Notes from the peninsula
I’m Michael Walters, author of The Complex, my debut speculative fiction novel which is available through Salt Publishing and all good bookshops. Welcome to my creative home on the web.
I post about books, films and writing, with the occasional life update. You can follow me on Bluesky (my Twitter replacement of choice) to say hello and become a member of my Patreon for more book-related stuff.
On the Patreon free tier, you get my reading and creative writing thoughts, by email if you choose, and with the “Weird and Wonderful” tier, if you want to support me financially, you get my everlasting gratitude (as well as a few extras).
October 21 2021, 05:58
Censor (2021)
Enid Baines is a censor at the British Board of Film Classification. Her parents decide it is time to have her long-missing sister declared dead. Enid’s daily life, the films she has to watch, and memories of her sister, begin to bleed together. [more...]
October 20 2021, 06:17
La Llorona (2019)
A former general found guilty of genocide is trapped in his house by protesters, and strange things begin to happen to the family as the ghosts of the past insist on being heard. [more...]
October 19 2021, 05:50
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Ana, a nurse, wakes up to the start of a zombie apocalypse, and manages to hook up with a police officer, Rhodes, and three other survivors and hide in a nearby shopping mall. [more...]
October 18 2021, 05:47
Night of the Demons (1988)
A disparate group of misfits are tormented by a demon after a seance-like party game on Halloween night. The second half of this film rips. [more...]
October 17 2021, 06:50
Saw (2004)
Two men wake up chained by the ankles to radiators on opposite sides of a locked room. There is a dead man between them with his brains blown out, clutching a tape recorder. [more...]
October 16 2021, 06:21
Triangle (2009)
Triangle is this year’s first such nugget of gold. It’s about the patterns of thought, feeling and action we find ourselves in, the bad habits we can’t break, especially with the people we love. [more...]
October 15 2021, 06:04
The Crazies (1973)
A military developed virus is accidentally released into the water supply of Evans City, Pennsylvania, and the military attempts to impose martial law to contain its spread. [more...]
October 14 2021, 06:02
My Bloody Valentine (1981)
A unique film set in a small mining town, with the young male characters mostly miners. It was exciting to see working class characters and locations in a film like this. [more...]
October 13 2021, 05:57
The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail (1971)
I though The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail would be a giallo, or at least a proto-slasher, but it is far more a crime-thriller. A wife inherits a million dollars and becomes the focus of a killer. [more...]
October 12 2021, 06:09
Nosferatu (1922)
The oldest unseen film in my collection. I appreciated the original Dracula and Frankenstein, but they were pretty dry in places. Nosferatu is ten years older again. This did feel like homework. [more...]
October 11 2021, 05:30
Salem’s Lot (1979)
Salem’s Lot has a special place in my heart. It was the first scary book I ever read. The film is the two part miniseries I remember from the eighties stitched together. [more...]
October 10 2021, 06:39
Nightmare Beach (1989)
The late eighties, Spring break in Florida, and thousands of young people are in bars and cars along the seafront, drinking, sunbathing and having sex. But this is Nightmare Beach. [more...]
October 09 2021, 06:25
A Quiet Place (2018)
Krasinski displays a touch of Spielberg in the way he shows the children’s lives, as well as in the adrenaline-inducing set pieces. [more...]
October 08 2021, 05:52
The War of the Worlds (1953)
I recently watched the cleak Spielberg/Cruise War of the Worlds, so I thought I’d go back to the original 1953 adaptation, whose bleakness is softened by the folksy charm of small town America. [more...]
October 07 2021, 05:49
The Thing (1982)
A perfect film. A shape-shifting alien picks off the crew of an Antartic research station. Suspicion turns to paranoia, and the remaining humans have stop the alien from taking over the world. [more...]
October 06 2021, 05:51
The Thing From Another World (1951)
A report of a crashed aircraft, a remote scientific outpost, a prickly doctor — and an alien whose unique biology threatens humanity. [more...]
October 05 2021, 05:50
Shadow in the Cloud (2020)
Horror stretches across many genres, and you can’t always know in advance how horror-y a film is, so with Shadow in the Cloud we are in war-action-horror territory, in that order. [more...]
October 04 2021, 05:42
Lisa and the Devil (1973)
One of the lesser-known corners of the Mario Bava-verse. Telly Savalas as the possible devil Leandro is an amusing presence, and if he is not particularly devilish, the dream-like plot definitely is. [more...]
October 03 2021, 06:28
The Addiction (1995)
This is a film thick with social commentary, philosophy texts and existential ideas. The first images we see are piles of dead bodies from the Holocaust and Vietnam. [more...]
October 02 2021, 06:08
Jakob’s Wife (2021)
The irrepressible Barbara Crampton and Larry Fessenden star in this story of a woman’s mid-life crisis being super-charged by an encounter with a vampire. [more...]
October 01 2021, 06:01
Werewolves Within (2021)
To kick off this year’s #31DaysofHorror I chose Werewolves Within, a comedy-whodunnit-horror based on a Ubisoft video game. It sounded like a fun October opener. [more...]
September 11 2021, 14:49
Horror AND sex!
Here we go again, with my fourth #31DaysofHorror. I’ve talked about this before, but watching these sorts of films makes me feel like I’m hanging out with my dad. This year I just want a reason to watch a lot of horror films. [more...]