Steven Sheil

@scsheil

Screenwriter and director: 'Mum & Dad', 'Dead Mine'. Writer of dark fiction. Co-Director of Mayhem Film Festival @mayhemfilmfestival.bsky.social. Nottingham, UK. Creator of @adrianchills.bsky.social

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Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jul 14

This has sinister implications to rival M&S. 'This Is Not Just Food - It's Never Just Food' - WHAT ELSE ARE YOU PUTTING IN IT!?

A screengrab of an Marks and Spencer website with the slogan 'This Is Not Just Food - It's Never Just Food'

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jul 13

They make a pretty good double act until Gardner runs out of things to do with Bertha in the later books. She’s a great character though. Her catchphrase is ‘Fry me for an oyster!’ Or variations thereof.

Minerva Fisher said, "I don't care for profanity or for coarseness and vulgarity in women, Mrs. Cool."
"I don't see anyone holding you here, either," Bertha said. "T can stand a hell of a lot of vulgarity. I adore profanity and I love violence.

Bertha Cool barged on into the room like a fortified tank moving in on an enemy front line of entrenchments.
"I'm Bertha Cool," she said. "I'm a detective. Cut out the lollygagging and get the hell down to business.

And the guy positively beamed at us.

Bertha Cool folded the check and said, Fry me for an oyster

—no, damn it, poach me for an egg!'

Calhoun grinned, Without breaking the yolk-sunny side
up, he said.

sort."
"Pickle me for a goddam beet!" Bertha said.
I walked out.

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jul 13

Poor Dougal’s had a run-in with Medusa

A stone plant pot on the street with a wispy dry grass fringe hanging over the end, looking like the Magic Roundabout dog

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jul 12

Watched all the Dietrich/Von Sternbergs last year and loved them. Before I saw Shanghai Express, I'd seen this iconic image a lot, but actually seeing the scene in the film - and how good she is in this moment - really changed how I saw it.

A close-up shot of Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express. It's in black and white and shows her with her head tilted back a little, eyes looking up, a hand holding a lit cigarette next to her head.

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jul 10

Did anyone else see that small werewolf wearing sunglasses in between Steve Wilson and Danny Murphy at the start of the Spain-Belgium game or was it just me?

A screengrab of commentators Steve Wilson and Danny Murphy looking at the camera. Behind them, the pitch and the stadium. In the middle, what looks like a person with a completely hairy face with sunglasses.

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jul 10

Today's best second-hand buy:

A photo of a paperback book - Centre Door Fancy, by Joan Blondell. The cover is green, with an illustration of a young showgirl from the 1920s sat in a spotlight.

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jul 10

Have just seen that someone has uploaded a batch of 1970s Spanish TV music specials directed by the great Valerio Lazarov, whose style can maybe be best described as Vision Mixer Uber-Maximalism. Please enjoy the visual onslaught of Raffaella Carrà and 'Rumore'

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jul 8

News on Early Bird Passes for the upcoming Mayhem Film Festival 2026, plus a special September screening of SURVIVE STYLE 5+!, courtesy of the lovely people at @thirdwindowfilms.com

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jul 8

Originally I didn’t see the Warhammer logo on here so I just thought that Boyes had somehow got inside knowledge about the coming nuclear apocalypse

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jul 7

Today's mini second-hand book haul:

Three paperback books. On the left, The Cold Room by Jeffery Caine (cover - a spooky illustration of a shrouded figure in a room, with a ghostyl girl's face behind), in the middle The Gorgeous Ghoul Murder Case by Dwight V Babcock (cover: an illustration of a blond woman in a purple dress reclining and looking over her shoulder where there is a bandaged face with no eyes or mouth) and Frighteners edited by Mary Danby (cover, a photo of a shadowy hand reaching for a door lit in ghostly green).

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jul 7

One of those posts that apply no matter which side of the Atlantic you're on

'This man is so pathetic. Yeah, he's corrupt as hell, but what a weak and pathetic man he is. It's embarrassing to watch."

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jul 5

Currently watching Sindey Gilliat's 'Left, Right & Centre' (1959) with Ian Carmichael as an academic turned TV personality who is parachuted in to stand as a parliamentary candidate in a by-election and disturbed to realise how much Carmichael, at least in certain shots, looks like Matt Goodwin.

A black and white photo of Ian Carmichael

A colour photo of Matt Goodwin, looking hapless

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jul 4

The video for Adam & The Ants' 'Ant Rap' just popped up for me on YouTube, which—like most Ants videos—is just a whole fever dream. The chorus of the song calling out the band members 'Marco, Merrick, Terry Lee, Gary Tibbs and yours truly' was indelibly imprinted on my brain at a very young age.

From the Wikipedia page "The setting for the music video is Bodiam Castle and features Adam wearing a suit of armour in the style of the movie Excalibur (released the same year, and made by the same armourer, Terry English), then a blue American football uniform with the number 57 on the front. While in his American football strip, he crashes through a door, revealing Marco Pirroni sitting at a grand piano dressed as Liberace. Adam then does a Bruce Lee impersonation while rescuing the princess (played by Lulu) before being seen again in his armour. The video ends with Adam jumping from the top of the castle into the moat (the jump is actually performed by a stuntman). He throws his sword in the moat only to see an armoured hand lift it again from the water.[2]"

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jul 4

A reporter looking at camera saying 'That's a Goal!'

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jul 3

Here's the trailer for The Ride Back (1957) which has a rather unique approach to text crawls

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jul 3

Renny Harlin's new plane crash/shark movie; some 80s Ray Harryhausen; a new Virginia Woolf adaptation; and an interesting Anthony Quinn/William Conrad Western from Robert Aldrich's production company. #LastFourWatched

A Letterboxed Recent Activity box showing from right to left, Deep Water (2026), Clash Of The Titans (1981), Virginia Woolf's Night And Day and The Ride Back.

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jul 2

My favourite example of a product name which you take for granted until one day you look up its etymology is probably Bovril

The first part of the product's name comes from Latin bovīnus, meaning "pertaining to an ox".[3] Johnston took the -vril suffix from Edward Bulwer-Lytton's then-popular novel, The Coming Race (1871), the plot of which revolves around a superior race of people, the Vril-ya, who derive their powers from an electromagnetic substance named "Vril". Therefore, Bovril indicates great strength obtained from an ox.[4]

Vril: The Power of the Coming Race, originally published as The Coming Race, is a science and subterranean fiction novel by the British politician and writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton, published anonymously in 1871.

Some readers have believed the account of a superior subterranean master race and the energy-form called "Vril", at least in part; some theosophists, notably Helena Blavatsky, William Scott-Elliot, and Rudolf Steiner, accepted the book as based, in part, on occult truth.[4] The 1960 book The Morning of the Magicians by Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels suggested that a secret Vril Society existed in Weimar Berlin.

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jun 29

The whole evening was all spectacle all of the time. 100% fun viewing experience.

On the stage, a male shirtless dancer holds a female dancer over his head, she his standing on his hands, with the legs doing a split. In the background fountains are going off.

A man in a long black cloak is wielding what looks like a set of fiery dumbells. all around him is a giant cloud of glowing fiery embers, about 30ft high

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jun 29

When Leona Lewis was on stage—singing Bleeding Love—a spectral version of her face was projected onto a giant spray of water behind her.

At the back of a stage studded with red lights, a giant image of Leona Lewis projected onto water.

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jun 29

Just got back from a film festival in Malta (where my wife won an award!) which had an absolutely wild awards ceremony—fireworks, synchronised drones, Leona Lewis, acrobats, fire jugglers, opera singers, fountains, jetskis and Jack Whitehall—all taking place on a stage above an immense water tank.

A wide shot of the venue. On the left of frame, the stage, which is structured like a wheel with walkway spokes over blue water. On the right, the audience in evening dress. There are a large array of lights behind them.

A shot of a giant moon projected onto a spray of water. On the righr, a woman in a 20ft high flowing white dress plays a piano which appears to be suspended in the air in front of her. At the base of her dress is a man playing guitar.

The stage, a troupe of dancers, in bare skin and white trousers and dresses, fountains going of behind them and a large array of fireworks in the sky above them.

The stage, with five acrobats upside down suspended from a large structure, kind of like a mobile, hanging from a cable suspended from an enormous crane. In the foreground a man in white with his shirt open showing a bare chest, mid-rotation in a large hoop

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jun 25

If anyone is down on Scorsese after the AI thing, can I suggest using this photo of a terrapin skeleton as a replacement in the ABSOLUTE CINEMA meme

A photo of a terrapin skeleton, brightly lit in a dark box. It's sat up on its shell, underside facing the camera, arms in the air and head thrown back as though in cinematic ecstacy.

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jun 21

Short list of words I've read in books which I enjoyed having to look up because I didn't know what they meant: rhadamanthine farouchely borborygmic decalcomania

A chunk of text from a book including the word 'rhadamanthine' (adj. rigorously strict or just)

A chunk of text from a book including the word 'farouchely' (adj. like someone who is either wild and disorderly, or awkward and shy)

A chunk of text from a book including the word 'borborygmic' (describes a rumbling or gurgling noise caused by the movement of gas and fluids through the intestines)

A chunk of text from a book including the word 'decalcomania' (a decorative technique by which engravings and prints may be transferred to pottery or other materials.)

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jun 19

Vader, Han and Chewbacca in a low-budget Italian Star Wars knock-off

Count Binface, Andy Burnham and a person in a fox suit at the Makerfield count.

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jun 15

Just started reading The Odyssey and can’t help thinking that Odysseus would be a bit freaked out by this phrasing. “A *what* of pain…?” “Odyssey. It means a really really long, wandering journey” “Where’s that word come from?” “…Best not to ask really”

“Poor man! Why does enraged Poseidon create an odyssey of pain for you?

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jun 13

Anyone know any vampires who are up for a freelance job?

A photo of a Daily Mail front page with a quote from Andrew Windsor - “You’ll call me Sir or The Duke until they send a vampire to suck out every drop of blood on my royal veins”

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jun 13

Just noticed that each of these books has the same printed mark inside the front cover - for 'Marjgold Ritter-Von-Bek', which doesn't appear to be a person but is maybe a Michael Moorcock reference?

The marke shows a circle with a large letter M inside it. In the crook of the M is a young girl in a dress and bonnet, as though sitting in a swing. beneath it, in capital letters it says 'Marjgold Ritter-Von-Bek'

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jun 13

Never read any James Branch Cabell, but found this batch super cheap in a charity shop and thought I'd take a punt.

Seven paperback books by James Branch Cabell - Jurgen, The Silver Stallin, Figures of Earth, Domnei, The High Place, Something About Eve and The Cream Of The Jest.

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jun 10

It's now been a year since I started @adrianchills.bsky.social. Thanks to everyone who has read, reposted and liked the stories. And if you haven't already followed and you like the idea of flash fiction horror stories based on the headlines to Guardian columns by Adrian Chiles, feel free to dive in

The header and bio for the Adrian Chills Bluesky account.

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jun 9

New aftershave in Lidl: gives you the precise aroma of a widowed policeman investigating the murder of his daughter, drawn into a wide-ranging political conspiracy involving nuclear weapons.

Two boxes of aftershave called ‘Edge Of Darkness’

Steven Sheil@scsheil· Jun 8

Current header: Carole Lombard's eyes (and eyebrows) from Supernatural (1933)