Notes from the Peninsula

On writing, films and living a creative life

Spirals

Returning from holiday, I went into an overwhelm spiral, and I'm only just getting out of it. Nothing too serious, but frustrating nonetheless. Lots of loops are closing, but it’s taken me a while to acknowledge that, and they’re not yet completely closed

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Gluteal tendinopathy (and me)

The pain was in my groin, or the front of my hip, or deep in my buttock, but it was a debacle with a Pilates machine that finally led me to Physio One.

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The Stendhal Syndrome (1996)

Imaginative and clichéd, intriguing and brutal, this film is primarily about rape, torture, and insanity. Asia Argento goes insane in Florence on the trail of a serial killer and rapist.

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The Black Cat (1990)/Trauma (1993)

These two odd kittens are making me wonder if the Dario Argento project is reaching its end. The Black Cat sees a deranged, beret-clad Harvey Keitel play a photographer obsessed with taking pictures of mutilated bodies.

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Early summer books

All Fours, by Miranda July. I haven’t laughed out loud so much at a book since Bridget Jones’s Diary. The unnamed artist makes terrible, hilarious decisions over and over, but she’s also just trying to have the horny creative life she wants.

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Opera (1987)

Opera is the last of what’s regarded as Argento’s unimpeachable run of giallo-horror-thrillers through the seventies and eighties. For me, there are hits and misses, but Opera is one of his best.

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Phenomena (1985)

Like in Suspiria, a young woman arrives at a female-run school where students are being murdered by an unseen killer, but there are no witches in Zürich, just a girl who has an unconscious connection with insects.

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Something new

It’s almost the end of July. What’s been happening?

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Tenebre (1982)

You see different things in a good piece of art as you get older. I wrote about Tenebre back in October 2020 for the #31DaysofHorror challenge. I loved it then, and I love it now, but the protagonist is far less likeable than I remember, and the twists more surprising.

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Inferno (1980)

If Suspiria was a step away from the narrative rigours of a whodunnit, Inferno is a giant leap, with four (four!) protagonists in two cities — but it starts with a woman, Rose, being sold a rare occult book called The Three Mothers and coming to believe her apartment block was built for a witch.

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Suspiria (1977)

Suspiria is a vivid, colourful dream where death stalks us, out of sight but ever-present. Characters die in complicated and fantastical ways to Goblin’s driving mix of Moog synths, bells, whispered vocals and a drum beat for the ages. And it’s a film filled with strong women. The men are all ineffectual side characters.

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Deep Red (1975)

After making a couple of thrillers for television and a hard-to-find historical comedy that was a commercial flop, Argento returned to Giallo with a twisty, colourful, Goblin-scored mystery.

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Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)

Roberto, an American drummer in a band recording in Milan, chases a man who has been following him and accidentally kills him. A masked figure takes photographs and begins to torment Roberto, but what is their motive?

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The Cat O’ Nine Tails (1971)

A blind ex-journalist overhears a conversation about blackmail outside his apartment. A newspaper reporter investigates a burglary in a nearby laboratory. As people at the lab start to die, the two men join forces to uncover the story.

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The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970)

In Panico, Dario Argento describes himself as being of two halves — the contented person at home, and the person who is compelled to investigate the darkness inside himself through making films.

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Changing

I’m six months into a new job. My father’s house is for sale. My son is living in Australia. My daughter is gearing up for GCSEs next year. My wife and I are looking at each other and thinking, this is the time we’ve been waiting for, and yet neither of us have clear plans.

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Darling buds

Four days off work! My plan was to not have a plan and trust I would do what I needed to do. It’s day two and I’m excited because things are changing — my glute tendons are healing (YES), my meditation habit has bedded in (now I miss it when I can’t do it), I’ve...

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Gathering ideas

The heart of this project is writing new material. I also want a mechanism to let me easily share my work as I go, including selling it (shock horror!), without getting hung up on finding an agent and getting published.

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Cornish horrors

I took my time with Cornish Horrors: Tales from the Land’s End, a collection of short stories I bought in Swansea Waterstones on one of my visits to see my father. Research can quickly become procrastination.

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Impatience

Making art means making a mess. It means tidying up, organising, and discovering something in doing it. There are unexpected emotions. There are doubts and dead ends. There are technical problems.

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