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.

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus

Every now and then, you watch a movie which manages to transcend its medium, one that illustrates dimly understood facets of the human condition and makes you feel a richer person for having seen it. Most of the time, though, you end up watching something like Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.

Oceanographer Emma (Debbie Gibson) borrows a mini-sub from her employer in California to watch a pod of whales off the coast of Alaska. That mini-sub has a heckuva range. While there, she witnesses a relatively worthless military experiment testing new sonar equipment. This causes a glacier to calve, and frees two creatures frozen there for millions of years. If you were paying attention to the title of the movie, you already know the creatures are a Mega Shark (Megalodon Carcharodon) and a Giant Octopus (Completelyus Madeupus). They wander off in search of mischief. Apparently, in dinosaur times, freezing didn’t hurt seafood as much.

The two big critters engage in a variety of hijinks. The shark leaps out of the water to eat a jet liner flying over the ocean, I assume at 30,000 feet. What a jumper! The shark also eats a battleship the movie calls a destroyer despite the destroyer/battleship valiantly firing in the wrong direction. The octopus eats an oil platform, hopefully with the head of BP on board. Pretty soon, the government decides they’ve had enough of this and a task force led by Allan (Lorenzo Lamas, looking a little embarrassed by the movie) is composed to stop the creatures. They decide they can’t do the job without Emma, even though Emma doesn’t seem knowledgeable enough to tell a squid from a fish stick. A lot of time is spent on multiple scenes of Ms. Gibson looking wistfully out to sea, trying to spot where her career has drifted, I suppose.

It takes them a long time to figure out the answer to their problems is in a law of entertainment first formulated, I believe, by the great William Shakespeare: If you have two monsters in the same movie, they will fight each other. Eventually, they figure it out and the movie ends.

The CGI for this movie is about on par with a computer game circa 1995, and the script is far below the SyFy Channel’s dubious standards. The acting rarely rises to adequate. Watch this one to mock, and for no other purpose.

There is one great moment, when Lorenzo Lamas asks Debbie Gibson “How will it feel to have a career and then be washed up?” I think Debbie knows the answer to that one.
.

Seventh Moon

I’ve recently decided to make an effort to try to whittle down the stack of DVDs I’ve purchased over the years but never watched, just because it seems ridiculous to own so many unwatched flicks. Today, I picked Seventh Moon, a Ghost House production from 2008. I guess I learned there are reasons I don’t watch some movies.

Yul and Melissa (Tony Chiou and Amy Smart) are newlyweds honeymooning in China, partly so that Melissa can meet Yul’s relatives. He is a very American Chinese-American, to the point where he barely speaks Cantonese. Their visit coincides with the Seventh Moon festival, celebrating when the hungry dead rise on the seventh full moon of the year and kill anything living. An interesting holiday, to say the least. The couple has a great time, until their tour guide abandons them in the middle of night in a rural area. It seems the locals sacrifice outsiders to the dead so they won’t take any of their own people, and Yul and Melissa are this year’s guests of honor, and pretty soon the duo are on the run from pale, hairless creatures with hostile intentions.

This is essentially a zombie movie, at least in structure, with the living running from the hungry dead. There are several major flaws that fatally damage this effort, starting with the characters. With only two people trying to escape the walking corpses instead of the usual group, it is important the audience have some sort of rooting interest in their survival. However, Yul and Melissa’s dominant character trait seems to be going to be pieces in times of stress. They invariably panic and do the wrong thing at every opportunity, and show little initiative or common sense. Probably the height of their dimness is when a group of creepy black-clad people show up and give them something to drink. Everyone else on Earth would instantly realize the drinks were drugged, but not Yul and Melissa. They drink up, and are shocked when it turns out they’ve been roofied. Additionally, Melissa is written as one of those people who just can’t shut up, no matter what. They are several occasions where the two are trying to hide, but since she has to talk, the dead are able to find them easily.

The film’s biggest problem is a technical one. It fits in with several other recent films (Unearthed, Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, etc.) where the cameraman believes the almost complete absence of light makes a movie more spooky, when it really makes it confusing. This is a very dimly lit movie, with two key sequences occurring in complete blackness. Throw in the shaky handheld used to film the movie and a tendency for quick cuts, it is nearly impossible to tell what is going on. Remember this simple rule: FILM IS A VISUAL MEDIUM. If you aren’t going to show the audience anything, you might as well do mit as a radio play.

Although it clocks in at just 87 minutes, the movie felt at least 20 minutes too long. Basically, it was a good idea for a short film, stretched out by repetition. It was directed by Eduardo Sanchez, best known for The Blair Witch Project, which may explain his affection for handheld cinematography. He’s capable of better work than this, and I hope he’ll move on to it. Watch this one only if you like pale naked Chinese guys running through the night.
.

New Horror Blog - Little Miss Zombie

A new horror-related blog (New to me, anyway. I don't get around much) for your reading pleasure - Little Miss Zombie. As a compulsive listmaker myself, I'd like to draw your attention especially to her list of 20 Great Canadian Horror Films. Who would have thought, since they seem so nice up there. There's obviously some darkness in Tim Horton-land. Major credit also for listing the criminally underrated Ginger Snaps as her favorite on the list.

Johannes Cabal the Detective

One of the many, many problems with current genre fiction is a lack of a sense of humor, as everyone today seems to take themselves very seriously, beyond the demands of what they are writing. It’s refreshing, therefore, to come across a playful, humorous novel such as Johannes Cabal the Detective, written by Jonathan L. Howard.

Set in a steampunk milieu and an imaginary 19th century Europe, this is the second book featuring the title character Johannes Cabal. He is a somewhat disreputable necromancer, a man of science capable of bringing the dead back to life, at least briefly. This work often goes awry, which is why cabal carries a heavy cane, with which to bludgeon failed experiments back to death. He is at best indifferent to mankind, and at worst actively misanthropic.

When the story opens, Cabal is imprisoned in a dungeon in the fictional country of Mirkavia, awaiting execution for attempting to steal a rare book on necromancy. He is resigned to his fate, but gets an eleventh hour reprieve when Count Marechal offers him his freedom. It seems that the Emperor of Mirkavia has just expired, and Marechal needs him brought back in order to give a speech which will incite the people of Mirkavia into a war Marechal desires. Marechal plans to double-cross Cabal, of course, but then again, Cabal plans to double-cross Marechal, too.

The escaped Cabal flees Mirkavia in a dirigible, where his curiosity about an on-board homicide makes him a target for murder as well. Together with his companion/foil Leonie Barrow, Cabal must uncover the murderers identity and ultimately thwart the Mirkavian plot in order to be free to carry on his diabolical experiments.

Cabal is a great character. Self-centered and blithely unconcerned about the well-being of others, he has few likeable traits, but nevertheless captivates the reader and forces you to root for him. The humor is sometimes subtle but effective – there is a gag near the beginning of the book involving cat shaving that made me laugh out loud – and it was an altogether enjoyable read.

This is the second in a planned series of books about Johannes Cabal, the first being Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, which I will be sure to seek out.
.

I Write Like William Gibson

There's a website called I Write Like which will analyze a writing sample and tell you which famous author your writing most resembles. Obviously, I had to try it, and lo and behold:

I write like
William Gibson

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

This might just be the worst day of William Gibson's life.

My Interview With Greg F. Gifune

Another of the short interviews I have been doing for Cemetery Dance is now on-line. This time, it is with author Greg F. Gifune. Click on his name to read the interview, and while you are there, feel free to order his latest book, Chasing Hell.
.