Introduction
I’ve decided to do a thing each month where I do a round-up of the media I’ve watched/read/listened to. This is the round-up for December 2025, with books, films, and TV shows. This has ended up as quite a lot of films and tv, as I was ill for a lot of December, and couldn’t focus on books or writing. I ended up on the sofa trying to stave off boredom.
The amount of stuff I got through this month while ill made me wonder if I should break up posts in future to make them easier to read. I’m not sure about the format for months where I watch loads of films, like this one, so just for now, I’m posting it as a list of films watched each day, following my Letterboxd Diary.
I’m not sure how that will work when/if I do the 100 Horror Movies In 92 Days challenge, as Aug-Oct will be very film-heavy. We’ll see!
Anyway, here we go with my December media round-up.
Books & Audiobooks
Linghun by Ai Jiang. A modern Chinese-Canadian gothic ghost story, described as ‘literary horror’. Serious, rich, multi-layered grief horror.
WELCOME HOME.
Follow Wenqi, Liam, and Mrs. in this modern gothic ghost story by Chinese-Canadian writer and immigrant, Ai Jiang. LINGHUN is set in the mysterious town of HOME, a place where the dead live again as spirits, conjured by the grief-sick population that refuses to let go.
25 Gifts of Terror by Boris Bacic. Read one story per day like an advent calendar.
25 Gifts of Terror is an advent-style 25 short horror stories read in 25 days, with the final story on Christmas. A perfect gift for a horror reader.
Audiobook: HorrorBabble’s Diary Horror. A “found footage” anthology, containing 15 stories written in diary format, including Ian Gordon’s 2020 audio tape diary story.
There are some good ones in here, and I got on with the narration. Lovecraft gonna Lovecraft though, so brace for his stories.
We Are Here to Hurt Each Other by Paula D. Ashe. This is a re-read of some of the stories in this collection, like “Jacqueline Laughs Last in the Gaslight”. I did not re-read all the stories.
With these twelve stories Paula D. Ashe takes you into a dark and bloody world where nothing is sacred and no one is safe. A landscape of urban decay and human degradation, this collection finds the psychic pressure points of us all, and giddily squeezes. Try to run, try to hide, but there is no escape: we are here to hurt each other.
Audiobook: Algernon Blackwood BBC Radio Drama Collection – I got this one and I’m finding the bouncy intro and credits very incongruous compared with the stories! But it has a lot of good ones in here. The Internet Archive has 4 of his John Silence stories for free, if interested!
A collection of strange and fantastical tales from Algernon Blackwood, plus bonus documentaries.
TV Shows & Mini-Series
- Hazbin Hotel & Helluva Boss – USA-made animated muiscals in the same universe. I’ve been binging these and watching them on repeat. I played the S02 Hazbin Hotel soundtrack on loop for over a week. The theology is all over the place, so don’t go in expecting anything coherent, or for it to be doing anything interesting or new with it, they are just fun cartoons. I enjoy the story and the characters enough, and the fantasy worldbuilding, that this aspect (theology) doesn’t bother me.
~ - Yaratılan/Creature – Turkish 8-part series, my November rewatch that spilled into December. One of my favourite series. I wrote a post on it when I watched Del Toro’s Frankenstein. This is written and directed by Çağan Irmak, and I really like the ending, the framed narration, and also that we see Captain Ömer freed from his own destructive ambitions and obsessions as a result of hearing the tale and meeting Ziya and Ihsan. I really love that, because you don’t get to see what happened to the Captain very often.
~ - La Révolution – French 8-episode TV series from 2020, in which the future inventor of the guillotine discovers a disease that’s causing the aristocracy to murder commoners. It was described as Kingdom meets Brotherhood of the Wolf, but it’s not zombies, it’s revenants. I really enjoyed it. I watched the French original with English subs, so I can’t comment on the dub quality. Unfortunately, it didn’t get renewed, and ends on a cliffhanger – so make up your own ending if you watch it. It can end any way you like.
~ - Queen Mantis – Korean 8-part thriller, heavy on domestic violence and CSA, and based on the French series La Mante. This has the same reveal but tackles it a bit differently? I haven’t seen them both to compare, and I doubt I will, but I’m going to have to do this in inline spoilers for the warnings.
Queen Mantis/La Mante Spoilers
This Reddit discusses whether La Mante (the original French series) is transphobic. The Korean drama version is the same plot, and falls back on the same reveal. The police immediately switch pronouns for her when they learn she is a woman, and interview trans women in clinics where there is an attempt to humanise and at least partially distance the Korean trans community from the killer. The killer introduces herself with her old name at one point, and the trauma of her abusive childhood and watching The Mantis kill her abusive father was what set her on this path, although she was already killing cats and dogs in the neighbourhood, so it’s very explicit in the Korean series that the trauma (a) was the direct cause of her gender dysphoria; she was not abused because she was a trans girl, she was abused because her father was a piece of shit, and (b) she was already exhibiting signs of antisocial behaviour and killing vulnerable creatures. I haven’t seen La Mante to compare this. I’m also relying on subs and I don’t speak Korean, so that’s what I picked up from the subtitles!
- Midwinter of the Spirit – an ITV (UK) mini-series (3 parts) from 2015. It’s based on the second Merrily Watkins book by Phil Rickman, adapted for the screen by Stephen Volk, where crime meets ancient English folklore with a rural vicar (Church of England) protagonist. I bought the first book, The Wine of Angels, an absolute doorstop, way back in the 2010s and have had it through house moves on my shelf for the last 10-15 years. I may finally read it, as I’d like to read this series now I’ve seen the ITV adaptation of Book 2. I think you can start the series anywhere, but it’s one of those where you get the character arcs if you read in order.
~ - Ordeal by Innocence – a Prime Original / BBC (UK) mini-series (3 parts) from 2018. An adaptation of Agatha Christie’s standalone novel, written by Russell Lewis. I have to say I do enjoy the de-centring of the best-known detective personalities in these standalone adaptations, like And Then There Were None, and The Pale Horse. The 2007 Marple series with Gwendoline McEwan in the titular role adapted Ordeal by Innocence as part of the Marple mysteries, just as the 2010 Julia McKenzie Marple co-opted The Pale Horse as a Marple mystery, but I really like that this one kept it as a detective-free standalone, with a really tight focus on the family itself, and let the characters breathe on their own. I also like that it’s a lot darker than the Marple versions as a result.
~ - Crooked House – a BBC (UK) mini-series from 2008, comprising of 3 half-hour episodes that is on Prime UK as a single 90 min film. It’s one of the Christmas Ghost Stories for the BBC, written by Mark Gatiss and directed by Damon Thomas. The segments go through the grim history of Geap Manor, with some nice touches and spooky atmospheric moments. This one is a rewatch, but I’d forgotten almost everything about it, so virtually new. I think I must have seen this when it originally aired, or not long afterwards, it’s that hazy.
~ - The Pale Horse – a BBC (UK) 3-part mini-series from 2020, the standalone novel adaptation by Sarah Phelps, who also adapted And Then There Were None (2015) and did an outstanding job, and dir. Leonora Lonsdale. I can’t remember the actual book, and I very much enjoyed the Julia McKenzie Miss Marple episode that co-opted this one as a Marple mystery. This is such a good, dark, bleak version. Rufus Sewell is perfect as Mark Easterbrook, who is a really interesting choice for a protagonist, and an absolute shit. I love Sean Pertwee as Inspector LeJeune. This is just a great one. It as close to folk horror as Christie gets.
~ - Ghosts – the UK version, just for some of the festive episodes and the last series which I couldn’t remember seeing. I absolutely love this series, it’s so funny and at the same time makes me cry buckets. I avoided the last series for ages because I knew I’d cry. (I absolutely loved Yonderland as well by the way, which is also by the same people, and it’s so weird to see Martha Howe-Douglas (Fanny) as the Chosen Mum in modern clothes.)
Films & DVD Collections
03 Dec:
- The Mean One (2022) dir. Steven LaMorte. An annual rewatch now to get me in the mood for the festive season. Daft romance! Brutal murders! The Gr–een Mean One!
~ - Krampus (2015) dir. Michael Dougherty. Another annual rewatch, and I even remembered to log it on Letterboxd this year. It’s my festive, family-friendly (or at least, there’s a family in it) film to get me in the Christmas spirit. Or else.
~ - Izvod: The Witch’s Swamp (2025) dirs. Oleg Taravkov and Alexey Plakhotnikov. Not a Christmas film, but something I just happened to find on YouTube. It was posted there by the filmmakers, who made this on a microbudget of US$28K, and it’s amazingly good for the money and the fact this is their first film. It’s a Slavic mythology-inspired folk horror, completely indie-funded. Highly recommend this – the English subs are really good, and it’s worth a look at any time of year. I had to add it Letterboxd.
04 Dec:
- អក្ខរាវិរុទ្ធ/The Spell (2019) dir. Amit Dubey. Not a Christmas film, and again found on YouTube. This is a Cambodian horror in Khmer with English subs, and although it’s a fairly predictable haunted house/ghost possession tale, it is one of the best quality Cambodian horrors I’ve seen, and I do want to highlight it as Cambodian cinema needs more international love and support! TW: suicide by drowning (opening sequence).
- To All A Goodnight (1980) dir. David Hess. I was off work sick and desperately scrolling all the Christmas films of all genres I could find, and literally couldn’t find anything I wanted to watch. Then I found this: the first time a killer in a Santa suit ever appeared on film. This is the only groundbreaking thing about the film – it’s a very run-of-the-mill slasher, but it’s a new-to-me Christmas one. I felt it was too long and the action wasn’t tight enough, but it was fine.
~ - Cinderella’s Revenge (2024) dir. Andy Edwards. I really liked his film Punch (2023). Tis the season for pantomimes based on fairy tales, and I did really enjoy the insanely gory Cinderella’s Curse (2024) dir. Louisa Warren. So here we are with this Cinderalla story, which opens with one of my fave songs, ‘Cinderella Snapped‘ by Jax. It’s downhill from here – her chariot is a fucking orange Tesla, and she’s chauffeured by Elon Musk. Grim. But I did like the innovation of getting famous designers from the modern-day to design her dress and so on, without it “just” being magic. And I did like the masked vengeance thing.
~ - Jack Frost (1997) dir. Michael Cooney. I was too tired and ill to really have fun with this, but it’s a good one for the background. It has ridiculous genetic science, a killer snowman, and some fun Christmassy kills.
05 Dec:
- Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010) dir. Jalmari Helander. Another rewatch, for when I want a fun, dark, good quality film I’m guaranteed to enjoy. I do feel very weird about the ending though.
~ - Mercy Christmas (2017) dir. Ryan Nelson. High Fliers films are very hit and miss. They are all generally low budget, but they have some bangers like Cannibals vs Carpet Fitters, and I’m now adding Mercy Christmas to that list of hits, but it does fall back on lazy writing at some points – and they didn’t need to kill off the Black guy. 3.5 stars overall. Fun casual cannibalism film.
10 Dec:
- Amanti d’oltretomba/Nightmare Castle (1965) dir. Mario Caiano. Gothic Horror that leans into the full drive-your-wife-mad-on-purpose territory. It has frog serum (mixed with the blood of a young woman) that changes an old scheming housekeeper young again, a mad scientist Count with a laboratory in his castle, and Barbara Steele playing identical step-sisters, but we don’t need to dwell on details or bother our little heads with pesky questions. I love watching Gothic films in winter for the atmosphere. The dafter the better.
- She-Wolf of London (1946) dir. Jean Yarbrough. A psychological horror in which we have a family curse, a woman who kills men at night in a park. Very solid Universal film, and I really loved June Lockhart’s performance in this. This is one I listed in my Werewolf Films 1910-1949 post. There’s a lot of British class dynamics going on here, which I really enjoyed. You can see from films like this one, and obviously George Cukor’s Gaslight (1944) where the later 1960s Gothic films got a lot of their ideas… also what a great evil monologue! This is what you get when there’s no man in the house…
I can also see, for someone who saw this and Gaslight at the Pictures and then saw a 1960s Italian Gothic, why they might say “They don’t make ’em like they used to.” Facts, love. Facts.
- Gaslight (1944) dir. George Cukor. After the psychological manipulation of She-Wolf of London, I felt like I wanted to see the seminal film in psychological horror, from which the subgenre really took off on screen. I cannot for the life of me remember if I’ve seen this before or not, so I’m counting it as a first watch. This was based on Patrick Hamilton’s thriller play of the same name, first produced in 1935, and I’d like to see that performed one day! It’s being put on in Harrogate Studio Theatre this year by the Woodlands Drama Group. Really enjoyable thriller. I really liked the colourised version.
My husband and I have a joke that due to my complete lack of object permenance, he could be fiddling with gaslights and god knows what else for months, and my complete denial and blinkers about everything would drive him mad instead.
11 Dec:
- The Phantom Light (1935) dir. Michael Powell. Based on Australian-British writer Evadne Price’s novel, which was adapted for the stage by Evadne Price and Joan Roy Byfield. It’s actually a crime thriller rather than a ghost story. It’s also pretty short (75 mins runtime) so you shouldn’t expect too much of the plot or character development, it is just atmosphere and nuts and bolts mystery plot with mildly spooky trimmings, and some nice monologue/dialogue moments.
This is set in Cymru/Wales and falls back on the usual stereotypes: old women in steeple hats and shawls who can’t or won’t speak English, singing fishermen, and supersititious/dangerous/’weak-minded’ locals. The accents are bad, and the only actual Welsh I heard was ‘nos da’ which means good night, said in the middle of the day. I’m not convinced that what I heard her say before that was actually Welsh at all. In other words: pretty typical of how Cymru and her people are usually portrayed in media that want to use it as an otherworldly, Gothic, or ‘uncivilised’ setting. See also: House of the Long Shadows, The Old Dark House, and the way T. Kingfisher perpetuates these outsider attitudes in her book The Twisted Ones, especially in the dismissive and mocking way her FMC talks about Cymraeg (the Welsh language).
12 Dec:
- Wake Up Dead Man (2025) dir. Rian Johnson. Really enjoyed this one, which looks at religious cults of personality and how they operate in the US Catholic Church and intersect with US Conservativism. I really loved the other two as well, and how they punch up not down. I also liked the dynamic of Blanc & Fr. Jud, and I enjoyed the way it was played, more as complimentary differences rather than an antagonistic contrast. I loved the locked room mystery, the cast, and the twists and turns. I especially liked the use of sunlight in this one to light characters’ faces when they reveal truths, or when something was happening inside them, and people cast in shadow when the truth is being obscured or nefarious things are afoot.
~ - Tre nøtter til Askepott/Three Wishes for Cinderella (2021) dir. Cecilie A. Mosli. A favourite of mine, and a lovely winter rewatch. I don’t have the nostalgia attached to the ’70s original but I love that too. This one fills in some gaps, doesn’t go with the ‘fat lady as comic relief’ trope in the ball, and gives us a cute gay romance AND an older couple’s romance in the distant background, and I think, overall, it’s the one I prefer. Definitely a good one for when I’m unwell – basically most of December.
Why I Prefer this Cinderella [Spoilers]
I prefer this version of Cinderella to the version I grew up with, I think. It’s got more of the Ever After vibes where they get to know each other first, but also because the wishes come from magic acorns, there’s no, “Where the fuck has this witch bitch been while she was going through shit” that I get every time the fairy godmother appears.
It also takes out that weird Anglo-American Protestant work ethic, and removes all that ‘if you just persevere when people treat you badly and work hard enough, your dreams/prayers will come true because you’ve earned it’ nonsense.
I vibe much more with this version of the tale, because she gets the acorns thanks to several people she has already met, an owl she has already befriended, and a mix of fate and luck (you choose).
I also love that she’s not alone in this one. She has friends among the older servants who take care of her and look out for her, and she is grounded in that community, despite the treatment she receives from her stepmother. She retains her kindness and strength through their care for her, not [only] because she’s inherently virtuous.
I feel bad for Dora, who is also a victim of her mother, but is complicit in Askepott’s mistreatment due to her own flaws and weaknesses. The world is full of sad, lonely, insecure Doras, and I have some sympathy for them. There’s a moment where Dora and Askepott are bonding over Dora getting ready for the ball, and then Dora only laughs at Askepott because that’s what everyone else is doing. Before she decides to give a short laugh herself, she looks visibly uncomfortable, recognising this as a choice she has to make. She doesn’t choose her stepsister. When her mother is stripping Askepott in the barn, Dora can’t look at her, she’s in the background looking down and looking miserable. She’s a weak character, and she’s awkward, spoilt, and not very socially adept, but she’s not ‘ugly’ or ‘evil’.
Her mother puts Dora on a diet of only beans and lentils for the ball, and that scene is meant to be cringe-humour, but after watching Den stygge stesøsteren/The Ugly Stepsister (2025) dir. Emilie Kristine Blichfeldt, I will never hear her stomach rumbling in the same way again.
She appears to enjoy bossing Askepott around as an unhealthy means of gaining agency, when what she clearly needs is friendship from a peer. She recognises this at the end of the film, and finally, pushed too far by her mother’s unhinged plans that put everyone in danger, Dora finally stands up to her, which hints at the possibility of an upward trajectory for her character arc. “All” she does is tell her to shut up and refuse to free her, but baby steps, Dora. Baby steps. She also gets asked for a dance at the end by one of the prince’s men who isn’t put off by her awkwardness, and that’s also a lovely moment for her.
Also, right at the end, the last dress in the acorn isn’t Askepott’s mum’s wedding dress as in the 1970s original. It’s her own dress, so she can find the prince as herself. I really love the moment of disappointment and insecurity where she drops the last acorn and looks down and is like, “But… this is just me”.
It also works as her first acorn dressed her up as a younger version of her dad, and the second one dressed her up in her mum’s ballgown. So the third one worked really well to be her own clothes at the climax of her identity reveal, after her stepmother strips her and locks her in the barn.
The climax is also pretty good with some peril on a bridge, and at least in this one, the prince doesn’t leave two women in a freezing bog to make their own way out or drown trying. He needs to be rescued in this one. I think this is much better as a bonding experience for them, and also Askepott gets to use her archery skills to do it. The relationship and its development is centred over the marriage aspect at the end, so you see them riding off and having fun together rather than the big royal wedding ending. You don’t even see them kiss – she leans in and then says he has to catch her first, and they race off into the snow, echoing their first horserace when they met. I like that, too. Personally, that really worked for me.
- La Belle et la Bête/Beauty and the Beast (2014) dir. Christophe Gans. I really love this one. It’s a French fantasy version with a framed narrative, and a lot of family background that you don’t normally get. It follows and expands on Cocteau’s version in that way, I think, which I really like. This is one of my top 3 versions: Panna a Netvor is my top one, and then I think Fanga and this one trade places for second and third depending on my mood. Today I wanted this one for the merchant family subplot and their dynamics.
Why The Version is One of My Favourites [Spoilers]
Firstly, while a lot of criticism is around the lack of development around the romance, I do get that, and I would also like more, but I think there’s enough in there if you’re looking for it. She’s pretty into the thrill of their back and fore thing, and the resistance dynamic they have. That’s all in her expressions, and the little moments. I also think she falls in love with the man the Beast is and was through watching his interactions with his late wife in her dreams – in learning about her story, and seeing what sort of man he was when he was with her, and then how he is now. She is definitely well into him by the dance scene. It’s just very French, in a way that doesn’t translate well for Anglo audiences?
I really like that the curse transforms him into a lion-Beast because he was a hunter, and his crime was [unknowingly] killing his fairy wife in her deer form, after promising not to hunt that specific deer. Keeping his promises to Belle shows that he has learned his lessons there, and she won’t let him off learning that lesson just because of Feelings. She makes it very clear from the start, where she grabs a knife to defend herself, that he is stuck there with her as much as she is stuck there with him. It also means, when she runs away after seeing him devour a deer in the tower in front of his portrait, she’s also running because he previously said she could see her family, then he took it back. And there’s the almost kiss on the ice lake. I would love more of that, but there’s also the family plot to get back to, and I enjoy that as well.
I also love that it is as much about Belle discovering what happened to his wife, as it is about her relationship with him. There isn’t a rivalry or a wicked fairy/virtuous human dichotomy set up. It feels like they could have been friends if they knew each other, and her respect for the Princess’s grave reflects her respect and care for her late mother’s statue in the garden of the family’s city house.
This one has very cute critters in the castle, called Tadums. They’re the beagles that got transformed when the castle was enchanted. I love that for them. I definitely prefer it to having the servants transformed into inanimate objects that reflect their duties (Disney).
I do like Cocteau and Herz’s approach of having actors be parts of the furniture, like having smoke-ring blowing faces emerging from the fireplace, hands rising out of the table to serve, and very creepy figures on the four poster bed, and there being no explanation for it. Here, there are no servants, only magic and the Tadums, which are not amazing CGI, but very, very cute.
Meanwhile, rather than the servants being transformed, his hunting buddies get turned into statues, and not by an enchantress, but by the god of the forest, his nymph-wife’s father.
I also like that the merchant class is seen as materialistic, weak, silly, corrupted by wealth and high society frivolities, and obsessed with social status. The father shares these qualities with his children, but Belle’s redeeming feature is that she likes life in the country, and prefers to live off the land with vegetables and livestock. Her willingness to be a working rural girl and not a member of the city elite is what sets her apart. She’s more grounded, more virtuous, and less selfish as a result.
Meanwhile, her reckless brother Maxime has got himself in debt to the notorious ruffian Perducas, and we have a subplot of Perducas and his gang (including his tarot-reading mistress, Astrid) going after the Beast’s castle to raid it for its riches, once they learn of Belle’s return from there with jewels. (Her brother takes a gemstone to Perducas to pay him off, and Perducas then decides to raid the castle, thinking it’s empty). This is much more interesting for me in terms of family dynamics and dramatic tension than Gaston’s subplot in the Disney version.
This bit of drama leads to a fun fantasy battle showdown. I do love that there’s an attempt to save Astrid by the fairies, and to give her the chance to save her lover, simply because she loves him, and not because he’s a good guy. He very much proves he is not. It’s not Astrid’s fault that they all die. It’s very much his. That’s the really sad part. Perducas suffers for Astrid’s death (a destroyed statue falls on her) and not heeding her warnings – he transforms into a twisted tangle of briars.
I love also that saving the Beast is a group effort at the end; she gets her brothers and some of Perducas’s remaining men to carry him into the tank of enchanted healing water in the tower, and they fight off the forest while she focuses on him, and the enchantment is broken with a tear, not a kiss. Very faithful to the original tale in that regard!
In the end, when we get Vincent Cassell back from the enchantment and death, he joins her in the country cottage and fully embraces the country life, no longer a prisoner of his curse, or his privilege.
The framed narrative is revealed to be Belle telling her children the story of her own family, from their fall from grace to their current pastoral idyll, as their father (Cassell) returns home. The siblings all get happy endings, but doing something decent. The dad becomes a florist (appropriate, with the roses that Belle is now growing), the brothers become book publishers, the sisters get married to twin brothers, so they remain close. Also, the Tadums come back as beagles, and also live in the country house with them all.
The final scene is Belle and her now-human husband kissing in the rose garden, and he’s wearing some good honest working man’s clothes, no longer a hunter or a warrior or a noble, but fully embracing the working class gardening life. I kind of love that for them.
15 Dec:
- Black Christmas (1974) dir. Bob Clark. This hasn’t been available to stream in the UK for ages that I could find, so I was really pleased to finally find it. I’ve seen the updated remake. I thought for the longest time this one was US-made but it’s Canadian, but that’s probably because I saw the US version (2019) dir. Sophia Takal first. I think I prefer this original version; I got what the remake was trying to do, but it was too heavy-handed about it for me, in the way US-made stuff often is, but that’s just my opinion. There are some genuinely good creepy moments in this original version that I found genuinely unsettling, and it has that weird 70s vibe that I enjoy. I think the central premise translates really well too, and has aged pretty well.
16 Dec:
Today, I cracked open my Christmas present from last year, the DVD collecton of the BBC’s Ghost Stories for Christmas, 1968-2010, produced by the British Film Institute. My rankings for the films are on Letterboxd.
I watched Discs One and Two today, and you can check out my full review of the DVD here.
- Whistle and I’ll Come to You (1968) dir. Jonathan Miller, introduction by Ramsey Campbell
- Whistle and I’ll Come to You (2010) dir. Andy de Emmony
- Audio version of ‘Oh Whistle, And I’ll Come to You, My Lad’, by M.R. James, read by Neil Brand.
- Ramsey Campbell reading his M.R. James-inspired story, ‘The Guide’.
- The Stalls of Barchester (1971) dir. Lawrence Gordon Clark, with an introduction by the director
- A Warning to the Curious (1972) dir. Lawrence Gordon Clark, with an introduction by the director
- Ghost Stories for Christmas with Christopher Lee (2000) dir. Eleanor Yule, two out of the four segments, where he does dramatic staged readings of both The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral and A Warning to the Curious by M.R. James, in which Lee plays M.R. James and tells his stories to a gathering of his students at Cambridge.
17 Dec:
I really enjoyed the Ghost Stories for Christmas DVD, and they’re short enough that I can watch one on my lunch break, and get through lots more after work. The director introductions do give some plot spoilers, but I really think they add to the story experience. Today I got through Discs Three, Four, and Five.
Again, you can read my full review on this DVD here.
- Lost Hearts (1973) dir. Lawrence Gordon Clark, with an introduction by the director
- The Treasure of Abbot Thomas (1974) dir. Lawrence Gordon Clark, with an introduction by the director
- The Ash Tree (1975) dir. Lawrence Gordon Clark, with an introduction by the director
- The Signalman (1976) dir. Lawrence Gordon Clark, with an introduction by the director
- Stigma (1977) dir. Lawrence Gordon Clark, with an introduction by the director
- The Ice House (1978) dir. Derek Lister
- A View from a Hill (2005) dir. Luke Watson
- Number 13 (2006) dir. Pier Wilkie
- Ghost Stories for Christmas with Christopher Lee (2000) dir. Eleanor Yule, where we have the Number 13 segment.
18 Dec:
Disc Six of the Ghost Stories for Christmas DVD today!
- Classic Ghost Stories (1986) dir. David Bell – 70min runtime, comprising of 5 short episodes where actor Robert Powell performs dramatic readings of 5 M.R. James tales: “The Mezzotint”, “The Ash-Tree”, “The Rose Garden”, “Wailing Well” and “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”.
~ - Spine Chillers (1980), episodes dir. Marilyn Fox – only 3 stories from this series, the 3 M.R. James stories: “The Mezzotint” (11mins), “A School Story” (11 mins), and “The Diary of Mr Poynter” (11 mins). All the remaining available episodes can be found on the Internet Archive.
I finished the DVD! And wanted more! So I found some!
- A Ghost Story for Christmas: Woman of Stone (2024) dir. Mark Gatiss. An adaptation of Edith Nesbit’s story, Man-Size in Marble, by Mark Gatiss. I loved Nesbit’s children’s stories growing up, like The Railway Children and Five Children and It, but her horror stories are pretty good too. This one is more about domestic violence and the deep roots of patriarchal oppression. I’m not sure what I made of this one. I think I’ll read the original and see how that goes.
~ - A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story (2022) dir. Adam Penford, a televised version of the stage play of Charles Dickens’ classic, A Christmas Carol, adapted by Mark Gatiss. This is a pretty funny version, but also pretty chilling; I loved the staging of the ghosts and the three spirits were fantastic. It also made me cry in parts. I remember being absolutely terrified of the Ghost of Christmas Future as a child, and this version didn’t disappoint. I loved the use of puppets and the staging was great. I think this adaptation might actually be one of my favourite versions of the story. Also, I appreciated that they cast an ambulatory wheelchair user as Tiny Tim, it was good to see a disabled actor in the role.
19 Dec:
- A Ghost Story for Christmas: Count Magnus (2022) dir. Mark Gatiss. I really like this M.R. James story, and I was really pleased to find that this was adapted for the Ghost Story for Christmas series. Lawrence Gordon Clark had a script for this all ready to go, but he couldn’t film it due to lack of budget, so it never got made in the original series. This is is Mark Gatiss’s adaptation of the story, and I think it works well. I wasn’t disappointed with this one.
~ - A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Tractate Middoth (2013) dir. Mark Gatiss. Another M.R. James, not one I’ve read, and I liked the casting and the atmosphere. It’s another sinister treasure hunt/puzzle mixed up in supernatural stalker shenanigans, which is a lovely combination that James did so well. Although a variation on a Jamesian theme, it’s a good variation, and I enjoyed Gatiss’s adaptation of it.
~ - A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Dead Room (2018) dir. Mark Gatiss. I think this one is an original story from Gatiss, with Simon Callow playing actor Aubrey in a haunted recording studio. This is a Haunted by the Past one, with a question around whether it is ghosts or memories, playing with the auditory element of the job, and Aubrey’s hallucinations. This worked okay for me, and it got at the sexual repression I think you can find in James’s work if you’re looking for it, foregrounding and centering it. I liked it, but not one of my favourites.
~ - A Ghost Story for Christmas: Martin’s Close (2019) dir. Mark Gatiss. This is another M.R. James adaptation, again written for the screen by Mark Gatiss, and it’s not a straight sort of period piece adaptation, but this time we get a narrator for the framed narrative, Simon Williams, playing Stanton, who narrates the historical tale directly to the camera and as a voiceover. It’s a blend of the Robert Powell / Michael Bryant style narrations, with cut-aways to the historical trial. I think this worked fine, and Peter Capaldi does a great job of the attorney role. I liked that Ann Clark was played sympathetically and as an autistic girl, and I haven’t read this one either but I hope that she’s not comic relief or written as an ‘oddity’.
~ - A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Mezzotint (2021) dir. Mark Gatiss. After hearing two versions of this story (Robert Powell’s narration, and the Spine Chillers episode with Michael Bryant), I’m very, very happy that this one got adapted. This has been moved forwards (the original story was published 1904) to 1923, which gives it a more Christie-esque vibe to me, but gives it that Golden Age Detective feel of a sinister mystery. This is a genuinely creepy story and one of my favourites, so I loved it. I also liked that I can compare Powell’s mezzotint prop with this one! I did like the choice to genderswap the servant character, as otherwise it’s just 4 blokes is a room. I also enjoyed the choice to link the mezzotint mystery to the mysterious family history of our main character. I get what they were going for with the ending, but… I’m kind of wishing they didn’t show us so much.
~ - The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020) dir. Jim Cummings. I thought I’d go for a feature-length film after all the shorts, and as this one has been on my watchlist for a while, I thought it would be a good one to go for. It’s a police procedural werewolf film in the snow; why not. It’s meant to be a horror-comedy? But I don’t vibe with this sort of blunt humour really, so for me, a lot of what was meant to be funny didn’t land. It was fine, though, and it pulled together at the end with some elements I appreciated.
~ - The Death of Snow White (2025) dir. Jason Brooks. These gory updates of classic tales are my guilty pleasure. I loved Cinderella’s Curse (my favourite so far?), and this one was full on cheap body horror all the way through. Everyone is in Ren Faire costumes, and the queen is outstanding. The pursuit of beauty is accompanied with horrific experimentations, the eyelash sewing, teeth replacement, leeches, blood magic, and hacking up peasant girls. It’s pretty good, and I found it funny, and it had some amazing moments. The butterfly. Amazing. Naked mirror demons. Amazing. I enjoyed this one.
~ - The Vampire Lovers (1970) dir. Roy Ward Baker. Somehow, the only one of the Karnstein trilogy I thought I hadn’t seen? I’ve seen both Twins of Evil and Lust for a Vampire (several times). This is the one that actually tried to base the plot on Le Fanu’s Carmilla, with a lot of familiar faces in the cast, and some gorgeous dresses. I actually remember a lot of scenes but not the whole film, so it turns out… yes I have seen it before? But ADHD I guess. Anyway, this is a good one.
~
20 Dec:
- Pale Horse (2024) dir. Pearry Reginald Teo. This is trying to be a modern Gothic, romantic, thing. The point is to watch a beautiful man with his shirt off painting, but there’s a lovely she-demon, and he’s sold his soul to make Art. It’s got a good premise, it looks good, but the sound mixing is atrocious. This feels like a less erotic version could be a YA Dark Romance bestseller, to be honest, but also if it went full-on Mandy with the visuals it could have been 80% better. I actually liked the ending though – a bit weak in execution, but I do like a tragic failure.
23 Dec:
- The Traveler (2010) dir. Michael Oblowitz. A Christmas Eve thriller with Val Kilmer, slaying in every sense. If Die Hard is a Christmas film (it is), then so is this one. I’ve seen Die Hard so many times I just fancied another gory thriller set at Christmas to shake things up! The ending of this one is a bit of a let-down, and is incredibly USian about it in the process (see spoilers below) but overall very enjoyable. I would rewatch this 100%, I don’t think the ending spoils it for me.
Spoilers for The Traveler
The extra-judicial torture and murder of a drifter who comes after the cops seeking revenge is justified at the end by the revelation he actually did kill the main cop’s daughter. So the little girl comes back to reveal the drifter’s name (like Rumplestiltskin, who also was after children in the fairy tale), and this enables the cop to break his power and shoot him. He’s already dead but guns always work when you have the right mystical knowledge.
Another interesting point is when he runs outside there are 2 doors: one is the Hard Eight bar with dice on the sign. One is a door in shadow that has a red neon sign saying JESUS SAVES above it. He runs into the bar. So you can read this as a complete rejection of Jesus and religious morals and Christian ethics, but he is saved anyway, because cop ethics/being a cop who is justified in his heinous actions, trump Christian ethics. He’s of course saved by the ghost of his innocent little daughter, which centres his position as Father in US family life over and above actual ethics and morality.
This film seems to subscribe to the idea that a man in a position of power can do anything and get away with it if (a) he can justify it to himself, and (b) he’s doing it for his kid, who then supernaturally rewards him for it as a seal of approval.
There is no coherent belief system in this film, of course, it’s not really thought through, or even about that. But that betrays the unexamined cognitive dissonance and central shallow thinking about ethics that the writer (Joseph C. Muscat) and director have, while pandering to (who they assume could be) their potential audience demographic. So that’s a total mess, because the film doesn’t actually present a coherent belief system, and plays with conflicting elements and vibes.
Because the drifter turns out to actually have been evil, this is played as some sort of redemption arc for that cop? If we’re going ‘saved by grace’ here, it’s the grace of his dead kid, not Jesus, which has been explicitly rejected (whether this was intentional by the writer/director or not) by making him go through the other door. So it’s a deeply secular ‘redeemed by family’ message, again, whether intentional or not.
That probable lack of intent is pretty normal for a lot of films that play with these themes on a surface level only, and it usually results in these sorts of internally incoherent ideas. I think it’s really telling about the cultural norms and assumptions of the writers/directors when this happens, as when you don’t think about what you’re saying, you fall back into your own cultural set of norms by default, and when you take a step back, they don’t make any sense in the context of the story you’re telling. They do, however, reveal quite a lot about what these writers/directors subconsciously or consciously think about certain things, and I find that equally fascinating.
I deeply regretted that we didn’t get a decent kill for the detective at the end – but apart from that, Val Kilmer is the best thing in this film. Worth a watch for the super close-ups of his face and little smirks.
24 Dec:
- A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Room in the Tower (2025) dir. Mark Gatiss. This one is genuinely good – even people who don’t like Gatiss’s adaptations think this one is good. E.F. Benson’s story, The Room in the Tower, came out in 1912, so before either of the Wars, but this adaptation was set during the Blitz in the 1940s, and that enabled a few tweaks to be made to the original, which ends with the coffin being dug up. I really liked the addition of the framed narrative, and the tension supplied by the bombing above them. I also liked the ending. E.F. Benson shows us the vampiric ghoul as well, and neither the original nor the adaptation explains why the main character is the focus of these dreams and apparitions. I’ll be honest: the original doesn’t do much for me, but the adaptation really worked to creep me out.
I think for January I’ll just post the highlights of the month, or these posts will get VERY long each time!
See you then for another monthly media round-up, and I’ll be posting my Year in Review as an Indie Author tomorrow.
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