99 Coffins

99 Coffins is the middle book in Wellington’s ongoing vampire trilogy, following 13 Bullets. It picks up a few months after the events of the first book.

Laura Caxton, the young State Trooper in the first book, is back on the job with a nice promotion after her actions in the first book. She has also become something of a minor celebrity, since a movie has been made of her previous exploits. Her mentor/partner/antagonist from the first book, Jameson Arkeley, has been forced into retirement due to the injuries he suffered in ending the previous vampire threat. He is still the custodian of the body of the oldest living vampire, Justinia Malvern.

With Arkeley out of commission, Laura is seen as the prime expert on all matters vampiric, so when a college archeological team makes a gruesome discovery at the site of the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg, she is called in. They have discovered 99 coffins with the bones of vampires – and the shattered remains of a 100th coffin. There is an obvious likelihood that there is a new vampire on the loose. Laura has to turn to the manipulative Malvern for assistance – with a price – to stop the outbreak of a new vampire epidemic.

The book is fast-paced, and steadily accelerates until the climax, a pitched battle between outmanned cops and National Guardsmen, and a vampire army. As with the previous novel, Laura is a very appealing character, with strengths and flaws, and you can’t help but feel involved in her quest. There is an unexpected twist near the end that left me eager for the third novel in the trilogy.

Wellington’s version of the vampire legend has soon fascinating variations. His vampires are almost animalistic, and nearly unstoppable if they have fed. In a unique twist, vampires I this universe need progressively more blood to remain mobile, and older vampires become near invalids, confined to their coffins. They can only be killed by the total destruction of their hearts.

If you are interested in this book, you should really read 13 Bullets first. 99 Coffins can be read as a stand-alone, but your enjoyment will be higher if you read them in sequence. I can’t recommend these books highly enough.

The author, David Wellington, has followed an unusual path to success. His earlier books, including the zombie trilogy Monster Island, Monster Nation, and Monster Planet were first offered as serialized free downloads through his website. This is normally seen as a poor way to build a readership (most people regard free things as worth what they paid for them), but it has paid of for him. Visit his website at http://www.brokentype.com/davidwellington/.

Boogeyman 2

I’ll have to admit, the original Boogeyman was a guilty pleasure of mine. Despite a fairly ridiculous setup (the monster in your closet is rule, and it’s going to get you), it did tap into an atavistic childhood fear, and deserved some credit for not making the mistake of trying to explain where the title creature came from, since anyone explanation would disappoint. Still, it took me a while to get around to the sequel.

None of the actors from the original movie carry over to the sequel (although a newspaper clipping explains the fate of the lead). In the new flick, and eight year old girl and her eleven year old brother witness their parents slaughter at the hands of the Boogeyman. That’ll scar ya. And indeed it does, as ten years later both young adults are still having problems with night terrors. The brother has just completed a three month stint in a “fear clinic” run by Gabrielle from the old Xena series. It seems to work well for him, so sis signs up, too, ignoring the fact that Gabrielle’s boss is Jigsaw (Tobin Bell). Had she watched the Saw movies, she would have thought twice about committing herself. The other patients are young people (the clinic specializes in only the most attractive demographic) with fears of the dark, germs, etc.

The other patients are pretty unsympathetic to the young lady’s fear of the boogeyman (although Tobin Bell gets to deliver the great line “It’s called boogeyphobia” which may me break out laughing. Because I thought boogeyphobia was fear of K. C. & the Sunshine Band.). They soon get theirs when everyone finds themselves locked into the facility, and chased by the boogeyman, who preys on their individual fears. Not a great movie, but entertaining enough in its own way.

SPOILER ALERT

I didn’t really understand changing the menace faced to a non-supernatural cause. In that case, why make it a sequel to the supernatural-creature original? Also, if the boogeyman has otherworldly powers, it is easier to accept the things he does to torment the patients. When it turns out he is a fairly scrawny kid, you can’t believe he pulled it off.

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.