Jack Graham

George Lea and I convene for another Lovecraft Retrospective (which I'll file here as a Same Log, despite the sad lack of Elliot) to talk about H.P. Lovecraft's strange, neglected, undervalued, late masterpiece The Shadow Out of Time. For my money, this bizarre and ominous tale of mental time travel

The Same Log gang reconvene to discuss David Cronenberg's 1983 movie adaptation of Stephen King's The Dead Zone - a 'perfect' movie according to me and still horribly relevant.

I'm back with Daniel and Elliot to chat about the original, the inimitable, the genre-transforming movie, Hellraiser, 1986, written and directed by Clive Barker.

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 Same Log team's diversion for Spooktober finally ends, only 3 months and a week after Halloween. But we're going out with a bang, talking about Ari Aster's breakout 2018 masterpiece of modern Horror, Hereditary, in which the occult (hidden) and exploitative nature of the bourgeois nuclear family

The Same Log team - myself, Hellraiser bluray boxset star George Lea, and the consensus greatest stage Sherlock Holmes Elliot Chapman - return for New Years with a very seasonally appropriate look at John Carpenter's Halloween from 1978. The very definition of a film for which no introduction or exp

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 2 of a consideration of John Carpenter’s In The Mouth of Madness (1994), and other things via it. The ideas in this essay were partly Part 2 of a consideration of John Carpenter’s In The Mouth of Madness (1994), and other things via it. The ideas in this essay were partly developed in conversat

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

On Horror, Childhood, Memory, and Time Part 1 of a Gothic Marxist consideration of Horror as Capitalist Cultural Production In recent years, the mass culture industries have resurrected the 1980s as a stylistic marker, first in Horror with the first film in the two-part adaptation of Stephen King’s

An audiobook of a short horror story. White explorers meet revolting retribution in Africa. An intriguing text with much to tell us about the morbid, sick, anxious psychology of racism, colonialism, and imperialism. WARNING: This story, while fascinating and effective as horror, is very racist. Cont