Hell Hollow Now Shipping

Hell Hollow, the eagerly-awaited novel from Southern horror author Ronald Kelly is now shipping from Cemetery Dance. Click on the title of the book to see what I thought of it, and on the CD link to order your own copy. This is a highly recommended novel from one of the master horror writers.
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Speed Dating with the Dead

As a Southerner myself (as you may have guessed from the title of this blog, which everyone keeps telling me is beyond stupid) I have a particular weakness for horror writers who also hail from the Old South, and one of the best working today is Scott Nicholson, author of The Red Church and Burial To Follow, among many other fine works. His latest, available in e-book format, is called Speed Dating with the Dead.

A team of paranormal researchers, led by Digger Wilson, investigate a “haunted hotel”, The White Horse Inn, to see if they can find evidence of supernatural phenomena. They come equipped with all sorts of scientific equipment to perform various measurements. Digger also has another motive as his recently deceased wife has promised to contact him (shades of Harry Houdini!). He is much less than positive this will happen (refreshingly he is very skeptical of the paranormal, despite his position with the team), but he gives it a go anyway.

As those of us who read horror stories and watch horror movies are well aware, you should not Meddle with Things Best Left Unknown. The researchers in the book ignore this basic rule, and their efforts awaken an ancient evil. Soon, the numbers of the people in the hotel are on the wane, and it is up to Digger and his daughter Kendra to put an end to what they started.

Nicholson always writes a fast paced story, and this one is no exception. I am a doubter of all things supernatural myself, but Nicholson has actually been involved in “Ghost Hunter” type paranormal research, and his familiarity with the methodology employed lends a sense of verisimilitude to the story. Like with any well-written tale, you begin to believe you are there.

You will never go wrong when you read anything by Scott Nicholson, and this is another good one. To learn how to order the e-book, visit Scott’s site, The Haunted Computer.
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Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead

2001’s thriller Joy Ride, about a sadistic truck driver who went by the handle of Rusty Nail (who notably killed people while pulling their lower jaw completely off) was a competently put together picture directed by John Dahl, and I suppose it was inevitable a sequel would be made. The only problem was, Rusty Nail died at the end of the movie, so it was impossible to continue the story. Who am I kidding? The sequel, Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead, just ignores the end of the first and puts Rusty Nail back on the highway, terrorizing anyone in his path, without regard for the original.

Melissa (Nikki Aycox), Bobby (Nick Zano) and Kayla (Laura Jordan) are driving across the country to Las Vegas for Melissa and Nick’s bachelor/bachelorette party. Along the way, they pick up Laura’s date, Emo Kid Nik (Kyle Schmid) whose function in the movie is to be the most annoying and stupid person in the world. He handles that well. When their car breaks down on an isolated road, Nik breaks into a nearby empty house and they steal a car. The group has the best intentions of returning it and paying for damages, but wouldn’t you know it, the house belongs to ‘ol Rusty Nail. Pretty soon, he’s chasing the kids, Bobby is taken captive, the rest of the group are forced to do dreadful things to try and get him back, and we are into some good old ho-hum torture porn.

This is one of those movies that rely on the characters to possess no common sense whatsoever. RN forces the group to destroy their cell phones and tells them not to contact the police, which they don’t do even though they know where he lives and the cops can find out who he is. Admittedly, if they behaved rationally, the movie would have ended immediately but still.

All in all, though, it’s reasonably well done for what it is. The cast does a good job with their limited roles, and the direction is solid. If you have a yen for the torture porn aspect of the genre, and you can ignore the illogical aspects of the story, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to enjoy this as a popcorn movie. Don’t expect too much, and you won’t be disappointed.
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New On-Line Story by Gary Raisor

Hurry on over to The Horror Drive-In and read a new story by Gary Raisor called “Better Watch Out”, featuring Uncle Sam, Santa and a few other fictional creations. It’s a story that’s funny right up until you realize there’s a hard edge in there, a statement about our modern world. The story features an illustration by Doug Draper, and afterwards there’s an interview with Mr. Raisor that is well worth reading. Possibly more disturbing than his stories is the realization his classic vampire novel Less Than Human has been out of print for a long, long time. If you haven’t read it, track down a copy, and hopefully it will see a more accessible reprint soon.
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The Book of Blood

“Everybody is a book of blood; Wherever we’re opened, we’re red.”

With those words, Clive Barker in 1984 opened his landmark six volume Books of Blood, collections of short stories that changed the face of horror. Wild flights of imagination, an unflinching look at the dark corners of sexuality, and a never before seen focus on body horror burned like fire through the field, a fire that still hasn’t gone out. Over the years, many of the stories from the books have been the basis for films, the best known being the Hellraiser and Candyman series, but also the films Rawhead Rex, Nightbreed, and the recent The Midnight Meat Train. In 2009, with Barker acting as producer, a movie was made from the title story (combined with the additional story “On Jerusalem Street”) “The Book of Blood”.

Mary Florescu (Sophie Ward), a paranormal investigator, along with her cameraman Reg (Paul Blair) and a psychic named Simon McNeal (Jonas Armstrong) move into an old house with a tortured history, to look for supernatural phenomena. They ultimately find the house is an intersection on the highways of the dead, a place where the dead can tell their stories. This knowledge brings death for one of the three, wealth and fame for one, and a life of unimaginable torture for the third.

The story owes a lot, or at least has certain surface similarities to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, itself filmed twice, once successfully. Its biggest problem is the work it is based on is among Barker’s slightest (the original story was just a little more than an introduction to the original work), and there’s just not enough on which to hang 100 minutes of movie. The beginning and ending are satisfying enough, but the middle tends to meander along. There are one too many scenes where the characters have to react to unexplained thumps and crashes, and much of the time the plot is just keeping time until the climax can start.

All in all, not a terrible movie, but one which would probably have worked better at half the length. There are ongoing plans to film other stories from Barker’s collection, and many of them should offer a more substantial basis for a movie.
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Interview With Tim Lebbon

My interview with the great author Tim Lebbon is now up at Cemetery Dance. Read it, to wonder why they keep letting me do these.

Savage Season

A bit busy today, so here's a reprint from a now-defunct blog I once wrote for, reviews of the Joe R. Lansdale series featuring the characters Hap and Leonard. eventually, I'm sure I'll repeat them all, but if you want to avoid the rush, they're all good.

The first novel in the series is the 1990 release Savage Season, which introduced the characters, and began Lansdale’s transition from an edgy, extreme horror writer into a somewhat more mainstream author of crime novels. It is one of the high points of popular literature of the last quarter-century.

The main characters of the books are best friends Hap Collins and Leonard Pine. Hap is a forty-something white guy, who is something of a disillusioned idealist. Standing on his principles in the late 60s landed him a stint in prison for resisting the draft. Leonard is also in his forties, is a gay black man, and a Vietnam veteran. As much as anything, the series is about the bonds of male friendship, and the frequent debates between the pair (Leonard, a country music fan, is by far the more conservative of the two) are side-splitting displays of political incorrectness. The book is set in and around the East Texas town of LaBorde.

When the story opens, Hap and Leonard are working in the rose fields, back-breaking menial work. They have an opportunity to make some money and escape their monotonous existence when a face from Hap’s past appears, his ex-wife Trudy. Trudy was a firebrand radical, who divorced Hap when he was in prison, and now works at the Dairy Queen. She has a proposition: Her current boyfriend, Howard, was in prison with a bank robber who told him of a huge score on his last job that had been lost in a Texas river. Trudy and Howard have put together a team to recover the money, and use it to fund revolutionary causes. Hap and Leonard, who are needed for their diving abilities, join in the scheme strictly for the money.

Trudy is a classic femme fatale. Although Hap resists the judgment, Leonard knows from the outset that Tudy brings disaster to Hap, and disaster is what they find. One double-cross follows another, and eventually Hap and Leonard are trying to escape with their lives. The book works as a gritty crime novel, or as an outright comedy. Highly, highly recommended.