If I didn't exist, how would you invent me?

Hmm, tough one!

Well, years of watching horror flicks have informed me that the primary way to create life is sew together corpses and bring the resultant new person to life with the power of what Catweazle used to call 'elec-trickery'.

Now many variations on Baron Frankenstein's methods have been presented over the years, but I'd definitely go with the classic Ken Strickfaden equipment - all whirling dials and Tesla coils and harnessing the power of lightning. There be none of that arsing about with electric eels as seen in Cuddly Ken's mendaciously titled Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) - it's be the power of heavens all the way baby!

What? You don't want to be a suture covered, mute, violent, hulking patchwork beast? Now that's a surprise!

Well, we could use the alternate process of life creation developed by Frankenstein's one-time collaborator, Dr Septimus Pretorious. On the plus side, you'd be fully human, looking normal and have some power of speech. The downside is you'd be only several inches high and have to live in a bell jar...

What? That's a no-no as well? Just think how cheap accommodation would be! No? Still not convinced?

Well, the modern digital era does allow the creation of people with a few mouse clicks. I could very easily make up an entirely new person by opening Facebook, Twitter and Google+ pages... However, you would of course just be what techies call 'a sock puppet' under my control. Not exactly ideal, as I can barely run my own life, let alone some one elses!

And just to be clear, we are ruling out actual physical sock puppets aren't we? That's a shame... I have some nice bits of felt and some natty buttons in my craft box...

Well then, I'm out of answers... Oh hang a minute though... There is this old Arabian style lamp I picked up the other day... I'll just give a rub...

Bingo! One puff of smoke and a big blue fella doing a poor Robin Williams impersonation later, and now you exist! Hurrah!

Hope that is satisfactory! Right must dash, this hyperactive bugger wants another two wishes from me...

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If you had unlimited lego, space and time, what would you build?

Ah Lego! How I loved thee! But I built wardroids and space cities, an Tie Fighter and X Wing for my Star Wars figures, a Nautilus style submarine for my little Lego fellas and even a motorised K9... One of the earliest toys I remember owning and one of the last to go before hormones demanded I put aside childish things... Bestest toy ever invented? I think so...

Now the possibilities offered by unlimited bricks, time and space are damn near infinite! And while I'd be tempted to to attempt some arty cleverness in the vein of Nathan Sawaya, a more appropriate answer would be the project I'd have done given this opportunity as a nipper...

And that would be a massive undertaking inspired by one of my other childhood obsessions, the scifi TV sagas of Mr Gerry Anderson... which I never had nearly enough bricks for back then...

Yes, I'd build Lego Mini Figure scaled versions of all the Thunderbirds and their super secret base, Tracy Island. But I wouldn't stop there... I'd go on to translate his whole universe in little plastic bricks; from Captain Scarlet's Cloudbase in the heavens, the World Aquanaut Security Patrol HQ at Marineville in the seas, and the moonbases of UFO and Space 1999! All with their attendant vehicles of course!

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What words do you live by?

'Klaatu barada nikto!'

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You can choose any two people, real or fictional, to watch having sex, for either comedic or erotic purposes, which two and why?

Well considering the last US version of Godzilla turned the King of the Monster into the Queen, I've often wondered whether Toho's King Kong Vs Godzilla could have gone down a different route... Just imagine... cities smashed in the throes of titanic passion!

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Horror Movie Remakes! Love them or hate them? Are there any genuinely good ones? Rant or rave, the choice is yours...

Another excellent question from Mr Cyberschzoid!

If there’s one thing guaranteed to summon the rage and ire of horror fans, and cinema buffs in general if we’re being honest, it is the subject of remakes. But the whole business of remaking movies has been around nearly as long as cinema itself. The earliest movies were very short affairs and naturally when film became established as a popular entertainment medium, it was only natural that stories that had previously been on screen as what we now would call shorts, returned as full length features.

And as the medium changed over the years, with every innovation and expansion of the cinematic art, old flicks were retooled for the new age. Hence silent hits were remade, but now with sound, and leap forward a few decades and something similar happens with the advent of colour film. However it’s only relatively recently that remakes have become the movie fan’s bête noir.

Now while there is the old argument that some stories are so timeless in their themes and so ageless in their appeal that they deserve to be retold for each passing generation, in recent years such claims have worn a little thin. For while the ‘timeless classic’ theory holds up well when applied to cinematic adaptations of literary works – after all, rarely is the first translation of a text to the silver screen the best * – in the general context of Hollywood remaking anything and everything, from classic movies to kitsch TV shows, and increasingly looking towards books and comics as a source of scripts, it does look like Tinsel Town is rapidly running out of ideas of its own. And currently it would seem that it’s the horror genre that is the prime target for alot of lazy cultural strip mining.

Now while it’s generally a safe bet that any remake is going to be inferior to the original, in the horror genre in particular we’ve seen this rule broken many times. To begin with as I’ve observed before, every Frankenstein flick since 1931 owes more to James Whale’s movie than Mary Shelley’s original novel, including allegedly back to the source productions such as Frankenstein – The True Story (1973) and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994). Such has been the power of this Universal classic that one could argue that virtually every rendition of the tale of the scientist and his Creature has been a remake of Whale’s two Frankenstein features.

Moving further afield, Hammer Films as well as bring Dracula and Frankenstein back to the cinemas, resurrected the Mummy with Universal’s permission to great effect. And lest we forget, Hammer made their name as purveyors of cinematic terror by delivering quality movies that remade the BBC Quatermass serials for the big screen.

But perhaps it was in the 1980s that we saw some of the best horror remakes ever made. Firstly in 1982 John Carpenter remade the classic The Thing From Another World (1951) and later in 1986, with similar body horror stylings, David Cronenberg masterfully reinterpreted another scifi-horror from that decade, The Fly (1958). Both these movies are all the proof you need that remakes aren’t automatically rubbish, and that in the right hands you can get a classic that equals the original.

And if that‘s not enough ‘80s goodness to convince you, consider that two other iconic films from that decade, Alien and An American Werewolf in London. Scott’s film borrows wholesale from 1959’s It! The Terror From Beyond Space with more than a dash of Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires (1965), while John Landis’ lycanthrope classic is heavily based on Universal’s The Wolf Man. Although it’s true neither of these modern classics are strictly remakes, both as close to their sources as either The Thing or The Fly, and arguably are in fact closer to being pure remakes than Carpenter and Cronenberg’s reimaginings.

But it’s also fair to say that for every successful horror remake there are many that crash and burn, dozens more if we count assorted rip-offs and cash-ins as unofficial remakes. However despite the number of horror remakes that are currently irritating genre fans, not to mention all those in years gone by, there are two important factors to remember before allowing the blood to reach boiling point and spewing black bile everywhere.

Firstly although the hit rate for horror remakes may be low, they must be appraised in the context of cinema as a whole. The key question here is not how many times a remake succeeds in bringing something worthy of the original to the table, but how original movies are any good in the first place. Let’s face it, the majority of movies in any genre that are currently screening aren’t destined to be hallowed as classics of their kind. Most are average, some entertaining but forgettable, and more than a few downright poor. When the percent of classic or quality films being produced from original material is so low, then we cannot expect remakes to perform any better.

Secondly, not matter how heavily hyped or how poor a remake turns out to be, it isn’t like they are coming round our houses to confiscate the original, and erasing all record of their existence in a Philip K Dick style exercise in reality editing. Though from the howls of outrage over the recent Friday 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street remakes you could be forgiven that was exactly what Platinum Dunes had done. Now while neither film would be gracing a top ten list of any stripe from yours truly, neither were they the cinematic abominations that many voices in fandom painted them as. (See here and here for my in-depth analyses of both these flicks).

Admittedly both had their flaws but equally they were far better than many of the sequels in either franchise. And I think that if we are honest, a lot of the ire comes from looking back with rose tinted specs; forgetting that both originals were low budget potboilers, and that while despite striking a chord at the time and becoming seminal films in the genre, neither were exactly masterpieces of cinematic craft. However despite their technical short comings, what Craven and Cunningham’s movies did have was originality back in the day and therefore the remakes are bound to seem inferior for older fans who know who Jason and Freddy are.

However that said, things grow somewhat murkier when dealing with remakes of films that are bona fide classics. Some films just seem to capture lightning in bottle and to any film fan it seems like outright foolishness to try and do it again. Recent horror remakes in category are, of course, Gus Van Sant’s Psycho (1998), Marcus Nispel’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), Neil Labute’s The Wicker Man (2006), and Rob Zombie’s Halloween (2007).

Whereas the remakes of Friday 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street were optimistically anticipated in some quarters and generally hauled over the red hot coals of fandom for delivering disappointing results, the above quartet generated storms of fury from the outset. Simply the fact that some studio boneheads would have the hubris to try and remake classic movies that even those outside the horror world recognise as genuine masterpieces of cinema, seemed to many to be something akin to artistic vandalism.

However conceptual rage aside, although none can be counted as a qualified success, as it turns out though only one of these was actually a real stinker. Nispel and Zombie’s movies both have a degree of merit despite both taking a wrong headed approach to the subject matter, whereas Van Sant’s film seemed to more like a film school experiment that proved by copying Hitchcock shot for shot, there was more to more to directing genius than his camera setups. As for The Wicker Man debacle, suffice to say that if the most convincing thing in your film is Nic Cage’s hair piece then you are in a whole lot of trouble.

Of course, there is a fifth movie we could add to this category - Zack Synder’s 2004 remake of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Despite the usual outrage the announcement of this project spawned, when the movie came out it actually got a rather warm reception. Yes, it wasn’t a patch on the original but the horror world generally seemed to quite like it and roiling clouds of anger quickly evaporated. I’m not entirely sure why this was, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that virtually every zombie flick post 1978 being effectively an unofficial remake or sequel to Romero’s film whereas the other four movies are much more a-one-of-kind cinema experiences.

But as misguided as the remakes from Nispel, Van Sant and Zombie were, at least they appeared to have some reverence and understanding for the parent movies, whereas Labute’s film showed itself to be the product of cine-illiterate morons; I’m surprised they didn’t go the whole hog and call it The Wicker Dude…

But as utterly egregious as that beehive of nonsense was, I still have my cherished editions of the Robin Hardy original and I doubt there are many who would claim the remake is better. In fact, there is a certain amount of pleasure to be derived from the fact that the remake is so widely mocked; and rather than tarnishing the original film, Labute’s turkey seems to have enhanced its reputation.

And this is perhaps the point many of us forget – no matter the quality of a remake, at the end of the day it will bring younger film fans to the originals. In the realm of horror, it’s all too easy to assume that the next generation are only interested in torture porn and that they are never going to appreciate the history of weird cinema as we do. But this is blatantly false – the teen market, that the current horror remakes are aimed at, is the first generation that has grown up with the internet where there’s thousands of film sites to clue them in and it has never been easier to track down even the most obscure of old movies. And if the originals that the contemporary remakes are allegedly bastardising so badly are indeed as good as we think they are, the next generation will take them to their hearts in exactly the same way that horror fans of my generation embraced the movies of Universal, AIP, Hammer and Amicus that were made before our time.

* the exception being the Lon Chaney Snr version of The Phantom of the Opera (1925) – even though it is a silent, black & white picture, it’s still the best translation of Gaston Leroux’s novel to the screen!

If you could launch your own horror TV show what would it be called and what would it be about?

Horror and television has had a somewhat patchy relationship over the years, and while there have been some great successes, many horror shows have died a death. And a recurring problem down the years has been that the horror genre’s prime objective of terrifying and/or disturbing its audience often conflicts with the contemporary ethos of what is acceptable to broadcast. Hence when the winds of the zeitgeist are blowing in the direction of safe, sanitised, family-friendly viewing at all times, horror telly has its fangs and claws blunted.

And it’s very telling that the titans of terrifying TV are largely one-off affairs: either TV movies such as Ghostwatch, The Stone Tape, The Night Stalker and Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, or particular episodes of anthology shows such as The Twilight Zone or Tales of the Unexpected. Partly this is due to the twitchy nature of TV execs who want viewers to tune in week after week for a predictably popular recipe of more of the same, rather than scaring them out of their wits and risk not only them not tuning in again but floods of angry complaints. However it’s also tied up with the fact that in the horror genre familiarity tends to rob the material of its fear factor.

So then bearing the above trends in mind, my first thought would be to head into anthology territory. But perhaps not a weekly show running in traditional seasons, as this carries the risk of the audience becoming at first too comfortable with the format and secondly bored with it. After all, history shows that as captivating as shows like The Twilight Zone, Tales of the Unexpected, The Outer Limits or Tales From the Darkside were, after a while audiences get wise to the tropes and twist-in-the-tale endings, and what was once startling and fresh becomes run of the mill and they stop tuning in.

Instead I’d take my cue from the 1970s BBC: when the subject of most frightening TV arises there’s nearly always several stories from their Ghost Stories For Christmas. Now this was a series that ran throughout that decade, regularly delivered top notch chills and yet comprised of but a single episode per year, screened late upon a Yuletide night. So then I’d institute a similar approach – like this highly respected series we’d adapt classic tales of terror for the screen, and to the same high standards with visionary direction, quality cinematography and respected thespians. But as well as bringing the stories of vintage favourites like MR James to the screen, I’d also delve into the work of more recent masters such as Ramsey Campbell. But rather than doing just one production a year I’d extend the format so you’d have a delicious dose of dread several times a year. Obviously Christmas would be one slot, but I’d add productions for Halloween, Midsummer and Walpurgis Night (May Day Eve) so there’d be some ghoulish goings-on for every season. And perhaps we could call it “Strange Quarters” or perhaps “Hung, Drawn and Quartered”!

Of course some of you may consider that proposal something of a cop out as it’s effectively a string one-off rather than a proper ongoing TV series…

Now a more traditional show has many more pitfalls to dodge. Recent entries into televisual terror such as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Supernatural and True Blood have delivered monsters and blood aplenty, and are a whole lot of fun, they are not exactly terrifying are they? Even harder edged fare such as Dexter and The Walking Dead, while they are gripping television they aren’t particularly a source of sleepless nights either.

The trouble is with the basic set-up of many horror shows has heroes dealing with assorted ghouls and maniacs every week. And so, the audience soon stops fearing the monsters as it’s pretty much a given that our lead characters are going to save the day every week. The classic example of this is Carl Kolchak, the grandfather of all our current TV heroes investigating the weird. His frist two appearances were in the TV movie The Night Stalker and its sequel The Night Strangler, two highlights in the canon of TV terror. However when he got his own series, (entitled Kolchak, The Night Stalker naturally), the suspension of disbelief necessary for chills to flourish became increasingly strained. The first two movies traded heavily on the fact that this downtrodden journalist had uncovered the existence of strange beings which no one else seriously believed in, and so it was difficult to sustain this dramatic device week in week out and fans were soon calling the show ‘Kolchak’s Monster of the Week’.

And this is a continuing problem for horror shows. Both Buffy and Supernatural fail in the fear stakes because with every subsequent series our protagonists move further away from being isolated heroes dealing with unknown threats. Instead they inhabit a fictional universe that is heavily populated by supernatural forces, and not only are the monsters commonplace but for every weekly menace there’s a handy expert or occult tome that has all the answers. And additionally over time our heroes are frequently are developing super powers.

Now a key factor to generating fear, in my opinion at least, is that your source of terror should be mysterious – the audience, if not the heroes themselves, should be thinking “what the hell is that!” rather than “oh, vampire again eh”. And equally there shouldn’t be well known stock solutions i.e. “Werewolves? Pass the silver bullets”. And while I enjoy exercises in alternative world building, often horror shows go too far; for example Buffy and Angel made their monsters so familiar, not only are they no big shakes on the shiver scales, but they were being represented as paranormal minority groups rather than avatars of the Other. It’s very telling that by far and away the scariest episode of Buffy featured a wholly original and enigmatic enemy, the superbly creepy Gentlemen.

Hence a format that encourages an overly familiar monster of the week is right out. And another common curse of TV shows is having no defined end points. Now while on paper this doesn’t seem a problem for a show with an open ended format but unlike Dexter and True Blood where each season is a serial telling one story, these nearly all episodic series often have a loose story arc to ensure there is some sort of season finale. And here’s where the problem lies – every season needs a bigger and better threat to round off with, and so if the show lasts more than three years you end up with characters joking about how many times they’ve saved the world and what number apocalypse this is.

Therefore it’s vital I think to have a game plan to stop this kind of dramatic escalation draining the life out of a series, whether it’s a built-in reset switch like regeneration in Doctor Who or a carefully choreographed story line spread over several seasons like Fringe is doing. And the most egregious error of all of course is claiming that there is such a plan when really there ain’t (“pulling a Lucas” as we call it round here) and then finding you’ve written yourself into a corner - yes Lost and Battlestar Galactica I AM looking at you. As the old adage goes a failure to plan is a plan to fail…

So then bearing all the above in mind, what’s my pitch for an on-going horror show? The setting contemporary Britain – though globe trotting could be in order in later series. The characters - a motley bunch of ordinary folk drawn together by unravelling the initial weird happenings who end up forming a group of investigators. Note there’d be no shadowy secret organisations, no magic computers/technology, and no special powers. The supernatural strangeness they encounter must be dealt with the same resources you and I would have: there’d be no font of occult knowledge instead they’d just have the same books as you’d find in the local library or bookstore.

Rather than a different menace every week, I’d divide seasons up into a mix of two and three parters; a series of cases that lead into each other. For example the series would begin with a character moving into a house that appears to be haunted, additional characters are introduced as they investigate and the case would close with the realisation that there appears to be similar outbreaks of high weirdness occurring in the same area. And through investigating these subsequent cases, gradually the full cast would be assembled over the first season – I’d definitely follow the pattern set by Blakes’ 7 which takes its time building up both its team of heroes and their milieu rather go the Firefly route that drops you in the deep end with a large crew and an unfamiliar universe (which Fox dickery aside, I heavily suspect was partly why it didn’t pick up enough viewers). And all of this would lead to a finale tackling the root source of the strangeness. Season Two who see our merry band discovering that the events in their area are not an isolated incident…

But although the case would build upon one another, we would be avoiding leading up to apocalypse scenarios. Instead the real climaxes would be discovering new information or evidence that redefines the nature of the weirdness they are facing. And instead of exploring the familiar pop culture mythos of vampires, werewolves and zombies, instead we be delving into the strange stories you find in Forteana and authentic folklore. There is a wealth of untapped material here – for example the British mythical beast, the woodwose (a medieval being of the forests that is kind of part way between Sasquatch and the Green Man), the winged serpents and wyrms that terrorised the Middle Ages, or the hosts of Faerie who are a far cry from fey humanised elves of Tolkein or the cute butterfly winged nymphs of children’s books.

But like William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki stories or HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, these old legends would prove to have new and bizarre origins that leave our heroes and hopefully the audience too questioning the nature of reality. A good reference point here is perhaps the finest of the weird detective shows Sapphire & Steel where what begins are a conventional ghost story leads to strange and unusual reveals such as The Shape, a being that haunts every photograph that has ever been taken… And just to maximise the unexpected, we should borrow an additional leaf from Carnacki’s book, and ensure that every case doesn’t turn out to have a supernatural cause; ordinary human skulduggery should be uncovered, just to keep the audience guessing.

Now aside from a lack of the usual tropes to aid our investigators, I’d be careful to ensure that the cast cannot easily be divided into heroes and sidekicks. Being a bunch of ordinary folk with no experts or authorities, dramatic tension could be built up by having them tussle for who’s in charge or debating how to deal with a particular problem. Additional such a group of characters that are given equal importance in the story would make it easy to bring in new cast members when the show needs some new blood, and you couldn't assume any one character won’t suffer a terrible fate because they get the more screen time…

Right then, all we need now is a title… how about ‘Shadowplay’?

I suspect that Jim Moon doesn't actually exist, as I've only ever seen one picture of him (or someone claiming to be him). How can we be certain that Jim Moon is a real person, and not just a clever ruse to lure innocent listeners into a web of dreams??

So asked Mr or Miss Anonymous...

Heh heh heh! I know how you feel... I often doubt my own existence! But in the wise words of Slartibartfast "that's just perfectly normal paranoia, everybody in the Universe has that!"

Defining what actually exists is an increasingly tricky question the closer you look at it. You've all heard the old saying "If a tree in a forest falls down and there's nobody around, does it make a sound?" - well quantum mechanics suggests that if there's no one to observe an event it doesn't actually happen, fnord so actually there is no tree or forest in the first place if there's nobody there! In such a universe, are any of us truly real?

Hence it’s very hard to prove I actually exist! I can assure you I do but if I was fictional then I would say that! Of course if you take that view, then I must refer to the Good Bok, and quote the words of Our Lord Brian “Well what sort of chance does that give me?!?”

And as this is an anonymous question, all the Gentle Readers out there may indeed be wondering if in fact I actually posted this to myself, and hence what you are actually reading is the textual equivalent of a Punch and Judy show, orchestrated by a secretive cyber-mastermind who dwells in a clock tower.

You can perhaps take scepticism too far…

However I will say that if I were a fictional character striding about the real world, firstly I’d be up before the Beak in Literary Court in no time at all – just look what happened to Jerry O’Flynn!

Secondly and less obscurely, if I was a fiction then my tweeting would be far more interesting! It wouldn’t be “mmm toast and Blakes 7” but “Just fed Ninja #6 to piranhas for letting that man from the Diogenes Club access the complex” and “Receiving visitors from Dimension X – do they like jaffa cakes?”

Incidentally, there is actually more than one photo of me floating about. They do surface from time to time on my Twitterfeed but I don't overdo it. Partly because years of absorbing pop culture has taught me that when a creative person goes from 'look at what I produced' to 'look at me!' the quality of their output takes a nosedive... As an old mentor of mine used to say “it doesn’t matter what it claims on the label, it’s what’s in the tin that matters”

But if I'm honest it's mainly because I firmly believe I have a face for radio! Plus as most of my family and friends either aren't on the Facebooks, or if they are, don't use it very often, I don't put up lots of personal snaps up there.

Mind you, the concept of “luring innocent listeners into a web of dreams” is an intriguing one! Not entirely sure what that would entail – will ask the Fishers From Outside next time I encounter them…

Then again, if you switch on the news for five minutes these days, a world of dreams where interesting genre and cultish material is celebrated in a relaxed and hopefully amusing manner does look a far more pleasant place to dwell.

And if my assorted online ramblings may uphold such old school Reithan values of informing, inspiring and entertaining all at the same time, then I’m more than happy to lure in the unwary to a realm that is both a solace and a counterbalance to constant negativity, cynicism and vapid celebrity worship that pervades so much of the media :)

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What is your favourite horror movie magazine ever?

It would have to be The House of Hammer hands down!

Firstly it was an essential source for details on the history of Hammer back in the days before there were several shelves of tomes devoted to this most iconic of horror studios.

Secondly it delivered all the latest news from the world of horror - for example, this fine periodical introduced me to modern masters such as David Cronenberg and George Romero. There were great features and interviews too which broadened my cinematic horizons.

But perhaps best of all were the comic strips - gorgeous adaptations of Hammer classics and macabre twist-in-the-tail shorts introduced by the Cushing Van Helsing. Featuring top notch art from the likes of Brian Bolland, Brian Lewis and John Bolton, these strips were a godsend in the days before the home video age; these comics were the only way to experience these classic movies, at least until the gods of late telly would oblige with a repeat.

And this delightful package was loving wrapped up in lavish painted covers. Iconic, eye catching and often truly beautiful - you'd be hard pressed to find another mag with such a run of brilliant covers.

I'm still dreaming of the day when the entire run is reissued in handsome high quality hardback volumes...

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You are inadvertently caught rifling through a member of the opposite sex's underwear draw. You need to come up with an excuse fast. Think on your feet...

I'd say "Don't move an inch! I saw a giant spider from Metebelis Three go in here... there may be more! Slowly move backwards and get your back against the wall!"

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Favourite classic horror films? (anything before 1980)....

So many great films choose from, so few remaining memory cells! Ignoring that terrible feeling I'm forgetting some favorites, a random ten that occur to me right now would be - The Abominable Doctor Phibes, Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter, The Wolf Man, The Phantom of the Opera (silent Lon Chaney Snr version), Carnival of Souls, Dr Terror's House of Horrors, The Innocents, Night of the Demon, Bride of Frankenstein, and Dracula AD 1972 .

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What do you think is the best ever horror movie sequel?

So asked Cyberschizoid... Hold on to your hats, we waxed lyrical on this one...

Ah sequels, the great paradox of movie making! We always want another helping of a particularly cinematic delight and yet so often when the studios oblige we discover that actually we’ve had our fill! Of course for the genre fan there is a certain pleasure in watching every sequel squeezed out of an ailing franchise, born from an enticing cocktail of completism and schadenfreude. However contrary to the laws of diminishing returns, there are good horror sequels out there…

Going back to the golden days of Universal chillers, a strong case could be made for Dracula’s Daughter and even Son of Dracula being movies that actually eclipse the Tod Browning origin. The former is intelligent, moody and seemingly anticipates the artistic direction Val Lewton would take a few years later, while the latter serves up the vampiric thrills and dynamic action that Bela Lugosi's outing as the Count was sorely missing. However with only tenuous links to the original, for all their charms, neither can be considered full blooded sequels as they don’t really continue the story lines laid out in the first.

On the other paw, Larry Talbot’s second screen outing, Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, was scripted with close attention to the continuity established in both the original and to a lesser extent the preceding Frankenstein saga, however despite the extraordinary fondness I have for this first creature crossover, it doesn’t really match either The Wolf Man or Frankenstein. And the same is true of many returning cinematic fiends from that era; the Mummy, the Invisible Man, Dr X, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and King Kong… And indeed this pattern holds true for many franchises after the black and white age.

Messrs Pinhead and Myers never quite topped their debuts, whereas Fred Krueger, despite an impressive Part III and a New Nightmare couldn't equal his first foray into our nightmares. Mrs Voorhees’ little boy is a different matter, actually starting his cinematic career proper in Friday 13th Part II. And despite strong competition from the gritty Part IV – the Final Chapter and the tongue in cheek Part VI – Jason Lives, ultimately Jason is still just following in his dear departed mother’s footsteps – a good sequel in our book should expand the story not just retell the first.

Now on this front, Hammer probably faired best. For example, their decision to concentrate on the exploits of the Baron rather than his creature in their Frankenstein cycle yielded a plethora of interesting stories. But as fun as the likes of Frankenstein Created Woman are, they do all largely follow the pattern laid down in Curse of Frankenstein - Peter Cushing builds a monster which runs amok. But also the continuity between the films becomes somewhat fragile; yes it’s more Frankenstein adventures that the viewer can connect but they don’t exactly neatly fit together as chapters in a saga.

However in their Draculain endeavours, they did produce on the finest sequels ever made -Dracula Prince of Darkness - which for many achieves that rare height of actually topping the parent movie. However as magnificent as this movie is, and a worthy contender for best horror sequel, for us there is one teeny tiny bat in the ointment, namely that Dracula never speaks. Maybe it’s was too much Tomb of Dracula in our formative years but we miss Chris Lee’s baroque tones!

Moving onto the other big guns, while Evil Dead II is an intoxicating blend of the macabre, the comical and the downright mad, we not entirely sure it counts as a sequel, given that Raimi essentially reboots the storyline completely afresh with a simplified version of the tale told in the original in the first reel.

In a similar nitpicking fashion, we also disqualifying Aliens for the best horror sequel crown too. Why? Well as fine as Jim Cameron’s flick is, and in many regards it does do everything right – continuing continuity with the first film and also expanding the storyline – our problem is that the second instalment of the xenomorph story is an action film first, a sci-fi flick second, a monster movie third and so horror is very much pushed into the background. Now calm down, we love Aliens to bits but it does lacks the creeping dread and gothic-in-space atmosphere that made Ridley Scott’s original so remarkable. The trouble is the titular creatures are reduced to dumb drones, whereas we reckon the beast in the first film could have took out the colony and those lunkhead marines all on its own.

Now George A Romero’s Night of the Living Dead holds special place in sequeldom’s heart; aside from the continuing saga helmed by Romero himself, it’s also spawned two alternative follow-ups, Dan O’Bannon’s horror comedy classic Return of the Living Dead and Luci Fulci’s Zombi II aka Zombie Flesh Eaters, which turn begat sequels of their own. Of course as good as the Fulci and O’Bannon movies were, easily the best is George’s own Dawn of the Dead. Masterfully expanding on the zombie apocalypse he created in the first film, exploring a wide variety of themes and subtexts and tying with Hitchock’s Psycho in terms of influence on horror cinema, Dawn of the Dead is a masterpiece. And it’s only the fact that there is no character continuity – after all Dawn of the Dead is set in the same universe but none of the original cast survived from Night of the Living Dead - that keeps it off the top spot…

Astute readers will probably have guessed our nomination for best horror sequel by virtue of the fact we didn’t mention it earlier when talking of the Universal Monsters… Yes, we’re giving the crown to James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein. This follow up feature is flawless in every regard, it seamlessly follows on from Frankenstein, brings plenty of fresh characters, plot elements and themes and equals if not outdoes the first in overall quality. It’s one of the earliest film sequel in Hollywood history, a textbook example of how to craft another cinematic chapter, and is still one of the best follow-ups ever created.

What species of dinosaur are the current political party leaders?

Well Mr Anonymous, now there's a question! And after much bickering, we decided on the following choices...

So cry havoc and unleash the dogs of satire!

Deputy PM and England's best known liar, Nick Clegg would be a brontosaurus! And yes we know that technically these beasts should be called apatosauruses nos jours, but old habits die harder than Bruce Willis.

And why? Well, the brontosaurus turned out to be something of a disappointment didn't it? See not unlike the Lib Dems already eh! Where were we? Oh yeah, brontosaurus = big let down. Because when you first encounter these prehistoric behemoths, you imagine it being something huge,impressive and powerful, fully deserving of the translation of its name 'thunder lizard' .

However contrary to their cinematic appearances, these beasts didn't charge about the place, making the earth shake and scoffing cavemen... Sorry kiddiewinks, Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen lied to you; actually all brontosauruses did was loaf about in foetid swamps, chomping on muck-drenched weeds, and generally doing sod all exciting and/or useful.

Sounds familiar doesn't it! Though many thought Mr Clegg was going to be an impressive, puissant beast in British politics, just under a year as Deputy PM has proved him to be fat, bloated and useless, happy to wallow in the filth of Westminster.

However the similarities don't end there! Where Cleggy most resembles the brontosaurus is here. This dinosaur was once believed to possess a second sub-brain located in its rear quarters - because it was so massive it needed two brains to coordinate it's hefty bulk. The practical upshot of this was, that the brontosaur could happily continue it's business for some time before it eventually realised that predators had eaten it's arse end and was in fact stone dead...

...Just like the Lib Dems, a dead party that has yet to realise that no one is going to vote for them ever again. For demonstrating the same limited brain capacity of a brontosaurus, they can't seem to grasp that blatantly breaking election pledges and lying to the public is political suicide.

But what of the opposition? Well Ed Milliband is clearly an archaeopteryx. The uneasy mix of fowl and reptile mirrors exactly Milliband - neither politically fresh enough for many voters tastes, nor far enough removed from the taint of New Labour to convince either. And so far he's done very little but squawk and flap about ineffectively - almost criminal when the Condems are serving up such a smorgasbord of sticks to beat them with. And just as some palaeontologists have suspected the archaeopteryx fossils might be hoaxes, I'm not entire sure Milliband, or proper credible opposition for that matter, really exists either!

And finally what of our not very beloved at all PM David "Call Me Dave" Cameron? Blatantly a Tryannosaur - a monstrous predator with the brain the size of a pea. Let's face it, only a cerebral cortex smaller than a penny could come up with the Big Society and then introduce legislation that destroyed the very services and organisations that are actually doing what the BS is proposed to do. And having a political vision whose initials are 'BS' doesn't seem terribly smart to us either.

But then again perhaps we're being thick - we didn't have the top draw Oxbridge education Dave and his pack Bullingdon Club T-Rex chums had. No, we had had to study facts and learn how to critically evaluation them, rather than smash up posh restaurants and then write a big fat cheque and avoid charges of criminal damage.

The other week at the Tory spring conference, Call Me Dave made a rousing speech pledging to fight the 'enemies of enterprise' like bureaucrats and the civil service... Apparently his grip on how government works is so poor that he doesn't realise that actually he's in charge of all the red tape. Evidently in the Camersaurus Rex, generations of not doing a proper day's work, has evolved fore arms which are stunted and useless, which would explain why he has such a poor grasp of reality.

Of course, all these beasts will soon be extinct. Socio-political astronomers have sighted a huge comet heading their way...

Ask us anything

THE GREEN HORNET's box office take is fine but is still way less than other superhero films. Have we reached a point where we're becoming over-saturated and bored with comic book adaptations or is this just a one off?

Personally I suspect the discrepancy between The Green Hornet's takings so far and other recent superhero flicks is largely down to several combining factors...

Firstly it's January - people are doing some belt tightening post Christmas and more so than previous years thanks to the gloomy economic outlook...

Secondly there's been mixed reports about the quality of the 3D, and more generally I think the received wisdom on the subject of 3D is solidifying in to 'usually a waste of time' . Hence I suspect the movie may be suffering from a lack of 'specs appeal'

Next, and probably most importantly, as a recognised character The Green Hornet just isn't in the same league as the big names from the Marvel and DC Universes. He's better known to fans of pulp fiction than even to the average comics geek as The Green Hornet's comic series have been sporadic at best in recent years. And the only reason the man in the street* might have heard of this venerable masked vigilante is that Bruce Lee played Kato in the short lived '60s TV series.

I'd guess the box office take so far is more down to audience recognition of the names of Seth Rogan and Michel Gondry than any interest in the character. However equally given that both the actor and director both have the capacity to irritate some folks, they could be losing the movie a few ticket sales. For example, I loved Be Kind Rewind, but I know a fair few people who felt the movie didn't deliver the knockabout comedy that the trailer seemed to promise...


* Whose name, my spies inform me, is Gary Tosser

Ask us anything

Is there an innocent, every-day activity that makes you irrationally horny?

Now that's a question you don't see everyday!

The dread Mr Greenslade asserts that anything from washing up to to fiddling with his antique pen collection can raise the spectre of Goat Boy (see the Hicksonomicon for more details on this outré entity), particularly if the moon is full...

Mr Jim Moon wonders whether appearances of Glynis Barber on Eastenders count.

Ask us anything

You're casting your perfect film. You can pick one currently working actor and one currently working actress. Who do you go for and why?

Hmm tough choice! To begin with, let us take it as read that our perfect film would be some species of exceedingly strange and atmospheric cinema...

Now our ideal female lead is an easy choice - Lina Leandersson. As after her stunning performance in the modern classic Let The Right One In, we're desperate to see her in something else and we're quite sure she'd be brilliant in any role you throw at her... and not in a spooky Dakota Fanning way either!

Right now it seems she's busy at school and while we approve that she's concentrating on her studies , we just hope she doesn't vanish from the movies like Alakina Mann (the little girl in The Others) or go all Lindsay Lohan on us when she grows up!

Now for the male lead, that's tougher but we'll go for George Clooney. He's handsome in a golden age Hollywood kinda way, but and as versatile as legends like Redford or Gregory Peck - indeed we think the makers of the Omen remake really dropped the ball not getting Mr Clooney for the role of Robert Thorn. And if they'd partnered him with Naomi Watts as Damien's mother you'd have had a remake to rival the original....

But we digress...

Back on point, apart from being a charismatic performer and all round nice guy (by all accounts at least), we'd cast him 'cos we'd love to see him in a highly strange haunting movie!

Ask us anything

Best film trailer of the last few days; GREEN LANTERN, COWBOYS & ALIENS, YOUR HIGHNESS or RED RIDING HOOD? Why?

So asked FILM INTEL and here's our anwser!

Right then, GREEN LANTERN looks fun but we're really not sure about the suit - CGI aside not entirely sold on the dark green.

RED RIDING HOOD looks pretty but doesn't seem to have captured a proper medieval tone - all seems a bit music video! We suspect the words 'missed opportunity' may figure heavily in reviews...

YOUR HIGHNESS however looked far more like a proper ye olde fantasy world and contrast with the foul mouthed humour worked well. Yes we laughed alot and are looking forward to this one! And we sure we're not alone in that it brought memories flooding back of teenage D&D sessions.

Clear winner though had to be COWBOYS & ALIENS. Looks gorgeous and a lot more intriguing than the lazy sounding mash-up titles suggests. This could be the best genre hopping Western since VALLEY OF GWANGI!

Ask us anything