Sometimes, when you start poking around in the increasingly daunting 'Drafts' folder (well, it's technically not a folder, but you get the point) and its seemingly endless roll call of unfinished and long-abandoned post ideas, it's surprising what you can find in there. For example, I've just stumbled across this long-forgotten doodle in the margin with the gobbledygook title You Can't Judge A Videtalker By Its Blurb (actually taken from Patsy Kensit-starring Nadsat-esque-spouting eighties Children's ITV sci-fi comedy Luna), which appears to have been driving towards making some kind of point about so-called 'Video Nasties'. It would have started, it seems, with a memory-searing childhood visit to the local video shop, with its sensory-assault-launching wall full of uncertified low-budget horror films with alarming cover art:
"One of these was of course the famously revolting cover to Cannibal Holocaust, so ridiculously over-the-top and retina-assaultingly rendered that it almost crosses a line into acceptability. The others that really seared themselves into my mind, however, were ones that you don't hear so much about now. The woman-grabbing photo on the cover of Don't Answer The Phone, for example, which made me feel in nauseous in a way I didn't really understand at the time, or the more traditional Granada Horror Film Slot Continuity Slide-style iconography of White Cannibal Queen, which it has to be admitted was not a million miles away from the 'Scary Picture' in Look Around You. Above all of these in the sleepless night stakes, however, was the priest cowering behind a giant crucifix on the cover of The Bogeyman. What's that? You've never heard of The Bogeyman? Well, that's hardly surprising. It came and went in cinemas with apparently nobody even noticing, and if it wasn't for its very brief spell at the top of the rental charts back at the dawn of home video, it's likely nobody would ever have noticed it; even when the tabloids were scrabbling around for a reader-enraging list of depravities in leading 'Nasties', all they could find to remark upon in this lower-rung post-Exorcist Hollywood underachiever was a telekinetically-driven scissor attack. It's about as dreary as early eighties mainstream attempts at doing mid-budget horror got, and that's no mean feat, especially when it's up against the likes of Dead And Buried. Yes, I did eventually actually see The Bogeyman, when I was a good deal older and indeed a good deal more interested in the obscurer corners of popular culture (oh, alright, rubbishy old films), and was quite surprised to find that it didn't exactly match up to the quakes of terror that had reverberated outwards from that hapless rental shop shelf"
Then there was a gap and the following fragment:
"So you can't judge a book by its cover but you can judge the idea by signifiers[...] the same way that I can make a fairly informed judgement about Lark Rise To Candleford or the eighteen millionth series of Shooting Stars"
...and that was it. Whatever point it was driving towards is now lost to posterity, alongside whatever would have gone in the blank posts headed 'Song 2 b-sides' and 'Adam Diment book in charity shop'. I did briefly consider reworking it into something about how, despite what people being paid to write columns with an eye on their next TV outing might say, it's perfectly acceptable to be opposed to the fundamental idea of Benefits Street without needing to watch it to form a value judgement about its actual content, but despite having a corking title (Can You Tell Me How To Get, How To Get Rid Of Benefits Street?) this was abandoned when Phil Norman did his superlative piece on much the same subject, and anyway, loads of people were sobbing "boo hoo hoo your opinions is giving me earrrrr infection can't you stop having opinions do more about Hardly Hare please ps i should win stuff by watching", so that was that, really, and 'malcolm tucker rant?' would never find its way into this post. Apart from just there of course.
Anyway, there was no conclusion planned out in the original half-post apart from the word 'conclusion', so let's just leave it there. I wonder who the real cannibals are?
