Halloween? This is Norfolk…it’s Halloween all year round.

You may have guessed that I love horror films, but I love them 24/7, 365 days of the year. Every Halloween I have to suffer people claiming to ‘love horror films’ for like the day before and day after Halloween, they’ll come up to me saying things like ‘You like horror films don’t you?’, ‘Yes’ I’d reply, and then they’ll say something like ‘I love horror films, I watched that zombie one the other day it’s got “Dead” in the title…you know people think it’s meant to be scary but it’s actual funny…” And I have to take a deep breath and question further….is it Return of the Living Dead you’ve been watching when you thought it was going to be Night of the Living Dead?. It’s kind of the same reaction one has as 24/7 pervert whenever faced by those who dress up for The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

When I was queuing up to see the hotly anticipated (by me) sequel Land of the Dead, there was a fat blond Norwich family (there are shit loads of these, it’s like the Village of the Damned meets Nutty Professor II: The Klumps ) . They were going to see Howl’s Moving Castle…god knows why, they’ll probably go…’but this is all in foreign and we have to read little sentences on the screen). Anyway one of the fat-fuck kids sees the poster to Land of the Dead and says “That looks crap!” and the dad goes

“I saw the original and that was crap as well…”

So what exact film was it you saw and thought it was the ‘original’ version of Land of the Dead a brand new film? Thank god for headphones…so I can listen to top tunes and not the dirge that comes out of some the gobs in a cinema queues. In Ireland a while back, I’m sure it was in a queue for Blair Witch Project or something, I overhead two mooks who ‘loved horror films’ saying:

“I used to love all those old Hammer Horror films with Vincent Price with the orange blood and that hahha”

“All those old Hammer Horror films?” What? Vincent Price? You mean the Vincent Price who worked mostly for Roger Corman’s American International films never made a Hammer Horror film?...and for that matter never played a Vampire?). Maybe, just maybe, you’re thinking of Christopher Lee (all hail the centre of the film universe) or Peter Cushing? (gawd rest his soul)

Things are looking up though we now have a Borders here so I can buy things like The Onion, Little White Lies and We Live in Funny Times, even there, I am not free from top quotes from the denizens of Noorfolk. One, upon exploring environs of Borders for the first time declared:

“You know what this is like? A library”

and my all time favourite from some bloke that had been dragged in the by the missus:

“I fucking hate bookshops!”