Sean Durkin, who wrote and directed the critically-loved indie Martha Marcy May Marlene, and Roy Lee, an executive producer of The Ring and The Departed, are directing and producing this Exorcist series

So there – that’s what’s happening.

Neil’s been a busy man and directly following shooting on the horror movie, The Reverend he was off to Spain to shoot Deranged. He’s back in good old Blighty now and about to start shooting another movie. As always I’ve blagged a part in this so expect news when I’m able to post it. I’m looking forward to this and very much enjoyed being a part of Neil’s previous indie horror, The Reverend – there’s a little news on that below.

Deranged centers on four girls who go on a bachelorette party weekend to a country house, in rural Spain, and in grand horror movie tradition things start to go wrong.

Deranged stars Craig Fairbrass, Marcia Do Vales, Natalia Celino, Victoria Broom, Tabby Quitman and Pablo Olewski.

I spoke to Neil last week and he informed that that his indie horror hit, The Reverend will be available on DVD soon so expect a review in these bloodstained pages. You can view a trailer of Deranged HERE.

To be honest I was never aware of this gothic soap opera, but it had been massively popular in the US. Apparently the show started off as a run of the mill daytime serial and in fact there were no supernatural elements mentioned in the bible given to writers, but the show which was only a marginal success went supernova when ghosts were introduced into the storylines almost six months into its initial run. Barnabas Collins, the most famous character, didn’t come into the show until episode 2010 which was a full years into the show’s run – initially the character had been intended to have a brief run of 13 episodes but so popular did he become that he soon turned into the star of the show. When I say I wasn’t aware of the show that is not strictly true because I had heard of Barnabas Collins from reading the old monster magazines but I had never ever seen the show.

Watching the episodes here reminded me of Doctor Who from the same period – both shows share the shakey sets, and often bad acting but at the core there is some inventive storytelling, and of course this show was aired daily and produced at super sonic speed so some of the shakeyness both in acting and sets is to be expected. In fact working within the constraints of the live-to-tape format benefited the show as it resulted in  an unusually inventive use of costume, make-up and, in particular, special effects. The fact that  almost every scene done in one take actors often stumble over their lines and more than once a boom mike drifts into view.

Now this UK release featured only 20 episodes of a show that ran for more than a thousand episodes, but it does provide a great introduction to the show and although I’ve not seen any of the other episodes I am reliably informed that the episodes featured in this collection are among the best the series can offer. They are taken from the first introduction and storyline to feature the vampire with heart and because of this they are all in black and white.

The entire run of the show is available in the US and the UK getting the shows, depends on how this DVD sells – the DVD is basically a taster and it’s certainly whetted my appetite for more.

“I love crime, I love mysteries, and I love ghosts. That combo made Hard Case Crime the perfect venue for this book, which is one of my favorites. I also loved the paperbacks I grew up with as a kid, and for that reason, we’re going to hold off on e-publishing this one for the time being. Joyland will be coming out in paperback, and folks who want to read it will have to buy the actual book.” Stephen King

“Joyland is a breathtaking, beautiful, heartbreaking book,” said Charles Ardai, Edgar- and Shamus Award-winning editor of Hard Case Crime.  “It’s a whodunit, it’s a carny novel, it’s a story about growing up and growing old, and about those who don’t get to do either because death comes for them before their time.  Even the most hardboiled readers will find themselves moved. When I finished it, I sent a note saying, ‘Goddamn it, Steve, you made me cry.’ ”

Robert McGinnis, the man responsible for the early Sean Connery James Bond posters, will provide the cover art which is another reason to get excited about this book.

Since its debut in 2004, Hard Case Crime has been the subject of enthusiastic coverage by a wide range of publications including The New York Times, USA Today, Time, Playboy, U.S. News & World Report, BusinessWeek, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Houston Chronicle, New York magazine,the New York Post and Daily News, Salon, Reader’s Digest, Parade and USA Weekend,as well as numerous other magazines, newspapers, and online media outlets.  The Chicago Sun-Times wrote, “Hard Case Crime is doing a wonderful job publishing both classic and contemporary ‘pulp’ novels in a crisp new format with beautiful, period-style covers.  These modern ‘penny dreadfuls’ are worth every dime.”  Playboy praised Hard Case Crime’s “lost masterpieces,” writing “They put to shame the work of modern mystery writers whose plots rely on cell phones and terrorists.”  And the Philadelphia City Paper wrote, “Tired of overblown, doorstop-sized thrillers…?  You’ve come to the right place.  Hard Case novels are as spare and as honest as a sock in the jaw.”

Other upcoming Hard Case Crime titles include The Cocktail Waitress, a never-before-published novel by James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, and Double Indemnity, and an epic first novel called The Twenty-Year Death by Ariel S. Winter that has won advance raves from authors such as Peter Straub, James Frey, Alice Sebold, John Banville, David Morrell and Stephen King.

For information about these and other forthcoming titles, visit www.HardCaseCrime.com.

THE SETTING

Jack the Ripper’s rein of terror lasted for a ten week period in 1888 – London was then the world’s largest city -  the hub of an ever expanding empire. The city was in effect the financial capital of the world and it had enjoyed a long period of financial growth. Things were however starting to change and London was facing competition from America and Germany and a trade slump saw unemployment take a dramatic leap, which resulted in London’s already packed slum areas swelling to bursting point.

It was into this mixing pot that was London’s Whitechapel, that the killer known to history as Jack the Ripper practiced his or her deadly trade, and by proving that he/she could evade capture from the police and authorities only consolidated the general image of the East End as a hotbed of murder and perversion. One report, published in 1888, estimated that out of a population of 456,877 souls more than 60,000 were living on the brink of starvation. Whitechapel at the time was ready to explode – there were racial problems with the high influx of Jewish immigrants coming to the city after escaping persecution in Germany, Russia and Poland – Whitechapel’s Jewish population at this time was estimated as being around 50,000, and as the spectra of mass unemployment threatened the Jews found themselves vilified for stealing British jobs. Indeed when the Ripper killings started the press hinted that an Englishman could not do such a thing and the person responsible had to have come from the vast immigrant population.

THE KILLING BEGIN:

The Ripper killings took place over an area that was made up of little more than a square mile. The victims were all prostitutes and we can’t even be clear of how many killings the Ripper was responsible for. The so called canonical five victims come from a report made by Sir Melville Macnaghten who stated in a report in 1894 that he believed Jack the Ripper had killed five and only five women – these are Mary Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Kelly. There are many who dispute this and it is my own feeling that the same hand was not responsible for all of the woman in the so called canonical five.

A lady named Martha Tabran was murdered on 7th August 1888 and many believe, myself included, that she was the first Ripper victim. However in my opinion the double murder of 29th of September 1888 were carried out by two different hands, and not by the Ripper which popular wisdom suggests. I also don’t believe that Mary Kelly was a Ripper victim but I do believe the key to the murders rests with her. Indeed it is the mystery surrounding Mary Kelly that drives the central premise in my current novel, The Rhondda Ripper.

Was Mary Kelly a Ripper victim?

Was it Mary Kelly who was found dead, mutilated beyond identification, in her bed?

These questions can not be answered with any certainty, but logic would suggest that the chance of there being only  five victims is quite wrong, and that the double event of 29th September could not have been carried out by the same person. In order to stick with the canonical five we would have to believe that the killer was disturbed just after killing Elizabeth Stride and then in the middle of the biggest manhunt London, indeed the world, had ever known he runs less than a mile away and takes time to kill and mutilate Catherine Eddowes. Hardly seems likely and the known facts are,  like the legend, buried in myth and fancy. The fog lit image above of the man in the top hat and cape has become the popular image of Jack the Ripper, and at the time it was a person such as this whom the police were concentrating on – it is no wonder they never found him, since the likelihood is that he didn’t even exist.

JACK THE RIPPER – THE SOCIAL REFORMER:

Ironically some good did come out of the Whitechapel killings and that was in giving publicity to the campaigners who said something needed to change for the working classes in the East End. The killings generated so much publicity that The Lancet, the world famous medical journal, reported - modern society is more promptly awakened to a sense of duty by the knife of a killer than by many thousands of words from earnest writers.

Many social commentators claimed that Jack the Ripper was a product spawned by the dreadful conditions that men, women and children found themselves and was therefore the fault of society itself. None less a personage than George Bernard Shaw wrote to the Times Newspaper, stating the the fiend of Whitechapel had at least drawn attention to the dreadful conditions. He went onto theorize that the killings, although abhorrent, would do more for the areas affected than any of socialist movements could ever hope. And although Shaw was being ironic by congratulating the killer as a social reformer it was true that following the killings a massive program of redevelopment started in the East End.

THE WRITING WAS ON THE WALL:

At 2.55 am on 30th September P.C. Albert Long found the missing portion of Catherine Eddowes’, whose body had been found earlier,  apron in a doorway on Goulston Street. A further investigation found a message scrawled in chalk upon the wall – THE JUWES ARE THE MEN THAT WILL NOT BE BLAMED FOR NOTHING.

There was a large Jewish community and fearing race riots the police wiped the writing from the wall. This was done on the orders of Sir Charles Warren. It was a highly controversial decision but Warren always defended what he had done and claimed that far greater crimes would have been carried out against innocent Jews had it been left for further examination.

The facts are that After the murders of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes , police searched the area near the crime scenes in an effort to locate a suspect, witnesses or evidence. As reported above it was Constable Alfred Long of the Metropolitan Police Service who discovered a dirty, bloodstained piece of an apron in the stairwell of a tenement, 108 to 119 Model dwellings, Goulston Street The cloth was later confirmed as being a part of the apron worn by Catherine Eddowes. Above it, there was writing in white chalk upon the wall.

THE SUSPECTS:

Suspects were legion – many were considered suspects totally due to general speculation, others because of descriptions, locations or occupations. One popular theory named Queen Victoria’s grandson who was known as Eddy and was known to have consorted with prostitutes. It was alleged that the Royal physician William Gull performed the murders in order to hide the fact that the prince had fathered a child with one of the victims, supposedly Mary Kelly. Another theory was that the prince carried out the killings himself because of brain damage caused by contracting syphilis of the brain.

Over the years there have been many suspects ranging from the plausible, George Chapman to the ludicrous, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

WHY THE RIPPER WAS NEVER CAUGHT:

The Victorian police have been the subject of much criticism by the media over the years, and some of it is likely deserved. But it must be remembered the criminal science was in its infancy at the time of the Ripper killings. Fingerprinting was not even an established practice and the locations where the killings took place were connected by an intricate warren of alleys and passageways, all of them unlit.

The Ripper is widely considered the world’s first serial killer, and given that the area of operation was one of the most densely populated, not to mention transient, areas in the entire city then it is little wonder that he/she was able to evade the police.

AND NOW THE ANSWER:

Police Inspector Frank Parade carries out his daily duties in Pontypridd, duties complicated by the presence of 500 members of Buffalo Bill Cody’s touring Wild West Show, not to mention the thousands attending the show every day. A series of depraved murders quickly makes things even more complicated for the policeman.

Soon Frank Parade find himself on the trail which stretches backs to London’s Whitechapel killings and Jack the Ripper. Secrets are revealed and the answer to the greatest mystery in criminal history is answered by a British policeman and an American legend.

Click HERE

Reviews:

It’s difficult to say too much in this review without giving away some major points that would ruin this well crafted story. It’s set in South Wales in 1904 and features a visit by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Circus – apparantly this actually took place. And concerns itself with a series of killings that ultimately reveal Jack the Ripper in an original and plausible way. Amazon readers review

Gary Dobbs partners up Parade and Buffalo Bill making for an enjoyable detecting duo. He does a fine job of bringing the famous Wild West showman to life and his descriptions of Pontypridd, the era, and people sparkle. I’m hoping Mr. Dobbs doesn’t leave Frank Parade on the sidelines too long because I’m betting there are more adventures in him. Or, maybe Bill Cody — there’s an idea worth exploring — Buffalo Bill as a world-traveling crime-solver. The Education of a Pulp Writer

The story begins slowly, a man’s morning routine as he gets ready for duty and faces the possibility of a busy day, but he has no idea how “busy” it’s going to get! Throw in Buffalo Bill, a Wild West show, murders that may or may not be connected to Jack The Ripper, and you have a really hot read. I don’t want to say too much for fear of giving something away, but it’s a well-written yarn and you will get hooked right away. It’s also, for me, a nice change of pace from the modern urban hard-boiled junk I’ve been digesting lately. Brian Drake 

Now that’s one scary movie.

you know what I’m not really sure that Feaks is a horror movie at all, but rather a drama with a cast made up largely of real life circus freaks, and even after all these years it is still a troubling movie. The title itself, when used in this context, falls foul of political correctness and the chances are that if the movie were ever to be remade it would be called something like, – Incredible gifted and special people. The thing that bothered audiences so much was not the storyline, which is basically a revenge story of a lover scorned, but the fact that a large section of the cast were made up of real life circus freaks. Among the real life freaks were Elizabeth Green, also known as Betty Green, a performer who was presented to audiences as a human stork during the early 1900s, Jane Barnell (3 January 1871,  – 26 October 1951, )a US bearded lady who used the stage name Lady Olga, Daisy and Violet Hilton (5 February 1908 – January 1969)  a pair of  conjoined twins who toured in the US  in the 1930s, Josephine Joseph (born 1913) a woman whose body was supposedly split down the middle,

one side female and the other male, Prince Rardion (1871 – December 19, 1934), a famous limbless performer of the early 1900s, John Eckhardt, Jr. (27 August 1911,– 5 January 1991, ), freak show  performer born with the appearance that he was missing the lower half of his torso and Peter Robinson a man who  weighed in at only  58 pounds and billed himself as The Human Skeleton.

Over time though the film has taken on the status of an underground classic, but it still lacks any mainstream appeal. If anything watching the movie now is even more disturbing than to the original viewers. That’s because we have a different mindset to audiences of this period, and it should not be forgotten that when this movie was made many of the freaks were performing and making a fortune in sideshows across America, several of them even worked for Barnum and Baily. The film has the reputation of being one of the masterpieces of baroque cinema. It has been more written about than watched. Yet the tramps’ last supper in Bunuel’s Viridiana was said to have been inspired by it, and Max Ophuls, Fellini, Bergman and a host of horror merchants have inserted clips from Freaks into their films. And in 1994  Freaks was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry’s archive.

It’s well worth seeing and the current DVD issue features an interesting commentary from Davis J Skal, the original prologue shown in cinemas, three alternative endings and a documentary. Pretty much essential viewing really, but beware this film still packs a punch and even the most ardent horror fan will find it terrifying.

Poltergeist is currently getting the remake treatment and it seems that Sam Ramini will helm the movie which is expected to hit screens for 2014

The Met Police is fighting the legal battle to keep files detailing the investigation into the notorious Jack the Ripper case secret because and in their words, ‘To maintain confidentiality for Victorian ‘supergrasses’. The documents are said to include four new suspects for the serial killings which terrorized Whitechapel in 1888 and have become one of the world’s most infamous unsolved cases.

The historic ledgers have 36,000 entries detailing police interaction with informants between 1888 to 1912.

However, Scotland Yard reportedly believes disclosing the names could hinder recruiting and gathering information from modern informants, affecting terrorism investigations – and even lead to the Victorians’ relatives being attacked.

Trevor Marriott, a Ripper investigator and former murder squad detective, has spent three years attempting to obtain uncensored versions of the documents.The ledgers provide details of the police’s dealings with thousands of informants from 1888 to 1912, including some who provided information during the original Ripper investigation.

A sample of about 40 pages from the Scotland Yard ledgers was released to last week’s tribunal, but with the names of informants and other key details blacked out.

According to Mr Marriott, the files contain the names of at least four new suspects, as well as other pieces of evidence.He said: “I believe this to be the very last chance that we may have to solve the mystery of Jack the Ripper.

“To have any possibility of getting near the truth about those horrific crimes we must see what these ledgers contain.“It may be that within them we find the final piece of the jigsaw that would unlock this mystery and lead to the identity of the killer, or killers, albeit 123 years too late.”

Jack the Ripper slaughtered at least five women between August and November 1888 in the slums of Whitechapel, east London, but various experts have claimed other murders may have been committed by the killer on earlier and later dates.

The police made several mistakes in the inquiry and detection techniques of the time were basic – with no fingerprinting and science unable even to distinguish between animal and human blood.
As a result, there is no conclusive evidence to point to the true identity of Jack the Ripper and the case remains one of the world’s great unsolved mysteries. Among a long list of possible suspects are Queen Victoria’s grandson the Duke of Clarence, who died in an asylum in 1892, and the painter Walter Sickert.

Mr Marriott, who joined Bedfordshire Police in 1970 and worked as a detective constable until the mid-1980s, began researching the Jack the Ripper case in 2003. He has previously published one book on the subject which put forward the name of Carl Feigenbaum, a German merchant executed for the murder of a woman in New York, as a new suspect.

On uncovering references to the ledgers in 2008, Mr Marriott applied to see the documents under the Freedom of Information Act. The Met refused and he appealed to the Information Commissioner who also decided the books should not be revealed.Now Mr Marriott has undergone the final appeal stage to the Information Tribunal, in which the case is heard by a panel of three judges.

The three-day hearing involved a detective inspector, identified only as ‘D’, speaking to the court from behind a screen because of his sensitive role running the force’s intelligence-gathering operation from informants.Detective Inspector ‘D’ told the tribunal that unveiling the files could deter informants from coming forward in future, and could even put off members of the public from phoning Crimestoppers or the anti-terrorist hotline.

“The interpretation on the street will be that the police have revealed the identity of informants,” said ‘D’.“Confidence in the system is maintaining the safety of informants, regardless of age.”
Det Insp ‘D’ said the passage of time did not make publication of informants’ identities less sensitive because their descendants could be targeted by criminals with a grudge.

“Look at one of the world’s best-known informants, Judas Iscariot. If someone could draw a bloodline from Judas Iscariot to a present day person then that person would face a risk, although I know that seems an extreme example,” the officer said.Another senior officer, Detective Superintendent Julian McKinney, told the tribunal that releasing names would make police officers less capable of preventing terrorist attacks and organised crime, and make informants vulnerable to attack.
Det Supt McKinney said: “Regardless of the time, regardless of whether they are dead, they should never be disclosed.

“They come to us only when they have the confidence in our system that their identity will not be disclosed.”

But Mr Marriott said a number of historical files have previously been released which contained details of informants.He argued there was no evidence to show descendants of informants who have been named had come to harm.

The tribunal decision is expected later this year.

Summary