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Description: Explores the raw energy, rebellion, and liberating impact of Britain’s 1976–77 punk explosion.

Punk: the filth and the fury. But it was so much more than that.

In The History of Punk Music, author Stephen Palmer depicts the punk rock explosion of 1976-77 in tired, bored, and socially stratified Britain. Emerging from the litter-strewn streets of London, punk’s music expressed the suppressed anger of young working-class people with nowhere to go and nothing meaningful to do. Its music was raw and shocking. Its fashion mocked staid middle-class values. Its art was expressed in cut-outs and by sprayed graffiti. Yet beneath this sudden explosion, frightening to those of the establishment who witnessed it, incomprehensible to white-collar workers commuting to and from work, lay a philosophy of individual creative expression and an ethic of anti-racism and liberation for women.

Punk in its original form was a movement of human liberation, a Year Zero moment in the history of a nation more used to colonial exploits and a vast empire. It spoke of fury, of hopelessness, of cathartic anger expressed through visceral, exciting, revolutionary music. Its visual images captured the gaze of the nation, and soon the world. And all of its central figures yelled, hammered and smashed the doors of the Establishment.

This book charts the origins, appearance, development and ending of punk. It is a book of passion and vivid description, befitting the individual visions of the original punk musicians.

Punk was filthy and furious, yet it was also a new dawn for the British music scene.



Author: Stephen Palmer is a professionally published author of thirty years, whose work has garnered much acclaim in genre, independent, and national press. His books have encompassed SF, Steampunk, and in narrative nonfiction Anthropology and Music. He was the man behind the psychedelic group Mooch, and the real world project Blue Lily Commission. He lives in south Shropshire with his partner and an unfeasibly large number of musical instruments.



Review: I was there. The day The Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen 45 rpm arrived at my record shop. I bought it. Played it loud so my neighbors could hear it. So my rock and roll friends could react to it. What is that? It's the new Rock, I'd tell them. That's not Rock, they'd reply. But they listened. And have continued to listen till today. Punk. Post Punk. Retro Punk. Hardcore Punk. But through all the changes, Punk remains the music of its day, a singular music for a singular era. The seed before the tree. And that's why "A History of Punk" by Stephen Palmer is so important: It reminds us of when and where it all began.

The Single

It is tempting to want to recap the book and compare notes from America about our Punk Movement on the Eastside of Los Angeles, but that's how enthralling Steve's recounting his perspective about the UK Punk Movement is that I want to say, So that's what inspired the roots of the Punk Scene. The book is not erudite research; it is a lived in community that an insider shares with outsiders looking in. It is not cold calculation and pedantic footnotes; it is a voice that echoes the beginnings of Punk because Steve celebrates the birth and growth of the Movement. And he does so with references to real times, places, and bands from his memory, his experience, and we listen to the words with envy, but also with pride, because, yeah, I was there too, but over here in Los Angeles. Reading A History of Punk is not nostalgia; it is being there buying and listening to God Save the Queen by The Sex Pistols all over again as if for the first time. 

 

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Crowfield by Dani Brown

Reviewed by Anthony Servante

Author: Suitably labelled “The Queen of Filth”, extremist author Dani Brown’s style of dark and twisted writing and deeply disturbing stories has amassed a worrying sized cult following featuring horrifying tales such as “56 Seconds”, “Becoming” and the hugely popular “Ketamine Addicted Pandas”. Merging eroticism with horror, torture and other areas that most authors wouldn’t dare, each of Dani’s titles will crawl under your skin, burrow inside you, and make you question why you are coming back for more.

Book Description: "At the end of the motorway, underneath the orange sodium light glow sits Crowfield. Parts of the council estate were claimed by the marsh before the first residents moved in.
Creatures lurk in the shadows. Their mummified toes poke out of their leather boots. They spread frost with their breath and bring death to Crowfield’s residents, young and old.

They don’t bring death to Spencer. They bring something worse. Eternity on the estate wrapped up in a golden brown spell cast from the end of a needle. Spencer needs to reach the only phone on Crowfield that works. He can phone his father and convince his father to rescue him.

Nigel takes the call, but Spencer is still just a baby. He hasn’t told anyone about Spencer. He hasn’t told anyone of that night he spent with Joyce in the bowels of Crowfield. Only her cat knows he was there.

A white cat stalks the rats and crows of the estate, watched by the scarecrow on the green. The scarecrow watches the ferns and heathers spread and the orange orb lights flicker on over the marsh.

Beneath each orange orb is another creature waiting to climb out and help Joyce make another scarecrow to hang on the green."

Review: In Crowfield, Dani Brown has written a living, breathing nightmare that pulls the reader in and from which the reader will not want to wake. By choice. Often in my dreams, even the bad ones, I visit horrible places that I refuse to leave for as long as sleep will allow. From Dani's story (if that is what this surreal horror can be called), we enter a place inhabited by scarecrows, mutant roaches, shadow creatures, and all manner of unseen terrors. But it's such a memerizing world, we are easily captivated while simultaneously be repulsed. 

Using beautiful prose to convey gruesome horrors, Dani creates a haunting and visceral tale that is more than just a story. It is an experience that is full of color, sound, and smell, used to full effect by the talented writing style Dani utilizes; she creates a depraved landscape where urban decay becomes alive with monstrous creatures both big and small, neon and dark, sulphorus and chorine, and alluring but dangerous. The language makes Crowfield work and rewards the reader with a very frightening but enchanting horrorscape. 

As an aside, I must point out my favorite sequence in the book: the vloggers visit to Crowfield. What I liked was the inversion of the narrative: Crowfield narrates the arrival of the vloggers, describes their predicament, and initiates their ouster. The vloggers merely respond. And, yes, there are many sequences such as this. 

Whether you read the book in one sitting, or savor it over a week (as I did), you will enjoy Crowfield by Dani Brown. Either way, the experience will stay with you like, well, a lovely nightmare. 

 

Funereal Plots

Horror Cinema reviews

Matthew M. Bartlett

Bring Her Back

Writer/Director: Danny and Michael Philippou

I saw on social media a horror writer complaining about a theme they felt was overused in the genre: trying to resurrect a loved one who has died. Good luck getting rid of that one. It’s as intrinsic to the genre as the werewolf and the vampire. As long as death exists—and it shows no signs of going away, no matter the advances in medicine—we will explore the ways people will try to reverse it, and consider what will go terribly wrong when they make the attempt.

17-year-old Andy (Billy Barratt) and his half-blind sister Piper (Sora Wong) lose their father and are forced to cohabitate with a step-parent. Andy could become Piper’s legal guardian when he turns 18 in three months, but a trouble past puts that strongly desired arrangement at risk. Laura (Sally Hawkins, brilliant in a difficult role), said guardian, is a former counselor who’s fostering another child—a mute boy named Oli, who is somehow frail and menacing at the same time. Laura had a daughter who died by drowning. She immediately works to try to sabotage Andy.

The movie starts off boldly, showing a videotaped occult ritual that is squalid and violent. How that tape connects to the events of the movie unfolds darkly and with wince-worthy scenes that make the viewer turn away from the screen. We see more of the ritual we witnessed at the start of the movie. When Oli’s true identity is revealed, the situation deteriorates.

Bring Her Back is, as they say, not for the faint of heart. There’s regurgitation, self-mutilation, the consumption of corpses, and a . I tend to look unfavorably upon movies where the horror is a metaphor for grief. This isn’t quite that—grief is the engine, but the horrors are stark and unyielding, effectively offset by some moments of humor, though less so than the other excellent horror feature of 2025, Zach Creggers’ A+ movie Weapons. Bring Her Back is a few steps up from the pair’s previous feature Talk to Me. It’s one of the best horror movies in recent times, managing to be intelligent, emotionally intelligent, and balls-out bonkers violent. I look forward to the Phillippous’ next (three-word-title?) outing. If their trajectory is like that of Creggers, they are moviemakers to watch (from between your fingers).

 

"Gaze into the Abyss: The Poetry of Jim Morrison" by William Cook

Reviewed by Anthony Servante

To appreciate “Gaze into the Abyss: The Poetry of Jim Morrison” by William Cook, the reader need not be a fan or detractor of The Doors’ singer/lyricist Jim Morrison. One merely need to appreciate good poetry. But that is the question: What is “good poetry”? For an answer, we look to the poetry itself. William Cook addresses this concern immediately by revealing to us his intentions: “In order to validate my claim that [Morrison] is a significant poet worthy of canonical consideration, the focus of this critique will be on Morrison’s own words and poetry.” This is important for the readers to know up front so that we do not confuse Cook’s emotional connections to the music of The Doors or to the turbulent history of the poet himself. The work will speak for itself, and it is the job of the critic to teach us to listen to the voice of the poetry by eliminating all manner of white noise that surrounds the work, be it the poet’s controversial life or the turbulent times the poetry was written in.

The general rule in literary criticism is to critique the work, not the person, place, or time, for criticism is cold analysis, not praise or rebuke. It deconstructs the work and finds strengths and weaknesses. What makes the literature work on its own terms? William Cook is to be commended for applying this rule to his critique of the work of The Doors singer/lyricist Jim Morrison in “Gaze into the Abyss: The Poetry of Jim Morrison. In an age where creative work from books to movies is attacked or worshiped by writers who confuse admiration and disapproval for critical analysis, it is good to see that William Cook elevates the traditional role of critic up alongside those of artist and author.

Whether Cook is writing about serial killers, the literature of horror, or the poetry of a generation, we can always trust him to clear away the clutter of emotional bias and offer us a lucid analysis that gives the reader a better understanding of the subject matter. Well done, William. Gaze into the Abyss: The Poetry of Jim Morrison is another worthy example of your critical skills.

 

Hunting Time

by

Anthony Servante

It was hunting time. Harper Knutssen opened the door and felt the cold blast of air chill his face. He’d have to down a bear not only for food but for the pelt, so he could make himself a coat with a hood to cover his face. The winter came upon him suddenly this year, and the cabin needed to be reworked to keep the heat in. He stepped into the snow, and his feet steeped into the 8 inches of powdery ice.

In the distance, just before the forest became thickened and dark, there ran a single deer, alone, lost, trying to find its bearings. I stalked it as the beast dumb with cold changed directions several times, entering the forest, exiting, stopping and turning its head as it realized I was upon it. My knife entered the warmth of its flesh. It fell instantly, but it wasn’t a clean kill. Its heart yet beat. I plunged the weapon into the pumping organ to put the animal out of its misery. Its doe eyes glazed as they watched me with morbid curiosity.

In the cabin, I skinned the deer and butchered it into sections for cooking. I’d eat later. What was important now was the pelt to cover my face from the freezing wind. There were white bears about. With the proper attire for hunting, I would down the big beast and make a blanket.

What a life I had chosen for myself all those years ago. The marriage didn’t work. She was an evil woman, an unfaithful creature. It was good to be away from the civilized animals, those unpredictable beasts. Alone I was safe. My heart untroubled. But it was my first winter here, and I was unprepared. Luckily the frozen door was ajar that morning. I would have to be quick to ready myself to survive the long months ahead. The deer meat would last perhaps a month. I still needed more meat. Bear meat. The white beasts would be looking for caves to hibernate. They were vulnerable then. I wiped my blade clean and resumed the hunt.

Another hunter eyed the blood from the deer I killed. What was he doing on my land? I sneaked up on him and slit his throat and dragged his body into the forest. Let the animals feast on him. It was the law of the uncivilized here. He should have known that. You don’t hunt the prey of another hunter. It’s the code of the animals.

Then I saw the bear in the distance, about a hundred yards as the crow flies. It was a big one. It seemed to be looking for something, perhaps a last meal before hibernation. It didn’t matter. I leaped upon his furry back and stabbed the knife into its neck. Blood sprayed every where. I was lucky to have severed an artery. I dropped to the ground and stepped back as the beast fell to four paws, then tipped over. I could not carry such a heavy animal to the cabin, so I first skinned it and cut it into several portions. It took half a dozen trips to and from the cabin to finally bring the entire bear home.

I felt safe now. But suddenly another hunter broke through the door and fired his weapon at me. My arm caught on fire. I threw the knife at him. It stuck in his eye. He dropped to his knees and fell on his face, pushing the knife deeper into his brain. As I got to my feet, a third hunter fired his weapon. The searing pain landed in my belly. I rushed the fiend and choke him. Again the gun explodes, but the bullet strikes the ground. I bit his throat and hear the larynx pop. He gasped for air for a few minutes. I watched him die in the doorway. I wanted to close the door but I was too weak. I sat. The freezing winter entered the cabin. There was nothing I could do now to prevent it. I surrendered to the sleep as I leaned against the carcass of the bear.

The County law authorities arrived the next morning when the morning shift nurses found the three dead male nurses. One had his throat torn out by what looked like human teeth marks. The second had his adam’s apple shoved into his esophagus. The third knocked unconscious, tied and skinned alive. When the muscular male nurse entered his hospital cell, he found the door was unlocked, forced open somehow. It would take animal strength to do that. And the horror awaited him. The doctor on duty as well as a female nurse and the receptionist were butchered and hanging in the patient’s room. A bed sheet was bundled in the corner and used for a fire. The doctor’s lighter lay by the blackened blanket. He backed out of the room quickly and notified the police. Why did he do it? They asked. The nurse said he was harmless and loved to stare at the calendar picture on the wall depicting a cabin in the snow. One thing though. Yesterday he kept complaining that it was too cold. I asked the doctor to reduce the air conditioning a bit, but he said that it would do the patient good. Well, said the detective, that explains the human skin suit he was wearing. Man loses his wife in a hunting accident and then this. You head doctors probably could explain this one better than a homicide detective.

His dead eyes never left the calendar. He didn’t notice the other hunters in his cabin and no longer cared.

 

Funereal Plots

Horror Cinema Reviews

Matthew M. Bartlett

Weapons

Writer/Director: Zach Creggers

Don’t read this review. Seriously. Stop here. Save it if you must, until after you see the movie. Yes, this is one of those “try to avoid all information before seeing it” kind of movie, and not because there’s some terrible twist—instead, because the way it reveals its story is captivating and intricate.

Seventeen children disappear overnight, seen on Ring cameras moving swiftly and strangely into the night, arms extended. They all left their homes at 2:17 am. They were all from the same class. Only one student didn’t disappear. Justine Gandy (Julia Garner, allowed here to let her let loose her considerable acting chops), the class’s teacher, falls under the town’s angry suspicion. This is the deceptively simple setup for Weapons. I thought I’d cottoned to its secret early on, when in a dream a massive, spaceship-like assault rifle looms eerily over a house. But I was wrong.

Justine is placed on leave. She starts drinking, carrying on with a local cop. Intensely curious and empathetic, hurt by the negative attention, she begins, despite her principal’s wishes, following the young boy who didn’t disappear. The windows of his house are covered in newspaper. It appears that his parents are inside, silent and still. Justine is joined in her unofficial investigation by one of the fathers (Josh Brolin). The cop with whom she’s carrying on complicates matters, as does interference from a local miscreant and, separately, from the school principal.

The movie jumps back in the narrative several times, showing us the occurrences from different points of view. We meet the remaining student’s aunt, a garishly clad and made-up enigma, who uses strange witchcraft on the boy’s parents—and who may be the key to the entire mystery. The movie’s explosive, startling ending also manages to be hilarious without compromising the horrors.

Weapons is everything a horror movie should be. Mysterious. Startling. Eerie. Inventive. Violent. Sad. Hysterically funny. It isn’t the same old horror concept rehashed. The director’s previous feature, Barbarian, was similarly inventive, if different in tone and execution. I’m excited to see what Cregger has in store next.

 

1942 (2012)
Directed by Feng Xiaogang

Reviewed by Anthony Servante

I saw the horror movie sequel to The Collector, called The Collection, both of which I enjoyed. As I left the theater, I saw a long line of well-dressed Chinese cordoned by black velvet separators used at movie premieres. So, I went for it. I got in line, wearing a black hoodie. There were security and uniformed ushers, all Chinese. As more patrons lined up behind me, one of the ushers counted people in the line and then instructed the last fifty or so people in line to follow him. I understood his body language enough that I didn't need to understand his Mandarin. We were escorted to the theater showing Red Dawn. Cool. I haven't seen that yet. Then the usher left and returned with two more ushers and hundreds more patrons who immediately filled the cinema to capacity. We were told by the escort usher that they have found a copy of the movie at a sister theater nearby and that it is being readied for showing in about 15 minutes. He apologized that the other theater was oversold, but while we are waiting for the movie to start, he and the other ushers would hand out free movie passes for a complimentary visit to attend a different film. When the usher reached me, I told her that my partner was in the restroom. She handed me an extra ticket.  Xie xie, I said. As I listened afterward, I found that most of the audience had a friend or family member in the restroom as well. The ushers smiled and bowed a lot. They didn't care. The tickets were an apology. That is all that mattered. Minutes or so after the freebies, the movie started straight away. No turn-off your cell phones. No refreshments in the lobby. No don't talk during the movie. No trailers. The movie started, the lights went down. I heard the crowd gasp. I sensed something about the movie was going to be good.

It was not Red Dawn. It was a Chinese film called 1942. That's what the four Chinese characters read. A one, a nine, a four and a two. Yet the English subtitle read: Back to 1942. (Later I found it's based on the book Remembering 1942, because as the author Liu Zhenyun points out: Americans remember [bad times in history]; the Chinese forget). The cast titles were Chinese except for Tim Robbins and Adrien Brody (other Brody movies, The Thin Red Line & The Pianist, and now this movie all take place in 1942, as Zhenyun also points out). The movie begins with a confrontation between peasants carrying torches at night and the landlord and his hired help carrying rifles. It seems the starving "bandits" as the rich owner refers to them are starving to death and they intend to share in the plentiful food behind the wall the armed men are defending. A messenger sent to summon police returns with the news that the Japanese have invaded China. The peasants and the riflemen begin killing each other for whatever food they can carry. The next morning there is an exodus of ten million people from the Henen Province who will go west in search of food. Why west? It is a traditionally lucky path to take in dire times. Only on this trek over three million of them will die: from starvation, strafing and bombing from Japanese planes, murder, and cannibalism.

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The horror the movie captured all too well, but this pic is real 1942

The refugees were starving. A pet cat that would not be left behind becomes food, and even the young girl whom the father tries to console needlessly declares, "I'm going to eat it too." Two thieves lose the mule they stole and one of the thieves tries to find the beast in the pitch black of a Henen night; he heads to a camp fire in the distance where Chinese soldiers are bayoneting the mule into size-able chunks for the huge pot of boiling water. He demands a piece of the animal only to fall into the boiling pot head-first, which instantly kills him. From days to months these people without food find themselves doing what no civilized person would do to survive. It is more humane to strangle a new-born baby girl than to watch it die of starvation.

Meanwhile, the Japanese planes just won't go away. In movie time the attacks span about fifteen to twenty minutes apart. The mass of refugees have nowhere to run or hide. They are ripped apart by high-powered bullet-fire. A tottler crying for her mother is blown in two by a nearby bomb. The visceral assault is non-stop. Your emotions are not spared. And we're not one third through the movie yet. There is much more suffering to come. But the reasons must be explored by the film-maker.

The blame is placed by the camera on the corrupt Chinese government. And the honest politicians are impotent to help. The Japanese on the ground get about fifteen minutes of blame toward the end when the Chinese pass their Henen refugee problem to their military enemy. The reporter played by Adrien Brody has been taking pictures of atrocities on the road from Hennen and has reported his findings to the highest Chinese official, who upon learning of the cannibalism, and seeing pictures of dogs eating human carcasses, worries more about how China will appear in the Time magazine article than about addressing the problems with the Hennen refugees. When 100 million tons of grain arrive, it dwindles as local government officials skim so much that nothing reaches the refugees. From horror to the horrible and back and forth the audience sways emotionally.

I was grateful that I fell into this movie. It was a great lesson in history, and after having just posted my article on History and Horror in fiction, it was quite the coincidence to follow the same subject in nonfiction. I was the first to stand and applaud the movie as the final credits began to roll. The crowd joined me with whistles and shouts of the director's name. I think I walked into an event of some magnitude. It was not a perfect movie. It was a perfect experience. Nothing like real horror to remind one what fictional horror emulates, and nothing like a good book or film to kindle that memory. It made The Collection look like a G-rated film.

Go see 1942. Let's show the Chinese how to remember. They already know how to forget.