Looking back at that story arc, though, I’m less than impressed. While the idea of a remorseless serial killer bonding with an equally deranged alien symbiote is a good one, the delivery was off. Instead of something genuinely chilling we got a two-dimensional, almost cartoonish character who was often more tiresome than terrifying.

But I always thought the potential was there, and writer Zeb Wells is proving me right with his current Carnage USA mini-series from Marvel. Today we’re going to look at the first two issues. All you need to know comes right after these ads.

Carnage USA Issue 1

The concept of the story is this: Cletus Cassidy wants to take over the world, and he’s starting in a small town in Colorado, USA.

And that, so far, is it. It sounds like a hokey idea on paper, but Wells is really nailing the execution of it, and the series is already turning into one of the best Marvel stories I’ve read in years.

Things start slowly as we are introduced to some of the residents of the sleepy town of Doverton. We see kids playing, pensioners sitting on their porch, even the town drunk being half-carried home by friendly townsfolk. And then Cletus Cassidy turns up and what happens next is out and out… well, Carnage.

And what a Carnage he is. Cletus doesn’t come over in the “ooh, I’m mad, me!” way he has in many of his other appearances. He is portrayed here as cruel and sadistic. There is a real undercurrent of danger in everything he says and does, so that even when he is behaving “normally” we never know what he’s going to do next.

As the town falls to Cassidy and his ‘other’, the US Government starts to take notice. The Avengers are sent in to bring Carnage down, and in one of the few weak points of the story they get their asses handed to them in about five seconds flat.

Seriously, I suspect my grandmother could’ve done more to stop Carnage than Cap, Wolverine and the rest of them did, and my grandmother has been dead for 18 years. Their shocking performance was enough to pull me out of the story for a second, but it’s the only foot Wells puts wrong in the opening issue, and without giving too much away it does make for a fantastic big splash panel in the final pages.

Spider-Man himself manages to escape in issue two, thanks to the intervention of some of the surviving townsfolk. How this will play out remains to be seen, because much of the second issue is devoted to the five new symbiote characters that are introduced. Yes, more symbiotes. You’d think the idea had been stretched far enough, but apparently Wells disagrees. I’m going to trust him for now and see how it goes, but none of them really do much for me on the basis of this issue.

Fortunately, we’re treated to some more scenes with Cassidy being proper sinister. He is using his ‘other’ to work the townspeople like puppets, and the sight of him clutching the baby of a woman he has deemed his ‘wife’ as she kneels on the floor begging for her child’s life reveals just how dark a tale this is shaping up to be.

The artist, Clayton Crain, is on top form here. I’m a huge fan of his hyper-realistic style which reminds me in many ways of the work of Alex Ross. The way he paints Carnage himself is particularly revolting. Never before has a symbiote looked so gloopy and alive, and Crain’s artwork takes an already strong story and just lifts it to a whole new level.

Critics of Crain’s style say his panels are often too dark and muddy, and that occasionally happens here. But this is the type of story that needs “dark and muddy”. It’s the Spider-Man equivalent of the Brad Pitt movie, Se7en, and Cletus Cassidy is shaping up to be every bit as psychotic as Kevin Spacey’s John Doe character in that movie.

I read both of these issues in digital format, and Crain’s artwork impressed me so much that I’m going to seek them out in print just so I can flip through the pages and absorb the images any time I like.

As much a horror story as a superhero tale, Carnage USA is shaping up to be something really special. Whether the slew of new symbiotes will drag it down in future issues remains to be seen, but for now I’m hooked in for the ride.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

You can pre-order the hardback collected edition of Carnage USA from Amazon now. Doing so helps support ThePhantomZone.

If you don’t know about the Clone Saga then I’m not going to be the one to inflict it upon you. Suffice to say it was one of the worst, most convoluted Spider-Man stories in the character’s history, and that your life is all the better for not having read it.

There wasn’t much good that came from the Clone Saga, but there were a few potentially interesting characters contained in its apparently endless pages. One such character was Kaine – a deformed clone of Peter Parker who was twisted in both body and mind. He was one of the villains of the story, although his motivations and loyalties shifted with virtually every issue.

Anyway, fast forward 15 years or so and Kaine popped up in the pages of the recent Spider Island story arc. Without giving too much away, Kaine was presented with the opportunity to sort his act out, and the damage to his body was repaired. Fast forward another couple of months and Kaine is now the star of his very own series, Scarlet Spider. But is it any good? On the basis of this first issue it’s looking promising.

Kaine is a man on the run. Haunted by the memories of his past life as a proper wrong ‘un, he is attempting to flee the US and set himself up in a beach hut in Mexico. He plans to get money by beating the crap out of some low level criminals and stealing their loot, which he does in impressive style in this issue’s opening pages.

Things turn sour for poor Kaine, though, when he discovers a big metal crate full of dead folks who were being illegally smuggled into the country against their will. Down there among the flies and the rotting flesh he finds one survivor, and despite his better judgement he brings her to the closest hospital.

That, as far as Kaine is concerned, is the end of his involvement, but events of the story soon begin to drag him back in. He wants to run, to be able to forget his past and live a normal life, but the old Parker (clone) luck seems determined to get in the way.

What makes this such a promising issue is the character of Kaine himself. The tagline on the front cover reads “All of the power. None of the responsibility” and that sums the concept up perfectly. Kaine is Spider-Man, but without the love of Aunt May to guide him, or the tragic death of Uncle Ben to set him on the path to hero-dom.

This is not a tale of a Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Hero, it’s the story of a man torn between protecting himself and making amends for his past wrongdoings. Kaine’s moral compass is still spinning at the end of this first issue so it is unclear whether he’ll become a hero or a villain, or something else entirely. Because this is Marvel, it’s almost certain to be the former, but the path Kaine takes to get there could make for an interesting journey.

This is a strong first issue by writer Christopher Yost (X-Men, Batman) and the artwork by Ryan Stegman compliments it perfectly. I can’t wait until February to find out what these guys can do with issue 2.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Released on DVD back in August (and BluRay, if you fancy), Source Code was one of the films that got away from me when it first came out: it’s got action (everything a man needs in a film, right?), a good cast of characters (everything a woman needs? Okay, now I’m stereotyping) and a science fiction element (everything we love!). Featuring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan and Vera Farmiga and a cast of special effects to blow your mind in their subtlety, it’s not one to miss.

The basic premise: Colter Stevens (Gyllenhall) has eight minutes to find out who set off a bomb on a train travelling to Chicago. When the eight minutes are up, he come back to reality. It should be simple enough, or so say his commanding officers, to find out who planted the bomb. The aim is to prevent a further attack. The problem: he’s only human, and he might have fallen in love with Christina (Monaghan).

While facing up with this new, er, problem, there’s also a train full of people to both save and to put up with. Things could definitely be a little less complicated for him. With a cynical comic, a panicky student and an eager businessman to survive, and only eight minutes at a time to try find the bomber, he really can’t afford to have feelings for anyone.

Overall, it’s a great film. It wasn’t an award-winner in 2011, but it’s certainly worth the watch. The plot isn’t overly complicated (always a risk with a “time travel” film): in terms of the train, the same scene is lived and relived, while the control centre follows the progress his findings have on the crime. It makes for an easy to watch story with some explosions that rival Michael Bay films and a number of special effects that make for some nice transitions between reality and the source code.

What really got me about Source Code was the repetition of scenes. While we see the train a number of times, with the same small things occurring over and over again, the differences make for distinguishing the replays of the event. The ways in which different choices affect the course of events becomes strikingly obvious in some instances, while the futility of other actions becomes immediately clear in others.

While other films along the same lines – such as Deja Vu - stretch believability to its limits, Source Code maintains a degree of plausibility within the plot. Yes, the whole thing is made up and the technology will likely never exist, but it doesn’t seem so improbable to re-create the events in a simulation.

If you’re looking for a good night in with something for everyone, this is the one to pick. Filled with excitement, it wont’ disappoint.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Director: Duncan Jones
Release date: April 1st 2011
Age certificate:  12A

Except taxidermy. No-one wants a fortnightly collection about taxidermy.

The latest collection to hit newsagents is the Marvel Ultimate Graphic Novel Collection which comes courtesy of Hachette Partworks. It claims to collect some of the most important stories in the Marvel Universe into exclusive hardback editions with some exclusive bonus content tacked on for good measure.

The books retail at £9.99 from issue 3 onwards, but part one is available now for just £2.99, and part 2 will be available for £6.99 when it is released in a week or two. But in these dark times of austerity, should you be chucking your cash at this? Short answer: “Yes, probably”. Long answer continues after the ads…

Hachette has been very clever in its choice of the first book to release in the series. It’s the classic Amazing Spider-Man tale, Coming Home, written by J Michael Straczynski with pencils by John Romita Jr. For those of you unfamiliar with the tale, it was first published in comic form back in 2002 and ushered in a new era in the life of Peter Parker.

Sick of playing second fiddle to the rest of New York, and equally fed up of having people kidnap and/or attempt to murder her, Mary Jane has given Peter the elbow, leaving him heartbroken and confused. As if that isn’t enough, a mysterious figure named Ezekiel, with powers not unlike his own turns up and starts messing with his head. Ezekiel also warns Peter that a great danger is coming that is unlike anything he has ever faced before. A few pages later, when said danger – new villain, Morlun – does turn up, the action kicks into overdrive and Peter is caught up in the fight of his life.

The reason I say Hachette has been clever in their choice of story is not just because it’s one of the best Spider-Man stories of the past 10 years, but because it’s essentially a tale about beginnings. Peter is beginning a new life without Mary Jane, he starts a new job, meets a new ally and a new enemy on the same day, and begins a journey of self-discovery that helped keep the character fresh and exciting for the next decade.

Straczynski is on top form here. He takes Spider-Man back to basics and reminds us why we love the character in the first place. This is a Spidey who is willing to risk everything – his life and his secret identity – in order to protect innocents. This is a Spidey who refuses to back down or run away if it means putting anyone else in danger. This is a Spidey who knows all too well that with great power comes great responsibility.

There is a lot of action in these pages – and I mean a lot – and the fighting and swinging stuff is drawn perfectly by Romita. The only part of the artwork I have issue with is the way Romita draws faces. More often than not they look oddly ape-like, and in the scenes where Ezekiel first makes his appearance he looks more like X-Men’s Beast than someone with spider-powers as he leaps and swings through the city.

Despite all the action, it is Peter’s intelligence that ultimately saves the day, which is a nice touch, and something we sometimes don’t get to see enough of.  Straczynksi gives us a character that is Peter Parker first and Spider-Man second, and the story is all the stronger for it.

So, do I recommend you pick this first issue up for £2.99? Yes. God yes. The paperback is available on Amazon for £9.00, and for less than a third of that price you’re getting a nice hardback edition with a few pages of extra artwork and character biographies. The next issue in the series is the X-Men’s Dark Phoenix Saga which collects Uncanny X-Men #129-137. This is another steal at £6.99, and I’ll definitely be grabbing my copy as soon as it appears in the shops.

For more information on the Marvel Ultimate Graphic Novel Collection, check out the official website.

I’m not a massive gamer, but that doesn’t stop me playing LEGO Harry Potter, Years 1-4 on my DS. It’s the one console I can repeatedly turn to because I’m not restricted to one spot and I don’t have to fight for a television, so I’ve become comfortable using it for games. In saying that, the game’s controls are simple enough that someone could learn how to play in a few minutes! Just as well, considering the fact that its more child orientated than the main-platform Harry Potter games.

It’s a fun game, there’s no denying that. Aside from the delight of the characters turned into LEGO, the magic and quests that make up the game make this one of the more enjoyable games I’ve played of late, even if it does seem a bit too easy. As the game goes on, various things become unlocked, from new spells to characters and bonuses, some of which can be turned on and off. Most characters, and all the bonuses, are unlocked as extras: cards from the chocolate frogs and red bricks from LEGO give us access to a whole cast of characters from the wizardry world, as well as some little tricks that make the game easier – more money per coin, invincibility and one-shot kills being some of the more memorable ones.

Spells, which are needed to access a lot of the hidden areas in the earlier levels of the game, are unlocked in two ways: anything necessary for game-progression and unlocking bonuses is learned as the game goes on, while additional spells for messing about with the other characters are unlocked by picking up red bricks on certain levels. You don’t need them, but it’s too much fun to not make Snape’s head blow up like a balloon, or turn it into an oversized pumpkin, hang him in the air by his feet or, my personal favourite, make him do a little dance! If only those spells worked on the bosses, too, to really aggravate them!

Or use it on this guy...

It’s definitely for Harry Potter fans. You need to have some idea of what’s actually happening in the videos to understand the consequences of everything. Even the very basic letter being received to admit Harry into Hogwarts is hidden behind a lack of dialogue or subtitles – the latter reserved for in-game talking – and I would say that that’s the games biggest flaw. It’s not the only flaw, however: I experienced a couple of glitches along the way, resulting in Harry – or whoever else I was using at the time – to become trapped in one spot, doomed to spend eternity there, usually standing on a ledge and falling into an abyss.

Unfortunately, flying a broom isn't *this* fun in the game!

While it’s no real loss to miss out on this game, it’s definitely advised for someone wanting a bit of childish fun for half an hour a day. You won’t find a game with such easy controls are swiping the stylus across the screen to attack and drawing shapes to cast spells, and if you do… well, it won’t have as many characters as this! There are over 80 playable characters, most of them just fan favourites rather than being of any special use.

My tip: bring a goblin, a wizard, a ghost, a strong character, a teacher, Hermione and Harry and you can do anything (that’s access to the goblin points, casting spells, passing through cage walls, pushing big bricks and statues, accessing the “smart” pedestals, using the time turner, speaking in parseltongue and turning invisible!) Easy fun, lots of variety and, of course, Harry Potter: what’s not to love?

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

And you know what? Without making the film a proverbial Q&A, they did just that. Bringing us back to 1988 and the childhood of Kristi and Katie – the lovely protagonists of the first two films – allows us to see what’s been missing from the first two films: reason. The hauntings in themselves are creepy, yes, but it’s a lot creepier when you consider the connection children have with the supernatural: they can see ghosts, for instance.

You know what that does, right? Not only do you have a creepy haunting (and it’s much creepier this time around!), you also have a creepy little girl who sees the ghost/demon/entity.

What I thought might annoy me was the camera. If you’ve seen the previous films, you know the camera is done from things you can buy commercially: one of the characters holds the camera, until they set up a rig to hold the camera. I won’t spoil the film on you by telling you about the ways in which it’s done this time (except that they use VHS!), but I have to admit, it’s a lot better than the security camera approach in PA2.

I don't know what's creepier: the reflection, or the fact this didn't happen

In terms of acting… well, I think the choice of male leads has gotten better as the franchise goes on. Micah (PA1) always seemed a bit weak, while Daniel (PA2) was more enjoyable as a lead but not quite fitting to the role. The new lead, Dennis, is different. Dennis is the one who believes, but he’s also the outsider: he’s the step-father of Kristi and Katie, and so he immediately has communication problems with them. It added a new human dimension to the films that was never there before, and the acting was much better than in the previous films. When it comes to Horror, this isn’t usually a matter of huge significance. Too many films have so-so acting because the point is to show-case the monster.

Usually, the monster isn’t invisible.

Overall, Paranormal Activity 3 was definitely an improvement on the franchise. There’s still time to see it in the cinema, and it’s not one you want to miss in that scenario: there’s nothing more enjoyable than sitting through a Horror and hearing people jump at all the wrong places. It’s even better when it’s a fully grown man screaming.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Additional Info:

Director: Ariel Schulman & Henry Joost
Age Rating: R (US), 15 (UK), 15A (Ireland)
Release Date: October 21st 2011

So what brings you to London?

Ostensibly I’m over here for the paperback release of Horns. The truth is that I come from old Maine stock and we don’t believe in vacations. You’re supposed to work from sun-up to sundown, and if you want to study your Bible by candlelight for a little while before bed that’s OK, and any sign of overt happiness is frowned upon because it usually means something’s not getting done. So I don’t really know how to take a vacation, so what I did was arrange this, but spread a thin crust of work over the surface so it seems like I’m actually here for a purpose. I did some media for Horns yesterday and I’m doing some press today and a reading tonight, and then I’m kinda goofing off for a few days with some friends I know here. I’m trying to work out how much time I’d have to spend in here before I could call someone a ‘bloke’ without getting a roll of the eyes. It’s just a great word to say. It feels good in your mouth.

The other thing is… I don’t know what it is about London, but I come here once or twice a year for about a week, and I walk around, and by the time I go home I’ve got about ten new story ideas. It’s a terrific place for me in terms of energy. Ideas aren’t everything – they’re not even the most important part of writing – but it’s still nice to have bunch of them in your back pocket.

So what is the most important part of writing?

Um, I think it’s having a certain level of cognitive dissonance between the work you put in and the result you get. You need to be able to sit there for six hours a day, and at the end of the day be able to walk away and let it go. You have to have a kind of blissful acceptance that you might spend two months writing a hundred pages and then throw the whole thing away in a single day. In the book I’m working on now – which is coming together great; I’m going to read some of it tonight at Waterstone’s – there’s this one part that’s about 180 pages long, about the bad guy. And I re-wrote it about three times and thought about it very carefully, and I think it’s a really good piece of work, and I decided about a month ago to slash the whole thing. I decided I’d written it for me. I was trying to find that bad guy’s voice and how he talks to people and why he’s the way he is, and I had to write it over and over again before I understood him. But in terms of actual story I think it’s better not to have so much of him right in your face, because it’s like seeing Jaws when he was a baby, eating fish. Less is more. It’s like, you want to be careful not to make the Hannibal Lecter mistake, where he was at his absolute most frightening in red Dragon where you only had him for about fifteen pages, and then in Silence of the Lambs he was almost as scary and just as great, and he’s still only in about 45 pages… It’s when you had a whole book about him… What, mommy didn’t love him and daddy didn’t understand and that’s why he’s bad? Suddenly he’s not frightening anymore – he’s just this loser!

Hemingway always said you have to kill your darlings. I don’t know if you always have to kill them, but I do think this has happened in every single piece of work I’ve ever done that was longer than like 20 pages, where I had this one scene I couldn’t wait to write and that I felt was the emotional heart of the book, and I would write the first draft and that scene would be in and I’d love it, and then at some point in the third or fourth draft I’d realise it’s the one scene in the book that doesn’t really matter; it’s the one scene totally holding the book back because it became something else. I don’t know if a lot of writers obsess over ‘The Concept’. I’m a firm believer that it’s important to have that nice fat hook: to have that concept that people can really get excited about. But by the time you’re finished, what you have is usually very different from what you initially imagined.

What’s your work routine?

I don’t religiously do six hours a day, but I set myself goals. With this draft – it sounds like I’m making processed meat – but I will process ten pages a day. If I get them done in two hours, great. If it takes me six hours, OK. If it takes me eight I’ll do it, but I try not to work that long because I think there tends to be a fall-off. I do work on the weekends though. Maybe not six hours, but I don’t like to let something go because then I’ll waste a day trying to get back up to speed. The other thing is, if I haven’t worked at all I feel restless and kind of out of sorts, and I’m grumpy with people, so I don’t feel centred and like myself until I’ve got my work out of the way.

Horns’ protagonist Ig is very vividly realised; is there a lot of you in him?

I think a lot of people when they hear ‘write what you know’ think that they’d better make their main character themselves, and I’ve always tried to avoid that. My main characters tend to be different from me. Judas from Heart Shaped Box was radically different from me: I was just like, what would it be like to be a heavy metal musician who’s had a thirty-year career? And Ig from Horns is also very different, although we have some similarities: there has to be something to grab on to. I come from a well-off family; my dad is a well-known guy the same as Ig’s dad; Ig’s family are musicians where mine are writers… So there’s some overlap. But Ig has a passion for books about building houses out of recycled materials, he’s big into volunteerism and he’s very devout and goes to church. I’m not very religious, and if I did have a religion I’d probably worship the same snake god that Alan Moore worships. It’s worked out pretty good for him. I think I aspire to do good, but for the most part I’m pretty happy to download movies and use my free time in the most selfish way possible. And Ig is braver. He does stuff like the courageous naked ride down the hill. I never would have done anything like that. I’d have been too worried about scraping my knees.

How far along is the movie adaptation of Horns?

Shia LaBeouf is going to play Ig in the film, and Keith Bunin who’s written a number of episodes of In Treatment is doing the script, and it’s ploughing forward so we’ll see what happens. I think Shia’s a great lead for the part. He can kind of play that kind of innocent Jimmy Stewart sweetness, but I also think it’d be really fun to see him with the shaved head and the horns walking around in a blue dress. I’ll be as involved as they want me to be, and I won’t be underfoot if they don’t want me underfoot. I’ve done my version of the story, and I’ve talked to them about ideas – I had a couple of suggestions that I thought might streamline a film. But at the end of the day I’ve done my version and the movie has to be something different. Films fail either when they treat the source material as if it doesn’t matter, or when they become too reverential to the source material. You want to find a middle path where a film can breathe and be its own deal.

I’m not sure it’s as unusual as it used to be for an actor to be attached at such an early stage of development. Shia read the book and was excited about it and thought it was a part he could play and that people haven’t seen him do. I think he wants to make that transformation. Maybe it’s even a metaphor for his whole professional outlook: he’s played so many clean-cut nice guys that he wants people to see that he can be the demon if he has to be. I think a lot of actors – especially actors who can open films – have started to do this: getting excited about about something and looking at how they can put a package together.

What happened to Locke and Key? The TV series seemed like a sure thing.

I’m not sure anything’s a sure thing. Launching a TV show is probably the hardest act in the entertainment business. In the case of Locke & Key we came up with a pilot, which Mark Romanek directed, Josh Friedman who was the showrunner on Sarah Connor did a great script, they pulled together a terrific cast, and they made something really scary and emotionally intense. BUT, Fox has three slots for new dramas, they had eight pilots, and they picked the three they wanted. But I’m not sure… I feel fairly certain that the pilot will see the light of day at some point, and I’m not certain that we’re done as a TV show. Locke & Key as a comic book has a lot of the same elements that you see in shows like Dexter and Breaking Bad and Walking Dead and Battlestar Galactica: dark, fantastic, with a grim edge… And the thing all those shows have in common was that they were on cable. So I think it’s possible that we may find someone at SyFy or AMC or TNT who’d like to give the show a shot. And if that happens I think we’d be very lucky, in that it would be a case of the show finding a more natural home than one of the big networks. It’s very difficult to imagine Walking Dead on CBS, so we’ll see. I think we have a good shot. I think there’s room for the pilot to be a theatrical film of some kind, although you’d probably have to throw a few more million dollars at it and add half an hour. But I also think it’s possible that a cable channel will throw another $5m and another half hour at it and make it a two-hour pilot. I’ll say this: we’ve had interest from some cable channels, and one cable channel has been MORE than interested… That gives me hope, but until someone actually buys twelve episodes, we don’t have a show.

And is Heart Shaped Box still happening as film? Wasn’t Neil Jordan attached to direct at one point?

That’s one of these movie stories where it’s in terminal development. Neil Jordan hasn’t been on it in a long time but I still keep seeing reported on a regular basis that he’s doing it. The book came out a while ago, and he wanted to do it, but they didn’t have a script that they liked and then there was the writer’s strike, and Neil just decided to go back to Ireland and make something different. So that’s what he did, and his attachment with the picture ceased. Some other names have been involved. If Heart Shaped Box suddenly goes into development it’ll be because an actor says they would like to play Judas Coyne. Then we might see a team come together around it. But it’s stalled at the moment. I have a short story called Twittering the Circus of the Dead, and that’s actually further along than Heart Shaped Box because there’s so much energy behind it. It has a director, and Manderlay wants to produce, and they’ve got a plan and all the pieces are flying together.

It’s interesting – I’ve now seen two sides of the business. There’s Heart Shaped Box, where there’s this spinning of wheels and this development process that continues and continues and continues. But when something does happen, it’s with such suddenness, it’s almost like everyone’s like racing behind going ‘Agh! We’ve gotta get this done!’ With Locke & Key it was amazing how all the elements collapsed together in just a few months and suddenly they were filming the pilot in Pittsburgh. It was such a remarkable difference from the way Heart Shaped Box has staggered along. So if something does happen with Heart Shaped Box it’ll happen all of a sudden!

A director named Todd Lincoln is behind Twittering the Circus of the Dead. You won’t have heard of him. He’s something of an up-and-coming it-director. He’s done a lot of short films that are kind of upsetting and weird, and he’s directed his first feature [The Apparition] which is a horror film coming out in early 2012, and this is going to be his follow-up project. He’s exciting. He’s kind of like if Wes Anderson wanted to make horror films. He’s a really cool guy!

Are you wary of films of your work, given your father’s experiences?

No, not at all! I think my dad has had nothing but good experiences! Because even the bad films are great. Horror fiction, fantasy, science fiction to a degree, the only thing that’s better than a good movie is a really bad movie. I love a great scary film, but I’ve also seen awful things that I’ve really loved. Like, what’s a good one, Howling 2! That’s such a gas. They show the shot where Sybil Danning takes her blouse off 32 times in that film. I counted. Actually it’s not a blouse, it’s like a leather bustier.

You know what’s a great, hysterical film? Children of the Corn. ‘Outlanderrrrrrr! We have your wooooooman!’ Who doesn’t love that? So yeah, you always hope you’re going to have a great film, but I’m sure if someone takes one of the books or one of the stories and makes something horrible, I’ll still probably love it.

Horns is out now in paperback from Gollancz.

Who can take a sunrise...?

Unleashed in 1992, and based on a Clive Barker short story from a decade earlier, Candyman was a murdered slave, still haunting New Orleans as an urban legend come to life. Daniel Robitaille was a more ambiguous monster than many of his contemporaries, and made an immediate horror icon of Tony Todd, the character actor who put flesh on his bones. Todd has since become a mainstay of the Final Destination and Hatchet franchises, but with Hallowe’en approaching, he’s more than happy to reminisce about the role that made his name…

How did you land the role of Candyman?

I owe a great debt to two Englishmen: [producer/original author] Clive Barker and [screenwriter/director] Bernard Rose. Bernard had seen me in [TV movie] The Ivory Hunters (1990) and insisted when they came to casting Candyman that I was the right guy for it. I was just starting out. I’d done Platoon and the Night of the Living Dead remake, but I think the studio were nervous because Bernard didn’t even want to even audition anybody else. They were like ‘Are you sure? Maybe Sidney Poitier wants to do this movie!’ But he was completely loyal. The director’s the captain of the ship. If he wants something he should get the freedom to choose. Fortunately he chose me! I wasn’t expecting any kind of longevity from it: I’m just an actor for hire. But Bernard insisted that the movie would change my life. In a lot of ways it has, but the fortunate thing was that it didn’t define my life.

Do you sympathise with him?

We didn’t want to make him just some generic bogeyman. Bernard and I wanted to make sure he was steeped in a kind of gothic American racial history, especially as the story had been transposed from Liverpool to Cabrini Green. We mutually decided that he was an artist, and from that came the idea of the painting, and once we had that, we knew it was going to be Phantom of the Opera. Once I had all that, I knew how to make him human, in spite of the fact that he’s a ghost. Having grown up in America just as the civil rights movement started, I could completely relate to him.

What did you enjoy most about playing him?

I knew he was unique. Once I read about the bees – this was before CGI of course – I knew he would live infamously or not-so-infamously in cinematic history. The idea that they were coming out of this person just said to me that he was this powerful, demented force of nature. But I loved his elegance too. We wanted him to walk with pride.

Did you ever wear the costume off the set?

No, I never wore the coat out in public, but I do get to travel a lot based on this character and spread goodwill.

Any crazy fan encounters you can tell us about?

You get all sorts. I did a lot of Star Trek so I’ve encountered some pretty antisocial Klingons. But most recently I was down in Houston, Texas and this woman came up with this enormous grin on her face and said she had something to show me. So I braced myself, and she lifted her sundress and on the inside of her right thigh was a tattoo portrait of my face. Every now and then I need a reality check! I guess it would have been worse if it was on her bum. It’s a little weird. I don’t think I believe in putting people’s faces on your body. And she wasn’t the smallest woman: I just hope it doesn’t stretch over time!

What’s your favourite Candyman moment?

I love the parking lot sequence in the first film: the first time you see the character. I think it’s very well shot: very Hitchcockian.

What do you think explains his enduring popularity?

The weird thing is that he’s only actually on screen for ten or twelve minutes, but he’s talked about every single second of the film. Less is definitely more: he grows in the audience’s imagination. I also think there’s a lot of heart and soul to the first two films. Other, subsequent horror films may have been more financially successful, but they don’t have Candyman’s depth.

Will he return?

There have been attempts to do another one after the not-so-good third one, which was completely compromised from casting on down.

The problem is that three different people own it but they can’t come to an agreement, which seems incredible to me. Whenever an idea comes up, one of them won’t sign off on it. It’s unfortunate. I’ve just had to let it go.

What’s your favourite horror movie?

I was profoundly affected by Rosemary’s Baby. I love that film. There’s not a drop of blood in it; it’s purely psychological. I love films that are purely atmospheric like that. I love the old Universal movies too. Horror’s treated like the bastard stepchild of the movie industry, but it’s actually always been the genre that saved Hollywood from total ruin.

What scares you?

I don’t like that moment you get when you’re still sleeping but it feels like it’s real life and you can’t quite wake up. That few seconds is really frightening. Intolerance bothers me. And women with tattoos!

Do you want to know the truth, though? Children’s horror, even if it is scary, won’t scar your child for life. You, the parent, the adult, are more likely to get scared and scarred. Want evidence? Okay: I get more scared by children’s horror now than I did when I was a child. It’s not that the books are getting scarier – some of them are, but most of them are just following the same patterns – but that I think too much like an adult. There’s someone in the house. This could actually happen. What would I do in this situation?

That last one? Mostly nothing. Mostly I would be powerless. The type of horror that children face in books can only be dealt with by children. All the wild fantasies that are constructed around the idea of terrorising children do a few things: they help the child become more imaginative, fear being one of our most motivating experiences; they reinforce the idea that the child isn’t helpless all the time, by making the hero a child; and they allow the reader, the child, to face up to fear early on, before the onslaught of second level education, social cliques, bullies and the nastiest of the nasty teachers in the world.

What is wrong with a child being prepared for fear? Honestly, what is wrong with that? I’m not the bravest person in the world, but I survived first days at two institutions in which I knew nobody but my brother. Do you know how terrifying it is to go to a new school and not know anyone? It’s less scary than, say, Mr Mumbles tapping on your bedroom window, but it’s a much more lasting fear, and one that can put children – and even adults going into third level education – from actually getting out of bed.

Your child is a wimp? That’s because you’re shielding him from the world. Children need to grow up. Children need to read. That’s not a subjective statement: the reading levels of children, especially those in England, unfortunately, are going down over the years. Making a child afraid to read by telling them the book is too scary for them is the exact opposite message any parent should be sending out.

If a child gets scared, you console them. Parents can’t be there to stop children becoming frightened all the time. It’s literally impossible. So why would they insist on getting involved at the basic level of books? It’s counter-intuitive to the child’s development to take away new experiences from them before they have a chance to be dealt with. Instead of fictional horror keeping a child awake at night, a parent’s words of warning will keep them from reading.

It just requires a bit of tact: you don’t let your child stay up until midnight reading or watching Cujo. Actually, you don’t let your child stay up until midnight at all (or at least not on a regular basis – New Year’s Eve seems to be the only real exception on this side of the lake). Until your child gets to secondary school, you don’t let them read adult fiction at all. After that, what they read is in the hands of their English teacher.
So, back to the big question: should children read horror? Most definitely. So long as the book is appropriate for the age group – and publishers won’t print something that’s not – it can, and should, be read. All the adventure that children need in stories is present in horror, with the added adrenaline rush to make the books that little bit more exciting.

So really, what are you waiting for? Recommendations? Three obvious places to start: the Invisible Fiends series by Barry Hutchison, Darren Shan’s children’s books and, with a wider range of mild to terrifying horror, the Goosebumps books by RL Stine.

Ian Ogilvy

Witchfinder General has had a bit of a renaissance in recent years, although it’s come up consistently all through my life. Film students have always written about it and done their theses on it, so it has come up over the years. I suspect the interest was always there, but there are more forums now for people to be interested: things like Facebook and messageboards and all these autograph shows, one or two of which I’ve been to. I haven’t seen it very recently: perhaps in the last five years. I can’t imagine what it looks like on Blu-ray; is the original quality of the film up to that?!

There was much less money on Witchfinder than on some of its contemporaries like the Hammer films, although I think that’s one of its strengths. It doesn’t look like it was made on a shoestring, but it wasn’t a wonderfully comfortable film to make. We were out in the wilds of Norfolk, shooting in an old aircraft hanger, rather than a studio. It was summer, but it was summer in Norfolk…

It’s bleak and brutal, but it wasn’t unremittingly gloomy in a sort of Swedish way; there’s a lot of exciting stuff in it. Michael always said we were making a Western. He thought it would be the closest he ever got to making one. Michael was extraordinary, because he was so young, but crews liked him, which is always a good sign. Once they realised that he knew what he was doing, he would earn the respect of a hard-bitten crew very quickly. He’d been making movies since he was about 14, and he had the most encyclopaedic knowledge. He could tell you who the second assistant director was on any movie. If you wanted to know anything at all about any movie ever made, you asked Mike Reeves. If you didn’t have any interest in film you’d have thought his conversation was quite boring! The legend is that he once hand-cranked a print of DW Griffith’s Intolerance, studying every frame. I don’t know whether that’s true or not. But he certainly understood the language and geography of movies.

We weren’t at school together, but were introduced by a mutual friend when we were 15, who knew that Mike wanted to direct and I wanted to act. We met in one of those endless coffee bars that were around in the fifties on Kensington High Street, and I went and stayed in his mum’s house with some other friends of his and we made this movie. I think tiny clips of that still exist; they’re very scratchy and black-and-white, and they’re silent. I lost touch with him for a while after that, and went off to drama school and did some early television and some stage work, and then my agent called me one day and asked if I knew somebody called Mike Reeves, who wanted me to be in his film. So we had a renewed acquaintance, after several years. He learnt from his first film (The She Beast, 1965), which was completely dreadful, and then the second (The Sorcerers, 1966), which is better, and then there was Witchfinder, which is the one everybody talks about. I’m in all of them!

My dealings with Vincent Price were actually very few and far between, because a lot of the time when I was shooting, Vincent wasn’t even around. The few scenes I had with him, he was very nice. The only one that was a bit difficult was the famous one in Orford Castle, when I’m killing him with an axe, and he was a very miserable, unhappy man by then. He was determined to be uncooperative. He’d had it with Mike, by that point. He didn’t want to wear any padding, and Mike wanted me to hit him as hard as I could with this rubber axe, which I said I wasn’t going to do. And we had a huge number of set-ups to do, and very little time, and we couldn’t go back, so we had to get what we could get. It was a tricky night, all a mad rush, and not helped by Vincent being dour and glum in the background.

Mike didn’t like directing actors at all. He liked casting right. He always said he didn’t know anything about acting, so he used Don Siegel’s trick – Don Siegel was his great hero – who believed that if you cast a thing properly you can leave the actors alone. But Mike found he was unable to leave Vincent alone. Mike’s directions tended to be just “Can you do it faster?” but with Vincent, it was always “Can you please not do that?” It was always in the negative, which is a little off-putting for actors.

Vincent was actually very, very nice… when he was happy! All you had to do was keep him happy and he was the most charming man in the world and he’d entertain us with wonderful stories. We were staying in this very nice old country hotel in Bury-St-Edmonds, and he had the “Dickens Suite”, because supposedly Dickens had stayed there. And in the evenings he’d be surrounded by people because he was so friendly and amusing. He really could be a delight. Just not on the set of Witchfinder General…

Witchfinder General is available now on Blu-ray from Odeon Entertainment. Buy from Amazon now.