Lovecraft by the brilliant Ben Templesmith.

Almost as unsettling as an actual photo of the man. Superb. Thanks Ben!

Gears are slowly creaking into life for the launch of Project Luna: 1947 at LSCC next month.

Matt Soffe kindly produced this thoroughly brilliant poster for us. It’ll be included in the book’s bonus material. Matt blogged about creating the poster here.

A limited edition hardcover will be available at LSCC. Written by me, with art, letters and colours by Jim Boswell. 88 pages plus extras (script-to-art samples, sketches and whatnot). I’ll be there on the Saturday at the Markosia booth should you want a copy defaced with my signature.

A trade paperback release will follow through the usual channels.

An enjoyable 90 minutes was spent at the IFI last Saturday watching 1966’s Dracula, Prince of Darkness. Probably my least favourite of Hammer’s Dracula efforts but it’s not like you can turn down a chance to see any Hammer film on the big screen.

It was the last of the Hammer Dracs that I saw when I was a boy. It never seemed to be on tv and I couldn’t track it down in the big HMV on Grafton Street where I would buy all my Hammers and Universals and B-Movie SF films. When I say “all” we’re talking about twelve VHS cassettes bought over five or six years, though I had a much larger library taped from the tele. I’m kind of sorry that I binned the VHS tapes as I replaced them with DVDs – there would be a reassuringly nostalgic quality to watching them again. Even now, when watching it on DVD, I still expect the tension of the climactic scenes of Quatermass 2 to be broken by the sudden appearance of Frank Bruno flogging bottles of HP Sauce.

For a long time the only thing I knew of Drac PoD was the iconic black and white photo featured in Alan Frank’s HORROR MOVIES book.

And the equally striking image contained in Denis Gifford’s A PICTORIAL HISTORY OF HORROR MOVIES.

The film is just about okay. Barbara Shelley is always good, and Christopher Lee can’t be beat, even though he doesn’t actually say a word and is on screen for all of about 3 minutes. His hissing is impressive though. The second act drags along at a painfully slow pace, I think that’s what kills it. The opening act and the final ten minutes are really rather good.

I’m not sure how much the other patrons enjoyed it: a sweaty-browed pillock behind me fell asleep and started to snore loudly until his friend woke him up. I’ve admitted that the second act drags a little, but come on. Then the woman sitting two seats over casually kicked her shoes off and dangled her fetid feet over the backrest of the empty seat in front of her. What’s that about? I don’t mean to sound like Dean Tavalouris here but seriously, what is wrong with people?

The cinema was all but sold out, and nearly everyone was polite enough to keep their shoes on. They should show more of these old horror films.

Derek Jarman. 1971. Music by Coil.

Look what the postman just handed me.

A gift, and much appreciated. Peter Cushing by the brilliant Matt Soffe.

It’s based on a publicity still from Hammer’s The Abominable Snowman. Always one of my favourite Hammer films – I taped it on VHS from a Channel 4 late-night showing, probably sometime around 1990. I think I was around 12 or 13 years old. It was a Friday night, I remember that quite clearly because I got up really early on the Saturday morning to watch it. It’s a really great film, written by Nigel Kneale (based on his earlier BBC drama The Creature, also staring Cushing), and features one of Cushing’s finest performances. I wish I had kept a count of how many times I have watched the films that obsess me.

Matt and I have been discussing the possibility of working on a comic together – a joyously monstrous horror book. A love letter, of sorts, to Hammer and Universal monster movies. If schedules allow we might start working on it towards the end of this year/start of next.

Click for Stewart Lee discussing Children of the Stones.

I first saw the show when I was seven or eight, when it was repeated on HTV during the summer holidays. I re-watched it recently and everything about it is still rather brilliant. And as a bonus it features Freddie Jones in one of his best mad-as-a-brush performances (almost as good as his sweaty stooging in Hammer’s The Satanic Rites of Dracula). It’s probably a strange thing to admit but this show had a profound effect on me. I think about it often.

The opening theme is still quite eerie. Though that may be due to nostalgia on my part.