution, and you won’t see the twist, I assure you!

I would have given Snatched 5 stars, but there are a few grammatical errors and formatting inconsistencies: there are no page breaks between chapters, and a couple of chapter headings are not in bold type.

Women In Horror Month

In general, Women In Horror month focuses on authors and publishers, which is a good thing, but there are others out there dedicated to furthering the horror genre with their blogs, in-depth book reviews and wonderful author interviews, two of which are Becky Narron and Mandy Tyra over at Roadie Notes.

Roadie Notes is the brainchild of Becky Narron, an avid reader, to say the least! In two weeks’ time, on February 15th, Roadie Notes will be one year old, and having read the entire blog, I’m amazed at what she has accomplished in just twelve months. Highly respected and loved by the writing community, Becky has amassed a huge number of interviews with the likes of Graham Masterton, Shaun Hutson, Edward Lee, Jack Ketchum, and too many more to mention. She has also reviewed books from not only established authors but new up-and-coming authors too.

Recently, Becky has been joined by Mandy Tyra, who has taken on the role of book reviewer for the blog, and if you’ve never read one of her book reviews, let me tell you that you’re in for a treat! Her reviews are better than some of the books I’ve read!

These ladies truly are a dynamic duo, and I urge you all to head on over to Roadie Notes, have a good read, and if you like what you read, give them your support, and please feel free to leave a comment or two, maybe subscribe to the blog, and click on that “like” button!

Review of “Bad Sunset”, by Alex S. Johnson

Bad Sunset by Alex S. Johnson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Malpuesta Del Sol, or Bad Sunset, is a true Bizarro novel in every sense of the word, and one that I hope readers and critics alike will hold high and show reverence to in the same manner that the Chinese revere Chairman Mao Tse-Tung’s “The Little Red Book”.
The genius of Alex S. Johnson is revealed in this book, which has taken over three years to write and refine. Who in their right mind would even consider weaving a tale comprised of elements such as a Wild West town; the second coming of Jesus Christ in the form of The Christo Kid; an Aztec death deity; a six thousand year-old mystic who rides around on a salamander and his student, Juan; Satan in the role of the Contessa, a flame-haired temptress; a saloon brawler with enough power in his punch to tear apart the fabric between the nine universes and set loose an unspeakable, nameless evil which in turn, raises the dead, and much, much more?
Did I fail to mention the copious amount of violence, gore, depraved sex performed upon every body orifice available, and the ingestion of sexual body fluids as a teaching aid and a method of expanding one’s understanding of the self and of cosmic consciousness? My apologies. I’m just so blown away by this masterpiece of fiction. I need to lie down and reflect further on what I’ve just read.
Outstanding, highly recommended and well deserving of five stars.

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Review of “Mountain Home”, by Bracken McLeod

Mountain Home by Bracken MacLeod

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“Mountain Home” is a huge display firework of a novel, and the audience (you, the readers)are invited to watch the display that Bracken McLeod has painstakingly set up for us. The touch paper has been lit, and we’re all now just waiting for the inevitable explosion to happen.
It seems like it’s just another day at the “Your Mountain Home Kitchen”, until the owner of the house opposite the diner decides otherwise, unleashing an all-out assault on the building and its occupants, with deadly consequences.
We learn through flashbacks exactly what Joanie Myer, an ex-Air Force sniper has suffered, and why purchasing her dream home in the mountains was the last chance to bring peace into her life.
That plan to hold on to just one thing, something to keep her grounded and give her a chance to heal is short-lived, no thanks to an avaricious and vindictive property developer and Beau, his manager, who runs “Your Mountain Home Kitchen”.
Joanie is not going to surrender her home without a fight, and fighting is something she’s extremely good at, as those inside “Your Mountain Home Kitchen” are about to find out.
Brilliantly written, with well thought-out characters who really stand out from the “page”, and there are a few who I know you’ll dislike intensely, I assure you!
A wonderful debut novel that I highly recommend, one that is totally deserving of 5 stars.

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Review of “Six of the Best: A Hellish Half Dozen”, by Kevin G. Bufton

Six of the Best: A Hellish Half-Dozen by Kevin G. Bufton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I received a copy of the book from the author in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Kevin Bufton’s debut collection of short stories features re-edited versions of stories previously included in other anthologies, and though I’ve not read the original versions, I can say in all honesty that reading this collection was an absolute delight!
The opening story, “Mother’s Milk” is a dark look at a young mother’s experience of delivering and living with a stillborn baby in an evacuated city apartment block, with no escape route and rapidly dwindling supplies. It’s heartbreaking.
“The Shoot” is the story of a journalist who, while interviewing a legendary masked wrestling star who has never before given an interview, learns the truth behind the wrestler’s anonymity – with dire consequences.
“53 Minutes” is an unusual zombie story, and apart from that little snippet of information, I’ll say no more, because I don’t want to spoil the readers’ enjoyment.
“Roots” is a great tale of what could happen when trouble comes rolling your way, but it’s not what you’d think!
“The Wren” would be a perfect tale for inclusion in one of the old Hammer films. It has a quality that reminds me of horror stories from the 60s and 70’s which, for me, was a golden age of horror. It has a shock value comparable to “The Wicker Man”.
“Hooked” is a nautical tale of a man’s search for retribution over the loss of his hand, and features the zombie in its classic form. Somehow, it reminded me of “Moby Dick”. Absolutely wonderful stuff!

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