Dead In The South

Halloween H2O: 20 Years Later

2011-11-17T16:18:00.000-08:00

After Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, the Halloween franchise seemed to have run out of steam, tangled in its own convoluted continuity. Was Michael subject to the Curse of Thorn? The result of a genetics experiment? It was unclear where to go with the story, and the box office receipts had been in decline for some time, while costs were rising. I suppose in 1996, it seemed doubtful Michael Myers would ever be given a chance to increase his body count. A couple of things happened, though, which brought him back to life, just as he always revived from whatever apparent death he suffered on screen.

First of all, Scream came out, which led to a brief revival of slasher movies. Secondly, Jamie Leigh Curtis became interested in doing a follow-up to the earlier films, something she had been deadfast against. I’ve always assumed this was partially because her career was slowing as she hit the 40-year-old wall that limits the opportunities of actresses, but that’s just speculation. The fact that so many A-list actors and actresses appeared in the Scream franchise probably helped remove some of the career stigma as well. Whatever the reason, with her involvement, a new sequel was prepped to take advantage of the twentieth anniversary of the original, with the somewhat kludgey title of Halloween H2O: 20 Years Later. Story ideas were supplied by Kevin Williamson, the writer of the Scream franchise. John Carpenter was approached to direct and was interested, but the studio balked at his $10 million fee, which seems to have stemmed from lingering resentment at being done out of a rightful share of the profits for the original Halloween. Instead, the movie was directed by Steve Miner, a producer on the original Friday the 13th, and director of the first two sequels in that series.

The movie opens in Langdon, Illinois, presumably close to Haddonfield. (At first, I thought the government might have just given up and nuked Haddonfield due to the carnage there, but I guess that wasn’t the case.) On the day before Halloween, a familiar person visits Nurse Chambers (Dr. Loomis’s nurse from the first two movies), killing her and two neighbor boys. Michael is back! We get one final look at the (cinematic) incompetence of Illinois policemen, as they take forever to respond to the report of a burglary, then go to the house next door to where three murders are being committed.

The scene shifts to California, the next day (finally, they won’t have to work around all the greenery at Halloween). Laurie Strode (Jamie Leigh Curtis) has faked her own death, changed her name to Keri Tate, and is working as headmistress at a posh boarding school, living with her son John (Josh Hartnett, in his first film role). No one knows of her secret, but she hasn’t exactly ended up well adjusted, and still suffers from various psychological problems centered on Halloween. Frankly, she’s a bit of a shrew, but who can blame her? At Halloween, the school is deserted except for Jamie, her boyfriend Will (Adam Arkin), her son, his girlfriend Molly (Michelle Williams in another early role), two of their friends, and a security guard played by LL Cool J. Michael shows up to continue his life mission of killing his entire family, and soon various actors and actresses are being impaled by sharp things.

Although there was originally to be plot points that explained how this movie fit with the fourth through sixth installments, the decision was made that they would be ignored as if nothing had happened since Halloween II, although Laurie’s fake death remains as a remnant of that earlier version. No explanation is given for where Michael has been for the last twenty years, although I like to think he was working as a chef at Benihana. Poor Jamie from the preceding films never existed, although since she ended up spending most of her life being raped as part of a breeding experiment, that may be for the best.

Anyway, carnage ensues, many secondary characters die, and we get a face-off between Laurie/Keri and her big brother. Blood is spilled, although H2O continues the tradition of the series being less gory than most of its counterparts (never fear on that point, gore fans, Rob Zombie is on the way), and Michael is once again killed for good. Despite the seeming finality of his demise this time, having seen his previous five appearances, I’m betting he’ll get better soon.

So, what’s the verdict? Surprisingly good, to be honest. I’ve never been much of a fan of Steve Miner, but the film does a good job of building suspense, swapping a high body count for increased tension. The cast is pretty good, and film buffs will enjoy the small part played by Janet Leigh (Psycho) who is of course Jamie Leigh Curtis’ real life mother. She gets to repeat the “one good scare” line from the first movie, and give us an in-joke when she asks Laurie if she can “be maternal for a moment.” I think if you are a fan of the first two, you can segue right into this one without any real disappointment.

For the trivia buffs, the two movies seen briefly on TV sets (a series trademark) are the legendarily awful Plan 9 From Outer Space, and writer Kevin Williamson’s Scream 2.
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WITA #3: Greg F. Gifune

2011-11-17T11:55:00.000-08:00

Resuming the series of reprints of interviews I did for Cemetery Dance, today we reprint an interview with author Greg F. Gifune which originally appeared on Cemetery Dance' website on July 7, 2010. As always, these reprints appear courtesy of Cemetery Dance, and the reader should remember the interview is over a year old, so if the subject says "coming soon", the book is probably already out there. So, fire up the old Wayback Machine...

The author we’re pulling away from work this time is Greg F. Gifune. A Massachusetts native, Greg is the highly-regarded author of such works as The Bleeding Season and Children of Chaos. His most recent book from Cemetery Dance is Catching Hell.

WITA -Your new release from Cemetery Dance is Catching Hell. Tell us a little about it.

Greg Gifune - It’s set in 1983, and is about three young actors and a stagehand from a summer stock theater who take off from Cape Cod to visit a resort in Maine as a kind of last hooray before they either go on to college or move to New York City to chase their dreams. On the way, they encounter a bizarre storm and wind up in a peculiar town that seems to be stuck in the 1940s. But the town is anything but the quaint and harmless little hamlet it appears to be at first glance, and once they become trapped there they realize the locals are harboring some horrible secrets and that they’ll have to fight their way out to survive the night, or risk falling prey to a cycle of depravity and violence at the hands of a demonic creature so horrifying few will even speak its name.

WITA -Compared to many of your peers, you are quite prolific (Your website shows 14 books written by you). How do you manage to be as productive as you are without sacrificing quality?

GG - Do nothing but work and have virtually no life? No, seriously, it may appear that I’m a bit more prolific than I really am, as I’ve been writing professionally now for more than a decade full-time, so when you spread my list of published novels out over a 10 or 11 year timeframe it’s probably not quite as impressive. And also, usually (not always but usually) my novels sit in my head literally for years before I write them, so by the time I’m putting them to paper I have a solid grasp of what I’m doing with it and what I want. Still, I have managed to produce a good amount of work, you’re right. Much of that has been because I’ve been in demand from the publishers I’ve worked with so I’m very grateful to them and the fans for that. I’ve learned how to juggle projects and to do the things required of a professional novelist these days, and to do them in a manner where quality is not sacrificed. I also work very hard at what I do and strive for that quality. The harder I work, the more it pays off.

WITA -Now that you’ve been writing for a while, how has your style changed over time? Does the process come easier to you now?

GG - Although it took time to find my voice and develop my style, because I wrote for years before I ever wrote a novel, I was able to have both established by the time I did. Since then I think my style has remained the same, more or less, but it has evolved, and continues to (hopefully for the better). The only thing is that I’ve had to speed my process up a bit, which is not entirely natural for me, but it’s a shift I’ve learned to live with because it’s a necessary.

WITA -Everyone wonders what the chef eats when he’s away from his restaurant, so what do you read for entertainment? Who are some of the writers who have had an influence on your work?

GG - Unfortunately I don’t have the time to read for pleasure like I used to, but when I do have the time I tend to mix it up between fiction and nonfiction. I have very eclectic tastes when it comes to just about everything, so it’s a wide range in both. I read The New Yorker too, have for years, and I enjoy that. As for writers who have influenced me, there have been many, but I rarely list them because I always forget some. Here’s a few: Virginia Woolf, Jim Thompson, Tennessee Williams.

WITA -Writing can be lonely work, and sometimes it takes a while to receive positive reinforcement for what you do. What made you decide on writing as a career?

GG - Very true, writing is very isolating at times and can be very lonely, and it’s also (at times) a very brutal business. I never really decided on it though, it decided for me. I’ve always known what I wanted to do, always wanted to be a writer and an actor, and from the time I was a little kid, I mean, I don’t ever remember not knowing what I wanted to do. I studied, worked in and pursued both for years. Sounds corny but it’s true, it’s who I am. The literal decision came in my early 30s, when I decided if I didn’t commit and really go after a career as a writer, I never would. So I did and fortunately it paid off.

WITA -What should we be looking for in the near future from Greg Gifune?

GG - More novels coming later this year and next, and recently I’ve had quite a bit of interest from Hollywood (and some indi filmmakers as well) regarding several novels of mine, so we’ll see what happens there. My website is probably the best way to stay on top of things: www.gregfgifune.com.
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Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers

2011-11-16T11:37:00.001-08:00

Although this is the sixth film in the series, it is the first not to have the number in the title (some of the home video releases do call it Halloween 6). This was done so that when you put them on your shelf, you have to look closely at the production date to figure out which order to place them. You don’t shelve your movies by category, sub-category, production dates, etc.? Oh, well. I have a touch of CDO, which is OCD but with the letters alphabetized, they way they should be.

It’s six years after the events of Halloween 5, and a strange cult attends a young woman giving birth. When the baby is born, it is taken by the Man in Black from the preceding film for a ritual involving painting a rune on its stomach. With the help of a sympathetic nurse, the girl escapes and takes the baby, only to be pursued by Michael Myers. We eventually learn the girl is little Jamie from the preceding two films, that she was kidnapped along with Michael, and that apparently the cult has been breeding her with her uncle Michael. (May I say: Ewwww!) She heads back to Haddonfield, with Michael on her trail.

Back in good ol’ Haddonfield, there isn’t any of the Myers family left, but relatives of the Strodes, Laurie Strodes’ adoptive family, are now living in the old Myers house. That’s convoluted. Meanwhile, next door, there is a boarding house where Tommy (Paul Rudd, in his first film), the little boy Laurie baby-sat back in the first film, now lives. Tommy has grown up to be a little weird, which is understandable, and is watching the Myers’ house for the inevitable return of MM.

It seems that Michael is as Michael is because of the ancient Curse of Thorn, which causes one person in the village to become a mad killer so that…something or other. The cultists want the curse to be passed from Michael to his son/grand-nephew because…they just do, that’s all. Michael kills everyone he meets, Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) shows up once again to save the day, the Man in Black is revealed to be anti-climactic, and there is another open-ended ending.

By this point, the series had degenerated into a twisted mess. The production was famously complicated, and delayed by various lawsuits. Endless re-writes and changes meant the “Curse of Thorn” angle which is the main plot point of the early part of the film disappears at the end, and the cult is revealed to be doing genetic experiments instead, for some unknown reason. There are several bootleg alternate versions of the film floating around, and many claim they are better. They would almost have to be.

Casting was a problem. Danielle Harris was willing to come back, but producers supposedly wouldn’t meet her salary demands, which were for the amazingly low price of $5000, which shows how seriously the production company took the project. The producers wanted to bring back the actor who played Tommy in the original, but apparently couldn’t find him, although I doubt they put that much effort into it. Instead Paul Rudd got his first part. I’ve never been a fan of Rudd, and feel he is the opposite of charismatic, but he doesn’t do a bad job here as the damaged-to-the-point-of-weirdness Tommy. Donald Pleasance has been the heart and soul of the series to this point, but here he seems old and weak, and with good reason, as the legendary actor would pass away before the film was released.

The movie was savaged by critics, and with good reason. It also opened on the same weekend as Se7en, which was a much more sophisticated look at a serial killer movie, and suffered in comparison. Despite this, the sixth installment of the franchise did surprisingly good business, drawing a box office about three times its production budget. Thank Thorn they saved that five grand.

Oh, and everyone still mispronounces “Samhain.”

By the end of Curse, it was difficult to see where the franchise could go. The last two installments had strangled themselves trying to create an overly complicated mythology, and it was going to be hard to continue the story and deal with the sometimes contradictory subplots that had been created. Not to worry, though, this would be dealt with by retconning the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth movies out of existence. The next movie would pretend nothing had happened in the story since Halloween II.
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Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

2011-11-10T11:08:00.000-08:00

When last we left the Halloween franchise, Michael Myers was finally dead, due to being shot a lot, and lovable moppet Jamie had turned evil, icing her adopted mother with a knife. So, Halloween 5 would be the first in the series without Michael Myers (omitting Halloween 3, which is part of the series, but not really part of the series. Continuity, I mean. Oh, you either know what I mean or don’t care, so let’s move on.) and would feature a pre-teen girl on a rampage with a knife, right? Not so fast, my friend…

The movie opens with a recap of the ending of Halloween 4. Everybody shoots Michael Myers repeatedly until he falls down a mine shaft. They then rush forward and drop explosives down the shaft, blowing everything up real good. They do everything they can to insure that MM is dead, other than, you know, checking to see if there actually is a body. There isn’t, because we see MM crawl out of the bottom of the shaft and exit in a nearby river. His body floats downstream until he is found by a hermit, who takes his comatose body to stay at his shack with him and his parrot. This is too obvious an homage to Bride of Frankenstein to be unintentional.

Meanwhile Jamie (Danielle Harris), who only managed to wound her mom, is institutionalized, rendered completely mute by her experiences. She is frequently visited by creepy Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) and big sister Rachel (Ellie Cornell). She also has a friend at the institution, Billy (Jeffrey Landman) who stutters. If the stutter fascinates you, please listen to the commentary on the DVD, because Landman and Harris go on about how much of it was scripted longer than you would imagine possible.

On October 30th one year after the events of Halloween 4, Myers wakes up in the old man’s shack and kills him. I couldn’t help wondering why someone would live with a stranger in a coma for a year, but I guess hermits are supposed to be that way. The fate of the parrot is unknown, which is surprising since this series is very hard on canine pets, with the fourth death of a pet dog coming in this installment.

Back in Haddonfield, where I guess people continue to live because of low housing prices, Jamie has developed a telepathic link with her uncle Michael, which would be more helpful if she could talk, since MM is soon butchering a brand new crop of the town’s teenagers. (Graduation ceremonies at the local high school must have felt like a wake.) There is also a mysterious man in black stalking around town, although we never see his face.

Finally, we reach the climax, when MM confronts Jamie, who has regained the ability to talk now that it’s too late. Before he can kill her, Loomis rushes in and saves the day. For a change, Michael doesn’t “die” at the end of this one; Loomis just shoots him with a tranquilizer gun and beats the crap out of him with a two-by-four. Jamie is saved and Michael is taken to jail, which seems like a Really Bad Idea. As it proves to be, when the man in black shows up at the station, kills all the cops, and releases MM. This is the end of the movie, which is an obvious setup for the next one, where hopefully we’ll find out who the man in black really is. I’m betting on Johnny Cash.

Up until now, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the series, but it begins to go off the rails here. It’s too much of a generic slasher movie, and probably seemed tired even when it was released. Most of the characters exist only to be killed, and many of them are the types who seem to deserve it. One of the girl’s boyfriends is supposed to be a “bad boy” type, but comes off as a sullen version of Fonzie from Happy Days. In keeping with the tradition of showing everyone in Haddonfield as a moron, there are two bumbling cops who are useless even by the Haddonfield PD’s dubious standards. They even have their own “clown music” musical cue, which is supposed to be an homage to the original The Last House on the Left.

Danielle Harris does a commendable job with what she has to work with, since she has no lines for most of the film, and has to show some variation of the same frightened face throughout the first two-thirds of the movie. Donald Pleasance does a good job of chewing the scenery, which is what his role calls for. Overall, though, I don’t feel very confident as I move on to the next installment.

Halloween 5 did reasonable business at the box office, but it was obvious the slasher genre it had spawned was running out of steam at the end of the 80s.
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Dark Score Stories

2011-11-09T14:02:00.000-08:00

Yes, I'm going to finish the Halloween movies, hopefully before next Halloween. In the meantime, check out the website A & E Television has launched that serves as sort of a prequel/backstory for their upcoming miniseries of Stephen King's Bag of Bones, starring Pierce Brosnan and Melissa George. It's called Dark Score Stories, and is fairly creepy. King fans can have fun finding the King references in the background of the photographs.
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Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

2011-11-01T11:30:00.000-07:00

I intended to finish my recap of the Halloween series on Halloween day. I also intended to be rich and handsome; that didn’t work out either. Even though the holiday itself is over, it lives on in the hearts of each of us, whether those hearts still beat in our chest or sit in a jar on the desk of the local serial killer. So, we continue on with Project Halloween. No more Roman numerals!

Ten years have passed since the night Michael Myers “came home” in the original Halloween. Contrary to what we saw at the end of Halloween II, neither Myers nor Dr. Loomis died in the fiery climax, they just picked up some interesting new scars. Michael is in an apparent coma at an insane asylum, while Loomis continues his new career of telling everyone that Michael is going to wake up and kill them all. He is the Cassandra of this series. Naturally, he is proven right when Michael wakes up, kills a few attendants, and hits the road back home to see his family.

Meanwhile back in Haddonfield, life has gone on. Laurie Strode grew up, got married, had a child and was killed in a car wreck along with her husband. (Don’t worry, in about three movies she’ll get much better.) Her daughter, Jamie (Danielle Harris), is now Michael Myers only living relative, and therefore his principle target. Jamie lives with her foster family, including Rachel (Ellie Cornell). Jamie is getting ready for Halloween by picking out her costume – a clown costume nearly identical to the one l’il Michael Myers wore at the beginning of the first one. This won’t end well. Donald Pleasance, who plays Dr. Loomis, is the only cast member to return from the first two movies.

A brief digression: I mentioned the incompetence of everyone in my review of Halloween II, but in this movie I was really struck by what a miserable place Haddonfield is to live, even if you discount the periodic spree killings. Jamie is teased mercilessly for having a dead mother; a group of teenagers taunt an old man trying to get a ride, and a bunch of local rednecks grab their guns and take off after hearing word of Myers’ escape, managing to shoot innocent bystanders in the process. The police are as clueless as in the rest of the series. In short, if I lived in Haddonfield, I’d move.

Once MM reaches Haddonfield, he goes on the usual massacre, including killing the only teenager who has sex, as is the custom. After being thwarted for several movies by the fact that Michael is impervious to being shot, the townspeople find the way to kill him: shooting him a lot. It seems the not-so-good people of Haddonfield can get back to the lives they lead between bloody massacres. After being suspiciously absent during the chaos, Jamie’s foster family picks her up and carries her home. All is well until we hear Jamie’s mother give a blood-curdling off-camera scream, and Jamie emerges in her clown costume, holding a bloody knife. It looks like Halloween 5 is going to be a nine-year-old girl on a rampage.

After the semi-failure of Halloween III, the Halloween franchise set dormant for a few years, while Michael Myers’ “offspring” such as Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger went on regular, money-grabbing, killing sprees. This inspired the studio, led by Moustapha Akkad to revive the series and get it back to its roots. John Carpenter and Debra Hill were contacted, and, with noted horror author Dennis Etchison, produced a treatment that dealt with the psychological aspects of a town such as Haddonfield dealing with the aftermath of tragedy. Supposedly, Akkad read it, pronounced it too cerebral, and said he wanted a guy in a mask running around stabbing people with a knife. Carpenter and Hill sold their rights to the franchise, Etchison was canned, and the series re-started. I’d love to know what Carpenter and Etchison intended for the movie, but that dwells in the realm of Things That Were Not Meant To Be.

Supposedly, the producers felt there was too little gore in the completed cut, and the bloody scenes were re-shoots, added later. One of the things that have surprised me in re-watching this series is how relatively bloodless it is, and Halloween 4 isn’t that gory even with the new scenes. The franchise was at its best when it suggested bloody horror, not when it was shown.

So, how is Halloween 4, after all that? Surprisingly decent, in my opinion. It is very low on originality, but as a by-the-numbers slasher film, it is well put together. The cast does a good job, the clothing and hairstyles have as little 80s embarrassments as possible, and the script and direction are solid. If you like slasher films, you should like this one.
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From A Buick 8

2011-10-31T20:46:00.000-07:00

For the Halloween season of October this year, I resolved to spend most of my reading time re-reading old favorites. Grand masters like Stephen King, Robert R. McCammon, Ramsey Campbell, Peter Straub, and my annual re-read of “The Colour Our of Space” guaranteed a spooky time. Throw in a couple of modern things (Bryan Smith’s Kayla and the Devil and Norman Partridge classic Halloween story Dark Harvest) and I was set.

For my King selection I decided to go with a book I hadn’t read since its release, and one of his books that inspires a great division of opinion among his fans: From A Buick 8.

In western Pennsylvania, a mysterious man drives his vintage Buick Roadmaster into a service station and disappears, leaving the car behind. The car is taken into custody by the local barracks of the State Police, and stays in a storage shed on their property for the next quarter of a century. The troopers learn the thing really isn’t a car, just a mimicry of a car. Strange lights are occasionally seen around it, there are mysterious temperature fluctuations nearby, and sometimes things come through. People, animals, and things also vanish nearby, indicating the “car” may be some sort of portal to…somewhere else. The story is told as a flashback, with the older troopers telling it to Ned Wilcox, the young son of one of the troopers who first encountered the object, and who has been recently slain in a roadside accident.

The story ties into King’s larger Dark Tower mythos, but it reads perfectly well without any knowledge of that series, and in my mind, not knowing anything else heightens the sense of mystery, so it shouldn’t make it difficult to read for someone who hasn’t read the other books. Many King fans dislike the book because there is a lack of a definite conclusion, and most of the mysteries are not solved in the end.
From A Buick 8 features two themes of King’s work. The first is the obvious connection to cars. Like Christine, the central object is a vintage car (or something that looks like one) with malevolent intent. King, like me, is old enough to remember the glory days of American car culture, so classic cars are a strong nostalgic totem in his work.

The other theme is one found in some of King’s later work, and is what frustrated many readers, the lack of a definitive conclusion. My pet theory is this relates to the age of the writer. When you are young, you have an often-misplaced confidence that in time all things will be revealed, all mysteries will be solved. Thus the more definitive endings and explanations of King’s earlier work. Carrie dies, the Overlook hotel explodes, Salem’s Lot burns to the ground. As you get older, you start to realize that not all puzzles will be solved, not all truths will be made clear. Sometimes, Godot never arrives. This is found in a good deal of King’s later work, in fact; his next novel, The Colorado Kid, is structurally identical to From A Buick 8. Old-timers tell a young person about a mystery, and that youngster is frustrated by the lack of an ending.

Although I understand why a lot of people don’t like From A Buick 8, the story works for me. Not every secret will be told, and sometimes you have to use your imagination to fill in the blanks.
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A Crystal Skull For My Birthday

2011-10-27T10:43:00.000-07:00

Sounds a little like the title of an old Gold Medal paperback, doesn't it?

So next Monday is my birthday. The fact that I was born on Halloween explains a lot, doesn’t it? So, I saw my Mom, and she gave me part of my birthday present:

That’s the 1.75 liter size of Crystal Head Vodka, and yes, it is a life size crystal skull. This is an incredibly cool present, although the thought of my mother, a teetotalling Southern Baptist, shopping for booze at the commissary gives me the giggles. Obviously, she went out of town to do it.
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Halloween III: Season of the Witch

2011-10-26T11:01:00.000-07:00

And now for something completely different…

Although Halloween II was a bit of a box office disappointment by the standards of the original film, lost amid the glut of early 80s slasher films, it was still very profitable, and therefore talks on continuing the series were almost immediate. John Carpenter was adamant that Michael Myers had died at the end of the second film, and that his story was over. To continue the film series, Carpenter had the idea of a yearly series of movies set around some aspect of Halloween but independent of each other, an anthology series on a grand scale. This would begin with Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which would have little or no connection to the first two films, at least in terms of story. Carpenter chose Tommy Lee Wallace, art director on the original Halloween, to direct the movie, and commissioned a script by Nigel Kneale, the British writer of the Quatermass films.

A businessman is chased by mysterious figures, clutching a Halloween mask and saying “they’re gonna kill us all.” He collapses and is taken to the hospital, where he is placed under the care of Dr. Challis (Tom Atkins), who continues in the Halloween movie tradition of drunken doctors. After one of the pursuers follows the man to the hospital and kills him, Challis for no good reason begins to investigate the case himself, with the man’s daughter Ellie (Stacey Nelkin). The trail leads them to Santa Mira, California (no fake leaves this time) and the Silver Shamrock Halloween mask company, run by kindly Irishman Conal Cochran (Dan O’Herlihy). Except Cochran isn’t so kindly. He has created an army of robots to do his bidding, and, as a follower of the ancient Druid religion has stolen Stonehenge and shipped it to America (!). A chip from Stonehenge is in each of his Silver Shamrock masks, and when the wearer hears the Silver Shamrock jingle while wearing the mask, he will be killed. Thus millions of children will die, and the ancient Druid gods will be appeased. Or something.

It was a bit of a troubled production. Kneale didn’t like the amount of violence being added to the movie, so he sued to have his name removed from it. John Carpenter did a rewrite of the script, and so did Wallace, although Wallace gets sole credit for screenwriting. The plot demanded several special effects shots and the tiny budget ($2.5 million) just wasn’t enough to do a good job. The effects in the climactic scene are particularly cheap looking. The movie was savaged by critics. Appropriate, since there is an apocryphal story that carpenter wanted to do the film because Rex Reed had said he would resign as a film critic if they made a Halloween III.

Still, Atkins, Nelkin, and O’Herlihy do a good job with their roles, and the anti-corporate message was ahead of its time. There are too many problems to call it a really good movie, but it isn’t the complete waste critics railed about at the time. Oh, there is a connection with the first two, as footage from the original film is shown on a television set in the background.

The movie took in less than half the receipts of the previous one in the series. While profitable, this decline killed the concept of a Halloween anthology series in its infancy, leaving future entries in the “What Might Have Been” category. When next the series returned, we would learn Michael Myers wasn’t all that dead after all.
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Halloween II (1981)

2011-10-24T09:46:00.000-07:00

Continuing Project Halloween…

When we left off at the end of the first movie in the series, Halloween had become a surprise hit. Director John Carpenter and Producer Debra Hill were satisfied with their work and saw no reason for a sequel. The story of The Shape ended with the disappearance of his body, and somewhere, he’s still out there. Laurie Strode survived and can try to put her life back together after her ordeal.

But…

When they made the first film, Carpenter and Hill had been focused on just getting it made. The contracts they signed were not very favorable for them, typical for filmmakers without any clout. Halloween had made a fortune for the distributors, but not for the creative people. The only way to see money from it was to be involved in a sequel, so Carpenter and Hill wrote a new script, although Carpenter was not interested in directing the sequel, instead picking newcomer Rick Rosenthal.

The sequel is a little unusual in that it starts immediately after the end of the first movie. In fact, the opening scene is a replay of the end of the first Halloween. We watch as the injured Laurie is taken by paramedics to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, bodies are collected, and Dr. Loomis starts badgering the police to keep looking for Michael Myers, referred to by name in this movie (in the first, he is simply The Shape, and Carpenter intended him to represent faceless evil). We find out that Laurie is actually Michael’s sister, a bit of retconning that was never intended in the original movie, but there had to be some reason for Michael to keep chasing that one particular girl. He follows her to the hospital, and some there are numerous openings among the hospital staff.

The movie was pretty well savaged by critics when it was released, and the general opinion was that it lacked the originality of the first one, and was just a generic slasher film. In retrospect, it deserved better than that. It is just a slasher film where the first was something fairly fresh, but it is a well done slasher film, much better than the pale imitations flooding the theaters of the day. The first one is a superior movie, but the first sequel holds up much better than I remembered. Supposedly, Carpenter was disappointed with Rosenthal's direction and shot a number of the scenes himself, upping the gore factor.

It’s also a little odd. Everyone in authority is laughably, criminally incompetent. The police chief and Dr. Loomis chase an innocent teenager into the street, where he is struck and killed by a police car, and no one seems to care. The ER doctor is drunk, the lead paramedic is smoking pot, and a nurse abandons her station in the nursery to have sex in the therapy room. The hospital security guard is reading a magazine, so he doesn’t see the psycho killer slip into the building. Another paramedic takes a pratfall in a pool of blood, either knocking himself out or killing himself, depending how you want to look at it. It’s a fairly playful movie, considering the subject matter.

There are a few gaffes. Southern California is still standing in for the Midwest in late fall, so the trees and grass are way too green. Dr. Loomis mispronounces “Samhain”, but if he pronounced it correctly, 99% of the moviegoers would have been confused. (It’s pronounced “sow-in” by the way. Those crazy Celts!) Loomis bizarrely fails to recognize his old nurse, although by the movie timeline it has only been a few hours since he last saw her. The hospital, on a night when there have been over a half dozen fatalities and accidents in town, is staffed by just one doctor and four nurses. All in all, though, if you’ve been putting this one off because you are in the “sequels suck!” crowd, you might be surprised at how well done this is.

A personal note. Like the first one, I saw this in the theater. I was dating a very sweet girl who was a nursing student in college. When the movie reached the scene where the neo-natal nurse sneaks off for a tryst and gets boiled in the hot tub, I heard my date muttering under her breath, “Kill her. Kill her. Kill her.” This seemed uncharacteristic, so afterward, I asked her why she was so eager to see the nurse die, and she explained she was outraged that the nurse would leave the children in the middle of her shift, and thought she deserved to die for it. I haven’t seen the young lady in question for many years, but I bet she made a very conscientious nurse herself.

The horror movie playing on a TV in the background of this one is The Night of the Living Dead.
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Fear & Undertaker's Moon

2011-10-23T10:17:00.000-07:00

After much anticipation, the first two volumes in The Essential Ronald Kelly Collection are available from Thunderstorm Books. The series will feature all eight of Ron’s books published by Zebra in the early 90s, with beautiful covers by Alex McVey, and each will feature a new novella by Ron set in the world of that particular novel, as well as a “writing of” feature which will delve into the circumstances behind writing the book. The first two titles to be released are UNDERTAKER’S MOON and FEAR. I’ve read both in previous editions, and they are horror classics, with a lot of people considering FEAR to be the definitive Ronald Kelly novel.
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Halloween (The Original)

2011-10-22T10:33:00.000-07:00

In 1978, John Carpenter was a very promising graduate from USC film school. He had directed a student film called Dark Star, which was pretty good – for a student film, and a praised low budget film called Assault on Precinct 13. He was developing a good reputation, but the major studios weren’t exactly breaking down his door. For his third feature, he and producing partner Debra Hill had written a script called The Baby-Sitter Murders, about a series of killings stretching over several days. The movie was budgeted at $320,000, half of which went to renting the cameras. Largely to save money by reducing costume changes, the decision was made to condense the action to just one day, and a certain date seemed perfect. So the movie’s name was changed to Halloween, and it was shot on a 21 day schedule in Southern California.

The movie is set in Haddonfield, Illinois, and opens with a flashback in which a small boy murders a young girl at Halloween. Jump forward a few years, and the now grown boy escapes from an insane asylum and heads back home, again on Halloween. Laurie (Jamie Leigh Curtis), Annie (Nancy Loomis), and Lynda (P.J. Soles) are getting ready for the holiday. Laurie and Annie are baby-sitting, while Lynda is looking for a place to be alone with her boyfriend. Michael Myers (actually identified as The Shape in the original) arrives to wreak mayhem, with psychiatrist Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance) in hot pursuit.

Expectations were low for the movie, but it struck a nerve with movie goers, going on to gross the equivalent of $150,000,000 today. In those pre-home video days, it became customary to see it multiple times, and it stayed in theaters for months. (In the movie theater where I saw it, it was customary to turn off all the exit and other lights during the frenetic last fifteen minutes – regulations were a little lax in those days – and if there was a full house, a tall usher would put on a mask and walk down the aisle waving a fake knife. Good times.) It wasn’t the first slasher movie, but it largely gave birth to the slasher genre.

Since the movie was shot in the spring in southern California, everything is too green for late fall in Illinois, but the low-fi solution was to make a number of fake leaves, scatter them about for a scene, then gather them up and re-use them for the next. The ubiquitous pumpkins were also difficult since they were out of season, and gourds painted orange were substituted, which is why all the jack-o-lanterns look unusually squat. As most people know, the mask is a cheap William Shatner mask painted white with the eye-holes stretched. As he did in most of his early films, Carpenter did the soundtrack (recorded mostly in unusual 5/4 time) himself.

A personal note: Back when I and a friend were doing our late, unlamented horror podcast, we took the name from a line in Halloween, One Good Scare, which you can see on the poster in the previous post.

The two horror movies playing on TVs in the background are the original The Thing from Another World (which Carpenter would remake in about four years) and Forbidden Planet.

I read once that it is impossible for modern audiences to fully appreciate Citizen Kane, since the innovations in that film have been copied so many times in subsequent movies they don’t seem fresh and original any more. There is some of the same problem with Halloween. When it arrived at the theaters in October 1978, its use of camera angles and narrative, especially scenes shot from the POV of the killer were mostly new to audiences, but some of their impact has been blunted by dozens of inferior films mimicking them. Still, it is a tight, focused, suspenseful film, and as close to Citizen Kane as the slasher genre ever got. I think it holds up very well. One of the peculiar things is the movie was seen as shockingly graphic at the time, but there are only two brief scenes of blood, and if you took out a couple of topless scenes, it could probably be shown on prime time TV without complaint. Times change. Carpenter and the rest of the creative people knew they had gotten as close to perfection as that sub-genre would stand, and there would never be a need for a sequel.
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Project Halloween

2011-10-21T07:54:00.000-07:00

Usually in October (Blogtober!) I go into a frenetic posting pace to rev up for Halloween, but this year, real-world considerations have made that impossible. Still, I wanted to do something for the season that would be a little special, at least to me. A couple of years ago, I went through the entire Friday the 13th series in order, and my brain didn’t melt or anything, so, in honor of Halloween, I’m going to try to get through the complete Halloween series of movies. I’ve only reviewed the second Rob Zombie movie here (which will save me from having to watch it again) and there are a couple of them I don’t think I’ve seen. I hope the later movies in the series are better than I remember.
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The Midnight Meat Train

2011-10-20T12:57:00.000-07:00

I am old enough to have been reading horror when Clive Barker’s work (Dread, The Book of Blood) exploded like a bomb in horror fiction with the publication of the first Books of Blood. The collections of short stories introduced a new emphasis on body horror to the genre, and new and fantastic variations on traditional horror tropes. The vibrant, amazing imagery in the stories soon attracted movie makers, and to date there are 31 movies (according to imdb.com) adapted from Barker’s work, although many of these are continuations of characters in long-running horror series. Like with most authors, the cinematic interpretations of Barker’s work have been spotty at best, with only a few truly good films in the mix. Hellraiser? Yes. Candyman? I think so. Lord of Illusions? Well, I liked it.

A few years ago, Lionsgate Films committed to a reasonably high budget adaptation of the first of the stories in The Books of Blood, “The Midnight Meat Train” (Barker had a way with titles), to be made under the supervision of Barker himself. The movie starred Bradley Cooper (before he got famous playing self-centered drunks), British tough guy Vinnie Jones, Leslie Bibb, and Brooke Shields. The movie got an enthusiastic response from advance screenings, but there was a shakeup in management at Lionsgate before its release. The VP who had advocated The Midnight Meat Train was out, and his successor, in time-honored fashion, did everything he could to torpedo the movie to make the other guy look bad. As a result, the movie had little or no theatrical run.

Leon (Cooper) is a photographer in New York, looking to make a breakthrough in the art world while his girlfriend (Bibb) has a real job to pay the bills. After prompting by a socialite art patron (Shields) he starts photographing people in the subway late at night. A chance encounter with a model who later disappears starts an obsession with the Butcher (Jones) who Leon believes is a serial killer riding the late night rails. (Incidentally, despite the title, the train in question leaves at around 2:00 AM) His friends and girlfriend are soon drawn in as he seeks the Butcher’s dark secret.

Is Midnight Meat Train worth the hype? For the most part, yes. The film is well acted and expertly photographed, with a weird ending that is true to Barker’s style in a way most adaptations of his work are not. There are moments of true suspense, and plenty of gore for the gorehounds. You’ve heard the phrase “not for the faint of heart”? Certain sequences, particularly where the Butcher removes the teeth, eyes, and fingernails from a victim may not be for the strong of heart. Maybe we could have done with a little more sympathy for the main character – Leon’s obsession destroys the lives of everyone around him, so it’s hard to feel very kindly toward him – but in general, this should appeal to horror fans.
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Priest

2011-10-19T10:18:00.000-07:00

While I am pretty much up for any horror/supernatural/sci-fi movie that comes down the pike (as a casual perusal of this blog will attest), my beautiful wife is a little more discriminating. She likes some movies you wouldn’t guess in a million years (John Carpenter’s The Thing) but nothing will tempt her to watch most horror flicks (anything where someone has a knife or other sharp object). So, when something in the genre catches her interest, I make sure we see it. Which brings us to Priest.

Based on a Japanese graphic novel, Priest is set in an alternate reality where humans have been at war with vampires for centuries. The vampires here are more creature-like than human, although they do keep a few human familiars, who seem to have some sort of derived power themselves. After all the fighting, the humans, led by a theocratic, rigid Church, got the upper hand by creating an army of warriors called Priests, who are easily distinguishable by a tattoo of a cross that runs from their forehead down the bridge of their nose. The Priests turn the tide, and the few surviving vampires are driven onto reservations. We see one of the last battles of the war as the main character, Priest (Paul Bettany), enters a large hive of vampires, and sees his best friend, Black Hat (Karl Urban), carried away after an ambush. The authors did not seem to waste a lot of time working on names for the characters. Anyway, they win the war, everybody moves to heavily fortified, massively polluted cities, the Church disbands the Priests and limits their power lest they become a threat to their authority, and everyone settles down to a grim lifeless existence.

Priest’s brother, sister-in-law (Priest’s old flame) and niece (or is she?) are working out in the middle of a wasteland, prospecting for something or other when the vampires stage a surprise attack. The adults are killed, and the girl is taken prisoner. The young girl’s boyfriend (Cam Gigandet), who is too old for her, frankly, tells Priest he’s going after her. Although the Church tries to stop this, saying the vampires are no longer a threat, Priest goes anyway, eventually joined by Priestess (Maggie Q). I told you they didn’t waste a lot of time on names, although, disappointingly, Gigandet’s character is named Hicks, not Sidekick. Much fighting ensues, and Priest is shocked to discover who is leading the vampires, although if you hang around with a guy named Black Hat, you shouldn’t be surprised by this.

Was the movie any good? It’s a little hard to say. It’s certainly no Citizen Kane, but anyone who goes to see a vampire/apocalyptic/martial arts movie and expects to see Citizen Kane probably has something wrong with them. I was reasonably entertained, in a watch-the-good-guys-kick-the-bad-guys way. The plot, as you have probably noticed, is more or less the same as the classic western The Searchers, which seems a good source of material to use, but it definitely could have done with more character development. Bettany is a good actor, although he persists in choosing these dour, emotionless roles. I also like Karl Urban a lot, but he is under-utilized to the point of well, pointlessness here.

In closing, if it looks like something you’d enjoy, you probably will, although it won’t change your life. The director and star are the same as for 2009’s Legion, so this may be an ongoing working partnership.
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Kayla and the Devil

2011-10-18T11:03:00.000-07:00

At the time of the implosion of Dorchester Publishing’s imprint Leisure Books, it was the principal mass market source of horror fiction, publishing 24 new and reprint titles a year. Since its fall, the authors of those books have had to find new means to get their books to the public. The best writer working in the Dorchester stable at that time was Bryan Smith (House of Blood, Soultaker, Freakshow), who has moved on to publish with Deadite Press. He has also ventured into e-publishing, and his latest book is Kayla and the Devil.

Kayla Monroe is a sophomore at Vanderbilt, and not that nice of a person. She is sarcastic and the definition of a “mean girl.” Since she’s also rich and pretty, her personality has never been an obstacle in her social life. In the last year, however, everyone has begun to shun her. She has no friends and even nerds won’t sleep with her. This is a mystery to her until she meets a stranger in the park, who explains to her she has been placed under a shunning spell which will keep everyone away from her. The stranger can lift the spell, however, and will be glad to do so in exchange for a couple of things: Kayla has to kill an innocent person, and give up her soul. If you paid attention to the title, you know who the stranger is.

As Kayla seeks to fulfill her end of the bargain, she finds out she might not be quite as mean as she thinks. She also gets to meet, courtesy of her benefactor, Jack the Ripper and the Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who functions as sort of middle management for Lucifer. Kayla has to make a choice between eternal satanic servitude and being unable to get a date for the rest of her life.

Stories about deals with the devil have a long history in literature, from Faust to “The Devil and Daniel Webster” and so on. It is a rich subject for exploration, and Smith handles it exceptionally well. There has always been an element of humor in Smith’s books, and that gets a lot of play here. The book is a bit of a hybrid between the author’s previous work and urban fantasy. There is plenty of elements of each genre, enough visceral scenes to satisfy horror fans, and enough of a playful element to attract readers who are more likely to favor Jim Butcher over Stephen King. Highly recommended.
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Shotgun For Two

2011-09-23T11:32:00.001-07:00

My friend Kent Gowran has a story by that name up at A Twist of Noir. You should check it out, get in ahead of the rush.

New Kealan Patrick Burke E-Mail Newsletter

2011-09-01T18:23:00.000-07:00

Kealan Patrick Burke (Seldom Seen In August) has started a new e-mail newsletter. To subscribe, send a blank e-mail to elderlemon2010@aol.com with “newsletter” in the subject line. Those who subscribe will receive an electronic copy of his excellent novel Currency of Souls, and will be entered into a drawing to receive a copy of his forthcoming novel Kin. For a little more about Mr. Burke, I interviewed him a while back here. Kealan Patrick Burke is one of the very best writers working in the genre today; if you aren’t reading him, you should be.
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Invasion

2011-09-01T09:50:00.000-07:00

“It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.” – Bob Dylan

In the case of William Meikle’s (The Amulet) Invasion, it’s more of a green rain (or snow), but it is pretty hard on those on whom it falls anyway.

On a winter day in the Canadian Maritimes, a strange snow starts to fall. It is green, for one thing, but more ominously, has an acidic effect on anything living on which it falls. People, dogs, plants, all are dissolved by contact with the eerie precipitation. The only people who survive are those who have immediate access to shelter, and the phenomenon is not localized, but is spread all over the east coast, and elsewhere in the world. Civilization begins to collapse under the onslaught, and it gets worse. Alien organisms begin to grow in the biological sludge left behind, and the survivors soon learn this is the precursor to a full-fledged alien invasion.

The story follows Alice, a biologist who gives some of the scientific exposition for the benefit of the readers and John Hiscock (I realize this is a real name of a real person, but I could hear Beavis and Butthead going “heh, heh” in my head every time I read it.), a survivalist and unlikely hero. Alice has a psychic ability to resist the invaders. They manage to find each other and join the military in a desperate attempt to stop the onslaught.

The whole thing has a 50s sci-fi movie feel, and the obvious point of reference is John Wyndham’s classic sci-fi disaster novel The Day of the Triffids, the most famous alien plant invasion story. The author does a good job of keeping the action moving. I could quibble about some minor details that are wrong, mostly military related (no one in the American military, Army or Navy, has held five star rank since Omar Bradley died, for instance) but I won’t. Although I guess I just did. There does seem to be too much story for the relatively short length (it’s more a novella than a full novel) and both Alice’s powers and the appearance of the professor are a bit deus ex machina.

The good far outweighs the minor problems, however. This is meant to be a fast-paced action piece, and I enjoyed it. It isn’t the deep sort of thing you read to reveal some existential truth about your life, but how often do you want to read something like that anyway? Invasion is available as an e-book or as an archaic tree-killing print edition.
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Under The Dome: The Series

2011-08-31T12:47:00.000-07:00

Stephen King’s novel Under the Dome will become a TV series for the Showtime cable network, according the Deadline Hollywood. This will be developed for television by Steven Spielberg’s Dreamworks production company, so look for an addition of a precocious tween boy with a distant father to the story. Hopefully it will do better than the ill-fated plans for The Dark Tower films and series.
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Bloodrayne: The Third Reich

2011-08-31T10:33:00.000-07:00

If you watched 2005’s Bloodrayne and 2007’s Bloodrayne: Deliverance, then the third installment in the series, Bloodrayne: The Third Reich (seriously) shouldn’t disappoint you. It shouldn’t disappoint you because the original Bloodrayne was a mess, with slumming “name” actors and an incomprehensible plot, and Bloodrayne: Deliverance was bad enough to make the first one look like Citizen Kane, so you shouldn’t have any positive expectations to be shattered. Why you would watch this after suffering through the first two is another question.

(Which leads to the question: I watched the first two, so why did I do this? Anyone who can answer that can probably get a nice research grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. I suspect repressed masochism enters into it, although I try not to think about it.)

Having disposed of the vampire Billy the Kid (!) in the previous installment, the Dhamphyre (Half-human, half-vampire) Rayne (Natassia Malthe) is now fighting Nazis in Eastern Europe during World War II. There’s no deeper motivation than hey, they’re evil, which I guess is good enough. While laying waste to a Nazi train carrying prisoners to a concentration camp, Rayne doesn’t quite kill Commandant Brand (Michael Paré) dead enough. He gets splattered with some of her blood, and transforms into a Damphyre/Vampire/Something. Rayne hooks up with some anti-Nazi fighters, while the undead Brand enlists Doctor Mangler (Clint Howard. Doctor Mangler. Really?) to help him capture Rayne and use her blood for nefarious purposes. The major subplot is to use the blood to make Hitler immortal but even Brand and Mangler don’t seem to have their hearts in that.

I think you’ve figured out by now, the plot is lacking a certain something. This is partially obscured by truly horrible dialogue. Sample, spoken by Rayne: “I need to do what needs to be done!” Thanks for the exposition there, Rayne. Although Howard does a decent job chewing the scenery, the rest of the actors appear overmatched, although it’s difficult to tell whether that’s due to lack of talent or lack of material.

The movie is directed by everyone’s favorite archenemy, Uwe Boll. Everyone piles on Boll, and his oeuvre is not terribly distinguished. He does seem to be a good sport about it, and I have to admire his ability to continue to get movies made, which is no small accomplishment. I’m also tickled by a director who stages boxing matches against his critics, and it doesn’t hurt that Michael Bay hates him, considering Bay is also the enemy of good taste. Here, Boll directs about as well as you would expect. It may be just me, but there is something unsettling about seeing a real-life horror like the Holocaust used as a backdrop for a frivolous movie like this, but this movie is hardly the first to do that, and your mileage may vary.

About a third of the way into the movie, it briefly morphs into a late-night Cinemax feature, as Rayne visits a brothel and there is a fairly lengthy soft-core lesbian sequence. I realize a substantial portion of the male readers who have been wondering why anyone would watch this just added it to their Netflix queue.

For an opposing opinion, here is a video question-and-answer with director Boll and the beautiful Ms. Malthe:

In closing, I’d like to say something nice about Bloodrayne: The Third Reich, so here it is: at 75 minutes, it goes over very quickly.
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Thriller: A Cruel Picture

2011-08-30T19:48:00.000-07:00

I’m a fan of Quentin Tarantino, and a while back I read an interview in which he talked about his influences and his favorite films. High on the list, and cited as the biggest inspiration for Kill Bill, was a Swedish movie called Thriller (known as They Call Her One-Eye - the connection to Kill Bill being fairly obvious - on its original American release,and as Thriller: A Cruel Picture in its home video version). Naturally, I had to see it although it took some work tracking it down.

Thriller is a revenge movie. Innocent young Frigga is kidnapped by a cruel pimp, raped, and forced into prostitution. When she balks at what he wants her to do, she is blinded in one eye (hence the American title). After the pimp kills her only friend at the brothel, she runs away, only to find her parents have committed suicide due to the hate-filled letter the pimp forced her to write. Frigga snaps, arms herself, and goes on a rampage, slaughtering everyone who has exploited her. Not the most convoluted plot in the world.

As I said, the movie has a pretty simple, obvious plot, and overall is not badly done (it would probably be even better if you spoke Swedish). However, it is for the strong of stomach, and, let’s say, enlightened tastes. In the scene in which Frigga is blinded with a knife, the visual effect was allegedly achieved by mutilating a real corpse from a local morgue. Although the scene is brief, it could be difficult to take. There are several sex scenes (understandable, considering the plot) and the sex is very obviously not simulated, with penetration being shown explicitly. Apparently the Swedes are a little more liberated than we Americans, and a lot of people would probably consider it porn. So if it interests you, be forewarned. Also, the DVD is available in a heavily cut and uncensored version. If you want all the explicit sex and gore, look for the version with the red cover.
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Supergods

2011-08-28T18:52:00.000-07:00

In the collective opinion, people who read comic books are geeks, and the lowest of the comic book geeks are those who read superhero comics. The general idea is, if you are going to read funny books at least read gritty realistic ones, refer to them as graphic novels, and salvage at least a little of your dignity. Books that feature guys (and gals) flying around in long underwear with magic powers are embarrassing according to general belief.

Grant Morrison, one of the more prominent comic writers of the modern era, disagrees with this. In his new book Supergods (not a comic book, for the record), he argues that the traditional superheroes like Superman, Batman, The Flash, etc., are important to us for their totemic power, and their sometime unrealistic devotion to a higher moral code is necessary to inspire us. We want to see our heroes soaring through the heavens above us, not wallowing in the muck like an ordinary being.

Supergods is both a memoir of Morrison and a history of the superhero genre, going back to the inception of superhero comics in the 1930s with early versions of Superman and Batman, kicking off the Golden Age, the revitalization of the form in the late 1950s in the Silver Age, and where our heroes stand now in the modern age. Along the way, he discusses his first exposure to American comics, brought to his native Scotland by American sailors, and his personal journey from novice to one of the more acclaimed writers in the field today. Along the way, he does an excellent job in explaining the subtext of most of the major comic storylines, divergent philosophies in writing the characters, and interestingly, the influence of mind-expanding chemicals on the superhero art form. (I got an unintentional laugh when Morrison explained the epiphanic vision he had in Thailand could not be explained by the relatively small amount of hashish he had ingested.)

Morrison discusses past legends of the genre like Bob Kane, Siegel and Schuster, Jack Kirby, and John Broome, as well as the work (and his personal relationships) with creators such as Alan Moore, Mark Waid, and Mark Millar. He is very blunt in his assessment of these writers and artists, even those who are his contemporaries. There is at least a hint of some minor feuds with other writers, particularly Alan Moore, and I do wish he had delved a little deeper into what seems a disapproving attitude toward his former protégée Millar. The book also deals with Morrison’s personal spiritual journey – he is a practioner of a shamanic form of personal religion.
Morrison is best known for his work re-inventing the previously minor DC character Animal Man, his own The Invisibles (which was an inspiration for The Matrix), the re-invention of the Justice League of America in JLA, and an interesting and controversial stint writing X-Men. I think his re-imagining of the moribund Justice League from what had become mostly a joke into a re-telling of ancient myths to be one of the better feats in comic book history. I also enjoyed his take on the X-Men, although the purists were up in arms at the time. (X-fans can be passionate and a little crazy. The other X-writer during Morrison's tenure was Chuck Austen, who was basically hounded out of comics by zealots angry at his take on the X-Men. I thought Austen did a good job, too.)

This is probably a book only for comic book fans, but if you are an aficionado of the gents in long underwear, you shouldn’t miss Supergods.
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WITA # 2: Tim Curran

2011-08-27T21:57:00.000-07:00

Continuing to reprint the older We Interrupt This Author series, here is the second interview, originally posted on Cemetery Dance’ website on June 28, 2010. At the time of the interview, Tim’s book The Corpse King had just been released, so once again, this is taken a bit out of temporal context. The only change in the text is the re-insertion of a mention of the book Four Rode Out, which was deleted from the original post, as the official announcement for the book had not yet been made. As always, remember that what was on the horizon in mid-2010 may now be in the rearview mirror.

Here we are for the second in our series of short interviews with horror authors, following the success of the first one (I define success as: Didn’t get fired, didn’t get sued. Set the bar of success low, and you won’t have to deal with disappointment, kids). Our latest author to interrupt is Tim Curran.

A resident of Michigan, Tim Curran is the author of the acclaimed novels Dead Sea and The Hive. His most recent book is The Corpse King, now available from Cemetery Dance. Tim’s home on the web is www.corpseking.com. Here are a few questions with which we bothered him.

WITA: Tell us a little about The Corpse King. Am I correct in assuming Burke and Hare were a partial inspiration?

TIM CURRAN: Yes, definitely. Those two are the most famous of the 19th century Resurrection Men. So I certainly had them in mind. During my research of grave robbers I came across a fellow named Ben Crouch who operated out of London as part of the Borough Gang as it was known. He was a real entrepreneur of the dead. Not only did he and his friend Joseph Naples supply corpses to order for the medical schools, but they ran something of a cadaver supermarket—skeletons, body parts, entire corpses of men, women, and children preserved in vats in their makeshift warehouse which was in a cellar, I believe. They ran the truly first medical supply house in the UK. Crouch was known as “The Corpse King” which I, of course, stole for my novella title. I based my graverobbers, Clow and Kierney, upon Crouch and Naples to a certain extent, though I moved the action to Edinburgh, the traditional home of bodysnatching ever since Burke and Hare and Robert Louis Stevenson’s story. Nearly everything that happens in The Corpse King is based upon firsthand accounts of the time. Although most of the Resurrection Men were illiterate, some either told their tales to others or wrote them down themselves. I read quite a few of these and was amazed at the morbid, gallows humor these guys had. I incorporated that into Clow and Kerney. Other than my supernatural ghoul—The Corpse King of the title—there’s nothing truly imaginary in the book. Edinburgh in the 1820’s was a horrible place of overcrowded slums, rampant infectious disease, child labor, rats and lice, poverty and crime. Life was cheap. People worked fourteen hour days in linen mills with machinery that was extremely dangerous and when you lost a limb or were too sick to work, you were replaced that same day. It was no wonder the girls turned to prostitution and the boys to crime…including grave robbing.

WITA -You live in the U.P. (the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, for those not in the know), known for being remote and sparsely populated. Do you find this helps set the mood to write horror fiction?

TIM CURRAN - I think so in some ways. Winters are long and harsh up here and it’s not unusual for towns to get completely shut down for days because of blizzards sweeping down from Lake Superior. It can be a very eerie, surreal experience. Up in the Keweenaw—or the Copper Country as locals call it—the winters are so severe that it’s pointless to shovel the snow so they have tunnels connecting the buildings. When I wrote my novel Hive, all I had to do was step outside on a dark January night with the wind howling and the snow flying, the windchill down to twenty or thirty below, and it was very easy to channel Antarctica. The woods up here are another factor. They can be very weird and primeval when you’re deep out in them by yourself. Algernon Blackwood tapped into that very well with stories like “The Wendigo” and “The Willows.” There’s these very disturbing moments when you’ll be out in the forest, miles from the nearest logging road or fire-cut. The birds are singing, insects droning, wind up in the trees…and then, nothing. It’s like somebody threw a switch. Dead silent. No wind, no birds, nothing. And you wonder what causes something like that. It’ll make your skin crawl. Besides those two factors, there’s a lot of eccentric characters up here. When I was a kid there were remote villages where the locals still spoke Finnish and French, and the old Cornish copper miners—Cousin Jacks, they were called-would spin pretty wild tales out of their native Cornwall.

WITA -It’s easy to see by the titles of some of the anthologies in which your work has appeared H.P. Lovecraft is a source of inspiration. Who are some of the other writers who have influenced your work?

TC - Lovecraft, along with Robert E. Howard, was one of the first authors of the weird I came across as a kid so I’ll always be standing in his shadow to some extent. I’ve been influenced by just about everyone from Ray Bradbury to Jack London, James Herbert to Elmore Leonard. I’m a big fan of Simon Clark and Ramsey Campbell and I honestly think that Thomas Ligotti is probably the greatest writer of the weird since H.P. Lovecraft. I’m absolutely in awe of that man.

WITA -Speaking of things that influence you, what are some of the things other than books which stimulate the writing process for you?

TC - Just about anything, I find. Like most horror writers I tend to unconsciously look for shadows and weirdness in just about everything. I see two men hauling crates into a house and I wonder what’s in them. I find an abandoned shoe in the woods and I wonder what happened to the person who wore it. I see a lake by moonlight and I wonder what might crawl out of it. I watch a movie or a TV show and the whole time my mind is making the connections, plotting out what will happen next and how it will end. And when it doesn’t work out the way I thought, sometimes, if my idea is powerful enough, I have to write it the way I think it should have been done.

WITA - There was some talk a while back about your novel The Hive being optioned for film. Is this still a possibility, or has that opportunity passed?

TC - No, that’s all done with. I had two different production companies looking at it and they both backed out. What they promised and what they delivered were two different things. It did not leave me with a real upstanding opinion of the people in that business. I’d love to see Hive made into a movie, but I’m honestly leery of the whole process. I guess I wouldn’t believe it until I got a check in my hand!

WITA - What’s on the horizon for Tim Curran? What projects are you currently working on?

TC - I just finished writing up the afterword for my short story collection, Bone Marrow Stew, which will be published in winter 2011 by Tasmaniac Publications of Australia. I’ve been publishing stories since the mid-’90’s and always wanted to do a collection of them but I held back because I wanted it done the right way. And now, thanks to Steve Clark of Tasmaniac, it’s being given the royal treatment in a hardcover, lettered edition with a wraparound cover and 10 awesome internal illustrations by the great Keith Minnion. Simon Clark, one of my favorite writers, is doing the introduction. I’m very excited about it. If it sells well enough—and I hope it does—there’ll be a volume two. There’s two original stories in the book and 15 reprints from anthologies and small press magazines, many of which are pretty hard to come by now. It opens with my very first short story and goes on from there. Other than that, I just wrapped up the second Hive book a couple months ago and that should be out from ESP in late summer/early fall. I’ll also be in another Cemetery Dance book with Steve Vernon, Brian Keene, and Tim Lebbon called Four Rode Out, a collection of weird western novellas that’s really going to kick ass and we’re all pretty pumped about. I’m also working on a collection of my zombie stories for Severed Press that’ll be bookended by two new novellas. The latter of which I’ll be returning to Lovecraft for a Herbert West story concerning his exploits in World War I. Let’s see, I’m working on an alternate world/steampunk vampire novel, another about a necrophiliac, another about veterans of the Iraq War who can read the fears in your mind and externalize them, and still another about a life-eating car haunted by a demon. There’s others, but you get the picture: I like to keep busy.
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The Silent Land

2011-08-24T14:21:00.000-07:00

Some writers are difficult to fit into the narrow categories we widely use to describe fiction, and Graham Joyce is one of those. His books have elements of fantasy, science fiction, suspense, a little horror, and other sub-genres, and his work can be classified as all or none of those. This should only affect you if you separate the books on your shelves according to these categories, however. What should matter instead is Joyce is one of the better writers working today. His latest is The Silent Land.

Jake and Zoe are a young married couple on a ski holiday in France. Life seems to be going well for them, and Zoe is searching for the right time to tell Jake she’s pregnant. Their luck turns when they are caught in an avalanche on the slopes. Zoe is buried and barely rescued by Jake, and then the story takes a turn into Twilight Zone territory. When they reach the resort, they find it is deserted. Apparently, it was hurriedly evacuated, with food still standing on prep tables in the kitchen. They believe this is because of danger from another avalanche, but a hike into town finds it just as deserted.

Attempts to leave the area are fruitless, as the two always end up back where they started. They discover the food left out doesn’t appear to spoil, as if time isn’t passing. At first, they make the best of having the exclusive hotel to themselves, but things go into a decline. Zoe gets garbled calls on her cell phone and glimpses eerie figures outside the hotel. They speculate they have died in the avalanche, and apprehension over what comes next begins to grow.

The story itself isn’t outstandingly original. By the halfway point of the book, you can assume it will end in one of two or three ways, and it does. Despite this, Joyce is a master at creating characters you care about, and slowly ratcheting up the tension. If you were going to call this a horror novel, and that fits as well as any other shorthand description, it would definitely be in the “quiet horror” tradition, lacking the exploding heads and other over-the-top psychodrama that fills most current horror fiction. Instead you have a growing feeling of dread, which to my mind is more effective. I found myself glancing over my shoulder when Zoe started seeing the mysterious figures, and it’s a rare book that gets to me like that. I had read about 50 pages when I opened it again at one o’clock in the morning, and, simultaneously dreading learning the fate of the young couple and needing to know it before I could sleep, I didn’t close the book again until I was finished.

If you’ve read Joyce’s brilliant previous books, you know what a good writer he is, and you won’t want to miss this one. If you’ve never read anything by him, this would make a good start. Either way, this is a book I whole-heartedly recommend.
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WITA # 1: Rick Hautala

2011-08-23T08:07:00.000-07:00

As mentioned yesterday, here is the first of the We Interrupt This Author interviews. It was originally posted on Cemetery Dance' website on May 18, 2010, and featured author Rick Hautala. The interview is presented here exactly as it appeared in its original form. Obviously, time has passed, and when an author talks about a "forthcoming" book in one of these, it is a book that has now been published. But you knew that. Because you're smart.

Writing is a solitary endeavor. Your favorite authors toil alone to produce the fiction that keeps you going. Here we reward them by…interrupting their precious writing time with a few questions. The first author we will ~~annoy~~ talk with is Rick Hautala.

Since the publication of his first novel, Moondeath, in 1980, Rick has been at the forefront of horror fiction. His next book is the forthcoming Cemetery Dance volume Occasional Demons, his first collection of short stories since Bedbugs, selected by Barnes & Noble as one of the distinguished horror publications of 2000.

-Everyone is looking forward to your forthcoming book Occasional Demons, your first short story collection since 1999. Tell us a little about the book.

At the time I signed the contract, Occasional Demons included every story I had written and published to date that wasn't in Bedbugs, but since then, I've got enough stories for a third collection, which Rich and I are talking about CD doing ... What's unique about this collection is that it includes all the "Little Brothers" short stories and a handful of stories I wrote as collaborations with friends and two of my sons ... The artwork by Glenn Chadbourne is, as always, stunning, and I hope the stories don't disappoint. I have a few personal favorites in the collection, but I won't say what they are. That's like trying to pick your favorite child.

-The publication dates on the stories in this volume range from 1987 (“Every Mother’s Son”) to 2010 (“The Call”). How has your style changed and evolved over this period?

Well, for one thing, I stopped writing my stories with crayons, so that's an advance. Seriously, though, I'm not sure how my style has evolved or changed, other than I hopefully have gotten better each time out. Writing is a tough "craft" as well as an "art," and no one ever really masters it. If they say or act like they have, they're delusional. Even the simplest advice, like drop the passive voice whenever you can, will hit you with the force of a religious revelation if you're ready (or need) to hear it. Of course, I have worked to eliminate passive voice, and useless intensifiers ( ... like "really"), and make the environment more active ( ... like instead of saying "She heard a dog bark in the night" becomes "A dog barked in the night.") But overall, I just try to do the best job each time out, and know when I finish something it could always have been better ... Resting on laurels or repeating past successes to the point of self parody are the pathways to creative death.

-It is the “Who cuts the Barber’s hair?” question, but readers always seem interested in what a writer reads for his own amusement. So, what does Rick Hautala read these days when he wants to kick back and relax?

Sad to say, I don't read much fiction. After writing fiction all day, I need to blow the stink off, as it were, so I read a lot of non-fiction--history, biography, political books. For fiction, I do a lot of what I call "social reading," which means I read books written by friends of mine so I can tell them I read their new book and loved it. (Speaking of which: I read Chris Golden and Mike Mignola's book Baltimore and loved it!) And as I get older, I find myself drifting back to sf, fantasy, and horror I read when I was young. Kind of a nostalgia trip, probably. Of course, I will always read and savor James Lee Burke's writing. Hands down the best writer working today. And of course there are other writers who, when I read them, make me think I want to do that!

-Your career spans from the early days of horror as a separate genre in American Publishing, through the horror boom and bust, the rise and fall of the major lines and the growth of the small press. You’ve seen contemporaries come and go, and you’re still standing. To what do you owe your longevity?

The Finns have a word for it: "Sisu." The positive spin is that a Finn will stand tough and do whatever needs to be done, no matter what, but the negative connotation is that a Finn is too damned stupid to stop doing something even when the odds are stacked against him or her. Look, writing is hard work, and it never gets easier. If anything, it gets harder, and the economy can take a toll. If your sales figures start to flag (and mine have gone up and down), you have to reinvent yourself. I think it was Harlan Ellison who said (this is a close approximation): "Writing is easy; it's staying a writer that's hard." You have to develop your craft and you have to expand your horizons and challenge yourself every time out. (re: my "pass success--self parody" remark). And the material has to stay fresh and exciting for you, the writer, otherwise it becomes a drill, a routine which will bore you and your readers.

-And finally, Maine is one of the smaller states in terms of population. In the horror fiction field, though, it’s as big as California. Is there something about Maine that lends itself to dark writing? What is in the water up there?

The glib answer is "Stephen King's success." Writers who have never visited the state set their stories in Maine and more often than not get it wrong, wrong, wrong! Sure, setting is important to a story, and Maine (and all of New England, being the oldest colonies ... if we ignore the Spanish in Mexico and the Caribbean) has its creepy places. But a writer has to write about what he knows. Imagination is only one element. To really get a story, you have to know the bones of the land and the people who live there so your story rings true and--hopefully--will be universal enough to reach readers even in, say, Europe (which has its own share of creepy locales). The only thing in the water is ... well, I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.

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We Interrupt This Author Redux

2011-08-22T15:40:00.000-07:00

Way back in 2010, I started doing an interview series for Cemetery Dance’s newsletter called We Interrupt This Author. The interviews went out to CD’s e-mail list and were also published on their website. When the newsletter got re-vamped, the series, still under the auspices of Cemetery Dance, moved to its current home at Horror World. In the recent revamp of the CD website, the earlier interviews came down. (This in no way represents a falling out with Cemetery Dance, in fact I am still doing some work for the print magazine which I am excited about.)

Maybe its ego, but I liked the idea of those earlier interviews being available in on-line in case fans of the authors involved went looking for them. Therefore, with the gracious consent of Norman Prentiss and Brian Freeman, I will be re-posting the first seven interviews here over the next couple of weeks, which will keep them “in print” – and allow me to post content with a minimum of work, which appeals to my lazy self. Links on the sidebar will be updated as they go up.
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We Interrupt This Author #11: John Hornor Jacobs

2011-08-17T22:36:00.000-07:00

After a long hiatus, my interview series We Interrupt This Author has returned, and my newest subject is my friend and outstanding new author, John Hornor Jacobs. Click on his name to read what he has to say about his new novel Southern Gods, his next novel This Dark Earth, and speculation on the hotness of Anais Nin and Erica Jong.
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Pontypool

2011-08-16T11:01:00.000-07:00

Not exactly a zombie film – it could more accurately be described as “zombie-ish” – Pontypool, a 2008 film directed by Bruce McDonald based on Tony Burgess’ novel Pontypool Changes Everything, is a good example how a good cast and script can overcome a low budget.

Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) is a morning radio personality for a tiny radio station in the equally small town of Pontypool, Ontario (a real place, no doubt named after the Welsh town of the same name). It is at least implied that Mazzy is at the last stop on the downward slide of his career, drinking his way through announcements about lost cats and garage sales. He is assisted by his producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) and assistant Laurel-Ann Drummond (Georgina Riley). Mazzy tries whatever he can to spice up the broadcast, while Briar tries to keep him on script, as it were.

A routine morning broadcast is disrupted by reports of violence and riots in the area. One by way, locals wig out and start attacking each other, mindlessly repeating random words. The radio station is soon under siege from the converted townsfolk. It turns out there is a virus that doesn’t transmit itself in the usual fashion, instead attaching to certain words. According to the director, Bruce McDonald, "There are three stages to this virus. The first stage is you might begin to repeat a word. Something gets stuck. And usually it's words that are terms of endearment, like sweetheart or honey. The second stage is your language becomes scrambled and you can't express yourself properly. The third stage is that you become so distraught at your condition that the only way out of the situation you feel, as an infected person, is to try and chew your way through the mouth of another person". The only way to avoid it is to stop hearing speech – an ironic task for people working in radio. Speaking a foreign language also seems effective, but it seems some Canadians aren’t as bilingual as you would think.

This is a very compact movie, with almost all of it taking place inside the radio station set. It is also dialogue driven, and thus rises or falls based on the cast. Fortunately for the film, Stephen McHattie, mostly seen as a character actor, does a superb job, and so does the rest of the small cast. The script is not only suspenseful but very witty in places, and I would recommend this movie. Be sure to wait through the credits for a final scene.

The writer and director have discussed plans for two sequels to the movie.
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Fierce As The Grave

2011-08-15T11:08:00.000-07:00

If you are still undecided about reading John Hornor Jacobs' debut novel Southern Gods ~~then you obviously don't listen to me~~, you might want to check out a sample of his writing. He has collected four of his short stories into the e-book Fierce As The Grave. It's killer, and you can get it at Amazon for 99 cents. What else can you get for that price these days, that you won't regret in the morning?

666

2011-08-14T15:19:00.001-07:00

I just realized I’ve made 665 posts on this blog prior to this one. 666 isn’t a particular large number of posts (I was well over 2000 when I got tired of the previous blog), but it seems like it should be a significant number for a (mostly) horror blog. It is after all, the number of the devil, after all, but what sort of devilish thing could I come up with to mark the occasion. A girl I dated in college did tell me I was the devil, once, but that doesn’t seem like a terribly interesting story, and in my defense her sister was hot and a bit of a slut. I just don’t know

Crap, I just realized I wasted the landmark 666th post talking about how I don’t know what to say. Oh well, come the 1984th one I’ll have something insightful to say about politics.
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The Andromeda Strain (2008)

2011-08-12T09:32:00.000-07:00

I’m a fan of Robert Wise’ 1971 adaptation of Michael Crichton’s novel The Andromeda Strain. Although not free from scientific errors, I do like its basic message that when the world is threatened, the smart educated people are the ones who will save it – Kids, stay in school! – and the “ticking clock” finale is very suspenseful. So, it took me three years to watch the 2008 mini-series remake, since I figured it would be an inferior copy of the original. I needn’t have worried, since the new version uses only the basic setup from the original and then wildly diverges from the original. On the other hand, I didn’t miss anything, because this is quite a mess.

A pair of necking teenagers in rural Utah are interrupted by a crashing satellite. Unfortunately, this guy isn’t like every other teenage boy in existence, who would have ignored a nuclear explosion if he had a chance to get lucky. Instead, he stops the love-making to load the satellite in his truck (it isn’t explained how he managed to pick it up) and takes it to town, where the fire chief opens it. Everybody in town dies. Kids, in addition to staying in school, have sex instead of monkeying with crashed extraterrestrial objects. You’ll ruin fewer lives.

This triggers a “wildfire” alert – a possible runaway biological contagion. A team of scientists trained (debatable) to handle this is gathered and taken to an isolated facility. This is one of the better moments in the original film, when there is a knock at the original Jeremy Stone’s (Arthur Hill) house, and an army officer says “We have a wildfire.” The look on Hill’s face shows how terrifying the words are. In the remake, Jeremy Stone is played by Benjamin Bratt, and his Stone, given the same notification, has a hard time ending an argument with his wife to pay attention.

The rest of the team consists of surgeon Angela Noyce (Christa Miller), epidemiologist Charlene Barton (Viola Davis), former biological weapons maker for the Chinese government (!) Tsi Chou (Daniel Dae Kim) and Army doctor Bill Keane (Rick Schroeder). Keane is chosen as the “Odd Man” of the group. Since he is unmarried and has no children, psychologists believe he will be able to destroy the facility and kill everyone in it if the contagion gets out of control, since he has no emotional attachments. The psychologists have overlooked that Keane is unmarried because he’s gay, and gays can form emotional attachments. (If Michelle Bachmann reads this blog, I’m going to get an angry comment on that.) Keane is also put there to “counter” Stone by General Mancheck (Andre Braugher) who seems to have his own agenda. Or maybe not, it’s hard to tell. There is also an investigative journalist (Eric McCormack), fresh from rehab, trying to expose the story. Stone keeps him apprised of developments by telephone, security meaning something different in this universe.

Here’s where the plot diverges most of all. The satellite brought back a virus not from deep space, but from the future, sent by our future selves because they could not find a cure. Uh-huh. The expanded length is accounted for by a convoluted subplot about shadowy figures in the government working against the researchers to preserve the virus. They kill everyone who thwarts their sinister scheme and are led by the National Security Advisor, who has no apparent motivation for his actions, with the possible exception of quitting smoking. He’s just Evil, dammit! The President is shown as a bit of a doofus, who is determined to do the right thing, until the end of the movie, where he does the exact wrong thing, despite ample evidence to go the other way. No explanation given. The movie ends in an ontological paradox, in case your head needs to explode.

I’m not going to go into the myriad scientific errors, except to state the crack team shows no real skill or knowledge in dealing with the situation. They don’t even solve it in the end, the answer is given to them from another source. Benjamin Bratt looks more like an action hero than a cerebral scientist, and neither do the rest of the cast, with the possible exception of Kim. The original used actors who looked like scientists, and was better for it. The character of Keane vacillates wildly, from complete jerk to relative nice guy, as does General Manchek. The suspenseful finale is changed into shots of Bratt climbing a pipe, with a ludicrous thrown thumb (!) for unintentional laughter. There is also a last-minute betrayal by one of the researchers which leads to the needless deaths of two of the others, although she is forgiven enough to be seen mourning at their funeral in the end.

Watch the slightly dated original, if the topic interests you, and hope if there is an actual outbreak of deadly plague, the team fighting it is a little more on the ball.
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Cowboys & Aliens

2011-08-11T10:49:00.000-07:00

Another slightly dated movie review; however, in this case, you probably haven’t seen Cowboys & Aliens yet, since not that many people did. This might be the best sci-fi/western hybrid movie ever made, since the only other one I can think of is Oblivion, which was not a high point of cinema, despite the presence of George Takei. That is assuming you don’t count Firefly/Serenity, which is science fiction with western themes rather than a western with science fiction themes. Confusing enough?

Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) wakes up in the desert, with no memory, a wound in his side and a strange metal device strapped to his wrist. He doesn’t remember his name, but he does know he is a badass, since he dispatches four desperadoes on the 10 o’clock train to Boot Hill. (Westerns bring this sort of thing out in me.) With newly acquired horses, weapons and clothes, he makes his way to the nearby town of Absolution. This turns out to be a bad choice, since Absolution is controlled by rich rancher and former Army Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) – and Lonergan robbed a stagecoach of money belonging to Dolarhyde. An encounter with Dolarhyde’s dimwitted jerk of a son (Paul Dano) lands both Lonergan and the son in jail, but not before Lonergan meets the enigmatic Ella (Olivia Wilde).

To this point, the movie hasn’t been that different from a traditional western, but then alien space craft start buzzing the town and abducting the townsfolk. Lonergan discovers his bracelet can fire energy blasts that can shoot down the alien aircraft, and he and Dolarhyde lead a posse in pursuit of the aliens, in order to recover the abductees.

All of this is not nearly as much fun as it sounds. Despite the title, the story is played deadly serious, and could have used more humor. Craig and Ford are playing the same character – the gruff tough guy with a secret good streak – and there needed to be more contrast for them to play off each other. The story also leaves no western trope untouched. In addition to the posse, Lonergan and Dolarhyde recruit Lonergan’s old criminal gang (in a scene reminiscent of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) and an Apache tribe (after a spirit ceremony, reminiscent of almost every bad modern western). The chase after the aliens seems to take place in real time, and the movie slows down just when it needs to speed up.

The aliens have an improbable reason for coming to Earth and abducting yokels. Worst of all, when it comes time for the climactic battle between our heroes and the aliens, the aliens fight with their bare hands, completely nude. Space dudes! You have the technology to travel between the stars, beam up precious metals and create wrist-blasters. You should use that know-how on the guys with six-guns and bows & arrows. I suppose they are related to the ETs from Signs. It is also stated the aliens can’t see well in daylight (this is mentioned, but has absolutely no bearing on the plot in any way) but choose to come out of their dark tunnels to fight the heroes in sunlight.

The cast does the best they can with the limitations of the script. (Harrison Ford said when he read the script he “didn’t get it.” I feel your pain, Mr. Ford.) Craig makes a surprisingly good western hero, and I can’t help but think it would have been a better movie if the filmmakers had created a straight western, leaving out the sci-fi elements. There is a fairly impressive supporting cast, with Clancy Brown, Sam Rockwell, Keith Carradine and Walton Goggins. It is a particular crime that Carradine and Goggins weren’t given more to do.

All in all, Cowboys & Aliens is more interesting to consider as the movie it might have been than it is to watch the movie that was made.
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Low Town

2011-08-10T20:52:00.001-07:00

I’m not much of a fan of what is commonly called fantasy fiction. Maybe I’m looking for something darker, but most of it comes off as far too inconsequential, often silly. I liked Tolkien all right when I was twelve, but even then found the hobbits to be useless at best and generally annoying. Had I been Aragorn, I would have sent them back to the Shire and gotten on with it. Unless, of course, hobbits cook up well, since you need provisions for that long trip to Mordor. Just my opinion, of course.

I do like the idea of reading about a magical world, where supernatural events are commonplace, but few authors manage to create a world where that is presented in an adult context. George R. R. Martin has done that with his A Song of Fire and Ice series, of course, and after some initial hesitation I came to love Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series, but those types of books seem rare within fantasy, which makes the discovery of one a happy occasion, which brings me to the most recent book I’ve read, Daniel Polansky’s Low Town, a book which manages to combine fantasy elements with a hard-boiled crime story, without cheapening either genre.

The main character is the Warden, a drug dealer in the titular Low Town, the rough section of the city of Rigus, which reminded me a bit of London. Warden grew up hard on the streets, went off to fight in the bloody “Great War” (an obvious analogue to World War One) and became an agent of the Crown, tasked with investigating crimes, before a fall from grace five years earlier brought him to his current occupation. Warden has to go back to his old detective days when the bodies of ritually sacrificed children begin turning up in Low Town. His search for the killer leads him to encounter a magical creature he first saw on the battlefields of the war, and to stop it he has to confront much of his own history.

Like Martin, Polansky wisely doesn’t overdo the magical aspects of his invented world. The inhabitants accept that they live in a reality where magic exists, but it isn’t necessarily a part of their day-to-day lives. They are too busy surviving in a rough town where the technology seems to be more or less on a par with our mid-nineteenth century. He has also created a hero who is sympathetic yet undeniably a hard man. The book is fast paced, closer to classic noir novels than the more languidly paced stories typical in fantasy. The reader is shown enough of the world to be intrigued, but the flow of the book isn’t muddled with long explanations of everything in the background. The inhabitants of the novel accept their world as it is, and so do we.

I thought the twist at the end was a bit obvious, but that did nothing to dim my enjoyment of the book. I assume this is intended to be the first of a new series, and I look forward to more visits to Low Town.

Low Town will be published by Doubleday on August 16th, and is available for pre-order at the usual locations. In the UK, it will be published under the name The Straight Razor Cure.
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Super 8

2011-08-09T08:48:00.000-07:00

I’m trying to get back to regular posting (yeah, I know, you’ve heard that one before) so I’m throwing out some of the stuff I failed to post earlier. The first up is a now-dated review of Super 8, which I saw on its release weekend. Most of the pre-release hype for Super 8 was centered on the (somewhat predictable) mystery as to the cause of the problems for the small town in the movie. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, and don’t want the mystery spoiled, I advise you to stop reading now. Although if you haven’t seen it yet, I doubt you really care that much.

In the summer of 1979 in the small town of Lillian, Ohio, a young boy named Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) is making an amateur zombie movie with his friends. This is therapy of sorts for Joe, since earlier in the year his mother died in an industrial accident, and he has a difficult relationship with his distant father (Kyle Chandler). Sneaking away to shoot some night footage, two important things happen for Joe: he connects with the film’s leading lady Alice (Elle Fanning), who happens to be the daughter of the man indirectly responsible for his mother’s death, and the young Eisensteins witness a shocking train derailment. They also see something apparently escape from the wreckage.

Soon the Air Force, presented as the true villains of the movie, is swarming over the town, people are disappearing, and property is being destroyed. It seems the mystery train was carrying an alien taken from the wreckage of a crashed spacecraft, which has been tortured for years by the Air Force, and now is trying to put its ship back together to go home, all the while enjoying a steady diet of Ohioan tartare. Will the alien return home? Will Joe re-connect with his dad? Will he find first love with Alice? Will the gang finish their zombie movie? Super 8 was produced by Steven Spielberg, which should give you the answer to all those questions.

I enjoyed the movie well enough, but I didn’t love it. It is too much a cobbled together collection of themes from other movies (Spielberg’s E.T. and The Goonies, director J.J. Abrams’ Cloverfield) to stand on its own, and there are too many inconsistencies in the script, with too many of the themes underdeveloped. Part of the movie’s arc is supposed to be Joe coming to grips with his mother’s death (a locket is used for symbolism), but frankly, he already seems to be handling it pretty well. Four months after the event, the 12-year-old is just a little blue. His relationship with his father is only shallowly explored. Is dad distant because of the shock of his wife’s death, or has he always been that way? Closure to this is found when dad realizes he doesn’t want his only child to be eaten by a monster, which seems like a low bar of parental responsibility.

There’s also the issue of the creature. We are supposed to root for the alien, since it just wants to go home, but it’s eating people. Not just evil Air Force personnel, who no doubt deserve it, but innocent townsfolk. Yes, it is misunderstood and has been treated badly, but is that any excuse for it to eat the nice lady next door or the guy working at the 7-11? I think the alien is from the wrong movie.

The young filmmakers are supposed to be the ensemble focal point of the movie, I think, but they are mostly unrealized. They are archetypes, the fat kid, the small kid with ADD, the kid with a weak stomach, etc. Other than the director of the movie, who is something of an ass, none of the group is developed at all, and except for Joe and Alice, they all disappear when it is time for the movie’s climax.

Abrams meant this movie to be an homage to his idol Spielberg, and it more or less succeeds. All of the typical Spielberg beats are here: A boy with issues with his father, a mawkish sentimentality, an idealized view of early teens. Unfortunately, these are mostly flaws here.

There were some good things. The train wreck is exciting, Kyle Chandler is always an engaging actor, and Elle Fanning is a revelation, showing real talent in her scenes for the movie-within-the-movie. But overall, Super 8 is a movie that falls apart if you stop to think about it.
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Southern Gods

2011-08-08T08:51:00.000-07:00

It seems like a lifetime ago, but it was just less than three years ago I was blogging about an unpublished novel I’d read. The world has moved on, as they say, and now you can read Southern Gods for yourself, and you really should.

The book is set in the American South in the post World War II era. Bull Ingram, a veteran of the war who left it with skills suitable only for violence, works as an enforcer in Memphis. A local DJ hires him to find a bluesman named Ramblin’ John Hastur, whose music, broadcast on pirate radio stations, is said to have magical powers, and drives some men insane on hearing it. Bull’s quest, which becomes as much about his own redemption as finding Hastur, takes him through the heart of the South and the blues sub-culture which was just beginning to break out into the wider world. He journeys toward a rendezvous with Hastur, a young woman named Sarah and her daughter Franny, and his own destiny.

This book is a detective story, a period piece, a road novel, and a horror tale. Its synthesis is greater than the sum of its parts. John does something increasingly rare in modern fiction: creating characters that seem real enough for us to care about them. You will want to come along on Bull’s journey.

A lot of writers these days seem to miss a central truth about their vocation: It is a combination of art and craft. They embrace the art side, telling stories, but shy away from the hard work of crafting words together in just the right order, the tedious business of finding the proper phrase to communicate to the reader what the writer is attempting to say. John is not one of those people. He labors hard at finding the right word, the appropriate phrase. Southern Gods was already a good book when I first read it in an early draft, better than the vast majority of what’s published today, but John was willing to perform surgery on it to make it even better. That dedication to his craft is going to make John an important writer, not just in the relatively small horror field, but in all of fiction.

John is a personal friend of mine, a fact you should know when you read this. But regardless of his poor choice of friends, he truly is an outstanding writer, and Southern Gods is a book you should read. It is a gem in the rubble of derivative zombie novels and torture porn that dark fantasy consists of at the present time. You can get a copy for under $10 from Amazon and other retailers, and you won’t be sorry you did.
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If You Lived Here

2011-06-29T07:20:00.000-07:00

Lorrie McCullough, the head of marketing at Underland Press, alerted me to an interesting project they have in the works. It’s called If You Lived Here: The Top 30 All Time Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Worlds, and will serve as a guide to the imaginary worlds we have loved in fiction. You can make nominations of such worlds and leave comments at www.ifyoulivedherebook.com, and your input could get into the book itself, which will be authored and edited by acclaimed writer/editor Jeff VanderMeer.

Having spent the last few weeks in the imaginary land of Westeros (long enough that I feel an urge to stab friends and enemies alike), I can see the need for this guide, and I imagine it will make a fine addition to your bookshelf whEN published.
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Martin H. Greenberg, 1941-2011

2011-06-28T07:44:00.000-07:00

Master anthologist Martin H. Greenberg has died at age 70. Greenberg’s name appears on the cover of around 2500 books, most of them anthologies containing fantasy, horror, sci-fi, or mystery. Most of us who read genre fiction have a shelf (or two) filled with his books. R.I.P., Mr. Greenberg.
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Another Mea Culpa

2011-06-28T07:31:00.000-07:00

Due to assorted personal issues, posting here has been sporadic lately. Okay, by sporadic I mean non-existent. Hopefully, I will be getting back to a more or less regular schedule soon. One of the interesting things I noticed in coming back to check the blog’s stats is my number of “followers” grew much faster during the period when I wasn’t posting than when I was. This begs the question of whether people like it better when I don’t have anything to say. Anyway, I hope to catch up on a pretty extensive backlog over the coming days.
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Invisible Fences - 2011 Stoker Winner

2011-06-28T07:18:00.000-07:00

Way back in December of 2008, I posted a review of Norman Prentiss excellent book Invisible Fences, and did what little I could to beat the drum for this masterpiece of quiet horror. I made an offhand remark at the time that Invisible fences would win a Stoker Award. Considering I’m right about something every decade or so, I’m happy to say that prediction came true, and Invisible Fences won in the Long Fiction category. Congratulations, Norman, it was a well-deserved win.

It’s fashionable to bash the Stoker Awards for the endless electioneering that goes on, and I’ve criticized them myself, but this years winners are pretty impressive, and if you plan some reading around the list, you shouldn’t be disappointed.
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Interplanetary

2011-05-20T08:49:00.000-07:00

I’m not a zombie guy, but back in 2009 I loved the zombie-comedy Hide and Creep, produced here in my own state. I thought the low budget film was a cut above the unending crowd of movies produced about the walking dead, and it made me eager to see the production team’s follow up, the sci-fi/horror/comedy Interplanetary. If I paid attention, I would have noticed it came out a while back. Better late than never, though, I ordered a copy (you can get it through Amazon) and watched it with my usual critical eye.

In the not too distant future, a small group of people man (and woman) a small base on Mars. Rather than the usual military and scientist types you see in this sort of thing, these characters are more the Office Space type. They are working for a faceless corporation at jobs that seem to bore them, more interested in office affairs or placating their boss than grand exploration. Their mundane lives are interrupted when first a fossil of ancient Martian life is discovered (the reaction is not joy at discovery, but “I’m gonna be rich!”) and immediately thereafter, intruders show up to kill them. There is also a secret lab, with strange monsters created therein.

I thought it probably wasn’t quite as funny as Hide and Creep, but I did enjoy it a lot, but anyone watching this needs to understand a couple of things up front. First off, this is truly a low budget film. You couldn’t hire a single Nav’ii from Avatar for the total budget here, so if you are expecting a mind blowing visual feast, disappointment awaits (although the film makers did make the movie look like Mars, or at least what I imagine Mars looks like). Secondly, this is a retro movie. It is spaced based sci fi as it would have been imagined in the 1950s, with clunky equipment and obsolete looking devices. (Think of movies like It! – The Terror from Beyond Space, a movie that scared the wits out of me as a kid as a touchstone.)

If those things don’t bother you, there’s plenty to enjoy here. I particularly liked the deadly cook, who turns out to be the action hero of the piece, at least for a while, and I thought the script was very intelligent underneath the goofiness. So support independent filmmaking and give Interplanetary (and Hide and Creep) a try.
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Mandrake

2011-05-18T09:30:00.000-07:00

If you read this blog, you know it is a ritual for my wife and eye to watch the spectacularly awful giant creature movies produced by the SyFy Channel (Sharktopus, Mega Sharp vs Giant Octopus, Wyvern, too many others to name). When I told her this week’s feature would be Mandrake, she said “Half-man, half-duck?” She knows her SyFy. However, the beast in question isn’t a hybrid between a man and a waterfowl, but a tree run amok.

Somewhere in the jungles of South America, a team sent by crazy rich guy Harry Vargas (Benito Martinez, The Shield) is searching for a dagger worn by a Spanish conquistador.* The team is led by Sgt. McCall (the underrated Max Martini of the sorely missed The Unit) and is unaware that at least one other team has sought the dagger and died for it. Vargas wants the dagger because…why do you have to ask so many questions? He just wants it, that’s all. The team finds the dagger, well preserved after 800 years, about ten minutes after they get there, so it doesn’t look all that hard.

Unfortunately for them, the dagger plunged into the ground was all that kept the giant killer tree from killing everybody. How did it do that? Always with the questions. It just did, that’s all. There are some evil tribesmen who having been killing outsiders by sacrificing them to the tree, but they seem to think an unrestrained tree is just too much. People are eaten by the tree, people are chased by the tree, and finally somebody remembers to put the knife back. During all this, Vargas goes steadily crazier and crazier because…well, some things we are not meant to know.

All those complaints considered, this wasn’t bad, by SyFy standards. The movie looks good, an d even the killer tree looks as realistic as possible given that it’s a tree. The cast is excellent, and really elevates this past SyFy’s usual standards. If you can avoid thinking about plot points which make no sense and enjoy this sort of thing, there is probably entertainment to be had here.

* Characters repeatedly refer to the dagger as being from the “fourteenth century”. Columbus made landfall in the Americas in 1492, which is at the end of the fifteenth century. Maybe it’s the former history prof in me, but that is the sort of thing that drives me batty.

The Last House On The Left (2009)

2011-05-14T09:56:00.000-07:00

This is, or course, a remake of the 1972 movie of the same name directed by Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream), which was itself a re-working of Ingmar Bergman’s 1960 movie The Virgin Spring. I feel I should point out up front I am not a fan of the Craven version. I feel the directing was crude (it was Craven’s first film), it stepped over the line in glorifying the torture and sexual violence to which the two young girls were subjected, and it has comedic sequences which seem jarringly out of place. I was inclined to dismiss the remake, but bought the blu-ray after several people mentioned it was good. Still, it sat on the shelf for a long time before I put it in the player late last night.

(Lest you think I’m the only one who didn’t care for the original, I’d also like to mention Fred J. Lincoln, who acted in the 1972 movie, has called it the worst movie he ever made. It is worth noting that Lincoln is a long-time actor and director in porn films, and among his titles is Abducted by the Enema Bandit*, which presumably he thinks is better than The Last House on the Left.)

* I would like to note I got the title from imdb.com, and have no personal knowledge of the movie in question. It hasn't been shown on Turner Classic Movies yet.

In the same area where a sadistic killer (Garret Dillahunt, Deadwood, The Assassination of Jesse James) has made a deadly escape from custody with the help of his similarly inclined brother and girlfriend, a physician (Tony Goldwyn, Ghost) and his wife (Monica Potter, Saw, Along Came A Spider) have brought their daughter Mari (Sara Paxton) for a weekend getaway at their lake house. Mari is still dealing with issues relating to the death of her older brother, and goes into town to meet her childhood friend Paige (Martha MacIsaac). Paige is the type of character who, when a creepy kid comes by and asks them to go back to his low-class motel to smoke marijuana, happily goes within him. This is a terrible mistake, and is the sort of behavior that makes fathers want to send their daughters away to a convent, even if they aren’t Catholic.

The creepy kid turns out to be the son of the escaped psycho, and soon the girls have been sexually molested, tortured and either killed or left for dead. In the twist that is the real reason for the movie to exist, the gang of killers afterward seeks refuge from a storm at the house of Mari’s parents. The parents soon realize the fearsome foursome is responsible for the attack on their daughter, and even the score in graphic and sometimes over-contrived fashion.

So, is it better than the 1972 version? Yes, it is. The direction here is quite competent (Dennis Iliadis) and the cast seems professional. Potter and Goldwyn do a good job as the much put-upon parents, and the infinitely changeable Dillahunt is one of the better character actors working today. He makes a truly menacing villain. Only his character’s ultimate disposition seems completely implausible.

The prolonged assault on the girls is very difficult to watch, and goes on for quite a while. I definitely squirmed while watching that. Your ability to watch scenes such as that will determine whether you should watch this, but, all in all, I surprised myself by liking it.
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Southern Gods Pre-Order

2011-05-12T10:15:00.000-07:00

Long before it became trendy and hip, I was telling you how good John Hornor Jacobs’ novel Southern Gods was, which didn’t do you much good since you couldn’t read it. Well, the long gestation is coming to an end with the imminent publication of Southern Gods by NightShade Press, and the book is now up for pre-order at Amazon for just over $10. That’s a steal. All you’ve got to do is cut back by a couple of bottles of MD 20/20, and the book is yours. Order it now, he’s got another on the way and you don’t want to fall behind.

I Did Not Go To Oz

2011-05-03T10:37:00.000-07:00

So, the blog hasn’t been updated in a while, but this time I’ve got a good excuse: Last Wednesday’s tornadoes passed through my area, and power was out for five days. (It is still out for most of the city.) One of the twisters passed less than a mile from our house, and en masse, they pretty well destroyed the power authority’s grid for this part of the state. I would like to point out while many people’s experience with the tornado outbreak was very tragic (nearly 300 people killed, so far), mine was not. A chair in the backyard I hated anyway was destroyed, and the canopy of a glider swing I wanted my wife to get rid of was shredded, but other than that, our only loss was some food that spoiled, and having to live in the nineteenth century for a few days*. A mild inconvenience, at best. I missed the internet less than I would have thought. As I mentioned on Twitter, while I was without power, I missed television, then when it was restored, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to watch. I guess Sharktopus 2 didn’t come out while I was cut off.

Anyone who sent me a message during the blackout, I promise I'll get back to you. To anyone who was looking for a review of their book, I'll catch up as soon as possible.

* With a Kindle and a cell phone, of course, just like the Western pioneers in the 1870s
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Sharktopus

2011-04-25T08:24:00.000-07:00

I admit to having a tendency to enjoy, in a slightly guilty way, the low-budget monster movies found on the Syfy Channel. Movies like Wyvern, Fire Serpent, Supercroc, the immortal Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus…big creatures who like to eat people. Lately, having exhausting the conventional monsters of mythology and legend, Syfy has moved on to “mash-ups”, and the ultimate of these is the wonderfully named Sharktopus (I suppose the idea is a combination of a shark and an octopus is the most scary hybrid imaginable, although personally, I think the Octomom is scarier).

A creepy corporation has developed the half-shark, half octopus (it also has spines sticking out of its sides, so there may be a little porcupine in there as well) for the defense department as the “ultimate weapon” – against someone, I suppose. Maybe they want calamari that fights back. The beast is tested by Evil Navy Guy in a scene which consciously spoofs the opening of Jaws, with the deadly creature being controlled by a device belted loosely around its midriff. If you’re thinking “that belt is going to come off”, you’ve figured it out. The belt comes off, and the monster goes wild, killing anyone around the beach at PuertoVallarta. Apparently, this beach attracts stupid people, because no matter how many people meet gruesome deaths in plain view of the other beachgoers, no one thinks to go home and come back on a more sharktopus-free day. Pretty much everyone is attacked, and the viewers rooting interest briefly swings in favor of the monster when it kills a trio of jetskiers, who deserve what they get.

Corporate Guy is under pressure from Evil Navy Guy to get the sharktopus under control before the media gets the story, ignoring the presence of news crews and the frequent TV spots about the attacks. Apparently, it will mean disaster if the public learns of the sharktopus, since then everyone would know it was a Navy project. Because that’s so rational. Corporate Guy hires a sharktopus hunter, who, in a feeble attempt at a subplot, was once fired by the Corporate Guy for asking for a raise. The Fearless Sharktopus Hunter is offered $300,000 for the job (later upped to a cool million) because “only he can do the job.” His method consists of boating aimlessly around the monster’s feeding ground and shooting a machine gun at it when it shows up, a worse plan than it seems, since the sharktopus is bulletproof, due to the production company being unable to afford CGI bullet holes. It is also revealed the sharktopus (no matter how many times I type that, it is still a ridiculous word) can use it’s eight legs to leave the water and walk around on land hunting for prey, just like a real octopus. Or something.

Eventually, stuff blows up, the creature is killed, Corporate Guy bites it, and The Fearless Sharktopus Hunter falls in love with Corporate Guy’s daughter, because they are the only ones left.

I usually say to people who watch a movie like this and complain about bad acting, a dumb plot and cheap CGI “It’s called Sharktopus, what did you expect?” That’s still valid here, but this truly is an atrocious movie, even by the dubious standards of the SyFy Channel. There isn’t enough plot to sustain the length, and even at 80 minutes, it felt long. Eric Roberts was obviously brought in to add a little class and professionalism, but it made things worse, since having him in a scene just emphasized how bad his co-stars were. The romantic couple who were the more-or-less leads were grating, and should have ended up sharktopus food. A subplot about a TV newswoman only served to kill time and provide more bodies for the butcher’s bill. Also, if you are going to name a character Pez, you should have him decapitated, right. What a missed opportunity.

I’m afraid Sharktopus is a movie to miss, much like the Puerto Vallarta beaches in sharktopus season. It’s definitely no Mansquito.
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Kealan Patrick Burke

2011-04-22T07:57:00.000-07:00

The historic 10th interview in the We Interrupt This Author series is up at Horror World, and to mark the special occasion, the victim this time is one of the absolute best authors writing today, Kealan Patrick Burke (Currency of Souls, Seldom Seen In August). Don't hate him because he's handsome, like him because he's an amazing writer.
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Who Goes There?

2011-04-06T11:15:00.000-07:00

You can find out what I think of Rocket Ride Books' edition of John W. Campbell's classic sci-fi/horror novella "Who Goes There?" by clicking over to Horror World. While I'm at it, let me put in an unsolicited plug. The last two books I've reviewed for Horror World have been from Rocket Ride, and I've been very impressed with their quality and professionalism.
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Shotgun Honey

2011-04-06T06:39:00.000-07:00

Got a taste for some hard-boiled crime fiction but not a lot of time? Try Shotgun Honey, a new site featuring short, gritty crime stories. The site is operated by the proprietor of the late, lamented Chop Shop Horror Show, and will feature some of the best writers working in the crime genre. The first story is "Two-Phones" by Dan O'Shea. Check it out.
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Pre-Order The Five

2011-04-04T19:15:00.000-07:00

I've read a lot of books, and I've met a lot of writers. That has left me a little jaded, a little aloof from the heat of fandom. However, there are a few writers who turn me into your basic fanboy. Stephen King, of course. The incomparable Joe Lansdale. And Alabama's own Robert R. McCammon, who has written books that can stand up to the best the genre has to offer. I've been a fan of his since the beginning of his career, and you can check out my reviews of Usher's Passing, The Night Boat, They Thirst and Mystery Walk on this site to see how I feel. It's been nearly twenty years since McCammon published a novel set in contemporary times, but the wait is almost over. His new novel The Five will be published in May or June and can be pre-ordered now at Amazon. This is a momentous occasion, and if you are a McCammon fan, you should plan on getting this one. If you are not a McCammon fan...you should be.
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KINCAID: A Paranormal Casebook

2011-04-01T18:55:00.000-07:00

My review of the aforementioned KINCAID: A Paranormal Casebook by William F. Nolan is now up at Horror World. It is published by Rocket Ride Books.
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Old Man's War

2011-03-26T22:05:00.000-07:00

Recently, a little bored with reading the same old thing over and over again; I started reading science fiction again. I read sci-fi voraciously as a youngster, got into it again in a big way in the late 80s/early 90s, and read very little for the last fifteen plus years. There are a lot of advantages to this approach: you’ve let enough time pass you can go back and re-read old favorites, finding them somewhat fresh after so long, and there is sure to have been a lot of good books published while you were away.

I don’t intend to do any real reviews of the sci-fi I read. Other than a second major in mathematics, I don’t have any real scientific knowledge, and I don’t think I would grow as a person reading the comments explaining how I must be a complete moron because I incorrectly explained the formula to express a closed thermodynamic system. At least from the outside, the sci-fi community seems amazingly argumentative and devoted to feuds, often over the most trivial things. Science fiction writers and readers range from the obsessively politically correct to proudly politically insensitive, and are willing to write tens of thousands of words to fight over things you wouldn’t even notice, let alone hold a grudge over.

(My use of the term “sci-fi” in place of science fiction is enough to piss a large number of people off. I read a comment by a noted sci-fi author where he stated calling science fiction “sci-fi” was the same as calling a black person the “n-word.” Which is so ludicrous I had to use it, despite the knowledge it may be a provocation.)

Without going into detail, I do want to recommend sci-fi books from time to time, although anyone who reads the genre on a regular basis knows these books pretty well. With that in mind, I would like to whole-heartedly recommend John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series. I just finished reading the first three books, Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades, and The Last Colony. They are wonderful stuff, heavily influenced by Robert Heinlein and Joe Haldeman, particularly the respective authors’ books Starship Troopers and The Forever War. They are military science fiction with a conscience and a surprising amount of humor, very well done, and I read through the three of them in just a couple of days. My only regret is I won’t get to read them again for the first time.
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EBook Alert: Rock 'n Roll Reform School Zombies

2011-03-22T11:15:00.000-07:00

Bryan Smith's book Rock 'n Roll Reform School Zombies is now available on the cheap, for those of you who have e-readers. It can be downloaded for just $2.99 at Amazon. I haven't gotten around to reviewing the book because I am insanely lazy, but I will tell you it is a bargain at that price.
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Excalibur

2011-03-16T15:06:00.000-07:00

There is a special class of flawed movies that, despite their limitations, grabs hold of you for one reason or another. They vary from person to person, but for me one of those is John Boorman’s uneven 1981 film Excalibur.

Like a lot of boys, I went through a strong “knights in shining armor” phase. I listened while my Grandmother told Welsh-centric stories of Arthur and his knights, and read the books by Howard Pyle, T. E. White, and Thomas Mallory that told of their exploits. The first Latin phrase I ever learned was “Hic Jacet Arturus, Rex Quondam, Rexque Futurus.” All legends and moonbeams, but it stuck with me.

When I was in college, the movie Excalibur came out (now I’ve dated myself) at the exact time the two rival theater chains in town were locked in a bitter competition, which would ultimately destroy both of them. One of the by-products of their struggle was a pricing system of $1 for evening showings Monday through Thursday, and 50 cent matinees Monday through Friday. Affordable for even a broke college student, and it resulted in my seeing Excalibur probably a dozen times during its long run.

Last week, the movie was released for the first time on blu ray (earlier VHS and DVD releases were very poorly mastered), so I thought I would see how well it held up. The short answer is that everything that was good about it back in 1981 is still good, while the rough spots, well, they are still painful. I won’t bother to recap the plot, since I assume everyone either knows the Arthur story, or doesn’t care about it.

The good: What originally attracted me to the movie was its beauty. The photography is gorgeous, depicting a lush green England. The knights are clad in completely impractical but beautiful shining armor (which they never remove – even when they are having sex. This indicates the women of the day were made of pretty stern stuff.) against which spatters of red blood seem to glow. Many of the better scenes were shot at night, and the flickering torches give the scenes a mythological beauty. Music is also used very well, with this film being the basis of my love for Carl Orff’s now-overused Carmina Burana. Some of the acting (Nicol Williamson as Merlin, Helen Mirren as Morgana, Gabriel Byrne as Uther Pendragon) is also top notch.

The bad: As much as I like the good parts of Excalibur, I have to admit where it comes up short, it’s terrible. The script, by Boorman and his frequent collaborator Rospo Pallenberg, has some of the most clunky and obvious dialogue in the history of cinema (Examples: The king is ambushed, and shortly after, his bodyguards arrive. Their dialogue: “The king is ambushed!”, which we just observed. Helpful for the blind, perhaps. Hector says to Arthur “You are not my son”. Arthur replies “Then Kay is not my brother?” Makes you think Arthur is a little slow.) There is a scene at the end where the dying Arthur asks Percival to take Excalibur and throw it into the water. Percival rides off, can’t do it, comes back, tells Arthur he couldn’t, Arthur says you must, and Percival finally comes through. An unnecessary break in the pacing of the movie.

The bad acting in the movie is truly horrendous. Boorman’s daughter Katrine played Igrayne. She is beautiful, but struggles to say the simplest lines. The child playing the young Morgana does much better. Also disappointing is Liam Neeson. Neeson is a great actor, but this is one of his earliest roles, and he had a lot to learn about technique.

Despite the bad spots, I still enjoy the movie. Whether you will or not will depend on your ability to overlook its flaws.
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A Brief Interview With Christopher Golden

2011-03-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

My interview with Christopher Golden is now up at Horror World. Mr. Golden was very gracious to submit to my questioning.
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Stupid, Stupid

2011-03-15T09:14:00.000-07:00

I’ve had to come to grips with being an addict. A week ago, I stopped taking a drug I’ve used recreationally for a long time. This was followed by days of alternate lethargy and twitchy energy, pounding headaches, an inability to concentrate, sleeplessness and a deep craving for the drug. My productivity plunged to historically low levels, and I was irritable even by my questionable standards. I was slow to acknowledge cause and effect, because I couldn’t believe I was hooked.
Yes, a week ago, for no apparent reason, I stopped drinking coffee. Apparently, a decades-long habit that has turned my blood jet black has a powerful hold on me. Good to know, I suppose.
This morning, I had four large cups of coffee within an hour of getting up. I feel so much better.
Happiness through chemicals.
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Two New Collections From Ronald Kelly

2011-03-08T11:47:00.000-08:00

Ronald Kelly has announced two new collections of his Southern-fried horror stories. They are Twilight Hankerings and Unhinged, both available from Crossroads Press for the low, low price of $3.99. I know I have a hankerin’ for these stories, and I imagine they would please you, too. Click on the names to be taken to the ordering page.
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Valley of the Scarecrow

2011-02-28T17:54:00.000-08:00

My review of Gord Rollo's book Valley of the Scarecrow is up at Horror World. I wasn't a fan of it. Sorry, Gord.
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The Death Fantastique

2011-02-20T10:28:00.000-08:00

If you read this blog, you know that soon-to-be hot author John Hornor Jacobs is a friend of mine. You've probably even marveled that I have friends. John's novel Southern Gods won't be out until later in the year, but if you like hard-boiled crime stories, you can check out his "The Death Fantastique" over at Beat To A Pulp.
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An Interview With T. M. Wright

2011-02-16T15:56:00.000-08:00

As some of you noticed, there has been a hiatus in the interviews I’ve conducted in the We Interrupt This Author series. This has been a result of a slight reorganization at Cemetery Dance (for more, see here). The series is now resuming, and Cemetery dance will be placing them on the Horror World website. I’m pretty stoked about this, as I’m a fan of Horror World. I look forward to taking orders from Nanci Kalanta.

The first of my interviews to go live(-ish) there is one I did with the great T.M. Wright back in the fall. Check it out by clicking here. T. M. Wright is one of those authors who, if you’re not reading his books, you should be.
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Deadworld

2011-02-12T15:31:00.000-08:00

Bryan Smith is one of the better writers working in horror today. On this blog, I've reviewed his books House of Blood, Queen of Blood, Freakshow, Soultaker, and Deathbringer, and he's one of the few writers who has yet to let me down. He's now published his first book to be originally seen in e-book format, Deadworld. You can get it for the low price of $2.99 at Amazon, and I would recommend it. The cover is by my friend, the multi-talented John Hornor Jacobs.
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Hatchet II

2011-02-03T08:57:00.000-08:00

Despite not being much of a fan of the first one, I decided to give Hatchet II a whirl. Most people disagreed with me about the first Hatchet, and I’ve heard nothing but good things about the writer/director, Adam Green. I figured a key point of the review would be to compare and contrast the review I did of the first one, although it was much more etched in my memory than most movies I’ve seen. I still remember most of my criticisms, including a line I used “if you get Tony Todd to appear in your movie, you should have him in the movie as much as possible” criticizing the brevity of his appearance. So I could link back to it, I looked up the address of the original review.

It doesn’t exist.

I looked at the archives of this blog, and of the three previous blogs I filled with my illiterate ramblings (you’ve been at it too long when you’ve written for that many blogs). Nothing. Nada. Zilch. The only reference to Hatchet was in a throw-away line in my review of Laid to Rest. So what happened to this no doubt insightful and brilliantly written review of mine? Did it get accidentally eaten? Put on yet another site I’ve forgotten? Was it written by someone else and my damaged mind is convincing me it was my work? Did it never really exist in the first place?

Oh, and if those guys in the white coats are reading this, this jacket doesn’t fit well at all.

On to the movie…

The original Hatchet was billed as a return to “Old School American Horror”, chock full of horror icons like Kane Hodder, Robert Englund and the aforementioned Mr. Todd. It was a slasher film about a tour group in the Louisiana swamp that runs into a psycho named Victor Crowley and gets chopped to shreds. It had some humor, and a lot of in-jokes for the horror connoisseur (I remember mentioning that in my lost review, too! Dammit!) but I thought in the long run it was just another slasher film, and I’m not that big a fan of the sub-genre.

The sequel takes up where the first one left off, and I mean right where the first one left off. The original cast has been sliced and diced, except for one plucky female survivor, Marybeth (played by Tamara Feldman in the first one, and this time by Danielle Harris, who is becoming something of a horror icon herself). After escaping Victor Crowley, she decides she must…immediately return to the swamp, to get the bodies of her family members. Marybeth obviously didn’t get into MIT. She goes to Reverend Zombie (Todd) and he organizations a return expedition for his own purposes, which seem to be getting rid of Crowley so he can make millions off swamp tours in Crowley’s swamp. The reverend isn’t Mensa material either. He gets together a collection of the dumbest redneck stereotypes imaginable, and they go off to get killed by Crowley.

It’s exactly what you would expect it to be, so if you are looking for a standard issue slasher film, gory with a bit of humor thrown in, this is probably for you. It's the first movie done differently, with a little more backstory, in the tradition of horror sequels. Tony Todd is present throughout most of the movie, so apparently the filmmakers read the review I never wrote in some alternate universe, but that isn't enough to elevate it, as enjoyable as Todd's performance may be.
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A New Movie Version of The Stand

2011-02-01T08:21:00.000-08:00

According the The Hollywood Reporter, CBS and Warner Brothers are teaming up to bring a new version of Stephen King’s classic novel The Stand to movie screens. George Romero tried to get the movie made back in the 1980s, and there was a fairly successful TV mini-series made in 1994. This is interesting news, and we will have to see how such a broad-scale novel translates into a movie format.
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Pod of Horror #63

2011-01-31T07:48:00.000-08:00

Over at Horror World, the 63rd edition of the Pod of Horror is now on-line for your diabolical listening pleasure. You can join Mark Justice, Nanci Kalanta and Jason Keene as they welcome Dastardly David T. Wilbanks for an extra-long Pod.
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R.I.P. Melissa Mia Hall

2011-01-30T18:26:00.001-08:00

Word came out today that writer Melissa Mia Hall has passed away, apparently from a heart attack. A little information is available at SF Signal. Ms. Hall was not prolific, but did produce some very fine short stories. R.I.P.
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A Personal Announcement

2011-01-29T07:15:00.000-08:00

Those of you who are regular visitors to this site (both of you!) may be aware of the short interviews I’ve been doing for Cemetery Dance, a series called We Interrupt This Author. I’ve had a lot of fun doing those, and it’s been great working with the authors involved and with Norman Prentiss, who supervised me with those. I have had the greatest admiration for CD, and respect for the position it holds within the genre.

The magazine version of Cemetery Dance is undergoing a slight reorganization. Norman will be the new Associate Editor for Fiction, and he offered me the position of Associate Editor, Non-Fiction. Naturally, I accepted. Cemetery Dance magazine is, in my opinion, the premier periodical in the horror fiction genre. It has been around for 23 years, an amazing longevity given the state of magazine publishing, and practically every author who has made a splash in horror or dark suspense has made an appearance in its pages. I am greatly honored by this opportunity, and hope I can live up to the high standards of the magazine. I thank Norman and the rest of the CD staff for this. The first issue I’m working on should appear in early summer.

This has been in the works for a little while, and I’m happy to be able to make it public. As far as I know right now, the interview series will continue, although they will be shifting to a new location.
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Ghosts of Mars

2011-01-28T08:13:00.000-08:00

John Carpenter is probably the most revered living directors working in the horror genre, yet a surprising number of his films were initially unsuccessful before becoming popular as “cult” classics. Movies like The Thing and Big Trouble In Little China flopped in the theaters, but found a place on home video, and are well regarded today. I had not watched his last release, Ghosts of Mars, since its initial release, and wondered if it, like the others, might have grown in stature in the years since.

The movie is set in 2176. Mars has been settled, and partially terraformed, with a more or less breathable atmosphere. Society has gone matriarchal for some unexplained reason, an interesting concept that is never really explored in the film. A group of police officers, led by Commander Helena Braddock (Pam Grier) is dispatched form Chryse, one of the major towns (I suppose) to a mining camp to pick up the notorious criminal “Desolation” Williams (Ice Cube). Included in the team is the real star of the film, Lieutenant Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge) and Sergeant Jericho Butler (Jason Statham, when he still had hair). They arrive at the camp to find everyone dead. It seems a dig has released the ghosts of ancient Martians, who have infected most of the locals, turning them into insane, self-mutilating killers. (It’s basically a zombie movie.) The police force will have to work with the criminals to survive.
Well, Ghosts of Mars really hasn’t improved with age. Sometimes movies simply don’t come together the way filmmakers wanted them to, and this is probably a good example.

There is a framing sequence to the story of Lt. Ballard testifying before a board of inquiry about what happened, and it doesn’t really work. The only purpose it serves is to let you know Ballard will be the only survivor, and that spoils a little of the suspense. It also means the bulk of the movie is told as a flashback, and any time something needs to be presented from the point-of-view of another character, it cuts back to the board room so Ballard can explain the sequence is based on what she was told by another character. That’s too clunky, and it makes for one of those flashback-within-a-flashback things that are so hard to pull off.

Special effects look fairly low budget, and they resort too often to the cheap shot of a stunt person jumping in front of an explosion to illustrate its force. This always looks ridiculous, and it’s done every time something blows up in the movie. A lot of things blow up in the movie. It looks like your kids playing on a trampoline, while you hurl grenades behind them.

The police/paramilitary force may be the worst cops ever shown on screen. If a bad guy flashes a knife, they instantly drop all their weapons, and then after they are disarmed and helpless, begin to bluster about how they don’t care if they die. That would be more effective done while they still had their guns, for your information. They also do nonsensical things to further the plot. The one hardened site in the camp is the police station, difficult to penetrate, with ammunition and other supplies inside. They abandon it not once but twice, so they can have running gun battles with the zombies/mutants/Martians. At one point, they set up a perfect kill chute, where the bad guys have to come at them no more than two at a time. They quickly retreat from that position, lest they kill all the bad guys and end the movie prematurely. Half the movie is spent with the characters trying to reach the train, so they can escape the camp. As soon as they reach it and are safely away, they decide they have to turn back.

The cast generally acquits themselves well, although there are some casting decisions that make you chuckle long after the fact. Statham was originally set to play Desolation Williams, but was switched to a lesser role since Ice Cube had more “star power.” Statham might have been better in the role, but that possible loss is balanced by Henstridge replacing the original lead Courtney Love, which would have been an interesting choice, to say the least.

The bare bones of the plot are basically a re-working of Carpenter’s first real success, Assault on Precinct 13, which itself was a re-do of Howard Hawks’ classic western Rio Bravo. (To make things more convoluted, Hawks more-or-less remade his film twice as well, with El Dorado and Rio Lobo.) Therefore, it is essentially a science fiction western, but whatever magic was present with Assault on Precinct 13 was not accessible here.

The biggest tragedy of Ghost of Mars is that Carpenter felt burnt out after making it, and it would be almost ten years before he directed his next film, the forthcoming move The Ward.
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Darkeva's Blog

2011-01-27T07:10:00.000-08:00

I’m always happy to recommend other horror-related blogs and websites, partly because people waiting on me to post new content can die of boredom. Today I’d like to recommend Darkeva’s Blog. Darkeva certainly has a better-designed site than I (although I can’t say that takes much), and seems to cover the gamut of horror fiction.

Darkeva also is Canadian, and one of the perplexing things is how many of the horror-related bloggers with whom I‘ve interacted hail from my country’s northern neighbor. Hopefully, these people will vouch for me when I seek political asylum there. ;-)
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Best Book of 2010

2011-01-21T10:12:00.000-08:00

I thought I would try to get this in before we are so far along in 2011, everyone forgets 2010 existed. Rather than try to rank the books from 1 to 10 like I usually do, I’m just going to go with a list of honorable mentions, then the top book. All of this is just my opinion, of course. I would also like to say that I tend to read books when I get to them, which is often well after the publication date (and sometimes before it), so my favorite book of 2010 may be something I’ll read in 2017, if the world doesn’t end in 2012. There is a bit of uncertainty on my part as to when some books came out, and I’m trying to stick with books published in 2010, not ones I got to in 2010. I don’t know if Norman Prentiss’ Invisible Fences, a favorite book of mine, was published last year or not. I think I first got to read it back in 2008. If it is a 2010 book, it should have been a contender, but I think I picked it as my top book of 2008, so I arbitrarily excluded it this time.

One thing that might be mildly controversial: everyone talks, of course, about how the heart and soul of the horror genre is the small press. I read a lot of small press publications, and they put out a lot of good things, but this year, the books I enjoyed most were published by the traditional big publishing houses. I have an opinion concerning that which I hope to put down in writing someday soon.

First the honorable mentions. This year seemed to be a year in which vampires, at least part of the time, stopped sparkling and came back to the dark side. Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan published the second part of their Strain Trilogy with The Fall, and Justin Cronin kicked off a trilogy with The Passage (review to come), a book that enjoyed a considerable boost from Stephen King. Peter Straub returned with the lyrical A Dark Matter. Stephen King published one of his periodic collections of four novellas in Full Dark, No Stars (review to come), which I thought was one of his strongest offerings in years. I enjoyed all these books quite a bit, and they mostly feature familiar names, and all come from big publishers. Perhaps I’m becoming more conventional, but I thought the books showed a generally higher quality of effort, and almost universally a stronger attention to editing, the great bugaboo of most of the small press.

My favorite book of 2010 is not from a familiar name, although it was a large mainstream publishing house. Australian author Stephen M. Irwin’s book The Dead Path hit all the right chords with me. The book, which told of a young man returning home to confront his childhood fears and a manifestation of The Green Man, heralded the arrival of a major new talent, in my opinion.

There you have it. The usual disclaimers, this is my opinion only, does not represent a scientific study, and no animals were harmed in the writing of this post.
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Dread

2011-01-19T08:12:00.000-08:00

Every time I review one of the Eight Films to Die For/AfterDark HorrorFest films, I mention how they are uneven in quality, which is true. Today’s movie is Dread, which has a better pedigree than most, being adapted from a short story by horror master Clive Barker.

Stephen (Jackson Rathbone) is a film student at an unnamed university. He seems to float aimlessly through life, modeling his personal style on Robert Smith of the Cure. He laments about his inability to get laid, although if you re-read the preceding sentence, you might uncover the secret. He has a chance meeting with Quaid (Shaun Evans) who is obviously a psychopath. Quaid shares his childhood trauma with Stephen, namely that an axe-wielding madman slaughtered his family while he watched, and suggests they collaborate on a student film that will explore what people dread. Stephen, who seems to be a little thick, agrees.

The film project consists of getting student volunteers to sit in front of the camera and talk about what their fears, making it just like every other student film ever produced. No faculty member seems involved in this in any way. Stephen gets his friend Cheryl (Hanne Steen) involved to edit the film, although editing should be easy, and his other friend Abby (Laura Donnelly) also gets caught up in the project. Abby has a birthmark which covers most of the right side of her body, which makes her especially vulnerable. Both girls seem attracted to Stephen for no discernable reason.

The project goes well enough, but there is a hitch. What could it be? Oh, yeah, Quaid is a psychopath. Predictably, he begins to use the subjects’ fears against them.

Judging by its rating on imdb.com, this is one of the more popular films in the series, and judging by the comments, there are a lot of people who really love it. As usual, I am a contrarian. I found it hard to believe the gang would lack the awareness to realize they were spending time in a secluded house in the woods with a sociopath, and that would not end well. The Stephen character is entirely too passive, and he’s one of those who gets a chance to stop the madman, and just can’t bring himself to do anything.

A lot of those who liked the film mentioned they liked how disturbing it is, and, with a nihilistic ending, it certainly is. So, however, is a video of a slaughterhouse, and I wouldn’t enjoy that either. I’m afraid this is thumbs down for me, although I should point out most disagree with me. It might also be enjoyed if you are a fan of The Cure.
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Ur

2011-01-18T20:18:00.000-08:00

In addition to being the most popular horror writer for the last 35 year, Stephen King has always embraced experimental forms. He wrote a serial novel (The Green Mile), a novel available by download over the internet, long before such a thing became fashionable (the uncompleted serial novel The Plant), and simultaneously published two novels that were alternate takes on the same subject by himself and his alter ego (Desperation under his own name and The Regulators as by Richard Bachman). It is not, therefore, surprising he would be one of the first to produce a story for the Amazon Kindle E-reader, and to make it about the Kindle. It is called Ur, and it is also not surprising that a diehard Stephen king fan such as I would buy it as soon as I received my Kindle.

Wesley Smith is a professor of English at a small college, and something of a Luddite. He is one of those who steadfastly proclaim the superiority of printed books over anything electronic (as I was a year ago). When his girlfriend leaves him in part because of his old-fashioned ways, however, he decides to show her different by ordering a Kindle. Wesley has a bit of dyslexia, though, and makes some sort of error in placing the order. When the Kindle arrives, it is in the unusual color pink (Kindles are white or charcoal) and has some unusual features, chief among them the ability to tap into different Urs.

An Ur is an alternate universe. In our Ur, Ernest Hemingway committed suicide in 1961, but in others he lived and continued to write for many more years. In others, he became a hard-boiled detective novelist, or some other variation. This is true of all other writers, and is obviously an English professors dream, the opportunity to read great novels never published in our reality. Wesley has made an excellent purchase.

The Ur-Kindle has another experimental feature that is not standard on the run-of-the-mill Kindle: the user can download editions of the local newspaper up to thirty days in advance. Through this feature, Wesley learns a disaster is about to take place, one that will claim the life of his ex-girlfriend and others. Wesley and one of his students have to use the knowledge gained to change the future.

All in all, the novella Ur is a bit lighter than most of King’s work, but his gift of characterization is as good as ever. Any of his fans should enjoy this, and for the hardcore fans, there is a connection to the Dark Tower series.

I also admit it was pretty cool to read a story about a Kindle on a Kindle.
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Origin

2011-01-14T10:43:00.000-08:00

There has been quite some disparity in authors’ reactions to e-books. Some have stubbornly resisted the movement away from traditional paper-and-ink, while some have embraced it. In the latter category is writer J. A. Konrath, who may well be the leading adopter of the new technology, at least in this genre. Origin is the first book by Konrath I have read, and it is available as a $2.99 download at Amazon and elsewhere.

During the construction of the Panama Canal at the beginning of the 20th century, workmen make an incredible find: a sealed sarcophagus with a not-quite-dead figure inside. The inhabitant is a fearsome looking creature, with horns, hooves, and serrated teeth. It is more comatose than dead, and in appearance seems to be…Satan. President Teddy Roosevelt orders the box and its contents taken to a secret facility in New Mexico for study.

Back in the present day, linguist Andrew Dennison is hurriedly brought into Project Samhain, the group studying the beast. It seems after all those years, it has finally awoken, and they need someone who can communicate with it. In New Mexico, Dennison meets with the rest of the team, all carefully chosen for personal flaws which would lead them to be accepting of isolation. This is a fatal error, as the devil is now awake, and Satan is a master at exploiting flaws. Before it’s finished, all the project members will wish he’d stayed asleep.

In a “bonus features” section of the e-book, Konrath mentions the difficulty he had in marketing the book, and it’s not hard to see why. The book is a bit of a techno-thriller, something of a horror story, and also a comedy. Potential publishers looked at it and couldn’t figure out how to market it. Readers don’t have as much problem, however, in making what they read fit into a narrow slot, and the cross-genre appeal should be in the book’s favor.

I highly recommend this book. It is slam-bang action, and I was surprised at just how funny it is. (Konrath supposedly toned down the humor in a re-write, but it still has moments of great hilarity.) Immediately after finishing Origin, I started downloading other Konrath titles. I think you’d like this too, and if you have an e-reader, you can’t hardly beat the price.
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A Response to My Canadian Readers

2011-01-12T08:11:00.001-08:00

After posting pictures from our snowpocalypse yesterday, some of my Canadian friends pointed out our snow seemed rather underwhelming. Custom demands that I fire back, but there is difficulty in that (1) they have all the facts on their side and (2) I don’t really want to offend. What can I do? I was searching for a suitable reply, and noted that most of light mockery came from those living in our near Toronto. Looking down at the sweater I was wearing, I saw the symbol designed to strike fear in the hearts of the residents of the Golden Horseshoe:

Vive le Bleu, Blanc, et Rouge!*

*All this is in good fun, of course

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SNOWMAGGEDON!

2011-01-11T10:25:00.000-08:00

Here is my back yard:

I realize everyone up north is thinking "A little snow, what's the big deal?" But I assure you, Southerners do not handle snow well. We've been shut down for two days, and roads may not reopen until Friday. This is our third largest snow on record, and I haven't worn a tie or dress shoes all week. Rarely pants, come to think of it.

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Living After Midnight

2011-01-10T08:33:00.000-08:00

All hail the new flesh, er, the new media!

The advent of e-readers and near instantaneous delivery of a book over the internet is alarming to some, but is a great opportunity to others. Some savvy authors have adopted this as a method of cutting out the middle man, and as a way to get closer to the reader, and the possibilities going forward are frankly exciting. Of course, this places an even stronger burden on the consumer to tell the good from the bad without help from the marketing campaign of a major publisher. Today, some of the good stuff, a new anthology from editors David T. Wilbanks and Craig Clarke, called Living After Midnight.

(Caveat: counting the two editors and the contributors to this anthology, over half those involved are friends of mine to some degree. I believe this sort of information should be provided up front, so the reader knows of any possible bias. I try not to let personal feelings affect what I think about a story, but it is always possible I would be more kindly disposed to this book than to, say, Tales from the Taliban: The World’s Leading Terrorists Share Their Favorite Jihadist Fiction.)

There are six stories in Living After Midnight, all inspired by heavy metal/hard rock bands (each story title is the name of one such band). Less that discourage those of you who are fans of chamber music and Celine Dion, no knowledge of the heavy music scene is required to enjoy these stories, as the authors for the most part use a name or image as a starting point.

Randy Chandler’s story “Spooky Tooth” tells about a rocker’s connection to lycanthropy – with a twist.

Matthew Fryer’s story “Iron Maiden” features a ghostly galleon and eerie sirens luring men to their doom.

In “Black Sabbath”, Steven L. Shrewsbury’s characters inhabit a world after a zombie apocalypse. The zombies themselves have mostly rotted away, leaving the greatest danger to the survivors – each other.

Co-editor David T. Wilbanks gives us a story about magic and curses in “Judas Priest” a slam-bang story about dueling creatures from another plane of existence.

L. L. Soares provides the well-written “Slayer”, about an aging rocker’s inevitable encounter with the acolyte of great and powerful supernatural entity.

There has to be a favorite in every collection, and mine is “Motorhead” by Kent Gowran, a crime/chase/horror story that seems to have pure adrenaline mixed with its ink. Mr. Gowran understands the way a great pulp crime story is created: the writer strikes a match to the story on the first page, and watches it flame its way to the end. You’ll want to look for more from this author.

The book is well laid out, an important consideration, since typos and formatting errors are the pet peeve of the users of e-readers. Effort was put into this book to make sure that wasn’t a problem. The very cool artwork (seen to your right) is by Carrie Gowran.

Living After Midnight is available from Smashwords and Amazon, for the bargain price of just $2.99. It’s one of the things that make having an e-reader worthwhile, and I strongly recommend it to you.

Well, 2011

2011-01-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

To say I’ve been lax on posting is a big understatement. I’m not sure why it has been so difficult to put something up, I suppose it’s just ennui. Ennui in this case means lazy, but when you say it in French, it sounds cool, like I have some sort of elegant wasting disease rather than being unwilling to get my fat ass in gear. Anyway, for the third time since Halloween, I’m going to start posting more. I have read quite a lot of interest, including discovering the work of J. A. Konrath, so I have a backlog of things to drone on about. Er, Happy New Year, but if you’ve been waiting for me to say it to get your own year started, you have the same problem I do.

Excelsior.
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Merry Christmas to Everyone

2010-12-25T11:00:00.001-08:00

I hope Christmas was everything you wanted it to be, and remember, Santa is an anagram for Satan.
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Blade Spinoff?

2010-12-24T10:24:00.000-08:00

Actor Stephen Dorff has informed Total Film he has been in contact with Blade director Stephen Norrington about a possible spinoff with his character from the movie, Deacon Frost. I didn't see that coming. I thought Frost was dead at the end of the movie but then again (a) he was a vampire and (b) it's a movie. I also thought Norrington had retired after his problems working with Sean Connery on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. We'll see what happens.
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Predators

2010-12-22T10:08:00.000-08:00

The original Predator, released in 1987 and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, is one of those movies whose fame has managed to outlive its decade. Still revered by its fans, it seemed ready-made for a successful franchise, but 1990’s Predator 2 was a disappointment, and the character remained dormant until brought back in Aliens vs. Predator (not as bad as its reputation, but still a little disappointing) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (It’s impossible to say too much about this one, since it was filmed with a total absence of light. I have no idea what happened in the movie, although I’ve seen it twice.). Various ideas have floated about reviving the titular monster, but none came to fruition, until this year’s Robert Rodriguez-produced Predators.

The movie opens with Royce (Adrien Brody) falling through the air. He has been thrown out of some sort of craft, and is saved by an automatic parachute (although the parachute opens low and slams him to the ground, which seems contradictory to their purpose). Royce is a mercenary (presumably) and he finds himself in the company of Nikolai, a Spetsnaz commando, Cuchillo (Danny Trejo), a member of the Zetas Mexican gang, Isabelle (Alice Braga), a CIA sniper (disregard what is said about her by Royce, he’s wrong), Stans (Walter Goggins, playing his usual racist redneck) and so on. All are obvious killers, except for Edwin (Topher Grace), who is a doctor and is presumably there to act as the group medic. It seems the deadliest of humans has been plucked from their world by the Predators and placed on a “game preserve” planet to be hunted by the Predators. This brings the story even closer to its original Most Dangerous Game antecedent. There are also other species from other worlds, but they barely figure into the story.

The seven surviving humans (one has an unfortunate parachute accident and does not live to take part) soon realize they are being hunted by the Predators and spend most of the movie trying to figure out how to fight back. There’s not much more of a plot than that; this is an action movie through-and-through. Complicating the situation somewhat is the presence of two distinctive (if you look closely) Predators, who apparently don’t like each other very much. I do wonder how a race that spends all its time trying to kill each other ever gain the technology to move about the universe so freely. There is a twist near the end which you may or may not find obvious, and the end sets up the possibility of a sequel, which Rodriguez has promised will be forthcoming.

My main reservation going in was Adrien Brody as a lead. He is a fine actor, but is better known and was seemingly better suited to playing more passive, intellectual roles. I was pleasantly surprised. Brody beefed himself up somewhat for the role, and talks in a lower, gruffer voice, and all in all, comes off well as a soldier for hire who is capable but interested mainly in saving his own skin. The rest of the cast is a bit stereotypical; one-note characters in the movie just so there would be someone to kill. The worst offender, the fault of the script, not the actor, is Nikolai. He is portrayed as an almost mindless brute with a machine gun. The Spetsnaz are the Russian Special Forces, and only take the best mental and physical candidates. It would have been a more interesting film, in my opinion, if Nikolai was the equal to Royce, perhaps pushing an alternative viewpoint, rather than having Royce as the Only Guy Who Knows What To Do. We also meet our old friend Exposition Guy (Lawrence Fishburne, in basically a cameo) in the middle of the movie, but since the only information he ha to dump is “the Predators want to kill you”, he doesn’t serve much of a purpose.

Incidentally, the filmmakers have stated this movie is a sequel to Predator and Predator 2, but not to the Alien vs. Predator films. Good call, although I would have pretended Predator 2 never existed, too.

So, is it worth seeing? I think so, as long as you know exactly what you are going to be watching. This is a simple movie of dangerous people being chased by alien monster who use advanced technology, just like the first movie, and in that it succeeds just fine. If you want something deeper, you probably wouldn’t choose this one anyway.
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R.I.P. Jean Rollin

2010-12-16T10:38:00.000-08:00

French horror auteur Jean Rollin has died at the age of 72, according to Fangoria. It is common to refer to directors as “one of a kind” upon their passing, but Rollin truly was. In films such as Le viol du vampire (Rape of the Vampire), La vampire nue (The Nude Vampire) and my personal favorite La fiancée de Dracula (Fiancée of Dracula), he created a distinctive blend of surrealism and eroticism that will be difficult to match. I’ve watched Fiancée of Dracula three times, and I still don’t know what it’s about, although I like. To quote one of his films: “The person evaporates, but the memory remains.” R.I.P.

So, Ya Wanna Be In Pictures?

2010-12-10T06:35:00.000-08:00

Well, you can be. Your name can be, anyway. Greg Bartlett has filmed an adaptation of the short story “Making Friends” by noted horror author Gary Raisor (Less Than Human, Obsessions). Filming is completed, but the filmmakers need to raise $600 by January 5th to finish it. To get the money they are soliciting donations, and donating brings you various goodies, including having your name in the credits. It’s certainly a lot easier than hanging out at Schwab’s drugstore day after day. Depending on the size of the donation, you can also receive a digital download of the film, a dvd, and/or a signed poster. You can view the trailer for the film here, and you can pledge a donation to the film here. I’m planning on doing it, and you might want to check it out, too.
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Southern Gods Sold To Nightshade

2010-12-02T08:13:00.000-08:00

Due to extremely light posting of late (I basically took the month of November off from my blog. But now I’ve used up my blog vacation time up, and need to get back to earning big blog bucks. Weak joke completely run into the ground.) I was remiss in not noting one of the more significant events to occur in my circle of friends: the devilishly handsome John Hornor Jacobs sold his novel Southern Gods to Nightshade Books. Big congratulations to John and to his outstanding agent Stacia Decker. Nightshade is a prestigious publisher, and this is really big news, even if I am three weeks behind in saying so.

When this book becomes the success it so deserves to be, will anyone remember one of the earliest positive reviews of it? No, of course not. Prophets are without honor in their own time. Anyway, this is a book you are going to want to read. More details as they emerge.

R.I.P. John Steakley

2010-12-02T05:45:00.001-08:00

The author of Vampire$ and Armor died last Saturday at age 59 of liver disease, according to the Dallas Morning News. He was less than prolific (publishing two novels and four short stories) but the quality of his work gained him an extensive fan base.
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New Apollo 18 Poster

2010-11-24T14:08:00.000-08:00

Looks cool:.

R.I.P. Ingrid Pitt

2010-11-23T10:58:00.000-08:00

Thanks to my friend Jim McLeod, I've learned that horror icon Ingrid Pitt has died. If you are a fan of the Hammer Horror films, Ms. Pitt was the most recognizeable female actress, and her roles in Countess Dracula and The Vampire Lovers, brought Hammer to a new level of eroticism. More details at BBC News.

I Have Been Assimilated

2010-11-22T20:28:00.001-08:00

My Posting Has Not Been So Prolix

2010-11-18T08:02:00.000-08:00

After the big October push, I slacked off of posting, but I will resume shortly, I promise. Like you care.
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My Interview With Norman Partridge

2010-11-09T13:24:00.000-08:00

My short interview with Norman Partridge is now up at Cemetery Dance's We Interrupt This Author website. Norm is the author of the classic Dark Harvest, and his new book from CD is Johnny Halloween: Tales of the Dark Season.

Yeah, Well, Okay

2010-11-09T11:05:00.000-08:00

So I took the week to think about it and have decided not to nuke the site. Hold on to your hats, as I'm sure an announcement like this will have a big effect on the stock market.
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Dark Tower Movie

2010-11-03T09:11:00.000-07:00

Comicbookmovie.com has reported (and Universal has confirmed, the release date for the first film in the series adapting Stephen King's Dark Tower series will be May 17, 2013. This is part of an ambitious undertaking which will have three movies, with seasons of a tv series between them as a bridge, to tell the complete Dark Tower story. Some people are leery of Ron Howard a the creative force behind this; and certainly the movie trilogy/tv series concept is one of the most ambitious gambles in entertainment history.
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Skyline Poster

2010-11-03T07:41:00.000-07:00

I don't want to be overly optimistic, but this looks pretty good:

Opening November 12th.
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Rock and Roll Reform School Zombies

2010-11-01T12:28:00.000-07:00

Here's something I'm a little late on: Deadite Press has released Bryan Smith's new book Rock and Roll Reform School Zombies. Smith is an author who never disappoints, so this one is worth checking out. You can order it (very cheaply, compared with what books are going for these days) through Amazon.
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Carpenter to Direct Darkchylde

2010-11-01T10:31:00.000-07:00

According to Total Film, John Carpenter's next film will be an adaptation of the comic book Darkchylde. I'm not familiar with the comic, but sense I watched The Thing and Halloween last night for Halloween, I'm on a bit of a Carpenter high, and hoping for the best. I wonder if that means he will no longer be directing Fangland?

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-31T06:49:00.001-07:00

I hope this Halloween will be everything you wanted it to be. I've tried to step up the posting pace to do my little part, and it has been fun. Thanks to everyone who has stopped by. Over the next week or so, I'm going to re-evaluate and see if I want to continue this little site, but either way, it's been a blast!

Scary Goalie Masks

2010-10-30T09:17:00.000-07:00

If you are both a horror and hockey fan (like me), for Halloween Sports Illustrated has posted photos of "Scary Goalie Masks." Pretty good stuff. I would guess if you're a Maple Leafs fan, the sight of Vesa Toskala is pretty terrifying, in or out of a mask.
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The Lost Boys: The Thirst

2010-10-29T10:18:00.000-07:00

I don’t think you could call it a guilty pleasure, because it was fairly popular, but the 1980s vampire movie The Lost Boys has always been a lot of fun for me, despite a number of campy elements that now seem dated. For years, attempts to produce a sequel to the movie came to naught, but twenty years later, the story continued (sort of) in 2008’s direct-to-video The Lost Boys: The Tribe. Sales were good for the film, and the producers went ahead with this year’s The Lost Boys: The Thirst, which is more of a direct sequel.

Over twenty years have passed since the first movie and the Frog Brothers, Alan (Jamison Newlander) and Edgar (Corey Feldman) have been busy in the vampire-killing business. Things have slowed of late, since Alan became infected with the vampire virus during one of their battles. For some reason that isn’t explained in the film, he doesn’t become the sort of vicious murderer as the other vampires. Maybe it was the Frog steely willpower. Anyway, Edgar is on his own, and is hired by the author of a best-selling series of vampire romances to save her brother, who has been kidnapped by vampires.

It seems the original “alpha” vampire has been holding raves in which a drug called thirst is passed around to the revelers. Thirst is actually vampire blood, and “DJ X” plans to build a vampire army. Edgar leads a decidedly rag-tag group, including a reality TV star (!) into the vampire’s den, to save the brother (who looks uncomfortably like Justin Bieber) and kill the alpha vampire, which will presumably cause all the vampires in his bloodline to revert to normal. There is a fairly illogical ending.

It isn’t the first one, obviously. Feldman is asked to more or less carry the whole movie, and while I’ve never thought he was a terrible actor, his character is written to be fairly one-dimensional and mock-grim, and begins to wear on you. Production values, script and direction are decent, and there isn’t anyone in the movie having as difficult a time with their role as Angus Sutherland in the last installment. Whatever is up Feldman allowing one strand of hair to dangle in his face I have no idea, but he seems to do it in real life as well.

This isn’t as good as the original, but it does have its moments. Pop a lot of popcorn and disengage the logic portion of your brain, and you probably will have a good time with it. I liked it better than the first sequel, for what that’s worth.
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Zombies of Mass Destruction

2010-10-28T15:16:00.001-07:00

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not much of a zombie fan, which puts me out of step with at least 90% of those who watch horror movies or read horror fiction. Nothing against it, it simply seems the sub-genre is exhausted. I always try to watch the After Dark Horrorfest movies though, and with Halloween approaching, decided to give Zombies of Mass Destruction a try. Zombies of Mass Destruction is a member of a sub-sub-genre, the zombedy, or zombie –comedy, best exemplified by Shaun of the Dead, with other successful examples being Zombieland and Hide and Creep.

Port Gamble is a fairly typical small town, albeit one that is fairly isolated by being on an island. Its politics run fairly red-state conservative, and most of the jokes made in the film are political in nature. Don’t worry about watching it if you’re a conservative, since liberals don’t come across all that well, either. As the story starts, a couple of former residents are returning to the island, Frida Abbas, the daughter of a local Iranian-American restaurateur (A running gag is that everyone thinks she’s Iraqi. It isn’t that funny), and Tom, who is accompanied by his boyfriend Lance, coming home to come out as gay to his mother. The outsiderness of the Arab-American Frida and the gay Tom are the source of most of the humor.

Once everyone is on the island, there is a zombie outbreak. Why this happens is never explained, although some think it is a terrorist attack, but an explanation really isn’t necessary. The movie becomes a the usual story of our protagonists trying to escape the cannibalistic walking dead, with the added sideplots of Frida dealing with her survivalist neighbors, who assume she’s responsible, and Tom and Lance having to hole up at a local church that definitely isn’t gay-friendly. This is also for the best, since the zombies here are not just the slow variety, they are ultra slow, and it seems if you pay attention and don’t let them get too close, they don’t pose that much of a threat.

The movie isn’t hilarious, but has some decently funny moments. It’s probably a little too long, since the jokes seem to wear a bit by then, and it didn’t seem the creators could make up their minds as to whether they wanted to descend into complete slapstick or not (it isn’t really that easy to pull someone’s arm off with a yank, for instance). Ever sense Romero did it so well; zombie film makers have tried to use the sub-genre to make social statements, with most of them falling on their faces. This movie does it well enough, though.

It certainly isn’t a terrible movie though, even to a zombie-phobe like me. The script is solid, the direction is good, production values are decent, especially considering the very low budget, and I could find no fault with the acting of the cast of unknowns. If you are the zombie enthusiast type, I imagine you would enjoy it quite well, and it works well enough even if you are not. I think my favorite line was the son asking his father if he was aware of what a zombie bite means, hasn’t he seen zombie movies? The father replies his son should know he’s a vampire man.
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After.Life

2010-10-28T10:51:00.000-07:00

Nobody likes to think about it, but most of us will eventually end up on a mortician’s slab, with a stranger submitting our body to various indignities. It is a hallmark of modernity that we have insulated ourselves from the business of death and the disposal of human remains. The unsettling thriller After.Life forces viewers to confront these things, and it may not be for everyone.

Anna (Christina Ricci) and Paul (Justin Long) are dating when a misunderstanding at a restaurant causes Anna to storm out and drive off in a heavy rainstorm. The next thing she knows, she’s awake on a metal table, and Eliot (Liam Neeson) is cleaning a wound on her face. In response to her questions, Eliot tells her she is dead and he is readying her body for a funeral in three days. Apparently, Eliot has a gift which allows him to see and communicate with the recently dead, which he uses to prepare them to transition to the finality of death. Anna has difficulty in believing this, but Paul and her mother are preparing for the funeral, there is a death certificate, and all signs point to her demise.

Paul is suspicious and tries to investigate, but is blocked by Eliot and Anna’s shrewish mother. Anna struggles against Eliot, but more and more of the signs point toward accepting her fate. The movie hinges on discovering what Eliot is really up to. Is he what he says, or simply the world’s cleverest serial killer? Not until the end of the movie do you truly know the answer to that.

The cast is very good. Justin Long is good as the guilt-ridden boyfriend, and Liam Neeson is always outstanding. This is Christina Ricci’s movie, though, and she shines at Anna. It is an uncommonly brave role, unglamorous, with Ricci nude for most of the last half of the movie. If genre films got award recognition, she might be a contender.

After.Life won’t be for everyone. It eschews gore for a truly uncomfortable look at death and dying. If you’re up for it, I’d say give it a try.
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Locke & Key Goes To Pilot

2010-10-27T17:25:00.000-07:00

According to Deadline, Fox has ordered a pilot based on the comic Locke & Key by Joe Hill. The series is tentatively being looked at for a possible summer run. The comic is excellent, and while network television's record with horror series is spotty at best, I look forward to seeing what they do with this.
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Veronica Lake As A Witch

2010-10-27T14:46:00.000-07:00

Another publicity still from the Golden Age of Hollywood: