Top 40

Today is my 40th birthday. Happy birthday to me. As a present to you, I have chosen 40 of my favourite albums from my 14,610 day stretch. You have probably heard most of them, because if nothing else I am extremely vanilla. But if you haven't, here are some free recommendations.

All subsequent recommendations will be £12.99 each.

The Band - The Band (1969)

An analogue, wooden relic of a time past, several times ago. Still bursting with good things.

Dusty Springfield - Dusty In Memphis (1969)

Britain's greatest soul singer makes her greatest album, all marvel.

Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited (1965)

I love this record unreservedly. The only reservation being I don't particularly like the final track, Desolation Row.

The Beatles - Rubber Soul (1965)

One of the most often-asked questions in the history of popular music answered definitively: this is the best Beatles album.

The Beach Boys - Wild Honey (1967)

After Brian Wilson went mad trying to make the aborted Smile album, the sainted Beach Boys went back to basics and recorded this. It is their soul album and I love it like a son.

The Velvet Underground and Nico - The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967)

Simultaneously the prettiest and ugliest record ever made. A clattering artistic statement of vast magnitude and influence.

Van Morrison - Astral Weeks (1967)

One of the most beautiful records ever made. The best part of all was that it was created out of absolute necessity, as Sir Van was completely skint.

The Clash - The Clash (1977)

A triumphant existential yelp. One of the most vicerally exciting records ever made.

Bob Dylan and The Band - The Basement Tapes (1975)

Originally a bootleg collection of unreleased recordings by a recouperating Dylan and his backing group in 1966, now one of the most notable repositories of modern folk music. Essential.

Radiohead - OK Computer (1997)

If it isn't too trite, our generation's Sergeant Pepper. Only with a shitter cover.

The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds (1966)

The great artistic statement of one of the 20th Century's greatest composers.

The Modern Lovers - The Modern Lovers (1976)

All the best parts of American garage rock, new wave and pre-punk, condensed into one perfect biscuit for our enjoyment.

Grace Jones - Warm Leatherette (1980)

A perfectly chosen, immaculately produced and brilliantly performed selection of songs, by one of the world's most outstanding artistic performers.

George Harrison - All Things Must Pass (1970)

All the bits George had been sitting on in one, hugely satisfactory, post-prandial artistic fart.

David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars (1972)

One of the great auteurs of the pop music era. Hunky Dory was more influential but this one has all the biggest bangers.

Dusty Springfield - Ev'rything's Coming Up Dusty (1965)

The Immaculate Collection.

Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band - Safe As Milk (1966)

The debut album of one of popular music's most unique and visionary geniuses. The entire history of the blues played at double speed by a maniac.

Bob Dylan - Time Out Of Mind (1997)

The great late masterpiece of the most significant artist of the last century. World weary, swirling and poetic.

The Beatles - Abbey Road (1969)

The considered final statement of the most important rock and roll band who can ever be.

Dexys Midnight Runners - Too-Rye-Ay (1982)

Each of the canonical Dexys Midnight Runners records are completely wonderful, but this chaotic blue-balled screech for acceptance is the most compelling.

The Rolling Stones - Exile On Main Street (1972)

Millionaire tax exile rock stars dodging HMRC by taking piles of cocaine in a French villa, clattering out raggedy blues. Completely wonderful.

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue (1959)

There are so many special Miles Davis records, but this one stands above them all. A masterpiece by any standard or measure.

The Specials - The Specials (1979)

British society reaping the innumerable benefits of West Indian immigration.

The Velvet Underground - Loaded (1970)

The Velvet Underground make a pop album for our listening pleasure.

Air - Moon Safari (1998)

A vision of the future as seen from the past.

The Beach Boys - Sunflower (1970)

A complete delight.

Nick Drake - Pink Moon (1972)

A Rizla-thin wisp of beautiful melancholy.

Bob Dylan - The Bootleg Series vol. 4: Live 1966 (1998)

The most famous concert in popular music history, immaculately recorded. An historical document.

Serge Gainsbourg - Histoire De Melody Nelson (1971)

The Frenchest, funkiest and filthiest record on record.

The Beta Band - The Three EP's (1999)

A shaken up electro-house-folk brilliancy. Quite unlike anything else before it.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Electric Ladyland (1968)

A thorough exploration of the oeuvre of pop music's greatest virtuoso.

Blur - Parklife (1994)

A brilliantly weighted and observed snapshot of fin de siecle British life? Well yes, actually.

David Bowie - Station To Station (1976)

A record Bowie could recall nothing of making thanks to prodigious cocaine intake. A chugging monument to white kids playing soul music everywhere.

Eels - Electro-Shock Blues (1998)

Grief counselling for the alt-rock era.

Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go (1996)

I was never one of those Manic Street Preachers people (you know the ones), but there is no denying that something very special happened here.

Supergrass - In It For The Money (1997)

Britpop's final hurrah, played out by its nicest young men.

Ian Dury and The Blockheads - New Boots and Panties (1977)

The most complete and accurate musical portrait of life in the south-east of England.

Joy Division - Closer (1980)

A valedictory triumph and tragedy.

Burning Spear - Marcus Garvey (1975)

An education.

Isaac Hayes - Hot Buttered Soul (1969)

Don't fight it, just accept it: the greatest soul record ever made.

Telecom problems

As you probably already know by now, my hatreds are many, varied, almost always unjustified and barely thought-through. But I will tell you this, some fountains of bile never seem to run dry and besides, I have genuinely managed to convince myself that I am always right, so my more enduring pet peeves I consider to occupy the same status as a Papal edict.

So yeah, adverts that have ongoing storylines. What the shit?

We've had to endure these throughout my lifetime. The Bisto family brought pathos to powdered meat, as well as dodging a major bullet when they successfully sidestepped casting Jimmy Savile as the father. The Nescafé Gold Blend couple made us all sick before Anthony Head finally got up the courage to pump Sharon Maughan in their twelfth (TWELVE!) commercial together. I remember Nescafé taking out adverts in the press advertising their advert on the day the denouement to this particular series hit our screens.  I remember specifically tuning in to see it, too. In the days when there were only four television channels, this was event TV! The specific event that I was hoping to see was a asteroid striking their flat, or them getting the clap. Perhaps the failure for either of these to materialise is the root cause of my hardline aversion to commercial series? I think it's more likely to be the fact that they are fucking shit, but anything is possible.

The biggest repeat offender in this hideous sweating gonad are BT. Seemingly without any regard for my feelings, blood pressure or pursing anus, British Telecom have decided that the best way to sell their services is vignettes of family drama. We've had Beattie the meddling gossipy housewife. Beattie wasn't so bad. She was more a chance for Maureen Lipman to bring her almost inexplicable worship of Joyce Grenfell to bear. But it was a shot across the bows, a warning that should have been heeded.

Because now they're on a roll. Kris Marshall became the new young daddy to a hideous family in a seemingly unending series of adverts which successfully managed to become more mawkish, turgid and ghastly by the installment. Eventually, Marshall got himself in a pickle with a traffic violation in real life, which saw his character cast out into a gloomy, takeaway curry in a bedsit, grindingly Onanistic nightmare before the plug was finally pulled. The nation (i.e. me) rejoiced and wondered why Marshall had taken so long to make a social faux pas. I mean, I alone must have sent a hundred hookers to his house in the hope he'd get caught out.

But the horror was not over. Now BT's spokespeople are a hideous group of housemates. A snot-nosed studenty male and an avuncular landlord at least twice his age coexist in perfect harmony until the new girl, who the elder one wants to fuck, arrives. But these commercials are so half-arsed they can't really even be bothered to keep up any sort of narrative strand beyond the fact the people are the same in every new outing. Simon's need to get some filthy bingo begins as being sufficiently strong that he is willing to download the entire back catalogue of Duran Duran. But come the Olympics, he's perfectly happy to chase after a room full of Spaniards. Now, at Halloween, he's concerned only for the integrity of his carpet.

At least the Gold Blend couple had some semblance of dramatic tension. The new BT gang are completely lackadaisical. A series of seemingly unrelated events occur to them without ever really ruffling too many feathers. So dead inside are they, maybe Simon and Simon's Bit Of Fluff bump uglies every single day but they're both such profound psychopaths that it doesn't even register with them the following day?

I hate all these people. Which, sadly, must mean that I do care about them. And that is exactly what the advertisers want. The fact that the majority of my investment in their story is that I want to see them all dying of the shits is neither here nor there. At this present moment in time I rather fear that I would buy anything Simon suggested I should, and I would like to protest about this state of affairs. No-one that I actually know, whose ongoing story arc I am familiar with, could make me do anything at the drop of a hat in the same way.

Television advertising has rotted my mind in ways I had rather hoped would be reserved for the rotting of the BT housemates' private parts. When they all die, screaming, of Atomic Crabs.

Bloody bastarding hell.

Common sense prevails

Why are there 26 letters in the English alphabet? It doesn't make a bit of sense. Twenty-six? Was that Henry VIII's lucky number or something? Even in the dark days of the imperial measures era there was nothing to rival the lunacy of basing anything on a base-26 system. Now, I'm from Sussex, which means that I have five digits on each hand. I am assured by my health visitor that this is the conventional number. This is why human beings tend towards counting in base-five and base-ten. Because you've always got those hands handy, you see.

So, we need to get rid of one letter, don't we? And I think that we all know which one it will have to be.

nemesis

Sorry, H, but it's time. We've had our fun, not least in your sneaky silent useage in words like "white". But you are no longer sustainable. Cockneys don't pronounce you anyway, for one thing. But it's the merciless plague of people who pronounce you as "haitch" that did for you in the end.

Nothing in this whole world angers me like people who say "H" as "haitch". Not even the Olocaust. If you do it, you are shit thick and pig ignorant and I hate you and hope you will soon die in screaming, torturous, agonies. How did it even happen? The first person I ever knew who did it was a girl in my class at primary school. Oh, we all just treated it as an oddity. How little did we realise that she was ground zero. The carrier. What we should have done is killed her stone dead there and then. She'll be 31 years old now. Thirty-one years old and from Woodingdean? You'll be able to count her progeny on the fingers of three hands. There's little hope now for our gene pool. It's probably time for humanity to start again on a new planet.

Fucking "haitch".

This is your brain on FLEAS

At every primary school there were kids who had fleas. If you touched them, you would have fleas. The only way to get rid of the fleas would be to use a spray of flea spray from an invisible can of flea spray. In many ways, your entire social status was very much dependent on enough people in your social circle liking you enough to disinfect you. Because otherwise you'd have fleas and be a fleabag. You fleabag.

FLEABAG

Life was simpler back then, in many ways. Even by the time you got to secondary school there weren't any fleabags. Maybe the proximity of GCSEs focused the mind sufficiently to give everyone a gung-ho attitude to the fact that the new people sitting around you may well have fleas? Maybe everyone gets sprayed with a giant invisible can of flea spray? Maybe everyone just grows up? Although I think that last one is highly unlikely.

Life was more straightforward back then. At my school there were two fleabags. That I knew of, at least. Which is worrying in itself. I could have been right next to a mega fleabag and not even known it and have the fleas. But I doubt it because fleabags are very easy to spot. Unkempt. Smelt a bit like old milk or hutches. Lived on the Bexhill Road estate, basically.

Life was more brutal then. Yes, there was a massive element of discrimination and snobbery to it. But in our defence we all agreed that they were fleabags and I'm pretty sure one of them actually did have fleas. That snorkel parka of his certainly had any amount of life forms other than him inside it. And let's face it, it does children good to be wary of getting fleas, especially at a time when AIDS had just gotten started. We all knew fleas was just a gateway to the worse stuff. And the link between the fleas and the AIDS was pretty obvious - the spray from the invisible can was 100% effective at curing both conditions.

Life was better back then. I long for a return to those days. I don't care about your job, your prospects, your income, your creed, colour or kin. Dancing around the deep psychological complexities of individual people, balancing the elements of positive or negative. It's exhausting and not for me. Just tell me if you've got fleas or not. Hell, I'll decide it for myself.

I'm not worried because I've got double super flea immunity, no comebacks.

Celebrity spotting masterclass

There are people who walk among us who are very adept at spotting celebrities. Celebrities are people who are better than us, so the people who can spot them are also very blessed. I represent neither group.

Holy crap, I think it's Zoë Ball!

Some people are just unlucky. Some people live in the wrong place. It's hard to spot celebrities if you live on Sark, for instance. However, I have no such excuses. I am just such an addled, clouded and brain-fugged numpty that I am simply incapable of registering what is going on in front of my eyes. I now present evidence of this complete lack of cerebral function for illustrative purposes.

Hatherley: elusive

Celebrity one: Charlotte Hatherley

CLAIM TO FAME
Popular musician, former guitar player with the group Ash.
ENCOUNTER
Sunday 17th June 2012.
LOCATION
The Garage, Highbury - at the Ash 20th birthday party gig, where to be honest one might be expecting to run into people who are affiliated with the above act.
DISTANCE
No more than 18 inches.
EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES
I was looking the other way.

Buxton: stealthy

Celebrity two: Adam Buxton

CLAIM TO FAME
Radio and television presenter, actor and comedian. All-round renaissance man. Furry superhero. And one of my favourite funny people.
ENCOUNTER
Sunday 17th June 2012.
LOCATION
Ash20, The Garage, Highbury.
DISTANCE
No more than a foot. We may even have touched.
EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES
I was looking for Charlotte Hatherley.

Izzard: practically a ninja

Celebrity three: Eddie Izzard

CLAIM TO FAME
Britain's most internationally famous stand-up comedian of all time, actor on stage, television and big screen.
ENCOUNTER
Sunday 15th July 2012.
LOCATION
De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea
DISTANCE
10 feet
EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES
Very few. I was on the roof of the De La Warr Pavilion looking at the Italian Job-themed art installation, surrounded by the paraphernalia - cameras, lights, stage, refreshments - of the show that Izzard was to play in that location that very evening. My girlfriend also said to me, "look, there's Eddie Izzard". What part of all of that failed to sink in, I am unsure.

The Olympic Torch relay passes through where I live today. I am in two minds as to whether or not I should go to see it, largely because I will probably miss it. Even if it sets fire to my sleeve.

CONCLUSION AND SUMMARY
I am a fucking idiot.

Prolonged absences

I've been terribly lax updating this blog recently. Unfortunately, actual life has been getting in the way, which has significantly impacted on my ability to imagine a whole different life and then fill the internet with a series of lies about it. So this morning I thought I should quickly explain that, and apologise. But then I thought, why should I? Honestly.

I love posts like these, but at the same time I have to admit that they are never anything beyond pointless, self-indulgent and self-important drivel. I'm afraid that people who have blogs, especially blogs that people actually start to read, just unavoidably find themselves cast in the role of a celebrity guest in the episode of Going Live! that is taking place in all of our heads.

I guess that this makes you readers the TV viewers or perhaps even the little kids who made up the studio audience. People who comment are the kids who called in to actually speak to the guests!

Kid 1 Hello Chris who does your hair?
(sound of a baby sibling wailing and screaming in the background)
Chris Isaak Hey kid, I do ma own hair
Kid 2 How do you get the ideas for your song?
Chris Isaak Hey kid, I needed money

So, just to be clear, you are my fans and hanging on my every word, I am famous, what I have to say is important, I am Chris Isaak.

Walking In Memphis is shite

There are no words quite adequate to express my loathing of the piece of shit song Walking In Memphis, which is 21 years old this summer and therefore old enough to buy alcohol in any number of particularly backward US States. In fact, it is so self-evidently malignant, such a cancerous growth on the very body of human society, I don't even really want to get too hung up on trying to explain why I hate it. I would ask instead why or how there could be people who didn't share my view. It is a disease, but unfortunately this is not the cure. Only the sweet, sweet, embrace of death is the cure for Walking In Memphis. And only then if you don't go to hell, where it is the elevator music.

Marc Cohn: enemy of the people

I first heard Walking In Memphis on Radio 1 in Summer 1991. We would have been on holiday at the time. I think we were probably in Somerset. Wherever we went, being a cool and hip 11-year old boy I would always petition my dad to let us listen to Radio 1 in the car instead of his usual station, Southern Sound, the local classic hits station based in Portslade near Brighton. Classic hits were just so square, man. Of course, my dad was completely right and the majority of the Southern Sound playlist from that era now live in the retirement home for popular music that is my iPod.

But back then, I was aware of the fact that I would like my finger to be on the pulse, and so would listen to Radio 1. The irony, of course, is that Radio 1 wasn't half as cool back then as it thought it was. Let's analyse the daytime schedule, which I'm appalled to say that I still remember: Simon Bates, then Gary Davies at lunchtime and Steve Wright In The Afternoon. OK, 21 years have passed but lest we forget that Simon Bates was already about 75 years old and if Gary Davies is the flag bearer for your "hip" credentials, you've got problems.

Steve Wright doesn't get spared. Oh no. Him and his ha-ha-ha-hilarious "Posse" are, in fact, the villains of the piece. It was on his show that I first heard Walking In Memphis. Quite taken with it, he was. He probably still plays it now on Radio 2. It's probably his ringtone. Frankly I sometimes wonder if we arrested the correct Steve Wright.

And herein lies the basis of my explosive hatred. Walking In Memphis is ADULT. It's GROWN-UP. It's SOPHISTICATED. A tale of spiritual discovery and redemption. This isn't a song to take lightly. This isn't throwaway bubblegum pop. This is something to listen to thoughtfully in your high-backed armchair with your fingers steepled. Perhaps take it a verse at a time as not to overwhelm your senses. Then maybe discuss it in a series of seminars at a new town university.

This was the summer of Right Said Fred's I'm Too Sexy and Salt & Pepa's Let's Talk About Sex. But these were merely ephemera. No, true music fans would turn up the bottom of their cords and enjoy Walking In Memphis, clicking their fingers with a single solitary tear rolling down from soulfully closed eyes.

So Steve Wright and his Posse would take some respite from the cavalcade of whimsy and comedy characters (Mr. Angry, he was one. He was angry), take a moment to settle down and then introduce this new life-changing record. Warning his drivetime listeners to park up their cars in case they had a Damascene moment in a built-up area, we then had to sit through 4 minutes and 20 seconds of what can only be described as soul death. Marc Cohn, you are my nemesis.

Cher: "I am still going to rock you, soulfully"

But there is an old saying in the music world: never say anything is the worst it can be until you've heard Cher do it. And this old truism maintains here. In 1995, Cher put on her most serious face and laid down the worst cover version of anything since World War II. Listening to that glassy-eyed bint warble out the now-familiar completely meaningless and empty "soulful" sentiments honestly made me want to smoke crack. And just look at the cover for the single. Just look at it. It's Cher saying "hey look, it's me, glamorous pop star Cher. But wait, put your lustful feelings towards me to one side. I'm going to be serious here. I've got things to say. But I'm still going to rock you. Soulfully." It's a face that I could punch and punch all day every day and never tire, but for my overwhelming concern about what its nose is made of.

I hate Walking In Memphis. I hate the original. I hate all subsequent covers of it. I hate anyone who bought it or owns it in any form. I hate anyone who has ever listened to it without weeping tears of pure bile and blood. I want to go back in time and prevent the birth of Marc Cohn's mother.

It is the worst thing that has ever happened. The end.

Odds and ends

I have touched on portmanteau horror films here before, so let me assure you that I am only doing it again due to my profound belief in and dedication to them and also because I never have any new ideas. Today's and tomorrow's posts about HORROR and WOLVES have also been partly inspired (i.e. nicked) from Megan's awesome love-in for The Wolf Man at the weekend. Read her blog. Do it!

Why does the portmanteau format lend itself so well to the horror film genre? Well, principally because, I think, there's only so much meat on any horrific bone. The best spooky tales are usually short, told around the campfire or as bedtime stories to a nephew you don't particularly like. One has to remember that the classic horror films - Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, The Wolf Man and their ilk - are usually little over an hour long, and even they are mostly censor-friendly drawing room discussions about morality and vol-au-vents.

A certain amount of that is necessary, of course: it establishes mood and an air of normality. Modern day horror films forget about that and just go straight to the horror. Horror, horror, horror, blood, spurt, murder, scream, horror horror horror. Keeping your actual scaries short and to the point has been forgotten by a lot of filmmakers recently. Forgotten, too, is that figurative or imagined horrors are actually far more effective than watching a man have his knees cut off with a Flymo.

The portmanteau horror is perfect in this regard. Often the segments are no more than 20 minutes duration, building towards a climax which is fundamentally more in the viewer's mind than on the screen. This has the double-barrelled benefit of leaving an imprint on the viewer's mind as well as pleasing the studio accountant. A bloke who used to be a baddie in a James Bond film being approached by two hairy hands. Fade to black.

This week I have been watching portmanteau horrors - mainly those of Amicus Productions, the fabulously schlocky British company run out of a shed by two American film writers and producers in the 1960s and 1970s, who specialised in the genre - until nothing I saw any more looked normal to me. I had to eat my dinner with a long handled spoon, lest the peas gained consciousness twixt plate and mouth. Then the idea struck me. I should do a blog post about my favourite portmanteau horror films!

This is a daft idea, as I should actually do that for Chop's Top Fives, which specialises in such things. So instead I decided to pick my five favourite segments and assemble what would be to my mind the ULTIMATE PORTMANTEAU HORROR FILM. Oh mamma.

This is already the ultimate portmanteau horror film, if I'm honest with you.

Story 1: ...and All Through The House (from Tales From The Crypt (1972))
Joan Collins, as a total bitch, thinks nothing of murdering her husband by running him through with a sword on Christmas Eve while their daughter sleeps upstairs. Gathering his magnificently orange blood in a sherry glass, she stages the thing to look like an accident whilst also admiring his life insurance policy and listening to Christmas carols on the radio. But! This programme was interrupted to reveal that a homicidal maniac had escaped from prison dressed as Father Christmas. Actually he looks like Frankenstein's monster after a night on the Stella dressed as Father Christmas. The inevitable ensues.

I find this one particularly effective as it plays right into several of my most enduring fears, namely escaped homicidal maniacs and also strangers appearing at the window at night. If you're not afraid of these two things, I think you are brainwrong.

Story 2: Creeping Vine (from Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1964))
Alan "Fluff" Freeman's young family return from holiday to find a particularly aggressive (and sentient) vine has taken root in their garden. Having resisted all attempts to be dug up, it then emphasises its claims to the house by killing Fluff's pet dog and also a Ministry of Agriculture scientist sent to investigate. Eventually, the family find themselves trapped in their house, entombed entirely by the greenery.

I have picked this story not for its particular scariness or for its brilliance, but for its effect on my imagination. I first saw this film aged about 15, and I can honestly say I have not seen a bramble, a vine or a piece of bindweed since without thinking about it. It makes me the most particular, ferocious and unrelenting gardener since Agent Orange.

Story 3: Wish You Were Here (from Tales From The Crypt (1972))
Another pick from my favourite portmanteau of them all. A wealthy, if ruthless, businessman loses everything including his life. Luckily his wife is on hand with an enchanted statue and three wishes, which she uses to particularly gormless effect.

This choice is a nod to the more traditional horror themes. Most portmanteau films feature at least one of the old horror film faithfuls - vampires, werewolves, zombies - but none of them feature in my list. However, this reworking of the old tale of the monkey's paw and its three wishes is a good replacement. I particularly love the scene where the man catches a glimpse of the grim reaper (riding a motorcycle) in his rear-view mirror.

Story 4: Drawn and Quartered (from The Vault of Horror (1973))
Tom Baker, well cast as a mad artist, finds that his art dealer, agent and a noted art critic (art critics festoon portmanteau horrors) have conspired to devalue his art so they might buy it cheap and then sell it dear whilst he is in Haiti. Haiti, people, Haiti. So, Tom tootles off to the nearest hut to "purchase some voodoo". Painting his own voodoo portraits, he then extracts his revenge on the wrongdoers back in London, with fairly scant regard for his propensity to paint self-portraits until it's rather too late.

This story has everything. Voodoo. Tom Baker saying the word "voodoo". Splendidly-OTT acting. Gory scenes - a man chopping his hands off with a paper-trimming guillotine being a particular highlight - and some more figurative scenes of horror left to the viewer's own imagination. Jackpot!

HELLO HUGO

Story 5: Ventriloquist's Dummy (from Dead of Night (1945))
Michael Redgrave plays a particularly gifted ventriloquist with a perhaps rather-too-sentient dummy. That dummy is always getting him into scrapes. Not least when he ends up shooting and wounding a fellow ventriloquist and being sent to prison. When he gets a visit from an old friend (the kind with a wooden head), all kinds of psychological fun and games commence!

No portmanteau collection could be without this story, the most famous from the film that is the grandpappy of the entire genre. The acting is first rate and the story memorable enough that it's fair to say it's probably accountable for the majority of phobias of ventriloquist's dummies that have followed it.

* * *

(Special mention: Poetic Justice (from Tales from the Crypt (1972))
Peter Cushing plays a man who the local residents association think is bringing down the tone and value of the neighbourhood, so begin to oust him by a regiment whispering campaigns, bullying and psychological torture. Following his suicide, a year to the day, Zombie Cushing has his revenge.


This is perhaps the most powerful story in any portmanteau horror that I know of. So powerful, in fact, that I could never include it in my ultimate film compilation. Peter Cushing was the godfather of portmanteau horror stars, and his performance is magnificent. Magnificent to the point you're more likely to cry than scream. Especially once you remember that Cushing was reeling from his wife's death at the time the film was made and is playing a lonely widower. It tears your heart out. Which, given the turn of events later in the tale, is pretty ironic.)