The Mighty Blowhole

Figplucker's 21st Century Blues: Drunken Spree (Skip James)

2012-01-27T04:23:00.000-06:00

It's the Year of the Blues here at the Mighty Blowhole...

As we move further into the new millennium, it's appropriate to look at a musical genre that, as it ages, seems to become more a part of our distant past than our musical present,even though the influence of the blues is still vibrant in the music of today...

So, to honor the blues, Figplucker's handpicking a variety of vintage blues songs, rerecording em for the 21st Century (seemed a bit disingenuous to rerecord 'em + try to make 'em sound like they were recorded 100 years ago), + posting 'em here on the blog for your enjoyment. Or whatever.

First up: Drunken Spree, originally recorded by Skip James, a classic Delta blues...

Leave a comment + let me know what you think.

Nasty, Nasty Part III: in which the bugs/rats/gators/abortions eat half our hero's ass

2012-01-26T20:24:00.000-06:00

Greetings, ummm, whoever shows up for these things we do here! Welcome to First-Draft Theater! I'm your host, Whichever Name I Use On This Particular Website!

Do you remember my previous posts on "nasty novels?" Well, you don't have to, because this is the Internet and they're still up there and you can go read them whenever you wish by clicking LINK I or LINK II.

Well, I've gotten just the least lil' ol' bit obsessed and have been buying up a lot of the sumbitches on ABE and Amazon marketplace, wherever I can find 'em cheap, so I have quite the shelf of bug/rat/critter/fish reading ahead of me. I also have a lot of it behind me, but unfortunately I wasn't writing reviews back when I went through a lot of these books. I also read most of them so long ago that I don't remember much of anything about them. And, since I've got a big stack I haven't even read the first time, it's not likely I'll be re-reading these anytime soon... but, that's no reason you can't have fun looking at the covers, which, as much as it bruises my ego, is probably most of the appeal of these posts, really. And if I do re-read 'em, I can always put up a more in-depth review later, right? Who among you is mighty enough to stop me!?

So, here's a gallery of covers, and I'll tell you whatever I happen to remember about any of 'em, by way of really-really half-assed reviews.

We bought a zoo! A zoo of endless horror! First priority - as in life - is a visit to the cathouse!

I don't remember much about this book. I think it was kinda mild for a critters-on-the-rampage book, but I think I liked it okay.

Don't remember this one, either, but I always like Nick Sharman's writing, so I'm sure it's good and probably ruthlessly gory. I may have to re-read this...

From the cathouse to the bughouse!

I don't remember much about this one, either... I think it was kinda ordinary. But I have a thing for hoards of flies, so I may have to re-read it, too. Plus, it's Signet, and I have a fondness for Signet. (Yes, I am weird enough to like publishing houses.)

Neurotic, babbling comedian and frequent Letterman guest in the 80's Richard Lewis wrote killer-critter books? No, no. I'm pretty sure it's a different guy (a British dude) and I have a sequel to this called The Web, so I may end up having to re-read this first. I remember it being fairly standard for the genre, but that's not a bad thing.

I remember this one a bit, and I lovvvvvve Squelch. My relationship with this book began well, when I was purchasing it at the bookstore and the lady ringing it up went "Ewwww, what is that! Why do you want to read that?!" and my lil' punk-rock self was sooooo happy that this book could upset citizens that I knew, whatever kind of trash actually lurked between the pages, it would be a venerated object for me. I remember reading it in my time between classes in college and digging the sicko amounts of gore as hideous caterpillars gnawed away at human flesh, only to turn into big moths which also made humans miserable. Yay!

I think I read this more than once. It's a pretty quick read. And since it's a novelization of the really stupid 70's giant-ant movie, it's pretty stupid. But I liked it when I was a grammar school kid, so, if you're a grammar school kid, you might like it. And you should probably leave the blog immediately, 'cuz I use words like "fuck."

On to the wiggledy stuff...

The author of Squelch returns with... KILLER JELLYFISH! That walk on land! Yes! This book grabs you by the collar, throttles you, and then crams fistfuls of stupid down your throat with relentless glee! It's way-stupid, but in the funnest, sickest way possible. You will love this book even if you have to hate yourself to do it!

I recently re-read Slugs, so that'll be a full-length review appearing here next time I amass a few more critter-books read to make a slew of 'em, but Breeding Ground is the sequel. I remember it being more of the same... which is exactly what you want if you liked Slugs. Flesh-eating slugs! Does it get any nastier than that? We can hope, but I don't think so.

Now, to the Reptile House...

I remember really really liking Death Tour. I don't remember a whole lot about the actual plot - something about people going into the sewers and getting stalked by alligators living down there - but I remember liking the writing style a good bit, and being surprised that it was a lot better than I expected it to be. Probably need to re-read this one.

I loved this book in my high-school study hall. I bought my copy at a garage sale at a preacher's house across the street (where I also bought my first Edge Westerns - "The Most Violent Westerns In Print.") It made me wonder what the hell was goin' on in the secret lives of preachers, all this violence. This isn't really a horror novel so much as an adventure-in-the-wilderness thing, with people trapped in a swamp, confronting a giant alligator and having to take it on with primitive weapons. All I can say is, liked it at the time, don't know how I'd feel about it now.

Don't remember much about this other that it was kinda ordinary, but had a few instances of impressive gore, such as a gravely injured guy who wipes at something that's dangling on his face and it's his eyeball. Yay, casual-wiping-aside-of-eyeballs! The 'gator in the book is pain-crazed because it's missing half its jaw, which made me wonder how it could so effectively eat people, but, it manages.

Rats in battalions!

This is The Rats, which I previously reviewed in one of those linky-things up there. But, I remembered I had this copy, too, so here's the cover. This one was a re-release to tie-in the movie version, which featured dachshunds in rat suits, scampering around, being every bit as terrifying as you think dachshunds in rat jammies would be. They'll adorable you to death!

This is the sequel to The Rats, which I actually read first. I remember it being good and gruesome. There's a third, Domain, which I have but haven't read yet, so maybe later on that one.

Now, assorted other various and unsavories...

I liked this book a lot, it impressed the hell out of me at the time. Some weird toxic fog is unleashed in London and makes everybody exposed to it become a murderous psycho. A team of scientists in hazmat suits roam around trying to stop it, encountering people who'd committed all sorts of depraved acts. Total gore that Herbert used to be famous for.

And this was basically the same kind of deal except a darkness makes everybody go nuts. Strangely, I remember not liking this one much and thinking it was just a rehash.

And now, for the daycare section of our zoo. Prepare to be offended! Especially if you're one of those right-to-lifers (although I'd be amazed if we had any rabid right-wingers on this site after all the overtime I've put in trying to offend and alienate you)....

SPAWN!!! Possibly the sickest concept for a nasty-novel ever created! I think I remember this right, but correct me if I don't: A sick-minded damage case whose sibling died in a fire as a baby has a job burning amputated limbs and stuff in a London hospital. Sometimes he's given aborted babies to dispose of. He can't stand to do it, so he takes them home and gives them funerals in his backyard instead. One night lightning strikes his yard, revives the fetus-corpses, and they become little prenatal zombies who need blood to survive. Soon he's covered with self-inflicted infected wounds that they suck on, and he becomes desperate for more to feed his "children." Yeah. You want this book, you know you do! And who am I to judge?

Okay, that's all I've got for now. In the meantime, Twitter me! And Twitter our blog-brother KickerOfElves while you're over there! You won't regret it! And if you do, you won't regret it much because it's just a couple of Twitter follows. If that's the biggest mistake you ever made, you lead a blessed life, my child, and shall probably never be eaten by bloodsucking-zombie-fetus-babies!

Might tell you some stories but I won't tell you no lies...

2012-01-21T01:15:00.000-06:00

I don't read a lot of nonfiction books - not as much as I probably should, anyway - so putting enough of those together to make a decent post takes some time. But, I think I've got a few interesting ones for you, so, here goes, an all-non-fiction book review post. And that's the truth, phhhhttttbbh!

The Hate Factory - W. G. Stone as told to G. Hirliman (Dell/Paisano, 1982)
Eyewitness account of the infamously violent 1980 New Mexico State Penitentiary riot, which left 33 people dead, and most of those getting the hard way out, by torture and mutilation. After enduring inhumane treatment and living conditions, prisoners managed to take control of the prison and went on a rampage, destroying cellblocks, getting insanely loaded on drugs from the prison pharmacy and glue and paint thinner huffing, and exploding in rage against guards and snitches. The guards were kept as hostages and weren't killed, but they were raped so repeatedly that many were driven psychotic by the experience. Prisoners from the protective ward were killed slowly and brutally; they were burned with blowtorches, had iron bars hammered through their heads, had eyes carved out, their heads were sliced off and paraded around on sticks, they were raped with billy clubs, etc. Crazy, heinous stuff, which the book claims was a logical reaction to the vicious treatment prisoners received at the hands of the system. The prison was geared not to reform but to breed hate, violence, and prejudice. The author (or reportee, at least)was not a riot participant; he was awaiting parole so he hid out while the destruction and murder was going on. It's pretty detailed and gruesomely intense, and serves not only as a record of the carnage but as an indictment of the prison system's practices. This was probably the best-selling book that Easyriders magazine offered in the 80's, back when it was an outlaw biker mag instead of the tamed-down "motorcycle enthusiast" junk it later became, and it's written in a style that will be familiar to anyone who read the magazine during its heyday -- from the gut. Biased, to be sure, but an important and worthwhile read -- I've read it twice (the first time way up in a tree because I'm a bit odd).

Dispatches -- Michael Herr (Avon, 1978)
Detailed, beautifully-written Vietnam war memoir by a journalist who was embedded deep with the troops and had a great eye for what would capture the experience. If some scenes seem familiar it's because Herr co-wrote the screenplays for Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket and incorporated some of the real stuff. It follows the conflict from its early days through its deterioration and final days, and gives you a clear, vivid picture of what went on and what it was like. A must-read masterpiece of war reportage. Also available in Volume II of the Library of America's collection of Vietnam War reporting.

Tesla: Man Out of Time - Margaret Cheney (Dell, 1981)
Biography of the elusive super-scientist who didn't get credit for a lot of his inventions (such as radio, florescent lighting, turbines, and AC power) and -- thanks to corporate greed and crooks like Thomas Edison -- was prevented from developing a lot of other things that scientists still haven't managed to work out, such as wireless broadcasting of power, a death ray particle beam, and robots and flying machines and unlimited free energy from alternate sources. It's tragic that such a powerful mind was held back by others' greed and that despite all his gifts Tesla remained poor, struggling to feed himself and his pet pigeons, captive to his strange obsessions and neuroses. It does get dull after a while -- I wanted more focus on his inventions and explanations of them in layman's terms -- but it is well-researched and a good portrait of a very amazing man.

The Weird World of Eerie Publications - Mike Howlett (Feral House, 2010)
I've discussed Weird Magazine on this blog before, so you know I have a fascination for them. My childhood was warped by the depraved things. Most horror comics were tame, but Weird and its cousins felt wrong and forbidden, like a sort of pornography of sick-minded violence. Well, this book explores how those magazines came to be, a story almost as sleazy and trashy as the magazines themselves. The offices of Eerie Publications was a crazy place where editors would sometimes fire guns at the workers, and stories and art were stolen from any place they could snag it from, such as old pre-code comics and foreign works. They were real cut-and-paste deals, with things recycled right and left. When the comics started to run dry they tried branching out into other strange one-off magazines (I'm pretty sure an old "Peter Frampton Joins KISS!" magazine I bought is one of their works). The book is heavily illustrated but doesn't include stories; for that, your best source is a book called The Zombie Factory by Patrick O'Donnell. If you're interested in how the small, struggling press operated back in the 70's and early 80's, though, this is a very well-done examination.

Under And Alone - William Queen (Balantine, 2006)
Can't-put-it-down nonfiction about ATF agent William Queen who, undercover as biker Billy St. John, infiltrated The Mongols, a mostly-Chicano motorcycle gang that's more violent than the Hells Angels. He maintained his persona undetected for over two years and managed to become a full patch-holder. This is one brave mofo, and he writes well, too, explaining his conflict at having to testify against guys who, despite being evil criminals, had become like real brothers to him, often treating him with more kindness than his fellow ATF agents. Scary and compelling stuff, full of tense situations. Mel Gibson really flattered himself, planning to play this guy in a movie that unfortunately never happened. Recommended.

No Angel: My Harrowing Undercover Journey To The Inner Circle of the Hells Angels - Jay Dobyns & Nils Johnson-Shelton (Three Rivers Press, 2009)
Unputdownable account of an ATF agent who managed the almost-unthinkable and infiltrated the Hells Angels Mjuiotorcycle Club, posing as a hit man/debt collector for another club. On the way Jay got so wrapped up in the case he lost his real self and almost his family by becoming the outlaw biker he was pretending to be. The book is extremely well-written and compelling, full of both honest self-criticism about bad things he did and a fair amount of bragging (but hey, anyone with balls enough to infiltrate the big Red & White has the right to crow a bit). The Hells Angels come across as sympathetic yet pathetic, criminal yet noble in a way... it seems like a fair assessment overall, and there's lots of interesting detail. One of the best books I've read in a long time, highly recommended.

Walking On: A Daughter's Journey With Legendary Sheriff Buford Pusser - Dwana Pusser with Ken Beck & Jim Clark (Pelican Publishing, 2009)
With The Twelfth of August unfortunately out of print, it was about time for another Buford Pusser book, and who better to tell the story than Pusser's own daughter? Of course it's going to be heavily biased in Buford's favor, which is understandable, but Dwana actually does acknowledge some controversies, such as her father's possible involvement in assassinations of some of his enemies (who you really can't feel too sorry for since they definitely had it coming). She reveals more illegal activities almost by accident, because she seems to think they're endearing (Buford's brutality to some prisoners, the irresponsible speeds he drove -- sometimes after drinking, cruel pranks played on friends that could have endangered their lives, etc.). Despite these flaws, Buford still comes across as heroic for taking on the scumbags he shut down, and his acts of kindness are also documented. Dwana talks about the filming of the movies (she likes Joe Don Baker and The Rock a lot, but Bo Svenson was pretty much of a dick) and her own trials and tribulations concerning the tragic deaths of her parents. I'd still like to read a more intensive bio by a historian (this book is fairly light and more personal than historically detailed) but given the unfortunate lack of writing on this interesting figure, this book is a very welcome addition, and it's simply written but compulsively readable. I'd love to see a sequel if she can dig up more stories. Lots of well-chosen photos.

I Was A Murder Junkie: The Last Days of GG Allin - Evan Cohen (Recess Records, 1999)
Too-slim book chronicling the author's three weeks as a roadie for GG and his just-slightly-better-behaved bandmates. The prose is sometimes a little clumsy, but that doesn't get in the way of compulsive readability of the human-equivalent-of-a-car-wreck that's depicted. When not committing acts of violence on himself or the audience, GG is usually looking for drugs or trying to get women to pee on him. Cohen makes it clear that just being around GG was enough to turn one into something of a degenerate, and it's also clear that, to a certain extent, society deserved him. Not for the timid, but if you have an interest in GG, this is worth seeking out. Don't pay the ridiculous prices some people online have been asking, though - it's only 116 large-print pages and a lot of that is taken up by pictures or blank space; it's essentially a glorified magazine article. Comes with a CD that Cohen recorded on a microcassette recorder, mostly of GG interviews, but also with a couple of acoustic songs.

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For copious, viscous amounts of profane sillyshit you can follow me on Twitter, and then I can increase my follower count and thus reach more people to whom I can promote this blog, and then when they come to the blog I can promote my Twitter account, thus again increasing the amount I can promote the blog, etc., eventually creating a vortex which will destroy the city of Des Moines. And admit it, you fucking hate Des Moines! So smug and French-sounding with that two names and all, what's that about? They've got a comeuppance coming! So, do it.

Or, if you don't like me, perhaps you'll like KickerOfElves, who's also on Twitter. Or, follow us both - it's free, and I think we're both pretty good at it, if I do say so myself (and I have to, 'cuz nobody else is... ;P)

Memories of Pittsburgh

2012-01-16T14:14:00.001-06:00

Plundering my archives because I want to post something but have nothing new to say. The travelogue below is from a trip I took in June 2008. Enjoy
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On the Saturday night I arrived in Pittsburgh, I went to a Pirates-Blue Jays baseballgame. Who should be the starting pitcher for Pittsburgh but Paul Maholm, once astar pitcher for MSU? I don't follow baseball at all (and only went to this game because it was there and the tickets were cheap), so although I knew Maholmwas in the majors I had no idea where. The fact that he just happened to bepitching while I was in town completely blew my mind. It was one of those strings of coincidences that beggar my imagination:

1. I happen to be going to Pittsburgh.

2. The Pirates happen to be playing a home game on the one truly open night of my trip.

3. The Pirates happen to suck ass and are playing the Blue Jays, another team that happens to suck said ass, thereby making the tickets easy and cheap to obtain ($26 for a comfy, literally-behind-homeplate seat).

4. The starting pitcher on this night happens to be a recent former player from my alma mater and current place of employment, not to mention a famous-enough player that I, not a baseball fan, know who he is.

Lengthy side note: I've experienced similar strings in the past, as follows:

1. March 1994: My wife and I go to the $3 movie on a Wednesday night in Pasadena, CA (Wednesday night was double-feature-for-only-$2 night. We saw Cool Runnings and Tombstone.)

2. The theater is a huge, old-timey theater with a balcony, where we choose to sit.

3. Being a Wednesday night, the theater is not even halfway full (empty seats everywhere), yet an older couple and their apparent grandson just happen to choose to sit directly in front of us.

4. The apparent grandson just so happens to be wearing a baseball cap, which he just so happens to be wearing backwards, which just so happens to be an MSU BULLDOGS CAP, staring us right in the face. What the fuck?

1. June 2004: I attend a professional conference in Salt Lake City.

2. Rather than go to the conference's lame opening-night reception, I wander the magic-underwear-strewn streets of downtown SLC looking for an eatery, of which there are many, and I find The Melting Pot, a wonderful wonderful wonderful fondue place.

3. The hostess tells me they're full and that I'll have to make a reservation and wait two hours for a table; however, I can opt to sit at the bar and order one of their appetizer/dessert selections instead of the traditional full-course shiz. "Oh yes," I tell her. "Oh. Yes."

4. I happen to randomly sit at the bar in a position where I have a perfect view of the restaurant's front door.

5. Not 20 minutes after sitting down, I see a family I know from Starkville who have absolutely no connection to the conference I'm attending. I go speak to them, and, after we hoist our jaws off the ground, I find out they're on a vacation and just happen to be passing through SLC. What the fuck?

1. June 2006: I'm about to leave for a vacation, so, after much deliberation, I responsibly decide to do all the yard work before I go.

2. The borders of our yard are woods, and they have a great deal of poison ivy. My yard work necessitates some interaction with this devil weed, to which I am wildly allergic.

3. During such an interaction, I just so happen to touch some poison ivy (unknowingly, unintentionally) with my right index finger.

4. Later, I just so happen to blankly wipe sweat off my right eyelid with the tainted right finger.

5. Two days later, while visiting my parents, my eye swells up. I know what it is, of course, but I want to see a doctor just to make sure I'm not going to go blind. My dad tries to make an appointment with his general practitioner, but he can't see me until after the time I need to depart for our next vacation spot.

6. I love my dad, but he readily takes no for an answer, and so rather than assert himself with this doctor's staff to get me (his only son!) in sooner, he just says "Well, that's all we can do."

7. Like my dad, I also too readily take no for an answer, but this time, I just so happen to push back. I grab the phone book and look for ophthalmologists. Huntsville is a large enough city that it has several ophthalmologists. I pick one, very literally randomly. They just so happen to be able to see me immediately.

8. This ophthalmologist just so happens to have several nurses/assistants. I get the one that calls my name (i.e., I didn't pick her).

9. I tend not be chatty, but for some reason, I just so happen to strike up a conversation with my nurse. She finds out I'm originally from Huntsville, and we ask each other questions about schools.

10. I just so happen to have gotten a nurse with whom I was friends in the third grade, some 28 years before. I remembered her and her name all these years because (a) she was blonde and cute and I probably had a crush on her back then, and (b) when I performed two Elvis songs with my pal Eugene at our elementary school's talent show, she stood up and screamed, hands-to-cheeks in that time-honored way that women (and probably Morrissey) responded to the young Elvis. (Eugene and I won first place.) That reaction, I can tell you, tends to leave an impression.

What. The. Fuck?

Anyway, after the game, I ate dinner at arestaurant attached to the baseball stadium, and a group of foursteelworker-type guys came in: they all had plastic Pirates baseball helmetswith the two-holster drinkholder on the top, and they all had two cans ofBudweiser apiece in their respective holsters. I absolutely loved these guys.Meanwhile, the cover band in the bar next door played, among many other"gems," "Come on Eileen" by Dexy's Midnight Runners,"China Grove" by the Doobie Brothers, and "Roseanna" byToto. Wow.

I spent Sunday walking around downtown Pittsburgh, and I came upon a streetfestival. It took up at least one full block and was bookended by two stages.As I walked past the first stage, I saw onstage a tall man wearing a sequinedblack evening gown, a crown, high heels, and copious makeup. He waslip-synching a disco song. Then I looked at the crowd, which was very large.Oh. “It's a gay-pride festival,” I thought. Therewere people of every age, color, size, and stereotypical manner of dress, mostof whom were holding hands with someone of the same gender. A man wearing asmiling "Jesus Loves You" t-shirt handed me asanctity-of-hetero-marriage tract stamped with the seal of "Jews for Jesus,"a group I've always heard of but never actually encountered. The other stagecontained some very – um – limberdancers doing a REALLY interpretive dance to Apocalyptica's four-cellorendition of the Metallica song "The Unforgiven." Wow.

As usual, the conference-kickoff picnic was a bust. It was on theconvention-center rooftop overlooking one (or more) of the 3 rivers thatconverge in Pittsburgh, so that was neat, andthey were serving allegedly real Pittsburghfood: pierogies, brats, locally brewed beers, Klondike bars (which aren'tactually made in Pittsburgh,so what the fuck?). But the "entertainment" was a band of middle-aged menwearing matching American-flag shirts, playing horrendous covers, and engagingin the cheesiest between-song banter in the history of human hearing. (I takethis sort of thing personally.) I had just finished texting a buddy about thisgoofy scene when a storm blew up and knocked their banner over on top of themin mid-song, thus ending the picnic. No one was hurt or even too scared. It wasperfect.

Another, shorter side note: I recently got Stephen Colbert's book I Am America (And So Can You), and Iread most of it on this trip. It's so unbelievably, relentlessly funny that Ihad to stop reading it on the plane because I was cackling nonstop while therest of the plane was trying to sleep. (I'm not exaggerating; people were turning around to look at me, annoyed.) Whoever you are, please, please, pleaseget this book and read it. You will cry tears of joy.

Many folks at these presentation-laden events still don't present very well.Two years prior in Chicago,I suffered through a "distinguished" lecture by famous author HenryPetroski, eventually leaving after nodding off a few times. The one I went tothis year was even worse. It was on a super-cool aerospace topic that wasruined by the speaker's curmudgeon-ness, his complete lack of enunciatoryability, his obliviousness to the microphone (and the need for it), and hisrefusal to make an incredibly complex topic palatable for a mixed audience. Itshould go without saying that I left this one early too. The major exceptionwas a communication instructor from Penn State who talked about anengineering-specific speech class and actually brought one of her students togive a six-minute talk on the physio-chemi-mechanical properties of spider websas an example of how well engineering students can present – a brilliant idea.

One of my all-time faves, Peter Murphy, just happened to be playing a concert in Pittsburgh while I wasthere. It was at a roughly 200-seat theater a few blocks from my hotel and theconvention center. He opened with the Bauhaus song "Burning from theInside." He played "Marlene Dietrich's Favourite Poem," and Icried helplessly. He played "Crystal Wrists," and I swear that mighthave been the best live performance of a song I've ever heard, flawless andchill-bump-inducing. For his first (of three) encores, he played some of Bauhaus’ssuper-spooky "The Three Shadows Part 1" on acoustic guitar as a segueinto "A Strange Kind of Love." Then he played another Bauhaus song, "She'sin Parties," at the end of which he sang "We're jamming" a fewtimes (including "We're jamming / In the name of the lord," whichmade me laugh out loud), and then he sang "Riders on the storm" a fewtimes, as a kind of outro. He did not do "Cuts You Up," "BelaLugosi's Dead," or "Ziggy Stardust." He also didn't do "TheLight Pours Out of Me" or "All Night Long," and I REALLY wouldlike to have heard those. He was way charming and talked to the crowd a lot.The theater was about the size of a small playhouse. I had a great seat, but noseat was bad. He was VERY dramatic when he was singing, almost expressionistic,which is exactly what I imagined. I bought a badass shirt with the Deep album cover on the front and the"This is no terror ground" passage from "Strange Kind ofLove" on the back. Besides some really good new songs I don't know, theother songs I can recall are “The Line Between the Devil's Teeth” & “DeepOcean, Vast Sea” (Deep); “Huuvola” &“Gliding Like a Whale” (Cascade); “TheSweetest Drop” & maybe one more from HolySmoke; some song from Dust Ican't recall; & a song or two from Bauhaus's latest album, Go Away White. It was fucking great.

The New York Yankees were in town for a series with thePirates. I tried to get a ticket, but they were sold out, and I later found out that they were not only sold out because hordes of Yankee fans travel everywhere with the team but also because this was the first time the Yankees had played in Pittsburgh in over 50 years (being from different leagues within MLB, they had only recently resumed playing one another with the dawn of inter-league play several years ago). But lo and behold, the Yankees stayed in my hotel. Havinggrown up in the South, far away from most forms of “celebrity,” I am easilystarstruck, so even though I don't follow baseball it was mighty neat to seeJohnny Damon, Jason Giambi, Hideki Matsui, and – yes – Alex Rodriguezwalking through the lobby a few feet away from me. I also rode in the elevatorwith a Yankee, and though I didn't recognize him or know his name, he was tootall, well-dressed, good-smelling, and blinged-out not to be a pro athlete of sometype. I tried to get an autograph for my son while I was there, to no avail.

A convention known as Anthrocon (http://www.anthrocon.org/) started in myhotel the day I was leaving. This meant that, the day before I left, the hotelbegan to be overrun by what are really and truly known as "Furries":people wearing furry tails, furry heads, and, in some cases, furry bodysuits. Iheard one of them – I believe he himself was wearing a 3-foot marmoset tail – explainthe convention to a clearly disgusted inquisitor as "a convention forpeople who enjoy anthropomorphic creatures. You know the old Disney animatedmovie Robin Hood, where all thecharacters are animals that talk like people? Yeah, that's basically it."Oh, and did I mention the NEW YORK YANKEES were staying inthis hotel also, along with a bazillion of their fans, so that there was thisweird mix of hardcorevideo-game-sci-fi-look-I'm-a-firefox-computer-science-major people andmuch-more-mainstream, pinstripe-wearing, I-want-A-rod's-autograph baseballpeople rubbing elbows with each other. "Surreal" doesn't begin todescribe it, especially seeing the Yankee drivers and other assorted posse – mostof whom truly looked like extras from TheSopranos – stand around in their pinky rings while hordes of 5-foot ocelotsmainlined Mountain Dew and chased each other across the lobby and up theescalators. I very much fancy myself a live-and-let-live kind of person, butthese sweaty, overeager, befurred folks got on every nerve I have. Yeesh.

The hotel cafe served many good dishes, none better than"steel-cut oatmeal with bananas crème brûlée and a caramelizedtopping." I don't know what "steel-cut oatmeal" is, but ittastes very, very good. (I had it twice.) Also, via the cafe's main server, anexhaustingly friendly and potentially gay man named Randy, I found out that "conversation isthe glue of friendship." (sniff)

With apologies to Mastercard and Billy Crudup......Gettinglost while walking around downtown Pittsburgh:1.75 hours of nonstop walking. Dinner for 9 at The Metling Pot: $500. Eatingwith your boss, who ensures that your office picks up the entire tab:Priceless.

Start the New Year with some Horror and Horror-ish Reading

2012-01-01T02:51:00.000-06:00

Happy 2012, everybody! Enjoy it while you can, 'cuz the Mayan curse is comin' for our asses. Booga booga! Prepare to be annihilated as soon as it's convenient!

Here are some reviews of horror books (and one non-horror book from a writer who's usually associated with horror so I snuck 'im in) I read recently.

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The Search For Joseph Tully - William H. Hallahan (Avon, 1974)
Strange, obscure horror novel whose reputation has been growing in recent years. A guy named Richardson is living in an apartment building that's slated for demolition. Only he and three or four other neighbors haven't moved out yet, and they're all rather eccentric (an artist, an excommunicated monk who believes in occult mumbo-jumbo, etc.) Richardson, however, worries that he may be losing his mind, because he hears a whooshing noise like someone swinging a golf club in his apartment, has crazy dreams, and is overwhelmed by a feeling that someone is coming to kill him. His neighbors eventually come to the same conclusion, with sometimes tragic results. Meanwhile, in a parallel story, a man named Willow is tirelessly researching the genealogy of the Tully family, who were once wine merchants centuries before. What the two stories have to do with each other is kept a secret until the last few pages, which is only part of the way this strange novel keeps you bewildered and on edge. The setting is creepy -- a desolate, incredibly cold winter amongst an urban wrecking site -- and the research into the family line is intriguing, and the whole thing has an Argento-movie-esque feel to it. The prose itself, though, is somehow off-putting, a bit too dry and lacking in detail, with characters who are such personality-less cold fish that it’s difficult to get too wrapped up in them. So, it would be a better book if it were stronger in the telling, but there’s enough in what’s there to make it more than worthwhile, with a sense of menace and dread that keeps building throughout.

Another (and much better, I think - Will is a lot less sloppy and more thorough than I am) review of The Search For Joseph Tully can be found at the great Too Much Horror Fiction blog, if you'd like more info.

11/22/63 - Stephen King (Scribner, 2011)
One of King’s best books of the 21st century is a tale of time travel, true love, and the price of both. A high school teacher is informed by his terminal-cancer-ridden fry-cook buddy that there’s a “rabbit hole” to the past (September 9, 1958, to be precise) and he wants him to use it to go back and finish a mission his cancer stopped him from completing -- preventing the Kennedy assassination and, subsequently, all the bad things he believes were caused by it. Our hero takes on the task because he thinks it can fix some other little problems along the way (such as a student’s family tragedy), and while having to live in the past awaiting the Kennedy assassination attempt (he wants to be certain Oswald did it and acted alone) he falls in love with a school librarian and that becomes as important as the mission, if not more so. King does an amazing job of capturing the late 50’s and early 60’s (I wasn’t there, but it sure feels legit and it’s detail-rich), and the stalking of Lee Harvey Oswald is compelling and well-researched. As usual, King’s sentimental folksiness does get the better of him at points; the whole school-play stuff works out too perfectly magical and makes me feel pretty sure that King knows what number The Hallmark Channel is on his cable system. His characters are lovable goofs who never miss a chance to say something corny or sentimental, and it does overload on schmaltz... but it’s top quality schmaltz and King’s so good at it you stay a sucker for it even if you have to roll your eyes now and then. There are some gritty parts, too (our hero falling into the hands of some serious-business-meaning thugs is intense), and even though it’s a really long book (though not overlong, like Under The Dome was, for instance) it stays compelling and fast-moving, and while the romance bit is overdone it ends up being touching despite it all. Not a horror novel by any means, but one of King’s best later-day works.

Southern Gods - John Hornor Jacobs (Nightshade Books, 2011)
When horror author Brian Keene had a semi-heart attack reading this book, and then kept raving about it on Twitter while he was in the emergency room, I knew I had to check it out. Do recommendations come any higher than when they’re delivered as a possible last act on Earth? And the book proves worthy, since it’s the best horror novel I’ve read in a while. A big mob-enforcer type named Bull Ingram is sent to track down the whereabouts of a missing record distributor, as well as a mysterious bluesman named Ramblin’ John Hastur, whose music is played on a pirate radio station that you can only find by luck (and maybe bad luck at that). After hearing a bit of one of Hastur’s dark songs -- which cause listeners to go insane or even come back from the dead - Ingram isn’t certain he wants to find this excessively-creepy musician... but then he gets mixed up with a young mother whose connection to Hastur has put her family in supernatural peril and he doesn’t have much other choice. It’s a very creepy setup (borrowing a little from Robert W. Chambers’ King In Yellow mythos, but there aren’t any scarier sources than that) and even if the apocalyptic-supernatural-battle climax is getting a wee bit familiar in horror novels, it maintains energy and stays compulsively readable throughout. I had a few story ideas of my own in mind that were similar to things Jacob wrote in this book, so at first I was a little ticked off that he’d beaten me to them, but I don’t think I could have written mine as well as he did it, so I’m sure it’s for the best. This book is a must for horror readers, DO NOT MISS IT.

Sometimes when you're a hoarder, you end up with the paperback and the hardback of a book. And what has two thumbs (and a five or six more in boxes somewhere) and definite hoarding tendencies? This guy! So, here ya go...

Letters from the Dead - Campbell Black (Villard Books, 1985)
A couple of single moms vacation with their kids at an old beach house, intending to write a photo book on the beach. The kids, a boy and a girl, both thirteen, are moody and board and not sure if they like each other. Amidst some games in the closet they find an ouija board and use it to talk to a malevolent entity named Roscoe. Yes, Roscoe! Frightened, they avoid the board, but the moms start playing with it and also find Roscoe. It soon becomes clear that Roscoe has plans for the two kids and everybody better get the hell out of that house, but that doesn’t prove so easy. This is an okay horror novel, but just okay; Campbell gives it a good try and he’s not a bad writer but the prose (for a reason I can’t put my finger on, since it’s always competently done) never really draws you in. There are some good ideas in the mix, but it adds up to something a little too mundane and not the Stephen-King-ish fear fest you can tell that Black was trying for. But, like I said, even though it’s not really successful, it’s not a bad try, so it’s worth a read.

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Now, one of your Gnu Rear's whatchacall Restitutions should be to follow me on Twitter, where I will tell you funny stuff to help you pee in your pants (and if you don't want peed-in pants, you're no son o' mine!), and I'll also tell you some other good people on Twitter to follow. Basically, I'll just run your whole dadgum life if ya let me. I have good taste and the people I follow are freakin' great. One of 'em is our own KickerOfElves, so that's proof enough that I know of which I speak. It's worth getting yourself a Twitter account just to do that-there-thing! Go forth!

Bad Men Doing Bad-Man Stuff

2011-12-09T23:36:00.001-06:00

Presenting a bunch of reviews of action books for the eyeball part of your face! I'm pretty sure at least a few of these haven't been covered anywhere else yet so they'll hopefully be useful. Enjoy! Learn things that'll never do you any good but may be entertaining! Or just look at the pictures. You like pictures!

That's about as badass a cover as you're going to find. Looks like the cover of one of those old "sweat" magazines. Looks like the artist who did the Lone Wolf series covers, and several others. Briggs looks like a BMF fo' sho'.

The Killing Ground - John Hardesty (Leisure, 1978)
Joe Briggs is a mercenary who's been targeted for assassination by the CIA. After an attempt at him fails, Briggs agrees to lead a UN force against IRA terrorists in Northern Ireland to quash the grudge the CIA has against him. He's soon in even more trouble, though, as the terrorists decimate his troops in a series of violent attacks and traps. He manages to score some victories with the troops he has left, but they're dwindling and the UN wants to pull him out. By then he's got personal business to settle with some of the terrorist leaders, though, both avenging some of his officers and a girlfriend they murdered, as well as wanting to finish what he started and prevent some political assassinations. So, a showdown with the terrorists' top killer is inevitable... especially since Briggs is now on their death list, as well, and won't be safe anywhere unless he finishes it. Decently written action novel, with frequent fight scenes that are handled realistically; Briggs is tough, but he's no superman, and he doesn't always have a lot of luck, either. Not bad.

One of the few books I've ever seen that devoted all the cover art to someone who's actually a fairly minor character.

Black Narc - Jeffrey Feinman (Manor Books, 1977)
Jacobs, the narcotics agent who's the main character in this book, is actually Jewish, but I guess Jew Narc wouldn't be as exploitable a title. Jacobs is burned out and taking some vacation time with a girl he picked up. All he wants is some fun but she's in some trouble because an ex-Nazi turned porn producer wants her to star in some depraved snuff-style films he's making, and Jacobs doesn't want that to happen. Then an old colleague named Washington - who is a black narc - shows up, needing help in busting a bunch of criminals which includes the ex-Nazi. They found Washington out when he was compromised while working undercover, and now they're threatening his family. Washington is a gimmicks whiz, and Jacobs and his girlfriend help Washington plant bugs in the Nazi's office, but they end up recording Washington getting murdered by the thugs. Jacobs and Washington's sons want some off-the-books revenge for that. Decently-written pulp novel that's not nearly as exploitative as the title would lead you to believe, and to my knowledge it never actually came out as a movie despite the claims on the cover.

The Burning Season - Wayne D. Dundee (Dell, 1988)
Inaugural appearance of private eye Joe Hannibal, who in this one is playing bounty hunter as he tracks down a criminal hick named Junior Odum. He catches Odum at his mother's grave, and Odum stands to give him trouble but swears to go along peacefully if Hannibal will investigate his mother's death. Supposedly she burned to death while smoking in bed but Junior is convinced that someone killed her. Junior's right, and finding out who did it will land Hannibal in a few tough scrapes. Andrew Vachss compared Dundee with Mickey Spillane but I don't really see that; Hannibal is more of a Rockford type than a Hammer, avoiding fights when he can but getting in a few nonetheless, and taking almost as much damage as he deals out. While the book is gritty it's not really all that hard-boiled, and reminded me a little of James Lee Burke's stuff. In any case, it's good and well-written, with a solid eye for setting, character, detail, and pacing.

Mafia: Operation Hit Man - Don Romano (Pyramid, 1974)
Part of a series of unrelated Mafia novels, this one depicts the saga of Dom Caressimo, a former soldier enlisted as a hit man by the mob as a way to start a new "Murder Inc." type of business. Dom is given assignments and paid upwards of $10,000 a hit, and he's doing well and getting rich until a contract goes out on a girl he once had a fling with. He fills the contract, in a way that can lay the blame on a serial rapist, but afterwards he has an impotency problem. He learns that he can temporarily cure the problem by visiting a dominatrix, but for some reason this bit of kink so unnerves the mob that when they get wind of it they decide that Dom may be a liability. Murder doesn't phase these guys, but a little hanky-spanky gives them the vapors? Dom finds out they want him dead, though, and he's not a safe man to cross. Sleazy but well-written sex and violence that plays kind of like one of those Italian crime movies.

The Headhunters #1: Heroin Triple Cross - John Weisman & Brian Boyer (Pinnacle, 1974)
This is kind of an odd choice to build an action series around -- a police department's Internal Affairs Division -- the watchdog unit that tries to bust dirty cops. In this book, at least, the authors don't seem to know what to do with the concept, either, and the unit takes a back seat to the criminals as most of the narrative focuses on a high-living Black drug kingpin and his dealings with a brutal, corrupt Black cop. There's some decent action and drugs and sex sleaze (including a woman who specializes in an act so depraved the reader's never allowed to know what it is) but the narrative gets so muddled you stop caring after a while, and it's trying so hard to read like a blaxploitation movie that it gets embarrassingly racist and silly. The writing itself isn't bad and I'm betting there's a better book in the series.

You can read a much better review of this book at the great blog, Glorious Trash.

Is that Zach Galifianakis?

Lethal Injection - Jim Nisbet (Overlook Press, 2009)
A prison doctor is disturbed by a prisoner's nonchalant response to his execution and starts believing the man was innocent. Driven to find out and with his own personal life in free-fall, he tracks down some of the dead man's partners in crime and tries to uncover the truth about what happened. His new friends are scary sociopaths and definitely not safe company, and when he finds out the truth, even that has more secrets and drags him further into darkness. The characterization is a little weak; it's hard to feel much sympathy for such self-wrecking douchebags, but the situation is bleak and severe and packs a punch despite the lack of sympathetic protagonists. Solid neo-noir.

The cover art is the best thing about this book, easily. Gotta love the Glenn Danzig guy in gladiator/bondage gear on the back whose arm's a squid, and the ax-weilding guy with a spider-plant-flower beard and the Cuisinart haircut. And the insect-face guy must've won one helluva rodeo to score that belt buckle.

Mutants Amok #1 - Mark Grant (Avon, 1991)
In the future mankind bred mutants to fight their wars and do their work, but it backfired and the genetically-engineered monstrosities have enslaved mankind. Most humans work on farms or are used for horrible experiments, but small bands of human rebels try to free mankind from the mutant enslavement. One rebel leader named Max Turkel crashes his plane near a farm and is hidden in a treehouse by a human who's never known anything but enslavement. Turkel is pretty much of a jerk, getting drunk and making lame sex jokes, but somehow he inspires others to seek freedom, and when they farm boy's girlfriend is abducted for mutant experiments, he teams up with Max to fight back. The whole thing's too sci-fi goofy for me and you can't really take it seriously (the mutants bred a race of Hobbits for Christsake), and Turkel is a clownish, unrealistic oaf of a hero. There's lots of gore but it all comes off as cartoonish, and the mutants are so evil I'm not sure how they'd maintain a society when they kill each other off so randomly. If you have a tolerance for sci-fi and aren't too picky, though, you may get more out of it than I did, because it's not boring or anything, just wacky.

Best Music of 2011 ...so far...

2011-11-17T08:21:00.006-06:00

(There's a few links below to click on, if you wanna find out more or hear some stuff...)

Administration Shock Him - 39:03 (blissed out post-rock)
The Atomic Bitchwax - The Local Fuzz (one excellent long-ass stoner-rock riff-a-thon)
Cave - Neverendless (weird + krautrocky)
Charts and Maps - Dead Horse (crazy time-signatures + saxophone-infused math-y post-rock)
Clouds as Oceans - Tides (some dreamy instrumental post-metal with lots of shoegazer-y washes of sound)
Danava - Hemisphere of Shadows (sooooo full of crazy-insane riffs... 70's-worshippin' stoner metal at its finest)

Earth - Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light (intense + introspective spaghetti-western metal)
Empire Express - Valleyland (excellent filmic post-rock)
Eternal Tapestry - Beyond the 4th Door (kooky space rock - like Hawkwind trying to play Meddle-era Floyd)
Felipe Arcazas - Induction to the Subconscious (desert rock very reminiscent of some of Brant Bjork's solo stuff... tasty guitarij)
Fire Spoken by the Buffalo - Hiatus (intense guitar-heavy post-rock)
Garage a Trois - Always Be Happy, But Stay Evil (freaky-ass post-rock meets jazz... with vibraphones! And the same drummer as Critters Buggin, if you're old like me...)

Giants - s/t (guitar-driven post-rock with some very pretty moments)
Gillian Welch - The Harrow and the Harvest (absolutely wonderful strippt-down American roots music... Thoroughly recommended!)
Grails - Deep Politics (some of the best trance-inducing space rock ever...)
Long Distance Calling - s/t (amazing post-metal, with top-notch bass + drumwerks; even the songs with vocals are good...)
Lunar Dunes - Galaxsea (future-retro space jazz... this'll be the music playing in the waiting room for your robodoctor in a coupla years)
Mastodon - The Hunter (...it's less proggy than the last one; more heavy, shorter songs... good stuff)

Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will (typical Mogwai, with epic highs + tender lulls + bashing, crashing, angelic choruses of layered + effected guitars... some truly apotheotic stuff, esp live)
Psychic Ills - Hazed Dream (space rock done right... loads of delay, reverb, sorta-tribal toms... downright psychedelic from git to go)
Radar Men from the Moon - Intergalactic Dada + Space Trombones (instrumental Danish band with a sound that lands somewhere near classic Kyuss; bounces from heavy to brokedown in the best ways)
Riding the Diplodoc - Dilettantes Like Lions (instrumental math-rock at its most frantically spastic...)
Russian Circles - Empros (a departure of sorts, more bass-heavy - + the bass more fuzzy - than previous releases; still a great album, but with the band accessing a bit more noise than in the past, at least on record... seen em get rather noisy live + hope to again soon)
Sonic Youth - Simon Werner a Disparu (this is the soundtrack to some Frenchie movie... but the band put the score together using outtakes from the Daydream Nation sessions, so I perceive this as really more of a bonus disc of those sessions, since it's unlikely that I'm gonna watch the film. If you like Daydream Nation, you should get this right away, cuz it's very much of that same tone, particularly regarding the guitar tones + tunings)

Tommy Guerrero - Lifeboats and Follies (another collection of tasty grooves from our favorite skater-hero... the basswerk is - as usual - ultra-tight + funky)
U.S. Christmas - The Valley Path (another single, album-length track... not as directly stonerific as TAB's new one, but more of a psychedelic journey. Good, but it hasn't snagged me as viscerally as their earlier releases)
White Hills - H-p1 (fucking rawk! trippy + wild + heavy + dripping with effects + incredible!!!)

Playing to the camera

2011-11-11T21:43:00.001-06:00

Only the first two of these are really new reviews, but I thought a post covering the subjective-camera horror flick genre might be handy. Not that this is everything by a long shot... just the ones I've got reviews typed up for.

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Atrocious (C, 2010) A Spanish entry into the Blair Witch found-footage subgenre has a couple of teens on vacation trying to document an urban legend of a ghost at their holiday villa. Supposedly a little ghost girl haunts an old hedge maze on the property. They wander around the poorly-maintained labyrinth and don't find much of anything. Then their dog is killed and thrown down a well, and their little brother goes missing, and then things get worse. It's well-intentioned and it tries, and the actors are likeable and game, but the director doesn't have a good instinct for suspense or fear, so far too much of this is just night-vision shots of weeds that go on and on. The movie also can't make up its mind about the nature of the menace; there's a non-supernatural solution that doesn't explain the girl's eyes suddenly turning blue. Overall it's lightweight and amateurish, but if you're a fan of found-footage horror it's good enough to bear with through the slow stretches.

Home Movie (C, 2008) Subjective-camera take on the evil-child movie is quite effective and creepy. Jack and Emily, a brother and sister who have a strange rapport that alienates them from the rest of society, live with their mother (a child psychologist) and father (a silly pastor who doesn't let his calling stop him from drinking and farting and making sex jokes). Jack and Emily rarely speak or even acknowledge anyone but each other, and they alarm their parents with increasingly aberrant behavior. First they’re hard on their pets, making sandwiches of the goldfish, putting frogs in a vice, and crucifying the cat. Then they turn on a classmate, cornering him and repeatedly biting him. And finally their little game involves their parents.... The acting is great and believable, and as more and more bits of Jack and Emily’s game are revealed, tension builds. This is a standout in the killer-kid genre, both due to the subjective-camera approach and to the almost-documentary realism that makes it all more unsettling.

Grave Encounters (C, 2011) Faux-reality show in the Blair Witch mode. This kind of thing has become very familiar but can still pack in some tension and scares if it's handled well... and this one's handled very well. It never quite manages to come across as real -- it always looks like acting -- but it does manage plenty of creepiness and some highly effective shocks, and it builds to some heavyweight darkness. A TV crew locks itself inside an abandoned mental hospital for the night to film an episode of one of those ghost-hunter reality shows. At first they're disappointed that the place is quiet and boring, but then little things start happening... and then they get a whole lot more than they bargained for. Doors that used to lead to exits now just open on to more labyrinthine corridors, and they're populated by some very spooky and disturbed spirits. And morning never comes; it remains dark outside no matter what time it is. They're left in the dark with limited light and something seems determined to keep them as patients in the hospital. It's a bit derivative but it works well and ranks high on the disturb-o-meter, and builds in creepiness as it goes, ending up intense and packing lots of dread. Recommended.

Blair Witch Project (C, 1999) Hey, you really can make a good movie in your backyard! The Most Profitable Movie of All Time (cost like $30 grand to make and grossed hundreds ‘n’ hundreds o’ millions... that’s a return-on-investment of... let’s see... a real whole bunch!), and you probably already know as much about it as me and I’ve seen it a dozen times. Bascially, it’s one of the most original horror movies in years (although the “found footage” concept has been used – anybody remember Cannibal Holocaust? And did anybody watch the even cheaper $900 feature, The Last Broadcast?) and it may save the sagging horror genre ‘cuz (A) it’s actually scary, not funny, and (B) there are no special effects at all. Unless stick figures and piles of rocks are special to you. Plot is simple: three college kids go out into the woods to research the legend of a witch, and they get lost and stalked by something unseen, and end up... well, let’s just say they’re never seen again and all they find is the footage they shot, which makes up the entire movie. But, on this one ya can’t really stop with just the movie. There’s a cool website for info on the legend, a comic book recounting the history of the Blair Witch, a book detailing the search for the missing students, and even a “soundtrack” CD with the goth songs that were on the tape left in Josh’s car. (The CD has some extra footage you can watch on a computer – just in case you don’t have one, it’s just Josh wanting to try to signal planes, and Heather and Mike telling him he’s nuts). There was also an “In Search Of”-style mockumentary that aired on the Sci-Fi channel and another short film called Burkitsville 7 that aired on a cable service (that one’s mostly about Rustin Parr). This doesn’t quite live up to the hype, but the hype was so heavy that nothing could. And, even though the movie does get a little tiresome with all the “oh damn we’re lost in the woods” stuff and only really gets tense in the last ten minutes, this one is a definite must-see. The unsteady camera work caused some sensitive members of the audience to puke, and the intensity of the film caused one girl in the theater I was in to start crying... that’s so cool!

Last Exorcism, The (C, 2010) Combination of Marjoe, Blair Witch Project, The Exorcist, and just a tad bit of Rosemary's Baby tossed in for flavor. An evangelist who's been performing exorcisms decides to perform one more and film it, because he doesn't actually believe in God or demonic possession and wants to expose it all as a fraud. He's a nice person and cares about the people he's been preaching to; he's just decided that exploiting their ignorance for money is harmful and wants to do his part to stop it. He chooses a random letter requesting exorcism and heads to Louisiana with a two-person film crew and meets a 16-year-old girl named Nell who's been exhibiting some strange behavior, such as mutilating her father's cattle during sleepwalking episodes. Her father is an evangelical lunatic who's kept the family separated from society and firmly believes in demons and exorcism, and Nell is a fragile, nice girl but very creepy. Her hostile brother seems protective of Nell but his animosity toward the exorcism crew is chilling. They do an exorcism and it seems to have taken care of the family's psychological needs... but then it becomes evident that more than psychology is at work in this case. I'd heard that this movie sucked, but it worked well for me, even though the filmmakers blow the whole Blair Witch "found footage" concept -- it's like they forgot they were even trying to do that sometimes and shot scenes from several different angles when only one camera's supposed to be present. The casting and acting are very good, especially Ashley Bell as the possessed girl, who can snap from being a nervously-friendly sweet girl to a screaming malevolent fury in seconds; she really goes balls-out in the possession scenes, which include a few twists we haven't seen before. It's creepy on a lot of levels. Evangelicals are creepy to begin with and they're portrayed convincingly -- I know a ton of people who project that same eerie, almost-mental-illness cultishness. The possession antics are disturbing, but it's also scary on an even-if-she's-not-possessed level because the girl is dangerous even if she's just crazy, and the father may also be on the verge of doing something violent in the name of acting on his beliefs. I had my doubts about this one due to some bad reviews (I've got to quit buying into that; modern audiences just seem to have no attention spans anymore) and the fact that Eli Roth was connected to it; I've not been impressed with his work at all, but he produced, not directed. The ending is pretty weak and is hampered by lame special effect bullshit, but overall this one's worth watching.

Collingswood Story, The (C, 2002) This movie is so low budget that you can figure if they already owned the camera and got volunteer work from the actors, they probably literally made money on the first DVD sold... but (and this is unusual for these cheapies, which honestly usually aren't so hot) this one deserves to make a lot of bucks and sell a lot of DVDs, because it's very creepy, true to its concept, and the acting is great. When his girlfriend moves away to Collingswood, New Jersey to go to college, a guy named John buys her a phone cam for her computer so they can stay in touch. The movie consists of their calls to each other and various other phone cam weirdoes. At first the movie's mostly concerned with the strained, awkward distance relationship, but then they get involved with a creepy cam psychic who tells them that people were killed in cult rituals in the house where Rebecca is living, up in the attic. Unluckily for all involved, Rebecca is a brave young lady, has a laptop, and a hundred foot phone cord... It's an obvious variant on The Blair Witch Project but manages to hold its own and build some serious intensity, leading to a legitimately scary climax that is both slightly disappointing (it doesn't make complete sense) and perfect for the story (are things as creepy when they do make complete sense?) You'll have to seek this unique format little movie out through its website (www.collingswoodstory.com) and deal with Paypal to order it (I'm not fond of the Paypal experience, sorry) but it's worth the hassle, unless you're one of those people who absolutely hated Blair Witch Project... and maybe even then, since these actors are a little more likeable and some have found this to be scarier (I wouldn't go that far, but Blair Witch really worked for me; this worked too, though). It also does a great job tapping into your voyeuristic instincts, so even though the movie is mostly all talk (My Scary Ass Dinner With Andre, sorta), it keeps your interest.

Expedition, The (C, 2006) Blair Witch Project worship meets Session 9 cultism in a film probably financed by somebody’s tax return. Five documentarians who say “fuckin’” before every noun and most of their adjectives and verbs too enter the long-abandoned Saratoga Homestead Hospital to videotape it all. It’s not really supposed to be haunted even though it’s an extremely creepy place, but they soon notice strange things happening, such as cold rooms and presences that make their cameras go staticky. While they’re wandering around the ruins one of their friends, fuckin’ Tom, goes missing and they have to search the building looking for him. Every once in a while they cut to footage of the police interrogating one of the filmmakers, and occasional “reenactment” footage. The strong point of this is definitely location; the huge, crumbling old tuberculosis clinic is atmospheric in the extreme, and would be highly creepy even if they weren’t trying to make a horror movie out of it. The main weakness of the movie is length; there is no reason whatsoever that such a scant story (premise, really) with almost no narrative drive needs to be an hour and 48 minutes long. At around half that length you might generate some spookiness (even if it’s extremely derivative of Blair Witch) but as it stands only an obsessive interest in urban exploration kept me watching. A music score of constant eerie music does manage to create some false tension, even while it spoils the cinema verite. Worth checking out for patient fans of Blair Witch-like films, and still better than many homemade horror films just because of location. Available ultra-cheap on the Mortuary of Madness 50 movie set.

Off The Beaten Path (C, 2004) Blair Witch-inspired shot-on-video horror about four amateur filmmakers investigating a story of a Satan-worshiping hermit named Jasper Hagen who did evil things in the backwoods. It deviates from the Blair Witch style by alternating regular filmmaking (establishing shots of their truck going down the road, etc.) with the point-of-view footage shot by the actors. They go out in the woods looking for cabins and spots were dead bodies were found. Deep in the woods they find inverted crosses and carvings on trees (it's typical stuff any metal kid would carve, but it freaks them out) and only the main guy wants to keep going; the others are all easily terrified. They press on and find some creepy abandoned cabins, a pentagrammed altar, and a book with crazy things written in it. Then it variates into an Evil Dead rip-off, but with much, much milder gore. It’s very amateurish and highly derivative, and screws up its “found footage” atmosphere with too many non-P.O.V. shots, and it’s obvious when the actors aren’t ad-libbing (when they do they sometimes come up with hilarious lines like “inverted crosses in the shape of a pentagram!”), but despite the limitations, it does still manage to generate a few moments of tension and spookiness, and is a whole lot better than most of the no-budget shot-on-video dreck that’s saturating the market. But, that’s faint praise indeed. If you loved Blair Witch and aren’t picky, you’ll probably welcome this one. Only an hour long. Found on the Decrepit Crypt of Nightmares 50 DVD pack.

[REC] 2 (C, 2009) Picking up where the first left off, but weaving together a more complicated timeline involving multiple sets of protagonists (who all happen to be carrying cameras), this is another grade-A Spanish scarefest. To make any sense of it you will have to watch the original first, because it's not very merciful about catching you up. A SWAT team is sent into the building to try to contain the outbreak, and they find a priest who's seeking the blood of the original possessed girl, which is the only thing that can stop the demonic-possession-virus from spreading. They have a bunch of hard luck and are whittled down pretty quickly by the frantic zombie-like horrors infesting the building, who are now sometimes manifesting more demonic powers, such as crawling on ceilings. Also a group of teens, bored after their bottle-rockets-and-love-doll experiment doesn't work, sneak into the building and soon wish they hadn't. The attacks are frequent and scary but they also get numbingly repetitive after a while because they're so chaotic; there's only so many times a bloody screeching person can run at a camera and attack it before you start thinking "this again?" And the movie relies on jump-scares so much that it could work as a kegel exercise video. The subjective camera thing starts wearing out its welcome in this one because between the darkness and the camera being thrashed around and broken up you end up not seeing much. But the situation is so creepy and the visuals so hellish that none of that matters too much, and this sequel is a very worthy follow-up, as horrific as the first chapter.

Paranormal Activity (C, 2009) It was about time for the next Blair Witch Project, and this is it; another simple concept with a “less is more” approach that effectively exploit’s the audience’s imagination for maximum impact. Filmed on a budget lower than Blair Witch and proving that all those “Pendulum Pictures” 50-pack movies have no excuse for sucking so bad, the whole film takes place in an apartment, with a brief early-morning foray into the back yard. An apartment is being plagued by poltergeist-like activity, the source of which appears to be a demonic presence that’s followed a girl since she was a child. Her boyfriend is overenthusiastic about getting as much of the activity on tape as he can, so he provokes the presence to increase its activity. It obliges him and they soon regret it. The film’s all shot from one camera, often stationary, and often while the actors are sleeping. Most of what happens is simple and subtle (doors moving, lights going on, sounds from other rooms) but intensity builds nicely and then stays constant. There is a slight over reliance on “jump scares,” but they work, and they movie also focuses on creepiness. It has a very good sense of what works and hits it pretty consistently. This movie made it to national theatres through word of mouth and people demanding it, so we’re lucky it got released. It makes me wish similar films like Ghostwatch, The Collingswood Story, and The St. Francisville Experiment (a lot of people hated that one but I liked it, so sue me) had also gotten that chance, even though Paranormal Activity is better than those. Audiences reported problems sleeping because the film scared them so badly. It didn’t affect me that strongly, but I still think it lived up to the hype, and definitely wasn’t a disappointment. There are two alternate endings; I like one of those a little better than the one they ended up using for the theatrical release (under Steven Spielberg’s recommendation).

Paranormal Activity 3 (C, 2011) The tricks are getting a little familiar and losing their ability to terrify -- it's kinda becoming a chain of "oh, that again" -- but the series is still solid and hasn't had a bad one yet. This is a prequel, consisting of video tapes shot when Katie was having her first supernatural troubles as a little girl. Her sister starts a weird friendship with an imaginary friend named Toby... who turns out to be neither imaginary nor friend, as he terrorizes her family. Like the others this starts out with little creaks and movements that get her stepfather obsessed with filming them all on his videocameras, but he conveniently captures more than he counted on. A little less is left to the imagination than in previous installments, and it still unfolds pretty slowly, but it pays off with some freaky special effects and an ending that explains maybe too much. They should probably end it here, but it's not a disappointment.

Nothing in this trailer appears in the film, by the way...

Others I didn't have reviews typed up for:

St. Francisville Experiment

Men with Knives

2011-10-30T22:42:00.001-05:00

Here's my contribution to our little horrorfest. I haven't written fiction in over 20 years, and it probably shows, so all critiques are welcome. Enjoy.

Men with Knives

“No.No.”

Anna’sgreat-grandmother lay completely still, her face compressed into a painedscowl, eyes closed, voice varying between a near-sob, a whisper, and defiance.“No no no no. No,” she kept saying. Anna didn’t know what to do. She wasrelieving her mother, who was clinically exhausted from weeks of bedsidevigils. It was 11:12 PM, really too late for a 16-year-old, but Anna was theonly child of an only child, and her father hadn’t been around since she wassix, so she and her mother had little choice. They had left hergreat-grandmother alone many times during her roughly two-month hospital stay,but over the last several weeks she had become much frailer and far more delusional.Plus, they had begun to sense that the nurses were simply done with them, readyto see this one off and let someone else’s relative while away their remaininghours with a bedpan and Jell-O. Thus they more or less stayed with Momma (theyboth called her this) around the clock, alternating day and night shifts everyfew days. Only her mother’s job as an Accounts Specialist at the hospitalallowed such an arrangement – 24-hour visitation was only permitted for parentswith newborns, but the hospital administrator liked Anna’s mother and knew thather grandmother was dying, so he made the exception. Anna often wished hehadn’t.

Annafound she could usually sleep okay despite Momma’s fitful moaning, even in ahard, reclinable hospital chair, but not tonight. She was fidgety, likesomething indistinct was bothering her. And Momma was definitely bothering her.Her moaning was often wordless and elusive, but tonight it seemed more intenseand focused, as if she were moaning about something specific.

“Shhhh,Momma,” Anna whispered. “It’s just a bad dream. It’s OK. Just go back tosleep.”

Mommagroaned and said, “No. No.” Then in that urgent whisper again, almost like shewas scolding someone without wanting others to hear, she said, “No. No sir.No.”

“Momma,shhhh. No one’s here but me. It’s just me and you.”

Momma groaned,and her features seemed to relax a bit. Then she opened her eyes. She was lyingflat on her back, face to the ceiling, and after a beat she looked over atAnna, her brow furrowed in concern. As she looked at Anna, her eyes narrowed inpanicky recognition, and then she looked jerkily around the room withoutlifting her head, her brittle, unwashed hair making a whishk noise against the stiff hospital pillow case.

“Youshouldn’t be here,” Momma said slowly. “Not safe…not safe here…Anna.”

Thissurprised Anna – at her most lucid, Momma often confused Anna with Eleanor, afriend from Momma’s childhood. Mostly she just didn’t seem to recognize Anna atall.

“Don’tsay that, Momma,” Anna replied. “It’s very safe here. It’s a hospital.”

Mommasearched the room for several more seconds and then looked at Anna withencroaching terror. “There are men,” she said intently. “Here. There are menhere.”

Annasnuffled a laugh. “At the hospital? Yes, Momma. Your doctor’s a man. Youremember? Doctor Garr-“

“Thereare men here,” Momma interrupted. “There are men here. They have knives.” Shewas looking at Anna in real terror now. “They have knives.” Slowly, withemphasis, she continued, “They are in the chairs. They have knives. It’s notsafe…here.”

Annaknew that Momma hadn’t been in an operating room in nearly a year and hadn’thad any procedure more serious than a bedsore treatment in months. “What menare you talking about? Doctor Garrison? One of the nurses?”

Mommakept looking at her, wide-eyed and scared, and for a few seconds Anna justlooked back. Then Momma searched the room again, only her small head moving,and returned her eyes to Anna as she whispered, “There are men here. They haveknives.”

Annasighed, letting a bit of exasperation slip out. She thought for a moment, staringat the tan corduroy window curtain, and began looking for the remote controlwith the nurse’s call button. “I’m just gonna ask Miss Frankie if you need somemedicine or something. Where’s the remote?” Momma only stared at her. “Shoot,”Anna said, gingerly lifting Momma’s blankets as she looked for the remote. Notseeing it (she didn’t search long – Momma’s bony body bothered her), she lookedat the wall behind Momma’s bed to trace the cord and saw it just beyond Momma’sleft shoulder, running down toward the floor. She pulled herself out of thechair and started to walk around the foot of Momma’s bed.

“Don’tgo,” Momma whispered. “Don’t go…Anna.”

“I’mnot, Momma. I’m just looking for something,” she said as she got around thebed. The remote was on the floor; Anna took two steps and knelt to pick it up. Asshe did so, a chill blossomed in her spine, and every fine hair on the back ofher body crept upwards. It was a familiar sensation – one she sometimes felt atnight after a scary movie, especially if she was alone in the house – but much,much stronger. The feeling intensified fast, as though the chill wereenveloping her entire body and the hairs were literally trying to crawl up herback. Her ears began to ring and the ringing kept rising louder and louderuntil it approached a scream. Anna had frozen, still on one knee, eyes glued onthe remote. What the fuck? shethought and almost said, and as the sensation became unbearable, she stood upquickly without grabbing the remote andwhirled around to her right, scraping her wrist and thigh on the nightstand, involuntarilyfolding her arms and grabbing her biceps, rubbing them as she looked around theroom, breathing rapidly through her mouth, her pulse impossibly fast.

Annalooked toward the wall-mounted TV and darkened entryway, not focusing onanything other than the chill and the ringing, which were less intense but notgone. She was light-headed from standing up so quickly, made worse by thecontinuing sensation. She was scared she might faint and closed her eyes,breathing deeply to try and regain control of herself. After perhaps twentyseconds, the sensation began to ebb, and after ten more, she felt centeredenough to pick up the remote. She held onto the bedrail and bent over at thewaist to grasp it, not wanting to risk kneeling again. When she rightedherself, she pressed the red “CALL” button and waited for a response. Nonecame. She tried it again but got nothing.

“Isthis thing broke, Momma?” Her voice was unsteady. She looked down. Momma haddrifted off to sleep again, the papery skin of her brow still furrowed.

Annaexhaled through her nose, mouth set, put the remote on the nightstand, andstarted walking toward the door. “I’ll be right back, Momma.” As she approachedthe door, she paused to look back over her shoulder. Momma’s withered frameformed a small ridge in the middle of the bed, just below her tiny head and cinched,sleeping face. Everything in its right place. Weird, weird, thought Anna.

She closedthe door quietly behind her and walked down to the nurse’s station. The nurse namedRenata sat staring intently at a computer screen, chin in her left hand, indexfinger over her mouth.

“Hey.Where’s Miss Frankie?” Anna said. She was still unnerved from the last fewmoments and did not like Renata anyway, so she sounded annoyed, but Renatabarely acknowledged her at all, let alone notice her temperament.

“Wenthome,” Renata said from behind her finger, eyes never leaving the screen.

Annawaited for an offer of help. Receiving none, she replied, “Well, Momma’s actingweird, kinda talking out of her head. Is it time for her to have some medicineor something?”

Renatasaid something indecipherable behind her finger. “What?” Anna said.

“Weirdhow?” Renata said, only slightly more clearly.

“Like Isaid, she was talking out of her head, talking about it’s not safe here, menhave knives, and et cetera.”

“Was talking?” Renata replied, large eyeslooking at Anna now, eyebrows raised, left hand still in place as though herhead would pitch forward helplessly without it.

“Well,she was asleep when I left the room just now,” Anna said, knowing what wascoming.

Renatashrugged and smiled patronizingly. “Probably OK, then. Folks in her conditionhave episodes like that. She’s not due for meds til 6. Can’t give her extraunless she gets violent.”

Annaput her hands in her hoodie’s pockets and sighed, angry but helpless. After abeat, she turned to her right and went back to Momma’s room, then stopped andturned around again. “Momma’s remote’s broken,” Anna said brusquely. Renata wasback in position, studying her screen. After several barren seconds (duringwhich time Anna thought You’re such abitch), Renata said, “We’ll tell the engineer” without looking away. Annaturned and kept walking, knowing she was raised to say “Thanks” no matter whatbut not giving a damn.

~~~~~~~~~~

Atfirst Anna thought she was in the wrong room. She hadn’t bothered to get up andturn off the overhead lights earlier when she was trying to go to sleep, butthis room was dark. Moonlight and the glow from the parking lot lights seepedin as a light-blue border around the heavy curtains. Anna saw the figure of aperson seated in one of the chairs near the window and started to whisper anapology for entering the wrong room. Then she looked at the bed, and there wasenough bluish light for her to recognize Momma’s form on the bed and enoughhallway light to see her own satchel slumped against the chair where she hadjust been sitting. Anna frowned.

“Hello?”Anna said. “Who-“

Beforeshe could get out another word, the figure in the chair raised its face, a lumpy,misshapen face so white it faintly glowed around eyes like small black dots.Anna’s own eyes bulged at the sight, and the sensation from a few minutesbefore returned with terrible ferocity. Her pulse spiked so suddenly she wassure her heart had burst, her skin crawled in every direction at once, and theringing in her ears sounded like the hiss of a cat amplified a hundredfold.Anna was sure the noise was coming from the face, even though it had nodiscernible mouth. Then she saw a glint of metal low on the shadowed figure’sblackness, and she screamed.

With noidea she was doing it, she whipped around and ran, slipping and falling on theshiny hospital tile but regaining her feet quickly on pure panic alone. Shesprinted and slammed palms-first into the nurse’s stand. Renata, who had beenstanding and leaning over the counter looking toward Momma’s room, jerkedbackward at the sound of Anna’s voice.

“HELP!!!SOMETHING’S IN THERE!!! HELP!!!”

In ananosecond, Renata snatched up the phone and slapped four numbers, breathedthrough her nose rapidly while waiting, and then said firmly, “Kenneth,emergency, room 303, hurry.” Then she hung up and dashed around thenurse-station counter toward Anna. “What is it?”

“Idon’t know! I don’t know!” Anna sobbed. Her hands involuntarily came up to hermouth and she sprayed them with spittle as she watched Renata run into Momma’sroom. She knew she should follow but simply could not make her legs move. I’m paralyzed, she thought idiotically andnearly cackled. Then she realized she should have heard something by now, butshe forced herself to hold her breath and found there was no sound of any kindapart from the residual ringing in her ears. The hospital itself was silent.

Severalvery long moments elapsed during which Anna tried in vain to will herself to dosomething, anything. Finally, she managed to say “Renata? What is it?” Silence.“Renata? What’s in there?” Silence. Didn’tshe call the security guard? Anna thought. Where is he?

Withoutactually knowing she was going to do it, Anna started walking carefully towardMomma’s room. She was terrified to the point of catatonia but now suddenlycouldn’t stop herself from moving forward or even understand how she was movingat all. And yet, a wily part of her consciousness tried to poke through, triedto say You were seeing things, there’snothing in there, the lights are on, Renata’s looking Momma and the room over,she just didn’t hear you call out. She tried to hold onto this idea andliterally whimpered with the effort, so buffeted and frenetic was her mentalstate, as she kept padding toward the room. When she got close, she didn’t stopand peek in but just kept moving forward until she was facing in through theopen door and could see inside.

Theroom was full of figures like the one she had seen moments ago. A host ofbulbous white faces rose up before her, pairs of dark eyes staring cold asspace, countless glints of metal winking against the black mass. The explodingheart, the spasming nervous system, the hiss-scream in her ears all returned,and for a long moment the combined sensations were so overwhelming Anna feltlike her entire being was wrenching itself apart.

Andthen she was in the room, swallowed by the blackness, the spasm and thescreaming somehow louder, her entire body rigid but trembling, not moving ofits own will but being pulled and tossed, her eyes and mouth stretched toludicrous sizes in purest shock. Her field of vision saw nothing but blacknessand those nearly glowing faces, devoid of features, spread all over what shethought had been Momma’s hospital room. Anna’s mind was scraped bare by herfear; no thoughts flickered across, no coherent messages fired, only theinvoluntary reception of her surroundings, as if the blackness and the faceswere crowding out everything else. Yet even this idea – Where is my mind? – eventually shuddered forth, and she slowly beganto cogitate again. Even as the screaming hiss continued, even as she feltadrenaline blasting through and urging her flight, she formed centering thoughts:Where’s Momma? Where’s the nurse? Whatthe hell IS this? And then the memory of glinting metal appeared, summoningMomma’s words from before: There are menhere. They have knives.

For thefirst time since she came into the room (howlong? she frantically wondered), Anna focused her eyes, looking for metal,knives, but also evidence of the hospital room: the bed, the chairs (the men! she thought, panic rising, there are men in the chairs, Momma hadsaid), the curtains, the faint blue light. Nothing to indicate the hospitalroom. But beneath the white faces, she could indeed see glints of metal, thin whitehorizontal flashes whose ominous flickering made her notice her pulse, whichfelt like a mallet pounding the inside of her breastbone over and over. I can’t do this, she thought suddenly,and she began to cry, an awful, plaintive wail that shocked her in part becauseshe’d forgotten about the concept of sound at all save for the screaming. Asshe did so, the metallic flickering came closer, in near her abdomen. “No, no,no, stop it!” she sobbed, “Go away! FUCK YOU!,” though this last came out as“fug you.” “FUCK YOU! LEAVE US ALONE! GODDAMMIT FUCK YOU GO AWAY!,” and thenAnna just screamed wordlessly, long and loud and high, until the blackness consumedher fully, and she lost consciousness.

~~~~~~~~~~

Anna’seyes slipped open. She had been semi-dreaming for what seemed like days,floating in a featureless gray mist, feeling cold but otherwise placid. Awakenow, she simply stared at the ceiling, and her first thought was There are men in the chairs they have knives.She gasped and sat up in a panic, looking around desperately, wincing at thepain in her body. She was alone in a hospital room. The door was closed. Therewere chairs and a wall-mounted TV and heavy curtains around which faint bluelight shone, but nothing seemed amiss. She still wore her hoodie, jeans, andsneakers, and her dull brown hair, though mussed and badly in need of shampoo,was still in a ponytail. Her mouth tasted doughy and stale, and she ached allover, especially in her abdomen (from screaming,she thought blankly). Everything was silent.

Afterseveral minutes of sitting still and blinking, letting her mind gather itself,Anna cleared her throat and said “Hey.” Her throat was shredded and hurt badly,but she kept going. “Hey. Anybody there? Renata?” Silence. “Anybody?” Itoccurred to her to look for the nurse’s call button. She instinctively lookedover her left shoulder and down, and there it was on the floor, cord runningout of the wall. The sight of it summoned a wash of memories, most unnervinglyher attempt to pick up the remote in Momma’s room and what happened when shetried. Momma, Anna thought. She knewshe had to find Momma and find out what was going on, but she wasn’t ready yet.She eased back down into a reclined position on the bed, and for a poignantinstant she realized that the only thing she wanted to do was put her head onthe pillow, curl up, and go back to sleep, no matter what had happened or wasstill to come. Instead, she rolled on her left shoulder and reached down withher right arm to get the remote, the right half of her body off the bed, her sensesanticipating something terrible. Nothing came. She plucked the remote off thefloor and rotated back into a sitting position, her legs rising off the bedslightly to account for the weight shift, much to her abdomen’s displeasure.

Annapushed the red button, not remembering if it was supposed to have acorresponding light of some sort. It didn’t, and she heard nothing, though shefelt sure she’d have heard some sort of buzz or ding given the hospital’spreternatural silence. She pushed it again – nothing. Anna opened her hand andlet the remote slip onto the bed. It landed near the bed’s edge and fell,clacking heavily to the floor.

Annasighed through her nostrils, looked around the room, and swung her legs off thebed to her left. She put weight on her feet tentatively, knowing her legs wouldbe rubbery. She stood there for a few seconds, rubbing her palms on her thighsas if to massage her legs back to full strength. There was a leaden feelinginside her chest that she knew was fear, but she started walking anyway. Whenshe got near the end of the bed, she stopped involuntarily. Not aware she wasgoing to do it, she stepped to her left toward the window and reached up topart the heavy curtains but found she had no desire to look outside. She merelystood there for several minutes, rubbing the curtain’s rough ridges, thinkingof little besides how the fabric felt under her fingers. In the back of hermind, she knew she should be thinking of Momma, of escape, of just what in thefuck those black shapes and white faces were, but it was as if her mind was infull retreat, literally running away from anything but these curtains.

Annastood there stroking the fabric for nearly fifteen full minutes, her mind analmost total blank and thus the fifteen minutes elapsing in what felt like ablink or two of her eyes. Then, suddenly, she let her hand fall toward herright leg, lightly slapping the curtains as they fell. And then just assuddenly she grabbed the curtain with her left hand and pulled it roughly tothe left. The curtain rings did not slide well, so the top of the curtainstayed mostly in place while the curtain’s right edge cut a diagonal lineacross the now-exposed window.

Sheappeared to be on the third floor, and the window looked out upon theintersection of Grassley Avenue, which ran right-to-left across her field ofvision, and Sullivan Street, which formed a “T” with Grassley just outside herwindow, meaning her view looked down Sullivan Street as it progressed into thedistance. Streetlights, parked cars, stillness, a light border of condensationaround the window. Everything in its right place, she thought.

Andthen she saw it: a broad black figure standing at the corner of the twostreets, down and to the right in her field of view. Its back was turned toher, and she stood there frozen as every hair on her body tried to move. Close the curtain close the curtain! herinner voice said, but she felt encased in stone, physically incapable ofmovement. The figure began to turn, and as its white face came into view, thatawful hissing scream returned to Anna’s ears. The face was looking straight upat her. Its black form rippled with what might have been the movement of anarm, and Anna saw the thick blade of a knife reflecting the street lamps’ glow.

Annasuddenly threw the curtain closed to her right and staggered backwards. “Shit! Shit!” she said,high-pitched and near hysteria. She covered her face with her hands andbreathed deeply through her mouth, and in the silence that followed she heardthe door click open behind her. Shewhirled around to her right in time to see the door slam open as a dark shape sailedinto the room. Anna screamed involuntarily and jerked away from the shape withpanicky speed, fleeing into the corner of the room and pushing unthinkingly againstthe converged walls as if she meant to plow through them. The shape landed whereshe’d been standing with a squishy, sickening thud, and she saw numerous darkblobs seemingly hang in the air in front of her before they hit her face,hoodie, hands, and jeans. Some of what hit her face landed on the left cornerof her mouth and splashed in. It was blood. She spit instinctively and pushedopen the curtain to her right in one spastic maneuver.

Withthe outside lamplight filtering in she could see that the shape was a body andthat it was shiny with moisture. It appeared to be a black man in dark clothing,though how much of this darkness was the clothing and how much was apparentmoisture she couldn’t tell. He lay completely still and did not seem to bebreathing. His eyes and mouth were wide open.

Annawas crouched in the corner of the room and simply stared at him, stunned intosilence and nearly devoid of thought. She stared at his face unblinkingly forseveral minutes before her eyes crept around to the rest of his body. His headwas near her and his legs were straight out toward the door, feet pointing at10 and 2. His left arm was bent at the elbow, and his left hand sat thumb downon the left side of his chest. It was a strange position. His right arm laysplayed to his right, palm looking up at the ceiling, fingers slightly curledand partially under the hospital bed. Then Anna saw that part of the darknessof his figure was on the floor around him, and she realized at once that it wasblood and that this was also why his clothing shone with wetness. Sheinstinctively looked at the wall to her left and saw dark drops and gobs ofblood there, so much that she was shocked she hadn’t seen it already. “Oh God,”she murmured. She looked back at the figure and understood in a flash that hewas the security guard Renata had called......when? How long had it been sinceshe’d been in Momma’s room (Momma)and seen something in the room (there aremen they have knives) and run out to tell Renata? She couldn’t begin toimagine, could not even mentally approach the concept. Where is my mind? she thought desperately.

With astart, Anna remembered the figure outside the window, and, never taking hereyes off the guard, she pushed up with her hands to try and stand. Her handsand sneakers pushed against wetness and she slipped several times, buteventually she managed to get her knees underneath herself and rise, musclesaching everywhere. She turned to her right and touched the curtain and wasstruck with déjà vu, briefly reliving and reseeing the meditative period frombefore, but this time she didn’t hesitate. She pushed the curtain open to herleft and steeled herself as she approached the window.

Therewas no broad, black figure on the corner like before, but even in the splitsecond of relief this afforded, her peripheral vision caught two figures to herleft, and she turned her head in that direction. These weren’t black masses ormen with knives. They were smaller, and reclined. One lay on its right side,half on the sidewalk and half in the street, and the other lay face down fullyin the street, just right of center. Both had large dark splotches on theirbodies and larger dark spots around their bodies, all of it, Anna knew, blood.The one on the left was slight and barefoot and in a drab hospital gown, theone on the right larger in mauve-pink scrubs and pale shoes. It was Momma andRenata.

Annalet out a wheezing groan and spun to her left to run, but she forgot about theguard, and she stepped on his right arm, which rolled meatily beneath her leftfoot and spun it up into the air, sending her palms- and chest-first onto theguard’s shins and feet. She shrieked and rolled off of him to her right. Thefront of her body was soaked; the guard was sopping wet with blood. She keptscrabbling to get away and had just begun to sense that she was about to slaminto a chair when instead she squelched into the sensation again. It was asstrong as an electrical field: her skin felt like it was burning, her heartthreatened to physically pound itself into her throat, and her ears filled withthat screeching static hiss. "Fuck," Anna croaked in shock and pain,and then in a flash she knew it. The darkness was just inches from her. Shelooked up into a bulbous, faintly glowing white face and realized that she hadfallen into one of the figures, a figure in a chair. There are men in the chairs, she thought wildly. And as she stareddumbstruck at the face, she saw the glinting metal of a knife raise up from herright, but instead of moving aggressively or poising for a stab, the knife keptmoving toward the face with the knife tip pointed toward where a mouth wouldbe. And the knife did not stop moving. It plunged into the white face and beganmoving in a circle, blobs of thick, dark blood oozing around the knife bladeand out of the newly forming mouth, shockingly deep red against the ghastlyface. Anna was transfixed to the point of transcendence, aware of nothingexcept for that white shape and its coming red rictus, now spread across thelower third of the face, a phantasmagorically large black hole, jagged withtattered bits of white flesh and great gobs of blood. Then the knife moved awayand the face began to descend upon her, the gashed and profane lips seeming tomove on their own, slithering as if in anticipation. Anna screamed hystericallyand managed to get her right knee under herself, pushing up to strike at theface and mouth. But it was no use. Her arms slammed into the mouth up to herelbows, and even as she screamed louder and tried to pull away Anna’s wholebody was devoured, crushed wetly into much too small a space despite themouth's relative enormousness, her entire consciousness winking out, consumedby darkness.

Shik-Chuff

2011-10-30T10:31:00.000-05:00

    Okay, got another Halloween present for you. I'm not sure I like this one as much as the other one (so go read that one instead if ya haven't already- I need the attention!) but it's a lot shorter, which, depending on how much you hate my writing, might be a good special feature. I dunno. :) As always, feedback is encouraged, here or on Twitter. If it disturbed and upset you, GOOD! If you thought it was funny, I'll take that, too. And if you thought it sucked, lemme know why and maybe that'll help me next time I write something.

The title is odd. I'm sometimes bad with titles. Originally all I could think of for this was "Burials," but that's so generic. Then I decided on "A Fitful Sleep," which might be better than what I settled on... but, I decided to go for the weird just to make you start reading just to figure out what the fuck that title was about. If you think that title's stupid, you may be right and should go with "A Fitful Sleep" instead.

That's all the stories I've got for this year, but keep an eye on the blog because I think Kicker Of Elves may be working on something for ya, and that should be good!

Anyway... enjoy... if that's really the correct term for experiencing the nasty gack I'm about to put in your head... :)

====================================

                                                                     SHIK-CHUFF

    shik-chuff. shik-chuff.

    It took Matt a minute to figure out that the noise that woke up him at two a.m. wasn't part of nature.

    shik-chuff. shik-chuff.

    Another two minutes went by before he realized that it was the sound of a shovel.

    shik-chuff. shik-chuff.

    Someone was digging in his lawn in the dead of night, and it sounded like it was happening right under the bedroom window.

    He was awake then, and afraid, and trying to find and pull on clothes in the dark so whoever was out there wouldn't be alerted by lights in the window.    He wondered if he should wake Jennifer or not; he might need her to call 911 if whatever-this-was-going-to-be turned ugly, but if it somehow turned out to be nothing then he'd undoubtedly scare the bejesus out of her. She often got spooked just by strange cars driving through the neighborhood, so digging on the lawn at 2 a.m. would surely mess her up good.   He grabbed his cell phone, deciding he'd call the cops himself if he needed them.

    He wasn't a gun owner. He'd meant to buy one, flirted with it for years, but hadn't committed. Too bad now. The best weapon his sleepmuggled brain could come up with and that he could find in the dark was a hammer. Not much against a guy who'd definitely have at least a shovel.   He'd just have to try to avoid violence if possible; always his first plan.

    He fished a flashlight out of a drawer and slipped out the front door. He thought about locking it behind him in case the shoveler killed him and went in after Jen, but if that happened the lunatic could take the keys off him anyway. He'd just have to not get killed, which was also part of his first plan.

    Great, we're thinking in terms of being murdered now.

    The shik-chuff was much louder out here, coming from right around the corner, and he paused, listening to it a second. Definitely a shovel; he could hear the metal scraping on roots or gravel, and the digger's grunts and hard breathing. Did he really want to confront this guy? The mental state of anyone digging in someone else's yard at this hour -- or any hour, without permission -- had to be far off the rails and into the weeds. He wondered if he should just go ahead and call 911 now. But there was always the rare chance that there was some sane explanation, and he could end up embarrassed. He'd better check it out first. Face it up, be a man, sometimes the hardest job in the world.

    With a chill of fear, he peeked around the corner.

    There he was, a short, sturdy man, bald on top with a wild white fringe around the sides like some mad professor. He was working the shovel hard, throwing his body against it as he piled dirt into the hole he'd been digging. There was enough light from the moon and the utility pole up the hill to make out who it was fairly quickly; old Mr. Thorson from the next block. Crazy Mr. Thorson, who didn't like neighbors. Matt had once said hello to him after an ice storm; Thorson had been out looking at one of his pines that had come down under the weight of the ice and Matt had said, "Ouch, looks like you're going to lose that one," and Thorson had bared long yellow teeth at him and said, "Don't you worry about it, shitbrick." Ended that conversation and all others in the future.

    Other neighbors he'd told about the incident had reported similar interactions. Ernie Thorson was pathologically unfriendly at the very least, and probably full-blown crazy. Nobody really knew what he did, because he made sure everyone minded their own business. He was supposed to be retired from a job in an air conditioner factory or something, but he was so antisocial Matt couldn't imagine him holding down any job, anywhere.

    Matt stepped out and switched on the flashlight and beamed it at Thorson. "What's going on here?" he said.

    Thorson looked over his shoulder and grunted, "None ya GOT-damn business, pissteat."

    Matt barked a laugh at the absurdity that a burial in his yard was none of his business. Fear was getting replaced by anger and bewilderment. "Like hell it's not! The fuck you burying in my yard?"

    Thorson ignored him and kept working the shovel. He was almost finished covering up whatever he'd put down there, in a sizeable hole. It was maybe a yard square, possibly enough for a body if it was compressed. He slapped the flat of the shovel on top of the dirt to pack it, then crouched to arrange the sod back over it.

    Being dismissed like this just made Matt angrier. "You going to answer my question?"

    Thorson looked at him and his upper lip pulled back in that ratty sneer-smile and he said, "So far don't look much like I am, does it?"   He snorted.

    Matt wondered if he could hit him, if it would ruin his life if he tried. Would he lose his job for being involved in a brawl with a crazy old man? Probably, and probably be left with no useable references, either. It was something to consider, but he really did want to deck this arrogant sonofabitch. "Well, you'd better! Digging up my yard, burying... what did you bury? Dig it back up!"

    "Not about to, and don't you be poking around down there, either. I fixed your grass back. A good rain or two and you'd never know anything was down there, so you forget about it, leave it be."

    "Like hell!" Matt laughed. "You're fuckin' crazy! For all I know you killed a kid or something and tried to plant it in my yard."

    "It's buried now so you leave it be and nobody'll know anything about it."

    Mike couldn't believe anyone would try to make this argument to him. "You are... ah, fucking apeshit bugnuts, man! Jesus Christ! Okay. Okay, I'm calling the cops and they can come dig it up." Matt took out his cell phone.

    Thorson jabbed the shovel at Matt's face. The edge of the blade was right under his nose, so close he could smell the clayey earth and the blood-like tang of rust.   "You ain't calling no-goddamn-body or I'll be digging another hole," Thorson snarled, spraying spit. "You ain't gonna call 'em now and you ain't gonna call 'em later, neither. I hear from the cops, you'll hear from me. They won't haul me in for what I buried, and I will be back, and I'll for-sure-no-foolin' kill you. I'll do it ugly, too. Maybe I'll get the chair for it but I'm old, I don't much care, and it won't make no difference to you. You leave that hole be. Or maybe I won't kill you, just leave you blind and crippled and tongueless with no hands. How'd that be? I don't give a damn what I do to you, you got me, boy? Don't give the merest shit!"

    Matt's blood had retreated somewhere deep inside him and he felt faint. Thorson meant every word of it; looking at the crazed gleam in his eyes Matt had no doubt he'd carry his threats through.   Real violence was just seconds from happening, and Matt had never experienced anything like it. He'd played some football, had a few playground scuffles, but this was something different, so severe it made him shake. He felt almost certain of dying in the next minute. "Ye... yeah, man, okay," Matt stammered, almost forgetting how to speak in the whiteout of terror.

    "You keep your mouth shut or I'll carve it so big it'll be no use to you, you fuckwallower," Thorson rasped, panting. He, too, was shaking, apparently from the effort of reining back his urge to murder. Matt's fear was feeding Thorson's rage, emboldening him. "You leave the cops out of this, you leave everyone out of this, you leave yourself out of this, or you gone wish to grandmammy Jesus you had!"   Thorson took a knife out of his pocket and snapped it open. It's blade had the wickedest shape Matt had ever seen, like a talon, and he backed away as Thorson gouged little shapes in the air with it. "Ain't none of your business what I put down there. Far as you're concerned this was just a bad dream you had. Go get back in your bed and it'll be over. I hear from the cops and you'll have nothing but nightmares ahead of you."   Thorson looked so crazy that Matt wasn't about to argue with him. The hammer he was holding didn't feel even remotely adequate to deal with this, and he didn't want that knife punching into him, slicing. He backed away, hands up, and kept backing away. Thorson watched him, shovel and knife in his hands, not following.

    Nightmare. This was just a nightmare. That'd be easy to believe.

    Matt went back inside, locked the house, and vomited in the kitchen sink. After washing up he crept back into bed and lay awake until dawn.

    A week passed and he didn't tell anyone what had happened, not even Jennifer. He was ashamed of how afraid he'd felt of Thorson. He'd never been a fraidycat but Thorson was crazy, truly crazy, and god knew what he'd do. And it seemed safer to just do like he said, leave it be.   He hadn't felt like he could call the police anymore after the first couple of days, anyway. He was implicated by his failure to report the incident quickly.

    And maybe it was nothing, anyway. Thorson was so loopy he could have just been burying some old dirty magazines or a dead dog or something. It didn't have to be anything illegal.

    But of course it probably was. Would he be that frantic to keep something innocent a secret? Would he risk getting caught burying something innocent on someone else's property?

    Maybe. The man was insane. Irrational.

    It was probably something awful. A dismembered body. Maybe a child, or two. Who knew what that psycho was doing at his house?   He was so secretive, so eager to keep people away, something bad must be going on there.

    Matt was too afraid to call the police, but he didn't think he could stand not knowing what was buried in his yard anymore. It was preying on his mind, driving out all other thought until life was just a secret background for The Problem. He would have to do something about it.

    More days passed as he kept an eye on Thorson's house until he found a night when his car was gone. Matt waited until after midnight and snuck out with a shovel. He had the patch of ground memorized and, shaking with fear, dug away at the top sod and set it aside. Second thoughts were hitting him hard; he didn't know if he could handle what he'd find down there. But then, if it was nothing, he could leave it be and get the whole incident out of his mind.

    So, he dug. Shik-chuff. Shik-chuff. It sounded a little like the needle digging at the end of a record, some finality. He couldn't see what his shovel was biting in the deep shadow that filled the hole, and he stopped every few shovelfuls to shine the flashlight down. The soil was still loose, and the digging went quickly.

    Two feet down the shovel hit some soft resistance and something whined.

    Matt backed away from the hole, trembling. The sound had been like a kitten's mewl, but thicker, phlegmy. Something alive down there? Impossible! Even if Thorson buried a cat or something alive, that had been over two weeks ago. It would have died by now. Maybe it was a rubber doll that squeaked if it was squeezed. But it hadn't sounded like that.

    He didn't want to see whatever it was.

    But there was no way he could just cover it back up. He'd wonder forever. He'd only dig it back up eventually, and now was the time, with Thorson not home.

    He shined the flashlight down the hole and saw a bit of muddy burlap.

    Carefully, he scraped the dirt away and revealed part of a sack, which he grabbed and dragged out of the hole. It wasn't easy; the ground had taken a grip on it.

    Something inside was moving a little, and Matt quickly dropped it on the grass and backed away.

    Christ, what's in there? Rats?

    Fighting back the fear, he reached for the neck of the bag and picked at the twine Thorson had used to tie it shut. It was hard to pick apart the mud-slicked knot but he managed to wrestle it loose and, with intense fear, so bad it squeezed him like a vice, he opened the bag and shone the flashlight in.

    Whatever it was, it was badly decayed and unrecognizable. It looked like maybe the upper half of a very deformed man, or a dwarf that had melted together in a lump. The thing had a head of sorts, although without features, no eyes, just a hole that opened and shut with a dreamy slowness, something diseased having a fitful sleep.   There was a limb, or part of one, ending in a stub of skin-folds. There was hair, mostly fallen loose in the bag but also sprouting from the thing. Its flesh was slimy wet and horribly pale, rotting and sloughing, almost luminous in the flashlight beam. It stank, though not as overwhemingly as he'd expect from its appearance. Spoiled meat, confined sickness, rotting vegetable matter, sewer mud, snotty breathing, all combined.

    And yet, it moved. Lazily, like a dreamer writhing while enduring a nightmare. It couldn't possibly be alive, and yet, it stirred. After two weeks in the ground. After putrefaction.

    The thing had no definite shape. He felt certain it was not and never had been human, unless it was some incredibly deformed mistake, some teratoma. It was too big to be a baby, weighed around thirty, forty pounds. Matt made himself hold the light on the head-like bulb and lean in. Veins, but no place that eyes, nose, or ears could ever have been. The mouth -- or orifice, more correctly -- was in the wrong place and toothless, a flexing fatty-yellow wound amidst the scabby luminous moonlight-skin. Hair sprouted here and there, along with mold. The smell was gassy, and like a dead rat squished in a mildewed book, and it clung to the back of his throat. Here and there knobs or spines of bone protruded. The inside of the bag was lined with slimy, fatty seepage. Living foulness, opening itself like a baby bird wanting a worm, or a kiss.

    And it seemed to be forcing itself into his mind with one horrible, insistent urge, like grease oozing through clenched fingers, foul and compelling, more impulse than thought, absurd but strong:

    “Eat me.”

    Matt turned aside and vomited, then stumbled away and looked somewhere else so he couldn’t get the thing’s message. There was no telling what the thing was, it was indescribable, and he couldn’t imagine where Thorson had found it. Was it some child of his, some deformed animal that he’d raised, some experiment? Were there more such things in his house? Something worse? What had he buried in his own yard? Had he been so afraid of getting impulses from the thing that he couldn’t have it on his own property?

    He only knew one thing for certain; he wasn’t going to let it remain in his yard. He’d never sleep again, knowing this thing was writhing in the ground below his bedroom window. Wanting him to... to...

    He coughed and heaved.   There was plenty of night left, he could still get rid of this damn thing somewhere. He was afraid to return it to Thorson, and dumping it somewhere on the side of the road wasn’t a good idea, because it might be found and then Thorson would know he’d dug it up. It might even manage to crawl back, somehow get into his house.

    Matt went and got a black plastic garbage bag and dropped the burlap sack into it and knotted it tightly.   He picked it up, along with his shovel, and he walked to the next block, where a meek little man named Leon Fleer lived. Picking out a spot, Matt began to dig. Shik-chuff, shik-chuff, he dug quickly and he dug deep, but apparently he didn’t dig as quietly as he thought, because as he was finishing up, out came Leon Fleer, bald, eyeglassed, wiry nervous-eater’s frame swimming in a bathrobe and striped pajamas.

    “Hey... hey, what goes on here?” Leon peeped. He sounded scared out of his wits. Good.

    “None of your fucking business,” Matt snarled, panting. “Go back to bed.”

    Leon blinked rapidly, his chin trembling. His eyes were as blue and shocked as a baby doll’s, and Matt felt simultaneously sorry for him and aggressive, wanting to punch him. Matt wondered if he’d looked like that when he’d confronted Thorson. Probably.   “But... you’re burying something in my yard!” he said.

    “So what?”

    “So... what is it? You can’t just...”

    “It’s something you’re better off not wondering about.”

    Leon blinked again, and looked even more harmless in his pajamas. He hadn’t even brought a weapon. Violence was an alien concept to this little man. “But you can’t just... it’s my yard, you can’t...”

    Matt - amazed at himself - jabbed at Leon with the shovel and glared. Leon stumbled back and adjusted his glasses, a nervous tic. “I can, if you mind your own business. And if you don’t, if I hear anything more about this, if I hear from the cops, then I’ll come back here, no matter what else I do, and I’ll chop you the fuck up with this shovel. You got me?”

    “I... I...I...” Leon wrestled with his glasses like they were a bat biting his face.

    Absurdly, the opening of Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" went off in Matt's head and he had to fight an urge to laugh.   If he started, he'd probably keep doing it until they hauled him off.

    Instead, he snapped, “Don’t worry about what’s buried in that hole. You’ll only be sorry if you if know. It’s nothing illegal, but you don’t want any part of it. You just leave it be, or you can start concentrating on what’ll be buried in the next one if you don’t keep your mouth shut. Because it’ll be you!”

    Leon flinched and shifted from foot to foot. He looked like he wanted to bolt but worried what might happen if he tried it.

    “Do you understand me?” Matt spat.

    “Yes, yes, okay.”   Leon’s voice broke. He held the glasses like they might serve as a shield against a shovel-blow about to cleave his face. His hands were shaking

    “Don’t forget,” Matt said, pointing at him.

    Then he carried his shovel home in the starlight, though for a moment he considered leaving it there.

                    THE END

Long Tall Sally

2011-10-28T22:12:00.001-05:00

Okay, Halloween's almost here. As is traditional, I wrote you a short story (remember Damp Basements of Heaven and Up The Stairs Where The Windows Are Painted Black? If so, you're the person who read them, I guess!). This year I even wrote you two! I'll post the other (mercifully shorter) one in a couple days. I b'lieve Kicker Of Elves has one in the works, too. And Igor wrote ya'll a song, which you should go hear if you didn't already.

Oh, and while I'm plugging things... go watch AminaMarx's review of The Walking Dead on YouTube. It's hilarious and brilliant. Go watch it now, it'll only take you five minutes, and the story'll wait. If you want to hang around and watch her other vids, the story'll still wait. I watch a good bit of YouTube and this is much better than most of the stuff on there, and deserves a big audience. Watch it, and tell your friends.

Okay, on to the story. This one's kinda long. Maybe a little slow (I can be wordy and there's no editor to yank my leash), but I was trying to use a Victorian kind of structure for it and build up an obsessive mood so I can (hopefully) slam the morbid into it. I don't know if I achieve it, but when I write horror, it's always with bad intent. I hope I'll entertain you, but mostly I want to fuck up your sleep, get in your head and do some psychological damage for a while, put a little fear o' the dark in ya. Otherwise, what's the point, right?   Sometimes I'll just throw a lot of hyperviolent splat around, but sometimes I try something darker. This one's pretty dark. A few people I've described the plot to screamed "Don't tell me stuff like that!" which I always take as a good sign. :) Anyway, I hope it pays off and creeps you out baaaad, or at least doesn't waste your time.   Otherwise, I fucked up! Feedback's welcome and helpful, so feel free to comment here or on Twitter. If you didn't like it, don't worry, I won't hate ya or nothin'... it'll just make me work harder next time, so give me reasons. :)

=================================

LONG TALL SALLY

    Ralph had already been noticing some strange things happening in his apartment before he met the drunk with the three eyebrows, but after their talk those things were enough to make him afraid to go home.

    His new job teaching college Spanish was going okay so far, but the new social life was not even okay. Any hopes of making friends at work wilted early on; the department was composed almost entirely of socially-crippled introverts who were painful even at lunch conversation. There were two exceptions, but the funny guy named Javier was married with kids and therefore not available for much hanging out, and a really fun girl named Lori was getting married in a month and so, same deal. Ralph wanted company; being alone in a strange town had him feeling trapped. So far luck hadn't dumped anybody in his lap at the grocery store or someplace, so, out of desperation, he was giving the bar scene a try, even though he wasn't much of a drinker. And that scene was turning out to be so oversaturated by people too young to want to hang out with him that it was just making him feel creepy. He was starting to clutch at straws, and that's how he ended up talking to Larry, of the three eyebrows.

    Ralph guessed that Larry had split the caterpillar-like left eyebrow in some drunken stumble, because even though he looked like rough trade, he was so friendly that Ralph couldn't imagine him getting in many fights. His clothes hung on him like the sails of a becalmed ship, and he had a wallet chained to pants that might fall off sooner than the wallet would fall out. He was a missed haircut away from having a mullet and one of his front teeth had a chip out of it, probably from some other drunken mishap.   Ever since he'd found out what Ralph did, he'd been popping out a "say something else in Spanish" every few minutes. It was meant to be friendly, but his impaired judgment was pushing it toward obnoxiousness, and that did make Ralph consider evening up his eyebrows and teeth, but not in any serious actually-gonna-do-it way.

    Ralph had been getting bored with the rambling conversation, though, and was trying to engineer a way to peel this guy off of him. He'd been starting his "Well, I better be heading back to the house" lines when things finally took an interesting turn.

    "So, wherebouts is tu casa, Ralph? Is that how you say it, tu casa?"

    "Pretty much, yeah. I got an apartment in a big old house over on Railside Street."

    "Railside? That's the old part of town, amigo. Real old, the oldest, like. Kinda getting run down now. Shame, too. Used to be real pretty, but they shut the railroad down and the neighborhood kinda went with it."   Larry made a farty noise that represented urban decline as well as any.

    "Yeah, it's kind of a gloomy area. Kind of a gloomy house, too. I'm not in love with it, but I'm getting paid kinda shit, y'know. It was in the budget."

    Larry nodded, holding his cocktail glass in front of him like a crystal ball he was augurying. Almost empty; not much future there, but Ralph guessed its main purpose was to chase away the past. "My grandma used to live over on Railside, so I know it pretty well. Spent lotsa after-schools terrorizing that neighborhood when I was a sprout. Wherebouts you makin' tu casa?"

    "It's a big, dark brown two-story with white trim. Almost black, really. I'm thinking it was a house but at some point they divided it into four apartments. It's at seven..."

    "...forty-eight," Larry finished with him. "I know that house. Seven-forty-eight, that's the one, yeah?"

    "Yeah, that's the one. You know your Railside."

    "Well, hell, you don't have to be no kinda genius to know about 748 Railside if you were raised around here. Holy shit, amigo, you're living in Long Tall Sally's house! No wonder your rent's cheap!" He laughed, and it was nervous, sending chills through Ralph's guts.

    "Who's Long Tall Sally?"

    "Ol' Sally Longneck. Sally the goose. Holy shit, man, I never knew anybody who actually lived in that place. You seen anything crazy yet? Oh shit, dude, tell me you aren't in apartment three." Larry grabbed his arm, setting off another chill.

    "Yeah, I am. What's wrong with apartment three? And who's this Sally?"

    "Sally was an old crazy whore, and apartment three's where they found her. Holy shit, man, I don't even know if I oughtta tell you about this, you having to go back there later and all." He rolled the glass between his hands. Ice clinked like Ralph's nerves.

    "Found her? What do you mean, found her?"

    Larry shook his head, finished the dregs in the cocktail glass, crunched some ice, and said, "Let's go on out of here, amigo. I need some fresh air if I'm gonna remember up this story. I'm drunk enough, anyway, and they're about to shut down."

    "Well, yeah," Ralph said, and they stood up. Larry had to hang onto the table for a second before he straightened up.

    "Zombies, man. Nobody drinks 'em anymore. I had to teach the guy here to make 'em. But they sure knock the corners off everything. Whoo. I'm old for this shit. Okay, here we go. Just like walkin' across a record while it's playing. Whee! Look mom, I'm surfin'!"

    Ralph followed him through the bar's dim multicolored schemes, which seemed patterned on rooms out of "Masque of the Red Death." One side room was all red and looked uncomfortably ambulance-lit, like drinking and dancing at the scene of an accident. One girl was gyrating and tossing her hair around even though Ralph couldn't make out any music amidst the blur of conversational noise. Her arms flopped around, as if boneless. Tentacular, he thought, wishing he could write the word down because he was pretty sure he'd just made it up, and he liked the sound of it. It cut through the dread a little; he was feeling chilled by this "Long Tall Sally" business, this "where they found her" ominousness that implied a dead body -- probably under weird circumstances -- in his apartment.

    Ralph didn't look into the red room long, trying to keep up with Larry as he wove through the college kids until they found the front door. Larry headed over to a ratty old motorcycle that looked like a project-in-progress, heavy on the bondo, and sat on it. Ralph took a seat at a picnic table next to it as Larry shook a pack of Camels and lipped one out. "I lied a little, y'know. Didn't really need fresh air, I needed cig-air. Want one? Never too old to be a nicotine-ager."

    "No thanks."

    "No mas, gracias," Larry mumbled, lighting up. "How you say cancer in Espanol? El too-mar de los lung-os, ai yi yi chihuahua. I am an asshole for smoking these things."   The air was crisp and starting to turn cool, and the stars were remarkably clear, sparkling like glass scattered across asphalt. Leaves would be withering soon. Larry pulled a lungful, blew it out, then said, "Holy shit goddamn, Long Tall Sally's house. Grandma was so scared of that place she used to write the mayor to get it pulled down. She kept the curtains drawn and safety-pinned together on her window that had a view of it down the street. She was a little girl when they found her. Sally Longneck, that is."

    "Longneck. Was that her last name? Sounds Native American."

    "Naw, nothin' like that. Her name was... something, I dunno, seems like it was something Polish, like, one of those o-chek or -ski or -vitz or something sounds like a sausage. Some good ol' all-American foreign name." He snorted out smoke. "Naw, she was Longneck 'cuz of how they found her, after. In apartment three. Tu casa, holy by-god shit. Never thought I'd meet anybody from there. That place was such legend when I was a kid. Scared the be-Christ out of us."

    Ralph was getting impatient and a little scared. He'd heard knocking and bumping sounds at night in his apartment, creaks and groans that had kept him awake but which he'd passed off as natural parts of living in an old building, or, at worst, rats. Once he'd thought he heard the tea kettle whistle in the kitchen just before dawn, but he'd dismissed that as air in the pipes. Now it was sounding like he was living in some notorious haunted spot, and even though he didn't believe in such things, he still had an imagination and the information he was hearing was giving it a good bending-over.

    "Okay, see, back when the railroad was an active thing -- Grandma's daddy, he worked for them, at the station house, that's gone now, tore down back in the nineties out of some speculation deal nothing ever came of -- back then, your part of town was busy. And Sally O-chek-ski-vitz-whosis was working the tourist trade as a woman of ill repute." Larry made finger-quotes in the air and wagged his remarkable eyebrows in tandem. "Way they tell it she coulda just as well gone the carnival route as an India rubber woman or something 'cuz her bones were like cartilage, she was real flexible, so she could turn some tricky tricks, I guess. Tie herself in a knot and kiss her own ass, somethin’. You‘d drop a ten to see that, no?”   Larry laughed and Ralph made a token effort at joining him, just to keep him in a talking mood. Larry finished the cigarette and scaled it across the parking lot, almost hitting some kids talking by an SUV. They were laughing for real, part of a better night.

    “Anyway, she made a nice trade fucking for dollars, I guess, but then something happened, don’t know what. Some guy she was gonna marry run out on her or her brother got killed or something, depends on who you hear it from. Maybe she just got tired of wrapping her legs behind her head for strangers, who the fuck knows? She was supposed to be pretty crazy anyhow. Anyway, something got to her and she hung herself up there - in your apartment, holy shit. Strung herself up on some braided clothesline, and they didn’t find her for about a week.

    “And by the time they did find her... with all those rubber bones or what-not... well. Her neck had stretched out to over a foot long.   You ever read Alice In Wonderland?   Grandma had an old copy of that, the classic one, with the drawings in it? There was one in there of Alice all stretched out between eat-me drink-me bullshits and Grandma showed me that picture and said Sally was almost like that and I had fucking nightmares over that for years, dog. They said she was like seven feet tall when they took her out of there, had to fold her up into a coffin and she’s off in that graveyard ‘cross the tracks from you. One good thing about your neighborhood, as bad as it’s turned out, can’t nobody say it’s the wrong side of the tracks, ‘cuz all that’s on the other side of those tracks is that graveyard. Woodside’s the name of the cemetery but we all called it Weedside ‘cuz it’s all grown up, and because that’s where all the heads used to hang out and smoke.”   He tapped pinched fingers to his lips, unnecessarily.

    “So, you said something about seeing anything crazy, if I’d seen anything crazy yet,” Ralph said. “Crazy like what?   What do people supposedly see in my apartment?”

    “Aw, you know, that’s probably just old ghost-story horseshit. I wouldn’t pay it much mind, man. I shouldn’t’ve even told you all this. Power of suggestion’ll have you seeing some shit, especially at two in the by-Jesus a.m., and if you’re half as drunk as me. And shame on you if you are because I’m goddamn irresponsible about my drinking.”

    “That how you got the scar, there?” Ralph asked, rubbing his own eyebrow.

    Larry reached up and touched it as if not realizing anything was there, then said, “That. Yeah. Know how every time something happens, some girl gets smacked around by her douchemaster boyfriend or something, they ran into a door? Well, hello, I ran into a door, for real. Woke up hung over, house all dark, the phone rings, I run to answer it, and crack, right into the edge of my bedroom door like a fucking spastic. Bled like crazy. Got to the phone and it’s some other drunk with a wrong number. Ha!”   He rubbed at the eyebrow. “Scab just come off a week or something ago.”

    “Jesus,” Ralph said. “So, about my apartment...”

    “Yeah, I don’t know, man, just weird shit. Noises and all. Worst I heard was a single mom moved in with her daughter and didn’t know fuck-all about Sally Longneck’s story or anything, but she never slept well in there, and her daughter starts drawing pictures of a ‘giraffe girl.’ Eventually some blabbermouth like me told her what went on in there and she hightailed it out of the place that same day.   That story'll set the spiders crawling up your ass, man. Another dude in one of the lower apartments, when he was the only guy renting in the place at the time, all three other units empty, he said one night this really tall woman was wobbling down the staircase from the second story. He ‘sent for his things.’   I’d’ve had some laundry to do, man, it’d been me. Just picturing it scares the gee-dee outta me.”

    “Shit, dude. They didn’t tell me any of this when I signed my lease,” Ralph said, cold swirling inside him.

    “Well, they’re not gonna do that, are they?” Larry said, pulling another cigarette. The kids in the SUV were backing out, dyeing him with more ambulance light from the taillights. “Hey, welcome, move right in, and please ignore the funhouse-mirror bitch you might see wandering the hallways.” He laughed and lit up.

    “Might have to have a little talk with my landlady.”

    “Hey, hey, man, don’t worry about it. Really, I didn’t tell you all this stuff to mess up your deal. I just babble, too much rum. It’s all probably a load of crap, you know? I don’t even know that there was a real guy who saw something on the stairs, or a real mom with a kid drawing giraffe-girls. Just stuff I heard, it ain’t gospel. Like I said, you’re the only guy I ever met who actually lived in that place, and you haven’t seen anything weird, right?”

    “Well, no, I haven’t seen anything. I heard a few creaks and bumps and knocks.”

    “Old house, right?”   Larry waved the cigarette dismissively, scattering ash. “Noisy neighbors.”

    “Well, that’s what I’d been thinking up ‘til now,” Ralph laughed.

    “Oh, hey, don’t let my bullshit bother you, man. It’s just stuff I heard as a kid and I’m probably not remembering it right, anyway, and somebody probably made half of it up to begin with. Probably nothing wrong with your place. Hey, I’d like to see it sometime, just since I heard about it all my life. In the daylight, though. I’m too full of my own bullshit -- and Bacardi’s bullshit” - he pushed his chin at the bar - “to handle it at night.”   He laughed. “So, what you hear in there, anyway, exactly?”

    “Nothing too weird, really. I was worried it was rats or mice. Maybe it is, I’ve still got traps written on my shopping list. But, you know, just creaking, a few loud knocks. Loud enough that I’ve gotten out of bed to check the front door a couple of times. Once I thought I heard the tea kettle whistling in the kitchen and thought I left it on, but I checked and it was cold.”

    Larry frowned at nothing, chewing on his cigarette. “House settling, probably, huh?”

    “Yeah. Air in the pipes.”

    “Air in the pipes,” Larry nodded. “Well, hey, man, it’s been good but I better be getting home, mi casa, while I can still do it. Nice meeting you. Ralph, am I right?”

    “Right. And Larry.”

    “No, I’m Larry,” Larry laughed, then held out his hand, all veins and bones. “I’m around here most nights so you wanna habla, hablo some more, look me up, alright?”

    Ralph shook his hand and said, “Absolutely, I’ll do that.”

    Larry nodded and stomped at his ratty motorcycle, which had probably been in good shape around the last time Larry was. Ralph asked, “You sure you’re okay to drive that thing?”

    “Oh, yeah, do it all the time, and it’s only about a half mile, some shit.” He stomped again and the bike blatted shockingly loud for two a.m. Larry gunned it, monitored it a second to make sure it wasn’t going to die off, then grinned and gave Ralph a thumbs up. Ralph returned it and Larry saluted and slowly, carefully, wheeled out of the parking lot and was soon a red taillight in the distance.

    And now Ralph didn’t want to go home. But the bar was shutting down already. You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here, wasn’t that how it went? And at this hour nothing else was open but a grocery store and the Wal-Mart, and he was feeling too tired to wander around either.

    He went and sat in his car for a few minutes, thinking about Larry’s “bullshit” story, and trying to remember that Little Richard song. That was about a whore, wasn’t it? Uncle John, hiding from Aunt Mary in the alley with his ‘built for speed’ woman? No relation, he was sure, but it made the song seem a bit morbid. Morbid, that was the word for the whole thing.   A neck stretched over a foot long?   He’d known people with rubbery cartilage, but Jesus, what an image. And even if it was just a local urban legend, the fact that it centered on his apartment, that was disturbing.

    Could Larry have just been having some fun with him?   Maybe he’d known that house for some other reason. But picking apartment three out of a hat? And those stories. He’d been too sloshed with rum to just make that stuff up on the spot. And the noises in the night, the disturbed sleep, before he’d even gotten here? No, Larry didn’t seem like a liar, and he’d been too drunk to be creative.

    He didn’t want to go home but it was silly not to, so he started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. He was afraid to turn on the radio because if that song happened to be playing he wouldn’t be able to go home at all, but he tried it anyway just to conquer a little piece of the fear. Scanning the dial, the closest he got was “Love Me Do” on an oldies station, so, supernatural forces were evidently not aligning against him.

    Still, he drove around a while, delaying it. This wasn’t a lively town, though, and it was 2 a.m., so the lack of life and movement didn’t do much to dispel the mood. Blinking red lights in the intersections, empty streets, black windows.   A fat possum crept through a back yard full of swingsets and toys, eyes glowing like ghostfire. The lonesomeness of it was bad, but anyone he would see at this hour might be worse. “Might as well go home to Long Tall Sally before she shows up on the radio,” he said to the night, and drove home.

    The house looked black. He’d left a light on in his apartment, not much of one, just the light over the stove, and he wished he’d left more now because that was so dim. He’d have to walk into a dark living room, a living room where a little girl may have drawn giraffe-lady pictures. And before he got there he’d have to go up the stairs where the guy had seen something bad enough to send him packing.

    The kitchen window burned orange up there, and he stared at it, waiting to see if the curtain moved, if someone peeked out, if a freakishly elongated shape would pass across it...

    Nothing did, but he felt it might, if only he waited a minute more.

    “Idiot,” he told himself and shut off the car and climbed out. He went inside. The lobby was dim but a light was kept on all the time, so tenants wouldn’t hurt themselves climbing dark stairs. Looking at those stairs he could imagine something backlit, gently swaying, coming down.   But there was nothing. They just led up, to apartment three, former home of Long Tall Sally and now him.

    He climbed them, unlocked the door with the three on it, stepped in, and locked it behind him before flipping on the lights. The place felt chilly and was still and silent; it sounded like waiting. But he quickly checked all the rooms and no one was there, and any presence was just in his own mind. The stillness was unnerving, though, so he cut the television on for company, the volume low so he wouldn’t disturb his roommate.

    Neighbors, he corrected himself bitterly. Despite Larry’s campfire tales, I have no roommate here.

    He walked through the apartment again. The kitchen, he decided, was where she’d done it. The ceiling was high there, and there were beams you could snake a rope around, maybe. A braided clothesline, Larry had said, though how he’d known that was a mystery. Probably an add-on detail to the basic fact as it turned from incident to urban legend. Maybe a lonely woman had hung herself here in the 30’s or 40’s and, being a boring little town where not much ever happened, it remained an event worthy of decades of talk, a hand-me-down story that grew until it became interesting bullshit. Her neck hadn’t been a foot long (ridiculous!), her name probably wasn’t even Sally, it probably hadn’t been apartment three, and there were no ghosts or giraffe-lady drawings and maybe the whole thing had never happened, anyway.

    But if it had, the kitchen would be the place, with those beams. He went back in and stared at them, looking for rope marks, but of course they’d been painted since, probably many times, and anything like that would be buried under layers of paint.

    Had she swung back and forth in here, for days? Seven feet tall when they found her, over a foot of it neck? Probably touching the floor by the end, not hanging, just standing there, dead. If it was as cold then as it was now, decay would be slow to set in. And if it had been later in the year, say, November, she’d have been fresh as a daisy, a long-stemmed daisy.

    “Idiot,” he hissed, turning out the light in the kitchen, trusting that nothing would fill the dark.

    Something in the hallway behind him made a noise. An old-house creak. He’d have to stop granting it any more than that. Everything creaked here. Just crossing the room was like a Karloff movie. There was no one here but him, and that’s why he’d been driven out to talk to a guy like Larry in the first place, that loneliness. Now some silly story was doing magic tricks with the facts. There was no Long Tall Sally here. If there was a Long Tall Sally anywhere then she was crammed and grinning in the rotten velvet of her wet, crumbling coffin, buried across the tracks. He looked out the window, saw streetlights in the distance, through trees. Graveyard out there somewhere. Sally, out there, maybe that streetlight shining on her headstone. Long time dead.

    Thinking like that did him no good. The point was, she wasn’t here, and fearing her was stupid. If she’d ever hung grotesquely dead and alone here, it’d been decades ago. Maybe almost a century if Larry’s grandma had been a little girl when it happened. There’d be no trace of the act now. It didn’t matter. It was just an apartment. The rent was low because it was on the shabby side, and not too close to campus, and on a side of town where the glamour’d rubbed off.

    He sat down and watched television, but nothing was very interesting and the late-night lineup was a strange video-dumping-ground that didn’t help his mood any. He resisted turning it off because it meant silence and feeling more alone -- or not-alone, he supposed. Finally he got weary enough and angry enough with himself that he decided to go to bed.   First he turned the heat up; the thermostat said it was 73 degrees but he suspected it was broken because he felt a chill in the air. A cold snap was starting out there and it was affecting the house as it would an old man, settling in its bones and making it complain.

    He didn’t want the place too dark but he didn’t like the light coming in from the window, either. That was coming from across the tracks and Larry had said nothing was over there but the cemetery. Woodside, Weedside. Who over there needed light, anyway?   Were utility poles set up for the convenience of the kids smoking pot? Be some brave-ass kids, getting stoned at 3 a.m. in a graveyard, with Long Tall Sally down there, all uncomfortable in a coffin that didn’t fit.

    He curled up in bed and wanted to sleep, but he sensed bad dreams waiting to pounce on him and he was afraid to meet them.

    Sleep was a long time coming, and was uneasy when it did, but there were no dreams that he could remember, just a feeling upon awakening that he'd been through some and they weren't good.   More troubling, though, was a sense that he was coming down with something. The seasonal change, and maybe Larry's secondhand smoke (Ralph was mildly allergic), had left him with a runny nose and a slightly sore throat, as well as a feverish weariness. Groaning, he got up and decided he'd better go out and get some supplies before the illness really settled in. It was only Saturday morning, and if he was lucky it would run enough of its course to let him show up for work Monday.

    As he got dressed the apartment seemed less sinister. It caught the morning light well and didn't look as much like something Long Tall Sally would prowl, so he decided Larry's story was silly. There was nothing here but aged atmosphere and a lot of suggestion. He went out and drove to the grocer's and drugstore, picking up some Gatorade in case his illness took some pukey/diarrheic turn, and some Sudafed that was harder to buy than a firearm.

    A neighbor was out front walking his dachshund when he got home. Ralph had met the man before but couldn’t remember his name, although he knew the dog’s name was Charlie. Charlie Brown. Charlie’s Dad was an older guy from across the street, bald but for some lead-colored fringe around the sides, and a face made up of expressive creases and prominent teeth. Ralph remembered his first impression of the man had been an underpadded boxing glove gripping some dentures, and he wished he remembered the guy’s name instead of his snarky little quip. Charlie’s Dad was already wearing a coat, and Ralph guessed everybody else had gotten the memo that winter was coming before he had, because he wasn’t even sure where his coat was, probably in one of the boxes he hadn’t unpacked yet. “Hey there, Ralph!” Charlie’s Dad called. “Been out shopping, I see.” Ralph caught a whiff of pipe tobacco as he shook his hand.

    “Yeah, I had a few things I needed to pick up.” Ralph adjusted his bags so he could crouch and pet Charlie, who snakedanced his head happily under Ralph’s palm..

    Charlie’s Dad gestured at the drugstore bag. “Something for your mom? She sick?”

    “Huh? No, my mom’s in Georgia.”

    “Oh. I thought that lady I see in your window sometimes was your mother.”

    Ralph felt that chill swirl through him again. “No, there hasn’t been any lady in my apartment.”

    Charlie’s Dad’s wrinkles pulled together in great frown. “That’s your window there, second story, on the right? With the flowerpot on the sill?”

    “Yeah, that’s the one,” Ralph said, noting the yellow flowerpot a previous renter had left was still up there, complete with its sprout of dead something-or-other. Seemed to be the day for dead things previous renters had left behind.   “But I haven’t had any women up there, or anybody else.   Only woman who’s been in there since I moved in was my landlady when she showed me the place.”

    Charlie’s Dad’s brows went up, building a leather ladder above them. “Well, you may want to take an inventory of your valuables, because someone’s been in there a couple of times when you weren’t home. Maybe your landlady?   Is she really slim, dark hair, kind of...”   He gestured around his head to indicate teased hair.

    “Strange,” Ralph frowned. “No, my landlady’s a short, sturdy-looking woman, really short greyish blonde hair.” The color of a dirty pillowcase, he'd thought, and realized he couldn't remember her name, either.

    “Well, I don’t want to create the impression we’ve been peeping-tomming your place or anything, but I’ve noticed this woman up there a couple of times. My wife Martha’s seen her, too. We never got a good look at her, but if you’ve had any break-ins we’ll be glad to talk to the police for you.   She looked tall, thin, moved like she might be crippled.”

    “I haven’t noticed anything missing, but I may have to see about changing the locks,” Ralph said, wiping at a sniffle. Changing locks won’t help me, he thought. Maybe an exorcist. Or a complete change of address as soon as I can afford it.    He coughed into his fist and looked up at his window. Tall, thin, crippled.

    “Peculiar,” Charlie’s Dad said. “I’m kind of relieved that woman’s nobody you know, to tell the truth. What I could see of her, she was an awful-looking thing. Like a street-woman, bag-lady, somebody stealing to buy drugs. She stared out at me one day all wild-eyed." He stretched his eyes at Ralph. "I hope she’s not some crazy former tenant who still has a key.”

    I hope she is, Ralph thought, and hid a laugh in a cough. “It’s strange.”

    “Spooky! I’d report it to the landlord and get your locks changed.”

    “I’m definitely going to look into that,” Ralph said, wiping his nose.

    “I would. Say, you’re the one coming down with a cold, aren’t you?” Charlie’s Dad gestured at the drugstore bag again. “Thoughtless of me, keeping you out here when it’s getting nippy and you’ve got no jacket. Get inside, you can’t be too careful when the seasons change.”

    Ralph bid his goodbyes and headed inside, promising again to get the locks changed and send the cops by if he decided to call them.

    He listened at the door to number three for a minute before he put the key in the lock and opened it up. Silence. More silence when he went inside. A motorcycle went past on the street and that was all.    He didn’t feel any particular presence but knowing what the neighbor had seen had him unstrung. What went on here while he was away?   He liked the crazy-former-tenant idea a lot better than the alternative, which he still found absurd. He had the creeps now, all right, but ghosts, for real?

    He was definitely coming down with something, though. Coming down, hell, he already had it, and it was hitting him harder by the minute, so he poured some Gatorade over ice and washed down some vitamin C and a Sudafed, then settled in front of the television. Cartoons weren’t what they used to be, though, none of the teams playing interested him, and the only good movie on was almost over. He didn’t feel much like watching anything, anyway; his mind was too troubled. Every swallow felt like a scrape and fever was settling in. Physically he felt like ass, and mentally he felt hunted by some unseen thing, so he shut off the television, pulled down the shades in his bedroom, and burrowed under the blankets to retreat into sleep.

    It was a bad sleep, though, full of vivid little nightmares about someone in the next room, and one in which he was outside and saw a pale face with dead black eyes peering down from his window. When he ran up to get in, his apartment door was chained from the inside and whoever was in there was making an angry gobbling noise.

    Finally he woke up because the kettle was whistling again.

    He lay there a while, listening intensely, waiting for it to stop. Air in the pipes, could be. He knew he hadn’t turned the stove on, unless he did it sleepwalking.   After a few seconds it trailed off, and he lay there feeling chilled by it. The sheets were sweat-soaked and it was dusk outside. He’d been here all day, in and out of his jerky, Sudafed sleep.   The medicine seemed to have helped his sinuses but he still felt rotten and couldn’t afford to take any more because he needed rest, and the crank in those pills jolted him awake every ten minutes. And maybe they made him hear things.

    Then the kettle whistled again, and he held his breath. Maybe he had been sleepwalking after all, it was possible in this state, so he got up and stumbled to the kitchen but the whistle trailed off again before he got there.   The kettle was cold.   He dumped its water into the sink and put it on the countertop to settle that.

    The apartment was dim and chilled and felt eerie again, some presence pressing at him, something waiting, always in the next room, wherever you weren’t looking. He dreaded night coming again. Everything was much worse here at night.

    Maybe he could sleep through it. He took a shot of Nyquil and went back to bed and lay there, listening and watching the light fade, feeling too sick to worry about ghosts.   If this got much worse, he might be haunting the place himself.

    When he woke again it was fully dark, and the kettle was whistling again. He looked at the clock; nearly ten P.M. No way was that the kettle. Air in the pipes? Could be. Somebody running water in another apartment? Probably. He listened and it trailed off. After a minute of silence it started again. Louder.

    “Fuck,” he snarled, getting up. The room tilted on him, almost dumping him back into bed.   Nyquil-drunk, cocktailed with what was left of the Sudafed. And feverish.   Probably how Larry had felt last night, but without as much sick. He cut on the bedroom light and weaved into the living room.

    The kettle kept whistling (but it’s NOT the kettle) and he stood, holding onto the couch and listening, trying to analyze it. It was coming from the kitchen, for sure. He could see nothing in there, just the dimmest shape of the window facing the street. The whistling trailed off into a wheeze and then heavy silence.

    He stepped toward the kitchen and held onto the door frame, waiting and listening. He was afraid to flick the light switch because there might be something in that darkness that he did not want to see, wouldn’t be able to stand, maybe only an arm’s length away and grinning down at him, distorted. He shook his head and held his breath. Surely the whistling wouldn’t start again now that he was right here in the doorway to catch it in the act.

    But it did.

    High and loud and horrible and he knew what it was immediately and he yelped in revulsion at the recognition and stumbled back.

    It was her goddamn BREATHING! Air being drawn in through a throat stretched thin and flutish.   Air in the pipes, oh yes, it was air in the pipes, ha ha!

    A shape with something wrong with it passed in front of the window. Hair, a mess like a splatter of ink.

    The light in the bedroom behind him went out, and the whole apartment was completely dark.

    Something knocked against the wall, then again, stumbling closer.

    A long wheeeeeeze and a fly buzzing.

    Ralph yelled in panic, "GET AWAY! GET OUT OF HERE!" But it didn't leave. Someone was in the room with him, and it wasn't heeding him. He yelled again, and O God it wouldn't go away it wouldn't go away. He felt it approaching through the darkness and he thought he'd be part of Larry's next drunken story. “And then they found Ralph dead in tu casa with his neck pulled long as your thigh, holy by-Jesus shit.”

    Ralph yelled again and staggered back toward the bedroom, found the doorway, found the light switch and turned it on and whirled.

    Nothing.   Empty, dimly-lit room. Black kitchen doorway.

    He stood there, panting, waiting. Nothing happened.

    “Fuck this,” he said, pulling on his pants. Sick or not, he wasn’t staying here. He’d go back to the bar, look for Larry, see if maybe he could stay at his place. He didn’t really know anybody else in town, but staying here didn't seem like an option with this thing stalking him. And anybody but Larry would think he was crazy.

    He pulled on a shirt, turned on every light in the place, and left.

    The rest was a blur because he was running too high a fever to be out, and when he got to the bar and couldn't find Larry he sat down and started drinking. In honor of Larry (and maybe Sally) he even ordered a zombie, and he wasn't used to those.    He wasn't used to anything, really, and he knew this was a bad idea but tried to tell himself that there was something about drinking lots of fluids being good for a cold and that made him laugh. Feed a cold, starve a fever. What happened when you got a cold shitfaced? Let's find out! Jägerbomb a cold, push a fever down the stairs! Ha!

    At some point he wandered into the red room and there was she the dancing girl, the young lady tentacular, and he yelled "Unmask! Unmask!" at her and tried to dance with her and somehow she found this amusing or charming, maybe she'd been drinking those zombies, too, he didn't know but she danced with him even though he was no more a dancer than he was a drinker and shouldn't have even been on his feet anyway, fever bleary out of control, nerves shot. The whole room was feverish, that red light (was it pulsing? maybe, like being in a big heart), and maybe he'd end up in an ambulance before morning but he couldn't be alone tonight, not in that apartment where he really wasn't alone at all now was he? Ha! Alone with that whistling bitch!

    The aloneness, he realized, was the whole problem.   Sally was or had been (still was, death only made her taller) a whore, and a whore is a specialist in loneliness, a cure for it was what they sold, and they were predators for it, it was blood in the water to them, and hadn't Ralph been thrashing his aloneness like a wounded fish, resorting to bars, talking to goofs like Larry? Long Tall Sally's pimp, that's what Larry was! He'd made him aware of her so she could get busy. Sally was drawn to him even though her mortal remains were on the other side of the tracks (under that streetlight, he felt certain) now even though he did not dare to go and see, because maybe when he found that headstone with Sally O-Chek-Ski-Vitz-Ha-Ha maybe his name would be on it, too. And he would be down there! Lonely no more! Ralph the customer! She was just trying to meet him and do her thing, fill his need.

    And he suddenly knew how to fix it, even through the booze-floating-on-medication and nauseating fever and terror he figured out what he had to do. This cute little dancing girl, with her long straight brown hair with hipster pink streaked through it and those razored bangs playing peekaboo with some racooon-mascara-framed eyes (green? he thought green), if he could bring her home that'd chase Sally back to her muddy rotting velvet. You be the lonesome one, Sally, lonesome loathsome and sleeping alone on the wrong side of the grass on the wrong side of the tracks, because look what I got! Pretty! Young! Alive! Spec-tac-u-lar ten-tac-u-lar! The hunted would become the hunter!

    Ralph didn’t know what he said. He knew he bought some drinks and that probably did it more than anything else but he also channeled his desperation into enthusiasm which probably flattered the girl. An older guy captivated with her. The attention she’d been dancing for. And who else was here anyway? Everyone else in the bar looked like freaks, ghosts, grey and drifting through the bad multicolored light like malfunctioning funhouse props. Some didn’t even have faces, he noted. Some were just blurs, here, then there. Suggestions of people in darkened corners, lurkers in the margins. Ms. Trendybangs was the only real person there even with her tentacles, which looked a lot more like arms now that they were holding a glass and pouring it into her laughing mouth again and again, drunker and easier and it was working.

    And he didn’t even remember how he got her home. He didn’t remember leaving, but you can’t go home and you can’t stay here. When he should have been leaving he woke up and was wrapped in sweaty sheets in the terrible dark. Back in the apartment, his apartment, he recognized the numbers on his digital clock which were after 3 a.m., after closing time. He lay still. The dark gathered itself around him and loomed ready to pounce.

    Had that been a dream? The whole bar visit? The girl? How about the whistling thing that came after him from the kitchen before that? Dream, too? All a night of bad dreaming? He felt disoriented. Drunk, maybe, maybe just drunk off dreams and just really crazy sick.   God, if that had only been a dream, then he’d still be alone here, his loneliness dangling like bait for Long Tall Sally the Whore. He felt panic, like a stroke, and sat up gasping in the whirling dark room.

    But, no, it hadn’t been a dream. He’d gotten home with the girl after all, because his sitting up had awakened her and she stirred in the bed beside him, stiff with sleep, making little noises. Maybe some of the sweat on the sheets was hers, from lovemaking he didn’t remember. It was so dark he couldn’t see anything, but he could feel her, there in the bed with him, his salvation. He rolled over to her and held her like a drowning man and she wound herself around him and he escaped into her kisses in the darkness.

    Even though her lips were chilled and damp

    And even though they were much higher, much higher than they were supposed to be.

                                                                  THE END

more Halloween challenge movie thing stuff! Yeah!

2011-10-28T19:29:00.002-05:00

Dead Men Walk (B&W, 1943) George Zucco has a dual role as kindly Dr. Clayton and his evil, deceased brother Elwin, whose studies of the black arts have given him the power to return as a vampire. Raging with hate, he targets Clayton's niece and starts vampiric attacks on her, aided by his assistant, Dwight Frye (in a more restrained role than usual, and also one of his last). Clayton and his niece's boyfriend struggle to stop Elwin's evil but the local law thinks Clayton's the one responsible since they' believe his twin to be dead. A low-budget B-picture but actually pretty good, with Zucco giving the evil role plenty of unrestrained malice, and the finale is impressive.

Fog, The (C, 2005) Unnecessary remake of John Carpenter's classic isn't a disgrace or anything (although I could definitely get an argument out of that claim) but it adds nothing but more face-time for the monsters... and since they look fakey SyFy-Channel monsterfied, that's not exactly a special feature. The story's basically the same -- undead leper pirates killing the townspeople of Antonio Bay in the middle of a supernatural fog. Instead of stolen gold they want revenge on the descendents of the people who stole their land and murdered them all. There are lots more special effects of varying quality but it's not an improvement. Nor is it unwatchable, and it won't bore you.

Monster Maker, The (B&W, 1944) aka The Devil’s Apprentice. Pretty sick (by 40’s standards, anyway) PRC horror in which a mad doctor (J. Carrol Naish) gets a serious crush on a pianist’s daughter, because she looks like his dead wife. The doctor gives the girl the creeps, though, so her dad tells the doc to get lost. In revenge, he injects dad with acromegaly, a disease that causes grotesque, deforming swelling of the extremities. Rondo Hatton, who wasn’t in this film but who starred in several others around that time, actually had this condition. The pianist grows deformed... and angry. He wants to kill the doctor for infecting him, so the doctor has to chain him up, and then tries to force a marriage on his unwilling daughter. There’s also a rampaging gorilla and some powers of hypnotism to keep things moving. One of the better PRC films, with more bad taste than was usual in the timid 40’s. Glen Strange (who was weird-looking in his own right; he was Sam The Bartender on Gunsmoke) has a small role as Naish’s assistant.

Grave Encounters (C, 2011) Faux-reality show in the Blair Witch mode. This kind of thing has become very familiar but can still pack in some tension and scares if it's handled well... and this one's handled very well. It never quite manages to come across as real -- it always looks like acting -- but it does manage plenty of creepiness and some highly effective shocks, and it builds to some heavyweight darkness. A TV crew locks itself inside an abandoned mental hospital for the night to film an episode of one of those ghost-hunter reality shows. At first they're disappointed that the place is quiet and boring, but then little things start happening... and then they get a whole lot more than they bargained for. Doors that used to lead to exits now just open on to more labyrinthine corridors, and they're populated by some very spooky and disturbed spirits. And morning never comes; it remains dark outside no matter what time it is. They're left in the dark with limited light and something seems determined to keep them as patients in the hospital. It's a bit derivative but it works well and ranks high on the disturb-o-meter, and builds in creepiness as it goes, ending up intense and packing lots of dread. Recommended.

Condemned to Live (B&W, 1935) aka Life Sentence, Demon of Doom. Thoughtful vampire film in which kindly Professor Christian (Ralph Morgan), cursed by the bite of a vampire bat his mother received while he was being born, suffers a Jekyll-and-Hyde existence as he blacks out and becomes a bloodsucker by night. The village relies un the professor's endless kindness to the poor, but live in terror of the vampire murders that are decimating the populace. His hunchbacked assistant tries to stop him from killing while keeping his secret, and the professor -- who only wants to do good -- is troubled by what he suspects is happening. Things are further complicated by his young fiance, who's in love with another guy but is very honored to be marrying the saintly professor and is devoted to him... but may become a victim. He makes a fearsome-yet-sympathetic monster, and it's good to see an old horror movie that's not so cut-and-dried. Similar in some ways to The Vampire Bat, which used the same music, sets, and director.

Showing off my Halloween(r): I Call It "Norman"

2011-10-27T09:54:00.001-05:00

So, unbeknowst to our reading audience, the diabolic zwolf challenged the rest of our crew to post a horror short story this month, to commemorate Halloween. And, of course, I failed miserably. Years of not really writing - aside from this kinda bullshit, which requires little to none of the creativity necessary for writing good fiction - has left me rusty + rough, like that old nail you steppt on when you were a kid...

Anyway, not to be completely left out, here's a Halloween song I wrote, recorded + posted for ya.

Norman

The intent was to honor the classic horror of the 60s, so the music's sorta early rock-influenct, intended to evoke The Cramps. Except the theremin-esk synth line, which is s'posta sound like every scary UFO from those films. And, of course, all of the words you'll hear are by Robert Bloch + Alfred Hitchcock, voiced by Tony Perkins.

Check it out + lemme know what you think. It'll play straight offa the browser + runs under 2minits.

Happy Halloween!

More movie thing for October thing yeah

2011-10-24T21:45:00.000-05:00

This marathon stuff is making me bleary. Man, do I wanna just turn off the TV and read a freakin' book! And I'm not anywhere near the goal... I'm gonna fail almost by half. But, still, whatever. Dropping ya'll a raw-feed again 'cuz what the hell, nobody actually reads these anyway, do they? Not that I can tell... :)

Paranormal Activity 3 (C, 2011) The tricks are getting a little familiar and losing their ability to terrify -- it's kinda becoming a chain of "oh, that again" -- but the series is still solid and hasn't had a bad one yet. This is a prequel, consisting of video tapes shot when Katie was having her first supernatural troubles as a little girl. Her sister starts a weird friendship with an imaginary friend named Toby... who turns out to be neither imaginary nor friend, as he terrorizes her family. Like the others this starts out with little creaks and movements that get her stepfather obsessed with filming them all on his videocameras, but he conveniently captures more than he counted on. A little less is left to the imagination than in previous installments, and it still unfolds pretty slowly, but it pays off with some freaky special effects and an ending that explains maybe too much. They should probably end it here, but it's not a disappointment.

Blood and Black Lace (C, 1964) aka Sei Donne per L'assassino, Six Women For The Murderer, Fashion House of Death. Formative giallo masterpiece created by Mario Bava has a masked killer (he looks just like The Question from the comics, with a featureless fabric mask and a fedora), murdering models in various gruesome-for-the-time ways, such as pressing a face to a red-hot heater or slamming a spiked metal glove into their face. He's after a diary left by his initial target and is killing anyone connected to it. The film is so classy and well-done in Bava's hands that you forget what a hack Cameron Mitchell turned out to be. Plot-wise it's more murder mystery than anything else, but Bava's eerie directorial touches (later copied wholecloth by Dario Argento) make it horrific, using lots of colored lighting, surreal sets, and expressive camera angles to create an otherworldly atmosphere. It can be a bit hard to follow but it's essential (repeat) viewing and well worth the effort.

Frozen (C, 2009) Open Water on a ski lift. Three not-terribly-lovable (but not so bad you'd enjoy seeing them suffer) skier/snowboarders try saving a few bucks on ski lift fees and end up paying for it big time when they're accidentally forgotten about midway up the mountain when the ride shuts down for the week. They're too high up to jump down, there's a pack of hungry wolves running around, the cables are too sharp to climb on, and there's a winter storm. If they stay they'll freeze to death, but they don't seem to have much other alternative. Attempts to get themselves out of the situation don't turn out well and they're getting frostbite. The further along the movie goes the more desperate the situation grows, and it's suspenseful but also kind of a bummer to watch. It makes me glad that winter sports have never appealed to me in the first place. If you're into survival horror, this should work for you.

Ghoul, The (B&W, 1933) Classic Karloff that was considered almost a lost film for a long time; there was only one print and it was in terrible condition. Then, oddly and without explanation, a beautiful, pristine DVD showed up. Karloff is a dying professor who's spent a vast fortune on The Eternal Light, a jewel that he plans to present to the god Anubis after death so he'll be admitted to Paradise. He has it bandaged to his hand and warns that he'll return from the dead seeking vengeance if it's stolen. And, of course, it is stolen, and on the full moon Karloff rises from his tomb and goes on an angry rampage. Karloff puts out a very emotive performance in a mostly-silent role, and the decaying-zombie makeup is effectively morbid. A scene with him carving a symbol in his chest is pretty gruesome for the 30's. Could have used more monster stuff and less skullduggery involving the theft-and-re-theft of the jewel, but the film is a classic worth saving.

Chambermaid, The (C, 2004) aka Lovesick: Sick Love. A young lady (Fiona Horsey) loses her job as a hotel chambermaid when a guest who paid her to jerk him off accuses her of stealing. She was only resorting to the minor-league prostitution because she's desperate for money to help her metal-musician boyfriend pay off some drug dealers who keep beating him up. While riding her bike one night she finds her boss completely drunk and takes him home and makes him believe they had sex so she can manipulate him. She also makes him believe the guy she jerked off tried to rape her, so she gets her job back. Her boss - a pitiful nebish who's browbeaten by his invalid mother - thinks he and Horsey have a relationship and starts to become possessive. She turns the tables and convinces him that he raped her and got her pregnant, and tries to blackmail him. She moves into his house with her boyfriend and torments her boss by taunting him and having sex with her boyfriend in front of him, and tries to treat him like their slave. But he goes psychotic and kills his mother and her boyfriend and chains her up in the basement so he can have children with her. She's been resourceful (and evil) about scheming so far, but can she get out of this? No-budget British production isn't all bad for an almost-homemade film, and the acting is good in spots even though it always looks clumsy and super-cheap. Much is made of Horsey's nudity but there's not really that much of it. Available on Mill Creek's cheapo Blood Bath 12-movie set.

Headless Ghost, The (B&W, 1959) Hopelessly corny silliness in which three college kids (two American boys and a girl from Denmark) hide out in an old English castle, hoping to see its famed ghosts. The ghosts do appear, stepping out of their portraits, but they look and act just like normal people in period costumes so the spooky factor is zero. They explain that they can't rest in peace until one of them is reunited with his missing head. They attend dinners with the ghosts and take part in other goofy things that are about as scary as a Topper episode. The whole thing is painfully obnoxious and irritating but might be fun for an eight year old.

That thing I'm doing, some part of it... yeah...

2011-10-22T01:58:00.002-05:00

Jeez, it's 2 a.m., I'm an idiot! Here's another un-edited dump o' reviews so I can get to bed. Have a good weekend, all!

Woman Eater, The (B&W, 1958) Mad Dr. Moran believes the sap of a rare Amazonian tree he keeps in his lab can bring the dead back to life, but the only way to get it to produce sap is to feed girls to it. A guy who's trying to pick up a carnival girl gets her fired instead, but manages to get her a housekeeping job...for Dr. Moran. The doc takes a liking to her and disposes of his previous housekeeper. He's likely to feed the new girl to the awkward-looking tree (a bunch of furry arms sticking out of a trunk -- the funnest thing about it is figuring out how all the people inside it are standing) but you can probably guess what actually ends up happening. Deservedly obscure.

Angel, Angel, Down We Go (C, 1969) aka Cult of the Damned Oddball hippie-era relic in which an overweight, disillusioned rich daughter named Tara Nicole is eager to get laid and break away from her vain mother and secretly-gay father. She's easy pickings for Bogart, the narcissistic sociopath singer of the band that plays Tara's coming-out party. Bogart wants to use her to get ahead, and she wants to hang out with the band. Bogart tries to convince Tara's parents he wants to marry her, but he's after her mother instead. Tara hangs out with the band (including Roddy McDowall and Lou Rawls) and hallucinates that she's stuck to the ceiling while everybody babbles about society and Bogart absurdly seduces the mom. The farther the movie goes the more pointlessly nonsensical it becomes until it's nothing but songs and disjointed, self-impressed dialogue. It leads up to a skydiving accident. There are some similarities to the Manson family thing, but it's coincidental because this came out first. Lots of weirdness and crazy 60's filmmaking, but not much to it but quirk.

Book of Stone (C, 1969) aka El Libro de Piedra. Obscure Mexican masterpiece of creepiness. A woman named Julia takes a job as a governess to a little girl named Sylvia. Sylvia's father and stepmother think she's mentally ill, partially because of her obsession with an imaginary friend, a boy named Hugo. Hugo's actually a statue of a boy holding a big book, located in a swampy area on the family property. Kindly Julia plays along with Sylvia's fantasies but starts to become disturbed by things about Hugo. Sylvia names an Austrian town that Hugo supposedly came from, and Julia discovers it existed. She also learns that Hugo was supposedly a real boy turned to stone by his wizard father, so he could guard a book of black magic. The stepmother starts having mysterious pains and Julia discovers that Sylvia made a voodoo doll of her. Once everyone gets wise to the fact that black magic is going on, more sinister things start happening and an extremely-creepy Hugo starts showing up. Sylvia's godfather tries moving the statue away to end the obsession, but Hugo has no intention of leaving. Extremely spooky, atmospheric, unjustly-obscure film that seems to have some Mario Bava influence. Worth the effort to seek out.

Eerie Midnight Horror Show, The (C, 1974) aka L'ossessa, Enter the Devil, The Devil Obsession, The Sexorcist, The Tormented. Sleazy Italian demonic possession flick in which a pretty young art student named Daniella brings home a life-sized carving of one of the crucified thieves, taken from a church that was deconsecrated because of all the orgies that took place there in centuries past. The statue comes to life (as demonic-looking Ivan Rassimov, perfectly cast) and has sex with her. She's left a screaming slut who tries to seduce her father, has visions of being crucified that result in stigmata, and screams and thrashes around whenever in the presence of a priest or crucifix. Chanting nuns cause her to run through the streets yelling like a lunatic. A priest tries to exorcise her, but the demon makes her pretty so she can seduce him. When he still resists, she pukes up what looks like melted lime sherbet and does some more screeching. Cheap and pretty artless rip-off of The Exorcist, with some really hilarious dubbed dialogue, but it's weird enough to be creepy in spots and I've always had a soft spot for it.

Whatever-month-it-is holiday movie thingie whatever I'm doing some number

2011-10-17T22:50:00.002-05:00

Goin' in raw this time 'cuz I gotta get a shower and get to fucking bed already... I'm ridiculous, doing this stuff! You can find YouTube stuff, you're big kids... Anyway, enjoy, if anybody's readin' this stuff!

Voodoo Black Exorcist (C, 1974) aka Vudi Sangriento. Bizarre, talky obscurity that owes a lot to Karloff's The Mummy. A native couple in the Caribbean (neither black, although they are wearing some brown makeup) accidentally kill the girl’s father in a fight over their forbidden love. In a voodoo ceremony the girl is decapitated (all the heads in this movie appear to be made-up styrofoam wig stands) and the guy voes to return for vengeacne upon the reincarnations of his tormentors centuries later. Cut to the modern day (established by NASA footage) and the coffin holding the mummy of the vengeful lover is loaded onto a cruise ship. He comes back to life and un-shrivels so he can control passengers with jabs from a drugged snake-ring and romance a girl he thinks is the reincarnation of his lost love. He tries to win her affection by putting a severed head in her bed. He also has another guy rolled over with a steam roller (unfortunately they don’t try to show us the aftermath). He gives interviews about being a living mummy! He also searches for his lost snake ring. On the way he kills a couple more people. This is a real mess of nonsensical scenes put together, and I can’t imagine what they were thinking when they made it, because I can’t imagine anyone thinking that it was going to be coherent. It’s interesting just for the weirdness and obscurity, but it’s crazy and also kinda dull.

To The Devil A Daughter (C, 1976) aka Child of Satan. Christopher Lee is an excommunicated priest (“it is not heresy, and I will not recant!” - if you ever wondered where White Zombie stole that line in “Supercharger Heaven,” you’re welcome) who’s out to bring the child of Satan into the world. As its vessel he’s targeted a young nun (Natassja Kinski, who was only 16 but still did full-frontal) who’s visiting London. Richard Widmark is an expert on Satanism who’s out to protect her. Lee and his Satanists do a rite involving a pregnant woman giving birth, which impregnates Kinski. They also terrorize her father through supernatural means, trying to force him to keep a pact. Kinski has been brainwashed to believe Astaroth (depicted as a guy who appears to have a giant inverted crucifix up his ass) is good , and she wants to serve him. She has visions of Christopher Lee in a golden mask having sex with her while she’s tied down. Widmark realizes he’s up against serious trouble and tries to rescue Kinski from an evil fate, but the deluded Kinski doesn’t help much. Lesser Hammer but still not bad (although a hand-puppet devil is so hilarious it ruins all the creepy mood that’s built up), adapted from Dennis Wheatley’s novel (although Wheatley hated it, due mostly to the ridiculousness of the ending). Hammer folded its tents shortly afterward.

Don’t Look Now (C, 1973) Donald Sutherland is in a very clammy-looking Venice restoring an old church, and his daughter drowns in a canal. Sutherland and his wife Julie Christie are devastated until his wife meets a pair of sisters, one of whom is a blind psychic who tells her the daughter’s happy. Later the sister predicts disaster for Sutherland and he almost falls from some scaffolding. Then Christie returns to London to check on their son in boarding school but Sutherland thinks he sees her in Venice, as part of funeral procession. He also thinks he sees his daughter running around, and since there’s a murderer loose in Venice, he becomes frantic. The movie is self-impressed with its artiness -- Nicholas Roeg seems to be more interested in making postcards than telling a story -- and has a very sterile, formal feel (even the softcore sex scene is very stagey, though fairly explicit). and it ultimately doesn’t make a lot of sense. The ending is creepy even if it’s inexplicable, though. The film does have a certain giallo-ness and it’s good in moments, even if it doesn’t hang together as a whole. It’s one of those pretentious films that people are afraid to say is badly flawed because it looks like you‘re supposed to find it intellectual. Don’t believe the hype, but it’s still worth seeing. From Daphne DuMaurier’s superior novella.

The Devil’s Rain (C, 1975) Absurdity and nonsense can be surpremely creepy, and this disjointed devil-worshipper classic has that working for it big time. I first fell in love with this weird movie when the CBS Late Movie used to show it in the 70’s (or early 80’s?) and I’ve seen it dozens of times since, and it’s still never made much sense. Damn if it doesn’t work, though, and has a strange atmosphere and a unique climax, and a cast you can’t believe would be in such a movie. William Shatner and his mother Ida Lupino and brother Tom Skerritt try to protect a 300-year-old book of signatures of renegade pilgrims who signed their souls to Satan. Devil-cult leader Corbis (Ernest Borgnine, who’s having a ball with his role and sometimes appears in ram’s-head makeup) is after the book and happy to subject the family members to all sorts of demented temptations. He leads a cult of black-robed eyeless followers (including Anton LaVey in a gold mask, and John Travolta, who’d go on to become a cultist in real life). There’s a lot of mumbo jumbo as Shatner (at his overdramatic worst -- he gnaws the scenery like it’s slathered in butterscotch) tries to survive demonic assaults and Skerritt and Eddie Albert face Borgnine in his church while the cast melts into puddles of was and slime in the rain. Once seen you’ll never forget it, even if you never fully understand it. The special effects are a lot better than the acting and are plentiful and creepy. The eerieness lasts right through the end credits.

Enter The Devil (C, 1972) aka Disciples of Death. A deputy sheriff doing a Clint Eastwood imitation is sent out to the West Texas desert to look for a missing rock hound. The man’s body is found burned in his car, and the deputy discovers a cult of Satanists is active in the canyons. Since deer season just opened, potential victims abound, and the icewater-eyed sheriff is election-obsessed, so the deputy’s under pressure to shut the cult down. Meanwhile they’re throwing people into rattlesnake pits and barbed-wiring-and-crucifying more victims. A lady reporter who thinks it’s a cult of penetenties gets too close and ends up in trouble. It’s a little too ordinary (aside from one unusual plot twist midway through) to be very effective, but the acting from the cast of unknowns isn’t bad and there’s some atmosphere and low-budget charm. A shot of a cultist with a stone (charred wood?) dagger made it into a prominent spot in Famous Monsters. The Sinister Cinema DVD-R edits over the memorable “Green, Green, Green, Everything’s Turning Green” opening song.

The Vampire Bat (B&W, 1933) aka Blood Sucker, Forced to Sin. This old indie stacks up pretty well with the Universal classics, partially because it shares some sets and actors. A plague of bats falls upon a European village, and drained corpses with fang-marks in the neck keep turning up. Everyone thinks the village idiot (Dwight Frye at his unhinged best) is responsible because he’s a giggling creep who likes to play with bats (“They’re soft, like cat!”). The sheriff thinks the vampire business is a load of bunk, but he doesn’t know that mad scientist Lionel Atwill has created what looks like a giant raspberry that he keeps in a tank. A strange, atmospheric little film I find myself re-watching a lot. If you ever wondered where the band Dog Faced Hermans got their name, this movie might answer that for you.

Strangler of the Swamp (B&W, 1945) One of PRC’s finest hours (although it’s not their best film - the people who claim that are forgetting about Detour), this ghostly tale of vengeance shows how much atmosphere you can build with no money, just a couple of sets, and a fog machine. Swamp denizens hang a ferryman for a crime he didn’t commit, and his accusers start dying from mysterious strangling accidents. When the replacement ferryman falls victim to the shadowy ghost, his daughter takes over the ferry. Blake Edwards shows up in the village after being away at school and starts romancing her... but he, too, is a target of the ghost’s relentless will for vengeance, and so their love may be doomed unless drastic measures are taken. Fast-moving and spooky little B-flick.

The Virgin Witch (C, 1972) aka Lesbian Twins. A couple of sisters run away to London, hoping to become models but become witches instead in this British horror with an emphasis on nudity and softcore porn instead of anything scary. Looking for work, one of the girls is drawn to a model scout named Sybil, who’s a lesbian and practices witchcraft. At a weekend of photo shoots at a country estate things soon start getting creepy, with weird people peeping at the girls and a lot of preoccupation over their virginity. They soon figure out they’re in the company of witches but think it’s innocent and interesting and they want to take part in a ritual, which basically consists of sex while everyone frugs naked around them. The model sister wakes up naked with Sybil, but doesn’t seem to be all that fond of her, and wants to become a witch and take Sybil’s place. Her sister’s boyfriend shows up all freaked out because Sybil’s a lesbian. He’d be much more justified in worrying about the virgin sacrifice the coven has planned. Not badly done but not much of a horror movie; it’s more of a nudie with exotic setpieces, playing to the 70’s fascination with witchcraft. Some of the ring-around-the-rosie dancing gets pretty hilarious and kills whatever minor creepiness this bloodless “horror” film might have created.

Mystery of the Wax Museum (C, 1933) Early two-stripe Technicolor horror with mad sculptor Lionel Atwill covering corpses in wax to create historical figures for his side-street museum. He’s a legit artist at first, but his partner sets fire to the unprofitable business for the insurance money, melting Atwill’s masterpieces and leaving him horribly scarred -- physically and mentally. He finds people who resemble the historical figures he wants to create and arranges their deaths. When he meets Fay Wray, he thinks she’s the perfect Marie Antoinette, and she may be in for a horrible fate if she can’t be rescued by a smartassed girl reporter. Well-done classic remade as House of Wax and ripped off by countless other films.

Who Can Kill A Child? (C, 1976) aka Quien Puede Matar a Nino?, Island of the Damned, Death is Child’s Play, Would You Kill A Child?, Trapped, The Killer’s Playground, Lucifer’s Curse, Island of Death. The prologue answers, apparently a lot of people -- it shows how wars tend to make things hardest on children. Then we’re off to the beach where butchered bodies have been washing up. Our protagonists, a couple on vacation in Spain, decide to get away from the festival crowds by taking a trip to the island of Almanzora... which turns out to be the source of the corpses that have been washing up on the beach, because the children of Almanzora have banded together to play a game where they kill all the grown-ups. Upon reaching the island, the couple is weirded out by how deserted it all is, and how unfriendly the children are, but things grow increasingly sinister. They get frantic phone calls from someone speaking German but they can’t speak the language. They see a laughing little girl (the creepy kid from Demon Witch Child) beating an old man to death with a stick, and then a group of them use the corpse as a pinata... with a scythe. They start finding more corpses and decide they better get the hell off Almanzora, but the kids aren’t quite done playing their horrible games, and to survive the tourists will have to fight back. But an adult having to overcome the taboo of using deadly force against children is a disturbing factor, too. Why this masterpiece isn’t better known I have no idea; it builds an eerie atmosphere of isolation and dread that grows more and more intense until it’s full-blown horror. If any “killer kid” movie ever scared you, be aware that the next-best one is still miles and miles behind this, which plays like a combo of The Birds and Night of the Living Dead, but with the added taboo of having to kill children to fight back. And gore makeup on kids is a disturbing sight. This is an absolute must-see for anyone who takes horror seriously.

Shriek of the Mutilated (C, 1976) aka Mutilated, Scream of the Snowbeast. If only this was as good as its title. Hell, I’d settle for half as good. A third as good. Michael and Roberta Findlay are at the exploitation sleaze again with this cheap Bigfoot horror. A professor leads an expedition of college kids to an island looking for some Yeti-type monsters. The lone survivor of a previous expedition was left homicidally insane and gets electrocuted by having a toaster thrown in his bathtub. Once on the island the professor has his Indian cook (who looks more like a Mafia goon in a headband) feed the students “bear pie” and fills them with Bigfoot stories. One is soon attacked by one of the fuzzy monsters (the costumes look like they’re stitched together out of white bathmats). A search for him recovers only one of his legs, which they used for bait to try to catch the monster. When that fails they try the corpse of a girl. And that leads to a disappointing secret being revealed. The movie has a little mild gore but balks when they could really have gone for some splatter; when every other aspect of a film is a big failure, why try underplaying something that would have been easy enough to deliver upon? Throw some meat around! DVDs substitute canned music for the extremely annoying synth song, “Popcorn” by Hot Butter.

The Most Dangerous Game (B&W, 1932) Joel McCrea is a famous big game hunter who gets shipwrecked on the island of deranged Russian hunter, Count Zaroff, who’s gotten so good at hunting that animals bore him and now he hunts men instead. Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong are also there, having survived a previous shipwrecked, and they’ll all end up hunted. After showing them his torture chamber and trophy room of human heads, he sets McCrea and Wray loose in his jungle, evading their traps and trying to nail them with his bow and arrow, rifle, and dogs. Incredible sets, lightning pace, and an atmosphere of menace add up to a compact, hard-hitting classic with major re-watch value. Led to King Kong.

Glad to Be Unhappy (1997) Go! Dog! Go!

2011-10-14T12:56:00.003-05:00

Dateline: 1997...

Never mind that the fuckin' album didn't even come out til we'd been back a month from our 7 week tour to support its release...

Our record label was actually nice enough to make sure that we had some copies to take out on the road with us, along with a box of our t-shirts...

Never mind that the fuckin' van broke down so many times that we started (half-)jokingly calling it the PepBoys tour...

We actually got to learn quite a bit about the inner workings of a piece-of-shit van. Rather useful, that...

Never mind that the fuckin' booking agent lied repeatedly about 'confirmed' shows that we were later told by him were cancelled (only to find out in at least one case that he'd never even contacted the club til that week)...

We had some excellent shows to help make up for that sorry piece of shit not doing his fuckin' job... + even bookt some while on the road - in a pre-cellphone, pre-internet world...

Never mind alla that shit, cuz we didn't know any of that was gonna happen a year earlier when we recorded this album, Glad to Be Unhappy by Go! Dog! Go!

In January 1996, we were fortunate enough to spend two weeks recording with now well-noted producer (and Drive Like Jehu drummer) Mark Trombino (Mark's on the right, trying to get out of the picture, I'd imagine...) at Big Fish Studios in Encinitas, CA.

We met with Mark in LA a couple of times, once notably in the bowels of the Capitol Records building, where he was using some of their classic studio space to work on some mixes for the then-soon-to-be-released self-titled Jimmy Eat World record (their first on Capitol, I think). And he was a decidedly nice guy, very easy to work with even though he'd just quit smoking prior to our fortnight of recording.

And below's the result, for yr downloading pleasure, recorded + mixt by Mark Trombino at Big Fish, produced by Mark Trombino + G!D!G! (except Bloated Worm, recorded + produced July 1995 by Andre Champagne + G!D!G!)

(<--That's Tim B. + me in Andre's bad-ass gingerbread home studio)

____________________________________________

Go! Dog! Go! Glad to Be Unhappy

track listing:

Intro (It Could Happen)
Socket
Engine
Drive, Turn Left
Rolled into One
Intent to Change
Soft Spot
Bacon Shrinks (All My Blue)
Lobby Song
Ceiling
Borrowed
Pillow Soft
Spinch
Platter
Spacegirl (Live)
Bloated Worm

1997, Risk Records.
Eric Beetner. guitars/vocals
Tim Boyd. alto+soprano sax
Tim Christopher. drums
Craig Smith. bass/backing vocals (lead on Borrowed)
(Eric, Tim C., Craig, Mark Trombino. trumpets on Spinch)
(Oh, and the cover photo credit: Marie's dad)

download it here for free with my blessings!

Until I get all of your skulls, posters will have to do...

2011-10-13T20:51:00.002-05:00

...for wall decorations.

One of my most-favoritest-ever people on Twitter is the lovely and talented RonnieWK, who is a must-follow - she's so double-plus funny she doesn't even need to be pretty (but oh my god she is - call me weird but I think that may be my favorite picture of a human being) and was almost elected National Lampoon's Most Offensive Female on Twitter (although the winner was definitely worthy of all acolades, I still think Ronnie wuz robbed!). She also runs a highly-addictive blog, Radmobile, where you'll find extremely weird 'n' funny pictures by the godzillions. She's also always been a sweetheart in my limited interactions with her, which not everyone on Twitter will take the time to do. So, I full-on-raging recommend that you visit all those links and follow/bookmark/all that stuff to improve your life before you die miserable in a puddle of your own befoulment! Anyway, back on point: recently she posted a picture of one of her walls, sporting a kick-ass collection of primo horror posters. Gotta love anybody with Make Them Die Slowly featured in their den. I told her it reminded me of mine, so she told me to show 'em... and, since I always try to do what cool chicks tell me to, here 'tiz!

First, my house isn't nearly as neat as hers, or as well-presented. I'm incredibly lazy and sloppy and hoarder-ific (if you could see the mountains of VHS tapes/skulls/boxes/assorted weirdo ephemera that are out of frame in these pics, you'd scream and call that TV show and tell them to send their SWAT team after my ass), so my posters aren't nicely matted like Ronnie's. I think I got some fairly cool shit, though, and, this being Halloween, I thought ya'll might like a tour. The two huge ones I ordered through the mail, and the others I scored for about a buck each from a comic book store in the 80's that had no idea what they had. The pictures may come out small, but click on it and it'll get bigger (as the farmer said to the milkmaid *rimshot!*). If my long-winded Captain Obvious act bores ya, just skip me look at the pitchers!

There's the infamous zombie gorefest Burial Ground, with a poster for Something Waits In The Dark, aka Screamers and Isle of the Fishmen. You can see the edge of my massive Devil's Rain poster, and assorted lil' things I tore out of video magazines that a video bootlegger friend used to send to my dogs. (Yes, he signed my dogs up as owners of a video store and had them send me promo publications). These things have all been gummy-stuck to that wall since around 1990. Look close and you'll see a postcard of George Bush I flipping a bird that I thought was punk-rock enough to stick up there with the horror stuff. He doesn't seem nearly as bad now that we met his idiot son, though. He's almost... quaint. In the stacks around you can make out my beloved VHS of Messiah Of Evil, (go watch that if you haven't!) Assonitis's Madhouse, a really old Goodtimes tape of Scream Baby Scream, and I dunno what-all. There used to be a Tombs of The Blind Dead poster under Burial Ground but it fell down behind the TV and I haven't fished it back up out of the giant nest of cables.

And, yes, that's right, my walls are fucking purple. I've got another room where the walls and ceiling are black. I don't decorate - I defile!

Onward...

The Devil's Rain poster is HUGE, the same size as the Suspiria one I'll show ya in a minute. The picture is beautiful, but the text makes no sense. "Heaven help us all when THE DEVIL'S RAIN!" When the Devil's Rain does... what? Falls? Then I'd understand it. That text is like a little papercut on my mind, that is. Anyway, there it is, the movie that made John Travolta get wet! Then he went from devil-worship to something far more frightening and detrimental - Scientology. Heaven help us all when XENU RAINS! Yeeaarrggh. Even William Shatner can't save us from that. Anyway, next to it, Fulci's gutmuncher, The Gates of Hell, known to the DVD generation as City of the Living Dead. Below it is a little video-two-sheet for Terror, aka Last House On The Beach, that was sent to me by the same old video bootlegger friend of mine. Last time I heard from him, he was in some trouble with the Mafia for selling dupes of some of their porn. Oi. I bought Scooter Trash from him, so I guess the Sons of Anarchy'd be after me. In the corner you can see part of my Tales From The Crypt poster, hiding behind some ancient stereo equipment and a stack of VHS. Here's a better look at that...

Ronnie's got a different version of this poster. I'm not sure what the story is on why there are different ones, but I like the one I got because it matches the Bantam paperback I've had since I was five.

Here's the back:

When I was in first grade I was reading at pretty much a high-school level, and I got in trouble for bringing this book to school. While the other kids were watching Dick & Jane run after Spot and Sally, I was reading the killer-Santa-Claus story. Later my grandma caught me reading The Exorcist. I don't think it did me any damage, though, really. "Let Jesus fuck you!" was pretty much how I was viewing Southern Baptist society, anyway.

On the bookshelf there you can spot some VHS... an El Topo pre-rec I scored somewhere, a bootleg of Love Camp Seven, ultra-gory Spaghetti Western Cutthroats 9, Splatter: The Architects of Fear, The House That Vanished, and Succubus, which is a retitle of The Devil's Nightmare.

Anyway, back to the walls...

Giant Suspiria (plagued by glare). That thing's pretty much the size of a mattress. On the window frame you can see a lil' collage of mini-pictures I put up there in the 80's. I Spit On Your Grave, Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, Slaughterhouse, Lady Frankenstein, and above the curtain you can see part of magazine ads for the punk-rock Western Dudes, and a bit of Anguish. Most of the shelves are empty (while the floors are piled - I make no sense) but you can spot home-dubs of stuff like Christina Applegate's Streets (why is this still not on DVD?), grindhouse sleaze classic Headless Eyes (Code Red, bring us that one!), Conqueror Worm, Pet Sematery, The Girl Hunters, and... The Battleship Potempkin. (Yeah, sometimes I watch stuff that's not splatter).

On the back of the door to the room I got... Infra-Man!

To your left there's a torn poster for Midnight, aka Backwoods Masscare, the John Russo splatterfest. And you can see a corner of a My Bloody Valentine (original, not remake) poster that I really need to repair one of these days, because I freakin' love that movie. And there used to be a poster for Death Ship above that, but I'm not sure where that one went. Somewhere in the house are also posters for Holy Terror (aka Alice Sweet Alice), the Italian Road-Warrior rip-off Styker, schoolgirl-by-day, Hollywood-hooker-by-night classic Angel and its sequel Avenging Angel, and one of those six-foot-tall Vampirellas they used to sell in the back of Famous Monsters. Oh, and the Chinese thing to the left... I don't know what that says, but my mom taught college and one of her students gave her that and I thought it was cool so she gave it to me. There's a lot of Chinese stuff scattered through the room. And a good many knives.

Elsewhere on the walls of the room (not pictured) are ads my lil' punk-rock self doctored, like an old Buck Cigarettes ad that I Liquid-Papered so it read "FUCK THE SYSTEM!" and another sign that read "WORSHIP AT THE CHURCH OF OUR CHOICE THIS WEEK." (It originally said "YOUR" but I trimmed the Y out to more accurately reflect the knifefight interactions I'd experienced from my Baptist "friends.").

Now, as a bonus for sitting through all that, and in the spirit of Radmobile that inspired this post in the first place, here are some covers of actual comic books I scanned out of a book for ya. No, I haven't ever actually seen or read any of 'em, but an old T-shirt company called Mutilation Graphics used to sell a Leather Nun shirt I was really tempted to buy back in the 80's. You'll have to click Teen Age Romances to find out what's so funny about it.

And, speaking of Twitter, you can let Zwolf fuck you! (by telling you stupid jokes about pee and farts and Rascal Scooters and mimeograph paper and stuff - you know, the same way Jesus does it). And while you're there, follow our Blowhole buddy, Kicker of Elves, who's a highlight of my timeline every day and can be one of yours. It's all free like a punch in the face!

One day I'm just gonna do a big Twitter post and tell ya'll everybody you should follow. Which is, basically, my whole follow-list. Good people on that. You cannot go wrong giving any of 'em a test-drive.

And, stay tuned to this blog 'cuz in just a couple weeks you're gonna be getting horror short stories by yours truly and (hopefully) these other guys, too. Also, free!

October Movie Challenge # Godzillion-million-billion!

2011-10-12T19:55:00.001-05:00

Earth Vs. The Spider (B&W) 1958 aka The Spider. A giant spider living in a cave on the edge of town attacks a girl's father on his way home to her birthday. Searching for him, the girl and her boyfriend discover the spider, and her father's withered corpse. They come back with the cops and spray the monster with DDT. Thinking it's dead, they haul it to the school auditorium, where a rock & roll band's practice session wakes it up and sends it on a rampage through the town. Surprisingly, they show a blood-covered toddler wandering around the rubble! When the spider returns to the cave the townspeople want to blow it up, but a couple of the teens are lost in there. Classic Bert I. Gordon giant-bug horror is more engaging than most and sports good special effects (although the size of the spider does seem to fluctuate from shot to shot; sometimes it's big as a house, other times it seems about the size of a car).

Welcome to Arrow Beach (C, 1973) aka Tender Flesh, And No One Would Believe Her This was chopped to hell before it was released, and now it's rarely seen at all (there's rumored to be only one print left in existence), which is way too damned bad because there's something about this movie... Icy eyed Meg Foster (who has nude scenes) is a hippie girl hitch hiking around California and she ends up having dinner with Lawrence Harvey (who died of cancer before this was released) and his skittish sister Joanna Pettet. They eat some extremely rare meat that's apparently pieces of a dead cop. Harvey developed a taste for cannibalism during the Korean war, and suffers from flashbacks that drive him to kill. Meg spends the night and wakes up to a weird chopping sound and eventually finds him in a basement meat locker hacking up a corpse with a cleaver. She escapes and goes to the cops (John Ireland and Stuart Whitman) but they think she's just been taking drugs and had a bad trip, and won't believe her accusations. Meanwhile Harvey lures an aging local slut to his house so he can take pictures of her... but he kills her in an extremely stylish scene composed of quick flash cuts patterned after the still pictures an automatic camera is winding off. Meg eventually finds someone willing to suspend their disbelief enough to go back to the house with her... Nice, atmospheric horror really gets butchered when shown on TV; they cut so much of it that you can't even really tell he's a killer, much less a cannibal. Uncut, it's pretty gory, but in a suggestive way - you only see quick glimpses of bloody meat, so you're not even quite sure exactly what you're looking at, but it's morbid, brutal, and highly effective. The theme song "We Are Born To Die" sets the atmosphere up right off the bat, and it's also strange because it's done by Lou Rawls! DVDs are scarce. Videotapes supposedly run 99 minutes, but I'm not certain about that. One of my absolutely favorite horror films, seek it out.

Hands of Blood (C, 1974) aka Stepsisters, The Texas Hill Killings) Small-budget (around $17K) Texas-shot drive-in horror with a slow pace, confusing plot, and a certain S.F. Brownrigg-type of atmosphere. A couple of sisters living in a huge creepy old house have sex with men who drop by. One of the sisters is married to a man she doesn't like very much, and he starts an affair with her sister. Together they plot to kill his wife. The plan's not all that ingenious -- he thinks he can just come home, catch her with another man, and kill her in a fit of jealous rage and the law won't touch him for it. Things don't work out like he thought, though, and the sisters have a secret of their own. There are a few killings - an axe murder, guts blown out (literally) with a shotgun blast, some stabbing - but overall it's a mess, with too much time spent driving cars back and forth, flying a plane back and forth, and people sitting around bickering. It seems to want to be a noir-type crime story as much as it does horror, and it's a little too talky, with an attempt to build a web of intrigue around stuff we don't know enough about to be very interested in. And there's not nearly enough killing. But, it does have that old 70's sleazy drive-in charm, and the world can always use more of that.

The Omen (C, 1976) C'mon, I don't really have to review The Omen, do I? This is a full-blown classic, the horror film as an A-picture. Ambassador to Great Britain Gregory Peck accepts a substitute baby when wife Lee Remick’s baby is born dead. When young Damien reaches age five they start noticing some strange things; he’s terrified of churches, animals hate him (other than a malevolent rottweiler that guards him), and people die in mysterious ways around him (including a classic impalement and maybe the best-decapitation-ever). Peck gets warned that the boy is the AntiChrist, and he starts believing it and getting ready to do something about it. Very well-made horror that’s become one of the cornerstones of the genre, and part of the American idiom; people know this movie even if they haven’t seen it.

October Movie Challenge entry # 437, why not?

2011-10-10T19:16:00.001-05:00

Butt first! If you don't like this song, fuck yooooooou, maaaan!

And, this is the most sense I've ever heard come out of Rick Perry:

Enjoy the hot yella Kool-Aid!

Beast of Blood (C, 1970) aka Beast of the Dead, Blood Devils, Horrors of Blood Island, Return to the Horrors of Blood Island. Immediate sequel to Mad Doctor of Blood Island picks up where the first one left off, with John Ashley's boat getting attacked by the great-looking chlorophyl zombie (with an ax!) and sunk. Ashley and the monster make it to shore, and Ashley and friends chase through the jungle trying to rescue a kidnapped girl, while fire-scarred Dr. Lorca continues his experiments, trying to transplant different heads onto the monster. The head and body still want to be together, though, and the head has more control of the body than Lorca has counted on. There are some gruesome surgery scenes and effective monster makeup, but too much of the time is spent on gun battles and jungle stalking; it looks almost like a war movie with a few horror movie scenes stuck in. And it gets pretty funny when the head starts talking...

Trailer

whole movie:

Bloodlust (B&W, 1959) Robert Reed from the Brady Bunch and his friends are out boating when their navigator passes out drunk near an island. They decide to go explore it until he wakes up, not knowing the island is run by a maniac whose hobby is hunting is hunting humans. Once he kills them he has them soaked in preservative, skinned, stuffed, and mounted in his private museum. The level of gruesomeness is surprisingly high, with severed legs, severed heads, a big wet pile of skin, gushing blood, and a guy dissolving in an acid bath. Nobody's going to mistake it for The Most Dangerous Game, but its got its sketchy charms.

Whole movie:

Nightmares (C, 1980) aka Stage Fright, Nightmare on the Street. A little girl is in the car when an accident kills her mother, slicing her throat with windshield glass. The mother's boyfriend really caused it by groping her while she was driving, but he blames it on the girl. She grows up to be an aspiring actress, but people in the play she's in start getting stabbed and slashed to death by shards of broken glass. Her fellow actors are soon unnerved by her erratic mood swings and odd behavior. She has visions of the killings, which she thinks are nightmares, but worries that she might be the killer. Is she? Bloody Australian version of a giallo focuses a bit too much on the works of the play and somehow doesn't draw you in as much as it should, but it's a classy looking film and sports plenty of nudity and nasty slash wounds. Brian May did a great music score (very reminiscent of his Mad Max work) but it's used so much here that it becomes overbearing, trying to make every scene come across as some pinnacle of terror. Max Phipps, who plays the director here, played The Toadie in The Road Warrior. Not entirely successful, but well worth seeing.

Room 205 (C, 2007) aka Kollegiet. Katrina is new at college in Copenhagen, sharing a dormitory with other students (male and female). They're a little mean and she's a little awkward but she gets along okay until she pisses off Sanne, the popular girl in the dorm, by fooling around with Sanne's ex-boyfriend and overreacting to a prank. This lands her on the uncool side of the pecking order, and Sanne and her friends like to hound any "uncool" people out of the dorm. They start bullying Katrina and telling her that her dorm room is haunted... and perhaps it is, because Katrina starts seeing things. She talks to the guy who was bullied out of the room before she had it and he tells her a girl was murdered in the bathroom, and that there's a legend that the spirits of the dead can get trapped in mirrors. Since Katrina had broken the mirror in the bathroom, the ghost is freed and causes havoc, killing off her dormmates. Katrina and the former resident try to get rid of the vengeful ghost before more people die. The pace is a little slow and too much is underplayed, and the haunting stuff is a little too conventional to be as effective as it could be, but it's not a bad little horror movie, made with some style. Basically a Danish version of a Ring type story.

Eyes Without A Face (B&W, 1959) aka The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus, Les Yeux Sans Visage. Groundbreaking, artistic French horror kicked off the whole surgeons-trying-to-restore-a-loved-one's-damaged-face subgenre. A plastic surgeon, wracked with guilt after causing the car wreck that left his daughter with a giant open wound for a face, kidnaps girls and peels their faces off to transplant them onto her. The donors always end up dead and the grafted faces always end up rejected and rotting, leaving the girl to resort to wearing a mask again. The mask is very creepy, a beautiful, expressionless, porcelain-like thing with holes for her large, expressive eyes -- the effect is really eerie. And speaking of effects, the film had ground-breaking gore, holding a cold, clinical, unflinching shot as a girl's face is peeled away in surgery. That one remains unsettling because of the way it's filmed and the expectations that they'd cut away from it. The girl ends up wanting to die but is as much a victim of her father's mania as the girls he kidnaps for her supposed benefit. The final image is haunting.

Surgery scene:

Horror-larity Abounds... H.P. Seusscraft

2011-10-10T11:56:00.000-05:00

The incredibly clever Cory Doctorow, whose novels are eagerly-awaited happies for me, posted on boingboing about this perfect-for-the-holiday mash-up from DeviantArt's DrFaustusAU that successfully captures the feel of both HPL's authorial voice + Dr. Seuss' zany art-chitecture... somehow.

Read the whole damn'd thing online at deviantart.com, starting here.

Creepy Halloween Animation: The Mascot (1933)

2011-10-10T06:13:00.000-05:00

Presented today for your edification, Vladislav Starevich's creepy 1933 classic of stop-motion animation, The Mascot.

Back in the 1980s, cable channel USA used to use Friday + Saturday nights to air Night Flight, a catch-as-catch-can show that combined music videos with bizarre animation + even rock'n'roll feature films like Rude Boy, Breaking Glass, Ladies and Gentlemen... The Fabulous Stains, and more... And hidden in the midst of all of this chaos, The Mascot would pop up from time to time; and usually, since there was no listing of what'd show when, I'd tune in after it'd started + watch til it ended. Never did know what it was called or who was responsible... til I got to college + met ol' Zwolf, whose personal hoard/collection of vids was store-sized then (you don't even wanna know about his stash now, cuz it'll just give you spastic jealousy fits...), who heppt me to the details behind this little chunk of video insanity.

Anyway, this is some seriously old cinema, so the pacing is a little slow by modern standards; even with that, though, the short is an amazing example of stop-motion animation that must be seen to be believed. And, if this is your cup'o'tea, I also recommend the short films of Jan Swankmajer.

And here's more Svankmajer...

October Movie Challenge installment number I-don't-care

2011-10-09T10:26:00.001-05:00

Brood, The (C, 1979) Oliver Reed is a Dr. Phil-like psychiatric psychopath who practices a weird form of psychotherapy that causes his patients to express their angst as physical manifestations. In a demonstration he goads a man about his daddy issues until he breaks out in sores. Another former patient is trying to sue Reed for giving him cancer through suggestion, and his lymph glands are swollen lumps. But the worst is Samantha Eggar, who's been breeding deformed dwarfs in a womb outside her body, as embodiments of her rage. These dwarves go out and bludgeon to death the people she's angry with, and she's got a lot of resentment toward her husband and their daughter... When all her other relatives start dying brutally, the husband tries to stop her before it's too late. Effective but weird horror.

Maniac (B&W, 1934) aka Sex Maniac. Crazy Dwain Esper exploitation curio that has to be seen to be believed. A mad scientist, Dr. Meirschultz, is working on a method of reviving the dead, along with his vaudeville-actor sidekick. Turns out all you have to do to bring a corpse back to life is rub its arms. Try it! Meirschultz wants a bigger challenge -- transplanting a heart he's kept beating in a tank -- so he tries to kill his assistant. The assistant kills him instead and impersonates him, becoming completely crazy in the process. He walls up Meirschultz's corpse, Edgar Allan Poe style (when it's discovered later you can see it helping to push the bricks out), and gouges out a cat's eye and eats it. One of his patients turns into a raving lunatic after an injection, delivers one of the weirdest rants in the history of cinema, then kills a woman and apparently rapes her corpse (which includes a topless scene that was a big no-no at the time). There are two vicious catfights -- one between women, one between actual cats. Whenever the assistant has a psychotic episode (which is frequent) footage from Haxan and other strange silent films are superimposed over hi, and occasional text describing mental illnesses are scrolled onscreen so this could be marketed as "educational." Must-see vintage trash.

injection scene (watch this if you watch nothing else!)

Full movie:

Rites of Frankenstein, The (C, 1972) aka La Malidicion de Frankenstein, The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, The Erotic Adventures of Frankenstein, The Curse of Frankenstein. Jess Franco nonsense that's not as bad as most of his junk; in fact, it's downright okay if you're content with a string of images and aren't concerned with coherent plots. Dr. Frankenstein transplants a brain into a silver monster and it works, but then the doctor is soon killed by a blind, flesh-eating bird-woman (an eerily-pretty girl with ridiculous feather gloves who goes around sniffing for flesh). She's the sidekick of Cagliostro (Howard Vernon with a goatee), an evil hypnotist who can revive the dead. Cagliostro wants to build a perfect woman to serve as a mate for the creature (apparently just so he can watch). The bird-woman usually delivers all his speeches so Vernon can just stand there, staring wide-eyed. Frankenstein's daughter keeps reviving her father's corpse for brief periods so he can advise her how to deal with Cagliostro. Meanwhile, Cagliostro's summoning robed skeletons to walk through misty forests and getting the silver monster to whip captives until they fall on beds of spikes, just to entertain acolytes. It doesn't add up to much but it's not as careless and boring as many of Franco's overrated offal.

Awful clip but it's what I could find:

Monster From A Prehistoric Planet (C, 1967) aka Diakyoju Gappa, Gappa The Triphibian Monster, The Giant Beast Gappa, The Triphibian Monster. Archaeologists and reporters scouting locations for a resort hotel go to an island full of natives who worship a giant monster statue, which they call Gappa. Volcanic activity on the island makes them think Gappa is angry, and they get really upset when a giant egg hatches a baby Gappa and the scientists take it back to Japan. They intend to study it but the newspaper man who sent them on the trip claims he owns the monster, plans to exhibit it, and treats it cruelly, which causes its parents to come after it. The monsters look basically like winged Godzillas with beaks and pointy heads. The daddy one has an octopus-tentacle beard. Massive havoc is unleashed upon civilization when they reach it, and tanks and jets come to fight them, but if you've seen any other kaiju movies you know about how well that works. The Gappa also have fire-breath, like Godzilla. Nothing will stop them from taking their kid back, and the movie does its best to make this silliness seem "touching." It's a Japanese take on Gorgo, which was a British take on Godzilla. The circle is complete.

Trailer:

Whole movie:

October Horror Movie challenge number blahblahsomethin'

2011-10-07T23:09:00.000-05:00

I'm not counting it as a movie, but I also watched the premier of American Horror Story on FX. I liked it a lot, and I'm amazed they got away with it on commercial TV. Some of the subplots are incredibly twisted and they're going to upset the hell out of a lot of people when the public gets wind of 'em and understands what they're building there. And the idea that Glee fans will be tuning into this, hoping for another cute 'lil show from their filmmakers, only to get their minds brutally violated by the transgressive, dark content therein fills me with... well, glee!

Messiah Of Evil (C, 1975) aka Dead People, The Second Coming, Revenge of the Screaming Dead. It's safe to say I'm obsessed with this movie. If you don't like this one, you have no horror-cred with me. I re-watch it every few months, and every time I notice something new (this time it was just the way they blended the wind outside with the sound of Anitra Ford's hair drier, but hey, that's something, right?).   It's basically a Lovecraftian take on a zombie movie, with a girl visiting the "neon stucco" seaside town of Point Dune looking for her missing artist father. She learns that an ancient prophecy is coming true and people (possibly dead, certainly zombie-like) are standing and watching the ocean all night, waiting for some ancient god to rise up. In the meantime, they kill and eat the living... if the living don't succumb to their malady first. This movie remains possibly the closest thing I've seen to a nightmare captured on film. Some people find flaws in it, but I think those people just aren't understanding what the film's doing. Michael Weldon, for instance, said in The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, claimed it was "confusing and badly-edited." Wrong, wrong. It's edited to be dreamlike, and its any confusion in the plot is due to its dreamlike construction. And the set design is very freaky and brilliant. In a way, it's Caligari-esque (which is far from the only way this film is similar to that one). It's a little bit Carnival of Souls, a little bit Night of the Living Dead, a bit of Argento, a little bit of a twisted poem, and a whole lot weird nightmare. People always mention the grocery store scene and the movie theater scene as highlights (and they are), but watch it a dozen times and you'll start seeing every scene as a standout. You may initially be disappointed that it's not gorier (there's blood, all right, but it lacks the gut-munching other zombie movies engage in), but nothing sets a mood like this. And the secret to this movie is... repeat viewings. The more you watch it, the more you'll see. Even though it's public domain and can be gotten in a hundred different places for around a dollar, invest in the Code Red version. But go ahead and buy a cheap copy, too, so you can get the eerie song they cut out for the director's cut. This is easily the most-re-watched movie in my collection, and my collection could win me a spot on Hoarders. I could go on and on about it, but I already have, right here. Click that and you'll get more of me writing about this movie than you probably want.

Whole movie here. Watch it or die screaming.

Mardi Gras Massacre (C, 1978) Somebody actually found the plot of Blood Feast compelling enough to steal it. A lunatic making sacrifices to some ancient Aztec deity seems out the most evil women he can find to tie down and slice up. First he stabs their hand, then slices their foot, then cuts open the stomach, reaches in, and pulls out a heart about the size of a canned ham. And I hope you like the effect because the footage is repeated every time he kills a girl; I guess the budget only allowed for one latex torso and one cow-heart.   The rest of the movie is padded with lots of dancing strippers, many of whom look artificially padded themselves. A couple of really stupid cops try to half-ass their way into catching the killer while stealing money and sleeping with the hookers. You get a lot of padded-in mardi gras footage because these cops approach to their case seems to be to just keep wandering around New Orleans and hope the killer just falls into their laps.   The filmmakers seem to have chose locations based on if there was a sign advertising the sale of corn. Either that, or N'awlins is one corn-happy town, because that stuff's everywhere. The killer starts wearing the metal Aztec mask he uses in the rituals on the street because, why not? Looks like they may have planned a sequel, too. Weak and pointless, despite the extreme gore.

Trailer here.

Hell of the Living Dead (C, 1980) aka Night of the Zombies, Zombie Creeping Flesh, Virus, Zombie Inferno. This Bruno Mattei zombiefest never got any respect and I can understand why but it's still always been a favorite of mine anyway. A gas leaked at a factory causes a worldwide zombie outbreak. A SWAT team of goofballs, after dispatching some terrorists, get a vacation (still in uniform) in New Guinea. They join a female reporter and her Tom-Savini-lookin' sidekick and wander around, fighting gory zombies and trying to pretend they're part of stock natives-and-wildlife footage inserted from The Real Cannibal Holocaust. That's not all the movie stole, either -- Goblin's Dawn of the Dead score gets more airtime here than it did in Dawn. All characters are incredibly obnoxious and their behavior is profoundly stupid so you wonder if they guy who wrote it was suffering a brain injury, but there's a lot of zombie action, and while the gore effects are mostly cheap, they're plentiful and extreme.   A rat runs out of a creepy old woman's bloated stomach, heads explode, an idiot who's playing dress-up in the middle of a house full of zombies gets devoured, and someone's eyes are gouged out... from the inside, by a zombie reaching through the roof of her mouth! Yeah, it's dumb (the dubbed dialogue is hilarious, and every character is incredibly obnoxious) and derivative, but Mattei obviously isn't just playing "got your money" here, and you've got to respect that -- if nothing else, he's a showman. The zombies are usually chewed-up looking, while Dawn of the Dead only smeared blue paint on most of them, and even if some of the effects are just meat held against a leg and gnawed on, at least there's plenty of it. And there's probably more pointless scenes of people vomiting than any movie I can remember. People pan this but I've probably seen it a dozen ties and I still love it. I like Mattei's other dog, Rats: Night of Terror, too. So there.

Secrets of the Clown (C, 2007) Bobby's having some problems with his girlfriend Val, so one of his dopey friends vindictively breaks her prized clown doll.   This friend is promptly knifed to death on the doorstep. Soon afterward another friend of Bobby's gets murdered in his car in the cemetery. Bobby and his friends vow to track down the killer, but Val has dreams of them all being killed. They contact spirits with ouija tactics and call in a psychic/exorcist guy. Meanwhile, Val turns out to have witchcraft powers and battles demons on the highway while Bobby and his friends deal with possessed friends and a clown monster (he looks like one of the type of wrestlers that WCW was bringing in right before it went under) shows up. A big supernatural battle starts up. The moviemakers had ideas beyond their budget or skill, and the end results aren't good, but you can't fault them for trying, and I've seen worse home-made horror. I wouldn't exactly recommend it, but it does seem sincere enough to make you want to help it along.

October movie challenge # somethin'ornother

2011-10-05T19:02:00.001-05:00

Who cares about what number it is, it's just movie reviews, right?

Fall of the House of Usher (B&W, 1948) Extremely weird British adaptation of Poe strays from the source heavily, but in completely absurd and nightmarish ways. Starting in a stodgy old gentlemen’s club where goofy twits are swapping tales, one pulls a Poe book off the shelf and then, apparently, just starts making shit up because the enactment that follows involves an old torture chamber in the woods where an insane old hag stands guard over a living severed head! By way of explaining Roderick Usher’s illness, an older man takes him there and explains that the hag is Roderick’s mother and the head is her lover, murdered by her father. It looks like some Ming The Merciless mask, and the hag looks like the singer for a black metal band.. The only way Roderick can break the curse and live past age thirty is to either burn the head, or sacrifice his sister Madeleine. Option one - burning the head - proves difficult, and the hag murders a couple of guys in the process. She also has secret tunnels to get into the house so she can try to get Madeleine. Then, abruptly, it starts being Poe’s actual story, more or less, with Madeleine dying, being put in a tomb for a week, then returning from the dead during a storm. The budget is low and the film has that stiffness that most British films had back then, but it’s got lots of atmosphere and such a crazy, dreamlike storyline that it’s a curio worth seeking out.

Ruby (C, 1977) aka Blood Ruby. Piper Laurie (forever known to my friends and I as "Carrie White's freakin' mama") is Ruby, a gangland moll who gives birth out of shock as her gangster boyfriend is gunned down. She goes straight and opens a drive-in theater, but supernatural happenings start plaguing the place. The projectionist is found lynched by a reel of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, a guy gets beaten up by an invisible presence, and another guy's corpse gets stuck in a soda machine and hooked up so it dispenses his blood. The rather-unbalanced Ruby and her helper Stuart Whitman think the ghost of her murdered boyfriend is back for revenge because he died thinking she set him up to be killed. Ruby's daughter Leslie is mute and deranged, but soon she's acting possessed, developing bullet holes in her face, doing backbends, and talking in the dead gangster's voice. A parapsychologist is brought in to play exorcist, but Ruby may have a date with a somewhat-ridiculous destiny. This should be more absorbing than it is, but somehow it didn't grab me, even though it's not really a bad film.

Haunted Castle, The (B&W, 1921) aka Schloss Vogeloed, Vogelod Castle. Count Oetsch invites himself to a hunting party and gives the sinister prediction that only one shot will be fired. His presence is awkward because he's rumored to have murdered his brother, who was married to a Baroness who's in attendance. A priest from Rome shows up, but soon disappears and everyone thinks Count Oetsch murdered him. People start having strange nightmares (one in which a monster claw drags a man through a window, and another in which chefs slap each other!) and they start leaving. Count Oetsch starts panicking everyone by revealing their dark secrets and says he'll expose the one who really killed his brother. The Baroness reveals the identity of the real killer to the priest when he shows up again... but the Baron is a very tricky guy. I'm a big fan of F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu, but this one's not nearly as skillful and it's pretty hard to follow (the blurry, cut-down Alpha DVD wasn't much help). There are moments of eeriness but it's mostly a stiff, static drama and not much of a horror film, despite the title.

Lit-Thieving Bastard Alert

2011-10-04T21:52:00.000-05:00

If you've been paying any attention at all, you know about the only thing on this planet I hold sacrosanct is the written (and preferably printed) word. Sometimes I may even get the least lil' ol' bit unhinged about it (anti-Kindle rants, anybody?). So, you probably have a pretty good guess how much of a hate-on I've got for people who steal other people's work.

Well, there's a dude who's doing that, and in a big way. And he needs the dogs sicced on 'im.

This post on Brian Keene's blog will give you the information you need. Go there, and do that, because the next person this Boyer fuck might steal from is you. Or me, since I'm putting a story or two up here later this month, and rumor has it so are my blog-brothers. And if somebody were to steal from me, I might do stupid things, so it's better to go with Keane's plan. Go read up on it.

Fuck, but I hate plagiarists...

October Movie Challenge Installment 3

2011-10-04T18:55:00.000-05:00

Only got one movie watched yesterday because I was typing up stuff like this. Probably won't get much watched tonight, either, but at least Sons of Anarchy is coming on, which you should go watch instead of reading this.

Frogs (C, 1972) Eco-horror classic of the nature-in-revolt school. Environmentalist journalist Pickett Smith (Sam Elliott, so young you can't recognize him) is out taking pictures of pollution when his canoe is swamped by rich brat Bradford Dillman, grandson of wheelchair-bound tycoon Ray Milland. Milland's industrial pursuits have been raping the environment and the denizens of the swamp want revenge. It's hard to make much of a "silent spring" case for this toxic swamp, though, because the frogs, snakes, and lizards are thriving and swarming everywhere. And then they start attacking. The drawback is most of the swamp creatures aren't actually all that dangerous so the killings are ludicrous; in one, a guy's smothered in Spanish moss and tarantulas (which aren't even indigenous, much less venomous), and lizards learn how to mix chemicals to make poison gas in another! And the frogs themselves don’t get to do much but spoil the 4th of July birthday cake. Even the butterflies are killers, leading people to their doom. Leeches, caymans, alligators, snakes, crabs, snapping turtles, and I guess fish (one guy’s attacked in a lake by something unseen) all do their best to make the humans miserable. This is a pretty ridiculous movie but there’s something really lovable about it. There’s plenty of atmosphere (lots of shots of the wildlife, and the animal sounds are constant), and no matter how ridiculous it gets it plays it straight. The music score is weird and adds a lot. Goofy as it is, I’ve probably seen it a dozen times.

October Movie Challenge installment 2

2011-10-03T21:15:00.002-05:00

Okay, here's what I got done yesterday. Probably won't get anything done tonight 'cuz it took me so long to type all this stuff up...

Victims! (C, 1985) A girl gets an axe in the head, a naked woman gets hacked up with a meat cleaver, and a girl gets stabbed in the skull by a transvestite with a butcher knife... and that's just in the first two minutes! This no-budget piece of mean-spirited sleaze hangs out the "People Of Good Taste Not Welcome" sign early and then runs with it. A scrawny, dope-nervous-looking guy and his scumbag buddy escape after a robbery and hole up in the hills, where they find a young couple. They knock the boyfriend out by smashing him across the mouth with a shotgun and rape the girl, just so we know who we're dealing with here. Into their wilderness wonderland of depravity come four girls out for a "wild weekend" of rock-hunting. Every guy in the movie is a leering creep who harasses them, so it's amazing that they'd be willing to leave the house. And it only gets worse when they return from a skinny-dipping escapade to find their campsite's been ransacked. They wisely decide to get the hell out of there (earning them the viewer's respect), but someone's disabled their car. They set out to walk the ten miles back to civilization but unseen people terrorize them and then the two creeps show up to rape and humiliate them. They make the girls go down on each other, rant a lot about how women are all asking for it by wearing skimpy clothes, threaten to murder them, etc. These girls are resourceful, though, and they may not be the only ones suffering before it's done. The film clumsily exploits the victimization of women while trying to promote a stance against male chauvinism, on a budget of zilch. It's more competent than some although the acting's about on a Hershel Gordon Lewis movie level, and the filmmaking's so skangy that at one point dialogue gets drown out by an offscreen lawnmower. Soundtrack songs sometimes start at midpoint. Nasty little obscurity that was infamous in the tape-trading underground in the 80's but escaped the notice of most video guides. Directed by Jeff Hathcock.

Here's a guy's YouTube review:

Curse of the Aztec Mummy (B&W, 1959) aka La Maldicion de la Momia Azteca. Sequel to The Robot Vs. The Aztec Mummy. The mad doctor known as The Bat is in police custody but his henchmen are still on the loose and manage to hijack the bus taking him to prison. Absurdly, a masked wrestler called The Angel shows up out of nowhere to fight them, but with the help of submachine guns (they had no blanks for them so the actors just shake them while a drumroll plays on the soundtrack) he escapes. The Angel teams up with some victims of the Aztec curse (explained by flashbacks to previous films), but The Bat kidnaps Flora (who's a reincarnation of the Aztec Mummy's girlfriend) and tries to hypnotize her into telling where a treasure's buried. The Angel (who wears his mask even while sitting in bed reading) answers his wrist radio to help, but he's no Santo and gets beaten up again and mocked by The Bat ("I don't admire your valor!") who tries to trap him in a pit of snakes. The Angel has to be rescued by a child. Meanwhile The Bat and his men are exploring a destroyed tomb trying to find the treasure. The mummy doesn't show up at all until the last ten minutes, which is a shame because he's a pretty cool-looking monster. Then the damn Angel is captured AGAIN and has to be rescued by the mummy! I see now why the Angel doesn't want to show his face; he's the sorriest hero ever! I don't admire his valor, either! You sit through a lot for literally two minutes of mummy footage, which makes me wonder at the acumen of these filmmakers; they've already got the mummy costume, and they should know that people who go to a movie with him in the title want to see more of him. Go figure. At least you get some hysterically bad dubbed dialogue, which is more than enough to make this worth watching.

Whole movie:

Orca (C, 1977) Jaws variation tries to make America's sweetheart, the killer whale, into an object of terror. Richard Harris is trying to capture a great white shark for an aquarium, but a killer whale kills his target shark (and rescues a diver in the process). Charlotte Rampling, in a lecture, explains that killer whales are so intelligent that humans are "retarded" in comparison, and Harris decides to go capture one of those instead, even though she warns him off. He promptly and incompetently kills a pregnant female killer whale and gains one hell of an enemy in the form of her enraged mate. Seeking vengeance, the male orca starts attacking the ship and dragging down any low-hanging-fruit dumb enough to dangle over the side (and idiots are plentiful in this film). He spends awhile in a pitiful struggle to keep his mate alive by pushing her dying body through the water but it's hopeless and leaves him more mad for revenge. Soon he's gone full-blown terrorist, sinking every boat in Harris's harbor, eating all the fish, blowing up refineries, and knocking down houses with his head-butting. Everybody's pretty pissed at Harris, and even though he's spooked by the whole thing (and has personal demons because his own pregnant wife was killed by a drunk driver) he finally goes after Orc-sama Bin Ladin when he bites off Bo Derek's leg. The whale earns his reckoning and Harris takes the boat out again, and things get even more ridiculous when the movie turns into an ocean version of Chato's Land. I know whales are smart, but come on! Dino DeLaurentis wasn't exactly making cerebral films at the time, and this one's pretty goofy and more of an adventure film than horror. It's not boring, though, if your brain can shrug off the insult. Ennio Morricone's score will help make that easier, as always.

Last House On Dead End Street (C, 1977) aka The Fun House, The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell. After being released from a year in jail for selling drugs, Danzig lookalike Terry Hawkins starts getting his sleazy dead-end friends together to make some "new kind of movies." Mostly Terry's pissed at the world, very sociopathic, and looking for a way to take his rage out on some victims. His friends are burned out and bored enough to do just about anything (before he even gets ahold of them they're whipping girls in blackface at parties) and the porn films they'd been shooting were getting dull (even when they involved dogs). Terry is played by director Roger Watkins, who was heavily tweaked on crystal meth and maxed out on misanthropic hate when he made this, so the severe vibe of nihilism that comes from this film is sincere; you are in the hands of a filmmaker who wants to hurt and terrorize you. Terry, the guy he's playing, wants to hurt people even worse, though. Setting up shop in a crumbling abandoned house with the drugged-out film crew he's assembled, he lures in his real "stars" - or, victims, since Terry's making snuff films. Wearing a mask that looks like the head of a Greek god's statue, he murders people who wronged him on film. Most of it really isn't that gory, just weird (such as one guy who's forced to fellate a deer's hoof sticking out of a girl's pants) and only has one truly gruesome scene -- a surgery sequence where a tied-down woman is slashed, has her legs amputated, and is then disemboweled -- and the effects work isn't very convincing. You can even clearly see the Saran Wrap the organs were packed in pulled out with them. What earns this film its notorious reputation is the unrelentingly weird, mean-spirited tone of the whole thing. It doesn't look like any slick production, and it has a genuinely deranged vibe, and the scary-assed music and constant mocking laughter doesn't help you. You never think you're watching a real snuff film, but you do get the feeling you're watching something made by people who might make one if they though they could find a way to market it. Disturbing classic that needs to be brought back into print. Criterion released the overrated Japanese House, so they should start digging here.

The infamous surgery scene:

The Messengers (C, 2007) Your conventional horror movie family (Dylan McDermott and Penelope Ann Miller as affectionate-but-worried-about-their-daughter parents, Kristen Stewart as the moody big sister (is there any other kind in horror films?), and a little toddler brother) moves into an old farmhouse to try to raise sunflowers. The place is apparently haunted by grey people who crawl on the ceiling but only the toddler can see them at first. Crows plague the place, and then Kristen gets attacked by heavy poltergeist activity and is almost dragged into the basement by the grey people. Her parents think she may be going crazy, but Kristen struggles to figure out what's going on in the house and convince her parents they need to leave. But, they're determined to bring in the harvest, even though she keeps getting attacked. Can she save her family from this assault of the supernatural? The production values are nice and some of the images are creepy, but this is a really cheap approach to horror. The atmosphere is a completely conventional process, with music cues relied upon to do all the heavy lifting; the soundtrack would have you believe that EVERYTHING is a harbinger of the apocalypse. When impending-doom music played over a close up of a bowl of Froot Loops, I 'bout peed. You top that off with a cheap jump-scare around every thirty seconds (seriously, what this film lacks as a horror movie it makes up for as a kegel workout video), and add overused clichés like a creature creeping up behind somebody only to have it disappear when they turn around and you’ve got by-the-numbers nothing-new horror at its most formulaic. This stuff was so weak on atmosphere and reliant upon jump scares that I started thinking Sam Raimi directed it under a pseudonym... and then I went back and checked the credits and damn if he didn’t produce it! I know my tired hacks by smell! It didn’t bore me, though, so I won’t say it’s bad, just standard with no new ideas. Be willing for plug ‘n’ play and you’ll probably have fun with it.

Don’t Open The Door! (C, 1975) The S. F. Brownrigg movie everyone forgets about reunites several cast members of Don’t Look In The Basement for a slow-burning Southern gothic psycho killer fest. Responding to a call that the grandma she hasn’t seen in thirteen years is dying, a young lady named Amanda Post comes back to her grandmother’s house to visit her. Gene Ross plays another Judge, and he and some other townspeople are squabbling over who gets her grandma’s house, which pisses Amanda off. Grandma’s house is a huge, spooky old place (which Brownrigg exploits to full effect) and she starts getting creepy phone calls from some whispering pervert, who’s hiding in a closet and peeking at her. He tries to get her to do phone sex while he fondles a doll. The film is obviously uncomfortable with sex despite being preoccupied with perversity; the sex call scenes are shot timidly, and the discomfort translates to the viewer. He also implies that he knows something about how Amanda’s mother was stabbed to death, and all the tension begins to drive her crazy. I love this movie because I’m a major S. F. Brownrigg fan and into the weird atmosphere he builds, but I have to admit that most people would find this one too slow and lacking much of a payoff. There’s very little blood and the approach to the subject matter is conspicuously prudish, and there’s not a lot of suspense about the caller because you find out who he is pretty early. But there is an air of twistedness that you can only find in Brownrigg. But see Don’t Look In The Basement first.

October Movie Challenge entry #1

2011-10-02T10:35:00.001-05:00

Okay, I'm trying this thing (which you are welcome to try, too, although yer a little late) so I'll be posting reports from that over here... provided I can stand wrestling with this board's interface, which has already given me about an hour of screaming, cursing fits today 'cuz it won't let me create links anymore. I'm trying the "new interface" to see if it's not completely broke-dick.*sigh.* It allows the links, but it jerks me around if I try to add blank lines.

I'm falling so out-of-love with blogging...

Anyway, I'm going to fail horribly at watching 100 movies in 31 days... especially since I'm gonna eat up hours typing up the reviews, and then an extra hour dealing with the blogger.com's fouled-up interface.   (And then even more time bitching about it, right, Z, ya whiney bastard? Yeah, I hear ya... )

Anyway, here goes... what I watched on October 1st.

==============

Final Exam (C, 1981) Simpleminded slasher film that was nobody's favorite due to a lack of blood; a stabfest with no gore is like celibacy porn, nobody really gives a fuck. It does serve as a reminder of how innocent the 80's were, though, because in one scene a fraternity stages a fake school shooting just as a distraction to let a guy cheat on a test. The school's resident serial-killer-buff (a real goober named "Radish") thinks it's real and calls the cops, not knowing the main masked shooter was his incredibly stupid buddy "Wildman" (who's so wild 'n' crazy he's got "Wildman" written on both sides of his shirt, just so nobody'll miss that he needs attention and lots of it, stat!).   When the mean ol' sheriff shows up he doesn't do much but threaten everyone (and call Wildman "bulldog" a lot, like that's badass). If you did something like that nowdays, CNN would talk about nothing else for a week, and it's probably still enough to keep this movie from airing on TV. Anyway, amidst the fake killing, a real knife-wielding psycho (finally) shows up and starts waving his knife up and down. It takes almost an hour for the killer to start doing his thing and then it's just weird because the guy's unknown and has no apparent motive whatsoever. Slasher movies have worked in some ridiculous twists but this is the only one I know of that has no twist at all -- he's just a random no-personality knife-guy who kills with no gore. He might as well be the flu.   So what you're left with are a bunch of sub-non-plots about a nice girl feeling whistful that the other girls seem to be having more fun (but slasher-film-101 tells you that she'll get to survive them all), Radish trying to convince the sheriff that there's real trouble on campus this time, and fraternity jerks tying their friends to trees with ice in their underpants. Yeah, the imbecilic forced behavior of "Wildman" is kind of amusing, but it's not enough to compensate for a slasher college that's sorely in need of an anatomy class, and so little blood that if it was marinara sauce you'd be sending your manicotti back to the Olive Garden chef with a sharply-worded letter. Maybe if he'd had a couple of sidekicks named Dickjerk and Corndog it could have made the grade. As is, it's not boring but doesn't deliver the goods, either. A product of Earl Owensby's studio.

Visiting Hours (C, 1982) Lee Grant is a reporter who's an advocate for battered women, which pisses off psychotic Michael Ironside. His mother splashed his father with boiling oil for playing too rough and witnessing the incident gave Ironside a deep misogyny in general, but particularly an obsessive hatred of assertive women. He’s already been stalking women, photographing them in the process of dying, and building a skull collage out of the photos, so when he sees Grant on TV, he’s already well-versed in what he thinks he should do about it. He invades her apartment but she manages to escape him, with injuries that leave her hospitalized. Ironside’s one driven bastard, though, so he goes after her in the hospital, killing some other patients along the way and targeting a nurse (Linda Purl) who’s a bit too together for him to tolerate.   He’s so determined to take out his target that he even smashes a beer bottle with his arm so he can use the injury to get admitted to the hospital as a patient. The directorial style is a bit messy (you can tell director Jean-Claude Lord is trying to be “stylish” but doesn’t have a good sense of when art gets in the way of function) and the severe tone may have made some slasher fans uncomfortable; usually the people getting killed off are cardboard party-types while these victims are realistic people with backstories just trying to get through their day. And Ironside is scary, cold, crazed with hatred, and almost never saying a word as he very-resourcefully and with unnerving determination goes about what he does. He’s a predator to contend with. The gore is restrained but the suspense is kept pretty high, so this one deserves another look. Oh, and William Shatner is also on hand, which may be a factor for some.

Mad Doctor of Blood Island (C, 1969) aka Blood Doctor, Grave Desires, Tomb of the Living Dead. John Ashley is a pathologist who travels to Blood Island to help Angelique Pettyjohn find her missing father. When they find him, he’s turned a dark green and is dying. Crazy Dr. Lorca has been experimenting with chlorophyll and infected him... but he’s better off than Lorca’s other “patient,” who’s a full-blown raging monster who’s so crazy that the camera goes into nauseating pulsations whenever it tries to film him! The green-blooded, rotting-with-chlorophyll monster is pretty great-looking and his victims are left in an amazingly gory condition, rendered to piles of bloody limbs and scattered organs. The plot itself is slow-going and not very interesting, but it’s worth it just for the monster and his splattery attacks. The effects are crude but reach Fulci-levels of graphic. Movie goers were given vials of “green blood” to drink to protect them from becoming such a fiend; no report on how many may have contracted cancer from the dye used. Ashley and Pettyjohn pad out the time between attacks with making out. A similar monster (but even cooler-looking, and with a detachable head!) would be back in Beast of Blood.   The trailer - narrated by Brother Theodore - is a masterpiece.

Unborn, The (C, 2009) Pretty co-ed Casey starts having weird dreams and seeing visions of (among other things) a creepy blue-eyed boy. Another freaky little boy she’s babysitting tells her “Jambi wants to be born now” and smacks her with a mirror. One of her eyes starts turning blue, her dad tells her she had a twin brother they’d nicknamed Jambi who died in the womb, and she learns her crazy mother (who committed suicide in an asylum) was saving articles on a Holocaust survivor, who turns out to be Casey’s grandmother. As she researches her family history, things get creepier and creepier. She learns a demon called a dybbuk that’s bothered her family before is back, and it’ll kill anyone close to her in its pursuit of Casey. Plagues of roaches, crawling people and dogs with upside-down heads, homicidal children, and possessed friends all attack poor Casey, and finally a Jewish exorcist (Gary Oldman) and his friends try to drive away the dybbuk. Some of it relies on jump-scare tactics and parts are derivative, but there are some really spooky images here, and though it’s no masterpiece it works pretty well for the most part and is worth looking for.

What Have You Done To Solange? (C, 1972) aka Cosa Avete Fatto a Solange?, Terror in the Woods, The School That Couldn’t Scream, The Secret of the Green Pins, Who Killed Solange?, Who’s Next? Professor Fabio Testi and his mistress are making out in a rowboat on the Thames when his mistress witnesses the sex-murder of one of his students on the shore. He won’t let her tell the cops because he’ll be outed as an adulterer, but eventually the mistress has to talk to the police because she remembers that the killer was wearing a priest’s robe. Things get more complicated when more girls are found with a knife up their cooze, and the killer becomes aware that the mistress may be able to identify him and targets her. Testi tries to track down the killer himself and discovers a secret society of schoolgirls and a key to the mystery in a mute girl named Solange (Camille Keaton of I Spit On Your Grave infame). But more bodies will turn up before this one’s solved. Brilliant giallo is one of the best in the genre, with a plot that’s actually compelling and a classy Ennio Morricone score (always a big plus), and a confident directorial style, quirky without drawing attention to itself, and the plot stays between the ditches more than most gialli. The gore isn’t graphic but given the nature of the killings it doesn’t need to be, and a bathtub drowning is pretty harsh for something bloodless. The solution is damn twisted. Must-see material here.

Haunted (C, 1976) aka The Glass Cage, The Haunted. An Indian maiden is falsely accused of witchcraft, stripped to the waist, tied to a horse, and sent to die in the desert while a Neil Diamondish theme song makes her punishment ever so much worse. She curses her accusers, and, sure ‘nuff, in 100 years she returns to take vengeance on their descendents... or, at least that’s what mean ol’ Aldo Ray thinks, but he’s crazy. He and his blind sister-in-law and her sons live in a ghost town they’re maintaining. The phone company -- for reasons no one understands -- installs a phone booth in the abandoned town’s cemetery. As Ray gets crazier he starts getting calls on it. A British girl’s car breaks down in the ghost town and Ray thinks she’s the reincarnation of the Indian maiden (it’s the same actress, anyhow). The elder nephew, Patrick, wants to run away and be a folk singer or something, and has his blind mother put in a rest home and plans to abandon the ghost town. This sets Ray off and he kidnaps the British girl and sends his nephew on a wild goose chase (in his badass AMC Javelin, which is the star of the movie as far as I’m concerned) to find her while Ray tries to burn her alive. She escapes and Ray hunts her through the ghost town, trying to stab her with a pointy stick. Yes -- a pointy stick. This is a sloppy nothin’-happenin’ mess, but at least it does look like a movie, which is more than you can say for director Michael A. DeGaetano’s previous effort, UFO Target Earth. Look close and you can spot a poster for that on one of the walls.

Some Interesting Free Music...

2011-09-25T07:54:00.003-05:00

I've meant to mention this before, but never got around to it... Sorry for my slackery. Anyway, in my constant search for interesting music, I came across a band I really like called Charts and Maps, whose odd-time- + saxamaphone-laden stuff sits nicely in-between jazz + post-rock.

Further digging turnd up their record label's blog, where (a huge chunk of, if not) the entire catalog is available for free download, under the aegis of the Creative Commons licensing agreement.

I cannot stress how very cool + important Creative Commons is to creators; clear-cut language that cuts thru any bullshit to the core of creators + their ability to retain their inherent rights to their creations...

So, Wise Owl is the record label + they seem to be a very cool + forward-thinking one...

I haven't had a chance to properly listen to all of these bands, or even most of 'em, but so far I've really enjoyed Charts and Maps, cssc, Lost Reverie (which is a bit more metal), Petrograd in Transit, + Taiga Blues...

Check out some free music, motherfucker!

(Here's a Charts + Maps vid - sort of... for 'Pearl Divers of the Arabian Peninsula' off their newest, Dead Horse)

yeah, yeah, yeah...

2011-09-23T23:58:00.003-05:00

...more movie reviews out of a can. Hey, they're new to you, right? And it gives me an excuse to be lazy. I'm wrote you guys a scary-ass ghost story for Halloween that's in the touching-up stage, and I may even write another one, so, I'll make it up to you in the coming weeks. I'll also probably be writing a ton of horror movie reviews, because I'm going to make a half-assed attempt at the http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif (which you are also invited to attempt). I will fail at that in a spectacular way (my narcoleptic tendencies wouldn't let me stay awake for that many movies even if I wanted to devote that kind of time to trying, and I don't - I wanna read, too - but I should at least get some watched. For now, there's these...

Black Lemons (C, 1970) aka E venne il giorno dei limoni neri, Mafia Connection. Antonio Sabato stars in this Italian mafia fest. A hit man tries to dump Antonio, our anti hero, into a rock crusher (getting an innocent co worker instead) and ends up being thrown off a cliff. This makes Antonio even more bitter against the mob, who had killed his wife over some inner family business. He's on parole for carrying heroin (they used him as a fall guy to distract the cops from a bigger shipment) and the cops want him to help them gather evidence, but he doesn't play that snitch stuff. He starts a trucking business, but the mob interferes and murders one of his friends. Another mob guy gets killed at the funeral by a guy who wants to work with Antonio. Antonia has a file incriminating all the mob leaders that will be released if he dies, so the mob is over a barrel, and Antonio's helper proves to be a little too psychopathic, and almost carves up a gangster's son they kidnapped. The conflicts between Antonio and the mob inevitably lead up to some shooting. Plenty of action even though the plot isn't really all that enthralling. As for the obvious question "What in the hell does that title mean?" I'm sorry, but I still have no clue. But I bet the strangeness of it probably dragged a few people into the theater in hopes of finding out, so I guess it makes sense on that level, anyway. On DVD (shitty print!) as Mafia Connection.

Black Moon Rising (C, 1985) Tommy Lee Jones is a big time thief who steals a computer disk. When some thugs come after him for it, he secretes the disk in an experimental car called The Black Moon. It can go over 300 miles an hour, runs on water (by processing the hydrogen out of it), and basically appears to be a Lamborghini that somebody bondo'ed all the character out of. Problem is, someone promptly steals the Black Moon, and Tommy's disk is still in it, and it's his ass if he doesn't recover it. Of course, that's not going to be easy or we wouldn't have much of a movie... not that we do, anyway. There's a decent cast Robert Vaughn, William Sanderson, Bubba Smith, Linda Hamilton, and Fear's lead singer Lee Ving with his hair grown out and a suit on that still somehow fail to hold your attention, and it was co scripted by John Carpenter, yet it's still pretty mundane. Not awful enough to avoid, not good enough to seek out.

Trailer available here.

Black Sun : The Nanking Massacre (C, 1995) aka Hei tai yang Nan Jing da tu sha, Men Behind the Sun 4, Black Sun Sequel of sorts to the very, very infamous Men Behind The Sun, depicting more Japanese war atrocities. Occupying Japanese forces commit hideous acts against the Chinese city of Nanking. The Japanese command declares a "killing competition" to encourage the execution of as many civilians as possible, and claim that all Chinese women are "comfort women," free to be raped by Japanese soldiers. Use of action historical photographs and film footage is intercut to add an uncompromising sense of authenticity to the proceedings, which are both historical dramatization and propaganda (there's even a scene with a Japanese soldier ripping up an American flag to outrage viewers in the States, too. Those World War II era Japanese bastards!) There's lots of hatefulness and mass killing, but it's not as focused on gore as Men Behind the Sun, limiting the real nastiness to a few incidents, such as a pregnant woman being bayoneted in the belly and the fetus pulled out and held up (the DVD company used this picture for a full page ad in Fangoria! Talk about crass), a baby being thrown into a vat of boiling water, some decapitations, and burning bodies. There's a subplot about an uncle trying to keep a couple of kids safe during the massacre, but mostly it's without any real plot beyond showing how cruel and depraved the Japanese were. It's pretty well made but, needless to say, not too pleasant.

Blonde in Bondage (B&W, 1957) aka Blondin i fara, Narkotika, Nothing But Blondes. A newspaper reporter is sent to Sweden to report on "Swedish morals" and finds a pair of sisters who are all too eager to teach him all about 'em. After a minor car accident he meets a show business couple, Krueger the manager and his singer, Mona Mace, who acts a little strange. He learns that she has a drug addiction that Krueger is using to control her. The reporter decides to help Mona out and ends up wandering sleazy streets full of drunks and prostitutes, looking for a dive called The Golden Calf, where he tries unsuccessfully to strong arm info. This doesn't work so he goes to a cabaret club where Mona's doing her song and strip act (just down to some fancy lingerae it ain't that kind of movie) and gets himself beaten up by Krueger and some hoodlums, who cause a lot more trouble before the reporter can make any real headway toward helping Mona out. It's tame but probably pretty exploitative for its time, and manages to look really cheap even though most of it was actually filmed in Sweden. There's some decent action and good sleazy locations, but it could have benefitted from some tightening up; at 90 minutes it's a little overlong. Pretty obscure doesn't appear in any movie reference books I've seen. The final chase through a funhouse is pretty interesting.

Blood of the Beast ( C & B&W, 2003) After massive biological warfare in 2012, one third of mankind is killed and nearly everyone rendered sterile, so the human race has to reproduce itself via cloning. Nineteen years later, problems start showing up in the first strand of clones; they go nuts and start biting people like George Romero zombies. And that's basically it, which would be okay except the movie doesn't do much with the concept. They don't show many attacks (basically just some campers and a compound of religious nuts) and they didn't seem to be very interested in the possibility for gore, either -- there's just a little blood unenthusiastically dripped around and that's about it. And it's not scary in the least. So, what you end up with is a lot of attempts to be clever with style that come across as wankage (the film turns into a silent movie at the end, after trying hard to look like the Blair Witch Project) and substance is kept to a minimum. It's not badly made overall and gets points for trying to be different on a budget of zero, but fizzles because it would have been so easy to make it so much better.

Couldn't find any video on it, but here's Exodus doing "Strike of the Beast." Completely unrelated, but it's good!

Brain from Planet Arous (B&W, 1957) John Agar and his buddy go into the desert to investigate some radioactivity, and in a cave they find a giant brain with eyes named Gor. Gor possesses Agar's body and uses him to enact his will on Earth. This gives Agar freaky shiny black eyes (contact lenses that were very uncomfortable, but Agar was a trooper) and super powers: he can make things blow up just by thinking about it. That'd be a bad power to have, just because of the "hippopotamus factor" (you know, if somebody tells you, "Don't think of a hippopotamus!" then that's all you can think about. Well, try to not think of "blowing up everything I see" sometime, if you're John Agar). Another alien brain named Vol shows up, hunting for Gor, who is a criminal on Arous. Vol possesses the body of a dog to be able to surprise attack Gor. Meanwhile, Gor is getting off using Agar's body to cheerfully blow up airplanes and make out with Agar's girlfriend. But he has much bigger ambitions; he gathers leaders from all the major countries on the planet (promising that if they don't show up he'll level their capitol cities) and lets them know that he's enslaving Earth so he can use humans to wage war on his home planet. Agar's great over the top performance and some funny floating giant brain effects (did they even think about trying to, I dunno, hide the wires in some way?) make this one classic.

Broken Skull (C, 2000?) When a Chicago gangster finds his wife cheating on him, he hangs her and crushes her lover's head in a vice. Twenty years later a repairman doing some work finds the guy's busted skull hidden in the basement wall of a building, then promptly rams a brick wall with his head until he's mangled. But then he gets up off the autopsy table, dripping brains, and goes on a killing spree. One guy gets stabbed while he's peeing and starts pissing blood... pretty sick. The undead killer's family, friends, and a lady cop try to figure out what happened to him. Meanwhile, the killings continue: a guy's bashed with a rock and has his head crushed by a train, another's killed with a drill. The detective discovers a reanimation virus was produced as part of something called "The Headcrusher Project." Then there's a crazy Cambodian lady who married the G.I. who murdered her family just so she can torture him every night. No -budget, shot -on -video horror isn't as bad as some, but even though the first half is fairly engaging, it starts to run out of gas after that. The gore effects are weak, but at least they're edited so fast that you don't get a very good look at 'em (use your pause button and you'll end up laughing), so they're still effective enough, which is good because the movie relies pretty heavily on them. Not bad among shot on video horror flicks, but that's kind of damning with faint praise. Available super cheap as part of the Night Chills 10 movie set.

Bug (C, 1975) William Castle's last production is a sci fi/horror film based on The Hephaestus Plague by Thomas Page. An earthquake opens a deep crack in the earth, from which emerge three inch armored cockroach/beetles that eat carbon, which they acquire by setting fire to things by rubbing their legs together. Due to pressure differences on the surface of the earth, the dangerous insects are quickly dying off, but entomologist Bradford Dillman is so intrigued by them that he can't let that happen, and unwisely finds a way to breed them, creating a new generation that eats meat and are intelligent enough to communicate by spelling words with their bodies. And they're intent on mutating further... It's unique among nature on the loose movies since these bugs not only bite but also burn their victims, which include several people and a cat. The special effects are pretty impressive, and the movie's well done and holds your attention, and will probably even scare you if you have an insect phobia. The climax is a little disappointing, though. This used to show up frequently on the USA Network, before they turned into complete crap.

Burn 'Em Up Barnes (B&W, 1934) This 12- chapter Mascot serial is one of the most action -packed old things you're likely to find. In fact, the cliffhanger endings are almost anticlimactic, given that the plot is a constant string of one tough scrape after another, with Murphy's Law in full effect for our heroes. Young Marjorie Temple is trying to run a small transportation business, but unscrupulous car manufacturer Lymon Warren and his henchman, Mr. Drummond, want to buy her land because they know there's oil on the property. Top race driver "Burn ?Em Up" Barnes (they actually call him "Burn 'Em Up" as a name throughout) and his teenage sidekick Bobbie help her out, battling Drummond and his hoard of badguys. Drummond frames Barnes for murder but Bobbie has film that proves Barnes's innocence, so they fight over the film for a while, with it changing hands repeatedly during one fight and high speed backroads chase after another. Then they fight over a signed confession for a few chapters, and then they try to wreck the school bus that Marjorie needs for her business. Barnes saves the day by getting a job as a movie stuntman, which leads to still more hairy situations. The plot quickly becomes superfluous to the action, but it delivers plenty of that, with only a few cheats on the cliffhangers. Solid stuff for serials fans or those who like watching antique vehicles going full tilt.

Bury Me An Angel (C, 1971) The day this comes out on DVD I'll be a happy fella, 'cuz I live in fear of wearing out my VHS. In fact, one of the reasons I'm considering buying a DVD recorder is to transfer this to DVD -R.
(Since this review was written, it has come out on DVD as part of the Best of the B's Collection 1, but I'm still not thrilled because my 2nd-gen VHS dub looks better! Somebody needs to put out a more primo disc of this one.) Dixie Peabody is Dag Bandy, a six foot tall shotgun wielding biker chick riding the vengeance trail on a chopped hog, gunning for the scooter trash who blew away her brother. If it wasn't for an icky psuedo Joe Dirt hairdo, she'd be just about perfect. Dag is emotionless and ice water veined, fixing up her bike and thinking of nothing but revenge. When she's ready she loads up the ?gauge and hits the road with two maile bike buddies and some cool suede pants (which reminds me Hannie Caulder needs to be on DVD, too). For some reason, the suede pants usually turn into other kinds of pants whenever she gets off the bike, but I think they just shot all of the road scenes at once and we're not supposed to notice that. So forget I said anything. On the way to the final vengeance, she intimidates a midget deputy, hustles pool, trashes a bar full of rednecks (or at least causes it), skinny-dips, meets a mystical woman living in a ghost town, has lots of flashbacks of her brother's head exploding, does a lot of riding to a fuzz rock soundtrack, and meets modern artist Dan "Grizzly Adams" Haggerty. Then she scares the hell out of a high school principal and his secretary, has a love scene with Dan, and finally catches up to the little weasel, where some dark secrets are revealed. This is possibly the only biker movie directed by a woman, Barbara Peeters, who later gave us the original Humanoids From The Deep. So, the film has a feminist slant Dag's male compadres are definitely subservient and look to her as the Alpha. Humanoids from the Deep has a feminist statement, too the monsters actually do the raping that was just implied in all those '50's flicks. Barbara Peeters is a sneaky (and possibly brilliant) woman. This one moves pretty fast and Dixie has loads of screen presence even if her acting leaves a little to be desired. One of the best biker flicks, and sports classic poster ad copy that Quentin Tarantino did a lousy job cribbing from in Kill Bill "I'm gonna get my gun and... BURY ME AN ANGEL. She took on the whole gang! A howling hellcat humping a hot steel hog on a roaring rampage of revenge!" Dixie only showed up in one other movie, Night Call Nurses, which is a shame because she could've been drive -in gold with the right push behind her. And if I ever have a daughter, I hope somebody stops me before I name her "Dag," because I'd be tempted.

Go, Dag, Go!

A Reason to Live... til at least December, anyway...

2011-09-17T04:45:00.002-05:00

Rejoice, humans... Raise your voices up in praise... 'cuz Scratch Acid is doin' a reunion tour!!!

Scratch Acid was a psych-punk / noise-rock ensemble from Austin, Texas in the mid-80s known for the wacky antics of frontman David Yow + the crazed rhythms of drummer Rey Washem + bassist David Sims (+ for having handed out LSD to the crowd prior to at least one of their shows...). Yow + Sims were to later be half of the Jesus Lizard, easily one of the best bands to play American underground rock ever. And with Scratch Acid were those raucous musical seeds sown...

College pal Matt hepped me to this band in 1987 + I've been a fan ever since. Of course, they'd disbanded by then... d'oh... so here's my chance to see 'em play! And yours, too!

Scratch Acid
2011 Tour Dates
Scratch Acid: (UPDATED 24 Sept with ADDED DATES)

11-01 Atlanta, GA - Variety Playhouse
11-02 Carrboro, NC - Cat's Cradle
11-04 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
11-05 Philadelphia, PA - Union Transfer
11-07 New York, NY - Webster Hall
11-09 Boston, MA - Paradise
11-10 Montreal, Quebec - Il Motore
11-11 Toronto, Ontario - Lee's Place
11-12 Chicago, IL - Metro
12-08 Dallas, TX - Trees
12-09 Houston, TX - Fitzgerald's
12-10 Austin, TX - Emo's East
12-13 Los Angeles, CA - El Rey Theatre
12-14 San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore
12-16 Portland, OR - Crystal Ballroom
12-17 Seattle, WA - Neumos

To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak The Truth

2011-09-16T22:39:00.002-05:00

Welcome to an all-documentary edition of Uncle Z's movie reviews! All the following purport to be collections of true actual-factual materials, and in some cases they are. In others, though, eeeeehhhhh, not so much.

American Grindhouse (C, 2010) The history of sleazy exploitation films and the way they were distributed is charted in this well-done documentary. If you're a real fan of this kind of movie then you're not likely to find much that's any big news to you, but you'll still enjoy seeing clips from hundreds of these movies and hearing interviews from filmmakers like John Landis, Hershell Gordon Lewis, Larry Cohen, Joe Dante, Walter Hill, and others. An important part of your education as a worthwhile human being if you're not familiar with such films.

Trailer available here.

American: The Bill Hicks Story (C, 2010) If you're a fan of genius, ground-breaking comedian Bill Hicks, then you've probably read biographies on him and everything in this documentary will be familiar to you. Hicks is one of those figures that those of us who are into him are reaaaaally into him, so we tend to want to know everything we can. But, even if you're familiar with the info, it should still be a very welcome and overdue production, covering the full extent of Hicks' career and featuring segments from his friends and family. Much of the film is animated from photos, and it's effective but overused. There are enough clips from Hicks' act to provide a fair representation (and hopefully spark any newbies to seek out more), and the second DVD contains some more rare clips. Very informative, well done, and a must for fans (which should be everybody).

Bigfoot: The Mysterious Monster (C, 1976) aka Mysterious Monsters. One of those Schick Sun Classics documentaries from the '70's that you either love or hate. I love 'em, and this is one of the best. Peter Graves narrates the exploration of the existence of Bigfoot. He starts out talking about the Loch Ness Monster and showing photos and films which he claims proves Nessie's existence conclusively. This neatly dispensed with (and if you disagree with him you just SHUT UP because it's REAL, it JUST IS!), Graves interviews witnesses and scientists, and numerous Bigfoot encounters are re-created by a guy in a pretty good Bigfoot costume. We're shown plaster casts of footprints which Graves says should be proof enough ("Footprints should be permitted to establish the existence of a creature if fingerprints can be used to hang one!"). He also presents audio tapes of Bigfoot babble, and consults psychic Peter Hurkos. The climax is, of course, the Patterson film, which graves accepts as proof, case closed, and goes on to determine what kind of animals they are. The science here is specious, but it's entertaining if you're interested in the whole cryptozoology thing, and it has a definite '70's charm. "Bigfoot is as much a part of our life as the gorilla or the Loch Ness Monster."

Trailer:

Whole thing starts here:

Big Rig (C, 2007) Fascinating documentary on truckers that will change the way you look at the trucks you share the highway with. Dozens of truckers are featured talking about their business and how tough it is to make a living doing it, even though the service they provide the country is crucial; it'd be hard to find anything in your house that wasn't carried on a truck at some point, yet hardly any citizen gives the job the respect it deserves. The truckers interviewed are male, female, black, white, young, old... but most are very likeable and all worth listening to, and even though they don't spend a whole lot of time with any one driver, the filmmakers have chosen their footage well and you get a good sense of the personality of each subject, and therefore what seems like a good sampling of the profession as a whole. The DVD has lots of extras, too. Recommended.

Trailer:

Whole thing starts here:

Blonde Captive (B&W, 1931) Silent anthropological footage narrated by Lowell Thomas; I hope they paid him well to read off all the horribly strained, laborious jokes and the racist comments. Explorers search for evidence of surviving Neanderthals in Australia and the South Sea islands. Mostly they check out which girls are pretty and which aren't (it's clear they don't like black girls). A lot of dancing natives are shown no matter where they go. They find a lot of sea turtles, steal their eggs, and butcher one of the turtles so they can watch it's ripped-out heart keep beating. They watch a boomerang-maker and then there are boomerang jokes for the rest of the movie. A dugong is butchered and its severed head examined. A chief knocks out a boy's front teeth as a rite of manhood. And they finally find an ugly guy and declare him to be a Neanderthal. Plus they discover a blonde white woman who got shipwrecked there years before and became part of the tribe; she doesn't seem to be a "captive" since she has no desire to go back with them. Interesting, but badly dated mondo-type film full of embarrassing racism.

Death: The Ultimate Mystery (C, 1975) Speculative documentary in which a guy (the voice of Cameron Mitchell and the glimpsed-from-the-back body of a guy who looks like Muammar Gaddafi) has a near-death experience and becomes fascinated with death and what may lie beyond it. He goes around interviewing people and visiting sites like the tombs of Egypt and the mummies of Guanajuato. He talks to people who've supposedly died and visited Heaven or Hell, and sits in as people recount past lives under hypnosis, and then goes on to verify details they've given as "proof" of an afterlife. It's all very scam-laden and pretty dull, and isn't any kind of "Faces of Death" -- there's nothing graphic in it other than a couple of slightly-gruesome war photos. It all comes across as phony and manipulative, and is unconvincing as a "documentary" when the conclusion is so obviously contrived.

Hearts and Minds (C, 1974) Powerful documentary on the failure of the Vietnam war is packed with images that have become iconic (an execution in the street, a little girl running naked down the road after being napalmed). It's almost bizarre to see how wrong-yet-convinced some people were about what was happening now that time has added perspective. You see people nobly motivated to do wrong things by what they honestly felt was patriotism. At the time this was a controversial, possibly-troublemaking film, but time has borne things out and now it's more of a moment in time... and maybe a document that says mankind never really learns anything, because we're still making the same mistakes, chasing the same delusions. Lots of footage of bombings and testimonials from soldiers (both pro- and con-) are mixed with what American officials say and what Vietnamese villagers say.

I Am Comic (C, 2010) Documentary on stand-up comedy interviews dozens of comics to analyze what drives comics to do what they do (it's apparently another drug), how comedy works, and what happens when it doesn't work. Much of the film centers on Rich Schiedner, a big comic from the 80's (you'll remember him when you see him) who gave it up for years and got the bug again while helping with the documentary. His new material's pretty weak but he gets by on being really likeable; you want him to do well so you pull with him through some bum jokes. You see a ton of comics but don't spend enough time with any of them to learn much about them, but you do get to see Carlos Mencia finally admit he's a joke thief. No major insight but very interesting if you're interested in the stand-up thing.

Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (C, 2008) Very informative and entertaining documentary on the life and work of H. P. Lovecraft, edited together from interviews with Lovecraft experts and writers and filmmakers who were influenced by him. It's interesting just to see these writers, some of whom are favorites of mine, such as Peter Straub, Ramsey Campbell (who's very engaging and bounces up and down when he talks), and Caitlin R. Kiernan. Other interviewees include S. T. Joshi, Neil Gaiman, John Carpenter, Guillermo Del Toro, and others, all informative. Stephen King is sorely missed in this. The documentary runs about 90 minutes, but the DVD includes over 70 minutes of other interview excerpts which are as interesting as the rest, so it's really nearly three hours of knowledgeable discussion, which should make any Lovecraft fan very happy.

Trailer:

Whole thing:

Marjoe (C, 1972) Expose of the evangelist racket with famed preacher Marjoe Gortner, who'd been preaching since age four even though he never believed a bit of it. He explains that it's all showmanship geared toward getting the rubes in the audience to give more money (which he gets by the sackful). The whole tent revival thing is shown to be little different from a traveling carnival, running emotional con games to make as much cash as possible. Marjoe made the movie because he wanted to get out of the racket (and he did go on to act in a lot of low-budget horror and sci-fi movies) and was feeling a little guilty about fooling people, but he doesn't come across as a bad guy, really, or to have contempt for his audience -- he's just an entertainer providing a specialized form of entertainment (which is all religion really is), ad the audience is getting the good show and the catharsis they were paying for, even if it's not sincere. People are only fooling themselves with religion, so it's hard to have much scorn for Marjoe when he's helping them do what they want done. You have to wonder if a lot of the audience isn't just playing a role, too, because it's fun to be part of the show. The film would be better if they spent more time talking to Marjoe, because it's too padded with "performance footage"; even though it's interesting to watch audience members acting crazy and flopping around in spiritual fits (doing their own acts, methinks), it gets old after a while. Overall, though, this is nicely made and worth watching. Glory je to Besus!

Mau-Mau (C, 1955) Exploitative documentary on the efforts to stop a violent secret society that was set up to resist white cotton growers in Kenya. The Mau-Mau terrorists raid both white farms and native Kikuyu villages which have refused to join the Mau-Mau cult. When captured, the Mau-Mau force the natives to swear to a magic oath that will result in a terrible curse if they disobey the laws of Mau-Mau, which includes being sent to kill people. Since the natives believe in the magic, they dare not break the oath. Wisely, the anti-Mau-Mau faction works out their own counter-oath to break the curse. Mau-Mau atrocities are documented, complete with burned and hacked corpses that are pretty gruesome for the time. The natives don't get great treatment from the whites, either, however; they're pushed around, their villages are bulldozed, they're overcrowded, and they're fed cheap, non-nutritious balls of wet cornmeal and used as labor. And, of course, Christianity is pushed on them, which isn't a lot different from what the Mau-Mau were doing. But they also help them develop their industry and fight off the also-oppressive-but-much-more-violent Mau-Mau thugs. This was originally made as a sociological-type documentary and got nowhere, but sleaze merchant Dan Sonney put it on the exploitation circuit, playing up the nudity (of which there's very little) and "sex rites" (none) and thus finding an audience. NBC's Chet Huntley narrates and gives it extra legitimacy.

Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project (C, 2007) John Landis directed this documentary on famed insult comic Don Rickles, and it's more of a celebration than anything meant to be informative; Rickles' past and career is discussed but more as incidental stories than any carefully-charted-out timeline. Lots of people in the stand-up business and from Rickles' movie career give soundbites, such as Clint Eastwood, James Caan, Sarah Silverman, Jay Leno, Billy Crystal, Joan Rivers, Bob Newhart, Chris Rock, and others. They talk about working with Rickles and how he's actually a really nice guy. Most interesting, of course, are the clips with Rickles himself talking, clips from roasts and The Tonight Show, and bits from his current nightclub act. It's good but leaves you wanted to see more of Rickles' material, which is hilarious.

Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue (C, 2010) Documentary covering the history of horror films from the silent days to modern torture porn, nothing the most important films and what motivates people to make and to see these films. For any real horror fans there won't be much new here, but seeing our favorite thing discussed by the likes of Roger Corman, John Carpenter, George Romero, Larry Cohen, and others, is lots of fun, and it'll serve as a teaching aid for anyone who isn't familiar with the genre, if you can get them to watch it.

The Real Cannibal Holocaust (C, 1974) aka Nuova Guinea, L'isola dei Cannibali. Gruesome Italian mondo documentary on tribes in New Guinea and their bizarre, gory, and all-too-often incredibly stupid practices. The tribesmen get extreme piercings and crude tattoos, jam sharp clusters of grass up their noses to incite bad "purifying" nosebleeds, and practice cannibalism (one scene starts to depict this but abruptly cuts away, apparently due to missing footage, which is frustrating in a movie promising such scenes). We do get shown the bludgeoning and butchering of a dozen or so pigs, which is pretty tough to watch. Then we see wedding ceremonies, ritual scarification, and primitive mummification practices in which corpses are smoked. A couple of tribes war over a fake battle enacted for tourists, which got out of hand. A widow has a finger chopped off as a mourning rite. Despite the exploitative English title, there's not really a "cannibal holocaust" -- the cannibalism is implied and, I suspect, misrepresented. Despite that, this is a worthy find for fans of mondo movies or those wanting to see real-life gore (which is tamer than the stuff shown in its infamous fictional namesake). Scenes of maggot-eating later showed up (in a much-degenerated condition) in the cheap rip-off Death Faces, and scenes of a bloated corpse being given a funeral (also degenerated as if filmed off a screen) were inserted into the weirdly-padded Night of the Zombies, aka Hell of the Living Dead.

Shoah (C, 1985) The title means "annihilation." This is a massive nine-hour documentary on the Holocaust by Claude Lanzmann, who doesn't use any atrocity footage, just talks with people who lived through it and visits the sites of the camps as they were at the time of filming. He interviews Jews who survived the camps (including the only two survivors of Chelmno), Polish people who lived in the area and witnessed what was going on, and a couple of Germans who were camp guards. Those last two were cheated into appearing, filmed with hidden cameras after being promised their identities would be kept secret. Lanzmann lies to their faces, but it's hard to have much sympathy for them. Lanzmann interviews one of the only survivors of Chelmno, who was a little boy at the time, and all the locals still remember him because the Germans used to get him to sing military songs. Some of his Christian friends, standing with him in front of a church, enthusiastically explain to the cameras that God punished the Jews for killing Christ. The survivor stands among them, enduring it; he's endured worse. A barber (who reminds me of Eli Wallach a bit) at first seems unflappable but breaks down crying as he recounts cutting the hair of victims (some of whom were friends and neighbors) as they went into the gas chambers. You hear eyewitness accounts of children and old people being taken to the "infirmary" where they were shot in the neck and thrown into a body pit. Again and again it's emphasized that the Germans took great pains to keep the Jews from knowing what was going to happen to them, because a panic might lead to chaos or resistance, which would slow down the efficiency of the death factories they were running. They explain that in the gas chambers the Zyklon-B would rise from the floor and the Germans would turn the lights out in the chamber, and the people would climb on top of each other to get to the better air. The ones on the bottom would be crushed in a puddle of blood, shit, and vomit. Even though just hearing these things are horrifying enough, I still recommend supplementing this with Night and Fog or PBS's Memory of the Camps to get a real look at what happened; as detailed and dogged as Lanzmann is at demanding details, you won't fully get it until you see those piles of bodies, which Lanzmann foregoes in favor of a lot of footage of trains. He also visits the sites of the camps as they were at the time of filming; Chelmno looks like an empty field, and Treblinka is just a few huge abandoned stone gas chambers like giant mushrooms in a field. The cameras go into the Auschwitz ovens, and follow train tracks. In a chilling moment an old conductor makes a cut-throat sign as the train pulls into Treblinka, just as he used to do to try to warn the Jews of their fate there. The last hour or so deals with resistance fighters in the Warsaw ghetto. It's a grueling film, both in subject matter and in length, but an important one.

If you wanna try sitting at your computer for 9 hours, go for it...

And now, just a lil' note: next month is Halloween month, and, while this is a blog about nothin' and everything, you may have noticed we tend to have a fondness for horror. So, there are plans to post some original horror short stories here for Halloween, so you can look forward to that. And I encourage all our readers to try to get a horror short story written for Halloween, too. Writing is good for you! So, do it! I've got about half of one written, and it may end up being kinda long. If it works like I want it to, though, it'll be creepy as dreaming a rotting clown is crawling around your bedroom floor in the dark and waking up to find muddy hair and teeth all over the place. Yeah!

Meanwhile, for much shorter writing, you can follow me on Twitter, and Kicker of Elves as well, and we will tell you funny stuff, promise! Or at least we'll try... I flub a few now and then, or so Favstar leads me to believe.

Newt Gingrich dry-humping a dead Philip K. Dick

2011-09-16T04:33:00.001-05:00

... the post title is the shortest review I could write for this novel that actually imparts any kind of information about it...

I saw the newest Dan Simmons novel - Flashback - at the local bookseller a few weeks ago + pickt it up for my wife ( + me, too, eventually). We're both long-time fans of his, back to Song of Kali which was incredibly disturbing + uncomfortable (great debut horror novel), so I thought she'd be thrilled, esp since the cover blurb promised a dystopic future-shocker...

And it does read like Newt Gingrich grudge-fuckt Philip K. Dick's remains til a novel poppt out nine months later. The PKD-flavored future here includes mandatory armed service (with our conscripted teens rented out to India + Japan to fight their expansionist wars overseas), violent teenage gangs (who then relive their thug lives thru the ubiquitous memory-drug flashback), a Global Caliphate that has engulfed the Middle East + Europe (+ hit Israel with a multiple nuke attack) + has a major foothold in the US, new Jewish concentration camps (see, there's this Global Caliphate...), an active Mexican reconquista movement to take back the Southwest from the US, an independent (+ evidently rather white) Republic of Texas... So far, this is par for the course for a depressing + paranoid PKD-styled view of the possible near-future, but for the inclusion of Islam (PKD was a bit too focused on his personal, paranoiac spin on Christianity to spend much time on Islam back then + he ain't writing anything new since he died...). Well, that and the pervasive + disappointing Islamophobia + Obama-bashing. There's literally a line about how we trusted our young new president back at the beginning of this century + he led us down this road. There are also jabs ( + worse) at global warming, health-care reform + more hot-button topics of our day.

So our hero, former cop Nick Bottom, is a flashback junkie who's abandoned his life (+ son) to mourning his wife's death in the throes of flashback, which allows users to relive their memories, til he's hired by a Japanese political-bigwig to solve a 6-year-old murder that he was the original investigating detective back when his life was OK, which adventure leads him to details about the death of his wife, a chance to reunite with his son (whose own adventures are pretty interesting) + an opportunity to discover some heavy truths about this brave new world he's living in. And it's an interesting world, except for the overbearing editorializing about how Obama's gonna lead us into the downward spiral that destroys the US as a world-power.

I really wanted to enjoy Flashback, but the politics that pervade this novel just continued to distract from what would have otherwise been a great read...I would've included a slightly-backhanded recommendation of this book for fans of the political Right, but we all know that most of those folks can't read ( + the ones who can just don't, cuz Fox News is on...).

To sum up: fuck your politics, dude... just write!

Earth Strikes the Bottletree Cafe!

2011-09-14T07:51:00.000-05:00

...which sounds only a little more apocalyptic than it actually was...

What it was: Earth on tour to support their newest release,
the excellent + atmospheric Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light (Pt. 1)...

So, Earth's line-up this time around was Dylan Carlson on guitar, with cellist Lori Goldston, longtime collaborator Adrienne Davies on drums, and Angelina Baldoz on bass... (sorry, no pix from the show, cuz neither of us that attended had a camera worth a shit on us).

Surprisingly, the volume was not overpowering, though as songs progressed the dynamics certainly included some increase in volume that workt quite nicely to help with the songs swelling to epic proportions...

If you haven't gotten the chance to check em out yet, do so at your earliest opportunity! Like, now, motherfucker! Even at a reasonable volume, this is some trance-inducing stuff... not so much drone as spaghetti-western instru-metal, played in slow-motion...

Along with a few others, the setlist included:
Blackwater Slide (a cover of a tune by *Ann Riggs*? - sorry, I wasn't listening so well to words when they started... had me musick ears on!)
Old Black
Father Midnight (both from the new one)
The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull (from the 2008 album of the same name).

Click here to watch an earlier show of theirs at the same venue here in Birmingham, memorialized on our local PBS station on their We Have Signal (Live at the Bottletree) series. (Also archived on the series' site are shows featuring Tortoise, Pelican, Man or Astroman? + tons more... check em out!)

More Miracles in Modern Flooring/ Gropin' with the J. Geils Band/ All The Boys Love Thundering Fungus

2011-09-09T19:48:00.017-05:00

If you've been following me on Twitter like you're supposed to, you've probably seen the icon next to my handle and thought, "What is that delightfully stylish orange thing in the square next to all the charming and witty things that this fellow keeps saying?" Well, if you're a frequent follower of this blog (and our stats say there may not be any such thing) then you probably remember this post which explains all about that. And if not, I just linked it, so I saved you years of faithful diligence!

Yes, Jesus lives in my floorboard. Since I look a little like Jesus (or at least Vlad The Impaler without the funny hat, which I think is basically the same thing) I figured that was an appropriate icon to use. And I'm gonna stick with it 'cuz I've figured out there aren't many orange icons on Twitter. It makes my stuff easy to spot in a stream, and that's handy if you need a pooping-zombie-midget joke in a hurry! Y'know, like, if your Grandma wants to hear one or something. Anyway, this week I discovered that something even more sinister dwells in my flooring. I had to move a rug to help some guys bring in a freezer to replace the old one that had the door held shut by duct tape, and lo and behold, I saw what had been hiding below that rug. And it was...

THE TERRIFYING FACE OF AN EVIL CLOWN!!!!

Click it and it'll get really big (or at least that's what I keep telling the ladies! (see why you should follow me on Twitter now?! Jokes like that! Wheeee!))

Now, if that doesn't fill you with terror such that your butthole puckers, then your butthole has no soul.

He's maybe not quite as clear as Jesus Parting the Waters, but it's still eerie. He's got a lonnnnnng funhouse mirror chin and chubby cheeks, with Emmet Kelly whiskers around the clown-paint around his mouth, and he's got a big, sinister, smirky kind of smile, there. His clown nose is kinda smooshed down under that, what is it, part of an inverted cross or something between his eyes? The burn-scar where a priest pressed one trying to exorcise his malevolent spirit? The eye on the left is all squinty, while the eye on the right is leering malevolently at ya from under his arched Jack-Nicholsonian clown-eyebrows. His forehead is even shaded almost perfectly.

Anyway, I'm totally covering that thing back up with the rug 'cuz I'm tired of the vile shit that he whispers to me at 3 a.m. in that hoarse squeal of his.

Anyway, I figured this week I'd just throw random shit at ya and try to make everyone happy. That always works out so well! First up, I was going through a drawer and found some old Super Rock magazines from the 70's. Super Rock was a sleazy trash mag that I mostly bought for articles on Kiss, but they covered lots of bands and also included smutty gossip from groupies. Amidst articles on bands nobody remembers, like Starz, Piper (one article on them included a photo of Bon Scott mis-identified as Billy Squier, whose name was also misspelled throughout), Deaf School, NRBQ, Player, Flame, Rex Smith, the Babys, etc. and other nobody-cares-anymore stuff like Rick Wakeman, Pat Travers, The Marshall Tucker Band, Peter Frampton, Johnny Winter, Hall and Oates, etc. I can probably mine these for more amusing pictures later on, but one picture of the J. Geils Band always struck me when I was a kid, because... what the fuck kind of band gropes each other?

Hey, when your baby is the centerfold, I guess ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

A few other funny things, while I'm scanning. I should get a Tumblr account for this junk, but, until I do, might as well put it here. Here's Tom Petty of the triangular head and mouth, ready "melt your jeans off," girls!

And here he is sitting on some dude's lap. Good thing it's not a member of the J. Geils Band or he might be getting molester-ed.

Ever wondered what Alice Cooper looked like sitting around at home in his shorts? Probably not, but you get to find out anyway:

(And remember, all the ladies agree - Foghat is one handsome band!)

Here's some of the groupie sleaze, with a rather nonsensical story about somebody or other - I *think* it's somebody in Rex Smith's group but the writing doesn't make it clear, probably to leave a litigation loophole:

Anyway, enough of that, on to some other stuff. I was glad to see Kicker of Elves putting up some book reviews. I haven't read any Simmons since The Terror, which I thought was good, although kinda overlong. I'm hoping Igor's going to review Flashback, which I understand's pretty awful. Simmons is a good writer, but oh hell yeah he needs somebody to yank his chain when he goes past 300 pages or so. His best book is definitely Song of Kali, which is maybe his shortest. That one's a masterpiece, one of the best horror novels I ever read. But he also wrote Carrion Comfort, which was one of the worst pieces of shit ever slapped between two covers. He took an (overrated) short story he wrote and expanded it to 800-some pages, and it was fucking *excruciating.* Seldom have I hated a book as hard as I hated that one. So, he's a wildly-variable author. And apparently he's lost his goddamn mind and turned into some kind of Glenn Beckerhead, so I dunno how likely I'm gonna be to buy any more of his stuff. But, we'll see.

I did read a good book lately, though, and you should seek this one out, monster kids...

Homeplace - Beth Massie (Berkley, 2007)
Creepy old-school haunted house novel done with Massie's genius style has an artist, Charlene Myers, moving into her great-grandmother's dilapidated house in the Virginia backwoods to try to paint some family history before selling the place. She has enough trouble with her desperate financial situation and the decrepit conditions of the mouse-filled house, but soon discovers worse problems. She has reoccurring nightmares of a hag feeding her worms, hears noises in a boarded-up room, and deer and rabbits batter themselves to death at her door (and keep moving even after they're dead and burned). The townspeople fear her because her ancestor was a notorious witch, and the only friends she can find are an old lady who tends a graveyard and a lawyer/would-be-novelist with whom she forms a romance. The hauntings, witchcraft, and possession intensify and Massie comes up with some very chilling stuff that will get under your skin. There's Southern gothic atmosphere and a pervasive sense of dread that make this one a heavy hitter, despite a finale that could be stronger. Horror fans should seek out all of Massie's work.

And, just to cover all the bases, here are a few movie reviews, in case I feel like slacking again next week or somethin'. I'm paid up, yo!

Thundering Mantis (C, 1980) aka Mantis Fist Fighter, Dian Tang Lang, Mantis Fist Boxer. One of the best kung fu movies ever made, more for its powerful overall effect than the fighting (which is really good) or for the filmmaking (which is crude). The charismatic Leung Kar Yan (affectionately known to fans as "Beardy") stars as Ah Chi, a hot-tempered but good-natured fishmonger who's come up with a unique "shrimp fist" kung fu style by catching fast-swimming shrimp in a bucket all day. He stays in trouble with his boss, and forms a friendship with a street urchin scam artist and his kung-fu master grandfather. Local merchants are being picked on by a dangerous local gang, and Ah Chi can't stand to watch anyone being bullied so he gets in fights with them even though it's ill-advised. Sparring with the grandfather, Ah Chi picks up a little mantis fist technique, which gives him an edge against the gang. Eager to learn more, Ah Chi tries to get the grandfather to teach him, but he's refused until an old enemy of the grandfather almost kills him. Then Ah Chi starts training and the movie goes through a lot of diarrhea and drunken-child humor, but that's just setting you up for a plot turn so tragic that happy-go-lucky Ah Chi will be driven completely insane from the cruelty he'll witness. You won't be ready for it. The sudden change in tone is powerful and even though this film should be just another low-budget kung fu flick, it ends up packing a punch like few other movies I've ever seen. The audience is not prepared for what they're finally hit with, and the finale is crazy. Even revenge is just more tragedy because of what it costs our hero. It's like the end of a comedy getting replaced by the final act of a Shakespeare tragedy... Titus Andronicus, even. You're gonna be walloped. Grindhouse gold.

You really should watch the whole movie and not cheat yourself of the effect the rest of the movie will set you up for, but if you just can't stand it, here's the end fight craziness. But it really won't mean as much to you if you haven't gotten to know these characters and understand how tragic this is.

Cut Throats Nine (C, 1972) aka Condenados a Vivir, Bronson's Revenge Being remade even as we speak, this notorious spaghetti western provided viewers with "terror masks" so they could shield their eyes from the gore, which is of a Lucio Fulci level. But no mask could stop the extreme nihilism. An army sergeant is guarding a chain gang of seven of the most vicious killers in the country. In a very unwise move he's brought his daughter along for the ride. The wagon carrying them crashes and the sergean is stuck with trying to march them all the way to a fort that's three days distant, but the killers are all planning to give him an ugly death the first chance they get. When they discover that the chains connecting them are actually a disguised gold shipment, the predicament gets even worse. Also, the sergeant knows that one of these men -- he's not sure which - murdered his wife, and he wants revenge. Because this movie is so misanthropic and transgressive, it hits you with some heavy, unexpected surprises that I haven’t seen any other movie dare to pull off. The meanspiritedness of if should make it a standout even without the gore, but that’s there, too, and the effects are nasty, including smashed heads, slashed throats, bullet-shattered faces, burned corpses, hacked-off feet, stabbings (with protruding intestines), and, thanks to a hallucination sequence, there’s even some zombie action. And then there’s a meathook-hanging before Texas Chainsaw. As sick as the gore is, though, it’s the relentless nothing-but-evil-scumbags tone of this thing that’s likely to get to you. And the ending works perfectly. The music score bears an extreme similarity to the one Werner Herzog later used in his Nosferatu remake.

Matango: The Fungus of Terror (C, 1963) aka Attack of the Mushroom People, Curse of the Mushroom People. This ain’t no Godzilla film. This Japanese variation on William Hope Hodgson’s “The Voice In The Night” will surprise you if you’re used to old Japanese horror films being goofy. A small yacht full of partiers is torn up in a storm, and the passengers and crew take shelter on a misty island. They find an old ship that’s been covered with a nasty fungus. An exploration of the island uncovers lots more fungus and huge mushrooms... some of which walk. And there are other former-humans on the island who’ve become knobby (and brittle) with fungus. After a while everyone’s so hungry that they start eating the mushrooms, which give them psychedelic visions and cause them to start sprouting. This one gets creepy quickly and only becomes more nightmarish as it goes, sporting amazing sets and special effects. Extremely weird and effective horror is a must-see for fans of scary stuff, this deserves a much bigger reputation and would make a great double feature with Goke: Body Snatcher From Hell.

All The Boys Love Mandy Lane (C, 2006) Pretty highschooler Mandy Lane (pretty actress Amber Heard) is the object of every asshole teenage boy’s lust, but she’s not a shallow drunken druggie idiot like everyone around her, so, bad as they want her to, she doesn’t fully fit in. Mandy’s only real friend is an unpopular kid who became even more unpopular when he tricked a drunken jock into killing himself while showing off for Mandy. She’s trying to distance herself from him and make some new friends, so she accepts an invitation to a party on a ranch, and all the guys there are conniving to be the first one to get with her. She’s not very comfortable with what her new friends are doing, though, and she seems more interested in the mature ranch hand... even though he’s a bit strange. And then it becomes a slasher film and people start dying unpleasantly. This film has gathered a big reputation mostly by being unobtainable for some stupid reason. It hasn’t been released theatrically in America and there are no DVDs, but luckily the British BluRay discs will play on American BluRay players (although the special features are in PAL, so we’ll miss the trailer and Amber Heard interview, but you can see parts of those on YouTube). Even though this really isn’t all that surprising or different from most slasher films, it is very well done and involving, and Amber Heard’s performance is great (it’d be hard not to like her nice-girl-in-the-midst-of-a-bunch-of-assholes character, though). And the end does pack a big twisted twist for you. Deserves a legit American DVD release already and worth tracking down on UK BluRay in the meantime -- Amazon marketplace can hook you up fairly cheaply.

(I hope the links work this time... something apparently has changed and fouled up the code on here and made getting anything done even more frustrating than usual... which, lately, is almost more than I'm willing to put up with anyway...)