Jack Graham

Spooktober 2: Twin Peaks - Fire Walk With Me

Elliot, George, and - after a delay - myself consider David Lynch's despised and adored masterpiece Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, a film as surreal as reality, a Horror film because the world is horror, a text which calculatedly destroys its own context, an uncanny investigation of a world made of selves and languages and codes and consciousness all made of signs and symbols, a ferocious indic...

Ending Explained (Part 1)

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.

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John Carpenter’s late - and last - classic In the Mouth of Madness (1994) is famously metafictional.  In the final scene of the film, the ‘protagonist’ Joh...

Spooktober 2: In The Mouth of Madness (1994)

Advance access to a new podcast in which I chat with George Daniel Lea and Elliot Chapman about John Carpenter's arch, apocalyptic, lovecraftian, metafictional 1994 Horror classic In The Mouth of Madness.  Features extensive digressions on Event Horizon, Twin Peaks, and David Lynch more generally.  Get ready for a discussion of Lynch's Fire Walk With Me next...

The Hidden Abode

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 deserves better.  It's actually quite an interesting film ...

Force Decides; on Israel-Palestine, bourgeois law & order, and a Marxist morality

This was written some years ago.  It remains depressingly relevant.

It is now clear to a great many people that what happened to the Native Americans as a result of the institution and independence of the United States of America was a scandal, a holocaust and a tragedy.  The idea is so commonplace it’s become a sentimental truism in pop-culture.  Well...

Robinson Crusoe and Zombies

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 Dawn of the Dead, are all at least partly ...

The Property of Property

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 generally much less concerned with examining the technical functioning a...

The Misogyny Vortex

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 whose spirit subsequently possesses every women who movies into ...

Conjuring the Past

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 It, and then in a host of what used to be called ‘cult’ produ...

'These Things of Darkness'; Dracula and Frankenstein as Gothic Capitalist Production

“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 Frankenstein is too good. As the rea...

Spooktober 2: Candyman (1992)

Myself, George, and Elliot continue our Halloween-season tour through the Horror movies that fascinate us with a conversation about 1992's unique and indefinable Candyman, based on a story by the legendary Clive Barker, directed by Bernard Rose, scored by Philip Glass, and starring Tony Todd and Virginia Madsen.  A film that soars above its milieu and reputation.  Superficial...

Patreon have fucked this whole thing up

Okay.

Thanks to fucking Patreon fucking around with a perfectly good system and fucking it all to fucking hell, things have to change here.  No longer can we do it the nice, simple, easy way we used to.  You pledge $1 and you get access to everything that i make available for patrons only.  No no no, far too sane.  

Instead we now have this fucking stupid new sys...

Todorov and the Fantastic

A section from an essay I wrote about the TV series Legion:

Tzvetan Todorov’s theory of ‘the Fantastic’ sees the genre bifurcating into the ‘uncanny’ and the ‘marvelous’ according to what happens in a given story.  Crudely, the former is when something fantastic is found to be ‘unreal’ within the story, i.e. a delusion or trick, and the latter is when it is...

The Fenstanton Witch by M.R. James AUDIOBOOK

I have read another eerie tale, this time an unfairly neglected late work by the master of the modern ghost story M.R. James.  

In the time of Queen Anne, two clerical scholars at Cambridge venture onto the fens by night, hoping to obtain the key to secret diabolical powers from the burial place of a recently executed witch... and receive a terrible lesson in the dark graveyard.

Marxists on Fascism: What is National Socialism? by Leon Trotsky AUDIOBOOK

"Not every exasperated petty bourgeois could have become Hitler, but a particle of Hitler is lodged in every exasperated petty bourgeois..."

In a few hundred brisk but bristling words, written just after Hitler's assumption of power in Germany, Trotsky displays his characteristic panache in analysing 'National Socialism'.  At breakneck speed he dashes from searing insight to searing ...

Lukundoo by Edward Lucas Wright AUDIOBOOK

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.  Contains slur words.  

I like recording audiobooks. &...

Same Log Spooktober 2 - Prince of Darkness (1987)

George, Elliot, and myself chat about John Carpenter's strange, unique, ominous, thoughtful, undervalued masterpiece Prince of Darkness from 1987.  As usual, we get into lots of digressions which you'll hopefully find interesting.  

This is not a dream.  (It's a podcast.)

What is Fascism? (1934) by Ignazio Silone - AUDIOBOOK

An exclusive for my patrons.  Another little audiobook, in which I read the 20th century Italian Marxist Ignazio Silone's crystalline delineation of fascism from a book he published in 1934.  

Silone, more famous for the anti-fascist novels Bread and Wine and Fontamara, was a co-founder of the Italian Communist Party in 1921.  Sadly, he later turned right,...

Same Log Spooktober 2: Manhunter (1986)

We're putting Hannibal Digested onto hiatus for a month and doing another Halloween season of four movies through October.  Segueing back via Michael Mann's Manhunter from 1986, the first movie to feature Hannibal.  We all have complex thoughts about this movie, which makes for an interesting discussion.  We also veer off into other topics, including Lord of the Rings, Star Trek,...

IDSG Bonus Ep30 In Cold Blood

We're back, both of us, with a bonus episode to carefully dip our toes back in the brackish, fetid waters of IDSG.

In this episode we talk about In Cold Blood - Truman Capote's book, the 1967 film, the two movies about Capote writing the book, and some other stuff, including alternate theories of the case.

Hey... true crime podcast!  That's an idea!  Nobody's trie...

Hannibal Digested, Show 4 - Sorbet & Fromage

As the series kicks into high gear, so does our humble podcast.   

In Sorbet, we see Hannibal inspired and hunting for the ingredients for a banquet.  In Fromage, Hannibal makes a new friend, and isn't happy about it.

A really fun discussion about two extraordinary episodes of an extraordinary show with my super-insightful and passionate friends George and Elliot.&nbs...

Wrong With Authority ep7: Gangs of New York

Here's one from the vaults, an old episode of now-defunct but fondly remembered podcast Wrong with Authority, featuring myself, Daniel, and our friends James Murphy and Kit Power.  On the show, we discussed movies about history and the history they're about, each of us taking turns to host and choose a movie.  This episode was Kit's turn and he chose the fascinating 2002 Scorsese film...

Hannibal Digested, Show 3 - 1.5 Coquilles & 1.6 Entrée

The meal continues.  Two more courses.

Lovecraft Retrospective: In the Walls of Eryx (1936)

George Lea asked me to join him and our mutual friend Rowan Fortune on an episode of George's running series of Lovecraft Retrospectives, and asked me to chose the story we'd be talking about.  I had no hesit...

Hannibal Digested, Show 2

Hey patrons, here's your exclusive advance access to the next episode of Hannibal Digested, in which I go through every episode of the bizarrely wonderful, gruesome, gothic, hallucinatory, literary TV show Hannibal in the incomparable company of erudite bastards George Daniel Lea and Elliot Chapman.  In this show we look at episodes 1.3 Potage and 1.4 Oeuf.

While you're here, I'll ju...

Hannibal Digested, Show 1

As promised, here's the first part of the new collaboration between myself, the toothsome George Daniel Lea, and the frankly mouthwatering Elliot Chapman.  In this inaugural episode of Hannibal Digested (after last time's preparatory chat about all things lecterian) we look at episodes 1.1 Apéritif & 1.2 Amuse-Bouche.  You, my scrumptious patrons, get exclusive advance a...

IDSG Bonus Ep29 Charles and Tucker

We're back.  Daniel and I reconvene for a chat about the coronation of Prince Charles (I know what I mean - listen to the episode) and the defenestration of Tucker Carlson.  We also talk a little bit about our recent hiatus, and our imminent return to regular production of episodes.

Enjoy!

IITSL Hannibal - Amuse-Bouche

So, the next stage in the journey for myself, Elliot Chapman, and George Daniel Lea is a podcast series in which we go through the entire Hannibal TV series.  

That's the plan anyway.  

As with all our previous discussions, the shows will go up at George's YouTube channel but you, my dear patrons, will get them earlier than literally anybody else.

Th...

Jawscast

Dur-dum.  Dur-dum.  Dum-dum dum-dum dum-dum dum-dum DUM-dum-dum-dum DUM-dum-dum-dum and so on.

Join myself, Kit Power and Elliot Chapman below decks for a great white chat about a great white movie.  

Patrons wade in first - the mayor insisted.

Poltercast II: The Other Side of the Franchise

George Daniel Lea and I reconvene for a follow-up to our episode about the first two Poltergeist movies.  This time we talk about the underrated Poltergeist III and the deservedly forgotten 2015 Poltergeist remake.  If the first episode in this series was unrelentingly positive, this one is more ambiguous.  We dig the third and final movie in the franchise proper, but the remake....