Just a bunch of kung fu and horror movie reviews I wrote about 10 years ago and am just getting around to typing up...
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Dead Hate The Living, The (C, 2000) As a big horror fan I’d be insulted by this, but after listening to the DVD’s commentary track, I think the people who made this were sincerely trying to make something good... they’re just not terribly skilled or creative and don’t have very good ideas. The basic plot is that some low-budget filmmakers go to an old hospital to film a zombie movie, but they find a real corpse (which looks just like Rob Zombie), and he’s an occultist with a machine that brings the dead back to life. So the filmmakers find themselves in a real zombie attack. The things that are bad about this film are hard to count, but here’s a partial list: instead of doing original things, they copy things from other horror films and pass it off as in-jokes and “homage.” This is a dumb idea for a couple of reasons, the first being that only an idiot spazz goes to a horror movie for “funny” stuff, and the other being that it just reminds you how much better those scenes were in the real movies they were ganked from. Then, there’s a zombie that has no nose. I mean, jeez, if you want to be convincingly scary, at least demonstrate a knowledge of basic anatomy and put a hole there or something. The makeup looks like nothing but makeup. The dialogue is very cliche and uninspired. Characterization is poor and unappealing and the acting is bad. It all looks cheaper than it needs to; I mean, they made movies in the 70’s cheaper than this and they looked good. There is some really horrible CGI (electrocution and zombies on fire) Also, there’s some just bonehead-fuck-dreck that basically says to the audience “You are a horror fan and therefore a dumb asshole who’ll accept anything without thinking,” such as having a chainsaw just laying around an abandoned hospital, or Jack Daniels burning like gasoline, or a zombie drooling blood all the time even though it’s long dead, and other implausibilities that are so blatant they’re insulting. I do think it’s a sincere effort and a labor of love, but they just don’t seem to understand what’s scary, good, or even basically intelligent. They have good taste in liking Fulci and stuff, but even though I wanted to like it, it was impossible. At least the DVD’s fairly cheap (and still in print for some unknown reason!) and has plenty of extras.
Watch the whole movie online here... or, better yet, don't.
Fists of the White Lotus (C, 1980) aka Hong Wending San Po Bai Lian Jiao, Clan of the White Lotus. The evil White Lotus, a.k.a. Pai Mei (the granddaddy of all of those kung fu guys with long white hair and eyebrows) massacred many of Gordon Liu’s friends and so Gordon plans revenge. Even though he trains to add crane fist to his tiger style, it’s not good enough to defeat Pai Mei, who can make himself so light that he just drifts away from the force of the blows and they never touch him. Gordon goes home and his wife makes him do women’s work, such as embroidery, so he can learn a more graceful, gentle style that would allow him to touch Pai Mei and damage him. He practices on paper dummies until he feels ready, then heads off to Lotus Mountain... but Pai Mei can hide his vital kill-spot, so Gordon can’t find it. But he may die trying... One of the classics, with Lo Lieh as Pai Mei (whose character may be better known to American audiences from Kill Bill, where Gordon Liu played him.
Watch the whole thing online here.
Grandmaster of Shaolin Kung Fu (C, 1982) aka Da Mo Shen Gong. Everybody wants a big gem stolen from a goofy drunk laughing guy, so they settle it the old-fashioned way -- by beating the peelivin’ doodoo out o’ each other. The gem triggers a laser that opens the door to a golden Buddha holding a sacred book of tricks... but it’s boobytrapped so you have to be a real kung fu master to get to it. The best candidate for receiving this “miracle” is a guy who’s out to avenge the deaths of his parents. A hermit in the golden Buddha temple trains him and gives him secret medicine. Several people in the movie have unusual hats hiding their faces, and there are weapons like birds and teapots that shoot needles. There’s also an aphrodisiac potion that makes a guy have to have sex or his blood vessels will burst, but if he has sex then his fighting powers will be destroyed, so, whaddaya do? Plus there’s an attack by a bunch of bronze statue-men, so you know what it all adds up to: maximum whacky coolstuff! Gotta love it.
Watch the whole thing online here. (Check out at least the beginning with the goofy laughin' guy... it's hilarious!)
He Has Nothing But Kung Fu (C, 1977) aka Gong Fu Xiao Zi, Gangbusters Kung Fu. Gordon Liu (with hair) takes a shot to the head and loses his memory... but not his kung fu skills. A con-man beggar (Wang Yue) teams up with him and finds ways to exploit Gordon's fighting skill, and Gordon goes along with it because he's confused anyway. Together the two of them foil a bunch of gangsters to the accompaniment of a weird Southern-style soundtrack which includes comical renditions of "Dixie," "Rose of Alabama," and the theme from Outlaw Josey Wales. Pretty good kung fu with an interesting plot, unobtrusive comedy, solid fight scenes, and - most importantly - Gordon Liu. A fight on the beam's of a house's unfinished upper story is also a memorable highlight.
Watch the whole thing online starting here:
Invincible Pole Fighter (C, 1983) aka Wu Lang Ba Gua Gun, 8 Diagram Pole Fighter. Elaborate costume kung fu epic with Wang Yu, Gordion Liu, Fu Sheng, and other Venoms doing a whole lotta battling with spears and staffs. It starts out chaotic and bloody with a bunch of Yang brothers fighting an odd assortment of Mongol baddies, including some archers who dress a lot like Santa Claus, and others similar to Fred Flintstone! Almost all the Yangs are killed, thanks to a traitor, and there are only two brothers surviving. One is rendered completely insane, and the other (Gordon Liu, o' course, since it's a role that requires head-shaving) tries to become a monk. The temple doesn't want to take him because he's too violent, but he doesn't give them much choice. The production values are way better than usual -- it even has a budget! - and showcases some truly amazing stick-fighting. That's what they mean by pole-fighting, by the way -- there's no scenes with people standing on poles in the ground, as in some films. You have to clarify on these things... In any case, this is one of the best, and crucial viewing for any kung fu movie fan.
Whole movie online starting here.
Lady Frankenstein (C, 1971) aka La Figlia di Frankenstein, Daughter of Frankenstein, Madame Frankenstein. Cheap Italian wanna-be-Hammer-type horror with some horror vets (Joseph "Baron Blood" Cotten, Herbert "Mark of the Devil" Fux) livening things up, and Mr. Jayne Mansfield Mickey Hargitay is also around. Cotten is the Baron, and his bitchy daughter Tania (Rosalba Neri), also a surgeon, arrives at his castle, intent on taking her dad's work to new extremes. Daddy makes a hulking, bulbous-headed thing with a damaged brain and half its face burned up by the lightning that revived it. The first thing this creation does is kill him, then wanders out and kills a naked girl and some villagers. Tania decides that the only way to kill it is to build another, stronger creature to fight it. A graverobber tries to blackmail her into having sex with him, but she wants to create her own ideal sex partner by putting her father's assistant's brain into the body of a local retarded stud. Meanwhile, the monster's still roaming the countryside, killing indiscriminately. Not-bad Eurotrash with sex and gore, nowhere near up to the level of the Hammer films its imitating but still possessing a better look than a lot of stuff that was coming out at the time. And scenes such as Tania getting off on having sex with a man who’s shaking in his death throes do deliver the promised sleazy-sickness level. Readily available (almost inescapable) on cheap DVD.
Whole movie online here.
Legendary Weapons of China (C, 1982) aka Shi Ba Ban Wu Yi, 18 Legendary Weapons of China. The excellent book From Bruce Lee To the Ninjas: Martial Arts Movies calls this the greatest kung fu movie ever made. That’s debatable, and I don’t agree, but it is a really good one, even though the plot’s difficult to keep track of. Martial artists are trying to deny that the arrival of guns is nullifying the effectiveness of their fighting skills, since anyone with a gun can kill them. One teacher named Li Kung gives up his school, admitting defeat, but others hunt him and try to kill him, lest anyone believe his truth. There follows a lot of strange supernatural-tinged fights, some of which are tricked up with faked disembowelments and voodoo dolls which remote-control a fighter’s movements. It all leads up to a lengthy climactic battle utilizing at least a dozen of the 18 legendary kung fu weapons. I’ll probably have to watch it a few more times to sort out all the plot points, but since the fight scenes are so astounding, that won’t be any burden.
Whole movie online here.
Make Them Die Slowly (C, 1981) aka Cannibal Ferox. This sleazy gorefest is the most infamous and (arguably) the sickest of a very sick genre -- the Italian Cannibal Movie. The curious packed 42nd Street grindhouses for years to see this, based on a poster promising that it's "Banned in 31 Countries!" (yeah, well, people in Burkina Fasa and Turkministan probably had other things to do anyway), and a trailer that was based on a catalogue of atrocities. The hype carried over into the video stores, when the oversized box covered with warnings made this (and the similarly-packed Buried Alive) into "dare ya to watch that" events. For better or worse, this is a definite legend, along with the similar (and at-least-equally-as-nasty Cannibal Holocaust), infamous not only for wallowing in disgusting gore effects, but also for killing real animals. Some anthropologists researching the "myth" of cannibalism venture into the jungle, where they unluckily meet up with some criminals who have been torturing the natives and really pissing them off. Then the natives catch up to them and go for revenge. That's the basic plot; what really drives the film is the grubworm chewing, intestine-gnawing, castration, brain-eating, eye-gouging, dismemberment, and hanging a woman by hooks skewered through her tits. And don't forget the carved-up corpses, the bamboo traps, and sadistic cruelty in general. The effects are spare-you-nothing graphic and aren't bad (but they aren't amazing, either -- you can see the base of the strap-on dildo that gets chopped off, for instance), but what's really unsettling is the general mean-spirited tone of the whole thing, the apparent delight in dwelling on extreme unpleasantness... not the least of which is the indefensible animal-killing, which even the Italian-Cannibal-Movie-demographic doesn't really want to see. You won't find many more films as sick as this. Actor John Morghen, on the DVD's commentary track, even says "No one should watch this, it's horrible" a few times. You'll likely hate yourself, but if you're in one of the countries where it's not banned, you may want to exercise your freedom...
Screaming Skull, The (B&W, 1958) A man brings a new wife to his decaying old estate after the death of his first wife. Soon after arriving, she starts hearing strange things at night, and keeps finding skulls all over the place. The husband thinks that the groundskeeper -- who’s a bit touched in the head and obsessed with his late wife -- is trying to scare them away. But it becomes clear that something even more underhanded is going on... but maybe the supernatural is involved after all. There’s a veiled ghostly figure that’s pretty eerie, and lots of skulls popping up and rolling down stairs. Some people toss this film off as silly, but it does have a moody atmosphere and can be effective if taken in the right spirit. It won’t scare you enough to cash in the free life-insurance policy offered at the beginning, but if you play along it’s not bad. Good drive-in - now late-movie - fare, which can be scored on DVD for pennies; cheap copies are everywhere.
Whole movie online here.
Snake and Crane Secret (C, 1976) aka She Hao Dan Xin Zhen Jiu Zhou, Secret of the Dragon. It’s not that big a secret, considering this is one of the most widely-available kung fu movies on DVD. I’ve seen various versions everywhere, almost always for a dollar. Some evil Chings are going around killing innocents, while some resistance fighters try to keep them from getting a book of snake and crane fighting styles, since it contains a list of the resistance fighters. A betrayed fighter goes in pursuit of a traitorous spy who’s working for the Chings, and who tried to kill two little boys about ten years before, after framing and murdering their father. Now the boys are separated, grown, and masters of kung fu. One of them is good enough to be a smartass about it. He usually uses crane style (complete with chirping sound effects, y’know, just like a crane doesn’t make). The main bad guy practices strikepoints on human skeletons he keeps in a dungeon. Finally the brothers are reunited (they know each other due to the old you-each-have-half-of-a-jade-medallion trick) and they team up against the evil (and fancy!) Ching warlord. Somewhat hard to follow and lackluster, but it’s decent kung fu.
Snake In Eagle's Shadow (C, 1978) aka Se Ying Diu Sau, Eagle's Shadow, Snake and the Eagle's Shadow. Possibly trying to follow the laws of nature, an eagle claw master (the amazing Hwang Jang Lee) is out to completely eradicate the snake fist style of kung fu, and he kills every snake fist practitioner he comes across. Meanwhile, poor Jackie Chan is washing floors at a martial arts school and being used as a punching bag. He's miserable (and pretty helpless) until an old man he tries to help in a street fight starts training him... in guess which style? It's kind of familiar ground, since it's Siu Tien Yuen, the same old man who trained him in Drunken Master. He's the last living master of snake fist, and he teaches Jackie, who combines it with things he picked up from watching his pet cat, and he becomes The Wrong Guy To Mess With. Decent kung fu with very good fight sequences, including an impressive game of keep-away with a bowl, and there's comedy but it's not overbearing.
Whole movie online starting here.
Snake in Monkey's Shadow (C, 1979) aka Hou Hsing Kou Shou, Snake Fist Vs. The Dragon. A young fishmonger's assistant falls down on the job because he's more interested in trying to learn kung fu than delivering fish. When he delivers stale fish he gets beaten up and (literally) treated like a dog. He finally gets a job cleaning up at a dojo where they teach drunken technique kung fu, and makes friends with a monkey style expert who looks like an Asian Barry Manilow. Then a couple of snake-fist bad guys show up and kill both teachers, and our hero learns how to avenge them by watching a monkey fighting a snake (which is cut out of the DVD version for reasons of animal cruelty) and trains hard (but briefly) and combines his knowledge inot that coolest of all styles -- drunken monkey! Check it out.
Whole movie online starting here:
Stigmata (C, 1999) Oooo, baby, the Catholics like this movie 'bout as much as they like aborted babies wearing condoms, or little boys who tell! And when something ticks off the church, that's usually a sign it's at least worth checking out. Okay, there's this girl, right? And she's an atheist and everything, but she gets a dead priest's rosary in the mail from her mom (gee, thanks, mom!) and soon begins exhibiting all the wounds of Jesus. Pretty graphically, too -- big gushing nail-holes in her wrists, etc. This kinda messes up her job at the hairdresser's and really cuts into her social life, because every time she goes out, whip marks tear open on her back, or thorns gouge her head. A priest is sent to investigate, and that's when you know this is really an Exorcist imitation, just like they made in the '70's! (Remember Beyond the Door, The Tempter, House of Exorcism, all that good stuff?) Soon she's writing on the walls in ancient Aramaic, rolling her eyes back, growling in tongues, levitating, and bleeding all over. But, she's not possessed by the devil... she's here with messages from Jesus, saying that churches are useless! Needless to say, the church finds this Jesus fella blasphemic... Music-video style art (blood drops in water, flashes of crucifixions) and loud chaotic techno music pack most of the shock-scares in this one, and that's a cheap way to go, but overall it's a pretty decent, well-done, interesting flick that works as sort of an infomercial for the anti-church Gospel of Thomas (which was conveniently left out of the canon). The special effects are fortunately not the lame CGI stuff, and they enhance the plot, rather than replace it. Not outstanding, but possession flicks are always welcome.
Strangeland (C, 1998) aka Dee Snider’s Strangeland. Dee Snider, who, with his bands Twisted Sister and Widowmaker, brought you some of the worst lame-ass heavy metal in history and made the whole genre look stupid, now brings you horror movies. Luckily he’s a little better at this than he is at music, but then he’d just have to be. Snider wrote this film and stars as Carlton Hendrix, aka “Captain Howdy,” a nihilistic body-modification freak who uses internet chatrooms to lure people to his house so he can torture them to death with body-piercings. He gets caught, put in a mental institution for four years, and then released, seemingly cured. Some angry parents try to kill him, though, and reawaken his Captain Howdy side, leading to more mayhem. No classic, but I’ll give the guy credit for coming up with an original and bizarre (as well as timely) concept, and Snider is pretty menacing and very weird-looking. But, he’s still destined to only be the second-scariest Captain Howdy in movie history... but considering he got the name from The Exorcist there’s no shame in that. Fairly gruesome effects work.
7.18.2010
7.11.2010
A Guide To Hard Case Crime, Vol. 1
I'm a big fan of the Hard Case Crime paperback imprint, and I buy everything they put out. It's one of those rare cases (like SubPop or Megaforce or Dell's Abyss) to put out consistent quality. They used to pop out a book a month, but unfortunately they've slowed down to maybe 4 a year or something. I hope they pick up again and don't peter out, so I figured I'd do my little part by reviewing them here on the blog-nobody-actually-seems-to-read. Maybe a few of the passersby will be inspired to pick up some of their stuff, or maybe even join their book club. So, here are reviews of all the HardCase books I've read so far. There are 65 of them so far, so I still have a whole lot of 'em to go, but from what I've read, and judging from the reviews on Amazon, they still haven't put out a bad book yet, so whatever you pick up will probably be rewarding. Even if, for some unthinkable reason, you don't like the story, you're still guaranteed some amazing cover-art. If you don't want to trust my word on it, their top-notch website (see link) will let you read sample chapters and give you more information on each title.
Volume 2 will be forthcoming in a few years when I read another dozen or so...
Fade To Blonde - Max Phillips
Hard-boiled retro-noir (it seems set in the 50's) about Ray, a spot laborer (he wanted to be a screenwriter, did a little boxing, and ended up a knockaround guy) who's asked by a girl named Rebecca to protect her from a jealous boyfriend who wants to throw lye in her face. Or at least that's her story... Even though Ray sees through her, he still ends up in plenty of trouble. Excellent old-school noir that really reads like some of the classic Gold Medal good stuff. With writing like this still being done, hardboiled crime fiction is nowhere near dead. Great stuff. If I highlighted all the good lines the book would look like the Yellow Pages. ****
Two For The Money - Max Alan Collins
Reprint of two novels, Bait Money and its sequel, Blood Money, that work pretty well as one long book. A thief named Nolan takes on a comic-book-obsessed sidekick named Jon to rob a bank, so that Nolan can turn the money over to the mob and get them off his back (he'd killed a mobster's relative). But of course things don't go smoothly, and Nolan's money ends up stolen, so he has to get it back. Not easy. Excellent hardboiled crime novels, definitely recommended. *** 1/2
The Gutter and the Grave - Ed McBain
Reprint of a 1958 pulp novel that McBain put out under a pseudonym - although I don't know why he used the fake name because if I'd written something this great I'd damnsure want credit for it. Matt Cordell is a detective who hit the skids and became a gutter drunk after pistol-whipping a guy who stole his wife. An old friend seeks him out for help on a minor problem that turns into a major case of murder, which may get Matt beaten to death if eh doesn't back off. Matt's pretty competent for a chronic alcoholic, but that's easy to overlook because the story's so well-written and fast-moving and compulsively readable. A slamdunk for anyone who's looking for something gritty. ****
Bust - Ken Bruen & Jason Starr
Excellent noir with some black-humor undertones, depicting how a relatively-simple plan to kill a man's wife becomes a destructive maelstrom as more and more bad guys get involved and start trying to scam each other... which doesn’t work out well for any of them. Compelling and well-written and well-plotted, although I don’t think you’re meant to take it too seriously. The characters -- an Irish hit man, a hair-metal-listening criminal in a wheelchair, a titty-obsessed businessman, and a slutty Irish/Greek girl -- are all pretty odd and memorable. Another great HardCase original. *** 1/2
Witness To Myself - Seymour Shubin
This is a really good novel, but you’re going to have to be generous and grant it some leeway in regards to certain implausibilities. A lawyer named Alan is haunted by an incident that happened at the beach when he was a kid, when he made a sexual advance to a little girl and then panicked that she might tell on him, got a little too rough with her, and (maybe) accidentally killed her. He got away with it but it shadowed his entire life with guilt and he became obsessed with seeing if he actually did kill her or not. This is where some really not-believable stuff starts happening -- searching newspaper backfiles on the case gets a police sketch of him published in papers, people spot incriminating icons on his computer desktop, a man he saved from a suicide attempt starts stalking him, every development in a decades-cold case gets reported on, etc. Despite flaws, the story remains compelling and poignant, and the writing is great, so you probably won’t mind overlooking some lapses in realism (especially if you’ve been trained by reading guys like Cornell Woolrich). Shubin returned to writing after years to put this out for HardCase. ***
Grave Descend - John Lange
Fast-reading pulpy crime novel (more of a novella, really -- it’s 202 large-print pages with a lot of blank pages snuck in) about a scuba diver named McGregor who’s hired to salvage a wrecked yacht off the Jamaican coast. From the very beginning the job makes him suspicious, and the further he goes the more wrong it all seems (such as finding out that the yacht didn’t even sink yet!) And the more he finds out the more danger he’s in. The book isn’t overly noirish and the writing is bare bones with no flash, but things keep moving and the plot keeps twisting, making it easily worth the short time it takes to read it. ***
361 - Donald E. Westlake
Reprint of Westlake’s hard-boiled 1962 crime novel in which a soldier named Ray Kelly comes home to reunite with his father and brother, only to have his father gunned down in an attack that also costs Ray an eye. Ray sets out to find out why it happened and how he can even the score. On the way he gets mixed up with the mob, finds out his lineage may not be what he’d thought it was, and loses more loved ones. Good stuff carved out of spare, no-screwing-around prose and not shy about violence when necessary. ***
Lucky At Cards - Lawrence Block
Reprint of an excellent 1964 crime novel with Block in top form. The narrator is a “card mechanic” named Bill Maynard, who gets caught cheating at poker and is beaten out of Chicago. While recovering in a small town he decides to pick up some extra cash by cheating a few locals at their weekly poker games. There he gets involved with a guy’s wife, who wants to run off with him... and her husband’s money. They can’t kill the husband, though, because he has a lot of restrictions in the trust he’s leaving her, so they have to find some other way to get him out of the picture so she can get at his money. The husband’s not as dumb as they’d counted on him being, though, and Bill ends up with a lot of trouble... much of it from letting the slutty wife override his own conscience. Even if you don’t know how to play poker (I admit ignorance) the card games manage to be intense, and Block has an unsettlingly intimate knowledge of how cheating is done, and the plot is tight. This is classic stuff, and you can’t go wrong with this one. ****
Home Is The Sailor - Day Keene
Excellent, ultra-hard boiled crime novel from 1952 about a big, tough, hellraising Swede sailor who plans to give up the sea but may end up giving up more than that, because after a near-fatal bar fight he gets hooked up with a woman named Corliss. He kills a guy who she said was attacking her, and they hid the body and then rush out and get married. The Swede soon starts thinking that Corliss isn’t quite what she seems to be. He’s right. The Swede is a kind of Mike Hammer-ish narrator, usually to’-ass up drunk and banged up from one violent altercation or other, always in a bad situation. Keene does a great job not giving the story any letup in momentum. A must-read. ****
The Vengeful Virgin - Gil Brewer
Reprint of a 1958 noir classic in the James M. Cain tradition, with a TV repairman getting mixed up in a hell of his own making when he helps an 18-year-old girl kill her invalid stepfather for a hefty inheritance. They work out a great, foolproof plan which, of course, doesn’t work. Very well-written, smart, and fast-moving. *** 1/2
Zero Cool - John Lange
Lightning-fast spy-caper type of tale with a young doctor getting in crazy mixed-up trouble in 1960’s Spain when he’s approached to do an autopsy on a dead gangster. Some people tell him they’ll kill him if he performs it, and others say they’ll kill him if he doesn’t. Even though he’s a radiologist, not a pathologist, he finally does it and they make him hide a package inside the body for smuggling purposes. That’s not the end of his troubles, though, since a colorful assortment of hoodlums (an eccentric professor, a dwarf count, a cowboy named Tex, etc.) all think he has information they’re willing to torture out of him, and everyone he meets seems to be in on the baffling conspiracy. Despite being a HardCase Crime book, this reads more like some wacky 60’s spy spoof; it’s played pretty straight, but the crazy situations (including a device stolen from an old Bela Lugosi movie, The Devil Bat!) make you wonder if Lange’s tongue wasn’t pretty far in his cheek. Even the cover has an in-joke that readers of Lange’s previous HardCase novel Grave Descend (whose cover was also painted by Gregory Manchess) will probably spot. It’s assuredly meant as a tall tale and thus deviates from the HardCase code a bit, but it’s well-done and entertaining, so who cares about being a purist? ***
The Murderer Vine - Shepard Rifkin
Amazingly good crime novel (originally published in 1970) that plays like Mississippi Burning gone film noir. A low-rent detective is hired to go to civil-rights-era Mississippi to find out who killed his son (an activist who was registering Blacks to vote) and then kill them all. It’s not the kind of thing the detective usually does, but the man offers half a million dollars, so, armed with a machine gun, a Southern secretary, and a cover story about researching dialects, off he goes into Hell. Very well-done, riveting read, with an effective ending. ****
Gun Work - David J. Schow
Horror novelist Schow turns to hardboiled crime in this action-packed post-Tarrantino novel, in which a gun expert named Barney tries to repay his old friend Carl, who once saved his life. Carl calls Barney down to Mexico to help free his wife, who’s been kidnapped. Barney provides excellent and expert assistance, but unluckily for him the whole shmear is a set-up, and Barney is captured, tortured for months, and nearly killed. He survives and, with the aid of some luchadores (masked Mexican wrestlers, if you’re unfamilar), seeks vengeance. Schow’s typically-hip prose is sometimes too smugly impressed with itself and some of what’s supposed to be badass just comes across as more geeky than badass. Some of the gun-worship, for instance, reads as much like a woman describing a Dior gown as it does a guy describing a firearm, and you’ll likely roll your eyes at some of the faux-macho prose-posturing, because Schow’s just trying too dadgum hard. Other times, though, it works exactly the way Schow wants it to, and sections of the book are intense and unputdownable. Others are comic-bookish action blitzes that feel like the climax of a Mack Bolan Executioner novel... but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Some of Schow’s strange obsessions pop up again and I got a little deja vu (he has a thing about people with modified, missing-finger hands), but mostly I was glad to have something to read from a guy who I wish was more prolific. Despite a few shortcomings, it’s a great (and very harsh and harrowing) revenge tale with a strong cinematic feel (if Robert Rodriguez hasn’t already bought the screen rights, he should) and a reminiscent-of-Spillane climax. It’s also the most violent HardCase Crime book I’ve read yet. *** 1/2
Nobody’s Angel - Jack Clark
Melancholy, existential crime novel about a cab driver working in Chicago while two killers are loose: one killing cabdrivers and the other slashing up hookers. He loses a friend tot he former and possibly gains a friend from the latter, when he discovers one of the hooker-killer’s victims, still alive in an alley. While dealing with the paranoia and sleaze of his nightly route, he tries to find the killers... and avoid becoming one of their victims. This is more of a slice-of-life than a focused, plot-driven novel, mostly following the protagonist through his shifts and showing his customers, the other people he meets, and what a cabbie’s life is like. The writing is simple but strong, and it stays compelling even when nothing’s really happening. Clark is a real cabdriver and originally had this novel self-published and sold it to customers in his cab. HardCase Crime did the world beyond Chicago a service by making it more widely available, and it’s a welcome addition to the tiny subgenre of cab-driver-crime pulp (whose only other member, to my knowledge, is John K. Butler with his Steve Midnight stories, which you can score in the Stroke of Midnight collection). Clark’s novel has a very authentic feel, not trying to be politically correct, just telling the truth about what cabbies do. ***
Volume 2 will be forthcoming in a few years when I read another dozen or so...
Fade To Blonde - Max Phillips
Hard-boiled retro-noir (it seems set in the 50's) about Ray, a spot laborer (he wanted to be a screenwriter, did a little boxing, and ended up a knockaround guy) who's asked by a girl named Rebecca to protect her from a jealous boyfriend who wants to throw lye in her face. Or at least that's her story... Even though Ray sees through her, he still ends up in plenty of trouble. Excellent old-school noir that really reads like some of the classic Gold Medal good stuff. With writing like this still being done, hardboiled crime fiction is nowhere near dead. Great stuff. If I highlighted all the good lines the book would look like the Yellow Pages. ****
Two For The Money - Max Alan Collins
Reprint of two novels, Bait Money and its sequel, Blood Money, that work pretty well as one long book. A thief named Nolan takes on a comic-book-obsessed sidekick named Jon to rob a bank, so that Nolan can turn the money over to the mob and get them off his back (he'd killed a mobster's relative). But of course things don't go smoothly, and Nolan's money ends up stolen, so he has to get it back. Not easy. Excellent hardboiled crime novels, definitely recommended. *** 1/2
The Gutter and the Grave - Ed McBain
Reprint of a 1958 pulp novel that McBain put out under a pseudonym - although I don't know why he used the fake name because if I'd written something this great I'd damnsure want credit for it. Matt Cordell is a detective who hit the skids and became a gutter drunk after pistol-whipping a guy who stole his wife. An old friend seeks him out for help on a minor problem that turns into a major case of murder, which may get Matt beaten to death if eh doesn't back off. Matt's pretty competent for a chronic alcoholic, but that's easy to overlook because the story's so well-written and fast-moving and compulsively readable. A slamdunk for anyone who's looking for something gritty. ****
Bust - Ken Bruen & Jason Starr
Excellent noir with some black-humor undertones, depicting how a relatively-simple plan to kill a man's wife becomes a destructive maelstrom as more and more bad guys get involved and start trying to scam each other... which doesn’t work out well for any of them. Compelling and well-written and well-plotted, although I don’t think you’re meant to take it too seriously. The characters -- an Irish hit man, a hair-metal-listening criminal in a wheelchair, a titty-obsessed businessman, and a slutty Irish/Greek girl -- are all pretty odd and memorable. Another great HardCase original. *** 1/2
Witness To Myself - Seymour Shubin
This is a really good novel, but you’re going to have to be generous and grant it some leeway in regards to certain implausibilities. A lawyer named Alan is haunted by an incident that happened at the beach when he was a kid, when he made a sexual advance to a little girl and then panicked that she might tell on him, got a little too rough with her, and (maybe) accidentally killed her. He got away with it but it shadowed his entire life with guilt and he became obsessed with seeing if he actually did kill her or not. This is where some really not-believable stuff starts happening -- searching newspaper backfiles on the case gets a police sketch of him published in papers, people spot incriminating icons on his computer desktop, a man he saved from a suicide attempt starts stalking him, every development in a decades-cold case gets reported on, etc. Despite flaws, the story remains compelling and poignant, and the writing is great, so you probably won’t mind overlooking some lapses in realism (especially if you’ve been trained by reading guys like Cornell Woolrich). Shubin returned to writing after years to put this out for HardCase. ***
Grave Descend - John Lange
Fast-reading pulpy crime novel (more of a novella, really -- it’s 202 large-print pages with a lot of blank pages snuck in) about a scuba diver named McGregor who’s hired to salvage a wrecked yacht off the Jamaican coast. From the very beginning the job makes him suspicious, and the further he goes the more wrong it all seems (such as finding out that the yacht didn’t even sink yet!) And the more he finds out the more danger he’s in. The book isn’t overly noirish and the writing is bare bones with no flash, but things keep moving and the plot keeps twisting, making it easily worth the short time it takes to read it. ***
361 - Donald E. Westlake
Reprint of Westlake’s hard-boiled 1962 crime novel in which a soldier named Ray Kelly comes home to reunite with his father and brother, only to have his father gunned down in an attack that also costs Ray an eye. Ray sets out to find out why it happened and how he can even the score. On the way he gets mixed up with the mob, finds out his lineage may not be what he’d thought it was, and loses more loved ones. Good stuff carved out of spare, no-screwing-around prose and not shy about violence when necessary. ***
Lucky At Cards - Lawrence Block
Reprint of an excellent 1964 crime novel with Block in top form. The narrator is a “card mechanic” named Bill Maynard, who gets caught cheating at poker and is beaten out of Chicago. While recovering in a small town he decides to pick up some extra cash by cheating a few locals at their weekly poker games. There he gets involved with a guy’s wife, who wants to run off with him... and her husband’s money. They can’t kill the husband, though, because he has a lot of restrictions in the trust he’s leaving her, so they have to find some other way to get him out of the picture so she can get at his money. The husband’s not as dumb as they’d counted on him being, though, and Bill ends up with a lot of trouble... much of it from letting the slutty wife override his own conscience. Even if you don’t know how to play poker (I admit ignorance) the card games manage to be intense, and Block has an unsettlingly intimate knowledge of how cheating is done, and the plot is tight. This is classic stuff, and you can’t go wrong with this one. ****
Home Is The Sailor - Day Keene
Excellent, ultra-hard boiled crime novel from 1952 about a big, tough, hellraising Swede sailor who plans to give up the sea but may end up giving up more than that, because after a near-fatal bar fight he gets hooked up with a woman named Corliss. He kills a guy who she said was attacking her, and they hid the body and then rush out and get married. The Swede soon starts thinking that Corliss isn’t quite what she seems to be. He’s right. The Swede is a kind of Mike Hammer-ish narrator, usually to’-ass up drunk and banged up from one violent altercation or other, always in a bad situation. Keene does a great job not giving the story any letup in momentum. A must-read. ****
The Vengeful Virgin - Gil Brewer
Reprint of a 1958 noir classic in the James M. Cain tradition, with a TV repairman getting mixed up in a hell of his own making when he helps an 18-year-old girl kill her invalid stepfather for a hefty inheritance. They work out a great, foolproof plan which, of course, doesn’t work. Very well-written, smart, and fast-moving. *** 1/2
Zero Cool - John Lange
Lightning-fast spy-caper type of tale with a young doctor getting in crazy mixed-up trouble in 1960’s Spain when he’s approached to do an autopsy on a dead gangster. Some people tell him they’ll kill him if he performs it, and others say they’ll kill him if he doesn’t. Even though he’s a radiologist, not a pathologist, he finally does it and they make him hide a package inside the body for smuggling purposes. That’s not the end of his troubles, though, since a colorful assortment of hoodlums (an eccentric professor, a dwarf count, a cowboy named Tex, etc.) all think he has information they’re willing to torture out of him, and everyone he meets seems to be in on the baffling conspiracy. Despite being a HardCase Crime book, this reads more like some wacky 60’s spy spoof; it’s played pretty straight, but the crazy situations (including a device stolen from an old Bela Lugosi movie, The Devil Bat!) make you wonder if Lange’s tongue wasn’t pretty far in his cheek. Even the cover has an in-joke that readers of Lange’s previous HardCase novel Grave Descend (whose cover was also painted by Gregory Manchess) will probably spot. It’s assuredly meant as a tall tale and thus deviates from the HardCase code a bit, but it’s well-done and entertaining, so who cares about being a purist? ***
The Murderer Vine - Shepard Rifkin
Amazingly good crime novel (originally published in 1970) that plays like Mississippi Burning gone film noir. A low-rent detective is hired to go to civil-rights-era Mississippi to find out who killed his son (an activist who was registering Blacks to vote) and then kill them all. It’s not the kind of thing the detective usually does, but the man offers half a million dollars, so, armed with a machine gun, a Southern secretary, and a cover story about researching dialects, off he goes into Hell. Very well-done, riveting read, with an effective ending. ****
Gun Work - David J. Schow
Horror novelist Schow turns to hardboiled crime in this action-packed post-Tarrantino novel, in which a gun expert named Barney tries to repay his old friend Carl, who once saved his life. Carl calls Barney down to Mexico to help free his wife, who’s been kidnapped. Barney provides excellent and expert assistance, but unluckily for him the whole shmear is a set-up, and Barney is captured, tortured for months, and nearly killed. He survives and, with the aid of some luchadores (masked Mexican wrestlers, if you’re unfamilar), seeks vengeance. Schow’s typically-hip prose is sometimes too smugly impressed with itself and some of what’s supposed to be badass just comes across as more geeky than badass. Some of the gun-worship, for instance, reads as much like a woman describing a Dior gown as it does a guy describing a firearm, and you’ll likely roll your eyes at some of the faux-macho prose-posturing, because Schow’s just trying too dadgum hard. Other times, though, it works exactly the way Schow wants it to, and sections of the book are intense and unputdownable. Others are comic-bookish action blitzes that feel like the climax of a Mack Bolan Executioner novel... but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Some of Schow’s strange obsessions pop up again and I got a little deja vu (he has a thing about people with modified, missing-finger hands), but mostly I was glad to have something to read from a guy who I wish was more prolific. Despite a few shortcomings, it’s a great (and very harsh and harrowing) revenge tale with a strong cinematic feel (if Robert Rodriguez hasn’t already bought the screen rights, he should) and a reminiscent-of-Spillane climax. It’s also the most violent HardCase Crime book I’ve read yet. *** 1/2
Nobody’s Angel - Jack Clark
Melancholy, existential crime novel about a cab driver working in Chicago while two killers are loose: one killing cabdrivers and the other slashing up hookers. He loses a friend tot he former and possibly gains a friend from the latter, when he discovers one of the hooker-killer’s victims, still alive in an alley. While dealing with the paranoia and sleaze of his nightly route, he tries to find the killers... and avoid becoming one of their victims. This is more of a slice-of-life than a focused, plot-driven novel, mostly following the protagonist through his shifts and showing his customers, the other people he meets, and what a cabbie’s life is like. The writing is simple but strong, and it stays compelling even when nothing’s really happening. Clark is a real cabdriver and originally had this novel self-published and sold it to customers in his cab. HardCase Crime did the world beyond Chicago a service by making it more widely available, and it’s a welcome addition to the tiny subgenre of cab-driver-crime pulp (whose only other member, to my knowledge, is John K. Butler with his Steve Midnight stories, which you can score in the Stroke of Midnight collection). Clark’s novel has a very authentic feel, not trying to be politically correct, just telling the truth about what cabbies do. ***
7.04.2010
Thomas Ligotti Short Stories Checklist!
Following zwolf's most recent post about horrible horror covers, I thought it timely to go ahead + post this checklist of Thomas Ligotti's collected short stories. Ligotti is an excellent horror writer, current + modern - maybe even post-modern - but with a vibe reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft, or the parable/fable-style deliveries of some of Jorge Luis Borges' fantasies, and an overwhelming paranoia that'd shame Philip K. Dick.
In any case, Ligotti's short stories are plentiful, but they tend to show up in numerous collected editions of his work. As such, I put together a quick checklist of the stories available in each of his mass-market published collections + present it here as an aid to fans of his writings. The fantastic fiction website already has a checklist of his available published works, but I couldn't find a story checklist anywhere... This list does not include any of his work published through small-press / limited editions, or appearances of his stories in anthologies or zines.
The books included herein are: Grimscribe, My Work Is Not Yet Done, The Nightmare Factory, Noctuary, The Shadow at the Bottom of the World, Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Teatro Grottesco
7.03.2010
So Unscary It's Scary
Among my many other obsessions is a mania for horror paperbacks. I've been snagging and hoarding 'em for years, and haunting used book stores and library sales for stuff I missed (or figured wasn't worth the full cover price). Back in the 80's there was a big "horror boom" and the market got flooded with paperback originals. People say the market has an "invisible hand," but I think it has an "invisible colon," too -- whenever any particular genre gets popular and starts selling, the market starts filling its belly with everything it can find in that area just to have a "product" to sell, resulting in a whole lot of shit getting dumped on the public. Then the genre dies from oversaturation. You can see this with music (thrash metal, death metal, grunge, rap), movies, wrestling, etc. The need to feed the public's hunger for a genre leads to standards getting lax, a lessening in quality product getting released, and then the audience soon gets sick of the crap, and the once-great genre soon becomes associated with mediocrity, and it dies out (or at least goes into a slump).
Now in the days of the internet there's no filter at all and anybody can "publish" a book and bands don't need to get signed and "filmmakers" can put anything they want on YouTube. About 90% of the self-published stuff out there doesn't deserve an audience, and the signal-to-noise ratio's getting so wide that it's too much of an effort to sort it all out, and now the public is getting pretty sick of everything. It's hardly worth filtering the din of garbage on our own to find the good stuff now, when publishers used to do that for us, so much of the public's given up and the quality of everything is lax. The entertainment industry isn't turning a profit anymore because you can download things for free, so why pay for anything? Especially since it's all shoddy anyway?
And this is my crackpot theory of why the economy is in such a slump... and an illustration of my own theory: blogs are providing non-experts like me a place to spout our crazystuff. Bad internet! You could have been spared this!
Anyway, back during the horror boom, there naturally arose a need for cover art, and there are only so many truly "scary" ideas for pictures to be had. Eventually, the industry ran out, got lazy, and wanted to put out so many books that they commissioned absolutely anything just to get product on the shelves. And that's where the fun starts.
Now, the actual art on these things isn't necessarily bad, as far as quality of technique goes, so I'm not making fun of the artists. Many of those "skeleton children" pictures that showed up on almost every Zebra book cover during those years are actually high quality paintings. But they're of incredibly silly subjects, and the covers are much more likely to induce laughter than chills.
This also isn't a critique of the book inside the cover. I liked several of these books, and haven't read some of the others yet. You really can't judge a book by its cover. Never forget, when it first came out, Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door -- high on the list of the most harrowing novels ever written -- had a skull-headed cheerleader on the cover. Ketchum hated that, and rightfully so.
Anyway, onward toward the hideous horizon we go...
=============
First up, The Feeding, by Leigh Clark. I haven't read it yet, but reviews on Amazon say it's pretty scary. The cover, however...
"AUUUGGGHHH!!! I am the displeased mountainside! See the displeased face I make, accordingly! Enter, hapless children, into my scowling mouth of DOOM and live inside my belly of TERROR! I awaken from my ancient sleep cranky and hungry for the tender flesh of the unwary! AUUUGGGHHH!!! And, furthermore, GARRRGGHHHH!!!! as well! Surely now you are frightened, no? If not, I shall clutch you! Don't make me clutch you!"
This seems a monster that could be dispatched with an antacid. And the children certainly seem terrified, don't they? That little girl is looking back at the claws coming out of the earth with the expression one usually has while watching a chipmunk, or perhaps a dog-surprise she's avoided stepping in.
And now, what's surely one of the most brilliant ideas in all of horror-book-cover-dom... a frightening bunny!
Yes, high on the list of the fearsome you will always find the bunny. Remember Night of the Lepus, and how scary that was? The promise given by this cover -- that within the pages you will find a mean blue-eyed rabbit -- guaranteed that only those with nerves of steel would dare tackle this book.
You have to admit, though, it does kind of intrigue you. You want to know what kind of story could incorporate a goblin-bunny-thing, don't you? Well, the back cover copy isn't going to help you much, as it's some of the most noncommittal, uninformative, and awkward marketing prose I've ever seen:
Reads like a third-grader's book report, doesn't it? In some unnamed "vicinity" of a "territory," gruesome incidents seemed to be accelerating (even the book itself isn't assertive enough to declare that they, indeed, are). And how much adversity is a ton? Adversity is some hard shit to weigh. It's like, "I'd like a pound of jealousy, please." A "wake" had left a "trail." That's quite a trick, since a wake is a trail. And it's all left to the irrational to explain it to us. Then weird mentions of witches and a mule who eats human hands (AAAAIIIEEEEE!).
You won't sleep much until you discover the answer. And thus we are all condemned to a lifetime of insomnia.
Okay, now, from bunnies to... lollipops!
Holy shit, I wish they wouldn't do that to me! It's irresponsible to put such terrifying images out there on the bookshelves! It's scary on so many levels, such as:
1. It's not just a lollipop, but the messiest of all lollipops -- the all-day sucker! She could, I dunno, put it in your hair or something. It'll rot your teeth out... NOW!
2. The lollipop has a SKULL FACE on it! A scary skull! Right on the lollipop there! You can see it! Surely this is the most fearsome of lollipops. What child would hold such a lollipop? A scary child, it is certain!
3. There's a bite taken out of the lollipop. Now, I dunno if you've ever had an all-day sucker, but them sonsabitches are like ping-pong paddles. You can crack somebody's skull with one, like a Viking axe (which is why you don't get one if you're a bad kid - they can't trust you with such a weapon). They're strictly for licking. You're not takin' a bite out of one of those bad boys unless you're a real beast! So, the implications are there. Implications, of course, of horror.
4. There, on the girl's chin... blood! Eek! And, while she's not really looking malevolent or anything, she's doesn't look particularly friendly, either. And not-particularly-friendly is scary! She looks a little bored, actually. And what does boredom often lead to? That's right - acts of horror. How many serial killers would have gotten started if they'd been distracted with a thrilling game of Jenga or Gnip Gnop? I'm not sure of the statistics, but I'm betting not many.
5. Her hand? It's a skeleton's hand! That does it, Zebra Books has sealed the deal, I'm shitting my pants.
Speaking of lollipops, what happens if you eat too many of them?
BELLYACHE!
"Behold my fillings! And who knows when I've combed my hair? Now you are frightened, I betcha!"
Either this guy's a homicidal maniac who's just seconds away from killing you and doing a maypole dance with your entrails... or he's "the Biffster" at a Kappa Alpha kegger screaming "WHOOOOO-HOO!" because "Brown Eyed Girl" came up on the stereo and that's his jam, man! If the book cover was bigger, I just feel certain we'd see a bottle of Jager in this fudpuck's hand, and that tee-shirt'll have Seven Mary Three on it. I ain't scared, other than by the thought that this guy'll probably have children and vote.
Now here's a book cover that snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Kinda creepy, ain't it? Wedding dresses, like clowns, are pretty spooky in a dim environment, and veils could hide anything. When I thought this was the front of the girl, this actually struck me as a damn eerie cover. But it's her back... and, alas, it's just the front part of a two-part cover, because, past a little trimmed edge there, there's a second page. You open that, and you see this:
I know, who farted, right? This little latex sculpt is almost insulting and destroys your confidence in the book. It's like, "Okay, if the people at Pinnacle Books think I'm supposed to be scared by a booga-booga picture of an Ann Coulter Halloween mask, how am I supposed to trust them that the novel within is scary, either?" This is just silly-lookin', and when I think of the hours some poor shlub spent crafting that gremlin-bride out of polymers while thinking "This'll be really scary!" I get a Holden-Caulfield-like level of annoyance. I see girls who look like that shopping in the country music section every time I go to Wal-Mart. Toby Keith, there's your audience, dude. Sorry 'bout that.
Okay, this one's not really horrible, but it's still a bit giggly...
I think if it didn't have the normal-person hands grabbing the monster thing, it would work a lot better. But it makes the bug-eyed grey-skinned claw-handed thing look like it's being victimized. It's not coming to get you... it's in trouble itself, at the hands of an apparently average fella. How scary can it be? It's been compromised. Still, I should probably have given this one a pass, 'cuz I've certainly seen worse.
Now, gird thy loins, because here comes.... A MONSTER JELLYFISH!!!!
O' course, if you've spent any time at the beach at all, you know that jellyfish don't have faces, but still, if you have a book dealing with a plague of walking jellyfish, I think you're to be allowed a certain amount of license. I like John Halkin's books. The first I got was Squelch, about killer caterpillars (which later turn into deadly moths), and it was one of the goriest things ever, wallowing in disgusting bloodshed so hard that you just didn't give a damn that it was stupid-ass city.
I remember when I bought that one, even though it's silly as a fish with titties, the lady at the book store got really grossed out by it and said, "UGH! Why would you want to read that?" and I told her something like "Because I'm a sick bastard!" Anyway, I remember reading it during dead spots between my classes in my Freshman year of college, and was impressed enough to seek out Halkin's other books, which include Slither (about ravenous legless lizards) and Bloodworm (which I think was about intestinal parasites). All British "nasties" in the mode of our next guy, Guy N. Smith. Smith is most famous for his "Crabs" series, about giant killer crabs. The best title is Crabs on the Rampage, but the best cover for our purposes is this one:
SHRRRRIIIIIEEEEEKKKKK! It's a giant crab... and IT'S GOT A KNIFE!!! Held there in its giant claw which could easily snap a human being in half like scissors through a paperdoll! A shiny dagger! And he's gonna hurt that girl with it! I'm gonna swoon!
Yes, a crab with a knife.
Somebody (most likely a whole committee of somebodies) greenlit this idea. Somebody ponied up the money to commission a crab-with-a-knife painting. And someone painted it. And somebody published it in mass quantities, and some people with trucks drove it all over the country and people were paid to put it out on shelves.
And then I bought it, so who's the real asshole here, right? Yeah. I got it used, though, so I'm only about a buck-seventy-five worth of an asshole.
Anyway, I'm waiting for Sasquatch with a gun.
Now, on to the omnipresent children-with-skeletons wave of book covers. There are so many of these I didn't bother to scan more than one, but I could do a post on the kids/toys/skulls covers all by itself.
That little girl certainly doesn't look too horrified, does she? And the skeleton is wearing overalls.
I dunno, I just don't feel any nightmares on their way from this. Mein spine is not ashiver, and alas, my pants, they remain unpeed. And I remember the book itself actually being pretty freakin' scary. Andrew Neiderman, by the way, wrote most of the books ascribed to "V.C. Andrews." She wrote Flowers in the Attic and a few others, then died. Only about 8 of the books under her name are actually by her. As an in-joke, a few of the books under Neiderman's name (including this one) have cover blurbs from "V.C. Andrews." I love that.
And, I think I saved the best for last. Are you ready for this, motherfuckers? Don't say yes to that too quickly, because this is some heavyweight-stupid, rat'cheer.... I don't think you're ready. But I might as well post it, because I don't think you'll EVER be ready for...
A SKELETON WITH A BANJO!
A skeleton, with eyeballs, and a sideways baseball cap, and a bloodstained banjo! Do scary things get more-scarier than that-there-thing?!? The answer would have to be NO, there is none more scarier, it is just not possible for a thing scarier than that to exist! Your feeble mind would shatter like a frozen pee-diaper if confronted with an image more fearsome!
"Yes, I have risen from beyond the grave and shall be haunting you and turning your life into a hellish nightmare of terror from which there shall be no escape right directly, but first, how 'bout a little 'Foggy Mountain Breakdown'?"
Seriously, what the fuck? I've been into horror practically since birth, I got in trouble in first grade for reading the novelization of Amicus's Tales From The Crypt movie in first grade, and my grandmother caught me reading my cousin's copy of The Exorcist about the same time. I've researched the origins of this stuff back to cave paintings, I've watched Edison's silent version of Frankenstein and just about everything since, I've studied back to Castle of Otranto and beyond... and in all my delving into the darkest depths the human mind can conjure, "fucking skeleton with a fucking banjo" has just never shown up.
If this is scary, then a werewolf holding a bunch of carrots is also scary, as is a ghost with a badminton racquet, a ghoul with an AbFlex, a vampire with a road atlas, a mad scientist with a bouquet of daylillies sprouting from his buttcrack, and Godzilla wearing a bib and propellor beanie, tooting a kazoo.
The sideways cap doesn't do a damn thing for it, either. "Hey, guys, it's the ghost of little Skippy from down the street!" dadalangdangdangjangjang!
Then the name of the book is Dew Claws. On a poetic scale, that evokes kind of an image: wet early morning grass and claws, we could maybe work with that. But when you look into it, all a "dew claw" is that little claw where a dog's thumb would be. Dogs didn't evolve as far as we did, so they still have a rudimentary nail where a thumb would be, had they gone further up the scale. (By the way, this is thing #67,854 that disproves "intelligent design"). In any case, it's not a scary thing. "Dog thumbs are coming to get you!"
Anyway, I don't think I can top skeleton-with-a-banjo, so I shall now leave you... to your nightmares! BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
...yeah...
Now in the days of the internet there's no filter at all and anybody can "publish" a book and bands don't need to get signed and "filmmakers" can put anything they want on YouTube. About 90% of the self-published stuff out there doesn't deserve an audience, and the signal-to-noise ratio's getting so wide that it's too much of an effort to sort it all out, and now the public is getting pretty sick of everything. It's hardly worth filtering the din of garbage on our own to find the good stuff now, when publishers used to do that for us, so much of the public's given up and the quality of everything is lax. The entertainment industry isn't turning a profit anymore because you can download things for free, so why pay for anything? Especially since it's all shoddy anyway?
And this is my crackpot theory of why the economy is in such a slump... and an illustration of my own theory: blogs are providing non-experts like me a place to spout our crazystuff. Bad internet! You could have been spared this!
Anyway, back during the horror boom, there naturally arose a need for cover art, and there are only so many truly "scary" ideas for pictures to be had. Eventually, the industry ran out, got lazy, and wanted to put out so many books that they commissioned absolutely anything just to get product on the shelves. And that's where the fun starts.
Now, the actual art on these things isn't necessarily bad, as far as quality of technique goes, so I'm not making fun of the artists. Many of those "skeleton children" pictures that showed up on almost every Zebra book cover during those years are actually high quality paintings. But they're of incredibly silly subjects, and the covers are much more likely to induce laughter than chills.
This also isn't a critique of the book inside the cover. I liked several of these books, and haven't read some of the others yet. You really can't judge a book by its cover. Never forget, when it first came out, Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door -- high on the list of the most harrowing novels ever written -- had a skull-headed cheerleader on the cover. Ketchum hated that, and rightfully so.
Anyway, onward toward the hideous horizon we go...
=============
First up, The Feeding, by Leigh Clark. I haven't read it yet, but reviews on Amazon say it's pretty scary. The cover, however...
"AUUUGGGHHH!!! I am the displeased mountainside! See the displeased face I make, accordingly! Enter, hapless children, into my scowling mouth of DOOM and live inside my belly of TERROR! I awaken from my ancient sleep cranky and hungry for the tender flesh of the unwary! AUUUGGGHHH!!! And, furthermore, GARRRGGHHHH!!!! as well! Surely now you are frightened, no? If not, I shall clutch you! Don't make me clutch you!"
This seems a monster that could be dispatched with an antacid. And the children certainly seem terrified, don't they? That little girl is looking back at the claws coming out of the earth with the expression one usually has while watching a chipmunk, or perhaps a dog-surprise she's avoided stepping in.
And now, what's surely one of the most brilliant ideas in all of horror-book-cover-dom... a frightening bunny!
Yes, high on the list of the fearsome you will always find the bunny. Remember Night of the Lepus, and how scary that was? The promise given by this cover -- that within the pages you will find a mean blue-eyed rabbit -- guaranteed that only those with nerves of steel would dare tackle this book.
You have to admit, though, it does kind of intrigue you. You want to know what kind of story could incorporate a goblin-bunny-thing, don't you? Well, the back cover copy isn't going to help you much, as it's some of the most noncommittal, uninformative, and awkward marketing prose I've ever seen:
Reads like a third-grader's book report, doesn't it? In some unnamed "vicinity" of a "territory," gruesome incidents seemed to be accelerating (even the book itself isn't assertive enough to declare that they, indeed, are). And how much adversity is a ton? Adversity is some hard shit to weigh. It's like, "I'd like a pound of jealousy, please." A "wake" had left a "trail." That's quite a trick, since a wake is a trail. And it's all left to the irrational to explain it to us. Then weird mentions of witches and a mule who eats human hands (AAAAIIIEEEEE!).
You won't sleep much until you discover the answer. And thus we are all condemned to a lifetime of insomnia.
Okay, now, from bunnies to... lollipops!
Holy shit, I wish they wouldn't do that to me! It's irresponsible to put such terrifying images out there on the bookshelves! It's scary on so many levels, such as:
1. It's not just a lollipop, but the messiest of all lollipops -- the all-day sucker! She could, I dunno, put it in your hair or something. It'll rot your teeth out... NOW!
2. The lollipop has a SKULL FACE on it! A scary skull! Right on the lollipop there! You can see it! Surely this is the most fearsome of lollipops. What child would hold such a lollipop? A scary child, it is certain!
3. There's a bite taken out of the lollipop. Now, I dunno if you've ever had an all-day sucker, but them sonsabitches are like ping-pong paddles. You can crack somebody's skull with one, like a Viking axe (which is why you don't get one if you're a bad kid - they can't trust you with such a weapon). They're strictly for licking. You're not takin' a bite out of one of those bad boys unless you're a real beast! So, the implications are there. Implications, of course, of horror.
4. There, on the girl's chin... blood! Eek! And, while she's not really looking malevolent or anything, she's doesn't look particularly friendly, either. And not-particularly-friendly is scary! She looks a little bored, actually. And what does boredom often lead to? That's right - acts of horror. How many serial killers would have gotten started if they'd been distracted with a thrilling game of Jenga or Gnip Gnop? I'm not sure of the statistics, but I'm betting not many.
5. Her hand? It's a skeleton's hand! That does it, Zebra Books has sealed the deal, I'm shitting my pants.
Speaking of lollipops, what happens if you eat too many of them?
BELLYACHE!
"Behold my fillings! And who knows when I've combed my hair? Now you are frightened, I betcha!"
Either this guy's a homicidal maniac who's just seconds away from killing you and doing a maypole dance with your entrails... or he's "the Biffster" at a Kappa Alpha kegger screaming "WHOOOOO-HOO!" because "Brown Eyed Girl" came up on the stereo and that's his jam, man! If the book cover was bigger, I just feel certain we'd see a bottle of Jager in this fudpuck's hand, and that tee-shirt'll have Seven Mary Three on it. I ain't scared, other than by the thought that this guy'll probably have children and vote.
Now here's a book cover that snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Kinda creepy, ain't it? Wedding dresses, like clowns, are pretty spooky in a dim environment, and veils could hide anything. When I thought this was the front of the girl, this actually struck me as a damn eerie cover. But it's her back... and, alas, it's just the front part of a two-part cover, because, past a little trimmed edge there, there's a second page. You open that, and you see this:
I know, who farted, right? This little latex sculpt is almost insulting and destroys your confidence in the book. It's like, "Okay, if the people at Pinnacle Books think I'm supposed to be scared by a booga-booga picture of an Ann Coulter Halloween mask, how am I supposed to trust them that the novel within is scary, either?" This is just silly-lookin', and when I think of the hours some poor shlub spent crafting that gremlin-bride out of polymers while thinking "This'll be really scary!" I get a Holden-Caulfield-like level of annoyance. I see girls who look like that shopping in the country music section every time I go to Wal-Mart. Toby Keith, there's your audience, dude. Sorry 'bout that.
Okay, this one's not really horrible, but it's still a bit giggly...
I think if it didn't have the normal-person hands grabbing the monster thing, it would work a lot better. But it makes the bug-eyed grey-skinned claw-handed thing look like it's being victimized. It's not coming to get you... it's in trouble itself, at the hands of an apparently average fella. How scary can it be? It's been compromised. Still, I should probably have given this one a pass, 'cuz I've certainly seen worse.
Now, gird thy loins, because here comes.... A MONSTER JELLYFISH!!!!
O' course, if you've spent any time at the beach at all, you know that jellyfish don't have faces, but still, if you have a book dealing with a plague of walking jellyfish, I think you're to be allowed a certain amount of license. I like John Halkin's books. The first I got was Squelch, about killer caterpillars (which later turn into deadly moths), and it was one of the goriest things ever, wallowing in disgusting bloodshed so hard that you just didn't give a damn that it was stupid-ass city.
I remember when I bought that one, even though it's silly as a fish with titties, the lady at the book store got really grossed out by it and said, "UGH! Why would you want to read that?" and I told her something like "Because I'm a sick bastard!" Anyway, I remember reading it during dead spots between my classes in my Freshman year of college, and was impressed enough to seek out Halkin's other books, which include Slither (about ravenous legless lizards) and Bloodworm (which I think was about intestinal parasites). All British "nasties" in the mode of our next guy, Guy N. Smith. Smith is most famous for his "Crabs" series, about giant killer crabs. The best title is Crabs on the Rampage, but the best cover for our purposes is this one:
SHRRRRIIIIIEEEEEKKKKK! It's a giant crab... and IT'S GOT A KNIFE!!! Held there in its giant claw which could easily snap a human being in half like scissors through a paperdoll! A shiny dagger! And he's gonna hurt that girl with it! I'm gonna swoon!
Yes, a crab with a knife.
Somebody (most likely a whole committee of somebodies) greenlit this idea. Somebody ponied up the money to commission a crab-with-a-knife painting. And someone painted it. And somebody published it in mass quantities, and some people with trucks drove it all over the country and people were paid to put it out on shelves.
And then I bought it, so who's the real asshole here, right? Yeah. I got it used, though, so I'm only about a buck-seventy-five worth of an asshole.
Anyway, I'm waiting for Sasquatch with a gun.
Now, on to the omnipresent children-with-skeletons wave of book covers. There are so many of these I didn't bother to scan more than one, but I could do a post on the kids/toys/skulls covers all by itself.
That little girl certainly doesn't look too horrified, does she? And the skeleton is wearing overalls.
I dunno, I just don't feel any nightmares on their way from this. Mein spine is not ashiver, and alas, my pants, they remain unpeed. And I remember the book itself actually being pretty freakin' scary. Andrew Neiderman, by the way, wrote most of the books ascribed to "V.C. Andrews." She wrote Flowers in the Attic and a few others, then died. Only about 8 of the books under her name are actually by her. As an in-joke, a few of the books under Neiderman's name (including this one) have cover blurbs from "V.C. Andrews." I love that.
And, I think I saved the best for last. Are you ready for this, motherfuckers? Don't say yes to that too quickly, because this is some heavyweight-stupid, rat'cheer.... I don't think you're ready. But I might as well post it, because I don't think you'll EVER be ready for...
A SKELETON WITH A BANJO!
A skeleton, with eyeballs, and a sideways baseball cap, and a bloodstained banjo! Do scary things get more-scarier than that-there-thing?!? The answer would have to be NO, there is none more scarier, it is just not possible for a thing scarier than that to exist! Your feeble mind would shatter like a frozen pee-diaper if confronted with an image more fearsome!
"Yes, I have risen from beyond the grave and shall be haunting you and turning your life into a hellish nightmare of terror from which there shall be no escape right directly, but first, how 'bout a little 'Foggy Mountain Breakdown'?"
Seriously, what the fuck? I've been into horror practically since birth, I got in trouble in first grade for reading the novelization of Amicus's Tales From The Crypt movie in first grade, and my grandmother caught me reading my cousin's copy of The Exorcist about the same time. I've researched the origins of this stuff back to cave paintings, I've watched Edison's silent version of Frankenstein and just about everything since, I've studied back to Castle of Otranto and beyond... and in all my delving into the darkest depths the human mind can conjure, "fucking skeleton with a fucking banjo" has just never shown up.
If this is scary, then a werewolf holding a bunch of carrots is also scary, as is a ghost with a badminton racquet, a ghoul with an AbFlex, a vampire with a road atlas, a mad scientist with a bouquet of daylillies sprouting from his buttcrack, and Godzilla wearing a bib and propellor beanie, tooting a kazoo.
The sideways cap doesn't do a damn thing for it, either. "Hey, guys, it's the ghost of little Skippy from down the street!" dadalangdangdangjangjang!
Then the name of the book is Dew Claws. On a poetic scale, that evokes kind of an image: wet early morning grass and claws, we could maybe work with that. But when you look into it, all a "dew claw" is that little claw where a dog's thumb would be. Dogs didn't evolve as far as we did, so they still have a rudimentary nail where a thumb would be, had they gone further up the scale. (By the way, this is thing #67,854 that disproves "intelligent design"). In any case, it's not a scary thing. "Dog thumbs are coming to get you!"
Anyway, I don't think I can top skeleton-with-a-banjo, so I shall now leave you... to your nightmares! BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
...yeah...
6.27.2010
Record Inserts of the GODZ!
Took last week off to go to my uncle's funeral, but now I'm back with something of dubious value to anyone! Hooray!
Recently I got some new space to move things to, which is good 'cuz I'm one of those hoarder people you see on TV. I am hoardcore! I am sporting a hoard-on! I live in a hoard-house! I make stupid jokes about what is supposedly a mild form of mental illness! Inappropriate glee for everybody! Anyway, after getting actual shelves to keep DVDs on instead of just having to pile them in mass amounts of boxes, I cleared up some space and actually can access my old LP's again. (Still can't play 'em... my turntable is either broken or unplugged - due to more hoarding pile-up I can't check the plug-in to see which it is. Besides, what good is life if all the mysteries are explained?).
Anyway, even though they've been making a slight comeback on the nostalgia market, "records" are still a foreign concept for a lot of people nowdays (hell, CD's are becoming foreign to a lot of 'em, since people are getting stupider and are willing to pay for "access" and trust electronic media to keep their libraries for 'em - I could do a whole huge rant on this but I'll hold off), I figured I'd go through my LP's and post some stuff from the inserts and cover art. I was a rabid metal/punk in the 80's, even before thrash emerged, so I've got original vinyl copies of a lot of stuff that's now considered classic... and a lot of other things that are now forgotten. There's a lot of stuff I could post, and I'll probably do more as I dig through the collection, but here are just a few things to start us off. Some bands filled the album sleeve with things. The Dead Kennedys would give you whole booklets of Winston Smith artwork, or posters (I have that Frankenchrist poster that got them sued), and SST would stick multi-page catalogs in their releases. Still got those.
So, let's go through my record collection and make fun o' stuff! I hope the 'net will resize these things so they're not crazy, or I may have to delete the post. I am tech-ignurnt). I'll avoid too many really obscure things, to make it more interesting for those who know the bands, but probably never saw 'em on vinyl.
This first lovely photo is from the sleeve of The Dayglo Abortions classic Here Today, Guano Tomorrow LP, which brought you such beautiful songs as "Hide The Hamster," "Drugged and Driving," and "Fuck My Shit Stinks" (that one always makes me cry!).
Spud there, on the far left, is not quite succeeding in doing the ol' tuck-yer-wiener-between-yer-legs-and-look-like-a-girl trick (made famous by Tommy Lee in the Pamela Anderson sex tape - she screamed "Stop it, I hate that!" when he did it). You can still see far more of his schween than you ever wanted to. The drummer, Jesus Bonehead, on the far right, seems far too amused (I always worried about that boy) and appears to be in the process of trying to attempt the feat himself. The other band members, Cretin, Mike Anus, and Nev The Impailer (sic), are caught in a faux-vagina crossfire. And I'm not sure it showed up in the scan, but down in the left corner there's a recipe for "Hamster In Cream Sauce Flambe." I haven't tried that. But I sure as hell played the fuck out of this silly album. "Drugged And Driving" is a helluva song, even if you're straightedge.
Next up, we have a picture from the back cover of The Great Kat's Worship Me Or Die LP. She appears to be torturing her bandmates, and they're reacting with appropriately cheesy expressions, because as dominatrixes go, they don't get goofier than Kat. Anyway, the reason I posted this is because I think it's as close as you will ever get to seeing a picture of The Great Kat with her mouth closed. Yep, she's still baring her teeth, but at least her jaw isn't hanging open like an attacking pelican, the way it is in every other picture of her you will ever see. Search the web if you doubt me. Apparently an unhinged jaw is crazy-genius-metal 'n' shit. If you can see her fillings, there's more metal, y'know.
Shall we do some Slayer? Aye, we shall. Didja know that when Slayer started out, they used corspepaint like a black metal band? It wasn't extreme, just some Hellhammer-style eye-darkening, but, yep, they did it and here's the proof, from the back of the Show No Mercy LP.
Kinda goofy, ain't it? Hanneman, with that inverted cross. And yes, Kerry King once had hair instead of a big goofy beard that he brandishes in fury.
Also, Slayer's gotten a lot of crap for being psuedo-Nazis. I don't think they are (Tom Araya's Chilean, fer christsakes... but then again, he's also supposedly a Catholic, so he's apparently able to reconcile himself to a lot), and most of the blame goes to the song "Angel of Death," just because it's about a Nazi. Hardly an endorsement for Nazism, that one. But, I gotta admit, they asked for a lot of that trouble themselves by calling their fan club the "Slaytanic Wehrmacht." Here's a merchandise order form that came in the Hell Awaits LP:
I still think they were just being ill-advised kids goofing around with fearsome imagery, but that fan-club logo's more right-wing lookin' than the GOP elephant. Anyway, somewhere I've still got an original Hell Awaits tee shirt, ordered from that very form. Or the remains of it, anyway.
Metal bands were big on covering their record sleeves with montages of photos. This was the one in Slayer's Hell Awaits (or part of it, anyway - my scanner's not big enough to capture the whole thing). Look closely and you can spot Slayer clowning around with King Diamond (he's wearing sunglasses - he always did in those days when he didn't have his Kiss makeup on), and Tom and a friend (Kerry?) pretending to snort lines of what I believe is margarita salt. If it didn't get cut off by the scan, you can also see them with Michael Jackson... or, at least a poster of him.
The following message was hand-written on a sheet of typing paper slipped inside my Plasmatics Coup D'Etat LP. Not sure who wrote it. Could be Wendy O.'s handwriting, for all I know. In any case, it was weird/interesting.
Metallica's Ride The Lightning came with a merchandise insert. I ordered every shirt available. Anyway, here's a copy of that artifact, which has probably never been seen by 98% of their current got-into-the-crappy-Black-album-first fanbase.
And from Sacred Reich's Ignorance album, we have a much more interesting merch sheet. This was from the days when Sacred Reich was still a crossover thrash/hardcore band, and before they got on MTV with horrible songs like "31 Flavors" and tried to be "accessible." I love the way Miss AquaNet 1987 is holding the shirt up so it won't restrict the view of the boo-tay (which I don't see listed on the merch sheet). It was kind of out of character for Sacred Reich to be doing this stuff, but, hey, whatever sells obscure band shirts, I guess.
We were recently talking about Peter Steele, since he died a few months ago. Most of his fans nowdays only know about him from Type O Negative, but here are a couple of shots of him with Carnivore, from the back and sleeve of their second album, Retaliation. Later I might try scanning some of the sleeve of their debut LP, which had a cartoon of a bunch of bestial skinheads and such covered with three-armed swastikas... which, at the time, supposedly didn't mean anything, but later got picked up by some idiot-supremacist group.
Pete was still holding down a day job with the NYC sanitation department, and you can see he's wearing a tee-shirt from work in the second photo.
Here's Death, from the back cover of their first LP, Scream Bloody Gore. Mere children, inventing death metal! You can practically see their bicycles parked outside the garage where they practiced. They look more like refugees from the film Over The Edge than death metal pioneers, but, there they are. I have that Kreator shirt. Igor gave it to me. Thanks again! I still wear it.
From Anthrax's Spreading the Disease LP we have a sleeve cartoon drawn by the multi-talented Charlie Benante. Play "Where's Waldo" with Freddy Krueger (unless the scan cut him off).
And, finally, because I wanted to make sure I put in at least one thing that nobody'd likely be familiar with, here is the back LP art of the Comely album by the obscure band, Bar-B-Q Killers. I never got into them all that much, because they've been described as a combo of Scratch Acid and Jesus Lizard, two bands I never much cared for, either. So, this stuff was noisy and (to my taste) boring... but, you still have to notice a band who puts an adult hydrocephalic on the back of their album (unless that's just a distorted picture), and has song titles like "Her Shit On His Dick," "Dookie Tingue," "Jose O. Dingleberry," and "Fistula."
Some day, if I get the energy, I need to go through those LPs and look for hidden messages scratched in the "gutter" and make a list of those. Y'know the blank section of record in the middle, around the label? Sometimes bands would scratch messages there. I can't remember 'em offhand, other than Carnivore's first album had "Spread Your Legs, I'll Seed Your Eggs" scratched there. Part of the fun of vinyl.
The main fun of vinyl, though? The smell. Kids today will never know what a record smells like, and that's tragic, because that's one of life's greatest scents. Yeah... try to download a smell, ya disposable-society-supportin' fuckers.
Recently I got some new space to move things to, which is good 'cuz I'm one of those hoarder people you see on TV. I am hoardcore! I am sporting a hoard-on! I live in a hoard-house! I make stupid jokes about what is supposedly a mild form of mental illness! Inappropriate glee for everybody! Anyway, after getting actual shelves to keep DVDs on instead of just having to pile them in mass amounts of boxes, I cleared up some space and actually can access my old LP's again. (Still can't play 'em... my turntable is either broken or unplugged - due to more hoarding pile-up I can't check the plug-in to see which it is. Besides, what good is life if all the mysteries are explained?).
Anyway, even though they've been making a slight comeback on the nostalgia market, "records" are still a foreign concept for a lot of people nowdays (hell, CD's are becoming foreign to a lot of 'em, since people are getting stupider and are willing to pay for "access" and trust electronic media to keep their libraries for 'em - I could do a whole huge rant on this but I'll hold off), I figured I'd go through my LP's and post some stuff from the inserts and cover art. I was a rabid metal/punk in the 80's, even before thrash emerged, so I've got original vinyl copies of a lot of stuff that's now considered classic... and a lot of other things that are now forgotten. There's a lot of stuff I could post, and I'll probably do more as I dig through the collection, but here are just a few things to start us off. Some bands filled the album sleeve with things. The Dead Kennedys would give you whole booklets of Winston Smith artwork, or posters (I have that Frankenchrist poster that got them sued), and SST would stick multi-page catalogs in their releases. Still got those.
So, let's go through my record collection and make fun o' stuff! I hope the 'net will resize these things so they're not crazy, or I may have to delete the post. I am tech-ignurnt). I'll avoid too many really obscure things, to make it more interesting for those who know the bands, but probably never saw 'em on vinyl.
This first lovely photo is from the sleeve of The Dayglo Abortions classic Here Today, Guano Tomorrow LP, which brought you such beautiful songs as "Hide The Hamster," "Drugged and Driving," and "Fuck My Shit Stinks" (that one always makes me cry!).
Spud there, on the far left, is not quite succeeding in doing the ol' tuck-yer-wiener-between-yer-legs-and-look-like-a-girl trick (made famous by Tommy Lee in the Pamela Anderson sex tape - she screamed "Stop it, I hate that!" when he did it). You can still see far more of his schween than you ever wanted to. The drummer, Jesus Bonehead, on the far right, seems far too amused (I always worried about that boy) and appears to be in the process of trying to attempt the feat himself. The other band members, Cretin, Mike Anus, and Nev The Impailer (sic), are caught in a faux-vagina crossfire. And I'm not sure it showed up in the scan, but down in the left corner there's a recipe for "Hamster In Cream Sauce Flambe." I haven't tried that. But I sure as hell played the fuck out of this silly album. "Drugged And Driving" is a helluva song, even if you're straightedge.
Next up, we have a picture from the back cover of The Great Kat's Worship Me Or Die LP. She appears to be torturing her bandmates, and they're reacting with appropriately cheesy expressions, because as dominatrixes go, they don't get goofier than Kat. Anyway, the reason I posted this is because I think it's as close as you will ever get to seeing a picture of The Great Kat with her mouth closed. Yep, she's still baring her teeth, but at least her jaw isn't hanging open like an attacking pelican, the way it is in every other picture of her you will ever see. Search the web if you doubt me. Apparently an unhinged jaw is crazy-genius-metal 'n' shit. If you can see her fillings, there's more metal, y'know.
Shall we do some Slayer? Aye, we shall. Didja know that when Slayer started out, they used corspepaint like a black metal band? It wasn't extreme, just some Hellhammer-style eye-darkening, but, yep, they did it and here's the proof, from the back of the Show No Mercy LP.
Kinda goofy, ain't it? Hanneman, with that inverted cross. And yes, Kerry King once had hair instead of a big goofy beard that he brandishes in fury.
Also, Slayer's gotten a lot of crap for being psuedo-Nazis. I don't think they are (Tom Araya's Chilean, fer christsakes... but then again, he's also supposedly a Catholic, so he's apparently able to reconcile himself to a lot), and most of the blame goes to the song "Angel of Death," just because it's about a Nazi. Hardly an endorsement for Nazism, that one. But, I gotta admit, they asked for a lot of that trouble themselves by calling their fan club the "Slaytanic Wehrmacht." Here's a merchandise order form that came in the Hell Awaits LP:
I still think they were just being ill-advised kids goofing around with fearsome imagery, but that fan-club logo's more right-wing lookin' than the GOP elephant. Anyway, somewhere I've still got an original Hell Awaits tee shirt, ordered from that very form. Or the remains of it, anyway.
Metal bands were big on covering their record sleeves with montages of photos. This was the one in Slayer's Hell Awaits (or part of it, anyway - my scanner's not big enough to capture the whole thing). Look closely and you can spot Slayer clowning around with King Diamond (he's wearing sunglasses - he always did in those days when he didn't have his Kiss makeup on), and Tom and a friend (Kerry?) pretending to snort lines of what I believe is margarita salt. If it didn't get cut off by the scan, you can also see them with Michael Jackson... or, at least a poster of him.
The following message was hand-written on a sheet of typing paper slipped inside my Plasmatics Coup D'Etat LP. Not sure who wrote it. Could be Wendy O.'s handwriting, for all I know. In any case, it was weird/interesting.
Metallica's Ride The Lightning came with a merchandise insert. I ordered every shirt available. Anyway, here's a copy of that artifact, which has probably never been seen by 98% of their current got-into-the-crappy-Black-album-first fanbase.
And from Sacred Reich's Ignorance album, we have a much more interesting merch sheet. This was from the days when Sacred Reich was still a crossover thrash/hardcore band, and before they got on MTV with horrible songs like "31 Flavors" and tried to be "accessible." I love the way Miss AquaNet 1987 is holding the shirt up so it won't restrict the view of the boo-tay (which I don't see listed on the merch sheet). It was kind of out of character for Sacred Reich to be doing this stuff, but, hey, whatever sells obscure band shirts, I guess.
We were recently talking about Peter Steele, since he died a few months ago. Most of his fans nowdays only know about him from Type O Negative, but here are a couple of shots of him with Carnivore, from the back and sleeve of their second album, Retaliation. Later I might try scanning some of the sleeve of their debut LP, which had a cartoon of a bunch of bestial skinheads and such covered with three-armed swastikas... which, at the time, supposedly didn't mean anything, but later got picked up by some idiot-supremacist group.
Pete was still holding down a day job with the NYC sanitation department, and you can see he's wearing a tee-shirt from work in the second photo.
Here's Death, from the back cover of their first LP, Scream Bloody Gore. Mere children, inventing death metal! You can practically see their bicycles parked outside the garage where they practiced. They look more like refugees from the film Over The Edge than death metal pioneers, but, there they are. I have that Kreator shirt. Igor gave it to me. Thanks again! I still wear it.
From Anthrax's Spreading the Disease LP we have a sleeve cartoon drawn by the multi-talented Charlie Benante. Play "Where's Waldo" with Freddy Krueger (unless the scan cut him off).
And, finally, because I wanted to make sure I put in at least one thing that nobody'd likely be familiar with, here is the back LP art of the Comely album by the obscure band, Bar-B-Q Killers. I never got into them all that much, because they've been described as a combo of Scratch Acid and Jesus Lizard, two bands I never much cared for, either. So, this stuff was noisy and (to my taste) boring... but, you still have to notice a band who puts an adult hydrocephalic on the back of their album (unless that's just a distorted picture), and has song titles like "Her Shit On His Dick," "Dookie Tingue," "Jose O. Dingleberry," and "Fistula."
Some day, if I get the energy, I need to go through those LPs and look for hidden messages scratched in the "gutter" and make a list of those. Y'know the blank section of record in the middle, around the label? Sometimes bands would scratch messages there. I can't remember 'em offhand, other than Carnivore's first album had "Spread Your Legs, I'll Seed Your Eggs" scratched there. Part of the fun of vinyl.
The main fun of vinyl, though? The smell. Kids today will never know what a record smells like, and that's tragic, because that's one of life's greatest scents. Yeah... try to download a smell, ya disposable-society-supportin' fuckers.
6.13.2010
All knobs to the right! Ten thousand watts of Hell! All knobs to the right! Bid your balls farewell!
This is just meant as an observation and not as a judgment or anything, but... anybody'd who'd buy a Jackson Browne album would suck a cock. Which is fine if that's what you're into, nothin' wrong with that, but, just know where you stand. Or kneel, however you go about it, and god bless ya.
When I was a kid he was always described as "rocker Jackson Browne," but I beg to differ. What did this guy ever do that "rocked"? Okay, "Running On Empty" could possibly be good if The Drive By Truckers or somebody kicked it in the crotch and did a beefed-up, grittier version of it, but that's about as "rockin'" as I've ever heard this tired, Daryl-Hannah-smackin' washrag ever get. Most of his stuff makes James Taylor sound like... well, I was gonna say Lemmy, but that's not really true, because even a comparison with Bread can't make James Taylor sound like Lemmy. But Jackson Browne does make The Eagles sound like Motorhead! How's that? The accuracy sends chills down your spine, no? I guess it's wrong to hate somebody just for making music, but when it's that music, I think maybe it's fair enough. Death to false soft-rock!
Is it wrong to wish that Jackson Browne start dating Tila Tequila? They deserve each other. (If you haven't heard about that, read up on it here and here and here - it's one of the most pathetic ploys for attention anyone's ever done. Did she really think nobody was going to check up on that shit? She says she has multiple personalities, but from what I've seen she doesn't even have one). Who mated Angie Dickenson with a chihuahua, that's all I wanna know.
Wow, I'm really being an asshole today.
Anyway, since I've told you what's bad, I guess maybe I should do a few music reviews and tell you what's good, eh? Okay... attention, you fucks! (Man, I still miss Bruce Rohers). The best stuff I've heard in the past several months is actually something I heard in the mid-80's. Medieval. I got this band on vinyl back then, one of my blind "this looks heavy" purchases, and I quickly loved the damn thing. The crunchy, dirty home-grown production made them sound like a garage band, and they looked like a bunch of preppy high-school kids. Nobody in a thrash band had short, normal-guy hair back then.
And while they were speedy enough, they weren't trying to play faster than everyone else, like most bands at the time were doing. And while bands were coming up with crazy names like "Slayed Necros" and "Satanic Slaughter," these guys were three brothers named Timmy, Willjious, and Terror (okay, maybe that one was made up, but he just did production so I'm not sure it counts) with a bassist named Elwood Chew. Seriously... Elwood. And they were from Kalamazoo, Michigan. In other words, there was NO pose to this band. They weren't playing the game, just the music.
Would Slayer or Venom include such a photo on their lyric sheet? I think not!
And the music was crazy-great. It was stripped-down and simple (except for some crazy shredding frequently layered all over the bottom end) Motorhead-influenced stuff, but ultra-catchy. When all my vinyl got buried under piles of video-hoarding and I didn't hear 'em for over a decade, I could still remember nuances of this music. Finally Renaissance Records released a limited-to-1000 CD of it, and I promptly went to their website to order one. Never do that -- Renaissance Records is a rip-off and took my money and never mailed me anything, never answered e-mail, nothin'. But, a couple months ago I found a guy in Greece selling a copy of the CD for a reasonable price, and he delivered and it hasn't left the stereo since. Until a reliable company re-releases this masterpiece on CD, you can find a download on this site. I don't usually recommend downloads 'cuz I'm all into supporting-the-band and stuff (I tried, guys!), but since it's so hard to track down and a definite must-have, you may want to try it. Up to you. The band is apparently still somewhat-active, since the CD had a few new tracks on it, and those also killed! I hope these guys put out some new material, 'cuz I'd definitely be buying it.
I've gotten a few other CDs lately... I'm not sure I've really listened to them enough to be reviewing them yet, but, what the hell, I'm irresponsible, I'll do it anyway.
Exodus has a new one, Exhibit B: The Human Condition, which they may be considering the second half of a double-album that started with the unholy-great The Atrocity Exhibition: Exhibit A. Exodus is keeping up with Slayer for the title of ol'-man-band-that-still-kicks-ass. Listen to this as you read (you fucks!).
Lyrics to that are a bit cheesy (but considering the previous post covered Manowar, I think we've established that cheesy lyrics can actually be pretty cool), but that riff kills. And you gotta love thrash bands that let you hear the bass. Is Tom Araya even plugged in? This next one starts out a little Iron-Maiden-y and then goes into this crushing thing, laying waste to all in its path.
And you can always win me over with an attack on the Christian right, and this one rages. New vocalist Rob Dukes sounds kind of like an amalgamation of their previous vocalists, and I like that you don't really need a lyric sheet to make out most of what he sings.
While I'm on Exodus, let me harken back to a song on a previous album, Shovel Headed Kill Machine. The song is "Deathamphetamine," and it has possibly the craziest, how-the-fuck-are-they-playing-that?!? riff I've heard in a decade. It starts at exactly a minute into the song, and it's insane.
Another good thing I got lately was Same Thoughts Different Day by The Subhumans (the Canadian punk band, not the one from the UK, although I love them, too). This is a re-recording of their classic Incorrect Thoughts LP. The band wanted to re-release the original, but discovered a defunct label they never heard of claimed ownership of it, even though they never got a penny from this company. There was no documentation to prove ownership, either from the label or the band, so rather than go through a legal fight the band decided to do what Doom did with their "Fuck Peaceville" album and just re-record all the songs, problem solved. I've heard the original (thanks to the magic of bootlegs) and these new versions have much more oomph to 'em. I'm fond of the spare, minimalist sound of the original, but the re-recording is a definite improvement in every way. Can't find anything off the new one, but here's one of their old versions just so you can get the flavor of the band. Top-notch punk for you fucks!
Got another punk band, Th' Inbred, Legacy of Fertility. I'm a bit dense, I guess, 'cuz I didn't get the joke in the title until I noticed that the font was a copy of The Misfits. They're rough hardcore with some weird time signatures thrown in there (they used to be compared to Victims Family, and I can understand why, although these guys were more hardcore and raw than VF, and perhaps not as musically talented (but then, who is?)).
Speaking of Victims Family, Ralf is now playing for Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, which sounds a good bit like the Dead Kennedys did at the end of their career (Frankenchrist, Bedtime For Democracy). I was never super-crazy about the Dead Kennedys last couple of albums, so I feel pretty similar about this new project. Jello's lyrics aren't as cuttingly clever as they once were, but still, it's nice to see him still in the game, and even though this band didn't blow me away, they're far, far from bad, either, and I'm still glad I bought it.
The intro is long, but Jello's always fun to listen to, so, go ahead and click it.
Nice, ominous bass intro on this one...
Anyway, if none of this stuff appeals to you, then I suggest some Jackson Browne.
And cock.
When I was a kid he was always described as "rocker Jackson Browne," but I beg to differ. What did this guy ever do that "rocked"? Okay, "Running On Empty" could possibly be good if The Drive By Truckers or somebody kicked it in the crotch and did a beefed-up, grittier version of it, but that's about as "rockin'" as I've ever heard this tired, Daryl-Hannah-smackin' washrag ever get. Most of his stuff makes James Taylor sound like... well, I was gonna say Lemmy, but that's not really true, because even a comparison with Bread can't make James Taylor sound like Lemmy. But Jackson Browne does make The Eagles sound like Motorhead! How's that? The accuracy sends chills down your spine, no? I guess it's wrong to hate somebody just for making music, but when it's that music, I think maybe it's fair enough. Death to false soft-rock!
Is it wrong to wish that Jackson Browne start dating Tila Tequila? They deserve each other. (If you haven't heard about that, read up on it here and here and here - it's one of the most pathetic ploys for attention anyone's ever done. Did she really think nobody was going to check up on that shit? She says she has multiple personalities, but from what I've seen she doesn't even have one). Who mated Angie Dickenson with a chihuahua, that's all I wanna know.
Wow, I'm really being an asshole today.
Anyway, since I've told you what's bad, I guess maybe I should do a few music reviews and tell you what's good, eh? Okay... attention, you fucks! (Man, I still miss Bruce Rohers). The best stuff I've heard in the past several months is actually something I heard in the mid-80's. Medieval. I got this band on vinyl back then, one of my blind "this looks heavy" purchases, and I quickly loved the damn thing. The crunchy, dirty home-grown production made them sound like a garage band, and they looked like a bunch of preppy high-school kids. Nobody in a thrash band had short, normal-guy hair back then.
And while they were speedy enough, they weren't trying to play faster than everyone else, like most bands at the time were doing. And while bands were coming up with crazy names like "Slayed Necros" and "Satanic Slaughter," these guys were three brothers named Timmy, Willjious, and Terror (okay, maybe that one was made up, but he just did production so I'm not sure it counts) with a bassist named Elwood Chew. Seriously... Elwood. And they were from Kalamazoo, Michigan. In other words, there was NO pose to this band. They weren't playing the game, just the music.
Would Slayer or Venom include such a photo on their lyric sheet? I think not!
And the music was crazy-great. It was stripped-down and simple (except for some crazy shredding frequently layered all over the bottom end) Motorhead-influenced stuff, but ultra-catchy. When all my vinyl got buried under piles of video-hoarding and I didn't hear 'em for over a decade, I could still remember nuances of this music. Finally Renaissance Records released a limited-to-1000 CD of it, and I promptly went to their website to order one. Never do that -- Renaissance Records is a rip-off and took my money and never mailed me anything, never answered e-mail, nothin'. But, a couple months ago I found a guy in Greece selling a copy of the CD for a reasonable price, and he delivered and it hasn't left the stereo since. Until a reliable company re-releases this masterpiece on CD, you can find a download on this site. I don't usually recommend downloads 'cuz I'm all into supporting-the-band and stuff (I tried, guys!), but since it's so hard to track down and a definite must-have, you may want to try it. Up to you. The band is apparently still somewhat-active, since the CD had a few new tracks on it, and those also killed! I hope these guys put out some new material, 'cuz I'd definitely be buying it.
I've gotten a few other CDs lately... I'm not sure I've really listened to them enough to be reviewing them yet, but, what the hell, I'm irresponsible, I'll do it anyway.
Exodus has a new one, Exhibit B: The Human Condition, which they may be considering the second half of a double-album that started with the unholy-great The Atrocity Exhibition: Exhibit A. Exodus is keeping up with Slayer for the title of ol'-man-band-that-still-kicks-ass. Listen to this as you read (you fucks!).
Lyrics to that are a bit cheesy (but considering the previous post covered Manowar, I think we've established that cheesy lyrics can actually be pretty cool), but that riff kills. And you gotta love thrash bands that let you hear the bass. Is Tom Araya even plugged in? This next one starts out a little Iron-Maiden-y and then goes into this crushing thing, laying waste to all in its path.
And you can always win me over with an attack on the Christian right, and this one rages. New vocalist Rob Dukes sounds kind of like an amalgamation of their previous vocalists, and I like that you don't really need a lyric sheet to make out most of what he sings.
While I'm on Exodus, let me harken back to a song on a previous album, Shovel Headed Kill Machine. The song is "Deathamphetamine," and it has possibly the craziest, how-the-fuck-are-they-playing-that?!? riff I've heard in a decade. It starts at exactly a minute into the song, and it's insane.
Another good thing I got lately was Same Thoughts Different Day by The Subhumans (the Canadian punk band, not the one from the UK, although I love them, too). This is a re-recording of their classic Incorrect Thoughts LP. The band wanted to re-release the original, but discovered a defunct label they never heard of claimed ownership of it, even though they never got a penny from this company. There was no documentation to prove ownership, either from the label or the band, so rather than go through a legal fight the band decided to do what Doom did with their "Fuck Peaceville" album and just re-record all the songs, problem solved. I've heard the original (thanks to the magic of bootlegs) and these new versions have much more oomph to 'em. I'm fond of the spare, minimalist sound of the original, but the re-recording is a definite improvement in every way. Can't find anything off the new one, but here's one of their old versions just so you can get the flavor of the band. Top-notch punk for you fucks!
Got another punk band, Th' Inbred, Legacy of Fertility. I'm a bit dense, I guess, 'cuz I didn't get the joke in the title until I noticed that the font was a copy of The Misfits. They're rough hardcore with some weird time signatures thrown in there (they used to be compared to Victims Family, and I can understand why, although these guys were more hardcore and raw than VF, and perhaps not as musically talented (but then, who is?)).
Speaking of Victims Family, Ralf is now playing for Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, which sounds a good bit like the Dead Kennedys did at the end of their career (Frankenchrist, Bedtime For Democracy). I was never super-crazy about the Dead Kennedys last couple of albums, so I feel pretty similar about this new project. Jello's lyrics aren't as cuttingly clever as they once were, but still, it's nice to see him still in the game, and even though this band didn't blow me away, they're far, far from bad, either, and I'm still glad I bought it.
The intro is long, but Jello's always fun to listen to, so, go ahead and click it.
Nice, ominous bass intro on this one...
Anyway, if none of this stuff appeals to you, then I suggest some Jackson Browne.
And cock.
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