Black Angel (1980)

A knight finds his village destroyed and abandoned.

He tries to track the attackers down and avenge his family, but almost drowns.

A maiden, prisoner of the Black Knight, saves him, so he vows to free her, even though she warns him not to.

Roger Christian’s legendary short film (above), a remake of which, that would expand Black Angel into a feature length fantasy epic, has now been in development since 2015 .

I last shared this online in 2019 (it's a favourite of Philip Reeve and he recommended it to me), but there have, sadly, been no updates on this crowdfunded labour of love since 2022. Much to the chagrin of the project's backers (check the recent comments on the IndieGoGo page).

RPG REVIEW: DuckQuest by Darcy Perry

Cover art by Jon Hodgson

Picture a game that mingles Marvel's Howard The Duck and Rocket Raccoon, with the adventures of Usagi Yojimbo, Stan Sakai's rōnin rabbit, and a dash of Disney cartoonery, then pepper it with humour akin to Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett.

Now you'll have an idea of what's to come when you leaf through the pun-packed pages of Darcy Perry's DuckQuest: Quack Starter Edition (from 2021).

Initially created as an adjunct to one of Darcy's Kickstarter campaigns for the wonderful, often anthropomorphic, miniatures he produces through Star Hat Miniatures, the game is now available for the general public to purchase as a gorgeously illustrated 64-page PDF (click here).

Back during the Kickstarter, Darcy explained the genesis of DuckQuest:

"Unlike other games where ducks are relegated as side-kicks or comic relief, imagine they're the star players; the heroic explorers on an epic adventure. It's an idea that didn't go away. The more I looked around, the more I noticed that ducks got a raw deal. Something had to be done. So combining the need for ducks to be represented in a better light and a lifelong dream of writing my own fantasy heartbreaker RPG. I took the plunge and dived in!"

Mechanically, DuckQuest is an ultra-lite and streamlined d20 game (the core mechanic is essentially roll a d20, add a stat, score over a Target Number), with a freestyle magic system (that still retains some simple mechanics to rein in overzealous players), and a wonderfully Tunnels & Trolls-like method to condense monster statistics to a minimum.

Although the book's fluff skews towards the players taking the role of ducks in the game, there's nothing stopping them from playing crows, cats, dogs, squirrels, turtles etc

Emphasising the science-fantasy leanings of the game, the A-Z of 26 suggested character backgrounds (their 'quackstories') even embraces cyborgs, time travellers, and stranded spaceship pilots.

After picking a quackstory and a suitable name, character creation primarily involves allocating one to five points between the five QUACKtributes (Quickness, Ugly, Arcana, Cool, and Kismet), determining physical (Heart) and mental endurance (Psyche), adding in some quirks (which are largely for flavour and roleplay prompts), and then sorting out what equipment you have.

The Dramatic Universal Cosmic Kudos System (DUCKS) core rules (light as they are, but with a basic scenario concept of "quests", often involving killing monsters and stealing their stuff) are certainly evocative of the 'old school'.

However, there's also strong elements of more modern narrative sensibilities in the rules, such as starting objects in a character's possession being colourfully named but their exact "crunch" being down to player suggestions and gamesmaster fiat.

An example of the game's gorgeous
and idiosyncratic art

Employing all the main polyhedrals (even up to a d30), DUCKS includes a small number of simple mechanics - such as dice steps and exploding dice - that tick all the right boxes for this fan of funky dice play.

With a core mantra of "it doesn't have to make sense, it just has to make fun", a great deal of emphasis in the book is put on a group shaping the game and the default setting of  Aqualoonia (if they even choose to set their campaigns there) to their own whims.

To be honest, beyond the evocative place names on the map, and occasional bits of lore dropped in along the way, Aqualoonia is largely a blank slate for players and gamesmasters to fill in as they see fit.

For instance, some of the breadcrumbs scattered through the text send my brain racing off towards the world of my beloved Mortal Engines, Philip Reeve's literary masterpiece, so that's another avenue my imagination could explore through the funhouse lens of DuckQuest..

The core game book also contains a delightfully inspirational page of "duck cryptids", compiled by legendary games designer Jennell Jaquays. These are folk tales and ghosts stories of the feathered folk that can work as delicious background matter and plot hooks.

DuckQuest, full of fowl humour and loving parodies of pop culture, is not a game to be taken seriously.

That said, it is a fully-functioning roleplaying system with enormous campaign potential thanks to its easy-to-grok "levelling up" rules and bulging bestiary of killer critters - ranging from tiny mushroom men to kaiju-sized monstrosities that would give Cthulhu a run for his money.

Given the solid framework that Darcy has created, DuckQuest is also primed perfectly for hacking, should you come up with a house rule or two on the way to conjuring up your own campaign.

Six Degrees of Separation

The movie Hombre is one of my favourite Westerns. It was recommended to me by a tutor on my scriptwriting degree course (as inspiration for the Western I was writing as part of my finale project).

The movie is based upon a novel by the late and lauded Elmore Leonard.

The other day, randomly, I picked up my copy of Hombre and read the first chapter. This got me wondering what stories were included in the chunky hardback, The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard, which I'd purchased last year.

The book flopped open to a title page I hadn't seen before... revealing that it was signed by Leonard himself.

This made me grin like a loon, as I'm a sucker for such dedications in books. Remember my excitement when I found the signed book in a sale at our local second hand book store.

Being a homebody generally, it's very unlikely that I'll get to pose for selfies with my favourite authors, actors etc

So I prefer "signed items" instead. I have a collection of signed Philip Reeve books (my favourite author) and head shots of stars of Classic era Doctor Who - from Carole Ann Ford and William Russell to Sophie Aldred and Sylvester McCoy. These latter pictures are proudly framed and displayed on the office wall, while my Philip Reeve library has its own shelf in one of the lounge cupboards.   

Back in February, I acquired from an online store (not Amazon) a limited edition (#365 of 750), first edition (with red page edges) of Red Sonja: Consumed by Gail Simone (which was signed by the author).

I was most delighted by this, and then when I shared it on BlueSky, Gail herself replied, hoping I'd enjoy the book.

The other week, a postcard winged its way across The Atlantic, signed by Dungeons & Dragons YouTube "influencer" Ginny Di.

This was a reward for supporting her Patreon (which I've been a member of since 2020).

It wasn't just Ginny's signature - and the details of an enchanted weapon to be used in a RPG - that made this magical though. It was the fact that a postcard had managed to find its way over here to the UK without getting mangled or lost. 

A signature is a sign of caring (I know many things get signed in a production line-like setting, but the fact is the creator is still doing it).

I may spend 90 per cent of my life within the four walls of our house, but receiving a signed item from someone whose work I admire (even it's purely by chance, such as the Elmore Leonard book) is a connection.

At one end of the process, the artist has signed their work and at the other end I get to hold it in my hands and appreciate the time spent both creating their art and signing my book, picture, postcard etc

Isekai? It's Narnia Business!

Isekai (Japanese: 異世界; transl. 'different world', 'another world', or 'other world') is a sub-genre of fiction. It includes novels, light novels, films, manga, webtoons, anime, and video games that revolve around a person or people who are transported to and have to survive in another world, such as a fantasy world, game world, or parallel universe, with or without the possibility of returning to their original world.

Portal fantasy, also called portal-quest fantasy, gateway fantasy or crossworld fantasy, is a plot device in speculative fiction, particularly fantasy fiction and science fiction, in which characters enter a self-contained fantasy world through a portal, typically within a quest-based narrative that focuses on exploring and navigating that world. Portal fantasy works typically feature protagonists who enter alternate realities, explore unfamiliar landscapes, and encounter distinctive characters. Overall, portals in speculative fiction act as catalysts for narrative movement, worldbuilding, and thematic exploration.

With a new vision of C.S. Lewis's Narnia coming to Netflix at the end of the year and the fact that I am listening to the BBC radio play adaptations of The Complete Chronicles of Narnia, I'm entertaining different approaches to hooking players into any future fantasy roleplaying setting I conjure up.

Given that the current hot contender for "game du jour" is the upcoming video game and anime-inspired Twilight Sword, I can't help but be drawn to the concept of isekai (see the definition above if you're not au fait with the term) - although I don't know if it would be appropriate for that particular game (on the other hand it is baked into Break!! as a core character concept).

But, more specifically, my current travels in Narnia have got me wondering about the idea of "child adventurers".

I know these days this is a much more common concept - thanks to the ubiquity of Stranger Things, a whole heap of anime, and RPGs like Tales From The Loop and Kids on Bikes -  but it's an idea that takes me back to the early days of Steve's Villains & Vigilantes campaign in the 1980's, where a core concept was you play "yourself with superpowers".

You didn't roll random numbers to generate your statistics, but rather you and your fellow players 'graded' each other on a scale of three to 18 for the the primary stats of your characters, then you generated random superpowers and bingo! That was how the Acrobatic Flea was born.

But, of course, the big difference between superhero roleplaying games and Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy adventures is that supers games are generally skewed towards keeping the player characters alive, where as dungeon delvers tend to be fragile, little snowflakes when they are just starting out.

There is a long literary tradition of "child adventurers" - in fact many of my favourite books have juvenile or young adult protagonists (e.g. Philip Reeves Mortal Engines saga, The Wizard of Oz and, of course, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland) - but literary tropes don't necessary work as written in a roleplaying format.

I like the idea of "Earth" men and women traveling to an alien world (e.g Edgar Rice Burrough's John Carter books), as it means you don't need to explain everything to the players beforehand and they can explore the world as they go along, and I have no qualms about tooling up imaginary child characters with swords and bows, but what are the logistics of such a starting point?

How would I go about generating statistics for the player-characters? Would the players play younger versions of themselves (as per Villains & Vigilantes) or roll new characters? How would players, particularly those who were parents, feel about putting (fictional) young characters in harm's way?

ASPIRATIONS FOR 2026

Don't Want To Rush These Things: After 19 years, work shall begin on my castle

As we reach the end of January (which seems to have dragged on for about 30 weeks) I thought it was about time to lock in some aspirations for 2026.

HEALTH

Obviously after last year's health debacle (losing about seven months of the year because my legs stopped working properly and being in a great deal of discomfort), I want to get better this year.

More exercise and a healthier (urrgghhh!) diet are key. Hopefully, at the very least, I can bring my blood sugar levels down so I can get the steroid injections in my spine that will allow me the freedom to do more beneficial exercises.

READING

I've already stated that I want to get back into reading more this year (eyes willing), both novels and comic books, as both have slipped in the last seven or eight months.

I'm hoping to dig into my collection of recent Conan the Barbarian pastiche hardbacks, as well as the upcoming new Philip Reeve novel, and a random assortment of other books that either I've purchased for myself or were gifts.

I also have a massive backlog of comics to get through. Even though my pull-list continues to shrink, fresh issues keep arriving every month and I keep getting further and further behind.

My Read Judge Dredd Every Day is going... okay. I read either a story from volume one of the Complete Case Files or fresh material from current issues of the weekly 2000AD or the monthly Megazine pretty much every day. Pretty much.

CASTLE

For my 40th birthday (god, I can't believe it's been that long), Rachel's dad built me a tower that I could then decorate - along the line's of Rachel's dolls house hobby - and while I've collected a lot of "bits" to go inside it, two decades on and I still haven't started proper work on it. 

I keep flip-flopping on the theme of the tower in my mind (sometimes it's a superhero HQ, sometimes it's a U.N.I.T. base from Doctor Who, and sometimes it's even a Dungeons & Dragons-inspired fantasy castle!). This year I really must get on with it.

I'D RATHER BE KILLING MONSTERS

The tabletop roleplaying Facebook group I started over six years ago, I'd Rather Be Killing Monsters, is ticking over nicely, with almost 460 members but I'd really like to kick it up a gear.

I want to make the group more interactive, get more conversations flowing.

At the moment it feels as though there's about a dozen of us doing all the heavy-lifting. I'd like to get more members of the group engaged and talking about their own games, the campaigns they're running or playing in, monster/treasure/trap ideas etc

And, of course, I'd always like to increase the membership.

PROJECT 60

This is the big one for me, my core focus for the geeky projects I want to have in place before I turn 60 at the end of this year. Yes, it includes everything I've set in stone above but the two major things I'm channelling my energies into are establishing a singular roleplaying campaign for me to run - that will have legs - and a (skirmish) wargame with painted miniatures and terrain that I can play solo or invite friends over to play.

The current top contender for a roleplaying game is the anime fantasy Twilight Sword.

When it comes to skirmish games, for a while I was spreading myself a bit thin by embracing several genres and settings, but I've finally decided that I need to concentrate on just the Western game Dead Man's Hand.

I'd hoped to get started on terrain building and painting last year, but my osteoarthritis put the kibosh on that. This year I will make up for that.

Putting The Fun Back in Defunding The Rich, To Give To The Poor

The trailer for the new "gritty" Death of Robin Hood movie led to a brief conversation with author Phillip Reeve about the paucity of "fun" Robin Hood films that hove closer to the original legends.

This got me thinking about the wonderful vintage TV serial, The Adventures of Robin Hood, which is still a fixture of Talking Pictures TV's Saturday morning line-up years after I first found it on their schedule.

Starring Richard Greene as Robin, this is the show whose theme music became an the immortal earworm:

One of the other reasons I love this rollickin', rebellious, series from the mid-1950s is that I soon realised every episode could supply me with either a top-notch story hook or an interesting non-player-character (often both) for whatever pseudo-Medieval roleplaying game I was noodling with at the time.

After loyally watching the half-hour show, week-in, week-out, for months on Talking Pictures, I eventually invested in the 18-dsic box set, containing all 143 episodes.

My discs

The Adventures of Robin Hood is most definitely a "fun", Boy's Own Adventure take on the legends of Robin and his Lincoln Green-sporting band of Merry Men, and one of my favourite iterations of the outlaws of Sherwood Forest.

The best is, of course, the mid-80's Saturday evening TV show Robin of Sherwood, where Michael Praed and then Jason Connery (after a mystical bit of Time Lord-style regeneration) took the title role in a show that blended arcane magic and myth with traditional tropes to create a truly unique and memorable programme.

This was another show oozing with very British ideas for a particular take on Dungeons and Dragons-kind of gaming.

Robin of Sherwood

Prairie Rascals (2025)

Arkansas, 1871: When Annie Harper's homesteader husband is murdered by desperadoes on the trail of hidden gold, she sets out in search of revenge - and the money. A Western adventure from Bonehill Films, starring Rosanna Lambert, Laura Frances Martin, Mylo Sermon, Amanda Lindseth, Nicholas de Jasay, Louis John Brzozka, Xanthe Baylis and Nick Riddle.

The latest cinematic offering from author and illustrator Philip Reeve - after his 2023 Arthurian offering Gwenevere - Prairie Rascals is a delightful, thrilling 50-minute tale of desperate treasure hunters in the American West.

Trapped in a loveless marriage, Annie Harper (Rosanna Lambert) is more annoyed at being left to bury her murdered ne'er-do-well husband Frank (Louis John Brzozka) than she is saddened by his loss.

Frank robbed the Confederate Army during the Civil War and hid a chest of loot at a secret location.

The psychotic Hannigan Sisters - Cat (Laura Frances-Martin) and Belle (Amanda Lindseth) - have got wind of this and relieve him of his "treasure map" before putting several bullets in Frank and setting his cabin alight.

With the local sheriff (Arran Hawkins) being too afraid of the sisters to raise a posse and pursue them, Annie decides to take the law into her own hands, stealing the sheriff's hat, gun, and horse.

Heading after the wicked sisters, Annie meets romantic, pacifist, greenhorn Charles Doolittle (Mylo Sermon) stripped to his long johns and tied to a tree.

A dilettante from the East, on a "walking tour" of the West with his gruff guide Muldoon (Nicholas De Jasay), Charles was completely unprepared for the likes of the Hannigan Sisters and found himself robbed and trussed up.

Wanting recompense for his predicament, Charles falls in with Annie on the trail of the sisters... and the buried treasure.

As with the majority of Philip Reeve's sci-fi and fantasy novels, Prairie Rascals is dominated by strong female leads, without shying away from the Western genre's requisite gun fights, heel turns and plot twists.

Released this week to the general public via YouTube and filmed in Dartmoor National Park, in England's West Country, Prairie Rascals was written by Philip Reeve and Brian Mitchell, and directed by Philip and his wife, Sarah.

Philip even wrote the lyrics for Ballad of the Prairie Rascals, which plays over the end credits. The music was by Brian Mitchell and vocals by Glen Richardson.

A jolly country-and-western ditty, the ballad serves as a "what happened next..." for the surviving characters and really makes me want a sequel to Prairie Rascals.

With many of the actors here also having appeared in Gwenevere, it's clear that Philip is attracting a great troupe of performers to his Bonehill Films.

Long may they continue to produce such wonderful little movies.

• You can read Philip's "behind-the-scenes" insights on the production here on his blog, Station Zero.

PROJECT 60: What's To Be Read?

Inspired, in large part, by Booktube - and Michael K Vaughan, in particular - I'm setting myself some personal "book reading challenges" for 2026.

In recent years my reading has gotten a bit slack, for various reasons (a combination of health, the easy ubiquity of television, and general laziness), and so I have been inspired to inject a bit of discipline into this important pastime.

The first challenge (seeking to emulate Michael's "reading Superman every day") is to Read Judge Dredd Every Day.

The plan is to start at the first page of the first Complete Case Files (which reprint every Dredd yarn in chronological order) and read on from there. Over the years I have accumulated (as shown above) the Complete Case Files 1 - 20, with some waifs and strays from the later volumes.

So, that should keep me going for a good while. 

The other challenge I'm setting myself is to read the new Conan The Barbarian hardback novels (see below), published by Titan, as well as the Red Sonja novel written by the peerless Gail Simone.

I think this is a solid basis for getting some organised reading going in the New Year.

Hopefully, by then, I will have made significant headway into my backlog of monthly comics (I'm pretty sure I'm six or so months behind on most titles), as well as trimming my pull-list to prevent such scenarios arising again (and for financial and space reasons).

There's also a new Philip Reeve book, Bridge of Storms, due in February, which will obviously jump to the top of my TBR pile the moment it drops on my doormat.

Audiobook-wise, I'm working my way steadily through Stephen King's Dark Tower saga - with diversions to other worlds between each volume - and hope to start book four, Wizard and Glass, in late January/early February.

This will be new territory for me, as I'd originally read the first three books pretty soon after they were published (not that I could remember much past the first, so the audios felt like new stories anyway).

This is an exciting prospect - even if Wizard and Glass is over 27 hours long - as I've oft wondered how the tale of Roland the Gunslinger concludes... and have been very diligent in avoiding spoilers for all these years.

I have a shelf of King books, outside of The Dark Tower they're mainly collections of short stories but I also have The Shining, which may get a look-in next year, depending on how the Conan reading goes.

Stephen King shelf - with my original Dark Tower cassettes (left), with King reading the story

Philip Reeve Takes Us Back To The World of Mortal Engines

Philip Reeve, my favourite author, returns to his incredible World of Mortal Engines next February with Bridge of Storms, a sequel to the last year's fabulous Thunder City.

On a futuristic Earth prowled by mobile cities and airships:

Tamzin Pook and her group of unlikely fighters-turned-friends have managed to make it out of Thorbury alive. Now with a massive, terrifying, armoured, and un-dead Revenant (and its pet kitten) as one of their gang.

For their next mission, Tamzin and her friends head to the city of Museion to help save it from the ferocious predator suburbs that surround it and keep it trapped in the mountain valley known as the Frying Pan.

Here, Tamzin, Max Angmering, Oddington Doom, and Hilly Torpenhow are in for the toughest fight of their lives. But as they battle for the fate of Museion against the terrible predators that surround them, people on board Museion start to die one by one from a traitor within.

They've got to figure out an escape, but every direction looks like a trap.

Featuring an evocative Ian McQue cover, Bridge of Storms is due for publication, by Scholastic Press, on February 12.

On his blog, Station Zero, Philip has also revealed that a third book in this current series has already been written and will, hopefully, be published in 2027.

BOOK REVIEW: Thunder City by Philip Reeve

I realise I'm a bit late in getting round to Thunder City, Philip Reeve's latest book set in the World of Mortal Engines, but the wait didn't dampen my appreciation of this amazing book.

For me - and I love all the books in this world - this was the best since the 2001 original, Mortal Engines.

Thunder City is a vivid - and surprisingly violent - ensemble action-adventure about a plucky group of rebels trying to retake an usurped traction city in the far-distant future of a reshaped Earth.

A postmodern Victorian scientific romance, peppered with sly jokes (the one about a certain tourist attraction in Paris made me laugh out loud) and cinematic references, as well as the usual rich assembly of engaging and interesting characters, Thunder City was a blast from start to finish.

The ending certainly leaves the door open for more stories about the protagonists and I just hope we don't have to wait quite so long for our next visit to the World of Mortal Engines.

Mortal Engines' Author Philip Reeve Takes Us Back To The Old West For His New Film

Arkansas, 1871. When her homesteader husband is murdered by outlaws seeking the gold he stole in the Civil War, homesteader Annie Harper sets out alone to beat them to the place where the treasure is hidden.

In late 2023, my favourite author, Philip Reeve - creator of the peerless Mortal Engines and Railhead books - gave us Gwenevere , a delightful short film encapsulating his love of Arthurian mythology.

This week, his production company - Bonehill Films - released the first trailer for his follow-up film, Prairie Rascals, a short Western, again shot around where he lives in Dartmoor.

In the introduction to the trailer, Philip writes that this is:

"... [a] teaser trailer for our new film Prairie Rascals, starring Rosanna Lambert, Laura Frances Martin, Mylo Sermon, Amanda Lindseth, Nicholas De Jasay, Arran Hawkins, Xanthe Baylis and Nick Riddle. Music by Nick Riddle, vocals by Rosanna Lambert.

"We hope to screen the finished film locally this summer and autumn, and upload it to the Bonehill Films channel next Christmas."

Returning from the Gwenevere cast are Rosanna Lambert taking the lead role of Annie Harper, Queen Gwenevere herself, Laura Frances Martin, as "ruthless desperado" Cat Hannigan, and former Lancelot Arran Hawkins as the cowardly sheriff.

You can read about the film shoot here on Philip's blog - Station Zero - and, last year, on Twitter (aka X), he published a selection of costume design sketches for Prairie Rascals, which you can see below:

Gwenevere (2023)

Poster by Sarah McIntyre

Banished from Camelot, Queen Gwenevere (Laura Frances Martin) must travel across wild country to the abbey where she is to live out her remaining years. She is accompanied by her loyal lady-in-waiting, Laudine (Joanna Neary) and young knight Sir Ruan (Jonny Hibbs). But their journey is interrupted by the menacing Knight of the Wild Woods...

Gwenevere: a film by Philip Reeve & Sarah Reeve, starring Laura Frances Martin, Joanna Neary, Jonny Hibbs, Tessa Arrowsmith-Brown, Sasha Innes and Roseanna Lambert. Guest appearance by Alan Lee. Shields designed by Sarah McIntyre. Music by Brian Mitchell. Filmed on Dartmoor.

As a long-time fan of the work of author Philip Reeve, I was delighted to learn that he was planning to bring his passion for Arthurian legends to life in a low-budget, short movie to be shot on Dartmoor, where he lives.

The resulting film, Gwenevere, was officially released on YouTube at the end of 2023.

It is a half-hour film following the titular queen (Laura Frances Martin) after she has been exiled from Camelot for her dalliance with Lancelot (Arran Hawkins).

She has been commanded to walk across country to the abbey where she will see out her days in quiet contemplation, accompanied only by her faithful handmaid, Laudine (an outstanding performance from Joanna Neary) and reluctant young knight Sir Ruan (Jonny Hibbs).

However, passing through some woodland their way is blocked by the mythical Knight of the Wild Woods (Niall Parker).

In the ensuing melee, Sir Ruan is rendered unconscious and the ladies bear him away to a nearby village, where they learn the story of the Knight of The Wild Woods.

Gwenevere then takes it upon herself to bring an end to the monstrous knight's reign of terror.

The beautiful short film is full of ethereal visuals and lyrical, evocative dialogue - as readers of Reeve's books have come to expect - strengthening the mythological bedrock upon which Gwenevere is built.

Dream logic and otherworldly rules lay at the heart of the story, while the smoke-filled forest is a visual tie to another classic of British fantasy film, my old favourite Hawk The Slayer.

Joe Bob Was My Guru

Over the years, I've talked about how I was inspired to become a journalist by the adventures of Tintin and Clark Kent, and that it was reading a reprint of Fantastic Four #17 that got me hooked on comics, I've talked about my favourite authors (e.g. Philip Reeve, HP Lovecraft et al) and my introduction to the wonderful world of roleplaying games many decades ago.

But I'm pretty sure I've never discussed the man that inspired me to start reviewing movies - particularly movies that other people might consider "bad" (such as trashy horror flicks).

That man was the one and only Joe Bob Briggs (aka film critic John Bloom), and, in particular, his first book, Joe Bob Goes To The Drive-In - a collection of his tongue-in-cheek reviews from The Dallas Times-Herald.

Joe Bob Goes To The Drive-In

The Penguin Originals edition of the book was published in 1989 and I'm pretty sure I picked it up soon after that.

At that time, mainstream movie critics, epitomised by the BBC's Barry Norman, felt completely disconencted to my own movie-watching experience.

They were a snobbish elite who either ignored the sort of films I loved or looked down their noses at them, dismissing with snarky asides and patronising put-downs.

All they ever praised - it seemed to me - were dull, earnest films that I had zero interest in.

Then I read Joe Bob Goes To The Drive-In.

And suddenly I knew how I wanted to review films.

Joe Bob, for instance, coined the phrase "spam-in-a-cabin" - which I use freely in reviews and conversation - to describe a certain style of horror film where the protagonists are trapped in a small environment by their attackers - supernatural or otherwise - and anyone can die at any time.

He was funny, clever, crass, and carefree. He'd talk about the T&A content in a film as well as the volume of blood spilled and body count.

Suddenly film reviews didn't have to read like dry, academic dissertations in Sight & Sound (a magazine designed to suck the fun out of films since 1932).

Seriously, if you love horror movies, trash cinema, drive-in fodder, you need to find a copy of Joe Bob's book and read it now.

I was surprisingly lucky that when I was allowed to create the position of "film critic" on the local newspaper that I worked for, I was pretty much given free reign.

Although I was never clever enough to go full Joe Bob, I'm pretty sure I was the first to use the phrase "spam-in-a-cabin" in the pages of the Kent & Sussex Courier.

My guru's inspiration shone through even brighter when I broadened my reviewing to the latest, trashy VHS tapes. I somehow got myself onto the mailing lists of several "low budget" video houses and, for a time, was reviewing three or four low-budget sci-fi/horror/action flicks a week.

It was in seeking to ape Joe Bob's style that I found the first inklings of my own "voice".