Betty Bloodletter

ON WRITING ABOUT ART AND WASTING TIME...

2011-07-18T22:39:00.000-07:00

So I took a month off reviewing horror stuff, and sat back, reflecting. Aaaand in other news, I received an anonymous request to only review films because nobody cares about books and "books are boring".

Srsly.

Good thing it was anonymous. I have this ugly tendency to occasionally remind people of their ignorance with my fist and/or the front half of my car. Insurance agents hate my guts.

Heck, I wanted to be surprised at the reality that nobody cares about fiction anymore, even if it's slash-tastic horror. But stupidity is not only excusable these day, it's a moneymaker. I mean, let's give the devil his due here. Even though ghost stories and horrific/fun folklore have been passed down from generation to generation, the hype lies in the movies because there's a commercial that instructs you to see Lindsay Lohan embarrass herself or Nicholas Cage's hairpiece create magic spells. I get it.

But...alas! I'm still going to keep reviewing the fiction. Yeah. Tough shit you little illiterate bastard teletubbies-raised pudding people. *Note: this message is only intended for little illiterate teletubby-raised pudding people known in a more common vernacular as imbeciles.

I will say this though - I think I will make a change in 1 aspect of the blog. I'm going to shorten my responses to stuff so that I can review more books and movies. My list of stuff to review has doubled in the time I'm writing. I suppose that's cool because it means I'll never really run out of stuff to review even when I'm old and scaring small children in the supermarket. But on the other hand, there are a bazillion horror movies/books out there, and I aim to find the best of the best. I came to realize this past year, that of all things, the greatest insult to me is wasting my time. Like when you have to go to some "meeting" where everything could've been just as easily and tactfully disseminated with a simple godforsaken email. I constantly have the urge to scream: "You know, you just wasted 2 hours of my life that I will never get back!!!!!!"

That concept is more horrifying to me than the movies and books I love to watch and read, or the other random obsessions I have (wouldn't you like to know). So more reviews, less time-wasting.

Here's a cornucopia of other wastes of time...entitled...

A CORNUCOPIA OF VARIOUS WASTES OF TIME.
................by Betty Bloodletter

Because nothing turns you on more than hours of creeping up to read the ignorant bumper sticker on the car in front of you.

Yeah! Why live a real life when you can live a thousand vicarious ones!

Overly-padded men strut back and forth for hours over a hundred yards of boring.

Children. Enough said.

I get a buzz putting children next to cigarette butts. 5 seconds well spent.

There IS a reason for the first four letters. Have YOU figured it out?

Kill yourself with chemicals!

Your boring status is wasting my precious time. Nobody wants to hear about your amazing time at the Blink 182 concert.

Hipsters. Waste of time, oxygen, blood, and caring.

THE WOMAN IN BLACK

2011-05-31T13:22:00.000-07:00

I'm still in a bookish mood (aka, my allergies are annoying the hell out of me and I'm pissed), and it's a rainy day at the end of May, so I figured I'd throw Susan Hill's The Woman In Black at you along with my offensive mood. I picked up this book a few months back when partaking in another episode of my search for the scariest fiction ever. People all over the world wide whatever have recommended this book claiming it was truly freaky. I guess I'm freakier than truly freaky, because I put this book (on a scale of craptastic to awesome) at meh/good.

WTF = 18
W = 7
T = 6
F = 5

The gist of the story is estate lawyer Arthur Kipps (in hopes that his ready ability to more or less kiss ass and take difficult jobs will land him a promotion) follows orders from his boss to go to this small town called Crythin Gifford to handle the affairs of the newly deceased Ms. Alice Drablow and her lovely property Eel Marsh House. At the time of reading this piece, the names of characters and places didn't make me laugh, but in retrospect it does seem a little silly. This is styled in kind of an Edith Wharton voice, so you have the prim and proper people besieged by the ghost of an undone woman, her tragedy, her vengeance, all told in prim and proper voice.

Anyway, Kipps soon gets drawn into the mess and ultimately pays his own price for assuming he can just doodle around with dead people's stuff, even though he's just trying to do his job. I'm not ruining the story (you know I don't believe in spoilers), as the story is told in retrospect from an aged and shellshocked old guy who's had to rebuild his life since his time in the small haunted town. Think of this as a really British Ringu.

The story, in some ways, reads like it was written in the first half of the 20th century, and I think I probably would have been fooled if not for the silliness of a name like "Eel Marsh House" to check the copyright date and discover it was written in 1983. That Hill received the W. Somerset Maugham award is also something. There's something brave about her writing in a style that is not contemporary, bringing it back to the early 20th century in voice and in story. But I also felt there was unreached potential for the story to be maddeningly frightening.

Perhaps it's the dialog, perhaps it's the character interplay. I do not know. And this is not to say that I don't like the ridiculous. I do really like the description of the woman herself, her wasted face, how she lingers on the edge of sight like an illusion. How people of the town shun anything to do with her out of total fear. How the children die. That's freaking awesome. But I put the book down disappointed, not with the story but how parts of it seemed rushed, like they were holding out on being completely mindbending because unleashing more would be completely...un British? I don't know. That's mean. But, I guess there's something to say for reading something that feels like there's a tennis racket wedged up your ass a little further with each new description of something that would normally drive a person batshit.

Is this a case for more realism? No. This book is what it is. And I'm being harsh. But for one second, picture yourself in a bed in a dark abandoned house. Outside the wind and sea beat against the land. You have never ever before in your life been so alone and you are a young person. You can hear what sounds like distant screaming but don't want to admit it to yourself. Suddenly you hear movement, the opening of a door. Footsteps. Creaking stairs. Tell me, just tell me you would not be more or less shitting your pants? I mean, depicting shitting one's pants would probably ruin the mood of the story, but you get the idea. You don't hold it together, rationalize it, or go to investigate. You hide. You run. People are more or less creatures that run away when they are scared. I'm not asking for realism: after all poop isn't really scary. But cut the paint by number, "I doubted what I saw and so I calmed myself down and went for a flashlight and a cup of tea" and scare me. This is the best I can do to describe why this book doesn't broach above a 20 on my scale. I read it always wanting more (not in the good way), and ended it with an, "...oh."

There have been adaptations of this book. One made-for-TV show that people claimed was scary but I had to laugh my ass off. I've included the clip that people claim was so terrifying that if you put it in replay it's the most hysterical thing. Another was a play adapted by this guy Mallatrat. Have not seen the play, though there have been many good reviews and it is something I'd be interested in seeing adapted given that most theater doesn't really aim to scare. It's just not the most common genre especially when you have so many idiots who want a fucking love story. But then again, I am reticent as Broadway generally makes me want to barf into my playbill. I've never seen a show that's good enough to convince me that the actual definition of a Broadway show (particularly musicals) is not the ritualistic translation of a story so that retards can understand it. I know, I'm being cruel again. I'm too sick to be politically correct. In other news, this review is well-timed because in December 2011, I believe Hammer (could not wrong, too lazy to check, do it yourself) is coming out with another version starring what's his face from Harry Potter who has grown up to look like Uncle Jessie from Full House.

Am I wrong? Ok, whatever. I actually do plan on seeing this movie (though probably when it's available on Netflix because I hate spending 10$ so I can have feet sticky with old soda and listen to someone's snotty kids ask stupid questions - they should see the Broadway version!) when it's available. My hope is that the directors will have picked up on that feeling of holding back that bothered me throughout the story. My hope is that they will give the actual storyline behind the woman in black more clarity and connection to why she seeks revenge to others, why her spirit is so unforgivably malign. For some reason or another, I think Radcliffe might be able to pull of the bumbling young Kipp, but we'll see. We'll see indeed.

Because it's so short and sweet, I would totally recommend reading this book on a rainy day like this. It's not by any means a bad book. Also when you check out this clip of the first TV adaptation below (totally not what happens in the book) watch the clip first, then go to 1:14 and keep replaying it a few times just for shits n' giggles. I know I'm twisted, but do it and tell me how ANY director didn't see how her eyes were crossed and how this has all the makings for a great comedy scene.

LOVE LOVE LOVECRAFT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2011-04-26T17:48:00.000-07:00

I have previously rattled on about how this guy is A 100% ACTUAL MASTER OF HORROR WITHOUT QUESTION, but only in agony at directors making craptastic crapflicks out of his stories. This review is all about his fiction, which countless other authors and directors have circled around in hopes of raising its darkness from the bottom of the abyss. You will have to trust me and take the time to read the insanely awesome works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft if you have any faith in any of the other horror stuff I've recommended. It is not an easy read at first (especially for people who are not very literate - we don't do much booklearnin' these days wen we gotz the teevee). I've known several college-educated people who could not really understand his sentences, and while I might say "that's okay, it's just not your style" to help them save face, I will also say to my esteemed readership that this book is not for you if you are not past an 8th grade reading level. At least. Ok nuf said.

One vein of thought that I will repeat is that there are not many writers out there who have managed to invent their own mythology. Lovecraft is one of them. Ironically, what got me into Lovecraft was the FANTABULOUSLY twisted and kinky conspiracy-theory of all conspiracy-theory books Wilson and Shea: The Illuminatus! Trilogy (also not for the feint of reading comprehension). I discovered in these two authors' heavily-layered fact-o-fiction the deep lures of many Lovecraft shout-outs, allusions I would later find in countless other books and movies and TV (X-files included, lol). I now take a huge amount of nerdy amusement in identifying the embedded Lovecraftian images in sci-fi, horror, and fantasy. After Illuminatus, I had to find out what all the fuss was about this guy, as isolated and tragic in his own way as Poe, and ever-surrounded by the mysticism that he helped create.

I should say that I'm not a huge Poe fan. I realize he was one of the greats to the audience that was his audience, and certainly a score for us American writers, but for some reason I never really bought in, much much much as I wanted to. Possibly because he was one of many blunt instruments used by one or two overpaid officials of the American public school system to ram "culture" into my brain. While I admit he was dark and creeptastic in his own pre-ghetto Bronx way, I always saw him as a tad bit of a drama queen. More melodramatic than hardcore, getting his panties all in a bunch because of a metaphorical bird and such. Yes, I'm dissing The Raven. I did it. It is rare that I find myself looking to be frightened by metaphorical birds. I can be saddened by metaphorical birds, but not necessarily frightened, and I guess that is one difference between the whimsical and the absolutely horrifying. I wanted the nitty gritty details of what exactly scared you shitless, not your description of the conniption you had after being scared shitless. I thought he'd do much better as a director of macabre theater in 1965 or something, curse my soul for saying it but it's true, as wondrous a wordsmith as he was. But then came HP, and I was knocked backward and upside the head. This was something that just felt intrinsically different than any genre of horror I had ever attempted before. It was like I was finally finding this essential piece of my love of horror fiction that was missing all the while. This was truly dark, as in dark under thousands of feet of black ocean current, dark as in dark beyond eons of cold glittering stars, dark as in the heavy metal lord of horror.

WTF = 29
W = 10
T = 9
F = 10

This was the kind of horror that had me up at night, feeling ill-at-ease. Written by a guy who died before 1940, his work is still as wild and relevant as it was when it was initially printed in the pulp mags. The eternal leavings of Lovecraft's self-termed "cosmicism" are items like the Necronomicon, and creatures like Cthulu, Dagon, and the Old Ones, including a language much more metal than Tolkein's elf talk that all those dorks buy rings with the inscriptions and such. That being said, I have fallen victim personally to Lovecraftian merchandise (though nothing as lame as some locket with something an elf said, I'll give you that at least.) For some reason I felt while reading all of this crazy stuff, that somehow, Lovecraft was basing his stories on some tangent of reality. That it could very well be that aliens landed here long before humans ever populated the earth, and that their technology or aims were unimaginable to our feeble linear minds.

While I continued to tell myself I was just reading epic and hysterically well-worded pulp fiction, I dug up the old X-Files phrase almost immediately, because I found I could not help but apply it to the pilots and scientists in the face of the "At the Mountains of Madness", or the poor fellow in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", or the simple farmers in "The Color Out of Space". There was nothing else but to admit it to myself loud and clear, assuming that perhaps this was what other writers and directors were feeling when they pulled imagery and relics out of Lovecraft's prose either as a lovingly-made allusion or a half-assed attempt to pass off genius as one's own:

"I want to believe."

And oh did I ever. I guess if the slew of other famous names of those who profess him to be a complete genius and an influence to create does not convince you to read this stuff, hopefully my testament that this guy managed to scare the living shit out of me while keeping me interested in not only his twisted, gnarled plots but also his characters will add to the ranks. You may find at first that, like his drawn influence from Poe, Lovecraft's also a tad bit dramatic too with his lengthy flourish of language and multi-syllabic vocabulary, but when you are standing in the ancient dead hallways of a million-year old cavern built by all-knowing slumbering alien minds creating technology far exceeding anything humans could come close to imagining you just try not to have a panic attack.

As a new reader of Lovecraft stuff, I would start fairly simple. Had I begun with "At the Mountains of Madness", I might not have gotten far with his work, though that is definitely the place to end it with a bang! It seems all so archaic at first, like nothing out of the 20th century. You will stumble at first with his writing style unless you generally read stuff from pre-1900, and this is to be expected I think even from the seasoned reader despite our desires to make others believe our brains comprehend everything instantly. I'd advise starting with something like "The Colour Out of Space", or even "The Call of Cthulu". I remember "The Curious Case of Charles Ward" was also one of the early ones I enjoyed. There are several editions of Lovecraft collected short stories that are great, but I will suggest two sets that I have and quite enjoyed.

I would suggest starting with this edition titled Tales of H.P. Lovecraft (selected and edited by Joyce Carol Oates). This is a good little stack of Lovecraft stuff and a great way to get started before you go for the extended additions: Omnibus 1-3. These books are super-chunky with a huge cross-section of Lovecraft's writing, including some of the less-stellar stuff, so you'll more or less have to do some sifting. I don't care if Joyce Carol Oates or Jesus Christ did the intro for the book - the reason I picked this edition first is because the stories contained are good examples of Lovecrafty goodness. I generally don't read introductions as a rule unless I'm bored and stuck on a plane with nothing better to do than pick my nose. And even then, nasal spelunking is usually way better than the contents of most introductory material. If the author you are reading is THAT good, their work should usually speak for itself and I find biographical stuff online.

And here be the Omnibusssses. All told, you have about a year's worth (at least) of screaming space madness the likes of which will creep you out indefinitely. And while it would most definitely be one hell of an experiment to see what happens to your general mentality and life after one full year of reading nothing except Lovecraft...I probably would not advise it. You would inevitably fall apart like the author did.

I actually found that, as much as I loved his writing, I felt always a little sick when I read it. This is the only stuff that gave my husband nightmares...he's the logical type that doesn't dream. Possibly because the guy manages such an intense feeling of ominous foreboding that if you're into the stories you can't help but feel kind of ill with this dull kind of constant worry in the back of your mind. It's maddening after a while and I discovered that what worked for me is to vary what I read and when I have a random rainy day where I can get away with a good hour or two's delve into something epic, I'll grab one of these and see what I find.

Get into Lovecraft to get in touch with your ageless, slimier self, the part of you that wouldn't mind descending into a thousand-mile-deep oceanic abyss to learn the secrets of the Universe...and possibly be eaten alive by a creature four hundred times your size. Lovecraft awakens in all of us, through the Cthulu mythos and his other tales, the sense that everything on earth and in the space around us is so much older than we can really fathom. That we are at the brink of some insanely ageless magical violent and indifferent mystery. I think what ultimately draws readers into this kind of writing is the realization that we humans know so little of the truth of what makes us sentient beings in what often appears to be endless dead space. And so we ask: what else is there?

Heavy metal horror...

Nerd Alert: bought one of these cuties for my husband. An adorable fluffy eater of souls :)

And lastly, some old Metallica (before they became a country band)...

ISOLATION

2011-03-27T19:42:00.000-07:00

Ay me. I gotz me this book in good faith but all I gotz in return was some bad religion.

WTF = 10...eek.
W = 3
T = 4
F = 3

I feel bad about buying Isolation and since this incident have begun a horror book trade with friends and scouring libraries so I don't feel like I'm wasting my funds on something I can borrow for free. Let's get one thing straight first: I have no problem with this being a Christian fiction book or writer. As I've said before, the only thing I don't really like is feeling like I'm buying into something smallminded, or that I'm being forced to listen to your shitty didactic ramblings on why your particular god is the only god or the better god, and the only other side of it is heathenism. You might ask me why I thought The Exorcist was a good movie and the answer is because the exorcism and possession itself was more or less made a spectacle AND I did not feel like I personally was being lectured. Many authors manage to hold fast to their beliefs and not shove it down the throats of others through their books.

I had three main problems with this book. The first was that I had difficulty relating to the characters because I did not like them and I think they were supposed to be liked. I could not feel for their plight of living off of other people while they converted "the unsaved". I hate it when this voice arises in me, but I found myself saying, "Sheesh. Get a real job." Which is at least a reaction to character, albeit a bad one (hence a 10). Said family of missionaries has returned to the USA for a several month vacation following their many months "working" to "save" some brown people from Satan and such. I do not mean to clump all zealots together, and I am not so ignorant as to suppose that many missionaries have not saved the lives of others through medical help, provision of food and clean water, better shelters, education, etc.. While I am very thankful that there are people who care that much, I'm equally annoyed that there are people who believe that in addition to improving the temporal conditions of the less fortunate, they also have to push the heavenly fortitude of their personal savior (whoever that may be - there are zealots in every belief system). The lives of this particular missionary family abroad were more focused on the conversion factor though there was some mention of more conventional missionary work as well. The village they were trying to "save" fell victim to a series of strange plagues and possessions (the kind that routinely fall upon people who are fanatics - not people who don't have a concept of the opposing religion). So, in short, I wouldn't have been too bothered if this family had an untimely meeting with an axe-murderer, tribe of angry badger-men, or battalion of aliens with scalpels. Not a good way to start a book if you're supposed to like the protagonists.

Father figure has trouble with his super strict faith, mother figure has trouble tolerating her family, and one of the children is basically a crudely-disguised rip-off of Danny Torrance. Which brings me to section two of why I should not have paid 12 US dollars or whatever for this book: it's more or less The Shining with religious ho-hum and half-explained anti-satanist whatnot instead of a kid who can talk to a wise old chef without saying a word and a father driven insane by lingering evil. The end of the book contains a whole diatribe about how Stephen King was a role model, etc.. I think it's okay to have role models, but a little strange when I felt like I was reading a less awesome version of Jack Torrance's Overlook adventures. Thrasher had a goldmine of interesting points to go into as an author: the mysticism and facts behind possession amongst the highly suggestible, the creepy history of the house he chose to describe in such detail only to abandon at the last minute, the unsteady and kind of old-school 50's relationship of the mother and father figures. There was a lot to work with that went untouched. But their vacation home being unreachable in a snow-storm coupled with the son's special ability seemed only a dead giveaway.

Which leaves us at my final qualm: the dead giveaway of the ending. I don't do spoilers, but I will say that unless you are very inebriated while reading this, are deliberately trying not to read this, or have had a lengthy and painful operation to replace your brains with mashed potatoes, you will see this ending coming from about forty-seven miles away. You will see it coming from so far away that you will be able to cleanly step out of the path to avoid a prosaic collision likened to when an elderly woman bumps into the salad bar at Wendy's and spills nothing but a few hard-boiled eggs. If this book were some sort of tongue-in-cheek introspection of itself, I might have been interested. Instead I was assuming it wouldn't be so obvious, and bewilderingly kept on reading, which only made me more angry when I finished it. I love Stephen King's old stuff as you know and so far, I've found two authors who I feel were a little too close for comfort for me. It doesn't astound me so much, because this is after all human behavior: to find someone really awesome and do like the monkeys. But it's my hope that any author of any caliber would encourage all other writers to do what decent teachers all over the world advise their students to do: be yourself. Embrace singularity over the conventionality of paint-by-numbers reading because it made millions for that other guy who doesn't even bother to imitate himself anymore. If you want to yearn after the heyday of Stephen King with a book that at least has the guts to give a shout out to the guy, this text is for you. If you have read Stephen King and would like to read another author, move on.

THE DARK TOWER SERIES

2011-02-17T23:30:00.000-08:00

For a very long time, I have longed to rid myself of the addiction to reading Stephen King novels. But we have history, Mr. King and I. The first non-girl lit books I ever read were his horror novels. I was eight when I started. For me, horror novels symbolized my departure from reading what authority figures (aka Elementary school teachers librarians and my mom - ever hopeful that I'd grow up to be a graceful swan in a family of carnivorous Italian-Germans, eh...her intentions were good at least) told me to read. With a little covert saving and spending on my part, I could finally put down Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, Gone With the Wind, and (urgg) Nancy Drew for good and move on having learned that if girls could be writers, plantation owners and detectives, they could bloody well also read horror fiction.

This was long ago, when I was in fourth or fifth grade, back when the internet was considered by suburban luddites as a ridiculous ephemeral phase of technology that noveau-riche and tacky families added to jack up their phone bills and flaunt to their co-workers. Little did they know how much the invention would take hold. Little did I know, huddling under the flashlight in my bedroom reading about ghosts, vampires, monsters, etc.. how much of an impact this one writer would have on me - as is the case with so many other readers.

Not my tat. But not bad choice.

All I knew was that I was not allowed to stay up to watch Stephen King movies and that aunts, uncles, older cousins, and schoolmates with more lenient parents had read his books and were delightfully frightened by the stories contained. I wanted to be a part of that. I wanted to be up at night with the covers pulled up to my chin. So I saved my meager allowance of like five dollars a week to purchase several used copies of his books.

When my mom finally realized I was more of a horror fiend than a women's empowerment book fanatic, it was she who bought me my first tattered copy of The Gunslinger from a 'throw out' pile of library books she raided. Though she still does not know it, this was one of her greatest gifts to me. Though I have read books by hundreds of authors and in just about every genre, the number one repeated name on my bookshelf is still Stephen King. There's just no way around it. Sometimes people are dumb lemmings, but sometimes the majority sees something awesome, and that this is the case with King's best work, I have no doubt.

Years later, I would be humiliated by my senior year AP English teacher in high school, who told me (in front of the class) when I requested a paper topic on the literary and commercial phenomenon of Stephen King, that I should pick "a real writer" as opposed to "trash". Had I known that I could get away with telling a teacher to go fuck himself without significant damage to my chances of getting a decent college scholarship, I would've relished in the deed, but my respect for people in positions of 'responsible adult' still had a strong a grip on me. Perhaps it was for the best that I did not, or else I would not have developed such a comfortably-seething hatred for the honored realms of lit crit's adherence to viewing books on the limited scale of a few scholars and philosophers rather than admitting that everyone has an opinion, and that a huge amount of those opinions have the capacity to be real and right. My opinion then and now is that King is both a departure from the classics and a classic.

That I was barred from writing anything academic about King did not deter me from continuing to plow though his novels. If anything, it only sped up the process. Being told not to do something is modus operandi enough for the adolescent mind. Plus, I had just finished The Gunslinger the year before and was already drawn in to Roland's cause.

In choosing which King book to write about first, I had a hard time. There are just so many other books that he wrote that are more directly categorized as straight horror (Carrie, 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, Pet Semetary, Needful Things, IT, etc.) that The Dark Tower by comparison seems to fall more into the lines of Fantasy. But I have to beg to differ on that one. It definitely is a Fantasy novel series, but underneath it all, each book is guided by that otherworldly horror tone that King manages to place in an Americana layman's voice with ease. When it comes down to why I like King's stuff, it's not only the stories he tells but his writer's voice. Once you've enjoyed one of his books, the rest are not only tales of terror, but sources of comfort, like settling down to being told a story by your favorite uncle or something, the one who the whole family regards as a bit of a rebel and a dreamer. There's familiarity and continuity in almost all of his books that keeps us reading...and buying...;)

The Dark Tower series begins with the epic The Gunslinger, of which I would advise readers to purchase the original cut version rather than the later version released. The cut version actually struck me as more sparse and epic - more holes for the reader to fill in with their own imaginations. It opens with a sentence I will never forget: "The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed." At the time I was more terrified that I would be reading some country western novel and that I would suffer through three hundred odd pages of "draw yer gun, ya dirty dawg" and "who stole my cattle?!". That fear quickly transformed into an affinity for stoic Roland, for the question of life itself, the nature of all of the realms of the universe, of ghosts and vampires and worlds laid to radioactive waste, and speaking demons and oracles.

Roland is on a quest for all answers, joined by a group of oddly-met friends in a world (or many worlds) dominated by the chaos of life and the neverending power struggles of those living life. Yeah, it sounds familiar. A bazillion other fantasy writers have gone there. But there's something special about this otherworldly set. The series is seven novels long, and some of the set are more engrossing than others. Along those same lines, some characters are more captivating than others. Like most series fiction, it has its ups and downs, but King himself sees these novels as a huge chunk of his life's work, written over the course of 30(?) some-odd years. As an author, he's notorious for plugging his other books - there are direct links to 'Salem's Lot, IT, Insomnia, The Stand, and probably a buttload more that I am not remembering in the thousands of pages. I've heard it called King's "uber-novel", one long narrative that links together other pieces of his life's work. My suggestion would be to either read these books first and then read the other major books, OR (this might be more fun), read the others first, then start the series because you'll recognize the links more clearly.

Evenually, Roland meets a young, displaced boy named Jake in an abandoned waystation. The kid has no idea where he is or how he got there. A city kid with a mind full of ideas and nobody to entertain them. I love Jake. He's a kid who is not afraid to ask questions, but at the same time feels awkward and jaded at a young age. The kind every teacher worthy of the title wants in their classroom. I felt linked to this kid because I was also always a nerd (though I kicked boys' asses if they called me that to my face, so there's a tad bit of a difference there), and I never quite fit in with the popularity-hound crowd, though I was voted "class clown" once, or the athlete crowd even when I was on varsity, and so on. Jake is good at what he does but feels completely unappreciated. In Roland's world, he finds his purpose, discovers it was always there but always unseen. These characters make a good duo as they travel together to where the desert ends and the perilous mountains begin. It is from Jake that we eventually get one of the famous quotes from the series (99% of which come from the first book): "Go then, there are other worlds than these." As early as the first book, there is this sort of fantasy version of quantum physics. The possibility of many existences happening simultaneously where all possibilities exhaust themselves.

Likewise, the Man in Black is an equally, if not more alluring a character, always messing with Roland's mind; the reader never knows how much he is leading Roland on, or how much of what he says is truth.

The book and the series continue forward (and backward) in the directions of good and evil and god and the devil and everything in between. King is a bit Christian-y at times, but it doesn't get too preachy, and I'm fine with that - I'm not a Christian, but I respect everyone's point of view so long as they are not trying to convince me I'm a heathen (I already know that). Some of my friends who have read the series are disappointed by it. They either don't like some of the characters, or the occasional religious undertones, or the ending, etc.. While many of them have good points to the series' downsides, what kept me reading was the journey of it all, the voice, and the most of all the questions.

Over the course of the series, you can't help but bond with some of these characters and their relentless quest through time and space. At least I couldn't help it. We are introduced to heroin addicts and split personalities, vampire hunters, soothsayers, witches, peasants with pitchforks, and the Crimson King himself (perhaps a shout-out to the beloved King Crimson?). What I loved about these books was that I did not want them to end. This is a rarity for me. I'm one of those sadists who forces herself to finish books that are lagging, boring, full of plotholes, full of shit, etc.. because I feel that I am disrespecting the author by putting the book down and judging it without seeing the whole scope of the thing. In my recent years, I've slowly developed some ability to say "this is shit!" and put it down, but not entirely...I still have a stack of books on my nightstand that are buried under books I want to read - a stack of books I feel guilty for not finishing. I know. I'm a dork.

BUT! When I find a book or series of books that motivates me to stay stuck in that world, to get hooked, I am appreciative. This set is grounded in fantasy, but I argue that fantasy and horror are husband and wife. They both ask the same "what if...?" questions. The both posit the same outlandish situations. The differences between them are primarily tonal, but both push the buttons of life and death, time and space, and The Dark Tower is exemplary of that marriage.

This review must be written before Ron Howard goes and makes a movie out of it all so more Americans can be convinced that they don't need to read anything and people in general can continue to get dumber. Why did you sell the rights, Stephen? Did you need another marble indoor pool or something? Ok, yeah, it might be great like Kubrick's The Shining, (but you yourself had some major issues with that and then ended up okay-ing a made-for-tv movie as if it would somehow rectify the situation). Kubrick's version was pretty awesome-o, I'll give him that (even though Nicholson was as batshit in the beginning of the film as the end - was that one of your complaints too?) I guess it had to happen and here's hoping it will rock as much as some of the other King books sold into celluloid.

I will also note that the books have been made into graphic novels as well...HOT FRIGGIN DAMN can we knock it off with the marketing? While the images in the graphic novel are kinda kickass.......Can't a book just be a book? I have tried to get into them but find that watching the images and dialog bubbles corrupts my initial vision of the series, which I prefer to keep thankyouverymuch. The magic of the original books in this set is exactly that: writer's voice and description met with reader's vision. No amount of illustration and CGI can make up for that in books like these.

I suppose it's about marketing. How else would people remember a writer's name? But the originality of that first awesome journey across the desert and through the mountains blew me away - and that was a tattered, dogeared yellowed and musty used book - THE BEST KIND!!!! From said tattered dogeared yellowed musty used book sprang these messed up and broken worlds that are not quite ours, but have pieces of our world hanging around, like "Hey Jude" playing in a piano bar of a desolate badlands town

Read these books because they are a colorful and weird journey, not because you expect Roland to do what you want him to do. Read these books if you like anything King has done (at least the early novels). Read these books if you like being sucked into a comfortable yet on-the-edge without being some wanky and heinously over-detailed alternate reality. Read these books if you can handle some level of cheesiness for the sake of an earnest yummy yarn. They are the the biggest lump in the life's work of one of the world's bestselling authors and while I think a lot of bestselling authors are full of shit, this is not so with King, who wrote through childhood and tough jobs and poverty and parenting and still makes sense. It is a rarity for me to sink inside a book, or for a book to make me cry or feel anything semblant of real concern for a character. But Roland and his wonder-horror journey won me over.

WTF = 28
W=10
T= 9
F= 9

Stephen King gives advice to those who want to be writers...

CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD

2011-02-06T23:28:00.000-08:00

It had to be done. And it was not an easy decision: in prefacing the many zombie movies to come into this collection I had before me several questions. The first was - do I give my esteemed readership a classic or do I surprise them with something modern and hyper-real? The answer, searching my ghastly heart of hearts, whispered...no shouted: CLASSIC!

Ah, but then I had to ask further: do I give them what they're expecting...which frankly is Romero? This is not to say that I will not rant AT LENGTH about Romero's fabulosity and shortcomings at some point in the future. What it came down to is picking the single zombie movie that had the most impact on me personally, and the answer to that complicated question is:

WTF = 25
W = 9
T = 8
F = 8

Yeah, yeah. It may not be the scariest zombie movie out there, but in my mind, it's one of the most creative. Fulci is a pro at this, so there are going to be a lot of readers in my readership that feel differently and that's ok. Your opinion is valid. And validly denied. If I were to recommend a zombie film to someone who never saw a zombie movie before, I would tell them to see this - yes even before Night of the Living Dead - for the sole purpose of seeing zombies in their Italian-American overdubbed heyday. I'd tell them to see Night...etc. to get the backstory of how it all sort of began, but only after seeing the cheesetastic and somewhat creepy creation of City of the Living Dead. For the record, this is a decent story with hilariously horrific details.

I'm talking about religious overtones. For once, forget the science of zombies. While (as I have said a'many times before) I quite enjoy it when directors/writers try to provide evidence-backed explanations for extraordinary plots, this is one movie where I kinda like the blurred meaning and the idiocy of the characters.

As is true to most Italian horror movies, the plot is really of no import. But I'll give you a briefing. In this case, we begin a creepy macabre priest who commits suicide on hallowed ground, thereby opening a portal to hell. I love/hate it when that happens. Sometimes you get an awesome splash of zombies battling humans to the last man. Other times you get a Republican electoral win. Saying that I prefer the undead is a blurry statement, so I'll be specific: I prefer the fictional outcomes and this is one film that by far exceeded my expectations. After the priest hangs himself, you have a seance with a bunch of psychic mediums that gets broken up when Mary Woodhouse (aka Catriona MacColl) has some sort of a seizure and they have to call 9-11. The paramedics pronounce her dead, and the police think it's a bunch of druggies in their investigation. A psychic with a low voice and a white-girl-afro (a hilarious product of the 70's that I truly wish would come back into fashion merely so I could laugh at them all over again) claims that this is the end of the world or some psychic blibblab, and we are instantly launched into zombie fun, beginning with...

...Woodhouse's burial. A snazzy scene. For some reason or another the poor woman wakes up in her coffin (this is why cremation is kinda preferable to me) and is rescued by the cigar-smoking Christopher George playing Peter Bell. I have to say that the coffin scene here is not to be beat. Rather epic in terms of lighting, timing, and dare I say: acting! I'm not sure how little or how much of this film is overdubbed, but the lot of it is self-aware and awesome. George rescues MacColl and they begin a fun adventure to finding this portal to hell so that they can close it before the apocalypse begins.

In a fight between Columbo and Christopher George, I'd vote for George any day. This guy is like a less stylish Lou Reed with a few really bad acting classes. Just a joyride to watch as he tries to man up to Woodhouse in their quest up the East Coast to the source of the undead scourge. He manages to smoke cigars for the majority of his speaking roles and to not appear actually affected by the majority of the whole 'rising from the grave' thing as is the trend in Italian zombie movies (until it's too late and such). Once they make it to the town a whole series of weird happenings has already passed and people are beginning to suspect that something is seriously wrong. Couples pick the wrong make-out spots. A poor young girl dies too soon, leaving a little brother looking out the window for her to return. Suspicious men in provincial bars begin to talk amongst themselves...somewhat Lovecraftian.

By the time Woodhouse and Bell arrive, it seems already too late. What follows is a series of powerfully awesome scenes of horror that you will not forget anytime soon. Not in the sense that they are scary, but only in the sense that they are classic. And in some cases - even by 1980 - classic rip-off material. I think this is partially where Fulci rips off Argento (once you see the maggot scene, you might be somewhat reminded of my dear Suspiria). This is a moment where you're like...uh...are these directors simply putting in flying maggots everywhere because they know people are grossed out by them? It's definitely not scary, more like one of those TV extravaganzas they have in Latin countries where you have girls in skimpy sequined dresses speaking with lots of rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr's and fruit hats and crappy bands and dudes with false teeth and tuxedos (not much different than MTV, but at least MTV as a bit more tact and by tact I mean less fruit hats and more guys with gold teeth and shitty new pre-teen music releases that nobody over 14 and or over 110 IQ would purchase).

But...again...I digress! I will preface my next statement in stating that above all things in the world including pain, bleeding, breaking of bones, bending of ligaments and tendons beyond their natural capacities, etc.., my GREATEST MOST HATED THING IN THE UNIVERSE is puking. I would rather have someone break my fingers one by one than deal with a stomach virus or food poisoning. I hate doing it, and I hate hearing it, and MOST OF ALL I hate watching it. BUT! This movie quite possibly contains the #1 best and unbeatable puke scene ever. An unfortunate couple drives up to some make-out spot and starts doing the nasty in the front seat of a car...which I never EVER understood as I do not find gear-shifts or consoles or dashboards, glove compartments and seats designed to fit people as snugly as possible conducive to lasciviousness. I mean, if you're going to drive all the way to some secluded spot, why not bring a sleeping bag or something? Why get it on in the most uncomfortable way possible? I do not understand. But for some reason, it works on film and it always has worked on film, because you can simply stick a camera in the window.

The girl gets the creeps, the undead priest shows his face, and suddenly, slowly, with almost unbelievable ridiculousness, the poor girl voms out her entire internal organ system. I feel SO SORRY for the actress who had to film this scene. I'm not sure what they used, sheep or pig or cow or whatever, but I'm QUITE POSITIVE it was not worth whatever she was paid to do it for. Anyway, because of the unique total grossitude of this one scene, I have to cite it as the most intense internal organ vomming ever to be filmed ever. To date. You may not find that an achievement, and to be honest, I'm not sure if I do either, but there you go. The glorious part of this scene is (for those of you who share my phobia) the that vomming is so absolutely ridiculous and filmed in a horrid piecemeal of cuts where the model obviously had to shove various pieces of raw organs and fake blood in her mouth. I think finally it got too much for the actress so they put an obvious dummy in her place for when she pukes up her own stomach or her liver or what-have-you. It's too fake to trip the gag reflex, but too awesome to ignore.

The remainder of the film is a mix of people teaming up to attempt to understand/counteract the series of evil events that has taken over the small town and its inhabitants. Naturally the team of pure genius uses the old and unbeatable horror fuck up methodology to deal with said events:

Let's split up!

Aaaaahahahah!!!!!!! Gets me every time. Like any non-suicidal group of frightened human beings would EVER use that plan EVER in a situation where dead people were getting out of coffins and eating the living? Who comes up with this bullshit? Answer: directors. On speed perhaps. And on a small budget. Further elaboration: because the movie would end too soon if they didn't split up. Ah.

But let us not dwell in the nonsensical ridiculousness of this 1980 production of cheesetastical zombificiation. Instead we should rejoice in the nonsensical ridiculousness of this 1980 production of cheesetastical zombification!!!!!! This is the timeless rhetoric of horror: whatever you hate about it can also be loved (unlike puking). While this movie makes little sense in terms of a scientific explanation (biblical being the total opposite of scientific) of the scourge of the undead rising to claim the earth, this is a 93 minute joyride of zombie shenanigans that winds the viewers down and down into the catacombs to the end of the world.

There's something refreshing about zombie movies that does not request but DEMAND that you take them as they are, flawed plots and all. I suppose that this is ultimately what I love and hate about zombie movies. They are in various ways true 20th century creations in that they give us big fireworks - displays of blood and gore and maggots and intestine barfing and soundtracks worthy of Wesley Willis - with little explanation other than 'this is a reflection of ourselves!!! oooooo!!!'. They are often poorly cut, acted, directed, overdubbed, and produced, but they are also often barrels of fun n' gore with a few religious/biological/social undertones here and there. City of the Living Dead is among said barrels of fun that is not to be read deeply but definitely to be enjoyed as a preface to all that came before and all that followed. It is what it is!!!

A TALE OF TWO SISTERS

2011-01-23T00:52:00.000-08:00

A tale of beautiful ugliness. Or ugly beauty. Whichever you prefer, A Tale of Two Sisters is worth the ride. I didn't hope for much from this movie when I first watched it, annoyed in the beginning scenes with the typical "girl with hair over face" effect so common since Ringu and Ju-On. My mind instantly screamed "Cash-in!!!"... but this exceeded my low expectations by leagues. I was quickly won by the young girls, their 'evil' stepmother, and the unrelinquished ghosts in their house and in their memories.

WFT = 25
W = 9
T = 8
F = 8

Of course, it didn't take long to try and pull another smelly American remake of this beautiful Korean trip of haunted house psycho supernatural awesomeness. Perhaps it's a form of flattery when a foreign director wakes up to discover his 'merkin counterpart has replaced his characters with sorority chicks and slapped a new title on it. Here's hoping at least Ji-woon Kim made a hefty bundle off his plot. So if you want a dumbed-down rip-off translation of this, go on and watch 'The Uninvited' and leave the big guns to Kim and his cast.

Like many horror creepfests, this flick has a slow lead-in. You have to do the work for the first bit of the film, keeping attention on details you think you might not remember. This is a bit of an atypical haunted house/psychothriller in the sense that you're not entirely sure when things are happening - or if they are really happening - until about the second half. You're also not sure as to which details are significant to getting the story. Just accept that the inevitable way you will start this film is in confusion and the inevitable way you will end it is with the urge to rewind with the purpose of putting the little pieces in place.

Soo-mi is institutionalized and semi-catatonic, her doctor unsuccessfully trying to help her recall the details of some traumatizing event. The next moment, she is being driven home with her sister Soo-yeon to a secluded but beautiful old house by the edge of a sunny lake. The house is dark on the outside and on the inside, filled with rooms of half-light and drawn shades.

In the entryway the sisters are immediately assailed by Eun-joo, their stepmother. She is perfectly-manicured in her style of dress and her tacky smile, and she talks with an incessant cheerfulness that is a poor disguise for the disgust and annoyance at the girls' return home. They barely respond to her because she scares them; they seem shocked to see her as she is (or at all) and they quickly escape upstairs followed by her dialog about how intrepid she is making this big dinner for them and how long it'll take.

The minute Soo-mi gets to her room and returns her diaries to her desk, things begin to go more wrong. The identical diaries she is returning to the desk are already there. Her closet is filled with two sets of the same dress.

Meanwhile, their father makes a phone call to someone. He looks haggard and upset. He does a great job at being both absent and present in the film as a male mired in a kind of over-domineering and warring female presence. He seems to only half buy in to the idea that mothering should be left to a mother figure, but he's also obviously too helpless for whatever reason to do anything otherwise. At dinner, he quietly places two little white pills next to his wife's plate before fleeing the scene.

It's clear that Soo-mi and her stepmother are about to lock horns, with Soo-yeon staring on, dumbfounded and sullen at being forced to sit through whatever situation this is. When Soo-mi leaves, evil step-mama sort of taunts Soo-yeon out of the room, saying she's expecting her to follow after her sister, insinuating she's more or less capable of doing nothing for herself. Soo-mi quickly reassures Soo-yeon that if Eun-joo picks on her, she'll handle it like some kid handling a bully in a schoolyard.

The soundtrack is sparse in this film, and I think this fits the strange atmosphere of the house and the broken family inside it. And the colorization of the film (yes, by now you've figured it out that I'm obsessed with color - it makes all the difference sometimes!) and set are incredible. There are parts of the film that seem totally grayed and faded out, or obscured by darkness, only to be offset by brilliantly color-rich scenes and it's hard to prepare yourself for the sporadic switch between the two perspectives. Many of the scenes with the father are grayish, whereas the more high-tension parts are the reverse.

The horror kicks in with the archetypal signs of the haunted house. Footsteps, cold air, creaking doors, TV static, creepy shit in the fridge, and so on. But what I like about this movie is how the plot escalates, getting more and more messed up as Soo-mi and the stepmother she only refers to as "that woman" exacerbate their rivalry that seems to be centered around the father's love or some old battle from the past. Some of the scenes in this thing stayed with me for months after I saw the movie. It's not that the ending is totally unpredictable (though it took me a while to put it together) or that this is some entirely new invention plotwise. It's just how the events are sequenced, how they add up to the whole story's point, and how the characters are acted that makes this a fabulous reinvention of the haunted house ghost story.

While all of the parts are well-played in this film, the two who stuck the most in my mind were the part of Soo-yeun and Eun-joo. Soo-yeon is the fragile 'little sister' whose behavior is childish and erratic. She scares easily, eats the plants outside the house before anything else when she first arrives, and stays close to Soo-mi in almost every scene. Her character is victimized by the stepmother who Soo-mi claims uses her as a scapegoat

Eun-joo is the polar opposite. She doesn't do a very good job at masking her inner freak show. The suzie homemaker act dissolves delightfully about five seconds into her character's airtime. It's plain that whatever gripes the sisters are suffering from, she is equally if not far more twisted than they are. This becomes painfully apparent when her brother and his scared wife come over for dinner. Eun-joo tells a funny story, and nobody at the table reacts or moves, as if they are frightened of her. The girls are equally disturbed by her, mostly because they are a constant reminder of their real mother, who still has a say in matters - though not in a conventional way. One particular scene of hers is especially "Mommy Dearest"; she yanks Su-yeon out of bed in the middle of the night, messes her around, and locks her in a closet. If the director didn't use "Mommy Dearest" as a muse for that scene, it's one hell of a coincidence.

The presence of the mother figure (the girls' actual mother) was extremely confusing. What her history actually was, or how she came to be replaced by the stepmother is somewhat explained, but not completely. I also wasn't too sure about the ending. On the same vein, I got frustrated with what was or was not real, but I guess that's part of the point. What comes across is that this story is more focused on memory than it is on any one of the three main female characters - though Soo-mi does probably have the most scenes. Memory is elusive. If we are good at lying to ourselves, we can convince ourselves that the past happened in another way. We can paint ourselves and others in a completely different light because even though the past can't change, our reconstruction of it can be whatever we create it to be.

The infamous dinner scene...

THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES

2010-12-31T23:14:00.000-08:00

WHAT COULD BRING IN A HAPPIER NEW YEAR THAN...

A jolly old film to bring out the new and bring in the old. This Vincent Price masterpiece was recommended to me by one of the best horror movie critics out there and I put it on the back burner at first because the title seemed so ludicrous - even though I've never been unamused by anything starring Price. Serves me damn right, this rocked!

Let us take a few minutes to give Vincent Price his due. He is BAD ASS. There are a lot of actors out there who fear being typecast into a specific role, and at times, Price was one of them. Even though he was admittedly typecast into the dark twisted well-spoken villians or the dark twisted well-spoken victims, he did a damn good job at dark twisted and well-spoken. So what if he got typecast? He rocked the roles better than anyone else I could imagine in his place.

How awesome is this guy?

- succeeded in oodles of high & low-budget films

- was well-known for memorizing not only his own lines, but also the lines of the other actors (aka, dude did his homework)

- Yale educated (and not even bought in!)

- patron of the arts, so to speak: donated almost a hundred pieces to a college in the 50's to help their art program

- appeared in Thriller (here be hilarious audio session)

- appeared on The Brady Bunch (lol!)

- appeared on the Muppet Show (happy new year)

- appeared on The Lucy Show

- celebrity roasted Bette Davis

- made an instructional video for Sear's Roebuck employees to sell another of his art collections?

- managed to make TV commercials humorously reusable:
(Tilex, Easter Seals, Polaroid, Wine Coolers, Stay Alive, 3D Cameras, Nestle)

- did voice-over for Burton's Vincent, a short film (Edward Scissorhands, much?)

It is also worth noting that Price wrote at least two books when he wasn't busy being a horror tycoon. One was an art book on American Art - he gives an interesting interview on Carson, more or less commenting that too many people confuse art with galleries and price tags. The second was a cookbook entitled A Treasury of Great Recipes, written by him and his wife Mary. Putting the Kitsch in kitchen.

In Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, and Christopher Lee, you've got your classic horror dude triad of the 60's & 70's, which is in many ways my favorite film era because of the risks directors actors and designers took - stuff that doesn't necessarily look risky from the vantage point of now, but might not have happened if not for the originals. This isn't to say that other decades aren't awesome (it's the recent stuff that's succeeding at actually scaring me the most - you know, when you're sitting there with your fingers plugged in your ears waiting for the thing to strike), but there was something obviously special about this time that makes me kind of envious of those who were young then (I wasn't borned yet). I just like the colorization, the crazy half-method/half-classic hybrid acting, and the daring and possibly drug-induced plot twists.

One of the problems with films in the last few decades is that while we can scare, there are pray few truly WEIRD gems - we often substitute succumbing to the weird with various unstable attempts at either being overly funny so that a huge audience of total morons can laugh at your stupified movie or being overly serious - since CGI can rationally make Jeff Bridges look 20 years younger (except his teeth) and you can always tack on another number to the end of The Ring and make people pee themselves at little girls with hair over their faces crawling out of televisions (the Ring wasn't that bad though, I'll admit). We are afraid - no, terrified - of looking silly or stupid in front of an audience, and many films reflect that fear until it becomes a downfall. The disease of taking oneself too seriously sets in (introduction to Overpaid Hollywood Actors 101). But NOT TO WORRY FOLKS: The Abominable Dr. Phibes is none of those things. It is quite simply an opus of weirdness.

I was caught by surprise by this fabulously self-aware tongue-in-cheek horror, which brought back from memory playfully-made stuff like The Prisoner and Help!. For the first bit of the film, I was sitting there in half suspense, wondering what the hell was happening and whether or not the filmmakers were serious or joking, and the answer is really: both. Dr. Phibes is a (for all intensive purposes 'dead') famous organist and scientist on a mission of vengeance. He's also hideously deformed and speaks through a tube which he connects to various gramophones around his humble marbleized digs.

Working with Phibes is his lovely sidekick "Vulnavia" (porn name much?) who carries out each task in total silence like a magician's assistant. I would love to get my hands on her kick ass costumes, which are these 60-70's odd takes on 20's clothing and enough silly hats to make the pope jealous. In some costumes, she looks angelic, and in others, she looks like a supervillian in the making.

Although ~~Vulnarnia~~ ~~Vulvana~~ ~~Vulvina~~ ~~Vulv..~~ Vulnavia is gorgeous and sleek and an interesting kind of straight-faced accomplice to the at-times laughable Price in all of his grandiosity, I was really confused about who the hell she was, or how an undead organist/scientist managed to get this hot chick working for him who doesn't say anything at all while he blowtorches life-sized wax busts and sorts brussel sprouts. I mean did he stop by a school for hot and sadistic mute chicks on his way back from the undead? (note to self: start school for hot mute sadistic chicks - i'll be rich!!!!) I thought she was his daughter or his dead wife or something, so that part could have been a little more clear than just re-using a Bond girl for sidekick's sake.

I was also simultaneously amused and confused by the death scenes in this movie. While the murders plotted and executed by Phibes and the lovely ~~Vulvarnia~~ ~~Velveet~~a ~~Vulva~~ Vulnavia are hysterically ingenious and varied, I was bewildered at how all of the victims just froze where they stood and let the killings happen (with exception to the "unicorn" death - my favorite - that guy had no heads up and neither did the audience - don't worry, I didn't spoil it for you). I thought they could have invested a bit more time into the whole 'struggle' idea. I don't know anyone with working arms and legs who would just sit there and let themselves be devoured by vampire bats without at least attempting to get up and run.

But then again, this film is what it is, a total horror joyride with a cast that obviously had a metric buttload of fun in the creative process. Price supposedly had to repeatedly have his make-up reapplied because he kept laughing so hard during the filming. I will be the first to admit that I have repeatedly misjudged Vincent Price as a total stock character of himself, and to a degree I'm not entirely wrong: the truth is that nobody does Price better than Price and there will never be another like him. He has yet to disappoint me in a role. I should have queued this movie up long ago, but I'm glad I finally did.

WTF = 21
W = 7
T = 7
F = 7

OMG: action figure desire -------------------->
(Vincent Price Masque of the Red Death)

And now, for your New Year's Eve enjoyment, the movie - follow links in 10 parts!
(one of the BEST opening scenes ever!)

GHOST ROAD BLUES

2010-12-30T14:14:00.000-08:00

I wanted SO BADLY to like this book. I wanted to find a new flavor of horror lit in Bram Stoker Award winner Jonathan Maberry, so I stretched and stretched myself to finish this thing in the headstrong hope that there would be some amazing stuff a page-turn away.

Bleh.

Now I'm mostly angry that:

(1.) I bought this book rather than using the amazingly and saddenly underused resource in America that most people are unaware of known as "The Public Library" and that...

(2.) I forced myself to stick it out to the end rather than obeying my instinct to put the damn thing down as soon as I had the itchy feeling (it's not fungal, don't worry) that I was loitering in an unwelcoming world of piss poor Stephen King stereotypes.

I know that this is harsh, but I put time into reading this and feel cheated. Here's your TMI for the 2010: I even kept it near the toilet when I had a stomach flu in hopes that I could finish it given the reality that I would be spending many hours in the bathroom. The worst thing is that I feel like Maberry writes like he is on the verge of a major breakthrough into something totally terrifying and genius. There are points where his language is scathingly original and funny and relevant to the inner monologue of today's 20-40 somethings - and oh how I wanted that momentum to stick through the whole book, but the plot kept getting in the way. I could not buy in, no matter what angle or position or literary lube I tried.

WTF = A GENEROUS 11
W= 4
T = 4
F = 3

I should state that as a reader I'm pretty much an addict trying to get hooked on a new gateway drug. Most of the time I counteract this behavior by deliberately picking out and looking for well-written (aka Bloodletter-tastic) reviews of books by new people. I go through author phases where I attempt to read anything and everything an author writes once I've sniffed out something good in their books. When I bought this book, I was hoping for another authorial revelation, a new world of someone's twisted horror mind that I could sink into on dark and stormy nights. Alas, I found the plot to be kind of unmemorable though it tried hard to shock me. I found the characters surprisingly flat given the level of background provided. And I found almost no real girthy underbelly of thematic horror goodness that he had the opportunity to expose in his semi-bucolic Pennsylvania community. I know the general area fairly well and a big part of my family lives there - it's fair to say that over the last thirty-fifty years, rural PA has undergone a dramatic transformation in dealing with the industry and population changes, loss of money, etc., and there's a lot of creepy shit he had the opportunity to play with in his little town that I just didn't see.

This is his first novel, so there's room for improvement. This is also why when I publish my first novel, it's going to be COMPLETELY ANONYMOUS and probably public domain so when someone rips me a new a-hole while I get my feet wet, I don't have to live it down. Given my own rippery, I hope that the author takes that voice that I saw in pieces and expands that grasp to really pull in readers on all fronts of the stories he creates. His potential is visible in this first book, but not altogether reached.

ANTICHRIST

2010-12-28T13:27:00.000-08:00

I just realized that I've been waiting to review this movie for a long time...

Antichrist is a difficult movie to categorize and in some ways an even more difficult movie to watch. But it is worth the watch. Lars von Trier does not explain the movie piece by piece so if you are looking for 'the big idea' (as I often find myself doing), you might be disappointed. That being said, I hope you can see beyond that to what the film does have to offer.

WTF = 27
W= 9
T = 9
F =9

The story centers around a grieving couple who lost their son - the scenes of his death being the beginning of the movie, shot in black and white slow-motion. When I first saw the opening sequences, I thought I was going to be watching a modern fart film. To a degree, this was true - the film is what you could call "artsy"...to an extent - that it's told in four chapters with weird title sequences and dreamy music and sounds. Also the preview makes it look like an existential art film. But it wasn't so bad as to give me acid reflux as films and books that get vacu-sucked up their own philosophical anus tend to do. There was more substance to this story, and the watcher is slammed into that substance as soon as the death scene ends, with the parents following the hearse to the grave site, utterly horrified by the reality that they are burying their infant son.

The cycles of denial, anger, blame, and so on begin in earnest when Willem Dafoe (the shizzy) protests his wife's (Charlotte Gainsbourg) - and her doctor's - choice of confinement in a hospital/mental ward based on the belief that he can help her heal better at home. It appears at this point that the death of their son has driven her batty, but when they return home, her behavior cycles downward from ferocious sex to the beginnings of hurting herself and her husband. When the first real fits of violence begin, Dafoe's character decides (much like the fabulous decision-maker, Jack Torrance) that it's a great idea to go to the place where his wife feels most afraid and vulnerable to face and confront her fears. Riiight. This place, she decides, is a cabin in a forest called "Eden", a place so isolated they have to walk for most of the journey through woods, a place where calling for help would be about as effective as autotune is for Katy Perry. Dafoe's character, a psychiatrist, pushes the limits of his wife because he believes he has the background and knowledge to be in control, but what they find at the cabin is an indomitable mix of the imaginary and the occult.

The couple dives further into insanity and it becomes apparent that neither of them are really 'sane'. I use that word carefully, because I am still not entirely sure what it means and I get pissed when people think they have the absolute definition. I can only conjecture at best that it resembles getting through life and being able to enjoy it and gradually learning to be yourself without hurting anyone beyond what it takes to make progress (i.e. straining yourself to achieve something or beat a dependence or addiction or negative behavior - no pain no gain = okay vs. chopping family members to pieces, freeze-drying them and eating them for several holiday meals = not okay). But that's a very loose interpretation. I do manage not to chop people up, but there are some days when I wonder if a couple of artfully wielded axes in the right hands would not make the world less painfully stupid. Today on the news I heard that a woman got arrested for dialing 911......... because she got a bad manicure...(please hold for brief screaming fit). Ahem. On my off days, I find myself musing: "And why do we need this asshole?"

But I do indeedly digress. Point being, it is people who drive themselves and each other batshit. Dafoe and Gainsbourg's characters are isolated into the dim corners of their own headfucks and what is conjured or imagined becomes beautifully/hideously blurred. The plot contorts into the strange back-story of Gainsbourg and her young son on their trip to the cabin the previous summer to complete her "thesis" on the validity of the witch trail sentences. While the whole thesis idea annoys me (having done a thesis myself and finding the majority of the topics in process and in nature to be more political and institutional wankery than mindblowing steps forward for mankind) it does frame the following background question nicely: are human beings (more specifically women) evil?

I dunno. I often ask...AM I EVIL?

The setting of Eden and the self-punishing nature of the mourning guilty mother is almost cumbersome with Eve symbolism, but does well at forcing that question on the audience. I think I lot of people could easily read the film as misogynistic. I don't think it's necessarily about women-hating, but more along the lines of people hating, since the wife tries to chastise herself and her husband. I think self-loathing is the most damaging aspect of humanity, yet we all do it to an extent, and the more of ourselves we destroy, the more it affects others around us. The background is witch trials, but I really felt that the mother and father of the dead child are standing trial. The 'big idea' I was searching for was: who's the judge?

Nevertheless, the word 'evil' to me is about as ambiguous as the word 'sane'. I guess that's why I liked this movie so much, not necessarily the search for explanations (which I always do anyway) but reveling in all of the QUESTIONS. Why do we hurt the ones we love? Is having children selfless or selfish? (Few ever really own up to it that they should not have had kids, but I see those people all the time). Is there a God/Devil or Good/Evil or a fine line between Sanity/Insanity? What is the destructive/creative force behind what this couple is doing to each other? And to what end? The ambiguity of these questions measured up to the images von Trier gives us makes for a strange puzzle that I had to revisit.

The imperfections of this film are many. One of them is Dafoe's character. You get a background of Gainsbourg and her psychosis, but all you really get from Dafoe's history (or lack thereof) is that he was often an absentee husband and father and that he takes his work more seriously than he does his family. Even those bits and pieces come from Gainsbourg's interpretation of him not being there or not wanting to be there. I also don't have any qualms with nudity, but I got tired of bobbing man ass within the first thirty minutes and tired of genitals altogether by the end of the film. I'm sure there was a reason for like six bobbing Dafoe ass scenes and seeing Gainsbourg's bush like 47 times, but haven't yet figured that out. Perhaps something to do with the banality of the body or fleshy sin, but I sense perhaps more to do with film wank. I got the sense at a few points that this was shock-gore for shock-gore's sake, but then again, measured up to the rest of the movie, there's kind of a place for it.

Lastly but not leastly, this film is VISUALLY GORGEOUS, just so beautifully shot that you could almost call it an exercise in images if there wasn't actual substance to the central characters and their weird history. The first time I saw this, I was just picking a random movie to watch after a long ass day. My hubbling joined me, claiming he was about to fall asleep, but would watch a few minutes of whatever weirdness I had found. We ended up watching the whole thing to the end, eyes peeled, exclaiming "Whoa!" in unison at certain obvious parts, unaware of how late it had gotten until long after the credits rolled. I think if you're in a critical mood, it is extremely easy to see this movie for what it isn't, but it's also lame if you can't see the movie for just what it is. For the record, Antichrist is a playfully sadistic experience in the realm of dark ambiguity and conjured horror. See it.

THE DUNWICH HORROR

2010-12-16T19:12:00.000-08:00

This blurb should have been the Brady Bunch theme tune.

I would like to begin this voluptuous rant with a word of warning to the reader: I FREAKING LOVE LOVECRAFT. LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVECRAFT. If I wasn't already married to the hottest mo-fo in the land....and if old H.P. wasn't so creepy (and dead)..... and if I was suddenly a polygamist, I would definitely marry him .....(and John Lennon - also dead, no dice).....(and possibly young Bruce Campbell circa 'Evil Dead' era). I am very unrealistic about hotties. Not that Lovecraft was hot or anything but there's more to being sexy than looks. I'll tell you what's sexy: HE INVENTED HIS OWN FUCKING MYTHOLOGY!!! And it caught on!!! There are warped burnout conspiracy theorists out there who actually think Cthulu is real!! How many of us suckers can in all honesty boast an achievement like that?........(crickets...brief creaks from the graves of the apostles and L. Ron Hubbard)......... Yeah, I thought so. Guys: I would be tickled pink if I had warped conspiracy theorists believing in the shit I came up with. For about five minutes, it was my goal in life and so I tried to think of my own mythological beast. It was named "Octobagus"....I had no idea what it looked like but it had lots of tongues and occasionally hid in people's swimming pools. It also came with a set of stickers that said: "Hello! My name is Octabagus!".......I decided not to quit my day-job.

But that, ye children, be utterly besides the point.

The point is "The Dunwich Horror" is hysterically bad at its best. A inbred cross between "The (original) Wicker Man" and a bad episode of Star Trek. "Half-witted" if you will. I've been using that phrase a lot since I saw the poster: "Hey bro!...I'm doing gooooood. Feeling a bit half-witted lately. That dinosaur birthday card you sent me was so half-witted, yeah...well, if I wasn't so half-witted, I'd consider not putting my underwear over my pants again...[screaming out of car door] HALF-WIT!"...and so on.

It's also my buzzword for the mental state required to enjoy this film.

Here is my overly-generous review:

WTF = 16 (yeah, for realz)
W = 5
T = 6
F = 5

I am ever so glad that Lovecraft died long before this atrocity came out because he probably would've thrown himself feet first into a woodchipper if he saw the level of mockery this film makes of the awesomely metal power of his awesomely metal horror vignettes. What hits me even harder is that his short story, "The Dunwich Horror", is one of the best I've read in the vast and chunky anthologies of his self-made lore. YOU DON'T NEED TO CHANGE THE GODDAMN PLOT, HOLLYWOOD!!!!! I really don't get it, was it a copyright issue? Did the keepers of Lovecraft's estate see what a laughable shitcake film this would be and decide to deny any actual plots being used?

Now, readership, don't get me wrong here. It's not that I have anything against a movie that is so bad it crosses another line into the land of hysterically good. In fact, I love those kinds of movies! Every time one of those movies gets made an angel gets its wings, we ALL know that! I guess I just get a little bit ~~homicida~~l ~~stabby~~ ~~bludgeony~~ antsy when you take something as gloriously intricate and beautiful as a good Lovecraftian tale and distort it into something non-ironically funnier than the episode where Batman battles the armed hippies. And so here we have Lovecraft vs. ...................the flower children?

Normally, I would find this shit priceless. It's just disgusting to me that you had such a sick plot already laid out there for you!!!!! Why change it? Reminds me of when people make history-based TV shows and change up the real history for these stupid TV plots...when the lives of the people they are blurring were totally interesting and novel and weird all by themselves. If this were a completely different movie with a wacked out story all its own, not ripped off of one of the primordial horror writers of our time, I would be cool as a cucumber with it. But quite simply: you don't mess with H.P. on my watch. Dig?

I'm also going to put this out there: I was kinda uncomfortable with two things. The first thing that made me feel weird was the quantity of Sandra Dee side-butt shots during the whole initiation/impregnating scenes. I tried to imagine myself as a lesbian or a guy to see if this weird shit would turn me on. Epic fail. Totally not turned on by lengthy self-grabby side-butt shots. Either show the whole damn thing or leave it out. This made me realize the movie was a step away from bad soft-core porn. So the side-butt was the first thing that weirded me. The second thing that weirded me was Dean Freakin Stockwell. And don't give me this "but he saaaaved the film!" bullcrap I keep hearing from the "Quantum Leap" fiends. All I can do is conjecture as to what specific type of acid he took prior to filming in hopes that I never NEVER take it myself.

That being said, I will briefly expostulate on what is good about this movie. What is good about this movie is the color. That was actually pretty much it for me - lots of high contrasty stuff typical of 70's horror films. But there was something a bit more neat-o about it, as if the set designers were perhaps the only truly creative people in the entire production. I think that aspect saved the movie from becoming something hopelessly forgettable. That being said if you happen to be drunk and high on paint fumes, you will absolutely love this movie and it will reside on your 'favorites' shelf. I was in neither of those states when I watched it having left my 1000% proof and paint fumes in the garage next to the cleaning products and laundry detergent. It made me briefly wish I had the addictions required to thoroughly enjoy this movie but I just don't have the gusto or level of self-loathing to cultivate them. Being my just plain sober insane and egomaniacal self, I can only categorize this film as a colorful piece of half-witted side-butt.

And here is the preview for said half-witted side-butt for your paint-fuming pleasure:

THE STRAIN

2010-12-11T20:41:00.000-08:00

I don't know what it is about vampires. Seriously. I can't decide whether I like them or find them akin to some moody drag queen you don't want to be around when she doesn't have a cigarette or a proper lay. As the books and movies about vampires come out of the woodwork (and as I revisit the oldies), I have my ups and downs about vampires. The Strain, however, mildly reassured me that everyone indeed hasn't turned into a pre-teen fucktard craving real sex and settling for the shitty metaphor of a bunch of emo kids biting each other.

Part of it is because I'm more of a supernatural kind of chick. You can do more with the supernatural. Less stereotypes to play into or to deliberately break. Also, I do confess I'm not really a huge Guillermo del Toro fan. I think his movies are definitely good, but I've never been knocked off my feet. And then to make it worse, you meet the die-hards with their "Oh but man, did you see Pan's Labyrinth? Did you see that?! I mean, whoa! That was totally incredible." Del Toro is a talented director, I will give him credit where it is due, but I found it to be less incredible than something Terry Gilliam would dream up in an afternoon nap. Still good. Just not Gilliam. So that being said, I've been on a bit of a vampire book thing since Twilight came out. Let me explain that statement before you send an assassin to my house:

Ever since the shit-tastic Twilight came out, I had to reassure myself that there was good vampire reading and film out there.

Ok, so yeah. I was insecure. In my lamentation I also watched True Blood for this reassurance and got a lot of manicured people from Hollywood pretending to be dramatic rednecks. I often feel that I need to explain to some people that the word 'vampire' is not synonymous with the word 'hairstyle'. If that were true, every metrosexual in the world would spout fangs.

The Strain gave me some - a glimmer - of hope. One review I read before I bought it said something like "it's a vampire book for boys" or something. I felt sad because I'm not a boy - I'm actually pretty girly (for someone who can neatly beat one's face in), but I guess I fall on the boy side of things when it comes to vampires. I'm not saying they can't be smart, hot, or glamorous. All I'm saying is they need to be scary. If you can't get the scary part right, you are not reading writing watching or filming horror. In actuality: you are reading writing watching or filming A SOAP OPERA. Let's just get those two things distinctly laid out there.

WTF...23/30
W = 9
T = 7
F = 7

I'll be a Negative Nancy and start with the problems. So you know in advance before you splurge on it in hardcover. It starts out scarier than it ends. That's my main issssssue with it. But, for the sake of the story, I'd say, finish the book. It goes from horror to thriller. And it takes A LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLOT to thrill me. It's also very fast-paced which for most of the book is in Hogan/Del Toro's favor. The downside of this is the book seems too deliberately quick in parts "nothin' to see here, move along, move along". The characters are also in some ways your typical characters dealing with a crisis of disastrous proportion. In places their shock and awe at the situation is too stereotypical. In my personal opinion, more people need to shit themselves when watching the dead walk around on streets. Also, I get annoyed when you use a simile in every other sentence, and that seems to be Chuck Hogan's style of writing (because Del Toro couldn't write it himself and needed to ride shotgun, which is also a little weird). But again that's just me. Here is a brief imitation of said writing style:

"I waddled into the bathroom like a penguin, holding my pants as I went like a scared actor from the 50's. As I flicked the lights on like a person flicking lights on I felt the oncoming terror of what was buried in the flabby sack of my ass hit me like a train hitting me at high speeds. I heard a sound like a crash of thunder emerge from my pants and reared my head in a high-pitched scream like a banshee on roids. I'll never eat Indian food again. Like an ass."

The End

Which leads me to the goodies of the book. As you know, I am not of the faith that demands every horror work be filled with flying intestines. BUT! This book is satisfactorily gory in all the right places. These are NOT well-groomed and dressed folk with pale emo faces and beguiling abilities of hypnosis based on their amazing Hollywood looks. The authors made monsters. Me likie. The first half, the detection of the vampire threat - as opposed to a terrorist threat - combined with the initial shout-out to Stoker, I thought, was pretty fabtabulous. I always like it when authors and directors actually try to explain the crazy shit they're writing about. It's an elaborate lie, but that's entertainment. Deal with it. It's not some 'because-god-said-so' why these creatures are burned by the sun and drink blood. The authors got fancy creative with the origins and reasons behind bloodsuckers. Here, vampirism is biological, a predatory parasite. Yummy! Let me tell YOU that I am the first jackass in line to completely agree with your pseudo-science explanation. You don't really have to go far with it, and I'll be like, "Oh, THAT TOTALLY MAKES SENSE!!!!!!" You just have to put a little more effort than Prince of Darkness to float my boat and this novel did that. It gave me enough fake-o-science gobbledygook to get the job done. I also liked two other twisty details Del Toro/Hogan threw in about the vampires.

The first is (whether it was intentional or just an awesome byproduct of the story) a reference to the zombie craze of the late twentieth century. When people are first bitten and turned they are these total mindlessly hungry creatures that will eat their own baby without a second thought. And so you more or less have this walking-dead zombie thing going on for a while. The second thing I like is how the parasite progresses - it gains intelligence after more and more feedings so the host (though it is no longer the person bitten) appears more able to communicate with other vampires and humans. In this sense, Del Toro gets the best of both worlds. He gets the rabid zombie invasion and he gets the cool calculation of a creature that navigates the periphery of the human world, taking as it pleases.

Lastly, you have the setting of New York City and the real fear of what would happen if a seriously serious outbreak of anything lethal happened there. How quickly it would engulf an entire population is just staggering. How quickly those in power would run out of things to say is even more creepy. Del Toro could have picked any city, but picked NYC probably because of its connection to 9-11 where there was this sense of wide-spread panic that he deliberately references (too many times). I've always been fascinated with the catacombs underneath cities, and NYC has another city's worth of tubes and halls underneath its massive body. (A la Ghostbusters II - the ooooooooooooooze! - but more terrifying). I read this thing in two days and I am one slow-ass reader. It has its flaws, but for sure the story will twist and wind and lead you to those dark caverns to confront the masses, and I'll tell you one thing: it ain't no pre-teen emo dance in the high school gym.

Here's a preview for the book...

THE INITIATION OF SARAH

2010-11-28T23:26:00.000-08:00

Timeless wisdom from the world of 1978 made-for-TV ...
"I wonder why they didn't want us to wear any clothes beneath this?"

I stumbled upon "The Initiation of Sarah" whilst trawling netflix in hopes that I could either bore or laugh myself to sleep. Mission accomplished on both counts. BUT! Before I closed my laptop to pass out, I discovered that this Carrie cash-in was not a complete waste of time (after all, I folded laundry and did my nails while I watched it).

You could say I was lured in by Shelley Winters' ceremonial initiation garb - out of curiosity as to why she signed on for this made-for-TV creation ($?). You could also say I was baffled by the Dallas side-character count here. Morgan Fairchild, most likely freshly kicked off Southfork by Pamela and looking for some sorority action. Also, Morgan Brittany plays Sarah's sister. Ironically, Fairchild also appears in the remake of this film, made in 2006, the year Winters died. So, yeah, you could say I was intrigued by the cast list. You could also say I had just polished off half a bottle of Guenoc after work and lacked the motor skills and drive to move on to something that is not a shining example of the 70's in all of its retarded glory.

That being said, let us look on the bright side! This film is a shining example of the 70's in all of its retarded glory! An excellent specimen in slapstick piano-dropping, poo-slinging horror with all of the graceful tact of a tampon commercial. It is the story of two sisters - one of them being an easily-manipulated social butterfly - the other, an anti-social (also easily-manipulated) slightly disturbed telekinetic. A match made on ABC Family.

Our two lovely sisters make their way to Waltham College, where they will be pledging various sororities in hopes of not living in the dorms and gaining social status through effectively buying their friends. This movie was filmed way back when sororities and frats still thought they were cool. Sarah and Patty check out the string of sororities in hopes of getting into their mother's sorority as "legacies", but Jennifer Lawrence does not like Sarah as a potential pledge, and wishes to separate Patty from her sister as a kind of power play.

I can't help it that Morgan Fairchild reminds me for some reason of every female gym teacher I have ever had: all she needs is a bright neon track suit made out of that swishy stuff. Her voice even sounds like my gym teachers (except for the one who had a tracheotomy). I realized about halfway through the movie that I was waiting in anticipation for a speech on why being able to do 75 sit-ups and the mile-run is important. Needless to say, I do not find spray-on hair and constantly thick make-up particularly attractive - in fact, it was kind of the scariest part of this movie watching Fairchild come out of the water looking like her face was re-touched again underwater. It's like her face has been spray-painted on in every television episode, movie, or picture I have ever seen of her. In this sense, however, she makes an awesome sorority super-villian. This is definitely her best role.

So poor Sarah gets blackballed by Jennifer Lawrence and crew, and she's stuck pledging Pi Epsilon Delta. PED is lauded as "Pigs, Elephants, and Dogs!" by Jennifer and friends at Alpha Nu Sigma - a sorority that needs an Upsilon stuck in there somewhere (har har). Sarah makes many fun friends at PED - a sorority that would've actually been fun with a bong in its living room, but had to settle instead for the illusory Mrs. Hunter (Shelley Winters) - not too bad a trade if only Hunter wasn't a crazed occultist. And so, with the two sisters pulled apart and divided against each other, the unspoken rivalry between ANS and PED reignites. Sarah becomes the target of Jennifer's bullying, and Sarah unwittingly fights back by using her 'gift' of telekinesis, which the PED house mother quickly enlists as a weapon to win the age-old sorority war of who gets to host the lamest tailgate parties.

Sandwiched between the kitschy exterior and the dark evil poo-slinging heart of this piece is the heartfelt anti-bullying message, a bit of fluffy PSA: "Don't bully the weird girl or you'll end up telekinetically cut to pieces." In some ways, this is the only really disturbing part of the movie, the only actual horror - that this kind of bullying actually really actually for real happens to real people in the real world by people as actually stupid as the character Fairchild plays. Actually. I don't think there is anyone I know who went to high school or college and did not experience some level of idiot human cruelty, poking fun at people who are different and the like. Nowadays we have kids bullying each other and being asswipes online (a la Jessie Slaughter), and the occasional suicide with facebook or myspace 'friends' bullying others. While this movie predates the technological aspect of bullying, it's not hard to imagine what it looked like before you could write some horrific message troll-style on someone's fb page. Sarah is first separated from her sister by birth and then separated from her sister by popularity contest. If everyone in this movie didn't look like they were over 30 and the dialog was not so fabulously trite, I'd have felt bad for these "kids" too.

But it was also a tad hard to relate...I grew up in a different time and place, where college kids in sororities and fraternities were for the most part looked down upon as the desperate sort of people who needed to be associated with a letter in order to score friends, an outdated and asinine form of name-dropping. There were still lots of them, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't the majority anymore, and the decision not to pledge was not met with scorn or early retirement to the chess club (chess rocks anyway). So I didn't really relate to the girls' initial need to pledge, but I was kind of happy that this movie (though dumb as a bag o' hammers dialog/plot/character-depth-wise) was at least smart enough to make that statement as early as 1978 that this sort of nonsense was nonsense.

I will also say that if you have trudged through the first hour of this, you might as well stay for the chuckles of the actual initiation scenes - priceless. I'm not sure who wrote Shelley Winters' particular dialog in these scenes, but I plan on using them to break up a wedding at some point. She is about as profane as Shake from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and equally as dark and mysterious in her den mother from hell act.

If anything, call it an amusing 96 minutes of semi-drunken social commentary and obligatory shower-scalding, a jolly peek into the world of dumb American collegiates, pursuing higher education and learning nothing.

WTF= 15
W= 6
T= 5
F= 4

The first scenes with music anyone would want to drown to...

OMG OMG OMG: THE SHELLEY WINTERS POSEIDON ADVENTURE DOLL!!!!!!!!!
(beats the SHIT out of Barbie)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAND ONE MORE REASON TO RECYCLE...

to Final Girl film club:

THE WASP FACTORY

2010-11-21T12:34:00.000-08:00

I don't think there is a better example of disturbing fiction than Iain Bank's creepy debut masterpiece The Wasp Factory. I figured, being me, I would be an expert in insanity. Turns out I was wrong. Once I learned "the truth about Frank" and his family, I realized that I am relatively not very insane (aw shucks), and that any oddness of my own American suburban childhood life was a birthday party compared to the raw abomination experienced by an isolated adolescent in Scotland.

The total nerds (aka me/my husband) reading this may be used to seeing Iain Banks as Iain M. Banks. Wow. Total transformation taking away that M. in the middle. Just like Clark Kent removing his glasses and suit in a phone booth. Banks simply removes his middle initial and he can go seamlessly from writing sci-fi books about boundless super-computer-starships and sentient space anomalies to writing about the isolated sociopaths, explosives, burning dogs, and the joy of various chemical enhancements and surgeries in the comfort of one's own cozy home.

The first time I read this book, I was more or less incredulous and hooked the entire time which ended with me sitting shocked over a breakfast of cold eggs visualizing Banks' appetizing descriptions in certain parts. Note to reader: avoid eating & reading, unless you're trying to diet and want to go the way of the bulimic, in which case, engorge yourself right before the latter half of the book. The second time I read, I was even more disturbed by it, because I had half-forgotten the plot (I only remembered that I was extremely creeped out in my first reading of it) and I did not fully realize during the first read just how exquisitely-written every part of the story is.

Frank is living on his own private island stocked with oodles of little animals for him to kill and more oodles of explosives when the local little Scottish seaside village policeman stops by for a spot of whiskey with Frank's dad and to tell him the news that his older brother, Eric, has conveniently broken out of the mental asylum. From there on, Frank has to secretly negotiate Eric's gradual return home from the asylum, along with his own desire to know exactly what his "old hippy" father is hiding in the dark corners of the foul family home. It's not just Frank's sordid inner monologue that grabbed me by the throat and kept me up, eyes peeled, wanting to know more about the unclear home life and history of this maniacal child. I should note that a lot of Banks' novels, though awesome in their breadth, are a bit long-winded. Not so in the case of The Wasp Factory.

Banks is more than a writer in this book, he's a magician with words. While Frank uses the parts of creatures he kills for his own unhinged forms of divination, Banks ropes you in for the journey all the way through, releasing each shuddersome revelation of Franks reality piece by piece. I remembered how in my angst-ridden days of high school, I used to listen to Nine Inch Nails every now and then (in between Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Stone Temple Pilots, and Liz Phair - back when Liz Phair did not compose songs only for radio play). All of Reznor's attempts at being industrially twisted and angry and demented seem cheap by comparison to the exchanges between Frank and his family members. Perhaps comparing writing to music is unfair, but art is art, and sentiment is sentiment and that's the way I felt. I did not really care to get into Reznor's head when I listened to Pretty Hate Machine - partly because at the time I was too wrapped up in those high school days of being my own pretty hate machine (you honestly could not blame me if you went to my high school with its student parking lot filled with Beamers and Lexus trucks bought by parents who had no business splurging that level of money on kids who didn't know any better) - but going through Frank's tale I felt that I had to know what experiences Banks had collected in his days as ammunition to write such a story.

You will be plunged headfirst into the altered logic of Frank, and oddly enough, you will sympathize. The child has no actual identity, no passports or social security (whatever the UK equivalent is), no documents to tie him to the real world. The setting of the isolated island attached by one suspension bridge to the isolated town sustains Frank's singular nature, his "wars", his shrines, his devices, and his ways of creating his own personal landscape to ward off what would probably be unbearable boredom to everyone else. The good thing about this book to me is, sordid and depressing as it is in some ways, it's not one of those kill-yourself stories like "Requiem For A Dream" where you want to drown yourself in a bucket of gasoline or something because you are so depressed after watching people messing up their lives. Frank's life is plain messed up from the beginning, so there isn't that whole descent into darkness thing going. You don't feel like you are so inextricably stuck in the spiraling headfucks of the characters that there is no way out, and I suppose that is because Frank's story is in its own way so exotic and unparalleled that you just can't compare anything to it. That exclusive oddness is what drew me in here - not so much the evil, but the making of something evil. What more can I say except: read this book.

WTF = 25/30
W = 9
T = 8
F = 8

A brief clip of Banks...

LAKE MUNGO

2010-11-08T02:14:00.000-08:00

Somebody needs to set the record straight about Lake Mungo, because if you can't understand and appreciate this movie, you can't really understand or appreciate what is behind horror. I have read many reviews blasting this albeit oddly-titled film, and I find the reviews as vapid and predictable as the horror movies many of the reviewers identify as unrivaled. I get it, I get it, I'M THE ONE who said that one gem is another person's garbage, but I have to draw the line somewhere, and here it is. Here is my line in the sand:

Total Score = 25/30
W = 9
T = 8
F = 8

It is fair to say that different things scare different people, and so I'm not going to be too judgmental about what has been written about this film...other than conceding that most of what has been written about this film is crap. The misconception lies in the assumption that horror is solely about gore or sticking to some overplayed subject matter deemed 'cult' or otherwise. If you don't run out of the packed theater screaming, it can still be horror. If you don't see sawed-off limbs, projectile blood vomit, or zombies, it can still be horror! It it's not directed by Romero, Craven, Cronenberg, or Fulci, (STARTLE!) it can still be horror!!

I found this movie leagues more terrifying and disturbing than culty films like Dawn of the Dead or Halloween because real horror is not so much about zombies in shopping malls or the guy with the knife in the closet than it is about losing the ones we love. The former images are flights of fancy, of imagination games we play with ourselves because the real world gets boring. The latter is the terrifying reality that we all must face at several points in our lives. The bright side of zombie shopping malls and masked-slasher sequences is that they are so uncommon (or unreal), that movie tickets will fly to people who want to see something out of the ordinary. The bright side of playing up the horror that we experience in the real world is that if it's done right (or almost right in this case - note that it does not have a perfect score), it leaves you with an altered perspective on life and death. If watched from the perspective of giving the film a grain of salt for its imperfections, this is a beautiful vignette of family, death, superstition, and playing upon the greatest fears of anyone who has ever loved anyone else.

This Australian movie is filmed in the style of a shoddily-made documentary - something a relatively local film crew would create for public access TV or a low-budget indie film (which is kind of what the movie is at times). The style of filming is almost uncomfortable, as if the crew is still putting the pieces together while the story unravels. The plot traces the stories of the family members and friends surrounding the sudden and unexplained drowning of a 16 year old girl named Alice Palmer at Lake Mungo. The family delivers the account with a shaky matter-of-fact composure, not icy, but giving the impression of intending to stay calm in front of television cameras. It's difficult (especially being an American) watching this film, because we are so used to watching people spill their proverbial and occasionally literal guts on television. The rules of normal TV and everything we've (errrrrrrrr) seen on Oprah lead us to expect the mother to break down into hysterical sobs when she describes how she couldn't get out of the car to see the waterlogged body of her child. That the parents and the sibling of Alice Palmer hold it together for the interviews is in some ways more sad than if they had been blowing snot into tissues.

The family's story unravels into a deceiving tale of haunting events and images versus doubts of said events and images. Little things start happening like hallucinations and nightmares, strange bruises, fuzzy images on photographs - that give way to more twisted sides of the story. Many of the characters seem more shaken by Alice's unexplained death and the clandestine activities of her short life than they are convinced that anything supernatural happened. Alice's death reminded me of Jeff Buckley, who's eerie drowning in the Wolf River was supposedly 'predicted' by the musician himself. Alice's fears and her family, in recounting the momentary lapse between Alice being there and gone and all of the subsequent tragedies, are the primary foci of the film.

Now you have to trust me here: I'm not so cruel as to set you up for some movie where you're going to sit there for 2 hours and nothing at all scary happens except a glass falls off a table and some weird ominous music plays. I'm not that twisted or boring and that is definitely not the point of this review. The point is that some of the most terrifying horror moments lie not in what is seen but in the essential tenet of what you don't see. In this movie, you don't see a murderous girl crawl out of a television with hair over her face. You don't see a dude with a paper bag over his head cut his mother to pieces. You don't see a man with pins in his skull expostulate on the realms of hell. In this movie, hell is an empty bedroom.

But it had to be addressed (forewarned, if you will - to the special viewer who expects gore thrills chills and kills at every turn in every horror film) that the story is centered on the living more than it is on the dead, though that margin is not so wide as you fear it might be in this flick. Through the family's characters, there is a disquieting sense of isolation and abandonment, and the incredibly deep sadness that comes when each viewer of the film identifies this story with some aspect of their own lives and pieces of loneliness that everyone shares but cannot share together. Anyone who has ever spent any amount of time reflecting upon a relative being in the morgue understands this feeling.

I think that if there is any message to this film it is that people, though inherently flawed and capable of despicable acts, are ultimately just creatures in search of love and company. Next to the family's shock and emptiness, the notion that this search for connection to our loved ones persists even after death is what shook me hard. Each of the characters is desperate for the comfort they cannot find in knowing that death puts a wall between us through which only a few shadowy and blurred impressions manage to escape. Every child's fear. Every parent's fear. Every sibling's fear. Every lover's fear. This is REAL horror, people.

One good reviewer that I read described this movie as something that creeps up on you, and I think that this is the most accurate statement I've read about this film so far including anything I've written about it. By the end of the film, I was lonely and scared and disturbed in a way that zombies on a roof with guns a-blazin' or witches committing sex rituals or the dark underlord rising up through a mason jar just somehow doesn't seem to grab me. Ultimately, the watcher has to decide whether they buy into what is happening in this family's home and in their community, or to see the whole story as a hopeful embellishment to disguise grief with attention seeking.

The movie does have its kinks. At times, it is almost too deliberately under-acted - the hidden emotion is subtle in most places but dull in others. Some of the plot devices are a bit hokey as well - there are places and events that don't quite flow with the rest of the story, and also little side stories that seem like an additional waste of five unnecessary minutes of the film, blurring the focus of the actual story. I linked the first title of this story to the film's wikipedia page, which describes the film as starring some random actress named Talia Zucker. I thought it was sad that it was a one sentence opener that was more focused on the weakest actor rather than the film itself. Ironically, Zucker (Alice) delivers the most unconvincing role of the lot; it's the family's grief and machinations that steal the show, not the lame-ish delivery of a teen girl's fears by Alice herself.

The supernatural components of the film are divided between the dark death of Alice Palmer, her reappearance in images and other respects around her house and to her relatives, and her predictions of her untimely end. I think that between these three blurred places, this movie takes the leap from just a plain psychological thriller to a supernatural horror/psychological thriller. The order of the film may seem chaotic in places, and this is definitely true of some parts where you question why the director even included five minutes of grandma-ranting or co-worker observations - BUT, next to other attempts at 'realistic' supernatural horror (aka Blair Witch, Paranormal Activity), this piece is carefully and lovingly put together, leading up to a final few moments that I had trouble forgetting.

Needless to say after all this, it's a movie that is definitely worth seeing, if only for the emotional rollercoaster that it takes the thoughtful watcher on. It is not your drunken laugh-at-the-fake-blood movie any more than Trainspotting is a lighthearted romantic comedy. For many people I can see that this might be a movie that hits too close to home in one way or another, and I suppose that this is what the movie was designed to do. So there you have it - line drawn - one possible face of horror that does not involve pea soup hurling, vengeful CGI mummies, or the end of the world. Instead, it is a movie about a family processing grief and coming to terms with the unfair, the unpredictable, and the unexplainable. In many respects, all other horrors pale in comparison to looking for the answers to those questions and finding none.

Trailer:

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE

2010-10-21T22:35:00.000-07:00

There will never be another Shirley Jackson. I was convinced of this as soon as I finished the first painstakingly crafted paragraph of The Haunting of Hill House. Though the plot may arguably not be entirely original to the thoroughfare haunted house tale in her 1959 novel, Jackson's mix of language, imagery, and psychological tricks are really one of a kind in spite of how they too have been ripped off in years to follow.

Total Score = 24/30
W = 9
T = 8
F = 7

I must admit that long before I read this book, I saw the film version in 1999 when I was a junior in high school. The movie was pretty bad and even at that fragile age, I could recognize the shoddy acting and CGI overkill that would eventually bring Star Wars (TM) to crash and burn. It's a surefire cash-in flick where Catherine Zeta-Jones' and Liam Neeson's overacting is worse than a middle school rendition of Xanadu and for some reason Owen Wilson is perilously cast as a 'serious actor'. The movie kills the book, so my advice is of course to read the book first. In the unfortunate event that you have already seen the movie, let its craptastical memory fade for a bit, and treat the book for what it is: an entirely different entity.

In the book, Dr. Montague, Jackson's take on a collegiate paranormal investigator prior to the world of EVP's electromagnetic energy readings and ghosts appearing in television static, rents the rumored haunted Hill House as part of his study in a pseudo-scientific attempt to prove the existence of life after death. To assist him in his uncommon work, he hires two young women who both experienced unexplained phenomena in their lives.

The first is Eleanor, an introverted childlike woman in her mid thirties who has horrible memories of youth and a lame existence with her selfish sister's family. She is isolated and nervous, but revels in the chance that she is needed in this study, and quickly hijacks the family car to trek out into the presumed New England countryside for a summer in the warped house of Hugh Crain. The second woman is Theodora, a vain shop owner and occasional documented telepath according to some possibly dubious accounts. Theodora is somewhat cryptic about her sexuality, but it is clear that she desires to compete with Eleanor to be in the spotlight to the males of the group. Descendant and future owner Luke, at the request of the family that owns the house, is sent along to make sure that nothing horrible is done during their rented stay. Luke fluctuates between hitting on the girls and kissing up to Dr. Montague in attempts to hide his charlatan side. The assistants' job (as well as Luke's) is mainly to "take notes" on what happens to them over the course of their stay, and to submit those notes to Montague, who will tie them together in definitive proof of the haunting afterlife.

The caretakers of the house are a creepy dour couple named "The Dudleys". These townies refuse to stay anywhere near Hill House once darkness comes. Mr. Dudley tries to steer Eleanor away from the front gates as soon as she arrives, and Mrs. Dudley gives Eleanor an ominous speech when she shows her to her room (one of the few crossovers between the film and the book), meant to scare the girl. Mrs. D. is somewhat a part of the house, stuck in her ways and unable to abide any of the Dr. or his assistants' requests for anything beyond her rigid working schedule of cleaning and cooking at set times to make sure she is miles away from Hill House when the sun goes down. Left alone in the house at night, the group quickly comes face to face with the phenomena of the house, winding the guests up, and winding Eleanor further into a spiral of doubt and hysteria.

What I love about this book is not so much the haunting details that surround the house and it's off-kilter angles towers and cold spots, but the fascinating interplay between characters. As Jackson's characters continue to mingle with each other, they change seamlessly into darker versions of their former selves. Conversations between Eleanor (the primary focal point of the book) and her new acquaintances depreciate from flirty pleasantry to tenebrous ambiguity. Is she being taunted by the house? Is she inventing imaginary slights? Do her new co-workers actually care about her or are they making fun of her? Is she meant to be in this house or is it all just a horrible joke on a girl who has lived a life of casualties at the hands of those she should have been able to trust? Eleanor reverts to childish imagination, and the search for a mother's love as a way to deny these questions.

In this sense, Jackson manages to make no character truly likable - an admirable trait in a writer attempting even a glimpse of the reality that human beings are creatures of mixed light and shadow. When Mrs. Montague and her lackey (a boys' military school dean) enter the scene three quarters of the way through the book, the reader just savors the possibility of the house swallowing the abhorrent cow who refuses to call any of her husband's assistants by name and assumes Luke to be a graduated servant. Her only redeeming quality is the oafish assumption that she can manage what her husband has not through moronic parlor tricks and seance-like planchette assessments of the house which make the reader more or less feel sorry for the poor woman. At the same time, she manages to bring out the underside of her husband, who is ashamed of her and the dean's presence. While Eleanor's imagination is certainly a sort of catalyst bringing out the house's venom, Mrs. Montague brings the house and the reader to the tipping point.

As a main character, Eleanor is more or less lead into an ambush. The beauty of her character is her secret dreams and the poetic stories she makes up for herself to get through her crude day-to-day life. Through Eleanor, the reader encounters the gaping self-doubt as to whether or not the whole situation is real or created by her musings. This is what makes the book a lovely cross between a horror story and a psychological thriller. Though the group certainly does witness chilling events in the house, Eleanor is a kind of unwitting conjurer of the isolation and madness that ensues over the course of their short-lived stay. Jackson lets Eleanor draw the requisite connection in the human psyche between the angry demon and the frightened child underneath. So while the reader may not identify with her self-isolation and desire to mainly be alone in a fairytale cottage of her own design, you just can't help but feel for her in the icy moments when it seems her companions are cruelly baiting her like the loser at the playground. The dark question begged here is: can people ever really be trusted?

The book has its flaws too (hence 24/30). I felt that it should have been much longer, that Jackson either ran out of steam for the backstory of Crain and the broken link of his tragic lonely family, or decided that it was better to cut her losses. The book reads like a short story; the author is most famous for her commonly school-taught short story "The Lottery". Perhaps she was most comfortable in this style, but I felt that this book would have bloomed so much further if she kept on diving into the house and the symbolism Crain endowed upon his progeny. There are also points in the story where it seems that Jackson wants to break loose of the prim 50's language she's using to describe this scenario - you get whiffs of this in the dialog that the characters spit at each other and some of the images in their heads. It's like she's caught between a Victorian ghost story and a 20th century realism piece, and sometimes that crevice is uncomfortable for the reader. I found myself getting distracted by the language, wanting to shout: "Just say what you want to say already!"

But the circular nature of the story, the occult undertones of the house designer (and Jackson's own real-life curiosity), and the repeating gestures and pieces of imagery and dialog make this tale more brilliant than its shortcomings. As I read, I could not help myself from noticing how many other authors she must have inspired - to the point of literally ripping her off. The first two that immediately jumped into my mind were Stephen King and Richard Matheson. There were unmistakable elements of this novel in Carrie, Rose Red, and Hell House. I guess one side of this can be seen as imitation as sincere flattery. But of course the downside is that if you do read King and Matheson first, Jackson's work seems less original and you get less of a sense of how the book may have been received when it first hit the shelves.

Then again, as I said from the start, the haunted house is one of the most unoriginal literary concepts of all time. Almost everyone has a friend or acquaintance who has another friend or acquaintance who lived in a 'real life' haunted house. It is hard to spin this genre into something wholly new and terrifying because we may feel we have heard it all. There were definitely points in this book when I felt I was revisiting pieces of the ghost stories of Edith Wharton or even Henry James. All writers or directors are influenced by others in some fashion, and Jackson is no exception in that respect either. But this is something more than cheap thrills, or at least feels like it when you bite into it. The bits of this book that stuck with me were when Jackson landed the state of mind of her characters (mainly Eleanor) and I had to ask the same questions she asked. I had to remember similar moments in my life when I was unsure of my own company or how much I wanted to be able to trust people. I had to wonder whether or not ghosts exist in reality or in our minds or both.

PRINCE OF DARKNESS

2010-10-04T23:50:00.000-07:00

So it turns out after all these years that they put the Antichrist...in a fancy mason jar. Intriguing. This movie is like the lame ex that you occasionally hook up with because you are bored. The lame ex...with a 80's blowout hairstyle, I might add. Somehow he charms you into his apartment and attacks you with a rabid mustache. You are left with many questions about the nature of good and evil, "science" vs. "god", and some bad mix tapes. This is my stupid metaphor for "Prince of Darkness", the second installment of John Carpenter's odd trilogy that begins with Kurt Russell's manly "The Thing" and ends with Sam Neill's crazy "In the Mouth of Madness" (Lovecraft rolls in his grave and Charlton Heston laughs in his).

In this film you will be riveted by the shock-gore of shooting liquids, putrid skin that looks like lasagna, and lines of poorly constructed dialog so potent you will wonder if you were caught in a speed-dating video gone awry. Parts of the story, setting, Donald Pleasence, and the fact that DJ Shadow sampled bits of this in "Stem-Long Stem - Transmission 2" from his album "Endtroducing" however, make up for some of the shoddy acting and Alice Cooper's parody of a parody of himself.

WTF:

W= 7

T= 6

F= 6

Total Score: 19

The film is both written and scored by Carpenter, which is worth knowing when you are a quarter of the way through and the intro music and credits are still rolling. I have a lot of queries and problems with this weird movie, yet it is not without its charms. There are moments that approach a total creepout amidst the dialog jargon and unbelievable costume choices (how these clothes were stylish EVEN in 1987 is so beyond me that I'm glad I was a Kindergartner in matching sparkly sweatsuits and not a care in the world at the time for how I looked). At the same time, because this movie is trying so hard to be seriously frightening (with exception to Alice Cooper), some of its setbacks seem far more obvious than, for example, the romping escapade of an Italian zombie horror film riddled with a cast of overpaid ex-porn stars. From the opening credits, you can tell that you are at least intended to take this film more seriously than not.

It all begins with the death of an old priest and the passing on of a gawdy key. A team of physicists, computer geeks, and experts in ancient texts and the like is invited by Father whatnot (Loomis aka Pleasence) to a very creepy urban brick-box church in Los Angeles: because if there's any city where the Antichrist would take up residence in a swirly jar, it's LA. In the bowels of this church, a secret sect akin to the secret service in charge of containing evil has been guarding the unformed son of Satan from entering the world and unleashing his father through the mirror of a parallel universe.

But the jar leaks!

There goes your green jam AND the world as we know it...unless this team of super-acting nerds lead by the theories of Professor Howard Birack holds evil at bay. In his role as Birack, Victor Wong decides that by acting semi-senile, he can lend some credibility to his team's "theories" of tachyon-transmitted dream messages and other sub-atomic biological menaces from other dimensions. Alongside the bantering of theorists on the team is the romantic subplot between Brian Marsh and Catherine Danforth. One of my favorite forehead-slapping parts of the movie is when Marsh asks Danforth out: enter the rabid mustache of Jameson Parker. How Danforth's character manages to let this guy pick her up is probably more of a mystery to me than how the son of Satan got stuck in a jar. But then again, poor Lisa Blount (who is far from an eyesore in real life) appears to have a dead animal for a hairstyle herself, so maybe it's an acute case of lowered expectations.

As the research team investigates the entity and its accompanying weighty instruction manuals, the evil begins to possess the vagrants surrounding the church - like Alice Cooper - as well as several of the technicians within the church. The team one-by-one begins to fall prey to the malignant force, and time spirals down to the end of the world.

What's interesting about this movie is its attempt to frame religious and scientific concepts in the same desperate picture. And even though it is hollywoodized pseudoscience embedded with a couple of real particle theories, I had to wonder to myself how scientists would witness the events such as those in the old and new testaments and other religions' scriptures. In that sense, the movie is an interesting departure from the slew of movies depicting religious phenomena (exorcisms, ghosts, zombies, witches, vampires, mummies) without bothering to go beyond: "because God said so." That Carpenter tries to take that explanation even three feet forward in his 80's future-searching flick is brave. He posits to his audience the possibility that the beliefs we've traditionally held could be something entirely alien to us.

The setting of the ghetto church with its own catacombs, the possessions of certain members of the research team, the odd dream transmissions, and the entrapment of the dwindling survivors in a building infested by evil are pretty damn creepy scenes. I still cannot decide whether or not the gore is perfect for the film, or if the film could've benefited from more realistic stuff. But then again, the same question goes for the dialog, costumes (gag), and actors (how the young Asian guy manages to stereotype himself 6 times over is both a mystery of screenwriting and acting).

At one point or another, just about every novel scientific or religious idea the human race has ever come to accept has been laughed at. I suppose that this is true for some of the best horror movies too. Prince of Darkness is right in the middle of that mix of laughter and brilliance that deserves to be seen just as much as it deserves to collect dust in the rack in between occasional midnight revivals.

"Amazing Grace"...

"This is not a dream"...

SUSPIRIA

2010-09-20T23:34:00.000-07:00

Dario Argento's "Suspiria" is the 70's gem of Italian horror movies, if not the greatest Italian horror movie of its time. This movie realizes what I love about so-bad-its-good horror. You do not watch Suspiria in search of mind-bending ingenious plot twists or incredibly deep character studies. There are very few horror movies that truly master that delicate balance without going overboard. Fortunately, "overboard" is this particular movie's mantra. In tackling the witch genre, Suspiria stands out as a lovingly-made horror trip.

Total Score: 22/30
W= 6
T= 8
F= 8

Within the first minute of the film, it's obvious that Argento thought about the images, particularly color and form, that the viewer sees. Nothing is blandly lit, nothing looks too realistic. The set design is pure eye candy. The colors are bright and primary, often lavished in gold or lined in black, from garish velvet wallpapers to extremely fake stained glass. It's meant to be an experience in another highly superficial world. The lighting is as doused in reds and blues and greens as a psychotropic trip. The soundtrack of the film, done by The Goblins (a band influenced by the mighty King Crimson) was oddly recorded in one night at the behest of Argento himself. Though cheesy at points, I think it is true to the kind of thrown-together sparkle that is pervasive throughout the film.

Like a posh Italian designer, style is Argento's primary concern, and possibly he focused so hard on how things would look, that he focused less on how things would make sense - hence not a perfect rating. But there is a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor to the piece, particularly in some of the non-eye-candy or boob-shot characters (you know, the ones who got hired because they actually know how to act?). Watch the face of Miss Tanner for one. There are moments where the characters, scene, and music sweat delerium and panic, almost like you're drunk and lost somewhere without any idea of how to get home. At some points, it is gore-tastic; at others, you ask yourself why Argento didn't put in just a little extra time to thicken the plot. But it is what it is (a classic 70's horror piece), and should not be missed. Argento may not be creating the great horror mystery of the century: but he is having fun. This is his best film.

Jessica Harper leads as Suzy Bannion, an American dance student beginning her short-lived learning experience at the mysterious Tanz Academy in Germany (formerly a dance /occult studies school). She discovers as soon as she leaves the airport that this journey is ill-fated, and the strange mishaps add up to her consequent discovery of a coven of malevolent witches who eliminate anyone in their way. At one point, the question is posited: "What does it mean to be a witch?"

Suzy is denied entry into the academy on the night of her arrival, as a nameless girl runs from the front door, through the forest, and into the first gore scene in the apartment of a friend. This scene sticks with you throughout the movie, because it sets the tone for the way Argento kills off his ladies - he's gotten a lot of criticism that these are misogynistic portrayals of girl slaughter but I'll let you decide for yourself. The girl ends up stabbed in her beating heart, thrown through a stained glass skylight (simultaneously impaling her friend in the entry hall with shards of glass), and hung by a cord just a few feet from the floor.

When Suzy makes it to the academy the next day, the vice-directress of the the school (played by Joan Bennett in her final role) greets her with a dark stare, obviously annoyed by her attempts to volunteer information to the police about seeing the girl who was expelled from the academy the night before for "improper conduct". Likewise, the ultra-severe lead instructor, Miss Tanner, played by Alida Valli (once dubbed "the next Garbo" in her screen beauty youth), quickly engages Suzy in a kind of strange competition, forcing Suzy to dance after she has been zapped by a foul spell in the hallway of the school. There is an "old vs. young" component to this movie. Suzy quickly falls into the "malefic" control of the aged school staff.

Bannion befriends one girl at the academy, Sara, a doomed friend of the expelled victim. She tries to make friends with the intimidatingly sexy (in a viper kind of way) "Olga", played by Barbara Magnolfi, but soon discovers that Olga is willing to sell Suzy out without a second thought. Hearing Sara's theories of witchcraft, torture, and manipulation on the part of the school staff, Suzy gradually wises up to the process of elimination dominating the school, supposedly under the command of the ever-absent "Directress". Suzy must ultimately go head to head with these creatures in order to escape with her life.

On the witty end of the production, there is some sense to its message of the consumptive vices of black magic (in testament to horror as opposed to stuff Wiccans might take offense to) with the spotlight on the evil nature of this particular coven, headed by the lead-witch "Directress", Helena Marcus. Argento's direction does achieve the presence and influence of the coven and its values, knitted deeply in the often catty and vicious torture that women in competition inflict upon each other. Being a dance academy, you get the picture that these (mostly female) students are not summer camp buddies. They are focused on their careers and monetary gain after their training at Tanz, as seen in the cruel behavior of Olga, and the other students who seem only to see Suzy when she is in trouble or hurt.

There is a keen sense of manipulation, of people quick to take offense, the coveting of money and wealth at the expense of others, of punishment for those who do not conform, and in this way you sympathize with the heroine's plight. As mentioned, there is also the "old vs. young" rift as a power struggle. Suzy's stubbornness with the Vice-Directress over her lodging quickly results in punishment in my favorite scene of the movie. As she walks down the hallway to the studio, a strange unsmiling scullery maid polishing silverware shines a glaring bauble directly in Suzy's eyes, briefly blinding her and rendering her too dizzy and nauseous to function in class. Tanner goads her further, half-laughing, and she collapses, manipulated into staying permanently at the school on a 'special diet' of wine that makes her too sleepy to think.

As I said, it's not without its humor too. Though I'm not sure if it was intentional, my favorite line in the movie is delivered by the cursed blind piano player when Miss fires him for the misbehavior of his terrified and provoked dog. As Tanner throws his jacket and cane to the floor for him to pick up without help, he turns to her screaming: "You Beeeeeeeeeeeeetch!" (My brother and I often use this quote to each other, it never fails to rustle up laughter once you see this scene and makes for a great prank phone call).

This movie has duality to the point that when you finish it, it is very hard to decide if you have seen something wonderful or hysterically awful. On the one hand, there is bad overdubbing, flimsy acting, choppy scene cutting (beware the shortened versions of this film!!!), low grade cheap-o scare tactics (aka worms, bats, blood so unreal ketchup looks scarier), and an ending that feels somewhat rushed and thrown together that is the plight of so many horror movies. On the other hand, there is the mysticism of the coven, the unwritten rules of the dance school, the lurid and seductive set and (sometimes) gore, and the ultimate fate of Suzy, the innocent abroad.

That this movie is being remade apparently with Natalie Portman disturbs me a little (mini gag). I believe this movie could be well made, but it's tricky business capturing the magic that this particular film has in connection with the time it was made AND nailing Bannion's kind of dumb/helpful innocence... although it might be fun if Portman plays the role of Sara - something a little more insidious perhaps.

See Suspiria because of what it is: a strange, colorful, and playfully ridiculous trip. I think the ill-fated Sara put it best: "It all seems so absurd, so fantastic." And indeed, it is.

Suzy Bannion gets witchslapped:

And some good ole heart-stabbery:

WTF: An Asinine Yet Somehow Effective Classification System

2010-09-01T16:26:00.000-07:00

Once in a while I want to recommend a fantastically bad horror movie to someone. You know: a movie that most people would flip the channel past its cheese-tastic bearing, its dated and unabashedly overdone gore, or the occasional (often hysterical) bad voice-over. Yes, you can use phrases like "it's campy" and "it's so bad it's good". But often, it's blurrier than that. Though it is far from perfection, this is my little horror rating system, lovingly dubbed: WTF.

W= Wit:

substance, plot devices, twists n' turns, character depth, deep thematic messages, social commentary, conflicts, special little nuggets of wisdom that you take with you. (Scale: 1-10)

example: the thematic message of "Dawn of the Dead" enacted by zombies ambling through a shopping mall as an example of how human consumerism persists beyond the grave.

T = Technique:
style, effectiveness in achieving what the film or book sets off to do, whether it's realistic or ironically fake bloodspatter, believability, trippy-ness, or campy comedic horror, decor of setting, costumes, acting, dialog, etc.
(Scale: 1-10)

example: how convincingly the little dead boy in "Salem's Lot" (be it movie or text) taps on the window.

F = Fear:
effect - most subjective of all - how scared/amused were you? And if the movie/book was not meant to be frightening per se, how well did it achieve the intended (or unintended) reaction.

(Scale: 1-10)

example 1: how well or poorly did Richard Matheson's "Hell House" scare you into keeping the light on after you put the book down?

example 2: how many of your vocal chords were damaged while you laughed yourself stupid watching "House on the Edge of the Park" (or "House on the Park of the Edge" as the title appears)?

In sum...
The Best Horror Ever = 30
and
The Total Piece of Craptastic Crap from Crap Mountain That Sucked Ninety Minutes From My Life That I Shall Never Get Back = 0
*** note: I don't believe in telling people NOT to read or watch something, whether or not I feel it wasted my time. Time is an interesting thing and everyone has a different interpretation of what is wasted time and what is worthwhile. So, while I won't advise people not to watch or read, (unless I'm really enjoying process of expounding on what triggered my zero bullshit tolerance), I generally keep reviews for the 'meh' stuff shorter.

On Inexpertise & the Virtues of Being Scared

2010-08-26T20:10:00.000-07:00

Many people consider themselves to be experts. They namedrop. They flash an intimidating lexicon of terminology pertaining to their unique breed of fanaticism. They scatter their articles, books, and blogs with so much fairy dust of their own (again, unique) comprehensive comprehension, that others lose track or are intimidated into assuming they know nothing on the subject when they know more than they allow themselves to realize. We live in a society that needs experts and boasts of many who actually aren't. In the soiled pool of art criticism, Horror critics are just one more society of false prophets. A slasher gem to one is crusty garbage to another. Anyone with a rental subscription and the ability to read and rant is suddenly an instant expert (case in point = me), and the opinions are amusingly polarized. Well, here's the good and the bad news about me:

I don't consider myself to be an expert at anything. There, you can unsubscribe to my blog now.

Except, just maybe, I'm an expert at being scared. Allow me to massage my ego for a moment, please. (Isn't that what blogging is about anyway, or perhaps I missed the memo.) In spite of the warnings of friends and relatives to "stop being such a worrier" or "live life to the fullest" and "don't be afraid of anything", being scared has driven me into somehow getting what I want/need.........and probably also kept me from doing time in a rustic women's prison for arson too.

My fear of dentists keeps me meticulous about who puts anything sharp near my gums. My fear of food poisoning makes me shun hotdogs and greasy Chinese take-outs. My fear of being alone forced me to search like a crazed bitch in heat (having rejected and been rejected by many inadequate prototypes) to find the perfect man - whom I found and married. Petrifying fear of living with my parents at 30 got me a good job straight out of college, a roof over my head, and a backyard full of flowers in the most beautiful city on Earth. Fear of being bored to death forced me at a young age to steal into the guestroom and watch horror movies when I was supposed to be asleep and to smuggle musty paperbacks into my house when I was supposed to be reading wholesome girl-lit like "Anne of Green Gables" and "Nancy Drew" (shiver).

Not too shabby for being "scared" if you ask me.

Horror movies and fiction fascinate me because deep down, we all want that rollercoaster. We all want to face the monster and defeat it - or sometimes even to be defeated by it. And what I adore about horror-lovers is their ability to enthusiastically contribute to the search for the perfect horror film/book. Not really so we can shout it from the mountains and re-watch/read it again and again and devour every subtle nuance of perfect filmmaking or writing (though we usually do just that). It's so we can have the living shit scared out of us once and for all! So we can have that vicarious moment of pure terror, filmed or worded to perfection. So we can get on with things having had that mutual experience with the character hiding in the closet from the thing outside without having to be eaten for real. Not so much to be expert observers - you'll find that 'expert observers' are not so much real horror fanatics as they are people who want to be seen as experts.

Horror fanatics are addicts. They often hide it, and sit through romantic comedies at friends and lovers' behests feeling like they'd rather be shivering and plugging their fingers into their ears to avoid the part where the creature jumps out of the sewage pipe. They forget their love of being scared, intrigued, and mesmerized at the same time long enough to drift unwittingly back to the section in the bookstore or movie rentals. They savor the occasional nightmare, once they've woken up and realized what a good plot it would be.

Unlike experts, I will tell you that I am going to be at times pretentiously wrong in my opinions as well as annoying, obnoxious, and offensive in other times and because this is horror, you'll probably have many 'expert' opinions of your own, and if it gets bloody: that's the point.

This blog is all about rating and recommending horror books and films. I will post on each book or film as I review my repertoire of years past and present using a handy dandy little rating system I lovingly call: WTF.

Ahead lie my decadent ramblings in the world of supernaturally fabulous fiction & film.