The Last Winter

A key element in much of horror is a sense of isolation for the characters. In the modern world, with cell phones, the internet, and rapid means of travel, this has become difficult to achieve. Among the settings still useful for this are the frozen reaches near the poles. John Carpenter's 1982 masterpiece The Thing used the Antarctic to great effect, and now Larry Fessenden locates his environmental horror The Last Winter in the Arctic, with uneven results.

In northern Alaska, a team of oil company workers are preparing to reopen an abandoned drilling site. There is the standard tension between the oilmen, led by the always great Ron Perlman, and an environmentalist, played by James LeGros. (The cast also includes two actors from Friday Night Lights, Connie Britton and Zach Gilford, which gave me the amusing impression that a really bad season for the Dillon Panthers results in Arctic banishment) As an added concern, some members of the team are starting to experience hallucinations on the barren wastes. Soon, the crew members begin to die, and the survivors realize they are not alone.

SPOILER WARNING: I will reveal the end of the movie next, so stop reading if you don't want to know.

As long as what is going on remains a mystery, the movie works just fine. As is often the case, when the menace is unknown, your imagination fills in the blanks in terrifying fashion, and when the danger is revealed, there is a letdown. And, brother, is the big reveal in The Last Winter a letdown. You see, what has been terrorizing and killing the drillers is...ghost moose.
Apparently, nature has reacted to the danger posed by man by dispatching a crack squad of killer ghost moose (mooses? meece?) to kill, well, everybody at the end of the movie. This strained credulity a bit.

Up until this point, the movie worked well. It would have been a better ending if what was going on had never been explained, but there came the moose. Mooses.

The movie is well shot and well acted, and there is a truly creepy air to the first two-thirds of the movie, so it isn't a complete washout. But the ending misses the mark by too much to be a thumbs up.

This Rage of Echoes

The most recent release of a Simon Clark title from Leisure’s horror imprint is This Rage of Echoes. I’ve previously read Blood Crazy, Darker, and Nailed by the Heart by Clark, and enjoyed them.

The new book has one of the more interesting premises of anything I’ve read recently. The central character, Mason Kantner, is on the run from Echomen, who, if they get close enough to someone, begin to become them. Once they have duplicated them, the new “Echo” turns violent, murders the original, and frequently goes on a rampage. Mason has fallen in with a group dedicated to killing the Echomen, whose existence is unknown to the general population. It is a gripping read, particularly once you start wondering whether the group is really killing Echomen or just ordinary people. Mason himself has his doubts. Some problems I had with the novel, with spoilers contained within, follow:

SPOILERS

Mason exhibits some of the traits of a bad horror movie character. Twice, he leaves the group despite knowing better, with disastrous results. This is the equivalent of when movie teens are trapped in an old house with a serial killer, and one decides to wander off to be alone.
It is established later that only certain people can be duplicated, and Mason himself has the strongest ability to convert someone into an Echo. So why is it so easy to make copies of his sister and mother as well?
After being taken to the compound, the group leader tells Mason how vitally important he is, then leaves him alone, with no questioning and only a mentally-impaired man as protection.
The resolution at the end seems a little too contrived, a little too deus ex machina for me.

END SPOILERS

Despite those complaints, I did enjoy the book immensely, starting and finishing it the same day. I would recommend it, as well as Clark’s other books.

One other observation: There is a jacket blurb from another author saying that Clark may be the next Stephen King. This is the third or fourth book in a row I’ve read with a similar statement somewhere on the cover. I understand why it is done, but come on guys: Everyone can’t be Stephen King.

R.I.P. Joseph McGee

Terrible news has come out today. 23 year old horror writer Joseph McGee, the author of the critically acclaimed Reaper and Snow Hill, died in his sleep Thanksgiving. McGee was well liked and respected in the community, and this is truly sad news.

Speaking of Podcasts...

I have been remiss in noting that the Pod of Horror has Episode #48 up for download here. As always, this is the premier horror fiction podcast available. Check it out.

About That Podcast...

A good long while ago, I announced I would be entering the world of podcasting, which was going to make me so rich and famous that strippers would be snorting blow off my ass. I know you’ve be dying to hear me talk (just play along, I have self-esteem issues), so here’s an update.

My partner and I recorded the first episode of One Good Scare (get the reference?) about six weeks ago. We discussed the movies Call of Cthulhu (yay!), In The Mouth of Madness (yay!) and Alone In The Dark (my eyes!) for a Lovecraft-themed episode. It seemed to go okay, and was a lot of fun. But on playback, a few problems emerged:

1. We used a twin mike system, and my mike was apparently overly sensitive, picking up a lot of background noise. Winston filtered it out, but the los of signal left me sounding like I was down in a well yelling up at Lassie. Winston is the tech guy, he’s figuring it out.
2. Apparently, I have a verbal tic of saying “uh” after every other word. This was as annoying as hell. Since I did 70% of the talking, this would drive someone to suicide. I will work on that.
3. Back in my teaching days, I did a lot of lecturing. Many students claimed I talked too fast, and I try to be conscious of that. So when preparing for the podcast, I kept telling my self “talk slowly…talk slowly”. The result was in the first segment, I sound like I’ve just taken the world’s largest dose of Quaaludes. It did get better in the later segments, but the damage was done.
4. Winston tells me my wit is the dry kind that doesn’t come across well on radio. (I asked him if it worked better in person. He said, “All that’s important is it doesn’t work on radio.”) I probably can’t fix that.

With these problems, we decided after much discussion, to shelve the first episode. After all, as many as ten people might here it, if we left it up forever, and we have reputations to protect. Winston does, anyway.

But I promise you, One Good Scare is not truly dead, and one day you will get to hear me talking about Tara Reid playing a scientist. Good things come to those who wait. One Good Scare will, too.

Some Over-looked (Maybe) Horror Films

Copied over from the other site, here is a list of movies that I feel are somewhat overlooked, yet deserving of a look. This reflects only my own opinion, of course. The movies are in no particular order.

Stir Of Echoes (1999) – This came out a month after The Sixth Sense, and suffered at the box office due to its similar theme, but I think it is better. Kevin Bacon is especially good.
From Beyond (1986) – The true follow-up to Re-Animator, this features most of the same cast and crew. Recently available on DVD.
Frailty (2001) – Really creepy movie that turns out not to be what you expected.
The Uninvited (1944) – Nice ghost story set in Cornwall.
Anatomie (2000) – German movie with Franke Potente about fiendish goings-on in a medical school. One inferior sequel.
Cemetery Man (Dellamorte Dellamore, 1994) – A very odd Italian zombie movie with Rupert Everett. The zombies are more of a plot device to examine the human condition.
Ginger Snaps (2000) - A Canadian film using lycanthropy as a metaphor for female puberty (It’s much better than that description sounds). A sequel and a prequel.
The Thing (1982) – Probably not really overlooked any more, included here because it was such an enormous box-office bomb on its release. My favorite horror film, I saw it when it came out at the theater as a double-bill with Annie, possibly the strangest double bill in history.
Ravenous (1999) – Guy Pearce deals with cannibalism in the Old West.
The Ninth Configuration (1980) - Directed by William Peter Blatty from his novel Twinkle Twinkle Killer Kane, this is one of the all-time great American movies, even though few have seen it. A surrealistic drama set in a Vietnam-era military insane asylum. Considered by the author to be the sequel to The Exorcist.
Deep Rising (1998) – A lot of people hate this because they hate Stephen Sommers, but how can a movie about sea monsters be bad?

I've Joined The Dark Side

I have finally given in and started a Twitter account to express my individuality like everyone else. If you would like to know what I’m doing, you may follow me through the sidebar. Here’s a hint: Ten messages a day saying “I’m sitting in a meeting, bored”. How can you resist? Or, at least, that’s what you’ll get whenever I figure out how to use this damn thing. Now, if you will excuse me, I need to visit the 200 sites where I posted “anyone who uses Twitter is a douche” and erase it.