The top 25 human horror films - Part 1

Morning all,

Having put NO MONSTERS ALLOWED out there under the bracket of 'human horror', I thought it'd be fun to explore what this concept means and some of the other examples of this that are out there. And so today I'm glad to present the first of five blogs, which will be counting down the best 25 human horror movies. The one thing I would say before I get cracking is that throughout this list I have tried to avoid what might be some of the more obvious selections and focus on work that may be a bit less-known and hopefully may just reveal a treat or two for readers of this blog.

Interestingly, this first part seems to focus on titles with an element of grim and macabre humour, and features a couple of titles that have been highly controversial upon their release. I don't mind anything being controversial - the real problem I have is when things become gratuitous, and with the films in this list I would tend to very much argue that any of the more shocking content is necessary to the plot. Of course that may well be an element of individual taste, and individual standards, but there you go.

Just click on an individual title for more information on it anyway - this will lead you direct to the IMDB page for the movie.

Number Twenty-Five – GROTESQUE

Dare I say, a typical piece of Japanese Cinema madness. Grotesque is probably one of the shortest films I've watched – weighing in at barely over an hour – and also one that does have a number of flaws. But what the film does have that rescues it as a piece of viewing is a strange sense of fun amidst the gory torture that inhabits the most of it. The final scene is astounding visual, almost to the point of being cartoonish – one for those with strong stomachs and those who can take graphic scenes with a pinch of salt.

Number Twenty-Four – LUCKY

Macabre humour much? This dark little tale concerns struggling writer Millard Mudd, who lives a lonely life and is fighting a battle against deadlines and writers block. Into his life comes Lucky the dog, a pooch who happens to inspire his creativity again – by talking to him and giving him ideas. But as Lucky's demands grow and grow, they take Millard down a very dark path. This one contains one of my favourite film lines – see if you can spot it...

Number Twenty-Three – OTIS

I went into this film with pretty low expectations, but the style and delivery of this one made it superior to many that have come before. Otis is a trouble young man looking for love, and seeks it by kidnapping young girls and trapping them in his basement with the intent of wooing them through a series of dates. It's strange to feel any kind of sympathy for the bad guy in this kind of movie, but Otis has a strange sense of innocence that hangs around him, making him almost as tragic as his victims.

Number Twenty-Two – REDD INC./INHUMAN RESOURCES

A very entertaining Australian entry, with Nicholas Hope putting in a star turn as Thomas Reddman, a businessman convicted of murder but now escaped and determined to prove his innocence. His approach is to chain six employees to their desks and set them the task of proving his innocence. Unfortunately there are some heavy penalties for not meeting targets and turning out results... the only thing that stopped this film being a bit higher up the list was something of a silly ending.

Number Twenty-One – A SERBIAN FILM

One of the most controversial releases of recent years, and with good reason – I have to issue a public health warning with this one, as it is a severe and disturbing piece of work. Despite the nasty taste it left, and many genuinely uncomfortable moments while viewing, this is an arresting movie with some unique visuals and a brutal means of making its point about Serbian culture. If I were making a list of the most shocking films I'd ever seen, this would probably top the list - you have been warned!

We'll be back Wednesday of next week with numbers 16-20 on the list!

Cheers

Alex

Scardiff Report

Morning all,

Back last night for the inaugural Scardiff event (http://scardiff.co.uk/) and wanted to post a quick report on the event itself from our perspective. I'm greatly indebted to both Theresa Derwin and Adrian Middleton at Fringeworks/Nightwatch for all their support over the weekend, even though unfortunately the book we had planned to launch didn't arrive in time!

But I was still there with a box of No Monsters Allowed, and really looking forward to a fine day. The might storm that was promised didn't arrive, thankfully, and the journeys both there and back were very smooth. It was fantastic to arrive at 10am and see a fair queue forming outside the door - always a good sign for any event, and I'd add that this was a great crowd, particularly bearing in mind this is a first event. There's undoubtedly an appetite for horror in Cardiff, and an even bigger event next year would be no surprise at all given this initial success.

Although I did spend most of my day behind my desk (as is often the case when you're bookselling...), I was on the opening panel of the day at 11am with Anthony DP Mann and Dominic Brunt. Both great guys, really friendly, and a panel that I really enjoyed. The subject was 'Tropes of Horror', looking at some of those favourite old staples of the genre - vampires, zombies and werewolves. And some very interesting points made, including a good point about Twilight (and I'm sure you can imagine the reaction when that particular subject came up...) and plenty besides. I was also greatly heartened to see the turnout for this - the room was damn near full, which for 11am at any convention is fine going.

This was followed by our launch slot, which was originally intended to be for Knightwatch's Seven Deadly Sins anthology X7 (although we did have a few pre-orders for this, which was heartening) and eventually became something of a shop window for No Monsters Allowed. It's great to have the chance to talk a bit about the process of the book coming together, although of course my speech was somewhat improvised on the spot!

Back to the desk, and it was great fun to see a host of fantastic cosplay throughout the day - there were zombies in abundance, as you may have expected, but also some rather more obscure outfits - particularly like the nurse from the Silent Hill game and movies, although those scenes did always somewhat creep me out...

But overall I want to tip my hat to the organisers - really well organised, very smooth, a large and enthusiastic crowd and a crammed dealers room are all testament to just how good a job the whole team did. Big thanks to Mike Allwood, Wayne Simmons, Iz McAuliffe and anyone else involved in the running that I didn't get the chance to meet and say hit to on the day.

Our next launch activity for No Monsters Allowed will be at Derby's Central Library next Monday, 4th November, where I'll be joined by the wonderful Adam Craig for readings and Q+A. You can check that out at http://www.derby.gov.uk/leisure-and-culture/libraries/library-events/listen-while-you-lunch-with-writer-adam-craig-and-writer-alex-david/

Cheers!

Alex

FREEBIE FRIDAY is here!

Morning all,

It's Friday, and why not join us for a little light weekend reading? Every Friday from now until the end of the year - at least - we'll be posting either an extract or a full story from the NO MONSTERS ALLOWED anthology. There is some absolutely wonderful stuff coming up over the next ten or so weeks, and hopefully plenty to give you an appetite for 'human horror'...

We kick off this week with one of the very first stories I accepted for the anthology, FIVE AN HOUR, by Devan Goldstein. The thing that I immediately loved about this story was its macabre humour, and the sense that this is the kind of thing that could almost happen to anyone. Anyway, enjoy, and don't forget to drop by next Friday for more NO MONSTERS ALLOWED goodness!

Cheers

Alex

Five an Hour

by Devan Goldstein

My first day on the butterscotch line, they tell me I can eat five chews an hour.

Frank says, “That’s more than on the taffy line.” Frank works across from me. He and I box the butterscotches, fifty a box.

“If they’re so worried about money,” I ask, “why do they let us eat the candy at all?”

Frank throws ten or fifteen pieces into a box. Then he asks me if I know Kevin Mercer.

“No.”

“Kevin worked here for three months. Left a year ago, I guess, and opened up the hot dog stand outside. Know why he quit?”

“No.”

“Never ate the candy. Without the candy, this job sucks.”

I wonder how much worse this job could be than the one he has now. “I guess he eats the hot dogs,” I say.

My second week on the job, I start to make rules to pace myself. I’ve been throwing two or three butterscotches into my mouth at the top of each hour, and the long stretches after my rations run out have been murder. As the candy goes by on the line, it talks to every part of you: your hands, your nose, your soul.

The first rule I make is, one piece at a time. Last Friday, I told Frank I’ve got a big mouth, and he said, “If a whale worked the line, he’d get five an hour just like you. You think he’d bitch about his big mouth?”

I didn’t know if whales bitched, I told him, but did he have to be so rude?

The second rule is, stick to some kind of schedule. At first, I think I should have one butterscotch every twelve minutes. But then I think of Swagger, and how slow the strippers there unwrap themselves, the good ones anyway, and make you wait for it. So maybe I’ll have one piece at the one-minute mark, then wait for at the half-hour, then one every ten minutes for the rest of the hour.

I ask Frank which system he thinks will work better.

“I just eat them when I eat them,” Frank says. “But everybody’s different.”

“You must have seen guys try different ways, though. Who’s worked here the longest?”

Frank looks at me like I just dumped his box of butterscotches onto the floor, and then says, “I have.”

By the end of my third week, I have tried five different schedules, and even messed around with eating two pieces at a time again. But the problem isn’t the schedule. It’s the candies. Too many of them go by. It just makes you want endless chewy butterscotch.

On a break, I tell these things to Marcus, the floor manager. Then I ask him: What if somebody sent the butterscotch rations down the caramel line, instead, and the taffy down the butterscotch line, and the caramel down the taffy line? That way, we’d all get excited when the candies we could eat came by, but we wouldn’t care about the ones we were cutting or wrapping or boxing. We could store up candies, too, like a bank account.

“A bank account,” Marcus says. Then he tells me to go get a hot dog.

“I hate hot dogs,” I say.

“Then just eat the bun,” he says, and I do, wishing he’d listen to my idea like I listened to his.

Over the next few days, I bring in different things to chew on in between pieces of candy. I like the springiness of balloons, but Frank complains about how loud they squeak between my teeth. A piece of my old brown belt makes less noise, but the leather makes my tongue sting by lunchtime. Silly Putty disintegrates in ten minutes, and I pick it out from the spaces around my teeth for the rest of the day. I probably swallow half of it down with my butterscotch rations.

And anyway, nothing replaces the candy, nothing makes me want it less, not even for the ten minutes between late-in-the-hour butterscotches.

Frank and I hardly talk anymore, but one day I ask him, “You ever try quitting the candy?”

He says, “This job sucks without the candy. Only reason to quit the candy is to quit the job.”

I know he’s right. You can’t quit the candy.

Soon, I start to think about the candy in a different way. I imagine naked fat women swimming through grain silos full of butterscotches. I think of my grandfather’s anal medicine, and I wonder if stuffing butterscotches up my ass would keep me from wanting them so bad, or if they have to hit your taste buds to work.

Then, I have an idea: I could easily fill two boxes at a time, one box with my left hand, and one with my right, switching every so often to make up for the difference in speed between my two hands. If I can fill two boxes, I should get double rations.

The next morning, I wait in the parking lot to tell Frank my idea.

When he opens his car door, I say, “I could fill two boxes at a time, and get double rations.”

Frank looks at me the way Marcus did when he told me to eat a hot dog bun. Then he starts to walk away.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“Inside,” he says. “so I can do my job and then go back home.”

I walk after him, and put my hand on his shoulder. “Frank, wait.”

As he brushes my hand away, I notice how bony his shoulder feels, like I could crumble it in my hand. And if I did, he couldn’t work the butterscotch line anymore. Marcus would have no choice but to ask me to fill two boxes at a time.

Then I grab the collar of his jacket and pull it hard. Frank falls onto the pavement. He looks up at me, and where his eyes usually are I see two unwrapped butterscotches. As I reach for the one on the right, I think, if he has one butterscotch in each eye, his head must be full of them.

Devan Goldstein’s writing has appeared in The Collagist, The Rumpus, A List Apart, and elsewhere. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his wife and son, and works as a web usability and strategy consultant 

Copyright © Devan Goldstein 2012

If you fancy grabbing yourself a copy of this, and indeed 19 more stories of human horror, then you can grab the anthology at http://www.lulu.com/shop/alex-davis/no-monsters-allowed/paperback/product-21240457.html

Cheers!

Alex

A face for radio!

Afternoon all,

Just another swift piece of news as per No Monsters Allowed - I shall be appearing on BBC Radio Derby next week on Andy Potter's show. So tune in if you can at 2pm on Wednesday the 30th to hear me talk about the anthology, and plenty besides I expect!

You can find out how to tune in - and I believe listen again if you miss it live - at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radioderby

Later this week we'll be starting out our series of 'Freebie Fridays', although given some of the stories I was tempted to go with 'Freaky Fridays'... anyway, each Friday over the next few months we'll be getting an insight into the collection with some extracts - and even full stories - from No Monsters Allowed just to whet your appetite. What more could you ask for?

Back again soon...

Cheers

Alex

Launch-type goodness!

Afternoon all,

Delighted to deliver some more good news on No Monsters Allowed today, as there are two launch events on the very near horizon for the book! Both very different in nature, and given how things are shaping up, I expect these two to be the tip of the iceberg - so nil desperandum if you can't make either of these, as hopefully we'll be rolling up at a bookshop or art venue near you soon!

SCARDIFF 2013: http://scardiff.co.uk/
SUNDAY 27TH OCTOBER, CARDIFF, MERCUSE HOLLAND HOUSE HOTEL
10am onwards
This'll be the first time physical copies of NO MONSTERS ALLOWED will be on sale, and I'll also be doing some panelling at the event if you fancied coming to hear me speak on horror fiction. Funnily enough, I'm on a panel about monsters, so I might just be the cat among the pigeons there...

LISTEN WHILE YOU LUNCH: http://www.derby.gov.uk/leisure-and-culture/libraries/library-events/listen-while-you-lunch-with-writer-adam-craig-and-writer-alex-david/
MONDAY 4TH NOVEMBER, DERBY, CENTRAL LIBRARY
12:00pm-1pm
Me oh my, aren't Monday afternoons tedious? Well they needn't be! If you find yourself at a loose end, come down and join us for a lunchtime session at Derby Central Library, where I'll be joined by ADAM CRAIG, who'll be talking about his story 'The Silence After Winter' and post-apocalyptic fiction in general. Again, we'll have copies for sale at the event. Oh, and do feel free to bring your sandwiches along with you...

Expect lots more news in the next few weeks about launch activities, and hopefully will see some of you at these two events anyway!

Cheers

Alex

No Monsters Allowed - an introduction...

Afternoon all,

An introduction in more senses than one, as I'm not only introducing this blog today, but also sharing my own introduction to NO MONSTERS ALLOWED.

But let's start at the beginning - NO MONSTERS ALLOWED is an anthology from Dog Horn Publishing, and one that I had the pleasure of editing. As the title suggests, you won't see a single vampire, werewolf, zombie, goblin or ghoul in here. Each story is about some distinctly human element of horror, from war to work, and family to friends. And I must say I'm really pleased with the end result, which takes the theme in directions that I would never have guessed at. 

So, in this first post, I thought I'd share my editors introduction to the collection with you. And as the days and weeks wear on, you can expect exclusive extracts, interview, giveaways and much more from NO MONSTERS ALLOWED.

So, without any further ado...

INTRODUCTION

from Alex Davis

I have to start by saying that this is an anthology I have wanted to do for a long time. The title No Monsters Allowed has been rattling around in my head for many years, and the concept came around for a very simple reason – I can’t remember the last time a monster really scared me in any form of fiction.

As a young horror reader I worked my way through many of the books that deliver classic monsters – James Herbert’s The Rats, Stephen King’s IT and of course the many Cthulhu tales of HP Lovecraft. I also saw more than my share of horror B-movies presenting all manner of weird and wonderful monsters.

However, over the course of time, I’ve very much found my taste changing towards what I’ve grown to dub ‘human horror’. What another person can do to you can be just as terrifying – if not more so – than what any werewolf, vampire or zombie can inflict. For me, that comes from the feeling that you don’t necessarily expect such a thing from your fellow human. The classic monsters, by their very definition, are evil. There’s no shock when a zombie tries to eat your brains, a vampire tries to drink your blood, or a werewolf goes to bite and transform you. That’s expected. A human being – well, human beings are surely good, on the whole? Aren’t they?

Perhaps so. But you can’t apply such a sweeping statement to all of humanity, and even less so when humanity finds itself placed in extreme situations. It’s a common thread in what disparagingly gets called ‘torture porn’, a genre that for me has ironically brought some of the most affecting films of the last ten years. Movies like the Saw series, Vile and The Tortured have played with this concept in a manner that is both intelligent and harrowing. The fear doesn’t come from the extreme nature of the violence itself, but the thought that it has been willingly inflicted by another person somewhere. There is also a lot to be said for the psychological aspect of horror – something foreign horror cinema does very ably, as evidenced by pieces such as The Squad, Ringu and Hierro.

What delighted me in particular with No Monsters Allowed is the range of submissions that I received. The term ‘human horror’ would of course seem to lend itself naturally to serial killers or revenge stories, but for me there is much more to it than that, something this anthology ably demonstrates. ‘Bred in the Bone’ and ‘An Honest Woman’s Child’ tell of the horror of family relations that are broken beyond recognition. ‘Puppyberries’ and ‘Special Girl’ tell of the horrors that may lurk within childhood. ‘Five an Hour’ and ‘The Algorithm’ explore the horrors that lie within the human brain itself, under the right – or the wrong – circumstances. There are stories here that explore the horrors that can exist within the workplace, within politics, within friendships. Each of these stories takes a very different approach to its horror, but keeps the human element at the very heart.

So if the invasion of monsters has left you weary and jaded, there might just be something here to perk you up a bit.

And remember to just be that bit careful of the people around you...

Alex Davis

Wolverhampton, October 2013

If you'd like to find out more about No Monsters Allowed, or pick up your copy, just drop by http://www.lulu.com/shop/alex-davis/no-monsters-allowed/paperback/product-21240457.html

Cheers!

Alex