CREEPING FLESH
David Kerekes, editor
Headpress

This slim tome has a distinctly retro feel to it, coming across more like one of the earnest fanzines of yesteryear than a contemporary post-modernist look at horror films. And thank God for that. There's been too many obsessively analytical (some would say just anal), pseudo-academic books on horror in the last few years and David Kerekes has managed to steer well clear of that vacuous approach and re-kindle the kind of enthusiasm for obscure fear flicks that the fanzine culture once thrived upon. To that end, there's even a chapter on seminal zine Sleazoid Express and the grindhouse sinemas of New York's Times Square (which are much missed yet sound like Hell on Earth!).

Almost half of Creeping Flesh consists of coverage of the horror (and sci-fi) related TV programmes produced in the UK by ITV and the BBC, which will doubtless endear the book greatly to older readers who fondly recall such chilling fare as A Ghost Story for Christmas, or the entertainingly patchy Hammer House of Horror, yet will maybe alienate the rest of the planet? But, here's the point, like any fanzine with any worth, this book seems to exist to reflect its editor and contributor's interests and the rest of the world can be damned. It's not all cobweb-ridden stuff from the past though, as there's a brave attempt to argue that Steve Coogan's Dr. Terrible's House of Horrible was anything but an unmitigated disaster. Sorry but it was awful. When will people learn that the horror genre spoofs itself unwittingly and doesn't need the likes of Coogan, or (Heaven help us) Kenny Everett (Bloodbath at the House of Death), to try and do it for us.

Elsewhere, there's an interview with director Alan Birkinshaw, the man behind the politically incorrect drugs, schoolgirls and psychos-on-the-prowl pic, Killer's Moon; a piece on Robin (The Wicker Man) Hardy's flawed, and downright sleazy The Fantasist; a look at British 'auteur' (ahem) Michael J. Murphy and his unbelievably hard-to-see and hard to sit through horrors (well someone had to cover this bloke); Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's 'orrible version of The Hound of The Baskervilles; and the abomination that is Boy Meets Girl. Something for everyone? Well, definitely not and I'm sure that's the intention. Whether the narrow, Brit focused themes explored will ensure it sells enough copies to warrant a second edition remains to be seen. I for one hope so, and then that's when I expect a scene-by-scene dissection of Lindsay (Ben Dover) Honey's softcore Hammer spoof, Death Shock and an interview with Mr. Dover himself.

ADRIAN LUTHER-SMITH

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