Ressie Lives!

One of the questions you get when you read horror novels, watch horror movies, have intimate horror roleplay nights etc. is “Why bother with all that made up stuff?” My answer is it isn’t made up, it’s completely real.

For example, just one state over, the town of Madison, Mississippi is stalked by a primordial horror called “Ressie”. Don’t believe me? Check out the Ressie Sightings Blog, and read what some brave people are trying to do about it. Godspeed, gentlemen.

The Deluge

The Deluge was the first book by Mark Morris I ever read. He is most prominently the author of several Dr. Who novels, which would have gone right past me. I know Dr. Who is a huge deal in England, but I've never gotten it. Probably a cultural thing, like eating jellied eel.

The book starts out in post-apocalyptic territory. With little preamble, in the wee hours of the morning London (and presumably the rest of the world) is flooded. Since it happens while most are asleep, the only survivors are those who live on the upper floors of high buildings, or who were above the water line for other reasons. We follow the flood from the point of view of Steve and his thirteen year old daughter Abby. After a few days, the water recedes, and the survivors venture out into a devastated world. Most people and animals are dead, and the water and the silt left behind have left almost everything ruined. Steve and Abby set out to leave London before the inevitable typhus and cholera sets in, and to reach Scotland, where Steve’s ex-wife and son live. Along the way, they are joined by other survivors, among them Max, a young black man who survived because he was chased onto a hospital roof by “Nazis” (I had a little trouble believing the gang could chase Max through the hospital without being stopped, but maybe that happens in England all the time), Libby, who was sailing at the time of the flood, and my favorite character, Sue, a policewoman. Sue knows where there is a cache of weapons, so their band is one of the few that is armed. (A major difference based on locale – if it were in America, everyone would be armed.)

At this point, the book seems to be following a familiar path, but there is a chilling twist. Some of the survivors are not really human. They are creatures that can mimic anyone (a la The Thing) and feed on humans. They quickly become the greatest danger the group faces, and their numbers quickly diminish.

The book is well-written, with deft characterization, the most important facet of writing a good horror novel. By the end, I found myself feeling unsettled, a rare experience considering how much horror I read. Some readers won’t like the number of questions that go unanswered. What cause the seemingly impossible flood? What is the significance of the blue lightning? What is the nature of the creatures stalking the survivors? The book certainly cries out for a sequel.

Despite the questions, this is an outstanding book, and I will be certainly looking for more by Mr. Morris.

Let The Right One In

It’s always interesting to see foreign authors’ works of horror, since cultural influences shape so much of a writer’s work. (I’ve always wondered why there aren’t more Latin American horror writers. There seems to be a cultural affinity for horror, but I can’t think of a prominent writer from South of the Border.) I don’t think I’d ever read a horror story by a Swedish author before Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist, and probably wouldn’t without the hype around the film version of the book (which will never play in Huntsville, since the screens are all full of Paul Blart, Mall Cop). Glad I did.

Oskar is a 12-year-old who serves as the butt of jokes and the object of pranks at his school in early 1980s Sweden. With few friends, he is brutalized by the local bullies every day. He escapes by losing himself in fantasy – and his fantasy is to become a serial killer, and to murder his oppressors. He is morbidly fascinated by the murder of a local boy who was found in the forest, hanging upside down with his throat cut. His loneliness is eased when he meets Eli, his new neighbor. Meeting at the playground at night, they form a bond, because Eli is lonely, too, being without friends for the last two hundred years or so.

Eli is a vampire (although he denies being a true vampire, who has to die and come back) who feeds on fresh human blood. His only companion is Hakan, an adult who guards and serves Eli for an unusual reason – he is a pedophile, and in Eli has a companion who will remain a perpetual child. As Eli and Oskar grow closer, they become solutions to the other’s problems.

This is a cold look at vampirism, shorn of the romanticism found in Anne Rice or Laurel Hamilton. The characters are all at least slightly repugnant, yet Lindqvist is able to use them to say important things about loneliness and the need for a human connection. You find yourself rooting for Oskar and Eli, even though both of them fit some of the definition of a sociopath.

Lindqvist also interprets traditional vampire lore in new ways, such as why a stake through the heart is effective, and why a vampire won’t enter a room without being invited. He offers practical details of the day-to-day life of an eternal bloodsucker. He also manages to take us in the mind of an adolescent child, as foreign a place as the mind of a vampire, probably. It’s interesting to see these things through Swedish eyes.

My judgment is Let The Right One In lives up to the hype, well enough to forgive taking the title from a Morrissey song.

The Wizard of Gore (Remake)

The idea of a remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ 1970 exploitation film The Wizard of Gore was an intriguing one. Lewis’ films have always enjoyed cult cachet (they are referenced by the title character in Juno), but they were made on shoestring budget and it would seem they would benefit from better production values. The casting was also top notch, including genre veterans Brad Dourif and Jeffrey Combs (nearly unrecognizable under a ton of makeup) and most enticing, the eccentric yet talented Crispin Glover as the title character. Unfortunately, although all three actors deliver, the movie is something of a muddled mess.

The movie seems to be set in a slightly surreal alternate reality (although the city is identified as Santa Monica), where a young reporter/publisher of an alternative newspaper attends, along with his girlfriend (Bijou Phillips), the performances of a magician (Crispin Glover). His show is short, and consists of pulling an audience member onstage, killing them in gory fashion, and then “revealing” they are alive and well. However, the subjects later turn up dead, killed in the same fashion as they were onstage. Which is reality and which is illusion?

The movie is murky, and some scenes seem disconnected from their proper place in the sequence of events, although in its defense [SPOILER] most of the characters perceptions are drug-altered throughout the film. Glover commands your attention, but regrettably, when the focus shifts to Pardue (which is most of the time) the movie seems to be running on fumes. A more charismatic actor who was able to hold his own with Combs, Dourif and Glover would have made the movie much better. For the gorehounds out there, it was reasonably graphic, although perhaps not so much for a movie with the word “Gore” in the title.

The victims of the stage show are played by The Suicide Girls, who I assume are a troupe of punkish strippers. Their chief contribution is a willingness to get naked.

Don D'Ammassa on The Current State of Horror Fiction

Anyone who is interested in the field of Horror Fiction should read what Don D’Ammassa has to say. He has taken the time to write a thorough summation of where things stand. Props to anyone who believes Stephen King is still writing good novels, as I do.

Mama's Boy Wins Dark Quill Award

If you read this blog I question your taste you know I am very fond of Fran Friel’s short story collection Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales. For once, I’m not alone, as Dark Scribe magazine has awarded it the Black Quill Award for Reader’s Choice for Best Dark Genre Fiction Collection. Well-deserved congratulations to Fran, and to all the voters: you got it right. Unlike those people who voted in the Roberto Benigni fiasco a few years back. What the hell were you thinking?

New John Carpenter Film On The Horizon

There’s no living director in the horror genre that I idolize more than John Carpenter. If he had only directed The Thing, it would have been enough, but throw in Halloween, The Fog, Big Trouble in Little China, In the Mouth of Madness, Prince of Darkness…. You get the picture. Carpenter hasn’t directed a feature since 2002’s disappointing Ghosts of Mars (he did direct two episodes of Masters of Horror), so it made me happy to see he will be getting behind the helm of a new film.

Variety reports Carpenter will direct a ghost story entitled The Ward for Echo Lake . Hopefully, this also means Carpenter’s health, which has been shaky for a while, is on the upswing.