Felix Castor: The Halfway Mark
Mike Carey’s Felix Castor is currently dominating my bedside table. After completing The Devil You Know and Vicious Circle I am now making good progress with Dead Men’s Boots. To come are the fourth and fifth in the series, Thicker Than Water and The Naming of the Beasts.
Carey is an odd writer. At times his prose is extremely atmospheric and effective, but he often sinks into lazy and almost woeful writing. The fault is possibly the sheer weight of what he is attempting to achieve; very lengthy novels produced at regular intervals, where quality sometimes, but not always, suffers from the dictates of pace. Perhaps also Carey doesn’t have much faith in himself as a writer of quality. He is simply content to produce popular, or even pulp, fiction.
At over five hundred pages, Dead Men’s Boots does at times feel overlong. For a reader dedicated enough to reach the series as far as this third instalment it’s possible that Carey doesn’t need to fill in on as much as the background story as he does. Both Castor’s history and the stories of his associates are explained quite fully in both Vicious Circle and Dead Men’s Boots. Castor in an exorcist, discovering his talent at an early age when he had to rid himself of his dead sister’s ghost. He works in an alternative London, one intricately detailed to resemble the real capital but one also populated with a variety of horrors. Ghosts, zombies and loup gorous, demonic werewolf type creatures. He is joined by a series of recurring characters. Nicky is a zombie who has to keep his body chilled to avoid decomposition. He also enjoys a glass of wed wine but only to sniff, his digestive system long shut down. Juliet is a demon who preys on sexual lust, although since the close of The Devil you Know has become less of a threat and more of an ally to Castor. She’s also living in a single sex relationship with one of the supporting cast of Vicious Circle. Then there’s Rafi, a man possessed and incarcerated, whose plight haunts the background of the series.
Vicious Circle featured several interconnected stories, something Carey is revealing himself the master of. A missing ghost, a haunted church, both were extremely believable threads for a fantasy novel. In Dead Men’s Boots he appears more ambitious, and introduces several tales in parallel. The Rafi story continues, and Castor and his exorcist peers are tormented by a mysterious band of exorcist bashers. In the foreground however is Castor and Juliet’s investigation of a brutal murder. A man is convicted of the crime but was it really him? Or perhaps the ghost of a dead American criminal? Carey takes his characters beyond their usual setting with Castor and Juliet travelling to the US.
With five novels in three years, Mike Carey has created a successful franchise that, with a little tidying around the edges, will no doubt make the transfer to film or television that it’s crying out to do. However, in the Twilight soaked climate that also finds room for Being Human and True Blood it’s difficult to see how this would really be worthwhile. What Carey really needs to do is hone in his writing talent to produce a leaner piece of work that is content to stay on the page and not reveal itself as a wannabee screenplay. Somebody needs to give him a push, just a little one, for him to realise that he could be a quality author.
The Devil you Know is my first foray into the world of Felix Castor, the opening novel in Mike Carey’s successful horror series. The book was partly a success for me; I liked it enough to buy the second instalment of the series, although I’m holding back on the decision to invest in all five. Carey mixes a noirish thriller with the supernatural, where an alternative London is crowded with ghosts, zombies and loup garous, which are a sort of animal-spirit hybrid.
The Devil you Know has a stunning plot, which involves exorcist for hire Castor investigating the haunting of a document archive in London. Particularly effective is the novel’s opening, where Castor reveals a ghost at a children’s birthday party. It’s a well written and suitably creepy piece that wouls stand up on its own as a great short story. What lets the book down is both its length (200 odd pages of this sort of thing is great, 470 is far too much) and Castor-as-narrator with his often clichéd and grating style which can make Sam Spade sound like he’s giving a Shakespeare soliloquy. And what disturbs the most is that the living characters are as unconvincing as the dead in this novel; villains are pantomime drawn, and Castor’s associates don’t really stick in the mind.
That Mike Carey has written five Castor novels suggests that he’s doing something right. However The Devil you Know comes across as very hurriedly written, and this author does appear to bash his books out. There are some great ideas though, such as Castor’s talent for sniffing out the ghosts he’s called upon to destroy, and at times this novel is genuinely and satisfyingly scary, but Carey needs to ditch some of the well worn scenarios that appear to be grafted on for effect – for example the Dr Lektorish prisoner that Castor calls on for a chat, which didn’t add anything to the book for me. But if you like literary ghosts, then the one haunting the central story of the book will probably satisfy you. Her plight is creepy, sad and well thought out.
Shall I move onto the second instalmant Vicious Circle? Oh, go on then.
What does a filmmaker with a thirst for the vampire movie do when audiences are dulled by the Twilight franchise?
Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In provides an answer. This is a beautifully shot and thoughtful film that is part coming of age love story and part horror movie. The Swedish director takes aspects of the vampire legend and moves them to early 1980s Stockholm, where tower apartments are eerily lit by bright, white, virgin snow.
Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is a sensitive twelve-year old boy tormented by his peers who befriends the unarguably odd Eli (Lina Leandersson). This is a girl who lurks around in dark corners to prey on the unsuspecting, so it’s in Oskar’s favour when the lonely lad finds some affinity with her. They form a friendship, of sorts, that appears to lead to something stronger. The most unusual of cinema’s adolescent love affairs as Eli is something quite unwordly.
Although this is essentially a horror film, and an at times unsettling one, Alfredson mainly concentrates on Oskar’s loneliness; his bullying and the seperation of his parents. Eli acts as a catalyst for Oskar to stand up against his enemies, and the story works best when exploring his journey there. And once he does arrive, the film is unambiguous as to whether he is actually any better off after sealing his fate with Eli. It’s an unusual movie, and describing it as bleak and depressing failed to set any of my friends alight with enthusiasm. I hope they don’t wait for the impending Hollywood remake, which may pointlessly turn it into another boring teen vampire movie (and they have already messed up by renaming it Let Me In). However bleak and depressing it is, Alfredson’s film certainly isn’t dull.
Let the Right One In has plenty of disturbingly effective scenes that you’d expect from a horror film. There’s the best use of cats in the genre since The Uncanny, where a flat full of the sensitive creatures take a unanimous dislike to a newly infected vampire. The film also makes a memorable and spectacular use of a swimming pool setting, where Eli proves her attachment to Oskar. Kind of. And there’s a very touching although certainly offbeat ending too. Although I admit that my taste in cinema is often odd, I found this a refreshing film. It’s challenging and consequently very rewarding. The leads were particularly superb, especially Leandersson, who just needs to learn the finer points of napkin etiquette.
Incidentally this is based on the 1994 novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, which in turn took part of its inspiration from a 1988 Morrissey song Let the Right One Slip In. Those immersed in vampire folklore will be aware that the undead cannot enter your home until invited, although I think this is only a minor comfort. Like Oskar, we may suddenly and unexpectedly meet our own Eli.
Tales That Witness Madness
In 1973 the horror anthology was all the rage. This was mainly thanks to the efforts of Amicus, the main rival to Hammer Films in the 60s and 70s, who churned out their series of portmanteau horrors. With titles like Dr Terrors House of Horrors, From Beyond the Grave and Vault of Horror, the films would each typically contain four of five different chilling tales and feature a host of familiar faces including horror stalwarts Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. The stories would usually be linked together with an often very loose framing device.
In Dr Terrors House of Horrors a fortune teller (Cushing) reveals the fate of fellow travellers on a train (who include, in a bizarre casting experiment, the late disc jockey Alan Freeman). Torture Garden does something similar in a funfair, while Vault of Horror has its subjects recount their disturbing dreams. There’s a great sequence with Terry-Thomas as an over fastidious husband who gets a rather nasty comeuppance. The creepy Asylum visits the tortured worlds of inmates in an institution, while The House That Dripped Blood suitably haunts all of its occupants. All deserve articles in their own right. And I promise that they will come.
Tales That Witness Madness is often mistakenly credited as an Amicus film, although it was actually made by the Rank Organisation. It’s an easy mistake to make. The director is Freddie Francis, who made many films for both Hammer and Amicus, and the cast includes Donald Pleasence, Jack Hawkins and Joan Collins, who were no strangers to this sort of thing. Like Asylum, it uses the framing device of the secure hospital, where a white-coated, bearded and manic eyed Pleasence is running the show. Jack Hawkins, rather foolishly, turns up for a tour of the cells.
Much of Tales That Witness Madness is poor quality. Hawkins, very ill at the time, has his voice dubbed awkwardly by another actor, Charles Gray. The final story is far too long, but there is a moody and memorable opening title sequence and Pleasence is as excellent as you would expect. And, like every British film made in the early 70s, there’s something that makes this essential viewing. Two of the stories, for different reasons, are very good indeed. Mr Tiger concerns a small boy, isolated from the world by his parents who choose to have him educated at home by a private tutor. He invents a furry imaginary friend – or does he? There’s no points for guessing how wrong things go here, and it helps that Rank stretches the budget to employ a real tiger.
The other memorable sequence features Michael Jayston and Joan Collins. Beginning with the eerily memorable line “does anyone here love me?”, this is the most bizarre thing Collins has ever appeared in. This in itself is an achievement from the actress who starred in the insane I Don’t Want to be Born and featured in the Tales From the Crypt segment as a murderous housewife pursued by a maniacal Santa Claus.
Jayston plays a man who, and I can find no better words for this, falls in love with a tree. He names it Mel and moves it into the house, much to – and you can’t forgive her for this – the chagrin of his wife Ms Collins. This being a horror film in the Amicus tradition, things eventually work out better for Mel than they do for Joan. And you can kind of justify why Jayston has ended up in a padded cell, although it’s unfortunate that he only has Donald Pleasence to look after him. From my point of view, the softly spoken voice and intense glare would only make me madder…
Everybody loves The Wicker Man. The 1973 film, that is, and not the 2006 remake starring Nicolas Cage. From what I can gather, everyone hates that Wicker Man. But what exactly was wrong with it? Was it just another case of a bad remake of a classic film (just like with Psycho and Get Carter)? Is it really that bad? Against my better judgement, I recently spent an evening with the Cage Wicker Man.
According to its director Robin Hardy, the 1973 original was treated badly by its distributors. The film was edited fairly brutally and eventually released as a B-movie to support Don’t Look Now. Rumour has it that some of the deleted scenes were buried under the M4. The film drifted in obscurity for a while and then began to gain something of a cult following, receiving frequent tv showings, and eventually a director’s cut DVD release. Hardy can’t really say the film is ignored any more. It’s rightly cited as a classic and is possibly the only British film made in the 70s that continues to receive five star reviews in film guides and listing magazines. Its own star, Edward Woodward, is now always asked about the film in interviews and recently made a short documentary with the film critic Mark Kermode where they revisited the original locations. Christopher Lee, who also appeared in the film, says it is his best role and can’t stop talking about it.
“Oh God! Oh no!”
The Wicker Man sits awkwardly alongside the horror films being made in Britain at the time, and this is probably why it has endured so well. For the first half, it’s possible to be forgiven for thinking that this isn’t horror at all. Woodward plays a devoutly religious policeman who’s lured to a remote Scottish island to investigate the disappearance of a young girl. He finds a cut off yet seemingly self sufficient pagan society, laughing at his Lord and indulging in sexual ritual (some of it looks fun, especially when Britt Ekland gets her kit off, but Woodward’s having none of it). The Wicker Man stands up to repeated late night viewings, both for its careful build up to a dreadful ending and for its most unusual and wonderful soundtrack. It’s the role of a lifetime for Woodward and probably Lee as well.
Surprisingly for a Hollywood movie, the new Wicker Man doesn’t change an awful lot, although what it does change leads to its ultimate downfall. Cage plays a cop (Edward) who’s called to a remote island … yes it’s the same. But the alteration is that the missing girl (Rowan Woodward – geddit?) is revealed as his daughter, thus altering the original premise that the policeman – a king-like, willing fool – was pure for sacrifice (a virgin). Director Neil LaBute also decides to make his island a feminist nightmare – run by women where the men are mute and dominated. This is one of the reasons why the film was slated, especially as Cage enjoys throwing a few punches, and it’s difficult to defend this plot change, although it was effective to have a woman (Ellen Burstyn) in the Lee role.
But I found the reception to this Wicker Man far too unkind. There is an underlying creepiness to the film, and the end is almost as effective as the original (I was on the edge of my seat because I really thought they were going to fudge it and have Cage rescued). And really strangely, there are a few fleeting references to Don’t Look Now with Cage pursuing a small child in red. Perhaps they forgot at times which film in the original double bill they were remaking. Now this film has earned its place in late night tv slots, I suppose LaBute will take Hardy’s place in moaning about its treatment. Although I can’t see this one being hailed as a classic in 35 years. But everyone who loves The Wicker Man, the 1973 one, should give it a chance.
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