HELLGATE

TRAILER - (as in the parks these actors now live in!)

Even considering that ghostly hitchhikers are about as frequent in horror as pre-pubescent vampires are in the red box; Hellgate is campy horror gold for the ages. For a movie that can only be purchased on DVD as a double feature to Canadian stinker The Pit, Hellgate is far more enjoyable than one would believe at first glance. With sex, senseless violence, and terrible hair choices; this film has everything that is essential for a camptastic kneeslapper. In comparison to a long line of campy, incompetent, ludicrous, movies that were so bad they were good; this film is so bad it's amazing.

With it's dollar store leading man, the late Ron Palilo of "Welcome Back Kotter" (insert Travolta joke) and "Little Clowns of Happytown" notoriety; Hellgate manages to present turn of the decade, brain dead youth in all of their flannel might; equipped with stereotypes for all races and creeds! The two-couple lineup of protagonists is so obnoxious that your wishes to see them slaughtered coupled with it's high likelihood is enough motivation for anyone to finish the film; much less love it.

 

This sizzling slice of 1990 takes place in both the then-present-day, and the 1950's; where the tale began. Piggybacking on the genre-heavy tale of the unjustly slain damsel turned undead pedestrian, the film introduces Josie. This ghost-to-be is a smoke show with abysmal acting skills in her only film to date. Josie is instant motivation for all male viewers; who will be aptly rewarded by no shortage of scantily clad and not clad scenes! Josie is promptly kidnapped from a picturesque 50s diner by "The Strangers", a ravenous biker gang, and a godless bunch they are.

An altercation with Josie's pops proves fatal for all but one of the sleazy bikers, leaving the girl crushed to death via motorcycle, and daddy disfigured and repaired with metal plates (no explanation for choice of metal plates over bandages whatsoever). The viewer comes to find that Josie's father is in control of a magic crystal that allows him to resurrect her ghost, and commit evil acts throughout the film. The origin or importance of this crystal is left as vague as all other seemingly important, but neglected details in the film; to great effect and the absence of explanatory bore.

Cut back to year nineteen hundreed and ninety, and four total boobs are renting a cabin out in the boonies. These utter morons tell one another the spooky Hellgate hitchhiker story of old; with poor acting  by Chuck, the largest of sweater-wearing tools. One of the female actresses looks like a poor man's Molly Ringwald, and the other looks like a person of no distinct gender. This is really a murderers row of pre-grunge 90s losers that you wouldn't mind seeing get murdered by the undead; in which case you're in luck!

Anywho, one of the nincompoops, namely Ron Palilo, is arriving late from "graduate school", when he has an encounter with the hitchiker; none other than Josie. Not to give too much away, but things obviously go completely to hell once the group stumbles across Hellgate, the perverted ex-roadside attraction of the dead, which is including but not limited to, exploding mutant fish, melting elderly men, crystals with dark powers, and the icing on the cake, zombies.

This movie has all of the intangibles that make a campy movie worth it's weight in fine luxurious cheeses; an overabundance of nudity, lawless sadist bikers, and a directorial penchant for killing main characters in brutally abrupt fashion! With the capable special effects staff of Hellraiser and Hellbound, Hellgate has the weaponry to keep things interesting, albeit not the heavy artillery of a big time gig.

With laughs and occasional scares that are well worth the price of admission, synth-heavy soundtrack that will make you want to break out a white suit and do the Carlyle, and the most anticlimactic building collapse ever filmed, Hellgate definitely has more than enough cheese to please!

W -4 (not brilliant, but not trying to be)
T -6 (pretty decent job on the major effects, but not cheeseless)
F - 7 (thoroughly enjoyable)

THE WOMAN IN BLACK

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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

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

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...

GHOST ROAD BLUES

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.
 

THE STRAIN

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...