How Can The World Go On Without Me?

Posting will be sporadic for a while. The harddrive on my 5 month old super machine is kaput. Since it is under warranty, Best Buy has to send it to the manufacturer for repair. Or for $600, they will fix it themselves in a day. What a racket.

Infected

I always knew if the world was going to be destroyed, it would all start in Ann Arbor, Michigan.*

Scott Sigler’s first published novel, Infected, is a horror novel with a bit of techno-thriller thrown in. In and around Ann Arbor, people are suddenly wigging out and going on a killing spree. The government has discovered that a strange sort of infection is responsible for this behavior, although they know little about it other than the victims/killers rave about “triangles” and their bodies undergo remarkably fast decomposition after their deaths. The authorities have kept this from the public, and only a small team is working on the problem, headed by Margaret Montoya, a doctor with the Center for Disease Control, and Dew Phillips, a CIA agent with a violent past.

In Ann Arbor, a former star linebacker for the University of Michigan, “Scary” Perry Dawsey, is the latest to be infected by what we soon learn are alien spores. What starts as a number of itchy spots soon grows into blue triangles, as alien organisms incubate inside him - and begin to communicate with him and try to control him. This is only the first step in an alien plan that will lead to the destruction of the human race.

Through the book, we flip back and forth between the investigating team and Perry’s solo struggle against the small invaders. It’s an interesting mixture, as the broader part of the book reads like a traditional race-against-time thriller, while Perry’s more intimate tale is reminiscent of some of Stephen King’s early short stories.

I found the book to be very entertaining. If there is a weakness to the book, it would be the imbalance between the two parallel storylines, as the portion with the team is somewhat less compelling than Perry’s problems. Still, it was a lot of fun, with a good amount of dark humor (the last of the aliens Perry has to deal with is growing in his scrotum, at once funny and extremely uncomfortable for a male reader). The book was originally a series of podcasts, still available for free at www.scottsigler.com. A sequel, Contagious, will be out at the end of the month, and it will be interesting to see where the story goes.

*Obligatory anti-University of Michigan remark.

Mother of Tears

One thing I don’t share with most horror fans is a great love of Dario Argento movies. Although I appreciate him as a visual stylist, I’ve always been left a little cold (or maybe confused is more accurate) by his movies’ adherence to form over substance. Thus, it took me a little while to get to the DVD of his latest movie, Mother of Tears. It didn’t really change my overall opinion of his work, although it did have some things going for it.

Mother of Tears is the third in Argento’s “Mothers” trilogy, after Suspiria and Inferno (I didn’t even realize the first two were connected, which shows I’m not a hard-core fan). It stars the director’s daughter Asia Argento, as well as his ex-wife. Featured in a too-small role is the always entertaining Udo Kier. I wish he’d lasted a little longer in this one.

The plot, such that it is, is about the last of the three “mothers‘, the three great witches who have existed since the dawn of time to bedevil mankind. The other two were destroyed in the two previous movies, and now it’s time for the Mother of Tears to have her turn, which starts when an excavation uncovers a box containing her magic camisole. She returns to bring in a new age of black witches (black in magic, not skin color) who will take over the world. The only person who can stop her is Ms. Argento, who is the daughter of a white witch who fought one of the other mothers, and who has the power to fight the MoT. Let’s hope she knows about the significance of that camisole…

There were some things I learned from the film. To wit:

1. You can always tell a witch by their over-use of eye-shadow
2. Even immortal, powerful witches can be so insecure about their appearance as to need breast implants
3. Bad guys carry around a tool designed to gouge out eyes, even if they don’t really need it.

Most of my previous feelings about Argento hold true here. The film does look very good, with rich colors, and a “deep” design style that almost looked 3-D. For those who like gore, there’s quite a lot here, as well as a great deal of female nudity. The plot is on the very slight side, with quite a few inconsistencies (how is a witch strong enough to kill a large policeman with one hand, but not enough to withstand an attack by a strong woman?). The acting is also on the slim side. I’ve enjoyed some of Ms. Argento’s previous work (such as in La Reine Margot), but she’s pretty much terrible here, and the actress playing the Mother of Tears is worse (although quite hot). Final decision: if you’re an Argento fan, you should love it. If not, you might want to give it a miss.

On a final note, I’m certainly not a prude (I don’t think) and I certainly appreciate gratuitous nudity as much as the next guy, but there is something about directing an unnecessary shower scene featuring your own daughter that seems a bit out there. But maybe that’s just the American in me.

Succulent Prey

Some horror writers subtly build a structure of dread in their work. Others come at you strong from the beginning. Wrath James White smacks you in the head with his work, sending you reeling through his stories. Until recently, White was well-known only among those of us who read small press releases, but he has now burst out to a wider audience, with the publication of his novel Succulent Prey by Leisure Books.

Succulent Prey blends the serial killer genre with werewolf legend, suggesting that being a serial killer is something that can be caught like a disease and passed on to subsequent victims. Joseph Miles, the protagonist of the book, was kidnapped by a serial killer as a boy, and was the only victim to survive the killer. Now grown into a (very large and powerful) adult, he is now losing his struggle to suppress the same sort of urges in himself. When he begins to fail at this, he seizes on the only hope he has to break the chain - to track down and kill the one who gave it to him. Along with one of his female victims to whom he is attracted, he journeys to his home town in search of the one who molested him.

Wrath James White certainly fits into the category of transgressive authors. Succulent Prey is not for the squeamish, filled with sexual assault and as much cannibalism as I’ve ever seen in a book, but for those who can handle it, this is quite a book. White, whose earlier work Orgy of Souls was also reviewed here, is definitely a writer to watch. I also salute Leisure, which in the past seemed a bit reluctant to go too far, for publishing this.

Forrest J. Ackerman Dead

I grew up a fan of monster movies, monster books, and the like. For those of us of a certain age who enjoyed such things, there was only one magazine that approached horror movies the same way we felt. It was Famous Monsters of Filmland, edited by Forrest J. Ackerman, who idolized Boris Karloff, and has been one of the biggest science fiction fans since the 1930s. With its wonderfully lurid Basil Gogos covers, FM made us creepy kids experts on monster flicks good and bad.

Therefore, it was a blow when I read that Ackerman ("Uncle Forry" to the fans) had died last Thursday of a heart attack. You can read about it here. Forry was well known for his generosity and kindness, and his magazine has been cited as inspiration by Stephen King and Robert R. McCammon, among others.

R.I.P., Uncle Forry. You changed our lives, and you will be missed.

Ghost Walk

I've fallen badly behind on reviews of late, but I'm going to make a concentrated effort to catch up by the end of the year. First up is Brian Keene's latest novel, Ghost Walk.

At the end of Keene's previous book, Dark Hollow, the evil that had tried to break through in Lehorn's Hollow had been defeated, at a price. Ghost Walk directly continues the events of Dark Hollow, although it would work just fine as a stand-alone novel. Some spoilers for Dark Hollow are probably inevitable here, so read forewarned.

A couple of years have passed, and most of the characters from Dark Hollow are dead or gone. Adam Senft, the protagonist of the previous book, has been institutionalized in a hospital for the criminally insane. Halloween is approaching, and a local businessman is preparing to open a "ghost walk" (something of an outdoor haunted house) through the Hollow. Nodens, the evil from the first book, uses this opportunity to sieze those who can aid in breaking the spell.

Standing in Nodens' way is a (formerly) Amish wizard named Levi Stoltzfus, and a reporter named Maria Nasr. To help them, they release the haunted Adam Senft from his cell. But Nodens is even stronger this time, and for him to be stopped, a terrible sacrifice must be made...

Brian Keene became famous as a horror writer due to the success of his zombie novels, but I've always preferred the non-zombie horrors he's written, and Ghost Walk is no exception. It is quickly paced, and the characters are well developed, which gives emotional impact to the horrors that befall them. Ghost Walk is a great book to read for Halloween, or anytime.

My Computer Hates Me

Last three days have been spent fighting the slow death of my hard drive, which would freeze progressively sooner after each reboot. Finally, I did a full system restore (losing all files in the process) and its back up. But I believe the drive has a physical problem, and it is just a matter of time before the 4 1/2 month old 750 GB hard drive dies again. I hope everyone at HP involved in the construction of this stubs their toe. Hard.