Meanwhile, Stewie and Brian took Chris back in time and found themselves trapped in the past in the third season of Fox’s Family Guy, and Stewie built himself a robot friend with homicidal tendencies. In the Series 14 Halloween episode, ‘Peternormal Activity’, Peter, Cleveland, Quagmire and Joe went to an abandoned asylum to write a horror movie script and ended up accidentally killing a hook-handed war veteran.
The six-episode reboot of Fox’s animated Golan the Insatiable teamed a young Goth girl (Aubrey Plaza) with the titular Dark Lord (Rob Riggle) from an alternate universe.
Greg James presented the BBC’s eight-part reality game show I Survived a Zombie Apocalypse, set six months after the 5G phone signal had caused an epidemic of the living dead.
Hosted by yet another comedian, the six-part series The Fear featured twenty-eight amateur directors of short horror films competing for a thirty-minute slot on the BBC. A cinema audience gave their verdict each week, and The Blair Witch Project co-director Eduardo Sánchez judged the final three highest-scoring films.
In June, Sky Arts presented a fascinating hour-long interview with George R.R. Martin about his writing career and, specifically, Game of Thrones, with additional commentary from Lisa Tuttle and Neil Gaiman.
Charlie Lyne’s feature-length documentary Fear Itself was basically just a montage of short clips. It debuted on the BBC iPlayer.
To commemorate the life of Christopher Lee, BBC2 presented a half-hour documentary, Christopher Lee: Talking Pictures, narrated by Sylvia Syms and featuring clips of interviews with the actor from over the years. It was followed by screenings of Hammer’s The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Dracula (1958) and The Mummy (1959).
In Unmade Movies: Orson Welles’ Heart of Darkness, starring James McAvoy and Jonathan Slinger, Welles’ unproduced 1939 screenplay of Joseph Conrad’s novel was adapted into a feature-length drama for BBC Radio 4. In the same series, Hitchcock’s The Blind Man was based on an unfinished script written by Alfred Hitchcock and Ernest Lehman and completed by director Mark Gatiss. Hugh Laurie starred as a blind jazz pianist whose pioneering eye transplant gave him visions of the donor’s killer.
Following Naomi Alderman’s conversation with the author (along with contributions from Neil Gaiman and David Mitchell) in Ursula Le Guin at 85, Judith Adams’ adaptation of Le Guin’s 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness was broadcast over two one-hour episodes on Radio 4 in April. The cast included Lesley Sharp and Toby Jones.
The same month saw Adams’ version of the first three novels in Le Guin’s Earthsea saga broadcast in six half-hour episodes on Radio 4 Extra.
In Julian Simpson’s Drama: Fugue State, sound effects were used to prompt the brain of a hospital patient (Steven Mackintosh) to recall a possible alien invasion that occurred in a remote village.
A TV researcher (Chloe Pirrie) discovered that the eponymous cult horror video she tried to track down had the power to drive people mad in Simon Passmore’s drama Earworm, while Simon Armitage’s half-hour drama The Raft of the Medusa was set in a flooded, near-future England.
BBC Radio 4 celebrated Hallowe’en night with two episodes of Fright Night: The Stone Tape was a re-imagining of Nigel Kneale’s classic 1972 TV drama and featured a cameo by that show’s star, Jane Asher. Meanwhile, Ring was an updated version of Koji Suzuki’s 1991 novel that replaced the cursed videotape of the original with social media “shares”. The series continued over on Radio 4 Extra, as Robert Glenister starred as Father Karras in an adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel The Exorcist.
At the beginning of the year, Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime presented a five-part adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Bottle Imp, read by Ian McDiarmid, and at the end of November the same slot offered a five-part abridgement of Neil Gaiman’s award-winning novella The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, read by Bill Patterson.
Weird Tales featured a three-part adaptation of ‘The House on Pale Avenue’ by Richard Vincent, starring Jamie Glover, along with dramatisations of Christopher William Hill’s ‘Original Features’, Richard Vincent’s ‘The Burial of Tom Nobody’, Amanda Whittington’s ‘Louisa’s’ and Lizzie Nunnery’s ‘Night Terrors’.
Haunting Women featured five supernatural tales by Irish novelist and poet Dermot Bolger, while Wish You Weren’t Here featured readings of three short stories about undesirable residences.
Julia McKenzie played a bad-tempered old woman living and working on a giant recycling machine orbiting Pluto in Iain Ross’ SF drama A Thing Inside a Thing Inside a Thing on Radio 4.
All the Dark Corners on BBC Radio 4 Extra featured a trio of forty-five minute dramatisations, including Paul Cornell’s ‘Something in the Water’.
The same station’s Ray Bradbury’s Tales of the Bizarre included half-hour adaptations of the classic stories ‘The Man Upstairs’, ‘The Scythe’, ‘The Wind’, ‘And So Died Riabouchinsk’ and ‘The Day it Rained Forever’.
The five-episode Elizabeth Jane Howard Short Stories featured Matilda Ziegler reading ‘Child’s Play’, ‘Whip Hand’, ‘Pont du Gard’ and the two-part ‘Mr. Wrong’.
During the first week of November, The Man in Black featured Mark Gatiss introducing Lucy Moore’s tale ‘Connect’, Nicholas Pierpan’s ‘The Printed Name’, Christopher Golden and Amber Benson’s ‘Lights Out’, Alison Falconer’s ‘Uncle William’s House’, and Nick Warburton’s ‘Perfect Home’ starring Toby Jones.
Later in the month there was a welcome re-airing of M.R. James Stories, in which Derek Jacobi read James’ ‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’, ‘The Tractate Modoth’, ‘Lost Hearts’, ‘The Rose Garden’ and ‘Number 13’.
David Tennant read such 20th-century vampire stories as Angela Carter’s ‘The Lady of the House of Love’, Fritz Leiber’s ‘The Girl with the Hungry Eyes’, Edith Wharton’s ‘Bewitched’, Richard Matheson’s ‘Drink My Blood’ and Robert Swindell’s ‘A Lot of Mince Pies’ for the Radio 4 Extra series A Night with a Vampire.
Ahead of the BBC-TV adaptation, Radio 4 Extra broadcast a ninety-minute version of Agatha Christie’s classic whodunnit, And Then There Were None, starring Lyndsey Marshal, Sean Baker and Geoffrey Whitehead.
Christie’s short story ‘The Lamp’ was broadcast as part of a re-run of the series Haunted on the same station, which also included R. Chetwynd-Hayes’ ‘The Liberated Tiger’ and ‘Which One?’, J.B. Priestley’s ‘The Grey Ones’, and the anonymous ‘The Dead Man of Varley Grange’.
Ian McDiarmid read J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1839 story ‘Schalken the Painter’ over two half-hour episodes on BBC Radio 4 Extra, and Ryan McCluskey read H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Tomb’.
Sylvester McCoy recreated his 1980s incarnation of the Time Lord in the three-part Doctor Who: A Thousand Tiny Wings, and Peter Davidson’s fifth Doctor contributed a DVD commentary to the re-release of a cult 1970s horror movie in Doctor Who: Special Features, both on BBC Radio 4 Extra.
The same station also broadcast the hour-long dramas Doctor Who: The Renaissance Man, Doctor Who: The Wrath of the Iceni, Doctor Who: Energy of the Daleks and Doctor Who: Trail of the White Worm, all featuring Tom Baker and Louise Jameson.
The Scarifyers: The Magic Circle was the latest four-part serial in the supernatural thriller series featuring David Warner, and John Barrowman reprised his rolel as Captain Jack Harkness in Torchwood: The Lost Files: The Devil and Miss Carew and Torchwood: Submission.
Tom Canton reprised his debut role of Dorian Gray in BBC Radio 3’s ninety-minute adaptation of Neil Bartlett’s stage play, The Picture of Dorian Gray, based on the short novel by Oscar Wilde.
Alan Moore was amongst a number of people who discussed the ancient “Hollow Earth” theory with Robin Ince in Radio 4’s Hollow Earth: A Travel Guide, and Ben Hammersley explored the global consumption of fictional universes with Marc Zicree, Robin Hobb and Warren Ellis in the documentary Homer, Hagrid and the Incredible Hulk.
In The Essay: The Further Realm, novelist Andrew Martin looke
d at the British fascination with ghosts and their stories over five fifteen-minute episodes at Hallowe’en, while actor Jack Shepherd talked with Fiona Shaw, Sir Richard Eyre and others about Britain’s spookiest stages in Ghost Stories from Theatreland. For those interested, The Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, London’s oldest theatre still in use, came out top for ghostly experiences.
BBC Radio 3’s Sound of the Cinema series included an episode on Hammer! in August, in which presenter Matthew Sweet presented scores from the studio’s films by James Bernard, Benjamin Frankel, Tristram Cary and others.
The ubiquitous Mark Gatiss was on hand for Sherlock Holmes—A Musical Mind, broadcast as part of BBC Proms 2015 on the same station.
Stephen King was the first of four authors who picked their favourite music recordings for Paperback Writers on BBC 6 Music. His choices included AC/DC’s ‘Stiff Upper Lip’, ‘Anarchy in the UK’ by the Sex Pistols, and ‘At the Hop’ by Danny and Juniors.
The inaugural release from Syracuse-based Cadabra Records, Where is Abby? & Other Tales featured stories (from newspaper columns) and art by famed Weird Tales illustrator Lee Brown Coye (1907-81), read by his son, Robert Coye.
Pseudopod marked “Women in Horror Month” in February, and two months later celebrated the work of Thomas Ligotti with stories by or inspired by him. The free weekly podcast of horror fiction also included works by Joe R. Lansdale, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Lisa Tuttle and Kelly Link throughout the year.
Jim Dale narrated audio versions of all J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books for Audible.
Bruce Willis made his Broadway theatre debut at New York’s Broadhurst Theatre in November as injured novelist Paul Sheldon, being held captive by Laurie Metcalf’s crazy fan Annie Wilkes in Will Frears’ stage version of Stephen King’s Misery, adapted by William Goldman.
Meanwhile, a refreshed version of the 1988 Broadway disaster Carrie: The Musical debuted in London at the Southwark Playhouse, with Evelyn Hoskins as the telekinetic teen and Kim Criswell as her up-tight mother.
Based on Christopher Bram’s novel Father of Frankenstein, which was filmed in 1998, Ian Gelder portrayed troubled film director James Whale in Russell Labey’s stage version of Gods and Monsters at London’s Southwark Playhouse over February-March.
Nick Mohammed played the deluded star of a fictitious vampire musical in the comedy Dracula! (Mr. Swallow—The Musical) at the Soho Theatre during the same period, while the titular fan (Ali Brice) presented the stage version of George R.R. Martin’s books he thought should have happened to attract investors in the parody Graeme of Thrones at the Leicester Square Theatre.
Tooting Arts Club set its pop-up revival of Stephen Sondheim’s musical of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in an actual hot-pie and mash shop, recreated in the heart of London’s West End. Jeremy Secomb played the crazed coiffeur, while Siobhán McCarthy was his cookery cohort, Mrs. Lovett.
It was closely followed by the English National Opera’s production of the same musical, which opened for a limited run at the London Coliseum. This time the star roles were taken by Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson.
Sophie Ward starred in a stage production of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World with original music by These New Puritans, which opened at the Royal & Derngate theatre complex in Northampton before touring the UK.
Only James Dreyfus’ Elwood P. Dowd could see the eponymous invisible white rabbit in a revival of Mary Chase’s 1944 fantasy Harvey, which also starred Maureen Lipman, at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London.
On September 17, Rocky Horror Show Live was broadcast into cinemas across the UK. Starring creator Richard O’Brien, Stephen Fry, Emma Bunton, Mel Giedroyc, Anthony Head, Adrian Edmondson, and David Bedella as Frank N. Furter, the one-off gala performance was in aid of Amnesty International.
The Generation of Z: Apocalypse from New Zealand was an immersive live zombie experience staged in a warehouse in east London, while Shrek’s Adventure was launched on London’s South Bank in July.
Towards the end of the year, the Old Vic presented Max Webster’s two-hour version of Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, with the title character represented by a two-and-a-half-feet-high puppet.
Jim Broadbent starred as Ebenezer Scrooge in a seasonal revival of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol at the Noël Coward Theatre in London.
Following on from the successful 2013 origin reboot, the Rise of the Tomb Raider video game featured Lara Croft battling a mysterious organisation that was seeking an artefact known as the “Divine Source”, which held the secret of immortality.
Capcom’s Resident Evil: Revelations 2 was initially available through four weekly digital downloads before a full release in March, while State of Decay: Year-One Survival Edition was a remake of the zombie survival RPG originally released in 2013, featuring add-ons, new characters and new missions.
Set in a steampunk Victorian London, Ready at Dawn’s The Order: 1886 for PlayStation 4 pitted the Knights of the Round Table (“The Order” of the title) against a rising army of werewolf lycans.
Created by Japan’s Hidetaka Miyazaki and developer From Software, Bloodborne was set in the Gothic horror town of Yharnam, where monsters lurked around every corner.
Slightly more subtle was Blue Isle Studios’ Slender: The Arrival, developed in collaboration with Eric “Victor Surge” Knudson, who created the “Slender Man” paranormal phenomenon.
Hayden Panettiere and Peter Stormare starred in Until Dawn, an interactive slasher game in which eight teenagers were trapped for the night in a creepy old hotel with a psychotic killer.
Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin was an updated version of the original RPG with added bells and whistles, and Saints Row: Get Out of Hell was a stand-alone expansion of the successful game series which sent the Saints to Hell to rescue the US President, who had been kidnapped and forced to marry the daughter of Satan.
Forty-seven years after playing the role on the Batman TV series, Yvonne Craig voiced the titular heroine of Batgirl: A Matter of Family, a downloadable story expansion for the Rocksteady Studios video game Batman: Arkham Knight. Batgirl teamed up with Robin to save her father, Commissioner Gordon, who had been kidnapped by the Joker and his minions.
The new Godzilla game was based on the original Japanese movie series, rather than the recent big-screen reboots, and also featured many other classic kaiju monsters.
As with the previous two entries in the Star Wars: Battlefront series, the third game’s photo-realistic action was restricted to events in the original movie trilogy, and players had to assemble the hero’s new Magnum Opus car before heading into the post-apocalyptic wastelands in the first Mad Max game, which was released in a “Ripper Special Edition”.
Released alongside Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension in selected AMC movie theatres at the end of October, Beast Media Group’s Paranormal Activity first-person virtual reality game was rolled out as a free demo for US audiences before its official 2016 release.
To celebrate the movie trilogy’s three decades and Back to the Future II‘s significant time-jump to October 21, 2015, TellTale Games’ Back to the Future 30th Anniversary Edition repackaged the original five-episode sequel games from 2010-11 with added new material for the current generation of consoles.
Peter Capaldi voiced the Twelfth Doctor Who for the TT Games franchise mash-up Lego Dimensions, which included everyone from Gandalf and Superman to the Jurassic World dinosaurs. Meanwhile, Lego Jurassic World featured insufferably cute pastiches of all four movies.
The seven-inch Vincent Price Bobblehead was the first release from the Rue Morgue RIPers series, and limited to 1,500 numbered units.
From home décor company The Bradford Exchange came The Nightmare Before Christmas Cuckoo Clock and The Nightmare Before Christmas Moonlight Lamp, both of which were issued in limited editions and priced at $199.95 apiece plus shipping. The Nightmare Before Christmas Blacklight Village from the same company came with a hand-painted figurine of J
ack Skellington and a free blacklight to make everything glow spookily.
The Game of Thrones Monopoly came with some nice board pieces, while the red Albert Bartlett Rooster was the official tie-in potato to the UK release of The Martian (no, I’m not making this stuff up).
Rhode Island’s Narragansett Beer, in collaboration with Revival Brewing, released its Lovecraft Honey Ale on January 19, the birthday of Lovecraft’s biggest literary influence, Edgar Allan Poe. The horribly sweet craft beer in a can was described as the first “chapter” in a series of four ales celebrating the 125th anniversary of Providence’s most famous native son. The best thing about it was the label artwork produced by graphic designer A.J. Paglia.
It was followed by a much better tasting Innsmouth Old Ale in April, with a label by Jason Eckhardt, and Reanimator Helles Lager in October.
With the release of the new movie imminent, the UK’s Royal Mail issued eighteen Star Wars first-class stamps the same month.
A 1937 first edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit was auctioned by Sotherby’s in June, where it sold for a record-breaking £137,000. This was probably in part due to a calligraphic verse inscription by the author, written in Old English.
Meanwhile, a recently discovered map of Middle-earth, annotated in green ink and pencil by Tolkien himself, was put on display at the Oxford store of Blackwell’s Rare Books with a price tag of £60,000. The map was found in a copy of illustrator Pauline Baynes’ own copy of The Lord of the Rings, and she had added her own notes while working on a colour poster map of Middle-earth, published in 1970.
At a vintage movie poster auction in March, a rare Frankenstein (1931) three-sheet went for $358,000, while a single lobby card from the same film featuring the Monster’s unused make-up design sold for $40,630. A three-sheet for the lost 1927 movie London After Midnight made $71,700 at the same sale.
In September, a previously unknown—and possibly unique—insert poster for the 1947 reissue of Universal’s Dracula (1931) starring Bela Lugosi sold at auction in Chicago for $15,600, which was 50% more than the high estimate. Another rare poster, for Roland West’s The Bat Whispers (1930), sold at almost twice the lower estimate for $7,800.
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