In honour of the memory of Eric Sykes who died today, here’s a bit of horror-tinged comedy in the mostly silent film, “The Plank” where the star of the film causes an awful lot of mayhem. Sykes was a prolific writer/performer and worked with just about everyone (which speaks well of his nature; imagine writing with Spike Milligan!). As in the slapstick humour of the Evil Dead trilogy, this short film demonstrates there’s a lot of juice to be found in the borderlands between horror and humour.
I mined that vein myself to win a runner up mention in the Stylo Short Story Competition (limited to six words) with “Won the lottery! Didn’t see bus…”
It doesn’t always work: see for example King’s Maximum Overdrive — laughable and not especially horrific, though he did somewhat better with Christine. There are many reasons to dislike King’s writing, but it takes a real special kind of asshat to write something as condescendingly dickish as this LA Times piece (h/t Anne Billson). I guess it’s become common practice for newspapers to adapt to the digital age by hiring trolls.
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