Heading Home (2006, directed by Jane Rose) is an independent short film about a mad scientist (Ean Sheehy) obsessed with immortality, whose frenzied experiments coincide with the disappearance of local children. His wife (Jenny Mundy-Castle) uncovers his secret and with the cooperation of a huge, menacing man called "The Butcher" (Chuck Bunting) attempts to do something about it. Her efforts, shown in flashback, lead to a chilling, twisted dénouement.
The film made the Official Selection at the Pretty/Scary and H.P. Lovecraft film festivals in 2006. Rose says,
Ramsey Campbell’s story “Heading Home” was given to me as a reading assignment at some point in grade school. Though I can’t remember exactly what grade I was in, I’m sure it must have been around Hallowe'en and I was of an age for such things to make a lasting impression on me. The twist ending came as a shock and combined with the clever title caused the story to remain in my memory for years. Campbell’s visceral descriptions translated easily into mental images; whether I knew it or not, I probably came up with the idea for a movie version of Heading Home then.
Watching Heading Home took me right back to when I was nine years old. From that age I was allowed to spend Friday nights at my Granny's house. I say "house", but her house consisted of two rooms, one unheated, on the ground floor of a gloomy Victorian tenement building with no hot running water and an outside toilet. If you wanted to pay a visit to the bathroom in the night, you'd have to take a big iron key and a spluttering candle stuck to a saucer with melted wax; make your way outside down a cold, dark stone corridor (the "close"); sit in an equally dark little stone room, shivering and shaking; then run like hell back to the safety of the fireside before the "man" got you. I loved it. It was the ideal setting for experimenting with terror, and in this Gothic haven I was allowed to stay up past midnight to watch late-night horror films.
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