And a very good afternoon to you! I hope the suitably teasing subject line umm, teased you? I did try putting in some cheesy clichés such as "are you dying to read this?" but they just weren't rocking it somehow. I guess being trash horror takes a bit more skill than what it appears...
Anyway, I was on a nightshift last night so I'm rather sleep deprived, visual hallucinations and I'm about to babble nonsense. Thankfully this book is not regular PH levels of nonsensery - not a coiled tentacle or demon is sight so I at least, shan't be nonsensing over nonsense.
Je presenté....
This is the first time I've read this book and on the whole it's a thumbs up:
I love the Point Horror Unleashed series because of its pure Britishness. I've been to the USA so I can imagine say Dark Fern Lane or the beach setting in "Beach Party", but I don't really have that emotional connection because I've never lived there so there's not that true connection to the environment.
With PHU that changes. With this book in particular, I know what the scent of salty vinegary fish and chips through an air vent is like. I can hear the air vent, the pitch if the whirring blades and that inevitable clanking of the shutters. I know what railway arches sound like. I can imagine that grimy bacon sarnie. I know the Roxy - the old cinema in my town was a threadbare fleapit, complete with seats that you took your chances with that they held out!
The cemetery with its Victorian angels agsibst a modern skyline is beautiful. I love a good cemetery mooch and reminded me if a pleasantly freaky day I spent photographing Tower Hamlets cemetery.
Not one of my photos but shows the Victorian gothiccgothic with tower blocks. It was also overgrown and misty the day I visited and very Blair Witch. Gorgeous cemetery. Actully the whole Magnificent Seven in London are worth a visit for so many reasons.
I've even been in places like the "Welcome Stranger" as part of my recent nurse training.
So much more of my senses and memories were involved in this read.
In this one, the quick chopping and changing of location brought up Keifer Sutherland "24 "tickertape type images in my head and the simultaneous unfurling of events in multiple locations creates a busy-ness and coming together of events in this story.
Plenty of red herrings are in this story and each and every one of them could be the Stranger Strangler. And Movie the cat is probably the cutest red herring yet!
I'm glad she survived.
Music features fairly heavily in this thanks to the Wurlitzer in the Roxy. This is very effective as we each impose our version of imposing, menacing music upon the text.
I found the dead girls scene in the auditorium particularly freaky. It really removed me of the zombie bus scene in "Carnival of Souls" (1962) and the ballroom scene at the end.
I would even go so far as to draw a connection between Mary at the church organ with the vicar saying "Sacrilege! Profane!" and Mary's subsequent termination.
One thing that did stick out for me, is the mention of Southern Television given it list is licence in the early 1980s and was taken over by TVS. Every other TV company mention is possible so I'm wondering why this "error"? The others Harlech, Granada etc were still producing and broadcasting at the time of publication so this does stuck out for me.
Not a major plot problem but having lived with a media geek before, it did stick out for me.
Finally, the question remains of who was the lonely: was it the homeless people, Perry, Mark, Cliff or Nancy? Each and everyone had an omnipresent loneliness.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UTR2IlAJEyQ
Beautiful song - perhaps I should re-read this with it playing on loop?
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