Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess

If you don’t know about this book, don’t read it.

Do, however, watch the film from 2008. It’s a perfect, unforgettable small-budget movie. In the film, Grant Mazzy is a shock-jock radio personality who has been fired from his job in the city. He now hosts his radio program in the tiny Ontario town of Pontypool, from the basement of a church with his producer. He hates everything about this job. The day starts out rough because of a massive snowstorm, but then creepy stuff starts happening:

The movie is a stone classic. It’s not gross or upsetting in any way, just extremely creepy and sinister. It was directed by Bruce McDonald of Hard Core Logo fame (if you don’t know that one, watch this space).

I’ve posted a YouTube stream of the full movie at the bottom of the page. Again: if you haven’t seen it, do it.

If you’re more an aural person, here’s a radio play drawn from the audio of the film, by CBC radio:

But don’t read the book unless you love the movie. Even the author agrees (emphasis mine):

The film bears little resemblance to the novel. How could it? There is a long line of former producers to the project who argued against my involvement, but, though I often suspected they were right, I think in the end I was the right person, because no one had a lower regard for this infuriating book than myself.

I felt great energy in tossing the book aside.

It’s quite an accomplishment to make something so incredible based on this insane, ugly, barely readable book. If it weren’t for the title and a couple of interesting basic ingredients, it would be impossible to connect the book to the film. This book is vicious and gruesome, testing almost every limit of taste and form.

It has redeeming moments where the writing is kinetic and surprising, almost like a Stephen King novel:

For now, however, Les is just driving his truck, with Mary breathing in the passenger seat beside him.

He decides he’ll drive her to the hospital and phone the police. They should probably call the military. In the rear-view mirror a car that Les has already seen today appears. The detective is catching up, and Les reacts by pushing his foot down on the gas pedal. As his truck surges, Mary rolls over against the passenger window and dies with her teeth rung around an orange button. Her first act as a dead person is to seize, jacking her head up, lifting the button, freeing up the door, which opens.

Her second act as a dead person is to drop out of a speeding car pursued by a detective.

That’s great stuff. What isn’t great is the body horror, drug use, child abuse, incest, mutilation, animal cruelty, and a dozen other wildly offensive things that mercifully never made it to the film.

Here’s the film. Not sure how long this will last:

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