‘The Otherwise’: The unmade horror film written by Mark E Smith
The writing talents of Prestwhich’s finest, Mark E Smith, seemingly knows no bounds. Not content with having penned upwards of 30 studio albums for post-punk pioneers The Fall, Smith also found time to write a memoir, release solo material, and even write an entire screenplay. It is a wonder he ever found time to fit in all the drinking, smoking, and slagging people off. Throughout his life, Smith remained one of the most prolific and original artists the United Kingdom has ever produced, and he worked tirelessly right up until his tragic death in 1960.
During his adolescence, Smith dedicated himself almost solely to the pursuit of music and literature, finding himself a natural disciple of rebellious characters in both worlds. Throughout it all, the budding young songwriter always seemed to be drawn to the darker side of the cultural spectrum. The first single he ever bought, for instance, was the proto heavy metal anthem ‘Paranoid’ by Black Sabbath and, although The Fall rarely bordered on metal, he carried those dark influences throughout his work.
Of course, The Fall was formed in the wake of the punk explosion, which fit naturally with Smith’s inherent rebellious streak. However, the band shared very little in common with what was thought by the musical mainstream as ‘punk’ – there were no mohawks, no bondage trousers, and no vacuous cries of ‘anarchy in the UK’. Smith and The Fall were anti-pop in every sense of the word, but that does not mean they weren’t influenced by the punk years.
The advent of punk coincided with a rise in the popularity of horror films and ‘video nasties’ in the United Kingdom, which perhaps provides an answer to why The Fall regularly mentioned themes of horror and darkness within their music.
From the title of their debut album, Live At The Witch Trials, to their cover of the northern soul classic ‘There’s A Ghost In My House’, there is no mistaking Smith’s love for horror cinema. In fact, the band’s 1982 track ‘Hip Priest’ appeared, albeit briefly, in the classic horror film The Silence of the Lambs.
Back in 2015, around the time of The Fall’s penultimate record Sub-Lingual Tablet, Smith took this appreciation for cinema to a new level by co-writing a horror screenplay alongside Graham Duff. Entitled The Otherwise, the film stars Mark E Smith as himself and is centred around The Fall recording a new EP in an isolated studio on Pendle Hill, near Burnley. Meanwhile, the Lancashire moors which surround the band are overrun with satanic biker gangs and Scottish clansmen who have time-travelled from the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745.
It is certainly an original pitch, but tragically, the film never came to fruition. The unique blend of Smith’s dry wit, the music of The Fall, and the strange historical angle of the plot proved too much for film studios at the time, who denounced the project as simply being too weird. On top of that, Smith passed away in early 2018, which meant that the production of the film could never get underway, even if it did find a backer. Nevertheless, the screenplay of The Otherwise has since been published and is essential reading for any fans of The Fall or horror films in general.
The screenplay shows a side to Smith that was rarely seen within his confrontational onstage persona or in the lyricism of The Fall. Seeing the frontman express all his weird, wonderful, and, let’s face it, nerdy interests through the medium of film – albeit an unused screenplay – is a rare treat for Fall fans. Despite the horror leanings of the film, the thought of Mark E Smith taking time away from scaring interviewers or firing band members to think about Scottish ghosts from the Jacobite Revolution is undeniably sweet.
