Afternoon all,
It’s been a while since anything has been posted on the blog, and I thought I’d give you an insight into my observations over the past few days.
I’ll start with Saturday – I was just browsing through the local theatre shows hoping to add a bit of culture to my ever-growing interest in horror, when I came upon a screening of Macbeth some time in 2012. Straight away I thought to myself “Richard, we fancy a bit of that”
Macbeth was one of my favourite Shakespearean plays as a child, particularly due its high volume of blood, guts and decapitations, so I thought I’d give it a try. And how much did a ticket cost? £20. Twenty quid! Forty, since I was planning to take the wife along as well! Forty whole pounds just to hear “Is this a dagger I see before me?” (We don’t know because we can’t see it!) and to watch a bunch of actors waving around plastic swords. I saw a clip on the internet. There’s no blood spattering the audience, no entrails littering the stage, nothing! I was aghast! I quickly closed my laptop and that was that.
Sunday isn’t really worth mentioning, except that I browsed a few dvd comparison sites and was disappointed to find that Cannibal Holocaust still hasn’t dropped below £7 (It’s not even the uncut version, I don’t know why I bother!)
Today I decided to add to my ever-growing library and go and find a few more horror books. Seeing as I don’t have much money I decided to venture to a charity shop for my purchases (It’s surprising the good quality of books found in places like that) Imagine my horror (excuse the pun) when I picked up Island by Richard Laymon and found that it was £4.50!Now I know that times are bad, both with the economy and charity shops closing down, but C’MON! The RRP on the book is £6.99 and that’s brand new!
Am I the only one that remembers when books cost 25 pence in charity shops? Here’s a few others that I found:
Shaun Hutson – Heathen; £4, Body Count; £4
Stephen King – The Shining; £4, Green Mile; £5
Clive Barker – Hellbound Heart; £3
John Saul – Shadows; £3.50
Now don’t get me wrong the books were in good condition, but they had obviously been owned by a number of horror fans before reaching the shop.
So anyway, I picked up three books (You can’t go in a charity shop and leave empty-handed right?) and spent £11! Now I am more than willing to support up and coming horror artists/authors/ filmmakers etc by purchasing their product regardless of price – purely because we need to support our horror brethren whenever we can. But when it comes to established authors such as Stephen King etc, I’d much rather buy the book on the cheap. But even now, that seems impossible!
Charity shops have upped their price. So now where do we go when we want to buy cheap second-hand books? The tramp behind the supermarket?
It’s a sad notion, but it seems that in order to indulge in our horror interests, we need to pay an arm and leg to do so. This comes at the worst time, as there are now more horror authors, film makers, artists, musicians etc that need our help. We need to learn how to budget if we are going to increase the horror influence in our society. Or we could wait for the economy to sort itself out (Yeah, I’m laughing too)
