A Handful of Horrors 2

When I was travelling Europe back in 2016, I found something somewhere along the borders of Bulgaria. I cannot know where my discovery was for sure, I cannot point to it on a map nor would I be able to go back there even if I had the time and money, because quite honestly, this instance is lost among a fog of memories shrouded in the distant reaches of obscurity. During 2016 I visited and passed through so many countries, whether it be by vehicle, public transport or by foot. It is far easier in fact to list off the places I didn’t visit rather than the ones that I did, the main ones I missed out on being Italy, Switzerland, Spain, and some of the Nordic territories but I have visited Finland. I collected some very fond memories during my 2016 travels, obtained a gallery of pictures some of which I’ve not shown anyone, discovered some wonderful lands that seemed to have never been touched by humans. So many cities I ventured through, so many towns and small villages unbeknown to the common tourist who is only interested in what they can find in a tour book not far from their luxurious five-star hotel. Seriously you guys are missing out! I met a myriad of different people, some of which I’ve forgotten the names of they’re just face’s now, and I can only imagine where they are or what they’re up to, they having drifted into the clouds of fractured thoughts. But I digress, there was one instance that I’ll never forget, and this is the story I wish to share with you today. Truth be told, the only other person who knows about this was my girlfriend at the time, a beautiful young lass from Australia and even she did not see what was down there in the tunnels beneath our very feet, she only knows a slither of what I saw because she did not follow me into that darkness, and I suppose she was the wiser. All I remember was that we had been walking for days, our legs and backs were tired, we’d not showered or slept properly for such a long time, the weather in Bulgaria had been kind to us for the most part, it was warm yet flourished with a crisp wind, but in order to get to where we wanted to go, we needed transport, and because we were down to our last few hundred lev and in the middle of absolute nowhere, we had no choice but to hitchhike across the border, standing on the corner of a gritty old petrol station that looked like it was days away from being decommissioned, only staying open for a few hours a day. Brown woodland rolled over the hills that surrounded us on all sides, tall, sharpened mountains shelled our location over the horizon, and the long stretch of road we had been walking on was black like it were a ribbon cutting through nature. While we were hitchhiking in this empty place, we’d often see a vehicle coming from miles away, our hopes would be aroused only for it to pass right by us and swerve around the corner like we weren’t even there, the engine chugging into the distance leaving us with a cold sense of dread that we may have to walk out of here, and when I say walk I mean hiking into the mountains, passing the border and into Macedonia on a diet provided by what we could find in the old rickety station. Over the course of the day, every car, truck, and lorry steamed on by, this happened hundreds if not a thousand times, we were standing there for an enormous amount of time, holding our board in two-hour shifts, sharing a bottle of water and cheap salty snacks. I seem to remember two occasions during our travels where hitchhiking went on for an eternity, where we were on the side of the road for days; One time was in Germany midsummer, we were on a busy junction with traffic lights baking under the intense heat, it was almost unbearable. We were eventually picked up by two German ladies one of which had dyed her hair cherry red, who took us to Moonlake, a heavenly open blue lagoon sealed away from civilisation, but this is a story for another time. The other instance was here, in Bulgaria, the opposite to Germany where little traffic came through by comparison. The petrol station closed, day turned to night, and we hadn’t seen a car in hours, so we decided to scout around for a flat piece of earth to pitch our tent. Where we decided to pitch was not ideal, I remember the ground was laden with sharp grass and bushes of thistles, walking on bare foot would be a painful experience but this was the best place we could find, over a hill far away from the road, up a muddy mound of earth and into the clearing of grass. As I was assisting my girlfriend slip tent poles through the loops and pushing the pegs into the ground, it was then when I saw it, something unnatural protruding from the otherwise overgrowth of thickets, a bunker covered in vines like it had been there for a hundred years. As I approached, I noticed that the door, the square steel door with rusted hinges was left slightly ajar and all that could be heard in the black was an echo of wind rushing in and droplets of water running in from the rafters swaying in a city of cobwebs. Using my knife that I always carried with me on my belt, even when I slept, I cut the thorns that roped around the handle, like tentacles they were trying their best to keep me out but after a few cuts and saws, I pulled the door open and as I did so, the steel slat scraped open…

As you guys know, horror is my favourite genre, whether it be sci-fi, psychological, creature feature, paranormal, alien you name it, if it’s horror and is of a certain standard, I’ll likely get around to watching it I look forward to such moments. Last year I wrote an article titled ‘A Handful of Horrors’ where I listed off five of what I think are some of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen, and even though I am still very proud of that list and of the honourable mentions I list afterwards, I plan to do something a little different here, I plan to take it up a notch. In ‘Handful of Horrors 2’ I’ve found some movies that you likely have never heard of before, movies that don’t just scare you, but are able to get under your skin and turn your blood cold, leaving you with a sense of dread and uncertainty that lasts for days if not weeks. You see, the horror genre has been butchered over the years, dare I say the last ten years has been awful for the genre as the mainstream pump out terrible title after terrible title one lame, predictable horror after the next, movies like IT Chapters 1 and 2, The Nun, Blair Witch 2, Annabelle, The Conjuring, Midsommar, Sinister, the Insidious trilogy the list goes on forever, such movies relying on bloody gorefests or jump scares to jolt its audiences and kill veterans like me with boredom, studios forgetting what true horror is and was. A good horror does not necessarily need a creature or something disgusting to disturb you, no, all a good horror needs is a raw idea, an audience with an active imagination and willingness to disconnect from the outside world for the runtime, this might mean (and get ready) turning your fucking phone off if you can manage it – That would be a good horror of today, wouldn’t it? Some teen named Chad loses their phone right before school and must face the day without it. I’m sure the youth of today would freak the fuck out if that ever-happened God forbid, or perhaps the internet drops for a few hours and you cannot respond to your Tinder message triggering your fragile ego!? Equally as terrifying for the teens of 2021, but anyway, back to my analysis – If you can trigger someone’s imagination, if you can upset those fundamental fears that rest inside us all, the need for a cheap jump scare, or a big dumb monster simply pales in comparison. The movies I am about to present do this beautifully, eliciting fears that plague us all in some form or another, unless you’re an unfeeling sociopath. So, before you indulge in the list below, know that I will try to be as spoiler free as possible, know that in order to build this list I had to delve deep into the genre, pluck my brain of movies that struck a chord with me at a young age. I had to go beyond the haven of Netflix, Prime and other streaming services that do not hold a candle to what’s out there in the far-off dusty corners of the internet, and at the end of this article, I’ll answer the question on the tip of everyone’s tongues, as to why do we subject ourselves to such horrors? Why is it that some of us are willing to expose our consciousness to such nightmares? I think the answer is most unsettling and interesting but for now, do grab yourselves a drink, I’ve gone with ginger ale I’m not addicted I swear, and let’s look over my second list, let’s read my ‘Handful of Horrors 2’ and restore some faith to those of us who love horror and wish to see it return to the big screen. I do hope you enjoy and if you’ve heard of all these movies, do let me know because I will be surprised if you have.

Scott and the Antarctic

I’d like to start off with a film telling the true and harrowing tale of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, a former Officer in the British Royal Navy who turned into an explorer, an adventurer who wished to uncover and conquer the South pole before the Norwegians, whose expedition was to be led by a man named Roald Engelbregt Gravning, who also was preparing for the long and dangerous venture into the harsh province of Antarctica. A race to reach the pole was on, a race consisting of two teams one of which was the English, who would use motor sleds (state of art technologies of the time in 1912), ponies (which Scott was criticised for) and dogs to drag their heavy equipment and resources most of the way before marching on by foot. They’d heave what they had left up the glacial wall and travel across the icy plate above where they’d reach their destination, well before the inhospitable winter thoroughly set in. Having meticulously mapped out the terrain and studied the weather patterns for years prior, Scott’s goals were not solely focused on reaching the pole, but was underlined as a journey of discovery, which explained his professionally diverse crew, Dr Edward Wilson, Captain Lawrence Oates, Lt. Henry Robertson Bowers who was the youngest member at twenty-six, and Edgar Evans, while the Norwegians decided to take a different route, using only their dogs and sleds. Their path was not as well mapped out as the English route was, this could either be riskier, perhaps easier, or quite simply could have led to a dead end stopping them in their tracks, but it was a chance Roald was prepared to take to reach the pole first. All the Norwegians were expert skiers, they were used to travelling in colder climates than the Brits, they were far more experienced with handling dogs using them as food when their usages ran out and their supplies lightened, making their travelling a little brutal, but far more efficient than their rivals’ methods, which were coined as being more humane. Scott led two expeditions into this hostile uncharted land, the first was called; The British National Antarctic Expedition, later known as the Discovery Expedition that began in 1901 and ended in 1904 with the help of Sir Clements Robert Markham, a famous geographer, writer, and member of the RGS (Royal Geographical Society). This expedition was followed shortly after by the Terra Nova Expedition of 1910 to 1913, this would be where the race against the Norwegians would take place and this would be the last venture Scott, and his heroic crew of five, ranging from scientists, explorers and cartographers would undertake, his body found with two of his friends in a tent buried under a thick blanket of ice on the Ross Ice Shelf just eleven miles away from a resource deposit, a depo where if they had reached in time before the winter caught up to them, would have likely saved their lives. If you think I just spoiled the story for you with the knowledge of Scott’s tragic passing, believe me, the cold death is just a small part of what went on during their desperate escape from the jaws of hell freezing over, a beast that picked off one man, one friend at a time in haunting, and unforgiving ways. Nature is a cruel mistress and this film, directed by Charles Frend in 1948, expresses how merciless some of Earths most hospitable domains can be and still are. What begins as a feel-good movie, a light-hearted adventure with an unyielding whip of feisty spirit, ever so slowly descends into a bleak and murky bitterness. Not only do the Norwegians reach the pole first, winning the race by a huge margin by five or so weeks, but Roald leaves a letter addressed to Scott directly mocking him for his efforts, his expedition after all costing far more and requiring more than it should have what with the advances in technology. But this is the least of Scott’s concerns for his luck begins to rapidly fall away soon after reaching the Norwegian post, having to face the return journey in a demoralising defeat, and walk more than nine hundred miles back to base with the steady realisation that an arctic winter is rapidly approaching, coming in far sooner than initially predicted…If you know anything about the English, you probably know that we do not like being told what to do, we’re stubborn in our ways and often approach things with an air of stoic confidence, and rightly so, we’ve earned this right having a long and impressive history differing from any other nation on the planet! We’ve conquered almost every territory on the globe, defeated every people in warfare, staved off a fascistic regime when Europe had all but surrendered and sided with the Nazi’s. We ended slavery, defeated the Spanish Armada, granted a democratic vote for all men and women, invented football, cultivated people such as William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Edward Jenner, Michael Faraday, James Chadwick, William Gilbert the list is ongoing. We also constructed the Magna Carter, issued in June of 1215, the first ever document that put into writing the principle, that the King and his cabinet were not above the law. This would prevent the King or ruler of the time from exploiting his power, placing limits of royal authority establishing the law as a power in of itself. The Magna Carta could be considered as one of the most important pieces of writing in existence, and although we’re also responsible for some great travesties over the course of history too, you cannot deny that our reach is a dominant one. So, to see the English spirit crushed over the final third act of the film, they being trapped in an endless white hellscape as supplies start to dwindle, technologies begin to fail them, their bodies succumbing to frostbite and fatigue, the ponies having to be shot one at a time right in front of the other until all that is left are but a few men, huddled around a tiny flame for warmth, inside a tiny tent becoming shadows of their former selves as a blizzard howls somewhat taunting them from the outside, unsettles me to the core. There are some scenes in this film that genuinely shudder me, moments when men surrender to forces that far exceed their own strengths, where human life becomes miserable and at times, a burden to be alive, not just upon yourself, but on others around you and it’s here, when I realise that this actually happened, that this is not made up, the events of which can actually be found well documented in Scott’s journal, letters that have been made available for the public to read. It’s the letters addressed to his wife and his old Admiral, Sir Francis Charles Bridgeman that catch me off guard, letters which are most upsetting and frightfully disturbing considering his dire situation. In the film, Scott and his men are trapped inside the belly of a storm, temperatures plummeting to -40, they’re caught out by nature burying them alive under carpets of snow. The final thoughts of Scott, dreaming about walking on a warm beach holding hands with his wife Kathleen, a woman so far away from him, someone he will never see again, fearful of leaving her all alone in this world and what awaits him on the other side – It’s a haunting, eye-opening stuff, but for all intents and purposes, Scott’s plan to enter and exit the South pole should have worked! Measurements made from modern-day weather stations along his route show the predictions Scott was relying on were extremely accurate, but 1912’s weather was an anomaly, the temperatures he and his crew having to endure only occurred once every fifteen years, this was something no one saw coming at the time and what began as a race to make history for one’s own country, turned into an unwinnable battle against the forces of nature, one that no one could have survived. Scott and the Antarctic was a film I saw when I was very young, is one that I will never forget and one that is deserving to be on this list and it’s not even listed as a horror, far from it, it’s merely a drama.  

Possession

Possession released in 1981, it stars Sam Neill, Isabelle Adjani, Margit Carstensen and was directed by Andrzej Zulawski. I was unaware of this movies existence long after I became fascinated with the horror genre, in fact it was only by accident I came across this one not that long ago, a few months give or take, where I overheard a critique mentioning it and particularly one certain scene that sparked my curiosity, so I hunted it down. At first glance I noted the acting, it’s performed well of course but comes with a mildly amusing, bombastic tone, it’s hard to take it seriously. In most movies, the goal of the actors is to portray characters through sets of circumstances plotted out by the writer and co-ordinated by the director taking on the roles of people in real life to the best of their ability, to convince us, the audience that they’re real, but in Possession I found myself shaking my head early thinking ‘No one behaves this way’ and I almost flicked over to something else giving this movie the elbow, but I didn’t! Instead, it kept me hooked, as overacted as it is, it’s unbelievably compelling, and then I realised what it was I was watching and the clue is in the title, Possession and then it hit me. What starts out as a typical drama between a married couple, their relationship plummeting into turmoil when Mark, played by Sam Neill discovers his wife Anna played by Isabelle Adjani is sleeping with someone else. To make matters worse they have a young son, who is forced to deal with and witness the breakup of his parents who are behaving in very wild and awfully strange ways. Anna becoming more and more distant as if a cold sorrowless statue of her former self, while Mark, unable to come to terms with the realisation that his wife is in love with someone else, becomes obsessed with who she is seeing, where she goes and how intimate she is with her new partner? We’ve all been through breakups before, we all know how it feels to lose your man or woman, whether it be sudden or over a period of time, and I am sure everyone reading this can remember a moment when you’ve done something you would never normally do, to try and win that person back, and yes before you say anything I am guilty of doing dumb shit too during some of my breakups so do not think I am some moral authority over this stuff because I’ve behaved in rather sporadic odd ways too in my youth, it’s all part of growing up, we’ve all done things we’re not proud of but given the right support system and a little time, most of us learn to deal with breakups responsibly and accept the reality of the situation you find yourself in and walk away…But in the movie, Mark does some abhorrent things, things you should NEVER do man or woman, he beats his ex-wife, both emotionally and physically going beyond the pale to try and get answers from her berating her with intense personal questions about her life outside the walls of their apartment, but Anna always responds in alarmingly cold and indifferent ways even when the blood is pouring from her face and it’s disturbing on a number of levels, the theme of abuse being but one of them. Now that we are here, I’d like to quickly talk about Isabelle’s performance, it truly is mind-blowing the actress herself needing a couple of years to get over this film and I heard (not sure if this is true so please do not quote me) she even nearly quit acting entirely after her role as Anna. Isabelle, able to give the camera a look of frightful glee yet encapsulating all the pain and anguish she’s in but accepts it all in the wake of her nightmarish circumstances alluding to her dark secrets which will be exposed gradually as the movie progresses. She’s able to hook you into this world with a stare of utter madness that feels almost alien in nature and it’s at this point where the film goes further than being about two people stuck in an abusive relationship. Anna escapes the clutches of her ex-husband and rushes to go home, to be with the ‘person’ she loves, only to get lost in a subway where she starts to lose her fucking mind! The scene goes on, and on and on and on. Honestly, I remember watching it thinking ‘Please make it stop’ for Isabelle’s sake, the camera on her for an uncomfortable amount of time, panning around and getting right up close as she gives a truly mesmerising performance of insanity. Like travelling by a car crash on the road, you cannot help but to stare and I gotta say, this scene along with some horrifying imagery both monstrous and sexual in nature, burned its way into me and onto this list where it deserves to be. Possession, is not for all horror fans, some may watch it and will be trying to hard to unravel its mystery and underlying context, like a child trying to understand a magic trick, I suggest you go into this with an open mind, do not try to understand it, absorb what you can and let it sit with you, trust me it will sit with you and then will you start to come to some strange realisations….Or you can just use the internet machine and have someone else tell you, your choice.

Last Summer

A young teenage girl, Sandy finds a gul on the beach of Fire Island unable to fly. Two boys, one named Dan the other called Peter, come over offering to help Sandy nurse the bird back to health, and over time they form a close friendship. The teenagers begin to hang out, they tell each other their secrets, they smoke their parents’ drugs, they go to the cinema and go exploring, everything appears to be normal, the film setting itself up as a feel-good feature, and yet it isn’t, something is…Off. To try and make their gul fly again, Sandy played by Barbara Hershey, ties a piece of string to the animal’s foot and hurls it into the air only for it to come crashing down in disarray. They all take turns tossing the bird into the air, laughing in delight as it plummets back down into the sand each and every time its thrown, the three teenagers totally oblivious to the guls distress. The mask of this light-hearted feature film begins to slip into something far darker than you had initially anticipated and it only gets worse. Certain pieces of dialogue scattered throughout will raise an eyebrow, often you will want some strings of conversation to go a little further or perhaps you won’t be satisfied with how an interaction concludes and you’ll become frustrated, especially when one of the boys finds their gul dead, its head caved in with a rock. What would normally follow is the dissociation with the culprit, but that is not what happens, in fact the opposite happens after the confrontation, Peter played by Richard Thomas and Dan played by Bruce Davidson seem to forgive and forget their bond with Sandy solidifying and growing stronger, her fierce and cruel personality simply accepted, and that’s when a fourth person joins the group, a younger girl named Rhoda, played incredibly well by the late Catherine Burns, who takes the place of the gul, becoming the trio’s pet project. Directed by Frank Perry in 1969, adapted from the novel written by Evan Hunter, Last Summer is a horrifying piece of film, where even in the most innocent of us, lurks a sinister and twisted presence.

Fire in the Sky

Based on a true event that happened to six loggers, six friends in the town of Snowflake Arizona in the year of 1975 November 5^th, Fire in the Sky is about the abduction of 22-year-old Travis Walton, and his harrowing encounter with extra-terrestrial life-forms. Made in 1993, directed by Robert Lieberman starring D.B. Sweeney as Travis, Craig Sheffer as Allan Dallis, and Robert Patrick, the famous T100 who plays Mike Rogers, based on the book written by Travis Walton himself called The Walton Experience, this is possibly THE best alien abduction film I’ve ever seen, and for good reason because it’s not what you’ll come to expect. Whatever images you just had, whatever thoughts you may have had that fluttered through your mind when you read the words ‘alien abduction’ and what it might be like to board an alien craft against your will, you’re likely wrong!? I know I was…I watched this film about four years ago, my Dad actually suggested it to me one evening when I was visiting, and within the next week, I had dug up a copy and gave it a watch and it blew away ALL my expectations in one fell swoop. All my thoughts, all my ideas I had about this subject prior to watching this changed, permanently altering my perception in one distressing scene, a scene lasting no longer than ten minutes that hits roughly at the end of the second act, where you learn and re-live the events of Travis Walton, who was missing after his abduction for five days, waking up in the woods close to where he disappeared on November 3^rd to the 8th. The majority of the film is about Waltons friends doing their best to convince the townspeople that Travis WAS abducted by a UFO, that they do not understand the set of events that took place in those woods, and that he is indeed lost without much of an explanation other than an outlandish one about a beam of light sucking Travis up into a glowing spaceship. When the search parties come back without a trace, when Travis fails to show and the logger’s stories do not change, this sparks unrest among the small town of Snowflake, fear and doubt spreads among the people leading to disbelief, ridicule and inevitable accusations that could result in criminal charges pressed against the witnesses, the news and gossips turning them into social pariahs. When Travis shows up, scared out of his mind, traumatised, and deeply unsettled does the film ramp up. I enjoyed everything about it, I loved the pacing and enjoyed the build, Travis is a likeable chap, the characters based off real people certainly felt real, their daily issues relatable to the average fella. A lot of people who I’ve spoken to who have also watched it, find it a slow burner and the ending leaving you wanting more, going out on a whimper. I argue that that is kind of the point, the case as far as I can tell, is still on-going, the group having done multiple lie-detector tests, endless recounts of the story, Travis Walton himself appearing on the Joe Rogan podcast which I watched as I dug around, I’ll link it below, it’s very interesting. I suppose at this point in time it is up to you to decide if you’re a sceptic or a believer. As for myself, after listening to this last interview in 2019, I am undecided, sorry to disappoint but I am on the fence with this one. Fire in the Sky has one of the greatest encounters ever put to film, the creatures appearing humanoid but devoid of a soul or care for the feelings of other lifeforms bearing sickly poisoned skin, like they are scientists from another world having done this to countless specimens before, leaving them cold, clinical, and calculating. The interior of their ship is not crisp, streamlined or lit in neon lights, it’s not portrayed as one would expect in most other science fiction/ alien movies, it’s dirty, dusty, unclean, almost like a giant abandoned animal holding facility, you can almost smell the staleness, the uncared-for scent of mould and decay, it’s revolting and unsettling, especially when you bear witness to the floating debris of other unfortunates, things like shoes, keychains, a pair of glasses and clothing, and then there are the aliens themselves which are disturbingly real, creatures I could believe are real, that evolved from a primitive being, just like us. Robert Patricks performance is brilliant, he holds the movie up until Travis’s re-appearance, the lie-detector scene is fantastic, the general look of the film is great, I do recommend it. I hear a remake is in the works, maybe it will be good but honestly, I do not think it needs one, this film still holds up today.

Threads

Where I recommend a movie like Fire in the Sky for not only its horror elements and entertainment value, where I suggest that you check out movies like Possession and Scott and the Antarctic, as disturbing as these movies are, they do not quite compare to that of Threads, in fact nothing I’ve seen in the last five to ten years compares to this movie. I do not recommend you watch this one but if you do, watch at your own discretion, watch with caution because this movie I promise will keep you up and awake for hours once its concluded, and this is coming from someone who intentionally seeks out horrors, who reads terrifying materials and plays some of the most stressful console games out there to date. On a personal note, after I watched this film, having been tempted to turn it off several times throughout, I remember lying awake in the dark just thinking about it, unable to get some of the twisted imagery out of my mind. The following day I was still processing it, unable to make a coffee without continuously stirring looking at the birds and the ominous spider spinning a web. At work it was all I thought about, even as I write this, I feel no desire to watch it ever again, not even to brush up on what happens, or at least not for a long time yet, I’m simply not ready for it. It’s one of those movies that’s difficult to watch, you cannot have it on in the background, you do not watch it for enjoyment, nor do you watch it if it happens to be on TV. I’ve not seen it ever on TV now that I think about it, very few people know about this film, everyone meeting my awareness with raised eyebrows and shakes of the head. It rarely comes up on those lists you see in long winded articles or appears in tacky channels you see online, last time I checked it’s not on Netflix or Prime, it’s like this movie sails under the radar and I cannot figure out why because it is absolutely horrifying, pure nightmare fuel to say the least that shits on anything and everything that appears in the mainstream! Threads presents a very simple question to the viewer; What would the UK look like if it were ever struck by a nuclear warhead? And this film directed by Mick Jackson and written by Barry Hines unfolds as if it were a light documentary, walking you through the steps to nuclear war, it’s fallout and what happens once the strike has concluded. Cities are reduced to ash and rubble, the weather itself becomes hostile, radiation sickness spreads, food, water, and medical supplies dwindle as a ravaged government is thrown into chaos as hell freezes over, rendering all of our contingency plans utterly useless. One by one our social structures buckling under the pressures of a distraught and desperate populace in the wake of such a catastrophe – One where all human life becomes short, fragile and meaningless. Released in 1984, at the end of the Cold War where the threat of nuclear war was a very real thing, present in everyone’s minds at the time, the translation here is flawless taking a seemingly scary movie to alarming and upsetting levels, and it’s through this lens where movies like Threads stand out from any other, presenting a very real horror that we as a society may be facing in the future and it will stay with you, believe me it will stay with you…I just tried to watch the trailer, if I cannot sit through the film again for another ten years surely I can watch the trailer right? But I couldn’t even do that, as I was reminded of the scene where one of our characters, Ruth Beckett played by Karen Meagher, takes a walk down her street in Sheffield days after the bombing, exposing herself to the contorted corpses caught in the blast, the ruination of homes, small business and worse, the desolation of wildlife. I know what I am about to say can be interpreted as awful, but for the most part I can deal with body horror inflicted on people, but not when it comes to say dogs, cats and other animals, and Threads is rife with such imagery, as unsettling as it is to see people in such hellish situations, to see kittens, and puppies amidst the chaos melting down all around them is almost unbearable, and it’s here where I almost flicked it off. What is most disturbing however, is not exactly the blast itself, it being a terrifying experience the bombs eruption like it were a giant approaching, but the path we take to get there. If you listen closely to each scene in the film, if you take note of what is happening on the radio stations before they are altered, so that our simple lad can hear the football results, if you see what’s on the TV stations in the background you’ll pick up on the clues to what’s coming, and I do not mean to freak you out, but it’s almost a mirror image of what is happening in the world around us today such as rioting, mass protests and fuel shortages just to list off a few. Unless you’ve been living under a fucking rock some of these things may ring a bell…Threads is of course brilliant, able to snatch you up in the charming time of the eighties and tells a story from different perspectives yet no matter who you are, everyone, and I mean everyone ends up in the same place after the bomb is dropped, and I feel that that’s the message we must take away from this film, not the horrors of nuclear war, but the simple fact that everything is connected, from the land, the animals and the ties we have with others. If we’re constantly at war with one another, if we’re forever severing ties with our neighbours and failing to communicate reasonably then we’ll end up weak, divided and ultimately crushed. Only when we work together will we survive the terrible things that WILL happen, only when we put aside greed, fear and panic will we be able to make things easier, and if it’s not a bomb that drops, something else will and we must learn to trust one another again, we must be able see sense and pull together otherwise what chance do we have? This is why Threads is so powerful, it shows us how fragile we all are, how dependent we are on the things we all take for granted each day, whether it be the water from our tap, a cup of coffee or the tin of baked beans we buy at the store, it reveals how our powers at be can be undone so easily, and once that thread snaps, once we succumb to our most primitive inhibitions, it won’t be long before we all do to, unravelling ourselves at the seams as time goes on, unlearning and destroying our civilisation until we’re literally back at square one, and if we’re to survive and prosper we must do so as one, and currently, at the tail end of 2021, this could not be further from the truth and that at its core is a terrifying prospect. Shape up people, shape up, we need each other, or embrace greed and be prepared to reap the whirlwind!

…I didn’t go in right away, I got as far as poking my head around the corner and having a quick look but couldn’t see anything because no light could enter this place. It was getting late, the tent still needed fixing, we needed to eat and tomorrow we had a long day ahead of us, so we camped out, but during the night I couldn’t sleep, I had to know what was in there? In the morning I told my girlfriend where I was going, said that I felt a need to check it out I even asked her to come along if she wanted, but she wisely declined. I told her that if I didn’t come out in half an hour, she should trek back down to the petrol station and call the authorities. I dug my phone out of the deep pockets of my travel bag, the battery was rather low but not too low to raise concern, about 23% and held it in my left. I found my knife, holding it in my right and approached the bunker, pushing the steel door open and stepping inside to a rich darkness, with nothing but the quiet tap of water droplets echoing throughout the empty cold space. I turned the light of my phone on, you know how these torches are, they do a fantastic job of lighting up a pocket of the surrounding area, and in here in this confined space, it did indeed light up the entire room where nothing was hidden from me. What I saw was nothing but a baron square room and a stairway, a stairway leading further down into the black, and when standing at the top of the stone steps, I made the decision to descend, all the while keeping a firm grip on my knife while relying on the light on my phone to reveal the way. About halfway down I noticed a mould creeping up the walls and festering in the corners of the hall, the passageway down was damp, the steps were a little slippery and the handrail was rough eroding with rust, so I didn’t use it. When I reached the bottom of the stairs I remember a sharp turning, and having to squeeze through a corridor that had been blocked with clutter, old soggy boxes flaking away into bits as I pushed them aside, pieces of rotten junk covered in that same white mould that was getting progressively worse the further in I ventured, I even remember almost tripping up on an old pair of leather brown boots, and it was here where the narrow hall dissected itself into other rooms, rooms as large as prison cells but there was something else here that didn’t seem right, I remember seeing hospital trolleys, gurneys and old medical equipment laying about the place. Dirty scrubs hung off hooks in the walls, a gasmask or two were placed upon a shelving unit, steel draws were full of syringes and lined with bottles of pills. I couldn’t read the labels, the writing was in a foreign language, but most had been worn off, so I left it alone – I know what you’re thinking, this place is obviously linked to some underground medical facility, an underground bunker during war time right? Well, you’re probably right, all the clues were here, I saw unmade beds, an old food storage, the smell of rot was in the air likely due to deceased rats among their leavings, nothing out of the ordinary when you think about it, but it wasn’t until when I passed the medical bay, where things took an interesting turn. Bear in mind my battery was running low, the torch was draining the battery, I had been down here for about ten minutes at this point and it was incredibly dark, there were many rooms I still had yet to check out but I wanted to reach the end of this maze before I left, to quell my curiosity otherwise I would not stop thinking about it, but part of me wishes I had turned back then and there. The door that blocked my way was like the entrance up top, it was big and heavy requiring two hands to open it, so I set my phone down in the corner next to my knife and pulled the door open, the scraping and squeaking straining my ears, if anything was lurking down here it certainly knew where I was now the noise was hideous. Before entering, getting a shoulder behind the door, I collected my phone and my knife and carefully peered inside. The rot was everywhere now like it were a living thing, gathering in the corners and soaking the very ground. The smell was unbearable, as if seaweed could sweat and stink covered in an oily substance, it was everywhere. I stepped inside with a sleeve over my mouth and nose because I could see another room up ahead, I ventured in and then I saw it, another empty space with nothing but a desk and chair inside, the chair had been tipped back, like someone had kicked it, and as my eyes followed its path, I saw holes in the walls. It was obvious what caused this, you too have just thought of it, my gaze finding my feet, my suspicions satisfied. There, on the floor were bullet casings and lots of them…There was nowhere else to go, there was nothing left to see, so I left swiftly, my battery having dropped another few percent, last thing I wanted was to be stuck down here in the pitch black, the area wasn’t large, but it was large enough to get lost in without a light. I was sure to close all the doors behind me as I left, and when I emerged outside in the sunshine, my girlfriend patiently waiting for me having packed up the tent and kindly my own things, she asked what it was I saw? I didn’t lie, I told her I found some empty rooms, some junk material, and a tipped chair in what looked like an interrogation room, but I chose not to mention everything because even to this day I ask myself; What ever happened down there?

In this article we’ve covered some pretty dark topics, and I feel that the only thing left for us to talk about is, why? Why do some of us do this, why do some of us love the thrill of frightening ourselves? Well, I’ve a few ideas, the first quite simply is for the adrenaline rush, but if we dig deeper, we’ll discover that it can be a way to deal with the pressures of anxiety. If you’ve ever had anxiety, suffer from panic attacks or mental breakdowns, you’ll know that in those moments you’ll often turn to something, anything to get your mind off it, and in some cases, this can include exposing yourself such imageries/scenarios found in horror, to replace the real horror you’re experiencing in real life. If you’re in doubt about this I understand where you’re coming from, how can one horror replace another, it sounds barmy, but I get it, I actually know someone who does this, a young woman (not naming any names) who is riddled with anxiety. She lives with it every hour or everyday and I wish her all the best in beating it, but until then a remedy of hers is found in horror more particularly crime documentaries of the worst kind, and this brings me to my next point as to why horror is so popular. When a horror film grips you, when you’re transfixed, alert and on the edge, you’re not thinking of anything else, for a moment you’re in a place where your real-life worries cannot get to you, all you care about is what you’re seeing and where it is leading, and I think there is real value to be found in that. Even when certain scenes creep back to you long after you’ve been exposed, in those moments you find an escape, you’re free from what’s going on in your personal life or in your job and especially free from what is happening in the world today, a world that seems to crumbling down all around us, and this does not just apply to film, but in any media of a similar nature. In summary, as disturbing as these films are, they are built for an escape, they take the more mundane horrors we as individuals face every day and replace them with spectacles we can walk away from on our terms, enabling us to find a courage we otherwise didn’t know we had, and as a horror fan, I certainly can relate to this, perhaps we need more of it.

Thank you for reading my ‘A Handful of Horrors 2.’ This time last year I wrote the original ‘A Handful of Horrors’ – If you’d like to read it, you’ll find it on this very blog or listed on my official website, I’ll link it below for your convenience, I hope you check it out, if not that’s okay too, none of my essays are going anywhere so all in your own time. I don’t only write articles; I actually have an epic fantasy series of mighty proportions in the works, it’s called The Ancestral Odyssey, a grand adventure set in the world of Equis, one loaded with myth, magic, mystery and war. The first instalment called, The Utopian Dream is available to pick up on the Amazon Store in Hardback, Paperback and Kindle, you can alternatively purchase it from my website but please, if you decide to browse the website do stay away from the Special Bundle section, it’s currently undergoing maintenance and I do not know exactly when it will be fixed, but everything else from the gallery, to the videos, is fully functioning just as it should be. I’ve worked hard on this series, I do love The Utopian Dream, I am extremely proud of it, but it pales in comparison to the sequel, Rise of the Black Doves which will be released next year hopefully in the first quarter. What’s next? Well, I’ve a lot in the works, some new music is being written specifically for one of my lead protagonists, editing will begin shortly on Rise, another character concept is underway and talks of the short film are progressing. Big thank you to the artist Jemma who provided the artwork for this piece, she really is a talented creature, do send her some love over on her Instagram where you will find more, she will greatly appreciate it. With all that said, thanks again, do take care of yourselves, and be sure to catch me in the next one. PEACE!

E-mail – taotome@outlook.com

Official Website – http://www.taotequevault.com

Promotional Material YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-nc_VEmC27AIz6pP51UVkQ

Promotional Material Bitchute – http://www.bitchute.com/channel/x9K5vwi2SsNu/

Author Page UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B01JMZ2BE6

Author Page US – https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B01JMZ2BE6

Twitter – @MegasTeque

A Handful of Horrors – https://taoscribe.wordpress.com/2020/10/30/a-handful-of-horrors/

Joe Rogan Clip with the real Travis Walton – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsiKEBAFmm4

Jemma’s Instagram – @seriousgraveyard

D.W.Gill