England's Screaming
Movie fans come in all shapes and sizes and ages these days, but I wonder if this isn’t really a book for someone like me who’s of an age to have seen almost all the films mentioned in it – from the prize-winners, to the cult movies, to the just-plain-atrocious-movie-you-watch-anyway-because-you’re-a-horror fan and saying it’s bad is no reason to hope there won’t be something good in it somewhere? (Example: In The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1972), Count Dracula has manifested himself as modern-day property developer D. D. Denham, and is funding research into a strain of the bubonic plague that will realise his long-cherished dream of wiping out humanity for good. Fabulous idea. Just a pity the film’s so awful. No wonder Christopher Lee packed in playing the count when he was done with this.) Because what we have here in this fabulously inventive book is author Sean Hogan finding links between different characters in (mostly) post-war British horror films and imagi...
