Vintage Item no.2.

...is Denis Gifford's 'Monsters of the Movies', published by Carousel in 1977. This book served a similar function, for me, to The Observer Book of Birds. It was my alphabetical checklist of horror movies: my I-Spy of Terror.

Years ago I lost my own copy. It came through our Book Club at school. I'm sure I've already written at some point about the delights of Chip Club and its monthly newsletter. The delivery of the box of books to our classroom was a very important moment. We'd have to wait till the end of the day for the passing out of our purchases - each book with its order slip neatly tucked inside like a bookmark.

Each monster had a double page spread with a grainy black and white photo. Each had a nasty allure. The text was skimpy but informative, giving a brisk and bloodthirsty precis of each film. I studied each horrible page for hours.

I was fascinated by Karloff's Dusty Springfield eye make-up in an over-exposed shot from 'Frankenstein'. I was thrilled by the cracked and addle-pated skull of Dr Phibes ('Nine eternities in doom, such was the promise of Dr Anton Phibes, PHD.') Most appalling of all was the frankly unidentifiable monstrosity that called itself The Blood Beast Terror. What was it? Some kind of evil chrysalis?!

It's almost sad to think that I've now seen nearly all these films. Some of their unbearable glamour has faded and fled through the demystification process of actually watching the movie itself (certainly, in the case of 'White Zombie'.) Maybe the monsters were better with just a hazy still and a few terse sentences to conjure with?

My copy went west some time in the 1980s. Then, in the mid-nineties I met Jeremy and was amazed, amused and very chuffed to find that he had kept his copy of Gifford's book quite pristine.

Just look at that cover. I always thought Frankenstein's monster was wearing a party hat.

I'm sure this book's behind my own lifelong desire to write novels with ensemble casts of monsters. I'm in the middle of writing my fifth book in a series about the wives and girlfriends of monsters like these...