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Anne Billson

John Carpenter's THE THING is best known for its startling visual effects. On release, it fared badly with critics and audiences, but its influence can now be detected in programs such as "The X Files". Journalist Anne Billson's defense of THE THING claims it is a landmark movie notable for its humor, Lewis Carroll logic, strong characterizations, and prescient insight. Color illustrations.

The Thing

An exciting new series of great writing on television from the BFI. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is sure to be a hit.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

'Everywhere you looked, there would be women dressed in black - white faces, black hair, mouths painted scarlet. It was The Look. You saw it on the street. You saw it on the covers of magazines. You saw it presenting arts programmes on TV. And some of us saw it in our nightmares...' Anne Billson's debut novel, described by Christopher Fowler in Time Out as 'dark, sharp, chic and very funny', is set at the end of the 'greed is good' era, and features a gothic love triangle between a man, a woman and the 300-year-old vampire they chopped into pieces a decade earlier. But now she's back, and this time she's building a bloodsucking empire... 'Billson honours the rules of the genre, then proceeds to have fun with them... Dark, sharp, chic and very funny' (Christopher Fowler - Time Out) 'A superb satirist' (Salman Rushdie) 'Merits a post position on everybody's reading list, even those who don't usually like vampire stories. It isn't splatter fiction; it's an honest piece of literature' (Michael Wood - London Review of Books) 'Enchanting and ominous at the same time: a rare and impressive piece of literary juggling' (Jonathan Carroll) 'A distinctive, original and refreshing debut' (Kim Newman - Starburst) 'A black and bloody celebration of wit, womanhood and slapstick, beautifully sustained to a thoroughly satisfying climax' (Chris Gilmore - Interzone)

Suckers

Anne Billson has been writing about films for four decades. Now she has collected over 4000 of her reviews into one book. You won't find reviews of every film ever made here, or reviews of the latest blockbusters, but you will have fun browsing (and perhaps disagreeing with) the personal and often unorthodox opinions of a widely published and respected film writer. Find out which films she loves and which she loathes, which made her laugh, which made her cry, which have the best music.. and which have cats in them!

Reviews of Over 4000 Films

Billson Film Database

My Day by Jones

These days it takes a very special vampire movie to stand out. Like Twilight, the Swedish film Let the Right One In is a love story between a human and a vampire but there the resemblance ends. Let the Right One In is not a romantic fantasy but combines the supernatural with social realism. Set on a housing estate in the suburbs of Stockholm in the early 1980s, it's the story of Oskar, a lonely, bullied child, who makes friends with Eli, the girl in the next apartment. 'Oskar, I'm not a girl,' she tells him and she's not kidding. They forge a relationship which is oddly innocent yet disturbing, two outsiders against the rest of the world. But one of these outsiders is, effectively, a serial killer. While Let the Right One In is startlingly original, it nevertheless couldn't have existed without the near century of vampire cinema that preceded it. Acclaimed film critic and horror novelist Anne Billson looks at how it has drawn from, and wrung new twists on, such classics as Nosferatu (1922), how vampire cinema has already flirted with social realism in films like Near Dark (1987) and how vampire mythology adapts itself to the modern world.

Let the Right One In

In the 1960s, after films like The Ipcress File and Funeral in Berlin, Michael Caine could be easily identified. This book looks at his acting career in films such as Zulu, which made him a star, where he played the part of an aristocratic officer. Since then, with a few exceptions when he has played the part of a foreigner in films like The Last Valley and The Eagle Has Landed, his deadpan cockney tones have been his trademark in films such as Get Carter, Alfie, Educating Rita and Hannah and Her Sisters.

My Name is Michael Caine

An extra-terrestrial alien, capable of replicating any living form it touches, infiltrates an isolated research base in the Antarctic, and sows suspicion and terror among the men trapped there. Which of them is still human, and which a perfect alien facsimile? John Carpenter's The Thing, the second adaptation of John W. Campbell's 1938 novella Who Goes There?, received overwhelmingly negative reviews on its release in 1982, but has since been acknowledged as a classic fusion of the science fiction and horror genres. Now a regular fixture in lists of the greatest movies of all time, it is acclaimed for its inspired and still shocking practical special effects, its deftly sketched characters brought to life by a superb cast, elegant widescreen cinematography, ominous score, and a uniquely tense narrative packed with appropriately ever-changing metaphors about the human condition. Anne Billson's elegant and trenchant study, first published in 1997, was one of the first publications to give the film its due as a modern classic, hailing it as a landmark movie that brilliantly redefined horror and science fiction conventions, and combined them with sly humour, Lewis Carroll logic and disturbingly prescient metaphors for many of the sociopolitical, scientific and medical upheavals of the past three decades. In her foreword to this new edition, Anne Billson reflects upon The Thing's changing fortunes in the years since its release, its influence on film-makers including Tarantino and del Toro, and its topicality in an era of melting ice caps and with humanity besieged by a deadly organism.

'That cracked mirror gave me the heebie-jeebies, and not just because it was impossible to forget what had once happened in front of it. One night, while brushing my teeth, I had the distinct impression that each half of my face was following its own separate game-plan. I'd already removed my glasses in readiness for bed, so I had to squint at the reflection to bring it vaguely into focus. One half of my face was drooling toothpaste over my chin like a rabid dog; the other was wreathed in yellowish shadow and scrutinising me through brown eyes so dark and narrow they appeared almost black. Normally, I wouldn't have worried. Except that my own eyes were blue.' Clare, stuck on the wrong side of town, is desperate to mingle with the artists and writers and well-connected wastrels of fashionable Notting Hill, like her friend Sophie. But how far will she go for a W11 postcode? As far as sharing a flat with someone who died twelve years ago? Clare's going to lead the good life if it kills her. And it's starting to look as though it might... From the author of cult vampire novel Suckers comes a 'sexy, sardonic and distinctly spooky' tale of girls, ghosts and glitterati. 'A slick and remarkably controlled performance which more than equals her satisfying first novel Suckers. Ghost tales invariably leave me cold. I read this one in a single highly enjoyable sitting' (Paul Rutman - Sunday Telegraph) 'With Stiff Lips, Billson overturns the clichés of the horror genre, establishing, in their stead, her own original voice' (Lucy O'Brien - The Independent) 'Sexy, sardonic and distinctly spooky... a tale to make you shiver - if you don't die laughing first' (Cosmopolitan) 'Stiff Lips achieves an authentic and unsettling nastiness' (Sunday Times) 'A vastly entertaining story... As well as being a successful ghost story, Stiff Lips is an amusing satire... Funny and spooky - an excellent combination' (Sopia Watson - The Spectator)

Stiff Lips

While Let the Right One In is startlingly original, it nevertheless couldn't have existed without the near century of vampire cinema that preceded it Acclaimed horror writer Anne Billson looks at how it has drawn from, and wrung new twists on, such classics as Nosferatu (1922), how vampire cinema has already flirted with social realism in films like Martin (I 977) and Near Dark (1987) and how vampire mythology adapts itself to the modern world. --Book Jacket.

Let the Right One in

From 1997 to 2003, Buffy the Vampire Slayer single-handedly reinvented the high-school genre, splicing it with action, comedy and the supernatural. Series by series, Anne Billson unravels the magic of Buffy, examining the antecedents, influences and the new twist on the age-old story of the struggle between Good and Evil.

No-one believes in ghosts, even in WWII, but strange things are going on in Hampshire Place. Sophie's in love with a writer who killed himself years before. At Halloween, as the midnight hour approaches, it's time for the boy to get the girl. Forever.

'She's going to die. I think we both know that. What's coming out of her is too big, too powerful, and it's going to tear her apart. I just hope it doesn't tear me apart as well...'Your best friend gets all the attention. Now she's pregnant with the Antichrist, religious maniacs are trying to kill her, and she wants to get an abortion. How do you compete with that, persuade her to keep the baby, and at the same time hold down your job as a bookshop assistant while trying not to think too much about decapitated Chihuahuas and the unpleasantness at the clinic? It's not easy.From the acclaimed author of Suckers, Stiff Lips and The Ex comes an everyday story of female friendship versus suave assassins, pushy tabloid reporters, and the End of Days.

The Coming Thing

This is the budget version of CATS ON FILM, with black and white photos instead of colour ones. What is a Catguffin? Why should you be wary of a Catzilla? What is the difference between a Catagonist and a Heropuss? Who or what is a Modesty Cat, and why does The Third Man have such problems with kitten continuity? All these questions and many others are answered in CATS ON FILM, the definitive work of feline film scholarship, in which critic and novelist Anne Billson explores the many and varied narrative functions of cats by examining their appearances in one hundred films, from blockbusters to art films, foreign films to cult oddities, rom-coms to horror movies. Meet Clovis, Ulysses, Jezebel, Pyewacket, Pumpkin and a clowder of other celebrated film felines, learn how the White Cat of Evil launched his career as Blofeld's lapcat in the James Bond franchise, and thrill to My Day By Jones, in which the cat's eye view of Alien is finally revealed. CATS ON FILM. No cat-loving film fan can afford to be without it.

Anne Billson

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