Steven Sheil
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scsheil.bsky.social
Steven Sheil
@scsheil.bsky.social
1.3K followers 1.2K following 2.8K posts
Screenwriter and director: 'Mum & Dad', 'Dead Mine'. Writer of dark fiction. Co-Director of Mayhem Film Festival @mayhemfilmfestival.bsky.social. Nottingham, UK. https://linktr.ee/StevenSheil
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scsheil.bsky.social
I was looking through the various Frankenstein books I have on my shelves and rediscovered this 1970s Corgi illustrated and abridged edition, which ends with the delightful vision of the Monster in a hooded snow jacket and mittens cavorting in the snow.
The cover to the book, illustrated by Tom Barling. It features a cartoony black, blue and brown headshot of the monster, with a midshot below it, the monster with his hands outstretched. The monster looks akin to the classic Universal monster. A full page illustration of the Monster in a yellow and blue patterned, fur-lined hooded jakcet, with yellow mittens. He's leaping in the air over a snowy landscape, with a low red sun beneath his feet which makes it look like he's just avoiding a last minute tackle while on a mazy run towards the touchline.
November 11, 2025 at 5:44 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
Had a go at turning this 1950s Diana Dors cover by artist R.S.Sheriffs into a t-shirt
A cover for a 1950s magazine called 'Men Only'. It features a thick-lined, stylised caricature of Diana Dors - all hair and lips - by the artist R.S. Sheriffs. The same illustration on a blue t-shirt that I'm wearing.
November 9, 2025 at 2:29 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
Today’s reading:
A 1980s paperback - Angel by Elizabeth Taylor, published by Virago. The cover features a painting of a woman sat in a chair drained in a fur-lined coat.
November 8, 2025 at 3:54 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
As part of this year's @mayhemfilmfestival.bsky.social, I got the chance to host a couple of great Q&As for some upcoming movies - GAME, with the cast and crew, and BULK, with director Ben Wheatley and producer Andy Starke. Both low-budget, inventive films well worth looking out for.
Me and stage with the cast and crew of GAME, in front of the retro-futuristic Mayhem logo projecte on the screen. Photo by Tom Morley. Actor Jason Williamson, screenwriter Rob Williams, director and co-writer John Minton, producer and co-writer Geoff Barrow, actor and co-writer Marc Bessant, in front of the big Mayhem logo projected on the ruched curtain in Broadway Cinema's Screen One. Photo by Tom Morley. Me, producer Andy Starke and writer/director Ben Wheatley on stage. Photo by Tom Morley Ben Wheatley on stage, bathed in a red glow, in front of the Mayhem Film Festival logo. Photo by Tom Morley.
November 6, 2025 at 3:03 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
One nice stylistic touch in 'Poison For The Fairies' is that - bar a couple of very intentional moments - we never see any of the adults faces - they're always either out of frame, or we just don't get reverses of them. It really keeps you in the girls' world.
A shot from the film. A dark haired young girl is hugging her father. We only see the back of his head. She holds a doll up next to her face. The subtitle reads 'Can we have a spider?' A shot from the film. A high angle shot of a room with a large fireplace. We're looking down at a man in a suit crouched in front of the fire and a woman in an armchair. We can't see either of their faces. A wide shot of a funeral. We see multiple adults in black holding umbrellas. The height of the shot means that the umbrellas block all of their faces. A young girl in white is under one of the umbrellas, but we can see her face. A young girl with a black dog sat at a kitchen table. On the wall beside her is the shadow of a woman. The subtitle reads 'he got in the car and your dad had to drive him back.'
November 4, 2025 at 6:06 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
Lonely 10 year old orphan Veronica convinces the new girl in class Flavia that she is a witch, then proceeds to exert her power over her. Slow burn, atmospheric, nicely shot piece with solid performances from the two young leads and a great ending.
A shot from the film. A blonde 10 year old girl stands in darkness. The subtitle reads 'Witches can do anything '
November 4, 2025 at 6:01 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
Finally succumbed to the stinking cold that's been threatening to hit me over the past week, so I've taken to my bed to watch films. First up, 1986 Mexican supernatural horror Poison For The Fairies
The poster for the film (with the original titles Veneno para las hadas'. The illustration on the poster shows two girls' faces merging together around th eye, with two intertwined snakes beneath.
November 4, 2025 at 3:57 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
Just noticed that this is now available on Amazon Prime. Truly a love story for our times.
The poster for an Indian film called 'Communist Girlfriend Capitalist Boyfriend'. She is in a red top with a hammer and sickle logo. He is in a blue jacket.
November 4, 2025 at 11:15 AM
scsheil.bsky.social
"Sir, I understand you were a victim of an unprovoked attack in the early hours of this morning?"
"Yes, I heard a noise on the landing, went out to investigate and was struck on the foot by several sharp objects."
"I see sir. And can you give a description of the assailant?"
"I can do one better..."
A black cat called Eddie, who likes to sink his teeth into your bare feet when you go and check on him in the night. He's curled up on a bed like butter wouldn't melt.
October 31, 2025 at 10:37 AM
scsheil.bsky.social
I'm guessing bioscoop comes from 'bioscope'? Reminds me of when I bought a big vintage dictionary of slang and it had a fantastic section of words for movies.
608. Motions pictures. 1. Animated tintypes, blinkies, canned drama, the celluloid, celluloid flickers, celluloids, cinemake-believe, cinemotion pictures, fillums, filmation pictures, flicker-flickers, flickering snapshots, flickers, flicks, films, galloping celluloids or tintypes, kodaks, leaping lithographs, moom-pitchers, motion peektures, movies, pics, pix, the pictures or pictchers 608 SPECIAL SLANG screen, screen fare, screenies, the silver screen, squawking tintypes, traveling photographs. Spec. canned show, movies, movie show, pic opera or opery, pic- ture, a photoplay; art, a well-acted and -photographed picture; bare skinema, nudie (pic), strippie, a nudist picture; Brit flick, a British picture; celluloid panegyric, a eulogistic motion picture; cinemelodrama, a cinemelodramatic pic- ture; cliff hanger or hangover, a serial melodrama; cinemexploration, travel motion pictures; commotion picture, a commotional motion picture; creepie, a horror picture; dude pix, society pictures; emotion pictures, feelies, emotional pictures; homies, home motion pictures; sinema, pink, hot pic, a sexy motion picture; pic dirt, risqué matter in motion pictures; indie, an independently produced picture; million-dollar production, a lavishly cast picture on the grand scale; movie stag, a motion picture for men only; nixed or thumbed pic, a banned picture; pic-flesh, a motion-picture and stage presentation; vaud-film, a vaudeville and motion-picture presentation; rah-rah movies, college motion pictures; release, a motion picture released for exhibition; sobbie, weepie, a sad picture; starrer, a motion picture in which an actor is starred; tinter, a motion picture in color; whodunit, a mystery picture.
October 30, 2025 at 11:59 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
Have just learned about an 1970s Italian TV variety show, all set in a Satanic underworld called Stryx, which featured sketches alongside musical performances from the likes of Grace Jones and Amanda Lear, accompanied by witches, demons, cat-people and lots of wild animals. Here's a taste.
October 29, 2025 at 6:45 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
Your post prompted me to look up the 1975 funk song 'Dial My Number' by Are You Being Served's Mr Spooner (Mike Berry) and I got this helpful advice
AI Overview Your request to dial a number for Mike Berry cannot be fulfilled for several reasons: Privacy: The AI cannot access or dial personal phone numbers. Sharing a private number for any individual, even a public figure, would be a major privacy breach. Deceased: The singer and actor Mike Berry passed away in April 2025 at the age of 82. Personalized action: An AI assistant cannot initiate a personal action, such as making a phone call, on your behalf.
October 29, 2025 at 10:27 AM
scsheil.bsky.social
Just found this photo on the street if anyone is looking for a short story prompt
A colour photograph of a grey-haired woman in a mac sat on a bench. The bench is in the corner of two high brick walls. On one end of the bench is statue of a man in a hat. On the other side of the woman, sat next to her on the bench, is the statue of a ram. The woman has her head bowed and her hands are over her ears.
October 28, 2025 at 12:45 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
Came out of the office to find the street packed with a few hundred people because Dave was doing a signing at Rough Trade. Crowd control seems to be entirely on the two security guards at the door.
October 27, 2025 at 7:09 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
Neil Diamond’s approach to Method Acting for The Jazz Singer
Neil made great progress during the picture. Toward the end of shooting he even got into Method acting. We were doing a scene in a sound studio where he storms into the recording booth in a rage and has a furiously angry argument with his pregnant girlfriend, Lucie Arnaz. We worked all morning on the sequence, but Neil couldn't get up a proper head of steam. He just wasn't angry enough to make the scene work. The recording booth was separated from the music recording stage by a soundproof window. Neil's band was in there, on the music stage, as part of the background, and that's where he would wait until I called "Action!" over the microphone. I could see him in there, pacing nervously, while we reset the camera to do another take. Suddenly, Neil seemed to go berserk. I couldn't hear him, but I could see that he was ranting and raving. The band was cowering and backing away from him, covering their heads with their instruments for protection, as he picked up and smashed microphones, music stands, chairs, anything he could get his hands on. The room was becoming a shambles. He was in a real fury. "Roll the camera!' I yelled at the camera crew and grabbed the microphone. "Action Neil! Action!" I screamed into it. "Action, goddamn it!" Neil blasted into the control booth in a blind rage. I was afraic he'd blow the lines, but he didn't. The dialogue got a little mangled but it was right for the scene. He was wonderful. A dynamite per formance. After I yelled "Cut!" I grabbed Neil and asked him what hac happened in the other room that had set him off like that. "Well, I was feeling so lousy that I couldn't give you what yor wanted, I asked my band to play something that would make m angry." "And what did they play?" "A Barry Manilow number."
October 26, 2025 at 7:49 PM
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Fleischer's filmography goes so many places - horror, sci-fi, film noir, fantasy, crime, musicals, historical epics, war movies - he did just about everything
A screenshot of the top part of Richard Fleischer's Letterboxd page, showing the films Soylent Green, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Conan, Tora!Tora!Tora!, The Boston Strangler, Red Sonja, Fantastic Voyage, 10 Rillington Place, Compulsion, The Narrow Margin, See No Evil, The Vikings, Mr Majestyk, Barabbas, Amityville 3D, Doctor Doolittle, Mandingo, The Last Run, The New Centurions, Violent Saturday.
October 26, 2025 at 7:33 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
There’s also a lovely account of the filming of Edward G. Robinson’s last scene in Soylent Green
One of the high points of the story was the euthanasia sequence in which the Eddie Robinson character dies. We approached it with great unease. Although he never showed one moment's illness or weakness on the set, Eddie's frail health was always in the back of our minds. None of us working with him actually knew he was dying. Still, all of us felt that there was something prophetic and terribly touching about him playing a death scene. Jane visited the set every day to bring him his lunch and to check on him. On the day we shot the scene she wouldn't come near the studio. The idea of the sequence was that Eddie, having chosen to die instead of having to live in the foul and corrupt future world de- picted in our story, goes to a center where euthanasia is routinely carried out. He is placed on a gurney, hooked up to various valves and tubes, and wheeled into a large, domed room. To help make his termination as pleasant and peaceful as possible, beautiful music is played and lovely images are projected on the domed ceiling. When Eddie was rolled into the room for rehearsal I walked over to the gurney where he lay to explain what would take place during the scene. Other than his just lying there, nothing much would actually happen. The music would be put in later, and so would the various ever-changing images that were supposed to be projected on the ceiling. He would be looking at a blank, white dome for the entire scene. I bent low over him, my face close to his so he could hear me, and tried to describe what he should be seeing in the dome. The images, I told him, would all relate to nature, pure and unspoiled, the way it used to be: unpolluted waves crashing on a pristine beach; Just Tell Me When to Cry 293 forests, lush and green; fawns, unafraid, nibbling leaves; mountain streams, crystal clear, rushing against rocks; limitless fields of golden wheat swaying to the horizon. Eddie watched me, his eyes wide in wonder, a gentle smile on his face. I felt as though I were telling a quiet bedtime story to a child. When I finished, it was clear that he was moved. He raised his hands to both sides of my face, slowly pulled me down to him, and kissed me full on the mouth. Then, still holding my face, he said, "You're very nice." Watching him do the scene was unforgettable. He lay there, looking at the ceiling, his face expressing wonder, awe, sheer de- light, aching nostalgia. Just as he reacted to actors he couldn't hear, he was now reacting to images he couldn't see. It was a phenome- non called acting. When I cut the scene, the crew was completely silent. I turned and found Chuck Heston standing directly behind me. His eyes were brimming. Later, when it came time to do a close-up of him watching the scene, the tears were still there. When I started to write this chapter I contacted Chuck Heston and asked him if he could give me his feelings as he played that particular scene with Eddie. He wrote me the following note: "As we played it out, I rose to his performance. When we finished, I thought, 'OK... if they want it better than that, they have to get another fella.' What really happened, I came to understand, was that Eddie, knowing that he was playing the last scene he would ever act in his life, somehow communicated that to me, unknowing, .. and I had lifting me to his unspoken reality. It's a great scene nothing to do with it."
October 26, 2025 at 7:25 PM
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Sir Ranulph Fiennes versus the set of Doctor Doolittle
Even people outside the production dedicated themselves to making life difficult, particularly one young gent with the unlikely name of Lieutenant Sir Ranulph Twistleton-Wykeham Fiennes. This twit decided that the big, bad American movie company was going to ruin the charm of Castle Combe, the most beautiful village in England, where we were working. To protect the village from our destructive hands he planted bombs in various strategic places the night before we were to commence shooting. It was his idea, appar- ently, that the way to save the village from the marauding Yanks was to blow it up. Luckily the police ended this punitive expedition when they apprehended him and an accomplice on their way to the church tower where they were going to hang a banner that read, "Go Home Twentieth Century-Fox." Two of the bombs exploded the next morning, doing very little damage, but most of our first day of production was taken up with the bomb squad searching for and defusing the others. Lieutenant Sir Ranulph Twistleton-Wykeham Fiennes was eventually fined 500 pounds for putting our lives, and those of some of the villagers, in danger. English justice must have figured that a name like that was punishment enough.
October 26, 2025 at 7:16 PM
scsheil.bsky.social
Also, Charles Bronson versus golfers
A few nights later, Bronson and I had dinner together in the barnlike dining room of the motel in La Junta. I thought it might be a good idea if we got to know each other a little better. Across the room from us was a long table with about fourteen men in business suits; the men also were having dinner. They kept glancing over at us, trying to get a glimpse of a real, live movie star feeding in their presence. Eventually the man at the head of the long table got up and strolled over to us. He was a tall, youngish chap with a bland, pasty face and very nervous. Obviously this was one star-struck local boy. He never even glanced at me; his eyes were riveted on Charlie as he hesitantly apologized for interrupting his dinner (not mine). Then he explained that the group he was with were the presidents and officers of several of the local golf clubs in the area. They got to- gether like this every month or so. Anyhow, he said, they couldn't help noticing that Mr. Bronson was here making a movie and that they would like him to know that if he wanted to play golf he would be more than welcome at any of their clubs. They'd be honored, in fact. I thought it was a very nice gesture and looked to Charlie for his reply. So did the shy, smiling young man. And Charlie did reply. "You know," he said, "where I live in Los Angeles the back lawn of my house is part of a golf course.' "Really? That's wonderful." "And you know what I do with that golf course?" "Why, no, I don't, Mr. Bronson." "I let my dogs shit on it," he informed the young man and returned to eating his steak. As I said, there's only one way to describe Charles Bronson: Mr. Charm.
October 26, 2025 at 7:13 PM
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As a taste of Richard Fleischer’s book, here’s Jackie Coogan versus Method Acting
Sometimes, however, when one actor is Method and the other is not, problems can arise. A story is told about Jackie Coogan rehearsing for a television drama when he was all grown up and no longer playing The Kid to Charlie Chaplin's Tramp. Coogan, who was not Method, had to play most of his scenes with an actor who was. The actor wouldn't look at him but kept staring down at his shoes while he wrestled with some inner emotion. Coogan wanted eye contact with the Method actor, talked to him about it, but wasn't getting it. The actor said it would spoil his concentration. When they started shooting the show live, in front of an audience, the actor went into his usual routine of looking down at his shoes. This time, though, Coogan's shoes came into his field of vision. On one shoe he had written the word "Fuck" and on the other, "You."
October 26, 2025 at 7:12 PM
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Compulsion (1959) was directed by Richard Fleischer, who had one of those Hollywood careers where he worked with everyone and in pretty much every genre. If you like film books that are heavy on fantastic on-and-off-set anecdotes, and light on autobiography, I'd highly recommend his.
The cover of Richard Fleischer's book 'Just Tell Me When To Cry: Encounters with the greats, near-greats and ingrates of Hollywood'
October 26, 2025 at 7:09 PM
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This evening’s viewing:
The poster for the film Compulsion (1959). The poster features Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman, standing next to each other, both wearing suits. A quote next to them reads: “You know why we did it? Because we damn well felt like doing it!”
October 26, 2025 at 5:28 PM
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Adding this to my collection of 'Children's Book Covers With Sinister Vibes'
The cover of a vintage children's book. It's called 'The Mouse Family' and it features a large collection of mice, some with sinister expressions, crowding round a hole in a brick wall. Glimpsed through the hole is the face of a worried cat. It's got a very Poe vibe.
October 25, 2025 at 6:32 PM
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Thought he was asleep beside me, then looked up from my book to see him watching me. Or maybe he’s just taken to sleeping with one eye open like a Mafia informant.
A close-up of a black cat called Eddie, lying on a white sheet. His paw is up near his face and one yellow eye is open and looking up.
October 25, 2025 at 11:35 AM
scsheil.bsky.social
Today’s reading:
A photo of the spine of a book. It’s brown with yellow writing - The Wasp by Ursula Curtiss. In between the title and the author’s name is a drawing of a wasp
October 25, 2025 at 10:03 AM