John Hornor Jacobs Invades Reddit

One of the best horror writers in the business, John Hornor Jacobs (Southern Gods, This Dead Earth) is currently accumulating questions for an AMA (that's Ask Me Anything for non-redditors) on Reddit. John is not only a writer you should be reading, he is a personal friend. Click here to ask him a question.
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Fright Night 2

A most unusual sequel.

Generally speaking, we expect sequels to carry on the story line from the preceding movie, or at least the general tone or spirit. While Fright Night 2 is ostensibly a sequel to 2011’s remake, it really is as much of a remake as the last one was. The characters of Charlie, Amy, Peter Vincent, and Evil Ed return (despite Evil Ed’s demise) without any knowledge of vampires or the events of the first film, and Jerry the vampire is now Gerri the vampire, and female.  Curious. As near as I can remember, it doesn’t have anything to do with Fright Night Part 2, the original sequel to the original film.

Charlie (Will Payne), Evil Ed (Chris Waller), and Amy (Sacha Parkinson) are American university students (all played by British actors, of course) whose class has gone to Romania for a course, field trip or something else. Not exactly sure on that one. Their professor is the sexy Gerri Dandridge (Jaime Murray), and Charlie spies her one night from a window dining on a young woman. Gerri is a vampire! He tries to convince Amy and Evil of this, but they haven’t seen the previous Fright Nights, so they are hard to convince. Eventually Evil comes around, and suggests they consult Peter Vincent (Sean Power), the famous host of a ghost-hunting reality TV show, who just happens to be in Bucharest. Vincent scoffs at them and tells them vampires aren’t real.
The plot plays out pretty much in the same fashion as the original and remake of Fright Night. The major change is Gerri is Countess Elisabeth Bathory, and that Amy turns out to be a virgin born at midnight during a blood moon, whose blood can either turn a vampire human or allow them to walk in the daylight. Gerri wants Amy, Charlie wants to save Amy, things work out for Evil Ed as well as you’d expect, etc., etc.

The movie is barely passable for a straight-to-dvd feature. The movie lacks the humor which helped elevate the first two versions of the movie, and suffers for it. The actors are competent but bland with the exception of Jaime Murray, who really, um, bites into her role. This one is for hardcore vampire movie fans and those who can’t bear to miss a sequel, even if the sequel to a remake is really a remake itself.
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GNOH Interviews Nicholas Vince

My friend Jim McLeod has an interview up with Nicholas Vince, who played the Chattering Cenobite in the film adaptations of Hellraiser and has now turned his attention to writing horror stories. Jim's site, Ginger Nuts of Horror, is a must-read on a regular basis, and this interview does not disappoint. Check it out.

WITA # 6: Hans-Åke Lilja

Continuing to re-print some of these old interviews I did for Cemetery Dance in the We Interrupt This Author series, here is a brief talk with Hans-Åke Lilja, who is one of the chief chroniclers of Stephen King's writing career. This interview is reprinted courtesy of Cemetery Dance, on whose website it appeared on August 16, 2010. As always, the material is a little dated.

For over thirty years, Stephen King has been the dean of horror writers, and arguably, his biggest fan is Hans-Åke Lilja, the proprietor of the Lilja’s Library website at http://www.liljas-library.com/.  Mr. Lilja has collectd the information acquired over many years into a new book from Cemetery Dance called Lilja’s Library:  The World of Stephen King, available now, and illustrated by Glenn Chadbourne.  It will stand as one of the great resources for information about Mr. King’s life and work, and Mr. Lilja was kind enough to talk with us about the book and about himself.

Dead In The South - So, your book from Cemetery Dance is called Lilja’s Library:  The World of Stephen King.  Tell us about it.

Hans-Åke Lilja - It’s a collection of the reviews and interviews I had done for the site up till mid 2008 as well as some I did exclusively for the book. It’s a version of the site that you can read in bed. It also has a very nice intro by Bev Vincent and an interview (also by Bev) with me about the site.

DITS -  You are one of if not the biggest of all Stephen King fans.  What is it about his work that speaks to you?

H-AL - The main thing is that he can tell a story really well. He makes you feel for the characters. He makes you care about them. He makes you feel like you know them. And on top of that he also has the ability to take something really ordinary and turn it into something scary, in a believable way. 

DITS - How long have you been a Stephen King fan, and what got you started?

H-AL - I have been a fan since the mid 80’s when I got a copy of Carrie for Christmas. I got hooked and read everything he had written after that.

DITS - Since you have knowledge of Mr. King’s work I can only envy, what is your favorite or favorites among his many books and stories?

H-AL - Oh, that is the hard one! I can’t pick just one. I really love The Long Walk which also shows King’s ability to create great characters. Who else could write a book about people walking? I also love The Dark Tower, The Stand, IT and The Talisman. Of the shorter works I really like “Secret Garden, Secret Window” and “Survival Type”.

King and Lilja

DITS - Over the years, there have been many projects in connection with King announced that never saw the light of day, books that were never completed and movies that were never filmed.  If you could wish just one of these projects into existence, what would it be?

H-AL - That’s easy. I would love to see the animated movie version of Eyes of The Dragon that was planned some years ago. And if it were to be done today it would probably be even better since the technique is so much better. 

DITS - Do you have any ambitions to write fiction yourself?

H-AL - No. Unfortunately I have no skills for writing stories.

DITS - Now that this monumental task is completed and the book is out, what is next up for Hans-Ake Lilja?

H-AL - I’m part of another book coming out next year called The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Trivia Book that I co-wrote with Brian Freeman and Kevin Quigley. It’s a quiz book about almost every King movie done. It’s also beautifully illustrated by Glenn Chadbourne.

After that I really don’t know. I’d love to do another book about King but I need to find something that hasn’t already been written about and that isn’t as easy as one might thing… I will also keep the site going and I have some plans for it that I hope to be able to realize.

The Breed (2006)

Although I have a soft spot for all sorts of creature features, I run into a bit of a personal problem when said creatures turn out to be dogs, as I tend to like dogs a lot more than people. In my entire life, I have only met one or two dogs I didn’t get along with; while the number of people I haven’t liked is {supercomputer is busy calculating this}. Anyway, on to The Breed.

After a short introduction of a couple docking their sailboat on an island and getting attacked by dogs, we see a seaplane loaded with five twenty-somethings. They are two couples and their Token Black Friend. TBK is doomed of course, because black guys in horror movies don’t last as long as a drummer for Spinal Tap. The two white guys are brothers, with the younger one a high-achiever who is going to medical school and the older the ne-er-do-well of the family. This is a setup for conflict between the two, but since the older brothers is surprisingly competent, it isn’t as much of a contrast as the filmmakers intended. The other two are the girlfriends, one played by Michelle Rodriquez, which immediately started me to speculating about when and how she would die. Rodriquez is the distaff version of Sean Bean, rarely making it to the closing credits with a pulse.

The five are flying to the remote island for a holiday, because the two brothers inherited a house there from a recently deceased uncle. I was having trouble identifying with them, since the only thing I’ve inherited from an uncle was a pair of old boots. The only other building on the island is an abandoned facility where they experimented on dogs, supposedly shut down because all the dogs got rabies and had to be destroyed. Not giving anything away if you looked at the picture of the movie poster above, but group is soon under attack by a pack of feral dogs and trapped in the cabin, where they try to outwit the fidos and escape. It seems that the experiments performed on them made the dogs super aggressive and super intelligent, although there must be limits since they haven’t invented rocket launchers or anything.

There is something of a subplot about those characters that have been bitten and survived becoming more aggressive and losing control, as if the bites had given them rabies or maybe just made them irritable at being gnawed on by Lassie, but this goes nowhere at all. Maybe they were saving that for The Breed 2.

A tense scene from the movie, showing the cast being attacked by one of the killer dogs.

Anyway, both acting and direction are competent, with only a few fast cutaways needed to conceal vicious dogs wagging their tails and sporting doggie smiles. The script isn’t particularly dumb by the low standards of this sort of movie. The scenery is nice (It was filmed in South Africa). I suppose the final judgment on the movie is that it is a perfectly bland, middle of the road horror-thriller. There is nothing much to recommend it or trash it. If you are in the mood for this sort of thing and have nothing else to watch, it will pass the time well enough, I suppose.

The moral of the movie’s story is always carry bags of Milk Bones on your vacation. You will make friends with the murderous dogs, and they’ll eat your friends instead.

The Fog (2005)

Way back in the aughts (You remember those. No? They ended three years ago! Fewer drugs, dude.) there was a mini-wave of remaking horror films from the 70s/80s. Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street and Arthur all got remakes, with enough success to encourage studios to keep doing it.

John Carpenter’s 1980 film The Fog was a fairly obvious choice to be remade. Successful at the time, it isn’t held in quite the same reverence as some of his better-known films, and Carpenter himself has said is feels dated. So, cast some good looking young TV stars, use modern special effects and it couldn’t go wrong. Right? Oy…

Nick Castle (Tom Welling, Smallville) owns a charter fishing boat harbored in Antonio Bay, Oregon. Despite the name, Antonio Bay is a small island off the coast of Oregon. He takes fisherman out for brief excursions with his completely incompetent mate Spooner. We only get to know Spooner briefly, but in that short time he manages to almost capsize the boat with the anchor winch and ignores the small matter of engine trouble at sea. Gilligan was better. One day, Nick and Spooner are floating along when they snag their anchor, disturbing a small bag. This is significant because…I guess because that’s how the movie starts.

Back on shore, we learn there is tension in the town between young entrepreneurs like Nick, who want the town to spend to upgrade the marina, and the older generation who spent the funds on a statue of the four founding fathers of the town. This is supposed to be a heated controversy, but neither Nick nor the town elders seem to be able to work up much enthusiasm for the fight. The timing is crucial, since this is the 100th anniversary of the town’s founding in 1871. Wait, when is this movie set? 2005? But…Try not to think about it.

Nick has an old girlfriend Elizabeth (Maggie Grace, Taken) who has been gone to New York for a while, and a new girlfriend Stevie Wayne (Selma Blair, Hellboy) who is the owner and sole operator of the town’s radio station. Nick is surprised when he picks up a female hitchhiker late at night (in a creepy don’t-get-in-the-truck way) and finds it is Elizabeth, who has apparently walked back to Oregon from New York. This would seem to trigger a heated lovers’ triangle, but none of the three can work up much interest. Stevie has a son, whose purpose is to be put in danger.

Meanwhile, disturbing that bag (or possibly the 100th/134th anniversary thing, or sunspots or something) has triggered a strange fog that darts in and out, hence the name of the movie. The fog is filled with ghosts, who murder people indiscriminately and really hate streetlamps. It seems that in 1871, there was another mythical Oregon island with a prosperous trading colony. Through trade with China, they all caught leprosy. That isn’t how leprosy works, but whatever. Cast out from their island (by who?) they search for a new home. The good founding fathers of Antonio Bay promise them half the island, but rob them, lock them on their boat and burn them alive instead, and use the stolen wealth to build the town. This does seem like the way to get a monument to yourself, judging by history. Rather than take their revenge on those who actually wronged them, the ghostly lepers wait a century or more to punish the relatively innocent descendants and unconnected people living in modern Antonio Bay.

Oh. no! Limited visibility!

There is also a drunken priest who wanders around misquoting the Bible, various impalements, and a lot of broken streetlamps. I don’t reveal the ending of movies so as not to spoil them for those who haven’t seen the film, but in this case I don’t understand it anyway. Something happens, but who knows why.

The actors are good looking but uninspired. Even Ms. Blair, who is normally an interesting actress, looks like she wishes she were somewhere else. The direction is flat. The modern special effects don’t really look as good as the 1980 version. There really isn’t anything about which to recommend this movie.

My favorite anecdote related to this movie is the director insisted that Selma Blair, a petite woman, wear formidable falsies in her role. Why? The role of Stevie in the original version was played by carpenter’s then-wife Adrienne Barbeau, who was fairly busty. Again, why? This is apparently yet another mystery of The Fog.

SEAL Team 666

In SEAL Team 666, Jack Walker is going through the selection process to become a U.S. Navy SEAL, one of the world’s elite Special Forces organizations, when he is graduated early to join an even more exclusive group: SEAL Team 666, a five man (and one dog) team of operators that deal with supernatural threats to the United States. It seems that Jack, due to an incident in his childhood, has the ability to sense supernatural danger, which makes him valuable to the group beyond his basic sniper assignment. Unfortunately for Jack, his spidey sense initially manifests itself as complete paralysis, which could be a problem in combat situations.

Jack has little time to adapt to his new role, as the team is off in pursuit of a Karen rebel in Myanmar who plans to bring forward an ancient demon, controlled by a custom suit of human skin. Casualties among the good guys mount rapidly as time runs out to stop the final ceremony.

Weston Ochse is the author of one of the best novels dealing with the supernatural in the last twenty years, Scarecrow Gods, and this is the launch of a new series blending military fiction (think Tom Clancy) with supernatural literature. I don’t think this is as good as Scarecrow Gods – there isn’t the depth of characterization found in the earlier novel – but few books are. I think this will be good reading for those looking for a book filled with action and horror. I will certainly look forward to the next book in the series.

Irrelevant trivia: because it is a pet peeve of mine, I was overjoyed to see that Ochse refers to the ammunition storage devices for the rifles used by the SEALs by the correct name of “magazine.” Too many writers use the word “clip”, a mistake they beat out of you in basic training. (Few modern weapons use free-standing clips, although many types of magazines contain clips.)
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Dungeon Brain

This is part of a blog tour organized by the Mistress of Horror herself, the one and only Dark Eva.

I read a lot of books, but it’s a little bit rare to come across one with a truly original concept. Novels tend to recycle the same old tropes, with only the execution to set them apart. I can’t say that about Benjamin Kane Ethridge’s new novel Dungeon Brain, as it definitely took me to unexpected places.

When the story begins, June Nilman, whose surname seems quite appropriate, wakes in an abandoned hospital somewhere in a dystopian future. It’s a world devastated by war, where programmed content is fed to the inhabitants through ocular implants. June has a few problems. She suffers from some form of amnesia, but even worse, her brain has apparently been stuffed with myriad other personalities and memories, a sort of punitive schizophrenia. Finding herself in the mental mob is a difficult task. In addition to her psychological obstacles, she has a human nemesis in Maggie, a Nurse Ratched-type character who seems to control the institution as well as a type of alien creature that acts as a sort of security patrol.

June needs to escape, and to do so she needs to access the personalities locked in her head, with the danger of being lost inside them. Even if she manages to escape the labyrinthine facility, Maggie, and the creatures, there is no way of knowing things will be better outside her prison.

Dungeon Brain is more science fiction than horror, but it is certainly horrifying science fiction. Losing oneself inside yourself is probably about as scary a possibility as exists, and the novel reinforces Douglas Winter’s thirty-year-old assertion that horror is an emotion rather than a genre in and of itself.

Ethridge writes with clarity and literary depth, and does an excellent job of creating the feeling of existential terror that permeates the novel. His writing shows a sense of craft above what you typically encounter in the horror field today while still connecting on the visceral level where horror (emotion or genre) lives. This is the first of his books I’ve read, but it won’t be the last.

You can order Dungeon Brain from Amazon, and check back here on the 14th for a guest column from Mr. Ethridge.
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Quiet House: A Halloween Story

If you are in the mood for a little seasonal reading at a great price, I would recommend “Quiet House: A Halloween Short Story” by Norman Prentiss, author of one of my favorite novellas, Invisible Fences. This story of psychological horror tells about the first year Jeremy is old enough to trick-or-treat, his anticipation at being able to visit the legendary Myrick house, his disappoint, and the consequences of a thoughtless act of revenge. The story is only 99¢, and can be ordered through Cemetery Dance or Amazon.
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The Final Destination

The Final Destination movies (of which there have been five to date, with further installments planned) have always been a guilty pleasure. The theme of inescapable fate, with death coming to those who thwarted it with various Rube Goldberg-esque machinations, was fairly repetitious, but there was a certain fun-loving quality amidst the gore, and I enjoyed the first three installments to some degree. Not enough, I suppose, since the fourth movie, titled The Final Destination*, sat on my shelf for over a year until I finally got around to it this week.

A group of vacuous twenty-somethings – who are supposed to be students, I guess – go to a track together to attend an auto race. None of them seems very interested in it but Hunt (Nick Zano), who is only there because he wants to see a wreck, and who is a dear friend to the others despite having a personality that makes you want to run over him with a steamroller. He gets his wish when a car wrecks, spins into the crowd, and kills the entire group along with various other bystanders in grisly fashion. Boy, that was a short movie, can’t say I’ll miss them thou – oh, it was just a premonition by Nick (Bobby Campo). He manages to get his friends, some of the bystanders, and a security guard out before the fatal accident. Well, that’s a more disappointing end, bu – oh, yeah, it’s the same setup for the other films. They have cheated death, but death doesn’t take that lying down, and will get them in the sequence they were supposed to have died. A few gory deaths, a trademark scene of gratuitous nudity, and a fiery climax at a 3D movie (how meta!) and it ends the same way as the others did.

Gallagher has gone too far!

There are a couple of differences. Nick continues to have vague premonitions (unlike the first specific one he had) although that mostly leads to frustration because his friends absolutely refuse to believe him. After all, his vision only saved their lives. There is also a minor twist that someone who has cheated the reaper can’t die until it’s their turn in the sequence again, which would allow you to have a pretty exciting day or two. I can’t see that these additions add or detract from the movie, but one change does: Tony Todd is not in this film. If you have seen the first three, you know he appears as a mysterious character to explain things to the victims-to-be and to thoroughly creep them out. Todd had a scheduling conflict that kept him out of this one, and the film suffers for it, for as I’ve said before, a movie should have as much Tony Todd as possible.

The big failing here is there is no reason to care if the cast survives, with the possible exception of George (Mykelti Williamson), and in the case of Hunt and Racist (that’s the only way he’s referred to in the film or credits) you actively root for them to get it. If you don’t care about characters, you won’t care about the movie, and The Final Destination definitely falls short of the guilty pleasure status of its predecessors.

The Final Destination was the first in the series to be filmed in 3-D, but I watched it in 2-D since I’m not a fan of splitting headaches.


* I’m sure it’s an example of some form of OCD, but I can’t express to you how much it irritates me the other movies are titled Final Destination, Final Destination 2, Final Destination 3, and Final Destination 5, but this one is called The Final Destination. Consistency, people! It makes my shelf look unorganized.
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The Faculty

Back in the 1990s, Kevin Williamson probably did more than anyone to bring horror movies back to popularity. The writer who was best known as the creator of the angsty teen drama Dawson’s Creek also created the Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer franchises, making slasher movies hip for Generation X. In 1998, he turned his formula to a re-visioning of the alien body-snatching subgenre, with The Faculty, directed by Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, From Dusk Till Dawn).

In a typical high school in Ohio, we find a fairly standard collection of students. There is Delilah the mean girl (Jordana Brewster), Zeke the slacker drug dealer (Josh Hartnett), Stokes the goth girl everyone thinks is gay (Clea Duvall), Stan the jock who wants to be known for more than his physical skills (Shawn Hatosy), and Casey the hopeless geek (Frodo Elijah Woods). We are introduced to each in short illustrative vignettes, most notably a group of students picking up Casey and slamming him crotch-first into a flag pole, over and over. As a confirmed hobbit-hater, I approve of this. The kids have little in common except the usual teenager’s belief that adults are aliens. In this case, they’re right.

Starting with the teachers, people are taken over and controlled by alien entities that love water and conformity. Our gang of misfits are the only ones who tumble to the truth before it’s too late, and it is up to them to stop the alien takeover. They have two advantages. Stokes is a science fiction reader, so she knows they only have to find the alien queen and kill her to end the reign of terror. They have a weapon when they discover Zeke’s homemade speed is lethal to the invaders (Nerdism: Zeke says his power works against the water-based aliens because it is a diuretic. I think he means it is a dessicant, because it doesn’t give the ETs an uncontrollable urge to pee.).

This is not a terribly well-regarded movie. Robert Rodriguez has mostly disavowed it, saying he only did it to learn how to work with CGI and to satisfy a contractual obligation. It is the only one of his movies without his distinctive special features on the home video release, and has little of his individual style. It currently has just a 6.3/10 rating on imdb.com.

Still, I love this movie. It doesn’t take itself very seriously and try to be something it’s not. It is, I think, a lot of fun. Williamson was the first screenwriter to write a slasher movie where the characters realize they are in a slasher movie, and here, thanks to the character of Stokes, they are aware of the science fictional precedents. Stokes quotes Robert A. Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters and Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers, even getting the name right on the later. Curiously, she doesn’t mention John Carpenter’s version of The Thing, but that maybe because The Faculty steals/pays homage to it so directly. For instance, when our heroic band decides to test themselves to see if any of them are aliens, it is virtually the same scene as the test sequence from The Thing, right down to the couch and the revealed alien crashing through a wall to get outside.

If this sort of a thing interests you and you haven’t seen it yet, you might want to give The Faculty a try. If you are a political conservative, you will probably be delighted when Jon Stewart gets stabbed in the eye. (In the interest of political balance, liberals should watch Anaconda, where Jon Voight gets eaten by a snake.
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The police say they have some questions for Bill O'Reilly

The Wicker Tree

The 1973 movie The Wicker Man is probably one of the more beloved cult movies of the horror genre. It had a very spotty distribution record outside of the U.K., and in some places only made it to the screen after 10 years or more.) The story of an upright, religious, and sexually repressed policeman who investigates the case of a missing girl in the Hebrides and has his faith challenged and his life taken by the pagan locals was very daring for its time. Home video increased its notoriety, and for years the original writer-director, Robin Hardy, has struggled to make a sequel. A big-budget remake was released in 2006 that has become legendary for how awful it is. Look for youtube clips of Nicholas Cage wearing a bear suit and screaming “Oh no! Not the bees!” if you dare.

In 2010, Hardy finally succeeded in filming a sequel, entitled The Wicker Tree, adapted from a novel he wrote called Cowboys for Christ. Was it worth the wait? Let’s just saying I was really missing those bees before the end.

Steve and Beth (Brittania Nicol and Henry Garret) are two sincere young Christians living in Texas, where all the men wear cowboy hats and everyone speaks with an exaggerated Southern accent. Beth used to be a successful country singer with songs about drinkin’ and whores (like all good country songs) but she saw the light and now sings turgid religious songs. Steve and Beth are engaged and wear silver rings as a promise they won’t have sex until they are married. They are the people you hope you won’t have to sit next to at the company picnic, but end up having to do so anyway.

Scotland, it seems, has a chronic shortage of evangelical Christians, so there is a Lend-Lease type program called Cowboys for Christ that sends Protestant missionaries over to witness to the heathens. It’s a shame Scotland doesn’t have Protestant churches of their own. They could even call their church The Church of Scotland if they wanted to. But, I digress. Beth and Steve arrive in Tressock, Scotland and begin preaching and singing to those sinners. They learn the locals worship Sulis, a version of Minerva, and accept it calmly, rather than freaking the hell out like real evangelicals would. A Scottish hussy flashes her boobs at Steve, his chastity ring flies off at the speed of light, and he begins the forbidden boning. He could have remained pure if he hadn’t traveled to Scotland, the land where women have breasts.

A tender, romantic moment

It turns out the pagan-ness is the result of some manipulation by the local bigwig. He owns the local nuclear power plant, which has been leaking a peculiar kind of radiation which apparently makes men sterile without any other effects. Lest the townsfolk turn against the power plant since they can’t have children, he has convinced them to wear silly masks and practice cannibalism and human sacrifice to restore their fertility. Groundskeeper Willy would be offended by this depiction of the Scots. In due course Beth gets her bare butt buttered (!), Steve is part of a very special meal celebration, a tree gets torched, and Beth has a chance to escape if she’s smart enough to do so. I’ll leave you to guess how that turns out.

This is a terrible movie, and it’s hard to believe the same person who made the first one is responsible for this as well. The stereotypes of Texans and Scots are painful to watch, and it has the depth of a puddle. The original presented the culture clash of an authentically religious Christian against true pagans, but here, no one really seems to be much of a believer. You know all along where this is heading, and the only suspense is how they get there. Hardy is supposedly working on a third film in the series, but my expectations are now low.

Christopher Lee was supposed to be one of the leads in The Wicker Tree just as in the earlier film, but an injury restricted him to a completely unnecessary cameo.
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Poster for the new Carrie

The remake of Carrie starring Chloë Grace Moretz has a new poster. I have no idea if the movie is going to be good, but the poster is pretty cool. Amazing how often Ms. Moretz has (movie) blood on her face.

Subspecies

Way back in the late 80s/early 90s, when there was money to be made in the direct-to-video market, Full Moon Features was the biggest name in the B-movie market, at least for horror fans. They had several lengthy series, the best known of which is the still-going Puppet Master films. In 1991, they ventured into vampire movies, with Subspecies, which spawned three direct sequels and one kinda sorta sequel.

In rural Romania, vampires are still thick on the ground (The characters in the movie mention there being many vampires, although we only see three. The recession is hitting every profession.). The local vampire king is one Vladislav (Angus Scrimm from Phantasm in a cameo scene). He has a generally pro-human policy, and has left the local populace alone. He has two sons, Radu (Anders Hove) who is more the typical bad-guy vampire, as evidenced by his amazing finger extensions, and his wimpier son Stefan (Michael Watson). Vladislav is in possession of the Bloodstone, an acorn-shaped jewel from which drips the blood of saints. All the vampires crave the Bloodstone because…well, I didn’t really catch that part. Maybe the blood of saints has a chipotle flavor? I thought the blood of saints kept vampires from needing to drink human blood, but this is contradicted by the movie.

Careful where you scratch.

Anyway, Radu decides to kill his father for the Bloodstone, but is thwarted when his dad hits a switch that releases an overhead cage exactly where Radu is standing. What luck. Vladislav’s victory is temporary, however, as Radu breaks off his own fingers (!) and they turn into tiny demon-looking creatures. I swear I was not on any medication, legal or otherwise, when I was watching this. Seeing this, Vladislav obligingly runs to the other side of the room so the homunculi can get to the switch to re-raise the cage, instead of, you know, stepping on them. Radu is released, Vladislav is skewered.

(Incidentally, the little creatures are apparently the subspecies of the title. I assumed it referred to vampires, but no, it’s a group of four-inch high toadies.)

Coincidentally, there is the arrival in town of four graduate students to study local folklore. They are played by three attractive young ladies, hired more for their willingness to forego a no-nudity clause in their contracts than their acting ability. Well, two-thirds of them, anyway. They could not behave less like graduate students if they tried. It’s sort of Valley Girls in Eastern Europe. Stefan shows up, falls in love with one of the girls, and they fight to end Radu’s (short) reign of terror. Radu is disposed of, although if you remember where I mentioned sequels, you know this doesn’t take.

Subspecies is a victim in many places of the film’s microbudget, but it is a good bit of fun. Director Ted Nicolaou does a good job of setting the mood, and was strongly influenced by Murnau’s Nostferatu, most obviously with Radu’s long fingers, and the creepy way the shadows of those hands look thrown against walls and across of the faces of sleeping victims-to-be.

Subspecies was the first movie to be filmed in Romania following the fall of Communism. The featurette on the blu-ray disc shows a number of Romanians being asked if they believe in vampires. All say they do not, and think it a frivolous question, no doubt partly because they had just gotten out from under the thumb of Nicolae Ceaușescu, a dictator so beloved that when he fell from power he was given a two hour trial and an immediate three minute execution. One of the interviewees stated that Dracula was a myth made up by a “stupid American.” I don’t think Bram Stoker was stupid, and I know he was an Irishman.
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Skyline

Not the famous brand of Chili in Cincinnati. Not the small northern Alabama town where everyone seems to hate each other. This is Skyline the movie.

By far, the easiest type of movie to review is one that is completely awful. The jokes basically write themselves. It’s also easy enough to rave about a movie you love. The hardest movie to review, in my opinion, is one that you never form a strong opinion about and neither like it well enough to particularly recommend it or hate it enough to mock it. This is also Skyline the movie.

An artist named Jarrod (Eric Balfour from Haven and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake) and his girlfriend Elaine arrive in Los Angeles for a birthday party for Jarrod’s best friend Terry (Donald Faison from Scrubs). Terry has hit it big, and wants Jarrod to move from New York to work for him. We are treated to a dullish party where we learn Elaine is pregnant and doesn’t want to move, Terry is cheating on his wife with his personal assistant, and the building super objects to loud music. It’s a very special episode of Party of Five. If you’ve ever watched one of those TV shows about angst-ridden yuppies and wished aliens would invade and kill them all, this might be your kind of movie, because Jarrod and Elaine have arrived in L.A. just in time for a big alien invasion.

Alien spacecraft descend and produce bright lights. If you look at them, you become all veiny and are drawn into the light and sucked up into the spacecraft, no doubt for a nefarious purpose. The military is no match for the alien menace, and soon Jarrod, Elaine, Terry, and company are attempting to survive the attack and get the hell out of town.

The obvious connection to be made here is Cloverfield, a similar and better movie about a group of affluent young things trying to survive horror. In both movies, the main characters (and the viewers) never get the full story about what is going on, and seem to be a side story to the main action. In this one, the characters seem a little less sympathetic, and the ending tends toward the confusing side.

More interesting than the movie itself is the back story of how it came to be made. The co-directors are successful in the field of computer-generated special effects and self-financed the production, spending $500,000 to shoot the live action before adding $10,000,000 of special effects in post. (The movie was shot in one of the co-directors condominium building). It does look great.

I suppose this is one of those films that should be seen by viewers who love alien invasion films, a group of which I am a member. A sequel has been rumored to be in the works since this came out, but has not yet materialized.

It will clear up. Just give it time.

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This Dark Earth

I’ve been a horror fan for a very long time, since I was old enough to read, but it has been only in the last few years that I’ve really interacted with the people who write the books and make the movies I’ve enjoyed. Some of those interactions haven’t gone so well, like the actress who was offended when I mentioned she’d been in a horror movie or the writer who blew a gasket when I complimented, but for the most part those who make it their business to give you nightmares are surprisingly nice. In some cases, this has led to true friendship, as is the case with the writer of the book I’m reviewing here, the multi-talented John Hornor Jacobs. I’ve known John since well before he published his excellent debut, Southern Gods, and I cherish his friendship.

I don’t remember exactly how long it’s been since I read his recently published novel This Dark Earth. I know it was before Southern Gods was sold, and I remember telling John he probably didn’t want me to read it, since I’m several years past enjoyment of zombie novels. (I realize this makes me an outlier amongst horror readers, many of whom don’t read anything much except zombie novels, but I felt for a while they have exhausted their appeal.) He wanted me to read it anyhow, and I’m glad it will. It may be the last zombie novel I will ever like, but like it I did.

Lucy Ingersoll is an ER doctor in Arkansas when a mysterious disease begins transforming people into maniacal creatures. The military tries to contain the problem by killing the infected and uninfected in the hospital, and Lucy narrowly escapes. She is helped in her escape by a trucker nick-named “Knock-Out”, and manages to reunite with her son Gus, just before the powers-that-be make things worse by nuking the area. Lucy, Knock-Out, and Gus survive, although at a cost. They join forces with a small military force led by Lieutenant Wallace, who can use Lucy’s medical skills.

The story fast forwards by about four years. Gus has proved to be quite a prodigy, and has helped the survivors establish a settlement (imaginatively placed on a bridge, ideal for defensive purposes). The zombie threat is still there, although the greater danger in this post-apocalyptic world is other human survivors.
So, why should you read this novel instead of other zombie stories? Because Jacobs does a masterful job creating believable characters. Lucy, Knock-Out, Gus and the rest come to life. Whether you like them or not, you understand them, and you care what happens to them. If you are a zombie fan, you definitely don’t want to miss this, and if you aren’t, you will probably be surprised how compelling it is.

I’m not really a fan of the cover, although it does look better up close than in a photograph, but if it sells the book, then that’s all it’s meant to do. Also, there is plenty of evidence that taste in book covers doesn’t reflect the zeitgeist.

I also keep calling the book This Dead Earth, but I blame that on David Wilbanks.
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R.I.P. Herbert Lom

Czech-born character actor Herbert Lom passed away last week at 95. He was probably best known for playing the long-suffering Dreyfuss in the Pink Panther films, but he made a number of horror movies, including the Hammer Films version of The Phantom of the Opera, Asylum and Now the Screaming Starts for Amicus, Mark of the Devil, and many others. He was also in a sci-fi movie that creeped me out as a kid called Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, although I doubt many people remember that one.
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Empty Places

I go away for a while and Blogger has a new layout. I’ll probably get used to it about the time they change it again. Due to some bizarre goings-on, I’ve been away from this for over half a year. Dagon willing, I will be posting more regularly as we go on.

Gary Raisor, author of the excellent novel Less Than Human and editor of the equally impressive anthology Obsessions, has a new release out in ebook form called Empty Places. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I look forward to it, as it certainly sounds like a winner. Joe Lansdale likes it, so why shouldn’t you?
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The Ten Best Horror Short Stories (Pre-1960)

I haven’t done a list in a long while, but they are always a way to fill space, er, present informed opinion. This one isn’t exactly new, to be truthful. I was taking some time to go through some old post on previous blogs (this is my fourth blog, and it was depressing to see that I seem to write worse and worse as time goes on) and came across an old post which contained a list of my favorite horror short stories published before 1960. The usual problem with making lists is that, since they are personal preference, the order/content of them changes almost immediately. (I found a list I had made of my favorite horror novels of the 21st century, and was so repelled by the books on it I can only conclude I had a secret drug habit in 2007, secret even from myself.) This list, however, seems to have held up pretty well, and doesn’t really change on casual observance.

Largely to limit the Lovecraft content, I limited the list to one story per author. There were several stories by Arthur Machen and William Hope Hodgson which almost made the list, so those are the most notable snubs/omissions. Most people would go with "Pigeons From Hell" for the Howard story, but an explanation for my choice can be found here.

1. “The Colour Out Of Space”, H. P. Lovecraft
2. “Who Goes There?”, John W. Campbell, Jr.
3. “Dig Me No Grave”, Robert E. Howard
4. “The Graveyard Rats”, Henry Kuttner
5. “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson
6. “The Damned Thing”, Ambrose Bierce
7. “Second Night Out”, Frank Belknap Long
8. “The Ash-Tree”, M.R. James
9. “Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper”, Robert Bloch
10. “Born of Man and Woman”, Richard Matheson
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WITA #4: Tim Lebbon

Trying to return to a steady post count here, I am once again reprinting an interview I originally did for Cemetery Dance. This gives me new content with minimal effort and ensures that none of the brilliant work I've done shall ever disappear from the internet. This piece originally appeared in Cemetery Dance's newsletter and on their website in August, 2010, and appears here courtesy of Cemetery Dance. As usual, bear in mind the interview is a year and a half old, and when the author talks about what is coming soon, he means something that is an old release to him now. This interview is with Tim Lebbon, one of the better contemporary writers. It appears just as it did originally, bad jokes and all. All mistakes in the text are mine and mine alone.

Interviewing authors is a tough job. Matching them drink for drink in sleazy bars, violent confrontations when the questions probe too deep, making permanent enemies. Well, I mean, it isn’t that way for me, I just sit here in my comfortable chair and ask questions of gracious and accommodating authors, but for those poor souls who are assigned Nicholas Sparks or Stephanie Meyer, they’re gonna lose some teeth. (Just kidding, Twilight fans. Please don’t burn down my house.)

Welsh author Tim Lebbon has been making waves in the horror field since the publication of his first book Mesmer in 1997. His awards for his fiction include the Bram Stoker Award (for his short story “Reconstructing Amy”), the August Derleth Award (for his novel Dusk) and the Scribe Award (for the novelization of the film 30 Days of Night). His current release from Cemetery Dance is the short story collection Last Exit for the Lost. Tim lives in Monmouthshire with his family, and took time from his busy schedule to answer a few questions.

WITA - Your recent collection from Cemetery Dance is Last Exit for the Lost, 19 of your shorter works in a 560 page volume. Tell us a little about this book.

Tim Lebbon - It's my first collection since 2003's WHITE AND OTHER TALES OF RUIN (which was a novella collection from Night Shade Books), and collects my best short fiction from 2000 to 2006, as well as the novella In Perpetuity from NIGHT VISIONS 11. It also contains Pay the Ghost, which Dennis Iliadis is soon to direct for Sidney Kimmel Entertainment. I don't write nearly as many short stories as I used to, which is a shame because I love doing them, so this collection is a bit of a milestone, and I'm very excited to see it out at last. Even though timewise it stops around 2007 (when the two original stories were written), it gives a pretty good cross-section of the sort of stuff I write. If a new reader asks 'what should I read of yours' I usually point them to one of my collections, and now that there's this new one to share. There's a new collection coming soon from PS Publishing, too, collecting my work from 2006 to 2010 (with some original work on there). I suspect that might be the last for a few years...

WITA -In a recent discussion I had with a friend about your work, we agreed that you are one if not the best contemporary writers when it comes to novella-length work. Not to slight any of your other stories, but would you agree that the novella seems to bring out your best, and if so, why?

Tim Lebbon - Thanks, that's very kind of you. I'm very proud of my novellas, and I'll be writing more in the near future. I'm not sure why it is that they seem to have more of an impact than my novels, and to be honest trying to analyse this troubles me. I guess sometimes in my novels, a weakness of mine is detailed plotting and seeing the big picture. I hate planning a book, so I usually head in with an idea and see where it takes me. With novellas, it's easier to do this and come out the other end unscathed, because although the ideas can sometimes be as complex as those for a novel, getting there is quicker.
I'm also quite an impulsive writer - and very fast, once I'm in the flow of a story - and I think an intensive writing period suits a novella more than a novel. If it's flowing well, I'll write a novella in a week then be exhausted. Not so easy to remain as focused and energised for the duration of a novel.

WITA -You are the most prominent Welsh writer of horror and fantastic fiction working today, in a lineage that goes back to the great Arthur Machen. In past times, the English viewed Wales as a land of dark magic and sorcery (see Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I). Is there something in Wales and being Welsh that lends itself to dark and fantastic fiction?

Tim Lebbon - Machen is one of my favourite writers, so thank you. Wales is certainly steeped in history, myth and legend, and perhaps that bleeds from the rocks into the writers who live here. As for me, I'm deeply affected by landscape, and the place where I'm lucky enough to live has some of the most beautiful countryside in the British Isles. I take daily walks in the local woodland, and that certainly recharges batteries and sometimes helps me see my way past, or through, a problem I might have come up against in my writing. From my front window I can see the Sugarloaf mountain, a beautiful scene. I'm very lucky. I've always been interested in humankind's interaction with the natural world, and I guess living where I am, I'm well-placed to see many of the effects.

WITA - You are a prolific writer. At what point in your career did you look at what you had written and say “I am a professional writer, and this is my future”?

Tim Lebbon - Making the transition into doing this for a living was a very gradual process. I guess I've known since a very early age that I've wanted to be a writer, and I worked hard at it all through my twenties, seeing short stories, novellas and my first novel or two published. I've been earning a living doing it for almost eight years now - four of them still doing some part-time work, and the past four years writing full-time. It has its pressures - my first month without a paycheck was a bit of a shock - but the positives outweigh the negatives by about, ooohhhh, seventeen million to one.

WITA - You are from the UK, but a sizeable proportion of your audience seems to be in America. Do you find that some themes don’t translate as well across the Atlantic, and do you find yourself tailoring your work for those of us who spell “colour” without the “u”?

Tim Lebbon - I certainly don't tailor my work any particular way, I just write the story I most want to tell. My first few horror novels were set in the UK and published in the USA by Leisure Books, and ironically my new SF/horror novel COLDBROOK was first sold in the UK, and is set almost exclusively in the USA. Locations suit the story, or the idea. There's that interesting language barrier that pops up in editing sometimes, and my good friend and collaborator Chris Golden often screams at me 'turn on US spelling, for f***'s sake!' I keep it off just to annoy him. I like him having to cut out all those 'u's

WITA - What should we look forward to seeing from Tim Lebbon in the future?

Tim Lebbon - Right then ...
Out on 27th July (the day before my birthday!), the new Hidden Cities novel with Chris Golden, THE CHAMBER OF TEN, and next year sees the fourth book, THE SHADOW MEN. Later this year Bantam will publish my new stand-alone fantasy novel ECHO CITY, and Orbit will publish that in the UK next year. Also next year comes COLDBROOK in the UK, a huge SF horror novel. And then HarperCollins in the US will publish the first book of mine and Chris Golden's series THE SECRET JOURNEYS OF JACK LONDON, called THE WILD. This has also sold to Fox 2000, and Chris and I are writing the screenplay right now. There's another movie going into production this fall, PAY THE GHOST (mentioned above). There's a collection and a novella from PS Publishing, and a few other things still under wraps. Busy times ahead, but exciting times too.

WITA - Thanks, Tim.
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