Jack Graham

Continuing a consideration of ‘The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral’ by M.R. James and its BBC television adaptation by Lawrence Gordon Clark Continuing a consideration of ‘The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral’ by M.R. James and its BBC television adaptation by Lawrence Gordon Clark Links to all previou

I reconvene with George & Elliot for our belated Christmas / New Years celebration, a discussion of Roger Corman's masterpiece, 1964's The Masque of the Red Death, an adaptation of about four different Poe stories and Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal and Sade's 120 Days of Sodom. A gorgeous and spe

George Daniel Lea, Elliot Chapman, and I, discuss another film in our Folk Horror series, and oh yeah this is one of the big ones. We're tackling one third of the now canonical 1970s British 'Folk Horror Trilogy', Piers Haggard and Robert Wynne-Simmons' frail behemoth Blood on Satan's Claw (Tigon, 1

Continuing a consideration of ‘The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral’ by M.R. James and its BBC television adaptation by Lawrence Gordon Clark. Continuing a consideration of ‘The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral’ by M.R. James and its BBC television adaptation by Lawrence Gordon Clark. Here is Part 1 of

On ‘The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral’ by M.R. James and its BBC television adaptation by Lawrence Gordon Clark - Introduction On ‘The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral’ by M.R. James and its BBC television adaptation by Lawrence Gordon Clark Introduction ‘The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral’ was one o

I have elsewhere remarked upon a paradox: M.R. James is thought of as ‘the father of the modern British ghost story’ (etc. etc.) and yet rarely wrote about ghosts as such. This is not a particularly original observation but it is one that remains, perhaps, under-theorised – something I hope to addre

Opening a consideration of the Ghost Story, drawing on… …the valorization of the realm of a culture’s ghosts and phantasms as a significant and rich field of social production rather than a mirage to be dispelled… *** …a Marxist genealogy fascinated with the irrational aspects of social processes, a

An intro to a series on the ghost story writer M.R. James, some of his stories, and their television adaptations... This essay is intended as a light introduction to a series on the ghost story writer M.R. James, some of his stories, and their television adaptations, as well as some related texts an

On Nic Roeg's 'Don't Look Now!' (1979): prophecy, tragedy, freedom, bourgeois patriarchy, and the deadly paradox of 'responsibility'... The ideas in this essay were developed in conversation with Elliot Chapman and George Daniel Lea. It is respectfully – perhaps presumptuously – dedicated to Frederi

The Cybermen, The Borg, Capitalism, Collectivism, and the Gothic The literature of terror is born precisely out of the terror of a split society and out of the desire to heal it. - Franco Moretti 0. Introduction People often compare the Borg, the cyborg gestalt from the Star Trek franchise, to Docto

A little bit of whimsy on my part. A reading of one of my favourite short pieces of writing; Poe's weird, oblique, haunting prose poem about a story told by a daemon. A desolate jungle, a rain of blood, obscurely horrifying water lillies, a congregation of giant beasts, a man with the face of a deit

Final part of a consideration of John Carpenter’s In The Mouth of Madness (1994). The ideas in this essay were partly developed in conversation with Elliot Chapman and George Daniel Lea. In The Mouth of Madness, H.P. Lovecraft, Alan Moore’s Providence, metafiction, the ‘fourth wall’, China Miéville’

Part 3 of a consideration of John Carpenter’s In The Mouth of Madness (1994). No more prologues. This installment gets down to business. Part 3 of a consideration of John Carpenter’s In The Mouth of Madness (1994). The ideas in this essay were partly developed in conversation with George Daniel Lea

Part 1 of a consideration of John Carpenter’s In The Mouth of Madness (1994). Part 1 of a consideration of John Carpenter’s In The Mouth of Madness (1994). Some of the ideas in this essay were partly developed in conversation with George Daniel Lea and Elliot Chapman. * John Carpenter’s late - and l

On The Boy (2016) On The Boy (2016) As a paying member (thank you!) you're getting this review/essay in its first draft form, in advance of publication at Eruditorum.press. The Boy, a film from 2016, written by Stacey Menear and directed by William Brent Bell, has been largely-forgotten, but deserve

On the End of the World, the Zombie Apocalypse, and other comforting Bourgeois Fantasies Say what you like about the zombie apocalypse but at least you don’t have to go to work in the morning. Zombie movies are about how much fun the zombie apocalypse will be. Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, Romero’s

On Possession, Property, and Haunting; on Colonialism, Alienation, and Commodity Fetishism Part 3 of a Gothic Marxist Consideration of Horror as Capitalist Cultural Production Possession is one of the key concepts in modern Horror, though Horror shares it with other genres. The genre of Horror is ge

On Horror, Women, Patriarchy, and Misogyny Part 2 of a Gothic Marxist Consideration of Horror as Capitalist Cultural Production The Conjuring movies are about good and bad women. In the first movie the central antagonist is the spirit of a dead witch who killed her own baby and then herself, and who

“This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine” - The Tempest Adaptation, Culture, and Production Dracula, the novel, and Frankenstein, the novel, have one thing in common: they’re unfilmable. The books are unfilmable for different reasons. It boils down to this: Dracula is too bad to film, and Frankens