Another paperback I found in a charity shop this summer was The Hiss. Its a sort of monastic Sixth Sense involving a young novice monk who predicts the deaths of fellow monks. His predictions take place when he hears a hissing sound. The tone of the initial chapters was encouraging and it reminded me of the cloistered mystery found in the medieval whodunnit The Name of the Rose.
Despite these good beginnings I have to admit getting bored with The Hiss and it went back on the pile for further hissing in the future. Have you read it readers?
The Hiss calls to mind another verbal noise-based story I have called The Shout. This is a movie, not a book and is quite a harrowing watch as Alan Bates terrorises John Hurt with his lethal shamanistic shout. Its an odd but powerful film set on the Devon shore and the brazen tyranny of lodger Bates is shocking.
Its shoreline atmosphere recalls that other Seventies oddity, Neither the Sea Nor The Sand by the famous newscaster Gordon Honeycombe. I enjoyed this book and the film version too. I seem to remember the book blurb on the front mentioning werewolves which is strange as there aren't any in it. Have you read or seen the Shout or Neither the Sea readers?
The idea of a powerful shout was a feature of my Kung Fu period as it happens. I was fascinated with all martial arts back in the early Seventies and the more obscure the better. One of the more obscure Japanese arts was Kiai-Jutsu or fighting by yelling. I used to try this out on my mates on the battlefield [our back garden]. God knows what our neighbours thought when high-kicking teenagers started screaming their lungs out at each other! Happy days!
Here's some footage of the Kiai yell I found on You Tube. Are you a shouter readers?
Woodsy, clear your mind and read Biggles Learns to Fly. The other stuff is too dark.
ReplyDeleteProbably good advice Terran!
DeleteI really like The Shout. It's got a weird, unsettling vibe all its own - which put me off a little when I first saw it many years ago, I must admit - but now I think it's a bit of an overlooked classic. I watched Neither The Sea Nor The Sand for the first time a couple of months ago. I'd never even heard of it until it cropped up in 'England's Screaming', a book by Sean Hogan. The pace is a little too leisurely for me but it does have interesting qualities. Another film mentioned in that book I'd never heard of before is The Godsend (1980), which is well worth watching.
ReplyDeleteI agree Paul. These films are overlooked. I read that Gordon Honeycomve followed up Neither with another spooky tale. I must get hold of it. How weird though, only this week dud I earmark a page in a video guide book for ... the Godsend!
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