A single moment passed. But Julia could sense that something was different. The cosy old bedroom with the bolted door and the wax cylinder recorder seemed both new and familiar at the same time. She had an inexplicable urge to check the old suitcase beside the wardrobe. Staggering and stumbling across the room, almost bumping ..read more

Well, this review of Anna Biller’s 2016 thriller/dark comedy/psychological horror/art film “The Love Witch” is one I’ve been meaning to write for a while. This was a film that I first stumbled across when I found a really cool-looking trailer on Youtube much earlier this year. At the time, DVD editions seemed to be out of stock on the site I’d planned to buy it from. Whilst I was ready to make cynical comments about how this amazingly timeless storage medium can sometimes be neglected or overlooked these days, it turned out to actually be a temporary stock issue rather than a “limited run” or ..read more

Well, I hadn’t expected to write a “first impressions” review of a modern TV series, but I happened to see a “Cracked” article  about a long-running BBC dark comedy anthology series I’d vaguely heard of before called “Inside No. 9” (2014- present). It intrigued me and I decided to read a bit more about it. From text descriptions and brief clips on the internet, it seemed like the sort of thing that I’d either really love or really hate. The show was created by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, who are most famous for the dark comedy TV series “The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen ..read more

Well, I thought that I’d talk about an interesting paradox I’ve noticed with the dark comedy genre today. This is something I ended up thinking about after rediscovering a Youtube channel called “Mashed” which contains animated parodies of various videogames. Having some kind of association with Channel 4, the humour is definitely more on the cynical and edgy “late-night television” side of things This article contains SPOILERS for several “Mashed” videos and the novel “Red Dwarf: Last Human” by Doug Naylor. I should probably also add a CONTENT WARNING for any Youtube videos linked here too ..read more

Postal. If you were a teenager who played computer games during the 2000s, you’ve probably at least heard of this edgy dark comedy series. And, back in June, I was astonished to find that there was actually a modern “retro FPS”-style game in the series called “Postal: Brain Damaged” (2022). Since I love old-school FPS games and was morbidly curious about what a “Postal” game with this style of gameplay would look like, I actually ended up buying this one on release day. To my delight, I was actually able to get a double-discount on the DRM-free edition sold on GOG (thanks to both a sale and a ..read more

Well, out of a mixture of vague curiosity and early 2000s nostalgia, I finally got round to watching Eli Roth’s 2002 film “Cabin Fever” for the first time (SPOILERS ahead). From the critic quotes on the DVD cover and Roth’s later reputation for extreme horror movies, I was expecting it to be a genuinely scary horror film. Yet, to my surprise, it actually turned out to be a surprisingly cynical and “edgy” dark comedy movie that – whilst it includes some gruesome special effects – was more likely to make me laugh than shudder. Although the plot of this film is – on paper – very much a horror mo ..read more

Well, I thought that I’d offer a few thoughts about the differences between two of my favourite types of comedy today- I am, of course, talking about the comedy horror and dark comedy genres And, yes, there is a lot of overlap between these genres – since they both make the audience laugh about “scary”, “grim” and/or “miserable” topics and they both rely on the tension between contradictory emotions to great effect. Even so, I’d argue that there are still some interesting distinctions between the two that can help you to tell them apart. So, what are they? Before I go any further, I should p ..read more

Well, I was still in the mood for films from the 1970s, so I thought that I’d take a look at the 1976 satirical dark comedy film “Network”. Although the film’s famous “I’m mad as hell!” speech has been sampled in numerous songs, I only really learnt where it was from when I happened to watch this fascinating online video (SPOILERS) about the film and then decided to look for a trailer for it afterwards. Naturally, I was intrigued and was also delighted to find that second-hand DVDs of this film were going cheap online. So, let’s take a look at “Network”. Needless to say, this review may conta ..read more

Well, I thought that I’d take a look at a book that I’ve been meaning to read for over a decade and a half. I am, of course, talking about Chuck Palahniuk’s 1999 novel “Survivor”. Back when I was about fifteen or so, I ended up reading Palahniuk’s “Fight Club” (after seeing the movie on TV) and found a copy of “Survivor” sometime later in a charity shop, possibly in Fareham. From the small pencil marks my younger self used to leave in books as a back-up in case my bookmark fell out, I apparently read about 25 pages of it back then but abandoned it for some reason. So, about a decade and a hal ..read more

Well, although I’ve talked about the topic of comedy in horror fiction before, I thought that I’d return to it today after I started reading a horror novel from the late 1950s called “The Haunting Of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson (mild SPOILERS ahoy). Although the novel starts in a fairly sombre, ominous and morose way, and I’d worried that reading it was going to be an extremely miserable experience, there is a surprising amount of comedy in the first half of the novel. Most of this consists of amusingly irreverent dialogue, quirky characters, dark comedy and even some hilariously obscure l ..read more