The Dancing Henry Guide to… Horror Films

For all of you who have ever wondered how the horror genre came to be one of the most enduringly popular in film history, how it forged and then constantly reinvented its own mythology, how it adapted itself to political and economic pressures, and why it is that the scantily-dressed heroine always insists on investigating the ominous noises in the basement, then we bring you this: the Dancing Henry Guide to Horror Films, and the answer to all your questions. Except that last one. No one knows that.

The roots of the horror genre are in the creepy silent classics made by a group of German film-makers in the early 1920s which were deeply influenced by expressionist art. To better portray the deranged worlds of their stories, geometric shadows would be painted directly on to backgrounds, and sets would be constructed with peculiar angles and sharp corners jutting forcefully into the film frame. The movement was sadly short lived, however, due to the unusually high number of eye-loss and other injuries caused by the scenery, but its influences remain. Among the acclaimed films made in this period is 1922’s Friedrich’s Cupboard, a film which in recent years has gained a reputation as being ‘cursed’, as all the people involved in its production have now died.

In the 1930s, Global Films released a string of acclaimed horror films based on popular literary monsters such as Dracula and Frankenstein, cementing their status as the archetypal horror villains. Though initially successful, Global struggled to provide fresh plots for its stable of characters and was eventually forced into scraping the barrel with monster mash-ups such as The Mummy and Frankenstein’s European Vacation, Adolf Hitler Meets the Wolf Man and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Get Hitched.

Most horror films of the 1940s were low-budget affairs, and producers such as Max Halton (head of AOK’s B-unit) were forced to find ways to keep the audience scared through subtle cinematic techniques. In particular, Halton felt that the imagination was the scariest thing of all, and the monsters in his film would often be consigned to the shadows, their presence only revealed through unearthly sounds and snatched glimpses under flickering lights. As his budgets were slashed further Halton grew to rely on these techniques more and more, resulting in films such as They Live in the Shadows…, which took place entirely in pitch dark, and The Monster is YOU! in which the audience were confronted by a blank screen and instructed to imagine the scariest thing they could.

Film producers of the 1950s decided to dispense with Halton’s theories, relying instead on the lurid appeal of make-up and special effects. Unfortunately they also had to deal with budgetary constraints, resulting in shoddy looking creature design which would damage a film’s credibility. To avoid loss of verisimilitude, film-makers would often attempt to justify the monster’s appearance within the world of the film itself, leading to genre classics such as The Papier-Mache Monster (in which a child’s school art project comes to life) and Jerky Invaders from the Planet Plasticine.

Another staple of 50s and 60s horror was the creature movie, in which a large animal would attack a series of remote farms and lighthouses before violently working his way up the property ladder and launching an assault on the big city. Most famous in this field was the “Creature Feature Company” who boasted that they were capable of producing a different movie for every animal on Earth, and even had a zoological department that was dedicated to discovering new species in order to generate more plots. This ultimately led to diminishing returns, as there was very little public appetite for films such as The 50 Foot Malaysian Small-Winged Stick Mantis and Attack of the Long-Eared Alpine Field Mouse.

The 1970s saw the birth of the slasher film, in which a group of people would be picked off one-by-one by a serial killer. Often criticised for its predictable “death by numbers” approach, the genre reached its epoch in the 1980s with The Deadly Wait, a three-hour film in which a bored psychopath systematically works his way to the front of a long queue at Alton Towers.

Since the 1970s many film-makers have attempted to use horror movies as political allegories, making powerful statements on the issues of the day. Britain’s Spanner Studios broke new ground in the early 80s when it raided its back-catalogue of characters to provide material for a slew of thoughtful, topical films. Most notable are Jack Frost versus The Abominable Snowman, a somewhat over-literal Cold War parable, and Dracula in Africa, the controversial last entry in their Dracula series in which the vampiric Count tragically dies after contracting AIDS.

Such social commentary was not always commercially successful. Whereas the mad scientists and nuclear monsters of previous decades had cleverly preyed on audiences’ fears of technology going too far, 80s cinema failed to be quite as convincing, with films such as Pacman takes Manhattan and Deadly Pong seen by most as unrealistic. Instead, the decade saw a trend towards gratuitous gore and body horror, with films such as Prickly Business, the excruciating story of a woman impregnated with the spawn of a demonic hedgehog, and Dismembered, in which a man is raped by his own penis.

Zombies have been a staple of the horror genre since the late 60s, with their groaning, shuffling antics striking fear into the heart of many a cinemagoer. In recent films zombie-lore has been updated, and they have gained the ability to talk and run. Further revisions in upcoming films will even see them managing to hold down a steady job, eating sandwiches instead of human flesh, and not being dead, thus completing their transition from being scary monsters to being exactly the same as ordinary people.

The 1990s brought a rash of post-modern horror films, such as 1994’s innovative slasher movie Eek!, in which a group of teenagers making a film in which a group of teenagers making a film are killed off one by one, are killed off one by one. 1997’s Eek 2! saw a group of teenagers watching the film Eek!, in which a group of teenagers making a film in which a group of teenagers making a film are killed off one by one, are killed off one by one, and being killed off one by one. And 1999’s Eek 3! followed a group of teenagers watching Eek 2!, and being bored to death.

Other popular sub-genres in recent years have included true-crime serial killer films and horror-comedies (though attempts to meld the two genres have not been well received). The most popular films have been teen-remakes of classic horrors, a trend symptomatic of the general kiddifying of the genre. One upcoming film involving a killer toddler set loose in a day-care centre has recently been approved a 12A certificate, a move which has sparked outrage among distributors, as it means that the target audience won’t even be able to see it unless their parents are with them. Fortunately for them, however, a PG certificate has been granted to an eagerly anticipated update of a classic 50s horror film, Wobbly Invaders from the Planet Pixels.

Despite this there are still signs of life in the genre, and many independent companies such as Vortex Films have begun to hark back to the Spanner films of the 80s, striving to introduce social subtext and political allegory into their films. Their cult hit Village of the Doomed imagines an oppressively politically correct society in which the adults of a small village are too terrified to look into the eyes of the children that live there, for fear of being put on the sex-offenders register.

Though the genre might not be in the healthiest state right now, its enduring popularity means that it will be around for a long time to come. Like Madonna, the horror film is able to continually reinvent itself, inflicting progressively more shocking and horrific images upon us as the years go by. We’ll always look to horror films to frighten us, to unsettle us, to provide a disturbing commentary on our times and an outlet for our darkest impulses, just as we’ll always secretly will the scantily-dressed woman to investigate the ominous noises in the basement, in the hope that maybe, just maybe, she’ll get stabbed in the tits. Such is the joy of horror.

.

Compiled by Josh Cluderay from entries in The Dancing Henry Almanac, twenty-third edition, vols 12-64.

Digest #000,008

Many concerned readers have emailed the Dancing Henry editorial offices recently, afraid that we might be adversely affected by the recession. Unfortunately, it is true that the Dancing Henry Corporation has had to make cuts. Our publishing department has now ceased printing once lucrative lines such as the A-Z of Numbers textbook, the Braille Guide to Music Appreciation and the Best of Ceefax Annual. Our merchandising department has now stopped manufacturing our range of Sir Henry Drummond action figures, our Months of the Year socks, and our famous spearmint bananas. And throughout the company we have made other minor cutbacks, including our library of betamax cassettes, our female employees and our electronic pistachio-sheller. Despite this, we still remain absolutely dedicated to bringing you this bi-occasional digest bang on time.

Nintendo Playa
Super-high-definition video console released in 2017 featuring unique interactive controllers. One of the console’s most innovative games was “Kicking a Ball Against a Wall”, a game requiring players to repeatedly simulate the action of kicking a ball against a wall. The lifelike wall graphics could be projected from the console onto any flat surface, such as a wall, and Nintendo developers created authentic football-style balls that could be propelled against it by players’ feet in order to almost exactly recreate the experience of kicking a ball against a wall. Though praised for its realistic design, the game was also criticised for its prohibitive retail price and its failure to add multiplayer and online modes, which might have enabled “Kicking a Ball Against a Wall” to become a widespread social phenomenon akin to Nintendo’s previous smash-hit virtual reality game “Walking to the Shops and Buying Some Milk”.

JavaCo
High-end coffee company who were succesfully sued by environmental groups in 1994 for allowing their Miami factory to dump waste materials into the nearby ocean over a seven year period. Shortly after the judgement, JavaCo were instructed to reinstate their expulsion of waste products into the surrounding waters when an unprecedented number of dolphins turned up on Miami’s beaches, bleary-eyed and clicking loudly about migraines.

Electric Drummond
Personal computer manufactured by Dancing Henry founder Sir Henry Drummond in the 1920s. While most computers at the time were enormous steel contraptions that took up entire rooms, Sir Drummond envisioned something more compact and accessible, and commissioned what would become the first ever home computer. Featuring a 2-button keypad, the five-stone monitor was capable of displaying up to 1 digit, and Drummond would delight his guests by seeming to magically produce either a 1 or a 0 on the screen in as little as 30 minutes. Although Drummond eventually sold off the Electric Drummond company, its principles had a profound influence on modern technology, and it is a direct inspiration for the binary code that still underpins most digital technology today.

Eric Z. Arnold
American born inventor of the EZ-Arnold range of kitchen products, an array of devices designed to overcome common kitchen problems such as unopenable bottles, leaking teabags, and purple toast. Initially rising to fame on the Home Shopping Network, Arnold boasted that with the use of his EZ-Arnold devices he could prepare and cook a five-course meal in under 7 minutes, claiming he never left home without them. Tragedy struck, however, on a self-catering holiday in rural France when Arnold’s luggage was lost and he was forced to survive on his own for an entire week without the use of his user-friendly kitchen gizmos. He was eventually discovered dead in his cottage two weeks later, having died of malnutrition on the kitchen floor while attempting to prise open a can of beans with a plastic fork, and missing several body parts in apparently unconnected stove and blender accidents.

Just Shoot Me
2004 documentary film in which film-maker and political crusader Buxton Hunt took a critical look at American gun culture, examining the effect that assault weapons have on the human body by launching on a strict 30-day regime of shooting himself in the face every morning with a pistol purchased from a high street store. Initially planned as a feature, the film eventually caused quite a storm in the shorts competition at Cannes.

Alf Ralph
Television painter who gained fame with a series entitled “Any Guesses” in which he would challenge the audience to identify the subject of a partially completed painting, asking them if they could “tell what it is yet?”. The show was finally cancelled after 10 years, when the audience grew tired of the conceit and implored Ralph to reveal the identity of the painting he’d been working on in every show for the last decade. Ralph was forced to admit that he’d been making it up as he went along, but suggested that it looked “kind of like a bunny rabbit, but with squintier eyes and a pineapple where his face should be”.

Speculator Speculators
In the 1980s there emerged a new group of businessmen known as ’stock market speculators’ who would make money by gambling on the troughs and peaks of the stock market. After the recession of the early 20th twentieth century there was a public backlash against individuals who exploited the market for their own gain, causing a renewed focus on these men. This led to the formation of a group known as ’speculator speculators’ who began to bet on the fortunes of these speculators, exchanging tips about their speculating habits and publishing information on their personal lives in order to get a better picture of their prospects. Often an unusual day at the stock market would result in speculators receiving a raft of abusive e-mails and phone calls from people who had speculated on them, and the weight of this pressure culminated in an unprecedented number of suicides among the speculator community in 2011 which led to the eventual demise of their profession. Around this time a new group sprung-up of so called ’speculator speculator speculators’, who speculated as to what the speculator speculators would speculate on now that their were no more speculators, suggesting that they would assume the position of the former speculators on the stock exchange. However, the speculator speculators confounded the speculator speculator speculators by pronouncing the stock market to be ‘actually very boring’, and both groups eventually joined forces, electing to spend the rest of their days at the pub, speculating on such things as how many water pistols they would need to take down a jumbo jet, and who could fit the most marshmallows into their mouth.

Digest #000,007

The Dancing Henry editorial office has received a lot of correspondence this week asking for our thoughts on illusionist Derren Brown’s impressive ability to predict the national lottery – suggesting that this stunt warrants an entry in the almanac. Long time readers will know better however, as many of them will have received the free supplement with volume 57 of the twelfth edition of the almanac that contains unfailingly correct predictions for every lottery up until 2015 (the numbers generated with a formula created by Dancing Henry founder Sir Henry Drummond himself: asking a politician, or a feminist, or some other “damn fool” what they thought the numbers would be, and then picking the exact opposite). Unfortunately for many of you, this supplement is now out of print, as the Dancing Henry Organisation was simply unable to come up with a way of generating the extra revenue to keep it going.

Vibe
The fourth primary colour, and an exceptionally brilliant one (hence the common term ‘vibrant’), that was popular up until the mid 1930s, when it was aggressively marketed out of existence by the Technicolor corporation, whose 3-strip colour film process was unable to reproduce it. After the global success of Technicolor Hollywood films such as The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, and Sir Henry Drummond’s epic King of King of Kings, countries around the world scrambled to remove any traces of vibe from their homes, so as to make them look “more like the movies”. The only country to retain vibe in some form was the unimpressed France, which still claims to hold the world’s only collection of vibe-based paintings and plant-life. When any non-French person requests to view these artefacts however, they get all sniffy and pretend they don’t understand.

Johann van Cruyst
Flamboyant Dutch football manager who invented the concept of “not entirely football” – an unusual playing style in which players would form a rigid 3-5-2 formation, refuse to move either forwards or backwards, and attempt to clumsily shuffle the ball towards the opposition goal. After a disastrous early exit at the 1972 European Championships, Cruyst was fired from the job of international coach, and went on to have an illustrious career designing table-based pub games.

Cardinal Hubert Eggwell
Advisor to Queen Victoria, and keen inventor who developed one of the very first cameras in the early 19th century. Though revolutionary, the exposure time on his ‘Cardinal-cam’ was so slow that subjects were forced to sit absolutely still for as long as 3 days in order to capture an image on the primitive photographic plate. Hubert was eventually executed by the Royal Court for treason after making no attempts to stop a robbery that saw the entire crown jewel collection and estate of the monarchy being stolen right in front of his eyes, the heist having unfortunately occurred during his attempt to take a self-portrait.

Bob Bassett
Long-serving barman of the Dog and Crown inn in 1950s Sheffield who was famed for his witty, and often cutting, remarks – on one occasion informing a customer embarking on an ill-advised business venture that he’d have more luck selling bottled water (then unheard of). When the man, Ian Evian, went on to become a multi-million pound success, Bassett vowed that he would never let any man besides himself benefit from the wisdom of his famous epigrams, and eventually died of frostbite in Greenland’s Arctic tundra while unsuccessfully attempting to sell ice to Eskimos.

Organisation for an Alternative Time System (OATS)
Group of intellectuals dedicated to overhauling our current, ‘archaic’, time system in order to replace it with something less arbitrary than the 24-hour clock. Each member champions, and indeed lives by, a different system, and to date they have had no meetings due to their inability to turn up to the agreed venues at the same time.

Josef Heinzberg
World renowned physicist who accidentally succeeded in travelling back in time by one year, and proceeded to spend the next 12 months working alongside his past self in order to recapture the secret. Having finally cracked the formula the day before the present Heinzberg was due to travel back in time to help the past Heinzberg work it out, the future Heinzberg decided to take the present Heinzberg for a drink to wish him off. A rowdy celebration of their unprecedented scientific breakthrough ensued, resulting in the present Heinzberg sleeping in the next day and forgetting to travel back in time, thus severing the time loop and triggering the present, future and past Heinzberg’s to promptly forget how they had done it. All three are now said to be in a passionate relationship that the scientific community has roundly condemned as being a reckless and irresponsible distortion of the laws of time, a universe-destroying paradox waiting to happen, and ‘really icky’.

Digest #000,006

If you’d like a second chance to see “The Dancing Henry Story”, a twenty-four-part TV mini-series chronicling the life of Dancing Henry founder Sir Henry Drummond’s struggle to create the Dancing Henry Almanac – despite resistance from censorship organisations, rival publishers, the church, heavy winds and gravity – then we would welcome funding for the £2.5 million production, giving you your first chance to see it as well.

Best Dad in the World Competition
Global competition started by Dancing Henry founder Sir Henry Drummond in 1946, in an attempt to redress the worrying post-war situation of women being seen as almost equal to men. Ever year, Sir Drummond would scour newspapers and magazines from around the world to find cases of extraordinary heroism in the name of fatherhood, and the earliest winners of the competition would be men who had been willing to sacrifice everything for their children, and would be rewarded for their efforts with 20 shillings and a piece of crockery which they could show off to their wife if she ever got uppity. However, in 1954 Sir Drummond was approached by several men claiming to be winners of the competition and demanding financial recompense. On investigating further, Drummond discovered that the market had in fact been flooded by counterfeit trophies in the form of drinking mugs, rendering the authentic trophies almost meaningless and resulting in Drummond being rather bitter about the whole affair. Nowadays the competition is regarded as something of a joke, with millions of fathers a year being awarded the title by persons completely unauthorised by the Dancing Henry estate. For several years, the Dancing Henry legal team has been fighting in the courts to bring these (often very young) offenders to justice, and they are speculated to be receiving a hefty settlement sometime in the next 3 years.

Bjorn Ilsson
Swedish pop-star whose music is so bland that almost 950 million people worldwide have bought and listened to his records without even noticing. His albums are in fact so unremarkable that it takes a trained expert to pick one out in a record collection, and it is estimated that one in ten people have one of his CDs on their shelves and don’t realise.

Orno Walberg
After sweeping the Academy Awards with his famed 1943 movie masterpiece Civilian Harry (see About the Almanac for his connection to Dancing Henry founder Sir Henry Drummond), film director Orno Walberg became the stuff of film legend when every single one of his subsequent efforts was subjected to extensive interference and re-cutting by the AOK studios, resulting in a string of some of the messiest, shoddiest films ever released. Walberg spoke frequently and eloquently about his struggles with the studio, and critics speculated that he was responsible for some of the finest lost masterpieces in cinema history. However, after Walberg’s death in 1981, the extent to which he had mythologised his own career became known for the first time when AOK Home Video released a boxed set of all of his films with the missing footage reinserted. Fans of the maverick director were somewhat disconcerted to find that almost all of the unseen material consisted of Walberg slapping his penis against his Best Director Oscar and repeatedly shouting “You can’t touch me! I’m an ARTIST!”.

Tacamahacca
Ancient cannibalistic tribe, the elders of which eat each others eyes as delicacies. As this tradition has not been carried on, their days now consist of stumbling around while their children laugh at them.

Joanna Jameson
19th century seamstress who claimed one day to be receiving communications from the ghost of William Shakespeare, and used automatic writing to set down a play which she claimed to have come from the pen of the bard himself. On examining the play, experts concluded that not only was it of an authentic Shakespearrean style, but was one of his most exceptional and technically brilliant works. A London run of the play was rushed into production, but was soon cancelled after Jameson unfortunately let slip whilst drunk that the whole thing had in fact been a fraud, and she had simply written the play herself. Disgusted, the drama community declared her to be a liar of the most despicable kind and promptly had her cast into the Thames. Several years later, a parlour maid named Elsie Stapleton claimed to be in contact with Jameson, and penned several plays whilst in seance with her that were proven by experts in the field to be absolutely genuine. Consequently, Jameson ended up having an illustrious posthumous career.

Morgan Jones
A man of no consequence, but with an agent so good that he is able to manufacture the inclusion of his name in any publication he wishes. Appears here courtesy of CKP management.

Odantia
Legendary underwater civilisation. According to myth, it was crushed by the sinking city of Atlantis, and the many Odantian scholars and enthusiasts have understandably developed an all-consuming hatred for their Atlantean counterparts. Because of this, many have now secretly joined their rivals on expeditions to seek the more famous of the sunken cities which, when found, they plan to destroy, thus exposing the ruins of Odantia, which they hope to use as an aquatic base for an extensive smear campaign against their hated Atlantean enemies.

Fulimer
A piece of advanced scientific equipment, designed by Dr Theodore Pocket in order to gain higher levels of precision in temperature readings. The function of the fulimer is to measure the temperature of a thermometer, and then add or subtract this from the reading it gives, ensuring a bias-free measurement. Such was the impact of Pocket’s invention that not only did it scoop the 1979 Nobel prize, but has often been cited as the inspiration for the fulometer – an invention designed by Professor John Chocolate to measure the temperature-bias of a fulimer, which was awarded the prize in 1980. This in turn was thought to influence next year’s winner, the fulomometer, and by extension the fulomomiator, fulomomiatormeter and the fulomomiatormetermatic. In fact, some unimpressed members of the scientific community have gone as far as suggesting that every Nobel prize for the last 26 years has been awarded to an invention that has simply taken the principle of the fulimer and multiplied it to ludicrous extremes.

Digest #000,005

Many concerned readers have written to inquire whether or not the Dancing Henry Almanac is carbon-neutral. We would like to reassure you all that not only are we not carbon-neutral in the slightest, but we have in fact gone one better and are opposed to carbon in all forms.

The Dancing Henry Organisation has always been a trendsetter (one of the first, in fact), and our anti-carbon policy was put in place long before the rise of the so-called ‘green’ movement when, in 1953, a scientific study commissioned by Dancing Henry founder Sir Henry Drummond to investigate the physical make-up of members of the most reviled groups on Earth (including Nazis, Gay Catholics, and Vegetarians Who Eat Fish) found that a significant portion of their body mass was carbon-based. Shortly after, Sir Henry instituted a policy forbidding the drinking of carbonated drinks, the breathing of carbon dioxide, and the making of carbon copies in the Dancing Henry offices. A hastily scrawled memo also led to an accidental prohibition on car bonnets in the Dancing Henry car park which remains in place even today.

But enough about us… on with the digest.

Jason Fleming
Author of “Learn How to Write Books” so poorly written and incomprehensible that only the most patient of readers was able to decipher them. This is a shame, as those who did go to the effort found that the advice within them was actually extraordinarily helpful.

Pimentoa
Italian village situated high on the slopes of a dormant volcano. Despite a prediction by experts that it would erupt shortly after Christmas 1926, the villagers remained adamant that they wanted to stay, and staged an elaborate ceremony to mourn their impending deaths. When the expected eruption did not happen, scientists amended the predicted date to Christmas 1927, but after another extravagantly grief-stricken ceremony, the volcano still remained dormant. Experts again moved their estimate back a year, and this pattern has now been repeated every year since, resulting in three generations of children that have grown up to the incessant sobbing of parents convinced that they will never live into adulthood.

Bruno Bandi
Legendary method actor whose most famous role was that of an ordinary mechanic living in poverty on the East Side of New York. In an effort to maintain something of the purity and integrity of the performance, Bandi made the brave decision to refrain from ever committing it to film, and so dedicated was he to his craft that he carried the role from the moment of his birth right up to the point of his death.

Liam Burns
Obituary writer for The Times that became so respected in the 1950s for the exquisitely eloquent epitaphs he crafted for the rich and famous that he need only announce a death for it to became accepted as fact. After his first attempt at a serious novel flopped spectacularly, Burns became bitter and began to use his influence to “kill off” any public figures whom he took a disliking to. Victims of his column would thereafter find it impossible to gain employment, or to be taken seriously by any of the official living. In one famous incident, then Prime Minister Harold Wilson returned to London after a country holiday to find that his death had been reported by Burns in The Times that morning, and subsequently taken up by all the major media. On attempting to enter his home at 10 Downing Street, Wilson was turned away by a security guard with the immortal words “Who are you kidding, Deadzo?”.

Gnusmas
Moroccan dish, often called the most duplicitous food on earth, so disgusting at first taste that it can – and usually does – induce vomiting. However, the aftertaste is so sweet that the prospect of another serving is irresistible. Frequently served in Moroccan restaurants with a side-dish of a cloth and bucket.

Koyanisqat
A state of being which many Native Americans believe can be achieved in place of death if, at the point of dying, your will is strong enough and you are able to retain consciousness. Although the body cannot move in any way, and may in fact appear to be dead, the person is actually extremely lucid and at last able to clearly perceive all the rights and wrong, truths and falsities of the Universe, as well as being highly attuned to everything in their surroundings. Unfortunately, as the person is unable to communicate this wisdom, the Indians soon grow tired of them and bury them anyway.

Digest #000,004

Our fourth digest now online. Those of you who believe in karma might want to take a moment now to reflect on whatever mind-bogglingly selfless act of human kindness you performed to earn this experience.

Apologies to those of you who had to pick up this digest from the post office. You weren’t home when we tried to deliver it, and we couldn’t fit this amount of awesome through the letterbox.

Tom Dodge
Legendary western gunfighter, allegedly so quick on the draw that he was able to unholster his gun and shoot a man dead before they had begun to draw on him, and sometimes even before they realised they were duelling. In Tombstone in 1873, he killed 14 duellers in the space of one month – three while they were reaching for their guns, five before they’d had a chance to load, four who were still in bed, one person yet to arrive in town, and one toddler who hadn’t even learned how to shoot yet. When a local sheriff become suspicious of these self-defence killings, Dodge, afraid of jail, decided to commit suicide. However, in an ironic twist of fate, he found he was too quick for himself and managed to draw his gun and put a bullet in his own head before he could shoot himself. Dodge’s super-quick draw has made him the hero of every schoolboy since.

Anti-Protest Protest
While watching an anti-war protest in North London in 2004, a group of bored students decided it would be fun to protest against them, and facetiously started up a demonstration at the edge of the crowd which proclaimed “We Hate Protests”. The anti-war demonstrators were so incensed at this action that they joined the students in order to protest the protest that had interrupted theirs. This ‘anti-protest’ group soon infiltrated tube stations, and caused such a disturbance that angry commuters also decided to protest the protest. As the chaos spread it was condemned by MPs, who pronounced it the largest and most pointless outbreak in British history, and promptly joined the protest. It was eventually broken up by police, its infectious irony apparently lost on them, and the protesters reluctantly shuffled home.

Atlantopacific Octagon
Legendary oceanic area, bordered by eight different points on the globe, which conspiracy theorists claim is a hotbed of alien activity, pointing to the fact that more ships and aircraft have gone missing there then anywhere else on the planet. The phenomenon was later proven to be the result of simple statistical inevitability, resulting from the fact that the area in question constitutes over 95% of the Earth’s surface.

Liv Edeht
This supposed Slovakian farmhand caused a tabloid storm after claiming to be possessed by the devil. However, after the Church of Slovakia filed a suit for blasphemy, it was revealed that he was not possessed, but was in fact the devil himself. After being fined 2,500 koruna for wasting the court’s time, he was sent packing to the underworld.

Genital Retraction Syndrome
Psychological illness in which victims are unable to escape the impression that their genitals are retracting into their body and do everything in their power to prevent their disappearance – often utilising ropes or adhesive materials that ultimately do more damage to their penis than the imagined disease ever could. Relatively common in parts of Asia and Africa, it is generally thought to be a culture-specific syndrome, and most psychologists blame its prevalence on the spreading of rumours through unsubstantiated reports in pseudo-academic journals. Not to be confused with Genital Withdrawal Syndrome, which shares the exact same symptoms but is in fact a genuine illness.

Fact File: Cluderday

Cluderday is a day of the week discovered by temporal entrepreneur Josh Cluderay. Whilst at University, Cluderay became frustrated with the traditional week structure (or ‘weak structure’ as he calls it), and resolved to find a way to change it. After unsuccessfully attempting to create an extra day in the middle of the week, primarily for snacking, Cluderay hit upon a discovery that was to change his life. In his own words, from a 2009 television interview;

“One week, for no reason I can think of, I suddenly found myself doing the laundry on a Saturday. Although initially disorientated and somewhat disturbed by this unwanted change in my routine, I wondered what would happen if I were to do all my Sunday tasks a day early, effectively transforming Saturday into Sunday. I soon discovered that this has the surprising effect of unlocking a new day in the week between Sunday and Monday, which I came to call Cluderday. The name, by the way, was seen as arrogant by some, but then all great discoverers have had to endure this criticism. Just ask Sunday Browning. Or Colonel Wednesday.”

Carrying with it none of the pressures of any of the ‘officially’ sanctioned week days, Cluderday has proved to be an invigorating addition to the week, and is (as Cluderay puts it) “far more useful than a Saturday, which – let’s face it – is really only there for professional footballers and Simon Cowell.”

Scholars have suggested that Cluderay’s mastery over calendrial manipulation springs from the fact that he was born on the 29th of February, and therefore exists independently of mainstream time.

Drummond Archives: The Encyclopaedia of Toast

After Dancing Henry Almanac founder Sir Henry Drummond’s tragic death in the spring of 1977, several of his unreleased writings, his photograph albums and his comprehensive library of toenail clippings were released to the public. Among them was a project that Sir Henry had begun in 1969 with a view to it one day being as big, if not bigger, than the Dancing Henry Almanac.

From the fragments we have left it is hard to imagine how much success The Encyclopaedia of Toast would really have enjoyed, but based on the glimpses we have into this fascinating project the opinion here at the Dancing Henry editorial office is that it would have been considerable.

Amongst the articles that only survive in note form is Toast: Through the Empire and Beyond. A potted history of the impact toast has had across the globe, it describes such historical events as the great American Toast Rush of the 1840s – after which toast prospectors would search far and wide for abandoned toasters, and then sift through the crumb trays for even the smallest piece. Thanks to his extensive travel experience, Sir Drummond was also able to make the startling revelation that everything in Australia was not only upside down, but also backwards, topsy-turvy, inside-out and the wrong way round. Among his writings is a fascinating discourse on how Australian toast must be imported in loaves, and is then put into a “breader”. Any unwanted bread can then be sold to other countries around the world – “thus the cycle of toast continues”. Such claims would undoubtedly have upset the rather blinkered world of toast scholarship, and it is perhaps because of this that Sir Henry felt it best to suppress it.

This, however, is the 21st century, and we are now proud to be able to present to you the only piece that survives in full: Sir Henry Q. Drummond’s guide to…

BREADBINS: FINDING THE RIGHT HOME FOR YOUR BREAD

Buying a breadbin is not something you can do one Saturday morning before the cricket whilst wandering lazily into your local kitchenware store. It requires careful thought and attention, and you must be absolutely committed to making the correct choice of breadbin. Here are a few pointers to make sure you get the perfect model for you, and for your bread.

KNOWING WHERE YOU OUGHT TO SHOP IN ORDER TO GET THE RIGHT ONE, AND HOW YOU SHOULDN’T BE LAZY AND BUY A BREADBIN FROM THE FIRST SHOP YOU SEE BUT SHOULD INSTEAD GO FAR AND WIDE SEARCHING FOR THE PERFECT BUY
You shouldn’t be lazy and buy a breadbin from the first shop you see, but should go far and wide searching for the perfect buy. Ideally, a shop that specialises in breadbins is best as there will be expert sales assistants on hand to help you make your decision. However, with the help of this guide you shouldn’t need them.

Why not try selecting one from a specialist mail-order catalogue? You will have access to virtually every make of breadbin possible, and some of them retail for as little as seven shillings. Buying in a shop is perhaps better though, as you get a much better look at the breadbin you want to buy and you have the opportunity to test it out (but only if the store permits it, you scallywag).

THINK ABOUT THE SIZE, FOR GOD’S SAKE!
Don’t be a damn fool and just buy the biggest breadbin you can. Bigger isn’t always better. Think carefully about the size of bread you normally buy. Do you go for the big loaves or the small loaves? Try and buy a breadbin that fits your preferred loaf snugly. It must have room to breathe, but not TOO much. Unlike a woman, a loaf of bread is a deeply thoughtful, introspective creature, and too much space will emphasise its solitude, making it too aware of its own insignificance, and the utter futility of its life.

If you have access to a local cornershop, or private bakery, you can replace your bread when you need it. If you live in a more rural area though, and your visits to the shop are more spread out you will need to buy in advance and will require a bread bin that holds more than one loaf. The latter option is also preferable if you eat a great deal of bread, or feel that your loaf needs a companion. This can lead to problems though – and it is best to make sure you eat both loaves evenly, as working your way through one first can leave it feeling inferior to the other. Loaf rivalry is one of the prime causes of premature staling, and should be avoided at all costs, you thoughtless blaggard.

CONSIDER THE ENTRANCE, YOU DAMN FOOL
Look carefully at the entrance to your breadbin. How does it open? Is it a smooth action or is it jerky and awkward? Will your loaf fit through? Proper care must be taken to ensure that the action remains smooth, so consider hiring a man-servant to operate and maintain it for you.

DON’T BE SO GOD-DAMNED SELFISH!
Consider your bread’s needs. If necessary, take a loaf into the shop before you buy and try putting it inside. Does it look sufficiently jovial? Is it perhaps squashed and uncomfortable? If you are still unsure, enquire at the store if it is possible to leave it overnight, then check back in the morning. This is not a good idea if your bread is of a nervous disposition as leaving it in a strange breadbin overnight could be catastrophic. If you’re not sure whether your bread has a sturdy enough character, then contact the manufacturer who should be happy to help. Alternatively, leave a gramophone with a wax record of yourself murmuring comforting words outside the breadbin. Be careful though, if the bread catches on to your ruse it will NOT be pleased.

With all this in mind you can make your decision. Don’t be a god-damned ignorant fool and choose one based on looks. Perhaps an ivory bread bin will impress your fool friends, but it will not impress your bread, you attention-seeking scoundrel. A breadbin that seems out of place in your kitchen or clashes with the colour scheme is worth buying as long as you’re sure you’ve bought the right one. If it bothers you that much simply have your walls repainted or buy a new kitchen.

Digest #000,003

In this historic third instalment of the Dancing Henry Almanac we bring you a digest more prestigious than Robocop 3, more succinct than Return of the King and more action packed than Three Colours Red.

Numerologists would have us believe that 3 is the magic number, but as anyone with a brain and a mouth and a copy of the Dancing Henry Almanac will tell you, the magic number is in fact considerably higher. More on this in digest #366,841.

Colin Cloud
Downbeat poet who produced numerous well-received collections, despite his poems being so complex that no one on earth was actually able to understand them – a fact which caused Cloud to have severe bouts of depression and pronounce himself a “misunderstood genius and outcast of the human race”. That is until one day, when he received a jubilant letter from an A-Level English student who had managed to glean some meaning from one line of an obscure poem published years before. Cloud promptly committed suicide.

Kavalian Photography
Field of research pioneered by new-age French physicist Charles Kavalier, in which he claimed it was possible to actually photograph someone’s life-force (or ‘aura’) using a camera constructed out of opposing sheets of material which beamed magnetic radiations through the subject and onto a photographic plate. Although the apparatus did in fact work, Kavalier was disgraced when he recommended that several of his clients undergo dangerous surgery in order to remove the cancers or tumours which his photographs had revealed, resulting in one of the perfectly healthy patients dying on the operating table. After he was challenged on his fatal misdiagnosis, it was discovered that the ominous ‘tumour’ on the photograph actually depicted nothing more than Kavalier’s own thumb in front of the lens.

Graham Alexanderson
Legendary film thespian who came to prominence in the 2010s during the heyday of “motion capture” technology. In 2018 he won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role as an armchair in “Melbank House”. The performance still stands up as one of remarkable poise and stillness, although eagle eyed fans have pointed out that precisely 57 minutes and 6 seconds into the blu-ray disc of the film it is possible to observe the armchair twitching slightly and scratching its bottom.

Ley-Bys
Small areas believed by the ancients to be places of mystical energy, ley-bys are typically found just on the edge of ley-lines – roughly every couple of miles.

Yawasuwi
Insignificant Japanese floating island, which provokes such indifference in the larger islands that it is often allowed to drift freely away (once reaching as far as San Francisco) before it is grudgingly towed back in. There is evidence that the islanders share this casual disdain for themselves, as theirs are the only schools in the world where every child is picked last for PE.

John Roswell
Once highly respected conspiracy theorist who on the 4th of July 1976 made the tragic mistake of watching a documentary about the Roswell conspiracy and reading a book on Descartes in the same afternoon. This potent combination forced his sense of reality to collapse in on itself, and in a state of feverish paranoia he decided to redecorate his living room by scrawling the now famous words “I think, therefore I must be in on it” across the walls with his own blood. His body was discovered in a sewer in New Mexico several months later, and forensic scientists were able to a retrieve a further sheaf of notes from inside his stomach, in which Roswell declares his intention to “keep myself hidden from me at all costs, lest I should ever be discovered by myself and be forced to divulge the knowledge I have of my involvement in this blatant conspiracy.” It is believed that Roswell ate the notes in an attempt to destroy the evidence, and the incident was initially reported as one of simple paranoia-induced insanity. However, his autopsy later revealed that he had died as a result of several blows to the head which investigators believe were self-inflicted for the express purpose of getting himself to talk. As a result, Roswell’s controversial views have been somewhat vindicated – as it appears that he really was out to get himself.

Digest #000,002

As if the first wasn’t enough, Dancing Henry is now proud, nay pleased, to bring you another instalment of its legendary Almanac, available online for the first time since last Friday.

Poinisata
Tiny island in the East Indian Archipelago whose economy is entirely dependent on tourism. Its one and only town consists of a small hotel and twelve tourist information offices – each one carrying a wide variety of brochures extolling the virtues of the other eleven. It is often called “The Leaflet Capital of the World” and has been named in many travel magazines as being the most frustrating holiday experience on Earth.

Alan Quarrier
18th century British explorer born in the East Coast town of Filey, and the first man to sail around the world. Widely credited as bringing about the demise of the then popular “flat-earth” theory, until it was discovered that Quarrier himself had been a supporter of this idea, believing the edge of the Earth to lie just West of the Pennines. His epic global journey is now thought to have been undertaken for the simple purpose of visiting his relatives in Blackpool.

Ted Smith
Though he was universally regarded as the stupidest man in history, no one actually bothered to tell Ted Smith and he managed to lead an illustrious life – forming numerous groundbreaking mathematical theories, and even managing to create a 6-dimensional object – before someone finally let him know him what an idiot he was. The downtrodden Smith eventually conceded that his many unprecedented scientific advances must have been dumb luck, and he spent the last few years of his life in his attic, picking his nose and eating it.

Dr Do-a-lot
Legendary veterinarian who, despite following a career as a doctor of animals, had an uncanny ability to “talk to the humans”, and could therefore diagnose them with an accuracy which other doctors could only dream of.

Greg Best
Horror-fiction writer who achieved unprecedented heights of forgetability with a series of novels about small towns being attacked by hordes of tiny creatures. So unmemorable were his stories that he managed to get away with using the exact same plot 24 times, merely changing the names of characters, and the species of creature attacking them. The public were so oblivious to this, and Best so shameless at exploiting their limited attention spans, that it is estimated that although his last book contained around 60,000 words, less than 50 of these had changed from the previous novel.

Fetchle
An internet search engine developed by NASA that returned such a staggering array of information, for even the simplest of search queries, that it instantly brought the lives of anyone who used it into horrifying perspective, causing them to spontaneously die in despair.

Dr. Theodor Fritz
Renowned 19th century psychiatrist whose many controversial theories were initially dismissed by his peers as “unscientific fantasies”, but eventually found acclaim both within the academic community and with the public at large. His most famous essay, in which he claimed that every man secretly harbours a desire to make love to his mother, and that this desire should be embraced rather than repressed, had by 1894 become so widely accepted that sexual relations between a mother and son were now commonplace. This behaviour eventually fell out of fashion in the early 1900s, however, around the same time that Dr. Fritz retired from psychiatry. Fritz claimed that society was simply not ready for such ideas, and added that the movement was essentially redundant now that his own mother had finally “put out”.