Table of contents for August 2019 in SFX

As Ghostface repeatedly asked, “What’s your favourite scary movie?” When asked that question myself – thankfully not by masked maniacs – I usually reply, “Showgirls.” Joking aside (what’s not to love about Showgirls, after all?) it would be the Nightmare On Elm Street series. As a teenager I was obsessed with them. I didn’t really see it as “horror”, I saw it as a battle between good and evil – the same as Doctor Who, which had captured my imagination for as long as I could remember. It’s fair to say that I’ve always been more interested in the more “fantastical” elements of horror and scary stories – brutality has never been appealing, but Zsa Zsa Gabor getting sliced by a supernatural dream-stalker on a late-night talk show is, seemingly,…

THE GANG ARE BACK! 1 Bingo, Fleegle, Drooper and Snorky return in a brandnew original movie from Blue Ribbon Content – Warner Bros Television Group’s digital studio – to be released on DVD, Blu-ray and a television debut on Syfy. But this isn’t like any Banana Splits adventure you’ve seen before – the film has been rated R for horror, violence and gore. REWRITING HISTORY 2 The Banana Splits Adventure Hour – a kids show mixing live action and cartoons – was produced by Hanna-Barbera and ran for two seasons from 1968 to 1970. (There was a short-lived revival in 2008.) This is the first time a Banana Splits on-screen adventure has been solely aimed at adults, although the group had a crossover with Suicide Squad in a 2017 DC…

Known for breaking boundaries throughout his career, it’s apt that the late Stan Lee delved into new territory in Stan Lee’s Alliances: A Trick Of Light, an Audible Original audio drama, which sadly proved to be one of the former Marvel editor-inchief’s last projects. “When we first met Stan in 2000, it was the early days of the internet and he was fascinated by how it could connect the world,” says Luke Lieberman, who co-created Alliances alongside Lee, and Ryan Silbert. “Alliances started as an exploration of humanity and identity in a digital world where we have the power to shape our own realities. Fast forward two decades, and rather than bringing us together, the internet and social media have left people more isolated, more tribal and more lonely.” As…

Introduce us to your character Stella and where we find her in the movie… Stella is the main character, or the storyteller, throughout the movie. She’s an internal character that has a lot going on, that is explained during the movie. She has an emptiness to her that she’s looking to fill throughout the adventure because there was a lot of gossip and stories that were told about her mother when she was younger. They carried on throughout her teen years. That’s where she finds a connection with Sarah Bellows and the book. She’s looking to find answers through this book. Does she buy into this book more than some of the other characters? Absolutely. Even in looking for the book, she’s very much the driving force behind wanting to…

For tour dates and tickets, visit kenwright.com/portfolio/the-exorcist…

COME TO DADDY OPENING FILM, UK PREVIEW An urban hipster faces major daddy issues in respected genre producer Ant Timpson’s directorial debut feature. Written by The Greasy Strangler co-writer Toby Harvard (based on an idea by Timpson), we meet the 30-something Norval (a career best performance by Elijah Wood) who’s been invited to his father’s space-age design cliff house. Nervous and desperate to impress his perpetually uncaring dad, Norval stretches the truth about his life until finally his father’s growing animosity towards him reaches a dark fever pitch. From here on, all genre-blending bets are off as this hilarious, gross and shocking-to-the-extreme adventure moves smartly towards its most uncompromising and unexpected finale. CRAWL SPECIAL PREVIEW Alligators are the new sharks! Two horror legends combine – The Evil Dead’s Sam Raimi…

What’s the biggest practical challenge of creating a moonbase? • The challenges of establishing a moonbase are far from singular. Almost all of the hazards of human space flight are present – hard vacuum, radiation, fractional gravity and extremes of temperature – but there are additional problems. The substantial difficulties of landing material there and maintaining reliable environmental control and life-support systems, obviously, but also the remoteness of the location, the requirement for the crew to be more self-sufficient than they need to be on the international space station. Then there’s the dust, which the Apollo crews tell us gets everywhere. Do you think we’ll see a real life moonbase any time soon? • It’s totally possible. We did after all land a total of six crews and 12 men…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 115 minutes Director F Gary Gray Cast Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, Kumail Nanjiani, Emma Thompson Seven years since we last saw the galaxy-defending Men In Black, the series is back with some new faces and the odd fresh spin – otherwise, though, it’s a pedestrian re-tread of old tricks and tactics. An alien McGuffin hunted by a nasty extra-terrestrial threat drives all the running around, which this time refreshingly goes beyond New York. Otherwise, it’s strictly business as usual, with plenty of beats feeling like boxes that must be ticked. They’re rarely handled with enough aplomb to make them stand out from previous instalments, with director F Gary Gray never finding the subversively quirky tone of Barry Sonnenfeld’s original. Tess Thompson is charming and canny as…

UK/US Amazon, 26 July Showrunner Eric Kripke Cast Erin Moriarty, Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr EPISODES 1.01-1.03 When a member of the world’s foremost superhero team drops his Spandex kecks and demands a blow job off a new female member, you know you’re not in the MCU. Quite the opposite, in fact. The Boys is based on Garth Ennis’s shock jock comicbook series about a world in which superheroes are all imageobsessed narcissists keeping their dark sides and sexual deviancy under wraps. The Boys are a self-appointed team that aims to curb the supes’ worst excesses, and they’re certainly not averse to using some very extreme tactics to do so. Amazon’s TV series, developed by Supernatural creator Eric Kripke, understandably tones down the comics’ grindhouse grossness, but there’s still…

RELEASED 29 JULY 1973 | 18 | 4K Blu-ray Director Nicolas Roeg Cast Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie, Hilary Mason, Clelia Matania Now scrubbed of dirt by a punchy new restoration, Nic Roeg’s masterpiece finds Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie’s grieving couple in the aftermath of the death of their daughter. They travel to Venice, where John begins work restoring a church, while Laura falls in with two older women who claim to be able to see Christine’s spirit. But while the couple begin to reconnect and rebuild their lives, John finds himself haunted by a strange figure in a red plastic mac. The film’s atmosphere – conjured through smart use of colour, setting and Graeme Clifford’s rhythmic editing – has become the stuff of legend. But ultimately, it’s down to Christie…

RELEASED 29 JULY 2019|PG |Blu-ray (4K/3D/standard)/DVD/download Director Tim Burton Cast Colin Farrell, Eva Green, Danny DeVito, Michael Keaton We all know keeping elephants in zoos is wrong, a fact even Walt Disney acknowledged in his 1941 animated classic by showing how baby jumbos are ripped away from their mamas and forced to do tricks. Getting a filmmaker as dark as Tim Burton to remake such an angsty tale must have seemed like a great idea, but he and screenwriter Ehren Kruger may have gone overboard with the darkness: smiles come from the flying scenes, but tears and trauma pour from every other direction. There’s another issue: the original featured talking animals, most notably Dumbo’s pal Timothy Q Mouse. Here only the humans talk – and way too much, particularly the children.…

RELEASED 22 JULY 2018 | 15 | DVD An animated intro sets out the lore of this tedious Russian faux-folk tale: if a man ventures too close to a lake at night a fishy female will lure him into the water forever. If he doesn’t succumb to her charms, a loved one can be offered in exchange. That’s basically the whole plot right there in this modern-day ghost story that’s slick-looking but repetitive and drowned in water-logged logic. Worse still, it’s not even about a mermaid! Lakelustre. Extras None.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 1987 | 18 | Blu-ray/DVD Director Paul Michael Glaser Cast Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maria Conchita Alonso, Yaphet Kotto, Richard Dawson BLU-RAY DEBUT Adapting the novel by a pseudonymous Stephen King, The Running Man makes its Blu-ray bow. Arnold Schwarzenegger is Ben Richards, framed by a totalitarian state and forced to compete in a lethal TV show. The part’s little more than an endo-skeleton for the thenrising star to hang his screen persona on: big cigar, morbid quips, muscle worship. He even gets a cheeky “I’ll be back!” Director Paul Michael Glaser delivers a drab future that looks more like bad urban planning than true dystopia, but brings an entertainingly cartoonish touch to the action. Though nominally 2017, it reeks of the ’80s, all televangelism, wrestling, aerobics and Paula Abdul…

RELEASED 24 JUNE 1985 | 12 | Blu-ray Director John Hughes Cast Anthony Michael Hall, Ilan Mitchell-Smith, Kelly LeBrock, Bill Paxton BLU-RAY DEBUT Taking its title from the EC comic book – along with the woman-in-kit-form premise powering the issue five story “Made Of The Future” – this is a surprising lurch into SF for John Hughes, king of the ’80s Brat Pack movie. Two teenage sadsacks create their own “Frankenstein… just cuter!”, feeding pages of Playboy and Cosmopolitan into a computer. A lightning strike completes the experiment and Kelly LeBrock steps from dry ice and pink neon like some MTV-era Aphrodite. To its credit, the movie steers away from pure horndog fantasy, telling a sweet, Hughesian tale of high-school redemption. But despite a talented cast – LeBrock is great, bringing…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 896 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Neal Stephenson Publisher The Borough Press If you’re looking for a way to separate what constitutes nearfuture SF from technologically-enhanced fiction of other stripes, the idea of what happens in the end isn’t a bad place to begin. The technothriller puts the Dangerous Technology That Got Into The World back in its box, and too many lit-fic novels, after riffing on a classic science fiction text, conclude with a wry sadness that new ideas can be dangerous. But SF writers make technological change so intrinsic to their stories that this shapes how those stories play out. Neal Stephenson’s latest glimpse ahead subverts this idea. It’s constructed in parts like a technothriller, and riffs off a classic text – Milton’s Paradise Lost – concluding…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 368 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Christopher Priest Publisher Gollancz Christopher Priest’s work has a funny way of sneaking up on you. There’s something about his tone of voice – coolly erudite, faintly mannered, seemingly rational – that stands in contrast to the sheer strangeness of much of his fiction. He’s been published since the ’70s, but it’s been almost 20 years since his last anthology of short stories. This collection gathers up 11, from the ’70s to the present day, and offers a fascinating glimpse at his impressive range. Each story is bookended by a pair of essays elaborating on the piece’s genesis and themes. “More grimness ensues,” he gleefully warns before “The Ament” – the tale of a man whose dreams of murder have a palpable effect…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 800 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Authors Chuck Wendig Publisher Penguin For a book about a deadly disease and the collapse of civilisation, Wanderers is surprisingly cosy. And that’s not a bad thing: the way the narratives of the main characters – an average 17-year-old girl, a brilliant but disgraced former CDC scientist, an easily-led pastor and an egotistical, closeted ageing rock star – come slowly together as a growing group of “sleepwalkers” wends its way across the US is reminiscent of the likes of Stephen King and Robert McCammon at their ’80s peaks. While the latter two characters, in particular, are very flawed (pastor Matthew Bird makes some particularly awful decisions, and while he suffers as a result you can’t help feeling he earned his pain), none of them…

RELEASED 23 JULY 304 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Heather Kassner Publisher Titan Books There’s a wonderful tradition of chilling YA fantasy – dark spirits, dark powers, books that take the sheer helplessness and potential of childhood and add a shimmer of magic. Unfortunately, this is not one of those books – but it comes so close in places. Irréelle is a created girl, built out of magic and dust to aide Miss Vesper in her work but never managing to please her. Constantly taunted with her imperfections and the threat of being unmade, she dreams of love and childhood, but when she damages a newly-made creation of Miss Vesper’s she’s forced to run for her life, into the graves and passages underneath a nearby cemetery. There are some good ideas contained…

RELEASED 23 JULY 335 pages | Hardback Author JW Rinzler Publisher Titan Books A protracted development. Conflict between the authors of the original script and the rewrites. A cast split into camps. Sets stunk out by offal. Studio execs piling on the pressure. A hot-tempered director, prone to punching a hole in the ceiling… Alien was, it seems, a terrible film to work on, but all that discord makes it a fascinating one to read about. 40 years on, with books like Alien Vault already available, you may think there’s nothing left to say about Ridley Scott’s seminal 1979 horror, but while fans will know much of the story, JW Rinzler’s account is truly comprehensive. With so much troubled backstory to lay out, it’s page 179 before we get to day…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Image Comics Writer Brian Schirmer Artist Claudia Balboni ISSUES 1-3 As genre mash-ups go, blending D&D-style fantasy with hard-boiled detective thrillers isn’t the most obvious choice, but it’s one that new ongoing series Fairlady pulls off with considerable style. The basic set-up is that in the wake of a magical war, ex-soldier Jenner Faulds gets hired to protect a wizard’s tower, but with lots of free time on her hands she earns extra cash as the fantasy equivalent of a private eye. These first three issues lean heavily into the traditions of pulp detective fiction, with each one being a (largely) self-contained mystery. These done-in-one tales feature entertaining twists and turns, but also find time for quietly effective characterisation and occasional bursts of action. The series…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Dynamite Entertainment Writers Richard K Morgan, Rik Hoskins Artist Ferran Sellares GRAPHIC NOVEL After Netflix’s TV series, Richard K Morgan’s Altered Carbon has graduated to comics. Given the visual nature of the medium, it’s no surprise Morgan and co-writer Rik Hoskin have come up with a scenario that requires protagonist Takashi Kovacs to be “resleeved” into several different bodies. Designed to fit into Morgan’s novel series at no specific point, Download Blues doesn’t really add anything of consequence to the saga. But it does boast some interesting ideas, such as clones of famous pop stars and actors being surreptitiously farmed out as prostitutes; perhaps more could have been made of the scene where Kovacs battles with a duplicate of himself. With Kovacs on the trail of…

SCI-FACT! Between 1978 and 1985, Kenner sold over 300 million Star Wars action figures – great news for the estate of Sir Alec Guinness, as the Obi Wan act or chose to take a percentage of royalties as part of his contract. A “lost” story from the original planned season 23, “The Ultimate Evil”, will be released on audio by Big Finish in November.…

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IT MAY STILL BE SUMMER, BUT THE DARK EVENINGS ARE ALREADY STARTING TO CREEP IN – WHICH MEANS ALL SORTS OF THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT! WHILE WE AT SFX CAN’T BE THERE TO HOLD YOUR HAND, WE CAN GUIDE YOU ON WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR… FROM THE BLOCKBUSTER ADAPTATION OF ALVIN SCHWARTZ’S SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK NOVELS, TO THE NEW SERIES OF THE TERROR, VIA OUR TOP 10 FRIGHTFEST FILMS TO BOOK, AND A COMPLETE GUIDE TO ALL THE BEST FILMS AND TV SHOWS COMING YOUR WAY. LIKE MICHAEL MYERS SNEAKING UP IN A CREEPY AUTUMN BREEZE, WE’VE GOT YOUR BACK. GET READY TO FACE YOUR NIGHTMARES!…

ONE OF 2018’S BEST HORROR SERIES was the adaptation of Dan Simmons’ novel, The Terror. Featuring a who’s who of top-shelf British actors, the limited series portrayed the doomed 1845 expedition of Captain Sir John Franklin’s search for the Northwest Passage. As terrific as it was, the story had a definitive shelf life, because the entire crew disappeared. However, that didn’t stop AMC – the network decided to turn The Terror into an anthology series that will tell season complete stories. First up late this summer is The Terror: Infamy. The new series opens in 1941 on Terminal Island in southern California within a Japanese-American community of fishermen and their families. Still cultural outsiders in their adopted country when the Pearl Harbor attack happens, the families are forced by the…

IT WAS A PERFECT LITTLE GEM,” SMILES director Duncan Jones, remembering the creation and runaway success of his 2009 debut Moon. “It was small and intimate and we all knew what we wanted to make – I don’t think I’ve ever felt like a project has been as pure.” Ten years on, if you ask Jones and his long-time producing partner Stuart Fenegan what the key factors behind their inaugural cinematic outing were, ambition, drive and a healthy dose of naivety will no-doubt crop up. Having cut their teeth on commercial shoots, the duo’s determination to break onto the big-screen saw them aim for the stars to tell a visually distinctive tale that combined the aesthetics of hard ’70s sci-fi with everprevalent themes of isolation and disconnection. It was a…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 106 minutes Director Gary Dauberman Cast Mckenna Grace, Madison Iseman, Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson As one of the supporting columns of the Conjuring scare universe, the Annabelle movies have largely side-stepped the main stories featuring supernatural investigators Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga). Here they’re more present, but don’t expect a full Con-job. Instead, the doll – which acts as a lightning rod for demonic activity – causes trouble for the Warrens’s daughter Judy (Mckenna Grace) and her babysitter Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman) when the older girl’s friend Daniela (Katie Sarife) lets the grinning figure free. The stage is set for all the evil lurking within the Warren house’s “safe” storage room to creep out. Regular writer Gary Dauberman steps up to direct here,…

RELEASED 29 JULY (download out now) 2019 | 15 | Blu-ray (4K/standard)/DVD/download Director Jordan Peele Cast Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex Though it has a political core – essentially how it’s easy, living in comfort in the West, to forget those less fortunate – Jordan Peele’s latest, in which an African-American family battles their doppelgangers, isn’t quite the watercooler movie Get Out was. Its social message is expressed more abstractly, and the fact that its creepy scissorwielding doubles, the Tethered, are murderous freaks arguably undermines it. Their world also defies any attempt at rational explanation. (“Why rabbits?” is one of many questions not worth asking.) It is, however, all kinds of sick-puppy fun – blackly comic, gratifyingly violent and poetically surreal. Not many horror filmmakers would intercut…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2019 | 15 | DVD/download A young boy possessed by a serial killer who died at the moment of his birth? It’s a positively ancient high-concept, and the execution isn’t much more fresh (whistling kettle as signifier of building tension? Please.) You’ll predict every beat of the first three-quarters. Two things rescue it: a first-rate performance by It’s Jackson Robert Scott, who nails both the vulnerable and sinister sides of young Miles (his face-off with a hypnotherapist is chilling), and its willingness to embrace a downbeat ending. Extras Trailer.…

RELEASED 22 JULY 2019 | 15 | DVD/download Taraji P Henson goes into full-on manic mode in this updated version of the 2000 Mel Gibson comedy, playing a sports agent who gains the ability to read men’s thoughts. Unfortunately, the result is nowhere near as amusing as the script seems to think it is. On the plus side, there’s sterling support from Aldis Hodge as the single dad she starts dating, while Erykah Badu, playing a bonkers psychic, doesn’t just walk away with the movie – she flies off to Mars with it. Extras Deleted scenes; gag reel.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2019 | 15 | Blu-Ray/DVD Director Ali Abbasi Cast Eva Melander, Eero Milonoff, Jörgen Thorsson, Ann Petrén Dig around a little and you’ll find an original telling of Little Red Riding Hood that differs widely from later editions. In this version it isn’t terror that propels Little Red into slaying the wolf, but the fierce grip of passion. While this isn’t a direct influence on Swedish arthouse horror Border, the film does bask in a similarly thorny patch of dark woodland desire. Based on a story by John Ajvide Lindqvist, it follows a woman named Tina (Eva Melander) who works as a border patrol officer, unknown and unwanted. She suffers from a birth defect that makes her look feral; her ragged skin and upturned lips look like the…

RELEASED 29 JULY 2019 | 15 | DVD Creator David O’Leary Cast Aidan Gillen, Michael Malarkey, Laura Mennell, Ksenia Solo Each week Project Blue Book’s opening rubric claims it is “inspired by Dr J Allen Hynek’s investigations for the US Air Force into the existence of UFOs.” This, coupled with the fact that the show premieres on the US History Channel, might lead you to expect veracity. You can forget that. The series reimagines Project Blue Book as a ’50s-set X-Files-lite, complete with ludicrous conspiracy arcs – everyone on this show outside its two lead characters has a hidden agenda. It takes the bare bones of the Project’s real-life cases and spins them into ripping yarns, complete with cartoonish caricatures of historical characters (such as German rocket designer Wernher von Braun)…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 208 pages | Paperback/ebook Authors Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone Publisher Jo Fletcher Books A temporal conflict is a boggling concept, scarcely comprehensible to our puny human minds. Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone have a good go at imagining it anyway, in this idiosyncratic novella. Red and Blue are opponents, both specially modified agents on conflicting sides of an infinity-spanning war for reality. At some point they start to leave notes for each other – mocking, at first, but then increasingly intrigued and affectionate. As their unlikely connection continues, it takes on a romantic aspect – which could spell disaster for them. Today, the phrase “Time War” most readily brings to mind Doctor Who’s pivotal conflict, and indeed parts of the book feel distinctly Who-ish. It’s witty, weird,…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 360 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Suyi Davies Okungbowa Publisher Abaddon Books Cards on the table: this urban fantasy debut doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it is pretty good fun. The plotting is all over the place and the characters lack depth, but if what you want from your fiction is basically lots of fights and explosions, then you can add an extra star to this reviewer’s rating. Ten years after a war unleashed a flood of gods on the city, large parts of Lagos are no-go zones for mortals: just burnt-out husks of buildings, sewage-choked waterways, and weird creatures that like to snack on the warm-blooded. Demigod David Mogo scratches a living selling supernatural pest control services in the human-inhabited regions of the city, until the…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 344 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Steve Feasey Publisher Bloomsbury A magic sword, an abandoned baby of mysterious origins, and a malevolent sorcerer looking to plunge the world into chaos… Dark Blade ticks off a lot of epic fantasy tropes, but the vitality of the writing rescues it from the familiarity of the ingredients. The hero of Steve Feasey’s new YA series is teenager Lannigan Fetlanger, charged with the unenviable task of stopping the magician Kelewulf from releasing the insane god Lorgukk from imprisonment. To aid him on his quest, Lannigan has the enchanted sword Dreadblade, the witch Fleya, and princess-turnedshield-maiden Astrid. The Dreadblade is crucial to the tale, but one of the weaker plot elements, as it instantly transforms Lannigan into a lethal swordsman, sparing him the arduous…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Boom! Studios Writer Brian Azzarello Artist Maria Llovet ISSUES 1-3 Less is always more with Brian Azzarello – he’s not one to overwrite. Billed as “an erotic depiction of faith, sex and the Devil in the tradition of The Divine Comedy”, Faithless is certainly a slow burn. It centres on Faith, a young woman who likes to dabble in magic. Much to her cost, she first becomes romantically involved with the enigmatic Polly and then Polly’s father Louis, who bears a distinct resemblance to Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler. Azzarello dials down the supernatural elements in this tale, and initially we’re not sure whether the strange and sometimes tragic incidents that occur around Faith are a coincidence, or even just in her head. Much has been made of…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Reviewed on PlayStation Also on PC, Xbox One Publisher Bigben Interactive VIDEOGAME So many videogames are about shooting, which has always made the idea of adapting the Lovecraft mythos a tricky one. So much of the horror author’s weird and cosmic spookiness relies on human insignificance and powerlessness, and there’s nothing powerless about doing a sick headshot on a monster from across the room. Which is why The Sinking City should be genius. Frogwares are well known for their series of Sherlock Holmes videogames that put you under the detective’s deerstalker. The best bits of The Sinking City transpose this into the world of Lovecraftian horror and add some great new mechanics. The flooded city of Oakmont is hard to navigate for newly arrived PI Charles Reed,…

“My character gets to be more herself than ever in season four!” promises Shohreh Aghdashloo, who plays Secretary-General of the United Nations Chrisjen Avasarala in The Expanse. And why’s that? “There’s lots of swearing!” chimes in Frankie Adams, who plays Martian marine Bobbie Draper. “And that makes for our favourite version of Avasarala.” In case you didn’t know, the sudden lack of restrictions on potty-mouths (and Avasarala is already renowned for her colourful cussing) has come about because The Expanse, having been cancelled by Syfy after season three, was saved by Amazon following a fan petition. It did no harm either that Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos, is a fan of the hard-as-nails SF space opera, often described as Game Of Thrones in space. And now it’s on Amazon, who knows…

Hailing from the US, Tini Howard didn’t grow up reading the adventures of Death’s Head like many UK creators. But she quickly fell for the fast-talking robotic bounty hunter after being asked to pen this month’s new four-parter, which pairs her with Japanese artist Kei Zama and colourist Felipe Sobreiro. “Death’s Head wasn’t a formative Marvel character for me, but I love all things metal, neon and absurd,” she tells Red Alert. “I spent a lot of time with Death’s Head, thinking about what kind of journey I wanted to take him on, and I thought what if he’s dealing with being overlooked or erased? One of my favourite things in sci-fi is the idea of what we perceive as powerful, futuristic and technically smooth. Death’s Head is a giant…

To mark what would have been Ray Harryhausen’s 99th birthday and the start of his 100th centenary year, the National Galleries have been given unprecedented access to his archive. As part of the celebrations, several of his iconic models have been restored, including work from Jason And The Argonauts, Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger and Clash Of The Titans. A new show, Ray Harryhausen: Titan Of Cinema, will open at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in May 2020, and will include the models, as well as newly restored and previously unseen material from the Harryhausen collection.…

HOT TOPIC your views on the month's big issue #X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX Bill Ryan, Facebook That’s twice they’ve ruined Dark Phoenix. Looks like only Marvel can Marvel. Gary Stuckey, Facebook A collection of half-decent action set pieces but no convincing narrative to hold it together. Keith Hollinshed, Facebook Good rather than great. I enjoyed it without being blown away. I think it’s time to rest the X-Men for a while before the MCU reboot. Craig Henderson, Facebook I love the X-Men and the “proper” Dark Phoenix saga storyline, but I’m not interested in this film. Until the Shi’ar and Lilandra are involved in the story, count me out. Third time lucky, Hollywood? You ruined the setting up after X-Men 2 and missed the target again for one of the comic…

Horror doesn’t typically cater to kids. Spooks, slashers and the supernatural can lead to nightmares or, worse, expensive therapy bills. Thankfully, author Alvin Schwartz and illustrator Stephen Gammell ignored that memo. In 1981, the duo conceived Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, the first in a trilogy of children’s books designed to give young readers the heebie-jeebies. This summer, producer Guillermo del Toro and screenwriters Dan and Kevin Hageman will bring those chilling tales to life in a big-screen adaptation of the same name. However, director André Øvredal admits that he was totally unaware of the genre-defining books before the project fell into his lap. “I was working with a couple of the producers on a movie, Jason Brown and Sean Daniel, on another venture that didn’t materialise in…

How much had you explored the Japanese internment camp history before you were cast? The very first film I ever acted in was a short film that took place in the internment camp, and I played a baseball pitcher. Also, I’m tied to the internment camps through my family. My grandfather was actually interned at Manzanar relocation camp. He also grew up in Terminal Island. What did you think about adding genre elements to this historical story? I thought it was so smart to incorporate the supernatural and the horror genre with the historical horror that took place with the internment camps; them being a reflection of each other. And what I loved about the first season of [The Terror] was taking that historical event and then adding a little…

LE VOYAG E DANS LA LUNE (1902) It’s the first great image of SF cinema: a gleaming projectile shot into the eye of a crater-faced Man in the Moon. Pioneering filmmaker and FX genius Georges Méliès capitalised on the fin de siècle craze for lunar landing tales with this immortal short, stealing from Jules Verne and HG Wells while using his experience as a stage illusionist to conjure some monoclepopping visuals – a pièce à grand spectacle, as he called it. Méliès’s Moon is a theatrical fantasia, where giant mushrooms sprout in caverns and the goddess Phoebe reclines on a crescent-shaped swing. Le Voyage Dans La Lune was a huge hit but a victim of its own popularity in the lawless days of early cinema: it was one of the…

Moon’s keen eye for retro design helped welcome in a new era of low-fi practical effects. What’s more, its crack team of creatives had spent so much time building famous pop-culture spacecraft, that some unlikely parts found their way into Sam Bell’s lunar base. “The model miniatures – that was Bill Pearson and his team. They’ve been working for decades on model miniature-driven productions,” Jones tells SFX. “There was definitely bits of Red Dwarf and all sorts of other shows that were broken down and stuck back together to make our Moon stuff. They’re proper scavengers. They go through everything and kit-bash it together. They’ll take things from old movies they’ve done, break it apart, stick it together, spray paint it and it’ll look like something new. They’re such great…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 18 | 147 minutes Director Ari Aster Cast Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, Will Poulter Midsommar’s ancestry is tough to track. Initially, it looks like its cinematic family tree has been planted by a combination of Ingmar Bergman, Lars von Trier and even Rainer Werner Fassbinder (a painting of 13 moons may be a subtle reference). But examine the branches and the low-hanging fruit of Eli Roth and the Nicolas Cage-starring Wicker Man remake are ready to drop. But anyone who howled into the darkness after experiencing Hereditary will know the author of the Satanic text cut into Midsommar’s trunk; it’s very recognisably been carved by director Ari Aster. The film carries all his hallmarks: compositions that make you feel like you’ve ended up at the…

UK/US Netflix, streaming now Creators The Duffer Brothers Cast Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Winona Ryder, Gaten Matarazzo, David Harbour, Natalia Dyer EPISODES 3.01-3.06 Stranger Thingsreturns for its third season feeling more ’80s than ever. That may seem a strange thing to claim, considering that ’80s nostalgia has always been a key element in the show. But while the setting has always been the decade of DayGlo legwarmers, synth pop and 8-bit video games, the style of the show itself has previously owed just as much to the contemporary Netflix formula, complete with slowburn storytelling and overwrought drama. Season three feels pacier, snappier, bouncier – more, well, DayGlo. If earlier seasons were homages to the films of Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter, now it seems to be taking its stylistic…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2019 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD/download Director Lee Cronin Cast Seána Kerslake, James Cosmo, Kati Outinen, Simone Kirby Lee Cronin’s debut has much in common with Corin Hardy’s The Hallow. Like that 2015 film, it’s set in Ireland, locates its threat in the woods, and taps into changeling lore. Sarah (Seána Kerslake) and her son move to a home by a forest containing a giant sinkhole. When James (James Quinn Markey) starts behaving differently, she grows convinced he’s been replaced. Is she perceptive or paranoid? As Sarah’s on anxiety meds, we’re kept guessing. It helps that James’s behaviour gets better once it starts to become uncharacteristic. Kerslake carries the film on her shoulders, while young Markey walks a fine line between sensitive and creepy. Little details help lend their…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 1992 | 18 | Blu-ray BLU-RAY DEBUT Demonic possession and snow sports? It’s a match made in VHS heaven… This early ’90s obscurity sees a group of youngsters shelter in an abandoned building after an accident – little realising its links to a satanic cult. The plot’s boilerplate stuff and the cast, er, variable, but it’s enlivened by some well-done snowmobile sequences and an amusingly melodramatic soundtrack that’s more daytime telly than horror. Extras Commentary; three crew interviews; gallery; trailer; a full-length VHS print.…

Set in 1846, subtle British horror THE ISLE (out now DVD/VOD) follows three shipwrecked sailors washed up on a remote Scottish island whose four inhabitants are clearly hiding something. Cue fragments of song on the wind at night, and spectres glimpsed in the woods. Drawing on Greek mythology (the sirens), it features strong characterisation, ravishing landscapes, and an eerie atmosphere. We’re conflicted on whether Network’s THE AVENGERS: THE CYBERNAUT S TRILOGY (5 August, Blu-ray) is an odd idea or a rather neat one. It brings together Steed’s three encounters with the titular robotic killers (the third, from The New Avengers, making its HD debut). All are newly restored, plus you get the option to watch them as you would have at the time, complete with commercials! It also comes with…

RELEASED 25 JULY 512 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson Publisher Gollancz Shadows Of The Short Daysoffers something old and something new. Set in an alternative Iceland (the country, not the popular frozen food suppliers), it follows Sæmundur and Garún, former lovers turned dissidents against a repressive regime. Sæmundur’s experiments with magic have outraged the respectable magic institutions, but he’s determined to push ever further. Garún, meanwhile, is taking the law into her own hands. Parthuman, part-huldufólk (a race of extradimensional beings), she’s using magic to sow sedition in the city. The urban setting, focus on politics and gritty tone are more than a little redolent of China Miéville’s breakout, Perdido Street Station. Like that book, Vilhjálmsson’s prose is full of a vibrant, punk energy. But there’s also a sense…

RELEASED 18 JULY 189 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook Author Eric Saward Publisher BBC Books Thirty-five years on from its transmission, Who script editor Eric Saward has finally novelised this Fifth Doctor tale, plugging an infuriating gap in fans’ collections. The story, which sees the Daleks spring Davros from a prison spaceship, and also encompasses alien mercenary Lytton, human duplicates, and a time corridor to 1984 London, remains essentially the same: dour, piled high with corpses, and possessed of rather too many working parts. Saward embroiders interestingly here and there, beefing up battle scenes and adding details (such as giving the prison ship a history – and a cat!), but some additions feel like the inessential snips often served up as deleted scenes. Sprinkling extra bants and continuity references as he goes (Saward…

RELEASED 18 JULY 535 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Evan Winter Publisher Orbit It takes a while for this fantasy epic to find its rhythm. Our young hero, Tau Solarin, appears only after an overlong prologue, and the prose feels stilted at first. But debut author Evan Winter is just warming up. Patience is rewarded with a fierce revenge story set in a distinctive world. You’ve got your favourite tropes: dragons, magic, politics. But instead of the usual Tolkienesque medieval pastiche, the textures here derive from African Xhosa culture. You soon become familiar with terms such as isihogo (hell) and umqondisi (governors). Driven from their homeland, the Chosen of Osonte invade the Xidda peninsula. They raise a civilisation, although conflict with the indigenous Hedeni continues for generations. Nearly 200 years after landfall,…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher DC Black Label Writer Brian Azzarello Artists Lee Bermejo ISSUES 1-3 In theory, Batman:Damned was supposed to be the splashy opening for a new, prestige-format adult-oriented DC imprint, reuniting regular collaborators Brian Azarello and Lee Bermejo. In practice, thanks to an almost subliminal image from issue one (now excised from all versions of the comic), it became “the one where Batman goes full-frontal nude”, and the resulting controversy completely up-ended DC’s approach to their Black Label line. It’d be nice to report, now it’s concluded, that this sumptuous three-issue miniseries has much more to offer than a now-censored shot of Bruce Wayne’s family jewels, but the result is a definite case of style over substance. Featuring gritty violence, swearing and a painterly approach more reminiscent of…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Running time 281 minutes Format Download Publisher Audible AUDIOBOOK Creating superheroes relevant to generation #hashtag was clearly Stan Lee’s aim in Alliances, one of his final projects. But this isn’t a new comic book story. It’s an audiobook, except there’s never been an actual book (well, not yet…). A Trick Of Light is the first instalment of a new connected universe, created by Lee, Luke Lieberman and Ryan Silbert, and written by Kat Rosenfield. Nia is an enigmatic prodigy whose father never lets her leave the house. Through the internet she meets Cameron, a would-be YouTube star with cyberkinetic powers. Partnering up, they use their superhacking abilities to bring down the supervillains of our time – right-wing chat show hosts, social media manipulators – unaware that there…

Space Hulk has a special place in the hearts of many a miniatures gamer, lapsed or otherwise. First released in 1989 by Games Workshop, it was the entry point for many to the Warhammer 40,000 universe – and about as close as you could get to an unofficial Aliens boardgame. It was set aboard a derelict spacecraft (the Hulk of the title), with you playing as either the Space Marine Terminators – an elite squad of heavily-armoured warriors with big guns and a dubious attitude towards xeno race relations – or the Genestealers, vicious six-limbed monsters with pointy teeth and rending claws. This led to a simple, but thrilling, setup. The Termies would slowly trudge through the ship’s corridors on various missions, while being attacked by wave after wave of’stealers.…