She wrote many adult novels as well, in many genres from gothic thriller to mystery to supernatural. Her writing is a marvel of clarity and sly, sharp intelligence, as well as a wicked and playful sense of humour. She could combine elegance and tremendous human warmth with a shade of the sinister that stayed with you for days. Her titles are equally evocative: Black Hearts in Battersea, Voices in an Empty House, Midnight is a Place. But it's her short stories that show the sharpest edge, the highest polish.
Let's Scare Jessica to Death is a quiet, creeping film from 1971 that makes a lot of people's most-underrated list. We went to a 16mm screening with the director, John Hancock, in attendance last week. Thought the print was a little too dark, it was great to watch in the theatre and get some backstory and commentary from him. Someone asked what he thought upon viewing it again after 38 years and he said "It's much better than I thought at the time!". The stark, relentless soundtrack by Orville Stoeber makes the tension that much stronger.
The Strangers came out last year, and I've just caught up to it. It's remarkably stripped-down, almost flat: couple terrorized in an isolated house by nameless, silent people. Very rarely do I get genuinely nervous watching a film. 
This looks fantastic...set in, and filmed as if it were still - 1980. Out now theatrically in the US, hopefully soon elsewhere...HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Sighing over Scott Walker once again, after watching the documentary 30 Century Man (2006). Cameras are let into his studio for the first time (recording his '06 album The Drift). David Bowie, Johnny Marr, Brian Eno all confessing their love and his influence. It's the first time Scott has been interviewed so intimately. You get a sense of the depth of his marriage to his music, that he can be and do nothing else but create this extraordinary stuff. Although his style has drastically evolved - become more itself, one could say - I will always get chills listening to his solo work from the 60s/70s. It stops you up short. He really is one of the life-changers. 
