Cold Hand in Mine

Horror Express (1972): “Part ape, part man, it lived two million years ago!”

2011-11-28T13:17:00.000-05:00

Horror Express is one of those sad orphan films of the public domain, just a little more recent than most. I watched it via archive.org, which I’ve previously mentioned.

Manchuria, 1906: A scientific expedition led by Professor Saxton (Christopher Lee in an excellent fur hat and mustache) discovers a frozen/fossilized corpse in a cave, perhaps a missing link. Returning to Shanghai, Saxton comes across fellow researcher and rival Dr. Wells (Peter Cushing), and they book compartments on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Even before the train leaves, the death of a thief who tries to get at Saxton’s specimen (now residing in a large crate), and the mutterings of a deranged Russian priest (Alberto de Mendoza) suggest the corpse isn’t as dead as it seems.

Soon, as the dark-eyed priest continues to make dire pronouncements, the corpse, a mummy-like creature with straggly hair, escapes the crate and sneaks around the train, leaving a trail of white-eyed, bloody-faced corpses. “This brain has been drained,” says Dr. Wells, conducting an skull-sawing autopsy on one of the victims.

It transpires that the creature uses its glowing red eye to suck the consciousness out of its victims, and eventually it is tracked down and shot. The passengers grow complacent, but the evil isn’t finished with them. An ancient alien parasite, it seemingly cannot be stopped. To demonstrate just how old the thing is, there’s a very silly scene where Lee and Cushing use a microscope to view unconvincing prehistoric images stored in the creature’s eyeball.

I would have guessed Horror Express was a Hammer production, but it was actually Spanish, shot in Spain (Spanish title: Pánico en el Transiberiano) and directed by Eugenio Martin. Lee and Cushing work well together as always, and some of the supporting cast, particularly de Mendoza, are also good. Telly Savalas hams it up in the last third of the film as the Cossack Captain Kazan. Despite the low budget, the settings are agreeably exotic. The train speeds through snowy Siberian forests while dastardly doings occur in the claustrophobic, rattling compartments. The soundtrack is pleasantly eerie, with fuzzy guitars and haunting whistles.

The somewhat atypical setting and plot, along with the presence of Lee and Cushing, put Horror Express a small step above mediocrity.

Them: Best of the Giant Bug Movies

2011-11-12T20:42:00.000-05:00

A shell-shocked little girl wandering through the New Mexico desert. A mangled, deserted travel trailer. An eerie piping from the desert wastes (“must have been the wind… it’s pretty freakish in these parts”). A devastated general store in the midst of a sandstorm, the electric light bobbing wildly in the wind. So begins the classic 1950s monster movie Them!, one of the best of the genre and certainly the best of the giant insect sub-genre.

The film starts out slow and sinister, as grizzled police Sergeant Peterson (James Whitmore) and fresh-faced FBI agent Robert Graham (James Arness) try to solve a string of disappearances and murders. The lonely desert, with tumbleweeds, blowing sand, and howling wind, is used to great effect. Soon, the doctors Medford, a father and daughter team of myrmecologists from the Department of Agriculture join the team, having identified a mysterious footprint as that of an oversized ant. As the senior Dr. Medford, the great character actor Edmund Gwenn (who was in his late seventies when the movie was shot) injects a great deal of energy and humor to the film. As his daughter, Joan Weldon gives a rather bland performance, perhaps aided by the fact that no romance really develops – it’s all about the ants. Still, most of the acting is quite decent.

The special effects, using enormous ant puppets, are surprisingly effective, and the first appearance of a giant ant, looming monstrously over a sand dune, is thrilling. Much of the film is action-packed, with an arsenal of machine guns, flamethrowers, bazookas, and grenade launchers being deployed to combat the red (ant) menace. Soldiers descend into creepy, dark ant nests in scenes reminiscent of the Alien films. The pacing slows a little too much in the middle, but picks up again as the ants begin to spread across the country. The finale is tense, claustrophobic, and, naturally, chock full of ants.

It turns out the ants have mutated as a result of radiation from the first atomic bomb test. As Dr. Medford gravely states, “When man entered the atomic age, he opened the door into a new world.” Nuclear-age warning, communist allegory, or simply a good science fiction horror story, Them! is a must see.

The Art of Zdzisław Beksiński: “Photographing Dreams”

2011-09-10T16:09:00.000-04:00

Polish artist Zdzisław Beksiński (1929-2005) created abstract and surreal art in a variety of media, but he’s best known for the fantastic, sometimes disturbing paintings he produced in the 1970s and 1980s.

Skeletons, corpses, sinister shadowy figures, dark landscapes, and looming cliffs and buildings abound.

Speaking of these paintings in particular, Beksiński said, “I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams.” In some cases, he seems to have succeeded.

Beksiński moved on to digital art in the 1990s, and was murdered in 2005. There are a few online galleries of his work here and here.

The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, Volume II

2011-08-27T11:34:00.000-04:00

My copy of the second Fontana collection of ghost stories arrived from an Amazon Marketplace seller with a mysterious black sticky spot on the back cover, in which were lovingly nestled several long, coarse hairs. It was one of the more disgusting things I’ve found on a used book.

Robert Aickman’s introduction to the collection rambles and entertains as usual: “Some people hope there are ghosts. Some people hope there are not. Most people, I suspect, manage to combine both of these aspirations, hoping and dreading at the same time.”

The opening story, Playing with Fire, is by none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and deals with a séance where the apparition is much more novel than the usual deceased relative.

Man-Size in Marble, by Edith Nesbit (best known for her early 1900s children’s books) conveys sadness and loss along with horror, as a young couple moves into a country cottage near a haunted church.

Robert Hichens’ How Love Came to Professor Guildea is frequently anthologized, and deserves to be. Aickman dubs it “one of the best ghost stories ever written”. It concerns a cold man of science and his downfall as an intangible thing creeps into his life and his home, a thing which is first heard via Guildea’s parrot imitating it:

“The voice was sickly and disagreeable, a cooing, and at the same time, querulous voice… a loathsome voice”.

While the owner of the voice only wants to love Guildea, the professor will have none of it.

The Demon Lover, by Elizabeth Bowen, is a short, tautly constructed piece dealing with the return of a woman’s former lover, thought lost in war.

A.V. Laider, by writer and caricaturist Sir Max Beerbohm, involves palmistry. It has one sharp scene of macabre tension, but tends to ramble for the most part.

Poe’s The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, with its “liquid mass of…loathsome putridity” (maybe that’s what was on the back cover of this volume) seems to have appeared in innumerable anthologies.

As much as I enjoy Lord Dunsany, the science fiction Our Distant Cousins (one of his Jorkens tales) is neither a ghost story nor great. Aickman calls it a “superb allegory” in his introduction, but I can’t agree.

Aickman’s contribution, The Inner Room, is centered on a large and gloomy dollhouse and its inhabitants. I think it’s one of his better stories; it showcases his talent for producing unsettling work that sticks with the reader due to ambiguity and sheer strangeness.

The cover illustration for this second volume of The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories is taken from a scene in Perceval Landon’s Thurnley Abbey –it portrays a mustached gent who at first glance I mistook for Hitler, crouching in fear as an apparition glides past. This tale is effective and has the most tangible ghost of any in the collection.

Nightmare Jack, by John Metcalfe, is one of the lowlights here. It’s a pulp magazine-ish story of stolen rubies and supernatural revenge, mostly told in dialect which is a little obnoxious to read.

Ambrose Bierce’s The Damned Thing might be even more over-anthologized than Poe’s tale. It’s always worth a read for those who enjoy Bierce’s bitter humor.

Finally, Edith Wharton delivers with Afterward, which has a nice premise:

“That there’s a ghost, but nobody knows it’s a ghost?”

“Well – not till afterward, at any rate.”

“Till afterward?”

“Not till long afterward.”

For me, this second Fontana collection wasn’t as enjoyable as the first. I’d read many of the stories elsewhere, and there were a few less than stellar selections. Still, it does contain some excellent tales of terror.

Fevre Dream: George R.R. Martin's Vampire Novel

2011-08-21T19:44:00.001-04:00

As previously mentioned I like what I’ve read of George R.R. Martin, for the most part. I was excited to add Fevre Dream to the list.

First published in 1982 and widely available again since the success of A Song of Ice and Fire, Fevre Dream combines vampires and 1850’s Mississippi River paddlewheelers. Gruff riverboat captain Abner Marsh is given an offer he can’t refuse: the cash to build and captain a massive new sidewheeler, which he christens Fevre Dream. The only downside is his investor and co-captain, the mysteriously pale and nocturnal Joshua York. York makes odd demands and invites a host of similarly-nocturnal friends on board the ship, testing Marsh’s patience and provoking his curiosity. As Marsh digs deeper, he begins to realize that as sinister as York may be, there are even more sinister forces stirring on the Lower Mississippi.

Martin did his historical research for Fevre Dream’s Mississippi River setting (or at least read Life on the Mississippi). The rivers, the towns, and the steamships are given enough detail to come alive and make the book something of a historical novel. Unfortunately, much of the story stays in sluggish, shallow waters. The vampires aren’t very interesting, and the stakes for defeating them aren’t very high. The novel progresses slowly yet jerkily, with a long and unnecessary digression into York’s back story and a thirteen-year timeout between acts. There are a few nice action-packed moments, but tension isn’t maintained and frights are few to none; the whole thing just kind of drifts downstream.

Fevre Dream isn’t terrible by any means, but it is quite lackluster compared to most of what I’ve read from Martin. I found myself wishing that the vampires would just go away so Captain Marsh could get on with his riverboating adventures, and thinking that the novel would have been just as good, or better, with natural villains instead of supernatural ones.

James Lewicki: He made American Folklore Creepy

2011-08-10T20:02:00.000-04:00

James Lewicki (1917-1979) illustrated many magazine covers and books for LIFE and others, mostly in the 50’s and 60’s. I encountered him as a small child reading the LIFE Treasury of American Folklore (1961). The Treasury stemmed from a series in LIFE Magazine, “The Folklore of America”, conceived and illustrated by Lewicki, which appeared in 1959-1960.

From the first full-page illustration of the “Sea of Darkness”, with gigantic sea monsters and blood-red waves, I was hooked.

The Sea of Darkness

Some of the other illustrations were nice too…

A well-endowed mermaid lures Pascagoula Indians away from Jesus

…but I was fascinated by the lurid, scary images Lewicki produced. Many of the people (and animals) seemed to be crazed and bloodthirsty, with staring eyes and overly-red mouths. Even many of the illustrations for non-spooky tales were themselves spooky.

The (Zombie?) Angel of Hadley

The images burned into my brain, and for a while there were some pages I had to skip past, but I kept going back to the Treasury again and again. I recently flipped through the book 20-some years later, and there they were. They’d been lurking there all those years…

Bras Coupé

Sedna's amputated fingers become marine mammals

Ghost Pirates of Manhattan

Loup-Garou Attack!

The one illustration that really gave me the willies was the witch woman on pages 172-173, spinning off her skin. Good story, too: “As he watched, she spun her entire skin off her body as easy as the shucks off an ear of corn. When it was all off, she was revealed as an enormous, tawny-yellow cat. She took the skin and chucked it under the bed. “Lay there, skin,” she told it, “with that fool husband of mine snoring in the bed until I come back. I’m goin to have me some fun.””

The Witch Woman

Someone else, probably scarred for life by these images like me, even went about creating a life-size model of the witch woman.

The Treasury itself has a wide range of stories from 1492 to World War II, including a number of unusual ones. But, needless to say, the illustrations were the most memorable part for me.

The Lurking Horror: Infocom's Lovecraftian Text Adventure Game

2011-08-02T20:43:00.000-04:00

Via guetech.org

Infocom produced classic text adventure games, starting with Zork in 1980, and running the gamut from detective stories (Deadline) to pirate romance (Plundered Hearts); some games (e.g. Trinity, A Mind Forever Voyaging) were strikingly unique and unclassifiable. Back in 1987, strange aeons ago in computer game time, Infocom released The Lurking Horror, an H.P. Lovecraft-inspired text adventure game. Written by Infocom cofounder Dave Lebling, The Lurking Horror was the very first Lovecraftian computer game.

There aren’t any overt Cthulhu Mythos references in The Lurking Horror (although the name “Lovecraft” is dropped), but the style is there. The story takes place at G.U.E. Tech, an MIT clone down to the steam tunnels (an early site of urban exploration). You take the role of a student trying to finish a term paper for “The Classics in the Modern Idiom” during a blizzard (“You wonder, yet again, why a technical school requires you to endure this sort of stuff.”). The campus is almost deserted and the file containing the paper has been corrupted by Department of Alchemy files which are bizarre, to say the least, including “woodcut illustrations which are queasily disturbing”. They seem to reference sacrifices and summoning, and before you know it, you have a dream about an ichor-dripping thing with palps. As you traverse the deserted buildings, the storm worsens and you begin to realize that, well, a lurking horror (as opposed to a Lurking Fear) lurks on campus.

Most of Infocom’s games concentrated on puzzles, and some were quite difficult. There are a number of these in The Lurking Horror, and, like the rest of the Infocom games, they’re made more difficult by the game’s limited vocabulary – players are forced to spend a lot of time trying to express themselves using words the game understands. Lebling did a nice job evoking the dark, deserted, snowed-in campus – there aren’t a lot of horrific thrills, but mostly, playing the game will give you a cold, oppressive feeling.

To make up for forcing you to use your imagination (and as copy protection), Infocom games tended to come with a lot of extras in the box; The Lurking Horror included a little rubber centipede-thing, among others.

Via guetech.org

The Lurking Horror is now classed as abandonware. If you really want to peer into computer gaming history and see a blue screen telling you “I don’t know the word “X” again and again as you figure out the commands, you can download it at Abandonia, or even play it online.

Joshua Hoffine's "Fears of Childhood"

2011-07-25T10:58:00.000-04:00

I just discovered horror photographer Joshua Hoffine thanks to a random post on an imageboard of some of his "Fears of Childhood" series, including the one above (my favorite). Striking, to say the least.

Hoffine, whose website is here, frequently uses friends and family, particularly his daughters, as models. He also maintains a blog, which is very interesting for a behind-the-scenes look at how he goes about creating his horrific images.

Hoffine's photography has been featured in Famous Monsters of Filmland and Fangoria, among others.

George R.R. Martin Writes Horror, Too

2011-07-18T16:06:00.000-04:00

Photo by David Shankbone

I tend to pick up anthologies randomly at used bookstores instead of actively seeking them out. Naturally, they can be a mixed bag, but anthologies have introduced me to a number of authors I really like. For instance, I started George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series relatively recently, not because it had been recommended or because I’d seen the HBO series, but because I’d read a really enjoyable Martin story in an anthology. It was “The Monkey Treatment” in Masters of Darkness II.

In “The Monkey Treatment”, first published in Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine, Martin introduces us to Kenny, an obese compulsive over-eater. Martin lovingly describes Kenny’s disorder in a way that makes the reader never want to eat again, before moving on to the real fun, as Kenny meets a formerly obese friend, who is now svelte, though haggard. His friend introduces him to a new diet, the monkey treatment, administered in a back-alley “clinic”:

“…a high-pitched chittering sounded suddenly from behind him, sharp and rapid as fire from a machine gun. Then another voice took it up, then a third, and suddenly the dark was alive with the terrible hammering noise. Kenny put his hands over his ears and staggered through the curtain, but just as he emerged he felt something brush the back of his neck, something warm and hairy.”

Things go rapidly downhill for Kenny now that he has a monkey on his back. Martin states that he wanted to write a story that was “genuinely funny and genuinely horrifying”, and he succeeded. It was a finalist for both the Hugo and Nebula awards.

In his note about the story, he also compares the marketing of fiction to selling ice cream, everything in a separate tub: “…I’ve always been the sort who gets scoops of two or even three different flavors on my sugar cones.” That’s what I like about Martin: he’s able to blend genres unexpectedly and inject a lot of novelty into his writing.

“The Monkey Treatment” led me to the entertaining science fiction novel Hunter’s Run (which Martin co-wrote with Gardner Dozois and Daniel Abraham), some of the Wild Cards series (which I found overwhelmingly dull, even Martin’s contributions), and finally to A Song of Ice and Fire, which was highly enjoyable until A Feast for Crows. Fevre Dream (vampires and 1850’s Mississippi paddlewheelers), and his werewolf novella “The Skin Trade” are next on my list.

The Fontana Book of [mostly] Great Ghost Stories, Volume I

2011-07-12T16:58:00.000-04:00

In his allusion-rich introduction to the first Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, Robert Aickman states that “there are only about thirty or forty first-class ghost stories”. The long-running Fontana series published several hundred, and most were at least pretty good. Aickman, who edited the first eight volumes of the series (1964-1972) before turning over the reins to R. Chetwynd-Hayes, suggests that many of the best are from the early Twentieth Century, “The pre-1914 Eden with the snake only just stirring”. Indeed, almost half of the stories in this volume are from before the First World War.

The Travelling Grave, by L.P. Hartley, is a unique, bizarre tale of a deadly contraption perambulating around an English country house.

The Ghost Ship, by Richard Middleton, cozily describes the effect of a ghostly pirate ship running aground in a turnip field adjacent to an already-haunted village.

Squire Toby’s Will is one of J.S. LeFanu’s classic chillers, involving a family squabble that continues after death.

William Hope Hodgson’s The Voice in the Night is an overwrought tale of fungus among us.

Three Miles Up, by Elizabeth Jane Howard, concerns the explorations of two young men on a canal boat. Three Miles Up originally appeared in the Howard/Aickman collaboration We Are for the Dark, and it is so Aickman-esque I have a feeling that writing it was a very close collaboration indeed. Aickman himself was ambiguous about this, as quoted here. I haven't read the rest of Howard's stories from We Are for the Dark, but this blogger has.

D.H. Lawrence’s The Rocking-Horse Winner is memorable and sad, a cautionary tale about the pursuit of riches.

The Wendigo, by Algernon Blackwood, is a story I first read as a kid, and the cry, “Oh, oh! My burning feet of fire!” has always stuck with me. Rereading this tale of a Canadian woods-spirit was a great reminder of Blackwood’s mastery of the horror and mystery of wild places.

The Crown Derby Plate, by Marjorie Bowen, is a succinct and creepy tale of mistaken identity, but one of the less memorable stories in this collection.

As he did in six of his eight Fontana collections, Aickman includes one of his own, The Trains, first published in We Are for the Dark. It concerns two young hikers who come upon a house by an isolated but busy rail line. Despite my great enjoyment of Aickman, I have to admit that The Trains is not one of my favorites. It has its moments.

The Old Nurse’s Story, by Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell, is the most old-fashioned ghost story in the collection (not surprisingly, since it was originally published in 1852). It contains nothing unexpected, but it satisfies.

The collection finishes with Seaton’s Aunt, by Walter de la Mare, in which the titular character exerts a malign influence on her young nephew and the reader is never quite sure if the supernatural is involved. De la Mare makes you wish poor Seaton would just get haunted by ghosts instead of being haunted by his aunt’s psychological torture.

Nitpickers, of which I am usually one, may remark that not all of the works in the collection are strictly ghost stories, but all in all, the first Fontana Collection of Great Ghost Stories does provide a number of great stories, and some good ones.

Ramsey Campbell's The Influence

2011-07-06T14:59:00.000-04:00

I read The Influence (1988) in yet another Tor edition with a great keyhole cover (recently I’ve had to resist an urge to collect books with keyhole covers – someone must do it).

In The Influence, young Rowan’s great-aunt Queenie dies, but doesn’t want to stay that way. It appears she might be trying to use the little girl as a gateway back to the land of the living. Queenie’s a well-realized character, a believably poisonous influence on others in life and beyond. Can Rowan be saved from her malice?

Like most of Campbell’s work, The Influence is set around Liverpool, but the city doesn’t play a major role. Instead, Queenie’s house, nearby Wales, and the routes between them are the locations. As always, Campbell provides us with a lot of geographical details, so entwined with the story that the places are almost like characters themselves.

Campbell is skilled at providing his protagonists with mundane stresses along with the supernatural ones; Rowan’s dad is an underemployed electrician, there’s marital strife, and Rowan was a “mistake” who worries about burdening her parents.

Despite the familiar elements, The Influence strays a little from Campbell’s usual style; it has more of a traditional, almost old-fashioned feel to it. The most memorable part of the story is Rowan’s solitary trip back from Wales to Queenie’s house after a series of traumatic events. Campbell makes it lonely, bleak, and menacing. The novel loses steam later on, but overall The Influence is an enjoyable chiller.

Ghost Music: Probably not a good introduction to Graham Masterton

2011-06-21T20:09:00.001-04:00

I know I’ve read some of Graham Masterton's short stories; I just can’t remember which, where, or when. I do know that Ghost Music is the first of his novels I’ve read, and it probably wasn't a good place to start.

Ghost Music’s protagonist, Gideon Lake, is a successful composer of advertising jingles, who moves into a Greenwich Village apartment and begins an affair with the mysterious Kate, his downstairs neighbor. She has a crass and menacing real estate agent husband, Victor, is consistently described as cold and bony, shatters glass with her screams when she climaxes, and continually dodges Gideon’s questions. Nonetheless, he’s infatuated; Masterton tells us this, but he doesn’t show us – there’s an odd lack of real emotion in the relationship.

It’s hardly a spoiler to say that Kate’s a ghost, since Masterton makes it abundantly clear to the reader; this makes the reader want to smack the dull and unquestioning Gideon for having no clue until Ghost Music’s finale. As Kate sends him tickets and keys to the houses of her friends in Stockholm, London, and Venice, Gideon very slowly begins to realize that he has a “resonance” that allows him to see dead people. But what are they trying to tell him? And how are Kate and Victor involved?

Much like Gideon and Kate’s relationship, the whole novel seems lacking in emotion, hastily tacked together for the sake of convenience. There’s nothing of the lyrical infatuation of, say, Richard Adams’ The Girl in the Swing, and there’s nothing to raise the short hairs on the back of your neck, either. The dialogue is mostly flat and unconvincing, and, like Ramsey Campbell in The Grin of the Dark, Masterton seems to have trouble making his American characters sound American – Britishisms sneak in (Gideon repeatedly refers to his “beezer” after getting punched in the nose). Add a stereotypical gangster henchman who says “dollface” sixty years too late, Gideon’s lovingly clichéd description of Kate’s “dew-soaked lily petals”, and a hastily tacked-on bit about shady organ transplants before the disappointed ending, and the whole thing ends up seeming weak and a little silly.

Despite this disappointment, it’s too early to give up on Graham Masterton; he's a prolific writer and perhaps Ghost Music just wasn't his best effort. I need to check out some of his earlier novels like The Manitou and see if they have more to offer.

Anthology Review: The Museum of Horrors

2011-06-13T16:47:00.000-04:00

Anthologies are a great way to discover writers. As a youngster, I expanded my horror horizons by reading Marvin Kaye anthologies like Devils & Demons, encountering for the first time a whole host of great writers from W.W. Jacobs to Tanith Lee. Kaye did have the unfortunate habit of adding a lot of stories by his friends, and sometimes by himself, which were of lesser quality. As a rule, though, it’s rare to find an anthology with strong stories throughout (except for The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories, which was just about perfect).

I recently read The Museum of Horrors, which is no exception to the usual unevenness. It’s an eclectic 18-story collection edited by Dennis Etchison, who received a World Fantasy Award for his efforts. At first I assumed the anthology had the theme suggested by the title, especially with the Joyce Carol Oates opener “The Museum of Dr. Moses”, in which the titular character, a retired coroner, shows off his museum of medical specimens to his wary stepdaughter. I’m not a huge fan of Oates, and found this story too lengthy for what it was. Only one other story, Charles L. Grant’s forgettable “Whose Ghosts These Are” really touches on the theme, although S.P. Somtow’s exotic, genre-transcending “The Bird Catcher” sort of brushes against it. It might have been a constricting theme anyway.

Highlights from The Museum of Horrors include a solid Ramsey Campbell contribution, “Worse than Bones”, about a particularly nasty ghost who communicates via notes in the margins of a book of ghost stories. Tom Piccirilli’s “Those Vanished I Recognize” is memorable and dreamlike, and Conrad Williams’ “Imbroglio” is the tale of a serial killer’s depredations from a young boy’s perspective. Another serial killer tale, “Hammerhead”, comes from the late Richard Laymon; it’s enjoyable if your tastes run towards the graphic and nasty. Robert Devereaux’s Judas story, “Apologia”, isn’t horror, but it is well-written and entertaining.

Some of the other stories, like Susan Fry’s “The Impressionists in Winter” are horror and well-written, but not very memorable. Gordon Linzner’s “Author, Author” is clichéd, and Peter Atkins’ “King of Outer Space” seems out of place. Melanie Tem’s fantasy “Piano Bar Blues” is lackluster.

The biggest disappointment, however, comes from Peter Straub. For unknown reasons (although perhaps to display Straub’s name prominently on the cover), Etchison included a near 50-page fragment by Straub called “Perdido”. A tale of a fantastic mountain resort, it is only a fragment, and a boring one at that. Straub sees fit to end it with a note about how he dreamed the story and then never had time to finish it, putting it in a binder. It should have stayed there, as it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

Straub’s fragment and some of the complete stories make The Museum of Horrors a little more uneven than most anthologies, but the highlights make it worth a look.

The Internet Archive: Some horrible horror films, and a few good ones

2011-05-10T14:59:00.000-04:00

When I first started looking for obscure horror films, back before my Netflix subscription, I found the Internet Archive and its science fiction and horror film collection. The Internet Archive is a “digital library of internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form”, a vast compendium of software, texts, audio, and film of all sorts.

Most of the horror films in the collection are ones likely to be featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, like Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), Killer Shrews (1959), and Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966). That said, you can also find some true classics, including Nosferatu (1922), Night of the Living Dead (1968), and Carnival of Souls (1962) (well, the last one’s debatable, but I liked it). There are also some esoteric ones like an early Frankenstein (1910) and 1920’s The Golem, Japanese giant monster movies, even video nasties like Driller Killer (1979). And there are wonderful titles like Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973), I Eat Your Skin (1970), and The Phantom Creeps (1939).

The Archive search function isn't the best, and some uploads have formatting issues, but it's still a great place to browse for old and obscure horror movies.

Frankenstein, 1910

Ancient Images: Stay out of the Tower!

2011-05-04T19:59:00.000-04:00

I’ve been a fan of Ramsey Campbell for a long time. I came across “Cold Print” in the excellent Lovecraftian anthology Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos Volume II and went looking for more. This led to Demons by Daylight, Campbell’s second collection of stories, and the first, as he admits in the forward, in which he was finding his own voice and leaving Lovecraft imitation behind. Next came novels (The Hungry Moon and the wonderfully titled The Doll Who Ate His Mother were early favorites), and I had fun hunting for more of his seemingly innumerable short stories in various anthologies.

My latest Campbell read is his 1989 novel Ancient Images. I loved the lurid keyhole cover (left), but ended up being less enthused about the book itself.

Ancient Images starts promisingly, with the rediscovery of a never-released horror film, Tower of Fear, starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. Film editor Sandy's friend Graham, the rediscoverer, soon meets a grisly fate and the film goes missing; this sets Sandy off on a road trip to find it and find out more about the lurking fear which seems to surround it. Those associated with the film are reluctant to discuss it, and many have met grisly fates of their own... or begin to meet them as Sandy digs deeper. Even her cats bite the dust.

So far, so good. Campbell's signature writing style, where everyday objects and scenes are imbued with horror, is present here, and he also includes some interesting film history. But Ancient Images quickly starts to drag. Sandy isn't a very engaging protagonist. When supernatural beings being to manifest themselves, they aren't very engaging either. They also appear too often - it seems like Sandy sees (or thinks she sees) something lurking in the bushes every other page or so. The lurkers are described as having flowers in their eyes, which somehow detracts from their horror.

As Sandy peels back the shroud surrounding Tower of Fear, the plot veers into shades of The Wicker Man, with pagan/harvest/fertility themes. There's a creepy scene in a dark tower (of fear), and some lurking scarecrows (or are they?). A wandering band of hippie-types called Enoch's Army is introduced. I'm not sure why they were included or if there was a real-life parallel to them in 80's England. The plot could have done fine without them. Enoch's Army, Sandy, and the plot all stagger towards the oddly idyllic village of Redfield, where the wheat grows really, really well. Then there is a lackluster and anti-climactic conclusion.

I felt that Ancient Images might have worked better as a short story; as a novel, it wasn't entirely cohesive and seemed padded to reach novel length. I kept comparing unfavorably to Campbell's more recent film-related novel, The Grin of the Dark. The real disappointment is that the enjoyable concept of a forbidden, cursed, and ghastly horror film doesn’t really come to fruition. When Sandy finally tracks down the film and views it, it doesn’t seem all that ghastly, and even worse, there doesn't seem to be a compelling reason for supernatural forces to take the trouble to haunt it.

Ramsey Campbell's still one of my favorite horror authors. I just didn't feel this was one of his best efforts.

The Bay has a Distributor

2011-04-18T10:33:00.000-04:00

Barry Levinson's found footage eco-horror thriller The Bay, formerly Isopod (those are isopods in the picture - terrifying!), will be distributed by Lionsgate. From the press release:

"The announcement was made jointly by Joe Drake, President of the Motion Picture Group, and Jason Constantine, President of Acquisitions and Co-Productions. From the producers of the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY franchise, the film is the next installment in their series following INSIDIOUS, and chronicles an unprecedented biological disaster unleashed from the waters of the Chesapeake Bay- an isopod parasite, carrying a horrific untreatable disease, that jumps from fish to human hosts. The true horror and scope of the event unfolds on footage captured on home videos and the internet by the town’s victims.
“Ingenious genre films are and always will be a specialty at Lionsgate,” explained Drake of the choice to acquire the film. “THE BAY is a shining example of the kind of truly fresh horror film that audiences are always ready for, and that we excel at eventizing with them. Thanks to Barry, we’ll all be afraid to go in the water for years to come.”"

Eventizing?

The Bay was filmed in Georgetown, South Carolina, where it has generated much excitement. No word on a release date yet.

The Hills Have Eyes (2006): Haiku on Torture Porn

2011-03-28T09:32:00.000-04:00

I watched The Hills Have Eyes, Alexandre Aja's remake of Wes Craven's 1977 fillm, while feverish. This may have increased my distaste for it. I don't have time for a full reflection on the value of gore-fests except to say that without plot, humor, or character they don't charm me. Instead, I'll express my sentiments with a few haiku (well, maybe not haiku by traditional definitions, but they do follow the 5-7-5 structure, anyway).

Baby at gunpoint

See man burned alive, so gross

Pickaxe in a face

Lesson learned from film

Mutants are always evil

Let’s fear the deformed

Story: ten percent

Violence and gore: the rest

Redeeming features?

The Beyond: Fulci's Masterpiece?

2011-03-10T14:10:00.000-05:00

After seeing Zombie and enjoying it for what it was, I was motivated to see The Beyond (1981) by various comments on the Internet Movie Database and other sites describing it as Lucio Fulci’s masterpiece, or at least one of his best. Of course, other comments from Fulci fans charitably referenced the “slightly incoherent plot” and stated that the acting is “what you’d expect”, so I knew what I was getting in to.

Louisiana, 1927: Instead of Randy Newman or any mention of flooding, we get a sepia-toned flashback with stern men bursting into a hotel to lynch a demented painter, Schweick. First they tongue-lash him (“you ungodly warlock!”), then they lash him with a chain, nail him to a wall, and spatter him with bubbling lye, all in Fulci’s blood-spurting, flesh-rending detail.

One hopes for a Lovecraftian slant, especially when the Book of Eibon comes into play, but it turns out that instead of a portal to the Great Old Ones, the hotel is built over one of the seven doors of Hell.

The scene switches to the present day (1981), as Liza (Catriona MacColl, who appeared in other Fulci films) inherits the rundown hotel. Liza meets the caretakers, creepy Martha (Veronica Lazar) and her slow-witted son Arthur (Gianpaolo Saccarola), the sympathetic Dr. McCabe (David Warbeck), and the original Joe the Plumber (Giovanni De Nava), who quickly meets an eye-gouging fate (a Fulci trademark) in the basement which is somehow pronounced an “accident”.

In one of the more memorable scenes, Liza runs across the blind Emily (Cinzia Monreale) and her German shepherd, standing on an eerily deserted Lake Pontchartrain bridge. “I’ve been waiting for you,” says Emily, so Liza takes them in, no questions asked. Was Fulci going for the surreal or just too lazy to craft a plot that made sense?

Assuming the former makes the viewing experience more pleasant, since the plot is slightly more than incoherent. It’s also fairly uninteresting. If the premise is a hotel built atop a gateway to Hell, one really wants to see all Hell breaking loose at some point; but this is not a haunted hotel movie of the caliber of The Shining. Fulci does try, with a spiked skull, ripped-off ear, torn throat, and exploding foreheads. There’s an inventive bit in a bathtub, and at one point inexplicable tarantulas manifest to eat a man; only a few are live, and the ones in the background are models which are waggled unconvincingly back and forth. The “Do Not Entry” sign in one scene is a classic.

The acting is in fact what you’d expect, but there are some enjoyable lines:

“I’ve lived in New York all my life, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned not to believe in, it’s ghosts.”

“I’m a doctor and I want to accept the rational explanations!”

“Somehow the basement’s flooded” (not entirely surprising in south Louisiana).

Overall, The Beyond just isn’t cohesive enough to be engaging. I found Zombie to be much more interesting.

"Once the Lurking Lust is Loosed-": Robert Bloch's "The Night of the Ripper"

2010-12-27T16:33:00.000-05:00

Robert Bloch had a writing career that spanned sixty years, during which he wrote about Jack the Ripper four times. “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper”, published in Weird Tales in 1943, presented the idea of the Ripper as an immortal making human sacrifices to stay that way. He revisited the Ripper in “A Toy for Juliette” and the Star Trek episode “Wolf in the Fold”. His most comprehensive look at the Whitechapel serial killer was in his 1984 novel The Night of the Ripper.

The Night of the Ripper is replete with well-researched Ripper facts and historical detail: unusual slang (“buors” are prostitutes, “suckcribs” are beer halls), Victorian London locations and personalities involved in the case and, of course, gruesome descriptions of the bodies of the murder victims.

The background makes for entertaining reading, but the story itself is formulaic. A wooden American doctor, Mark Robinson, joins forces with the dyspeptic Inspector Abberline to stop the fiend, while a nurse, Eva Sloane, provides the requisite love interest. Characterization is weak and there are too many characters who are only introduced as potential Rippers. Bloch feels the need to throw in cameos by Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Bernard Shaw, and John Merrick, to no discernible purpose. When Bloch reveals the real Ripper, it’s possibly the least interesting choice of all the suspects.

The Night of the Ripper is a quick read and might be worthwhile for Bloch’s detailed account of the setting and the crimes, but as a novel it feels hastily constructed and superficial. The fact that at some points it seems virtually any character could be the Ripper, and a few ruminations on the beast within (“conceal it though we may, the beast is always there, waiting to escape”) suggest the deeper study of psychological aberration Bloch might have undertaken.

"Be Prepared to Take the Good with the Evil...": The Kingdom (Riget) 1994-1995

2010-12-19T11:57:00.000-05:00

Take a blender. Add a distillation of hospital dramas. Dump in a liberal helping of Twin Peaks, but enhance it with an extra dose of quirky humor. Pour directly from a bottle of spirits (clamp the lid down quickly so they don’t escape). Blend well, and you might get a rough approximation of The Kingdom (Riget), Lars von Trier’s eight-episode miniseries for Danish television. However, The Kingdom is a unique concoction, hard to describe or replicate (although Stephen King adapted The Kingdom for American television as Kingdom Hospital, which I haven’t seen but apparently stayed fairly true to the original).

Centered on Copenhagen's Rigshospitalet, the fictional Kingdom is a sepia-toned labyrinth full of ghosts and demons. Built, according to the introduction, on the ancient “bleaching grounds”, it is stocked with ghostly ambulances, spirits crying in the elevator shafts, and the menacing shade of Udo Kier.

Like any good hospital drama, The Kingdom has an ensemble cast of patients, doctors, and support staff – they are just a little quirkier than most. The Swedish chief of neurosurgery (Ernst-Hugo Järegård) hates his Danish coworkers, frequently shouting his catchphrase “Danish scum!” His arch-rival, Jørgen (Søren Pilmark), works the system from his lair in the basement, and is not above a little blackmail to get his way. The medium Mrs. Drusse (Kirsten Rolffes) keeps finding ways to get herself admitted to commune with the unquiet dead. Dr. Bondo (Baard Owe) lusts after a patient’s liver tumor, while Dr. Petersen (Birgette Raaberg) experiences an unusual pregnancy. Two dishwashers with Down Syndrome (Vita Jensen and Morten Leffers) make cryptic comments on the supernatural goings-on. Lurking behind them all are the ghost girl Mary (Annevig Ebbe) and the ominous Age Krüger (Udo Kier). Despite the short duration of the series, viewers get to know them all through a variety of bizarre subplots, and the acting and script make even the smallest role engaging.

The first series has its share of chills, but is also very funny. The final episode ends with an attempted exorcism and a difficult childbirth; in both, horror and humor combine. The second series is weaker, focusing more on the quirky humor of the characters and less on the horror. Like the first season, there’s a cliffhanger ending, but sadly, a planned third season never came to fruition since several of the major actors died.

With The Kingdom, Lars von Trier presents a unique series, unclassifiable and highly entertaining.

Night Watch (2004): The Terror of Spastic Director Syndrome

2010-11-26T16:32:00.001-05:00

The establishing prologue for Night Watch (Nochnoy dozor in the original Russian) is not encouraging – two fantasy armies are doing battle, but they’re slightly cheesy, and you keep expecting to see Terry Gilliam prancing behind them banging coconut shells together. The prologue is like those in many fantasy novels, easily skipped to get to the good stuff. It’s a tedious way to set up the eternal contest between the supernatural “Others”, Light and Dark, each monitoring the opposing side to look for violators of their ages-old truce (the monitors are the Night Watch and Day Watch).

The film follows precog Anton (Konstantin Khabenskiy), a member of the Night Watch tasked with policing the Dark Others. He’s a refreshingly shabby protagonist, a staggering, vagabond vampire hunter. His Night Watch teammates include a few shapeshifters who never actually shape-shift, and Olga the were-owl (Galina Tyunina), who has a well-filmed, messy transformation scene and then seems to have nothing to do for the rest of the film. The Night Watch members echo the Ghostbusters, with their jumpsuits and their bright yellow truck with flaming tailpipes, whizzing through the city streets to supernatural incidents.

There is a plot, but it is told incoherently, as if the director cut out half the footage at random. The end result is loud, garish, confused, and somewhat annoying, with strange camera angles, quick jump cuts, and hardly a whisker of character development. There’s something about the “Vortex of Damnation” and a cursed virgin, who appears to herald the final battle between Light and Dark, and a great Other who will choose sides and determine the outcome.

The film and its sequel Day watch (2006) were based on a series of novels by Sergey Lukyanenko. Perhaps if you’ve read the novels you can fill in the blanks in the movie version of Night Watch, but otherwise the events are made barely comprehensible by the spastic, jumpy direction. The special effects, impressive for the overall budget of about 4.2 million, and sometimes inventive (wheeling clouds of ravens and a handy spine-sword), are the only real reason to see Night Watch.

Naked SCUBA! Zombie vs. Shark! Splinter-in-eyeball! It's Lucio Fulci's "Zombie"

2010-11-06T16:04:00.000-04:00

Hot on the shambling heels of Dawn of the Dead (1978) came Lucio Fulci in 1979 with the imaginatively titled Zombie (sometimes titled Zombie 2 to confuse European viewers into thinking they were seeing the sequel to Romero’s film, which was titled Zombie in European releases).

An abandoned boat (or is it?) drifts into New York Harbor. It belongs to the vanished father of Ann (Tisa Farrow, Mia’s sister). A note (“due to my morbid curiosity, I have managed to contract a strange disease”) points to the Caribbean. Soon, Ann is on her way, joined by reporter Peter (Ian McCulloch, who went on to star in a different role in 1980’s Zombie Holocaust, a film which is unrelated to Zombie other than being filmed on the same sets, and alternately titled Zombie 3, apparently to confuse viewers even more).

The two convince boat bums Brian and Susan (Al Cliver and Auretta Gay) to take them to the supposedly cursed island of Matul, the home of Dr. Menard (Richard Johnson). A zombie outbreak is underway, with no explanation for the cause other than some mumbling about voodoo.

The highlight of Zombie occurs before the protagonists reach the island, as Susan goes naked SCUBA diving and is witness to a zombie eating a shark.

It’s difficult to top that. Fulci tries to do so with gore, giving up on the scanty plot for face-eating, arm-rending, flesh-ripping, splinter-in-eyeball mayhem. In general, the special effects are realistically stomach-turning. Gallons of blood are spilled, bright 70’s movie blood like tomato sauce (maybe it was tomato sauce?).

It’s surprising more zombie films aren’t set in the Caribbean, where, after all, zombies originated. Zombie has pretty island scenery and brightly-colored villages where the zombies roam, and the soundtrack includes both cheerful island music and voodoo drums. The film even includes a sort of tropical recreation of the cemetery awakening scene from The Plague of the Zombies and many others.

Although more gross than frightening, and not the most intelligent zombie film ever made, Zombie is undeniably entertaining and well worth a look.

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-31T11:36:00.001-04:00

Horror of the 80s: Demons (1985)

2010-10-24T10:07:00.000-04:00

A subway in West Berlin. New Wave styles abound. A young student, Cheryl (Natasha Hovey), is stalked by a mysterious figure (Michele Soavi) with a metallic half-mask (or is it – his face?). It turns out that he is only handing out tickets to a movie at a recently renovated theater, the Metropol. Cheryl and her friend Kathy (Paola Cozzo) cut class to go.

“You don’t think it’s going to be a horror movie, do you?” asks Kathy.

The theater contains a creepy usherette (Nicoletta Elmi, of Dario Argento’s Deep Red and several of Mario Bava’s films, in a cameo of sorts) and some odd audience members, including two young men, George (Urbano Barbarini) and Ken (Karl Zinny), who make friends with Cheryl and Kathy. They begin to watch the horror movie-within-the-horror movie. The characters on screen find an ancient book “something about- demons!” and a strange mask. Whoever wears the mask will become a demon – oddly enough, such a mask was in the theater lobby, and one of the audience members tried it on before the show…

Soon the demonic infection is spreading, both onscreen and throughout the audience. They realize they’ve been bricked in to the theater, and the body count begins to rise, to the tune of bouncy 80s synth-pop.

Co-written by director Lamberto Bava (son of Mario) and Dario Argento, who produced it, Demons is a mixed bag. The highlights include some good special effects, mostly demonic transformations in which long claws grow, air bladders are used effectively, and teeth pop out to be replaced with fangs. There are a few inspired touches, most notably when the actress in the onscreen horror flick is being menaced by a knife making long gashes in her tent, and suddenly the theater screen itself gashes open and one of the infected audience members falls through.

There’s a lot of Argento-like playing around with lighting effects, some of which is quite nice – although sometimes you get the feeling that the filmmakers went through the script and randomly said “this scene will be blue. This scene will be red.”

The theater setting is sometimes used to good effect (the darkened row of seats, the innumerable red curtains through which victims claw their way), but could be better utilized.

The low points: there’s a lot of primary color demon-vomit and cheesy makeup. The demons themselves are rather generic monsters – basically zombies with fangs and glowing eyes. The acting is miserable and the lousy English dubbing doesn’t help. Wait for the laughable sequence in which the hero rides around the theater on a dirt bike which has mysteriously appeared from somewhere, swatting at demons with a samurai sword. Things get even more random with a deus-ex-flying-machina towards the end.

Still, Demons was popular enough to spawn a sequel, Demons II, the following year. For the most part it’s an average 80s horror flick, entertaining enough but easily forgettable.

Halloween Reading: Zelazny's "A Night in the Lonesome October"

2010-10-18T14:37:00.001-04:00

I hadn't heard of A Night in the Lonesome October until my brother sent me the audio version. Read by Zelazny himself, it's quite good.

Published in 1993, Lonesome October, nominated for a 1994 Nebula Award, was Zelazny's last book (he died in 1995, aged 58). Zelazny was a truly original fantasist, perhaps best known for the The Chronicles of Amber, which I can't say I really got into. Nonetheless, I found A Night in the Lonesome October to be very engaging.

Set in Victorian Era London and vicinity, the story is in the form of first-person (or first-dog) journal entries by Snuff, who is the familiar of his master, Jack. Each night in October gets a chapter in this gradually-revealed tale of preparations for a great supernatural event, a full moon on Halloween, when the barriers between the planes thin and doors between worlds may be opened. A host of characters ranging from Dracula to Jack the Ripper have assembled, intent on either opening or closing a portal to Lovecraft's Great Old Ones. Each "Player" in the "Game" has a familiar, who go about bargaining with each other and attempting to pinpoint the exact site of the portal, never quite sure who is on which side.

Zelazny writes in a sparse, effective, and humorous style, expertly building the suspense as grave robberies, murders, and weird happenings abound. There's a somewhat pointless foray into Lovecraft's Dreamlands that reads like filler, but the rest of the story is tautly constructed.

Reading A Night in the Lonesome October, with its monstrous characters and autumnal setting, is like being wrapped up in a warm, soft blanket of Halloween. Simple, fun, and satisfying, it's an excellent read to get you in the Halloween spirit.

The Bay: Filming Wraps Up

2010-10-09T14:41:00.001-04:00

Barry Levinson's ecological horror film The Bay, formerly Isopod, is wrapping up filming in Georgetown, South Carolina, with cast and crew expected to leave town in the next few days. The Bay is set in the fictional Maryland town of Claridge, and we now know that the plot actually does involve parasitic isopods, which normally use fish as their hosts, taking over humans instead and causing them to run amok - essentially as zombies.

Link for a brief Georgetown Times article on the end of filming is here.

Dog Soldiers: Neil Marshall's Werewolf Debut

2010-09-25T10:27:00.000-04:00

I wasn’t too sure about Dog Soldiersat first. The 2002 release was Neil Marshall’s first feature film (he wrote and directed it). I saw his second, The Descent, and left feeling it was pretty standard horror. Would Dog Soldiers be any better?

After the typical introductory sequence showing that there’s something bad in them there woods, the film gets started with a group of soldiers on a training exercise in Scotland. It’s a slow start, with a lot of banter designed to establish the characters before anything happens (some might say too much banter, but you do end up getting to know the characters more than in most horror films). Eventually, the team comes across the remains of a special forces team, badly mauled, with Captain Ryan (Liam Cunningham) the only survivor. Out of radio contact, the soldiers are soon under attack by a werewolf clan, and this is where the film makes up for its slow start.

Eschewing CGI, Marshall went with animatronics and large men in werewolf suits and stilts. This could have ended up looking cheesy, but fortunately it works very well, creating unique humanoid wolf-headed creatures. The animatronic heads are particularly convincing. Once the soldiers become trapped in a farmhouse with the wolf-men trying to get in à la Night of the Living Dead, Marshall provides his audience a very effective series of action sequences with plenty of scares and gore.

What makes the film even better is the unexpected humor provided by Marshall’s inventive scenes and well-written dialogue. The gruff but lovable Sergeant Wells (Sean Pertwee) has his intestines ripped out, leading to the following exchange with the protagonist, Private Cooper (Kevin McKidd):

“My guts are out!”

“Well, we’ll just put them back in again!”

“They’re not gonna fit!”

“Course they’ll fit, man!”

Later, Sergeant Wells’ errant intestines provide more humor as a hungry dog tries to steal them while they’re still attached to the Sergeant, and when Cooper tries emergency surgery with superglue and copious amounts of whisky. The actors all do well in their roles; it’s obvious they had a lot of fun making this movie.

Dog Soldiers mostly sticks to the tropes and doesn’t really break new ground in horror, but the acting, clever dialogue, well developed characters, and nice special effects make it a superior werewolf offering.

I didn't include the trailer because it's terrible and will make you not want to watch the movie; the link is here if you're really interested.

"The Bay" Filming Article from the Georgetown Times

2010-09-15T16:57:00.000-04:00

Ever-so-slightly more information on "The Bay" from the local rag here.

"The Bay": Filming Begins

2010-09-14T15:33:00.001-04:00

Filming on Barry Levinson's eco-horror thriller The Bay started yesterday with a traffic jam scene on the bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway in Georgetown, South Carolina. "They said there was a monster coming out of the bay," said one witness (article here), but the exact nature of the monster(s) is still under wraps.

Today's filming was a July 4th festival scene in downtown Georgetown, with extras crab-racing and taking turns on the dunk tank. They filmed a crab-eating competition after I left, in which one of the contestants starts puking - perhaps a harbinger of the viral horror to come.

There were Maryland flags in abundance. Since they wanted a crowd, it was pretty much an open set with people wandering through walking their dogs and stopping to be part of a take or get some cotton candy.

I overheard some of the crew talking about the parasitic isopods that hitch a ride in fishes' mouths after eating their tongues - interesting.

They Came Back: Resurrection can be Inconvenient for the Living

2010-09-11T13:20:00.000-04:00

When a horde of Romero-esque zombies attack the living, groaning and biting and eating brains, society’s response is predictable- fight or flight. But what if the dead return peacefully, undecayed, and ready to resume their former lives? How does society react?

This is the question posed by They Came Back, a 2004 French film directed by Robin Campillo. The film explores the relationships between a group of the living and their dead spouses and children. Instead of joy or horror, the resurrected dead are met with unease, and the government treats them as unwanted refugees from the beyond, illegal immigrants who take up jobs and state resources.

It’s a great premise, and there are some very nice touches in the film (particularly the cinematography and the soundtrack), but overall the film is oddly unemotional, abstract, and slow, and the questions it raises are never fully explored.

"Isopod" is now "The Bay"

2010-09-05T10:21:00.001-04:00

Slightly more information on Barry Levinson's upcoming thriller here.

Apparently it is actually an ecological horror film involving a viral outbreak in a small Maryland town. So, the bay in question would be the Chesapeake (although they're shooting next to Winyah Bay in Georgetown, South Carolina, probably for tax purposes).

It also appears that they're using the pieced-together-footage technique of Cloverfield, etc., which can work well if it doesn’t give you motion sickness (I had to close my eyes during parts of The Blair Witch Project, and not because it was too horrific to watch).

At the audition for extras, they were specifically looking for one year old twins, amputees for a hospital scene, and expert blue crab eaters. The latter should be easy to find around Georgetown.

Wild Zero: Rock and Roll and Zombies

2010-09-04T10:19:00.000-04:00

A Japanese rock-zombie spectacular, Wild Zero (2000) is essentially an extended music video for the band Guitar Wolf. Consisting of Guitar Wolf, Drum Wolf, and Bass Wolf (since deceased and replaced), the band slouches around combing their pompadours, abusing substances, and shouting “Rock and roll!”

Aliens are invading Earth and creating zombies left and right (shades of Plan 9 From Outer Space). What's more, the band's former manager (Makoto Inamiya, resplendent in a pageboy wig and short shorts) is after them. The rudimentary plot concerns Guitar Wolf’s number one fan Ace (Masashi Endô) and the very special girl he falls in love with (Kwancharu Shitichai). With the help of a magic whistle, Ace can summon Guitar Wolf's aid when he's in danger - but can the rockers fight off the zombie hordes and their alien masters?

It’s not meant to be good, it’s meant to be trashy camp, and it succeeds admirably, aided by a soundtrack that includes Guitar Wolf's own Ramones-influenced tunes and a suite of others, from Dick Dale to Bikini Kill. Wild Zero serves up a big helping of dumb fun. The DVD menu even includes an in-movie drinking game for those who wish to quantify the number of exploding heads and flaming tailpipes with alcohol.

Isopod Extra Auditions

2010-08-28T15:12:00.000-04:00

I spent an hour this morning at auditions for extras for the upcoming "indie sci-fi thriller" Isopod, to be directed by Barry Levinson. A pretty simple process: wait in line, fill out a form, staple your picture to it. About 600 people showed up. Filming should run mid-September to mid-October in Georgetown, South Carolina.

There's very little information on Isopod so far, just the director and genre, announced by a Production Weekly Twitter message on August 10. The bare IMDB entry gives you an idea of how little is known about the film. Isopods are crustaceans, mostly very small. Pillbugs are the best-known:

probably followed by the "giant" deep-sea ones:

which do look a little scary but are only about a foot long. My speculation is that if the film involves actual isopods at all, it'll be a ginormous version of the deep-sea ones or a horde of the parasitic isopods which suck fish blood, suddenly bent on destroying humankind.

We shall see. Maybe it'll be like one of those 1970's ecological horror films like Frogs ("Today the pond! Tomorrow the world!) or Night of the Lepus:

Bio-Zombie: Hong Kong Horror-Comedy

2010-08-22T17:20:00.000-04:00

A 1998 feature from director Wilson Yip, Bio Zombie follows the misadventures of Woody (Jordan Tan) and Bee (Sam Lee), slackers who unwittingly set off a zombie plague at the mall where they sell bootleg DVDs. Along with their fellow retail workers, the pair battle the undead with everything from hacksaws to power drills.

The result is a little like a Shaun of the Dead/Dawn of the Dead combination, but while Woody and Bee are engaging protagonists and there are some genuine laughs, a lack of substance and lame zombie effects make Bio-Zombie a pale and sickly creation compared to either of those films.

Dead-Alive: Peter Jackson's Zombie Movie

2010-08-14T11:42:00.000-04:00

Along with Meet the Feebles (1990), 1992's Dead Alive (also known as Braindead) proves that Peter Jackson has a twisted sense of humor, and we can all be relieved that he didn't direct The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy as some kind of ghastly parody.

In Dead Alive, the zombie plague is transmitted by “Sumatran Rat-Monkeys”; a zoo specimen in

New Zealand

bites Lionel's (Timothy Balme) domineering mother (Elizabeth Moody), who infects others, starting a chain of walking corpses. Lionel tries desperately to keep his romantic interest Paquita (Diana Peñalver) and his small town neighbors from finding out by confining the zombies to his mother's house. At first he succeeds, but in the end the film turns into a gore fest in which Lionel fights zombies by the hundreds, at one point with a lawnmower strapped to his chest.

The actors are pretty cheesy, but this is in keeping with Dead Alive's aesthetic theme. There’s an engaging 1950’s feel that adds a lot to the film. Dead Alive is reminiscent of The Evil Dead movies in that it's full of over the top slapstick humor and creative bloodiness. Unique and entertaining, it's definitely worth checking out.

Harper Cemetery

2010-08-08T10:15:00.000-04:00

I've never found cemeteries very spooky unless they're on film and zombies are clawing their way up out of the ground. Instead, they (the older ones, anyway) are full of historical interest ("stories in stone") and tend to be peaceful, sometimes beautiful places. I have yet to visit any historic cemeteries that compare to those in New Orleans, but I recently went back to an early favorite, Harper Cemetery in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia.

Looking at Harper's Ferry from Maryland Heights across the Potomac River, Harper Cemetery is on the hill on the upper right. Named for Robert Harper, who founded the town, the cemetery has graves dating from the late 1700's (including Harper's).

There are no ostentatious tombs or statuary, and the stone below is probably the most elaborate.

All in all, a pretty pleasant spot to be buried.

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974)

2010-07-28T13:10:00.000-04:00

A Spanish/Italian production shot in England, this film follows the travails of a hippie (Ray Lovelock) and his chance traveling companion (Christine Galbo) who become suspects in a series of murders committed by the living dead. They are relentlessly pursued by the zombies and by The Man, primarily a relentless police inspector played by Arthur Kennedy. The zombies are a product of a new agricultural device to kill insects, a nice idea which may have been produced by the burgeoning environmental consciousness of the time.

Director Jorge Grau borrows somewhat from Night of the Living Dead, but also creates realistically creepy zombies and novel scares, with harrowing sequences in a mortuary basement and a hospital. Darkly atmospheric and full of nicely-done grue, it's well worth seeing.

Note: This is a zombie film of many names. Besides Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, it's also been titled Don't Open the Window and The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, among others.

"Let Me In" Article on Associated Content

2010-07-20T15:35:00.000-04:00

I added this article on the Let The Right One In remake to my Associated Content work.

Hidden Floor: Another Asian Hair Ghost Movie

2010-07-17T14:34:00.000-04:00

Hidden Floor (2006) is a Korean production which, while enjoyable, breaks no new ground in the genre of vengeful Asian female ghosts with long black hair covering their faces (onryō). Apparently, the wild-haired nature of these ghosts comes from the fact that traditionally, Japanese women only let their hair down when being buried. Hence, long hair, and usually a white funeral shroud, became synonymous with frightening spirits... like this one:

However, many Asian horror viewers have called for a little more variety after seeing onryō in Ju-on, the American remake, Dark Water, the American remake of that, Ringu, the American remake of that, and numerous others.

Anyway, on to the film in question. Hidden Floor is the story of single mother Min-young (Seo-hyeong Kim) and her six year old daughter Juhee (Yoo-jung Kim), who move into a new apartment in a recently renovated but underpopulated apartment building. Juhee remarks that there is no fourth floor button in the elevator, and her mother explains that "four" sounds like "death" in Chinese; hence there is no fourth floor. Or... is there?

Soon, strange noises from beneath the floor, the crazy-eyed neighbor with a bagful of syringes, mysterious deaths, and the onryō's appearance start wearing on Min-young's nerves. Juhee, on the other hand, starts getting weird and proclaims that she never wants to leave. One of the nice touches of the film is that it plays not only on traditional fears, but also the fears of working parents: child neglect, untrustworthy babysitters, and so on.

The concept of a hidden floor is also a nice one, and there are a few good scares. There are also too many "boo!" moments, but the film does manage to sustain an atmosphere of dread for a while. Some of the scenes and plot devices are a little reminiscent of The Shining, and the apartment building's florescent lights serve to make the shadows more scary. However, the film turns into a typical vengeful ghost story, in which the hidden floor isn't really necessary. It ends up being entertaining, but could easily be confused with many other films in the onryō genre.

Let Me In: Distributor Problems?

2010-07-09T12:34:00.000-04:00

According to this article from today's LA Times, Let Me In's distributor, Overture, is undergoing financial difficulties and restructuring, which could potential limit the number of theaters in which Let Me In is released. The article also has a good quote from producer Donna Gigliotti in response to those bemoaning the remake of Let The Right One In: "We're incredibly admiring of the original, but... that picture grossed $2 million. It's not like we're remaking "Lawrence of Arabia."

Let Me In: Hammer’s Let the Right One In Remake

2010-07-08T11:49:00.001-04:00

Releasing October 1st, and written and directed by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield), Let Me In is a remake of the excellent 2008 Swedish film Let The Right One In, which was in turn based on the 2004 Swedish novel Lat den Ratte Komma In (Let the Right One In) by John Ajvide Lindqvist.

When interviewed back in 2008, the director of the original was understandably not happy. Lindqvist was also interviewed and gave a sort of non-opinion on the remake and some insight into the story. It's an interesting interview.

For Lindqvist, the story was a very personal one, and this is what makes it so good, in a world of fairly generic vampire stories. Poignant and tender, it captures a certain mood at a certain age, and it’s really more about being a lonely outsider desperately waiting for someone than it is about vampires.

I could rant about remakes, but instead I’ll just say that I’ve already seen the original, so I don’t need to see the English-language version. The remake might be good, but I doubt it will capture the delicate and understated nature of the original.

Hammer Films Rises from the Dead

2010-07-06T15:25:00.000-04:00

After years of suspended animation, Hammer Films has returned to life. Their first feature film in 30 years is Wake Wood, a sort of pagan horror movie filmed in Ireland. It will soon be released in the U.K. More interestingly, Hammer veteran Christopher Lee (above) and Hillary Swank are starring in The Resident, a thriller opening in late 2010. Even more interestingly, a Hammer remake of the Swedish vampire movie Let The Right One In will be opening in October. An interview with the head Hammer person is here. I've only seen a smattering of Hammer's classic productions, and I have to say that with the exception of Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter, I wasn't entirely impressed. Maybe it was just the luck of the draw - I do want to get around to seeing The Vampire Lovers and the rest of the Karnstein Trilogy. I'll have to check out The Resident (trailer here), but I won't be seeing Let Me In. More on this later.

A New Contender for "Worst Horror Novel I've Read"

2010-07-04T12:44:00.000-04:00

Please stay away from Brian Keene. I'd never heard of him, but had some store credit to burn at the Other Used Book Store (the one with higher prices and that one woman behind the counter who always looks at me like I'm there to steal something). I noticed City Of The Dead. It had zombies, so I grabbed it. This was a big mistake.

Keene, who apparently won a Stoker Award for his first zombie book, The Rising, appears to be trying to channel bad zombie movies into print. It doesn't work, at least not with his writing. It's awful. The characters are cardboard, with dialogue so atrocious I'm not sure Keene has ever heard another human being speak. An entire book that's just one extended "flee/fight the zombies" scene would get boring even in capable hands. In Keene's world, the zombies are a result of demonic possession, which isn't a bad idea, but you can't really take them seriously because they talk (with Keene's cheesy dialogue), sing, burn down houses (and even sing while burning down houses: "the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire"), and are led by a demon who calls himself "Ob of the Obots". Keene exercises the most creativity in going for the gross-out, with necrophilia and maggot-filled zombie testicles. Oh, and everybody dies in the end.

The only silver lining in this frankly stupid book is for budding horror authors, who will realize after reading it that you really can get anything published (at least, if it's about zombies or vampires).

The Shadow of the Wind

2010-06-19T17:30:00.002-04:00

Back at the tiny used bookstore, pressed for time and crowded by not one, but several other customers (literally a crowd in this particular bookstore), I grabbed an offering from the horror section, a 2001 Spanish novel called The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. It stood out from all the Kings and Koontzs with an intriguing cover illustration of a foggy street and jacket blurbs with high praise. I thought I'd stumbled on something interesting.

It wasn't really horror. There were some Gothic trappings (abandoned mansions, crypts, family secrets, lots of fog), and an attempt at magical realism (which I don't much care for even when it is well done). Although generally well reviewed, Zafón's first novel is disappointing, 506 pages that strive hard for style and lay on the literary allusions, but end up feeling shallow and highly repetitive. It starts out when the protagonist Daniel is ten years old (although you couldn't tell this by the way Zafón has him speak), taken by his father to a mysterious book collection to select a rare book of his very own. He chooses a title by Julian Carax, and very, very slowly begins to find out more about the failed author and to be drawn in to mystery and danger. Occasionally, Zafón delivers a felicitous or humorous phrase, but overall the characters are thin, I didn't feel for them, and Daniel's excruciatingly slow quest to unravel the mystery of Carax's life made me want to flip to the end after roughly 150 pages.

So much for my hopes of stumbling on something interesting. It was a little like finding an intriguing shell on the beach and having it break into little pieces when you pick it up, or maybe like opening a nicely wrapped present to find a pair of bargain store socks.

Review of "Dead Snow" on Associated Content

2010-06-18T15:41:00.000-04:00

I published a slightly expanded review of Dead Snow on AC. Apparently the film's director, Tommy Wirkola, is now directing something called Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, which, if it ever actually comes to fruition, will likely be pretty bad.

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

2010-06-11T15:41:00.001-04:00

In Drag Me to Hell, Sam Raimi returns to his roots (along with brother Ivan, who co-wrote it along with Army of Darkness (1992)). The Raimis completed the script soon after Army of Darkness, but were sidetracked by other projects. I’m glad they finally got around to it.

Christine (Alison Lohman) has a mundane existence as a loan officer until she causes an old Gypsy, Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) to be evicted. Mrs. Ganush, perhaps overreacting slightly, puts the curse of the Lamia, the “black goat” on Christine, vowing that she will be sent to Hell in three days.

Disbelieving at first, Christine is forced to acknowledge the seriousness of her situation as the Lamia begins to torment her, the demon’s manifestations increasing as the deadline approaches. Can Christine negate the curse with the aid of the mystic Rham Jas (Dileep Rao) and her boyfriend Clay (Justin Long)? Or will the Lamia succeed in dragging her to Hell?

In Drag Me to Hell, Raimi has returned to his element. Shades of the Evil Dead movies are everywhere. The fear of old people is once again used to good effect (the vengeful Mrs. Ganush echoes the farmer’s wife in the basement from Evil Dead). There is a sly mention of a cabin in the woods, and Raimi’s yellow 1973 Oldsmobile even makes an appearance as it has in many of his films. His inventive camera work has not flagged, nor has his penchant for grue. Watching Mrs. Ganush try to gum Christine to death when she loses her false teeth is particularly disturbing.

What has improved from the Evil Dead movies is the characterization and acting (no offense to Bruce Campbell). Christine is a more fleshed out character than many a horror movie damsel in distress, trying to escape from her accent and roots as a farm girl and former pork queen as well as from the curse. Raimi skillfully adds her anxiety to impress her boyfriend’s parents and get a promotion to the rest of the dread, and Alison Lohman does an excellent job in the part. Justin Long gives a very natural performance as Christine’s sweet, geeky boyfriend, and Lorna Raver, veteran of wide range of TV shows, seems to delight in the leering and snapping that the role of Mrs. Ganush demands.

Drag Me to Hell is much better than any recent horror movie I’ve seen- the Raimi humor is still strong, the story and script are good, sets, lighting, and special effects are all masterfully done, there are Gypsy curses, flies, gore, foreclosures, obnoxious bosses, scheming coworkers, and other demons. The only (slight) flaw is an over-reliance on Mrs. Ganush jumping out at Christine throughout the film. I kept wondering “Where will she pop out next?” and “Can I make a drinking game out of this?” Still, it’s highly enjoyable, especially when Raimi lets out all the stops for an over-the-top séance. He hasn’t lost his talent for making you laugh at the same time you’re getting the bejesus scared out of you.

Heart-Shaped Box

2010-05-31T09:58:00.001-04:00

I read a review of Heart-Shaped Box when it came out in 2007, thought it sounded interesting, and promptly forgot about it. I was pleased to find the paperback edition in one of the two used bookstores within driving distance, the one that is so tiny browsing is almost impossible if there are any other customers.

In the novel, an aging rocker with a taste for the macabre and the unlikely stage name of Judas Coyne buys a purported ghost in a box from an online auction site. He soon realizes that he's being targeted by vengeful relatives of his ex-girlfriend, who committed suicide, and that the ghost is real. The rest of the novel depicts Coyne, along with his current girlfriend and faithful dogs, attempting to escape the vengeful ghost.

Heart-Shaped Box is an action-packed, inventive novel that is difficult to put down, as the hunted humans travel the south looking for a way to banish their pursuer. There are some extremely scary sequences, and some of the best are some of the more subtle, such as when the ghost first appears in Coyne's darkened hallway. Along with the horror, Hill writes with a great deal of humor and poignancy, as Coyne is forced to examine his life and relationships past and present, as he struggles to avoid losing them.

My only (minor) quibbles are that the frantic pace of the action sometimes takes away from the horror, and that sometimes villains are more frightening when they're portrayed with dimensions, not just evil and crazy. Still, this is an engrossing, well-written, and scary read.

Review of Showtime's "Masters of Horror" on AC

2010-05-29T12:03:00.000-04:00

With some misgivings, I've started writing articles on various subjects for Associated Content. I recently added a derisive review of Dance of the Dead, one of the worst entries in Showtime's hit or miss "Masters of Horror" series. The link is here.

Tombs of the Blind Dead

2010-05-25T19:54:00.000-04:00

This 1971 film is the first installment of Spanish writer-director Amando de Ossorio’s four-part zombie epic. The zombies are withered, wispy-bearded Knights Templars, who have made a pact with the Devil, drinking blood to become immortal. Unfortunately for them, they are also blind (the Devil is like that). ”Don’t let them hear your heart beating!” is the tag line. A young camper (María Elena Arpón) vanishes after wandering into the crumbling castle where the dead lurk, and her friends must solve the mystery of her disappearance. There are some genuinely scary scenes and a nicely grim ending, but this is a ‘70s exploitation film with gratuitous cheesecake and violence towards women, not a classic. Still, where else can you see blind zombie knights on horseback?

The Last Man on Earth

2010-05-10T20:01:00.001-04:00

Vincent Price plays the titular protagonist in this 1964 film based on Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend. Price is the lone survivor of biological warfare which has turned the populace into ghouls. Although the ghouls are as much vampires as zombies, George Romero was obviously inspired by the plot and particularly by the scenes of shambling undead trying to get into Price's fortified bungalow. Price does well portraying a lonely, half-crazed man grimly hanging on against the odds, but the film overall is a little slow and lackluster. The similarities between it and Night of the Living Dead are interesting, but for entertainment, read Matheson's novel instead. And don't bother with the Will Smith version, either.

The Astro-Zombies

2010-04-04T10:54:00.000-04:00

This mind-rotting bit of camp trash from 1968 features John Carradine as a mad NASA scientist creating bizarre, machete-wielding undead for no particular reason and Tura Satana, best known for her role in Russ Meyer's Faster Pussycat Kill!..kill!, as a secret agent. It inspired a song by The Misfits, but it won't inspire you to do anything but stop watching.

The Plague of the Zombies

2010-03-21T06:30:00.001-04:00

From 1966, this is a rare zombie offering from Hammer Studios. Animated by voodoo, the dead are used as slave labor in a Cornish tin mine. Andre Morell gives a strong performance as the indomitable doctor who matches wits with sinister zombie master John Carson. The film is atmospheric but the zombies are slightly boring, except for one memorable sequence in which undead hands begin to sprout from the grave like pale flowers.

Dead Snow: My First Nazi Zombie Movie

2010-03-09T11:41:00.000-05:00

Somehow I've managed to avoid the strange sub-genre of Nazi zombie movies until now. I'd heard of a few, like Jesus Franco's 1982 Oasis of the Zombies, but I thought they were a thing of the past. Apparently they never die.

Dead Snow is a 2009 Norwegian horror comedy (or at least, it has some humor), with the standard plot of a group of young people spending time at an isolated cabin with no cell phone reception (in this case, it's in the scenic, snowy mountains). The male characters are cardboard (self-sufficient outdoorsman, film geek, horny guy, medical student afraid of blood), and the female characters are hardly distinguishable from each other (the one with dreadlocks, the blond one, the other one). They joke knowingly about the traditional horror film setting they're in, which would have been nice if the script had then eschewed the tropes for something unexpected.

Instead, after the traditional cryptic warning from a random grizzled guy, Nazi zombies erupt from the snow and attack. The film is visually appealing, the special effects are good (realistic entrails are liberally used), and there are a few humorous and unexpected touches, but overall there's not much novel here and the end result is mediocre.

Plan Nine from Outer Space: The Worst Zombie Movie?

2010-02-27T13:38:00.000-05:00

Made even more infamous by Tim Burton's 1994 biopic of director Ed Wood, Plan 9 (1959) is often dubbed one of the worst movies ever made. Aliens attempting to contact Earth are angered at not getting a response; to show they mean business, they start bringing Earthlings back from the dead. Foremost among the undead is Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson, made iconic by his performance here; other notable zombies include Vampira (the ur-Elvira) and, briefly, Bela Lugosi (who died before filming was complete). Look for Ed Wood's wife's chiropractor as Lugosi's unconvincing stand-in, as well as flying saucers on strings and a plethora of other goofs. Plan 9 is good for a laugh, if nothing else.

I Walked with a Zombie

2010-02-20T13:37:00.000-05:00

From 1943, this is the second in famed producer Val Lewton's regrettably small body of work with RKO. Lewton mixes voodoo with a bit of Jane Eyre in the story of Betsy (the doe-eyed Frances Dee), a young nurse who comes to the Caribbean island of St. Sebastian to care for the catatonic wife (Christine Gordon) of a sugar planter (Tom Conway). In her efforts to cure the woman, Betsy comes across a nest of secrets on the idyllic island. With well-realized characters, a multifaceted plot, and wonderful lighting effects, I Walked with a Zombie is one of Lewton's best. And that makes it very good indeed.

New Film Review @ TFTMP

2010-02-15T18:56:00.002-05:00

My review of the Hong Kong horror-comedy Bio Zombie is out in the new Valentine's Day issue of Tales from the Moonlit Path... Which is now (2011) defunct, unfortunately.

White Zombie

2010-01-17T14:23:00.002-05:00

Zombie movies have been a popular staple of the horror genre since George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) shambled onto the screen. The visceral fascination induced by watching a few isolated survivors fight off hordes of undead spawned a host of imitators. Like the zombies themselves, zombie movies seem to multiply until it's hard to keep track of them all. I'll be reviewing some of the most obscure, unique, or just plain odd.

White Zombie (1932) has a place in cinematic history as the very first zombie movie. No Romero-esque rotting ghouls here- these zombies are the traditional sort, entranced by a magic powder to do the bidding of the sinister Haitian planter Legendre (Bela Lugosi). When Legendre becomes enamoured with a young American, Madeline (Madge Bellamy), he uses his powder on her, tricking her fiance Neil (John Harron) into thinking she is dead. Can Neil discover the ruse and rescue Madeline from Legendre's evil clutches? Many viewers will find White Zombie overly melodramatic, but the dreamlike chiaroscuro images and Lugosi (thoroughly enjoying playing evil) make the film a pleasure to watch.

Carnival of Souls

2010-01-11T17:49:00.002-05:00

She emerges from the murk of a swollen river, mud-streaked, her pale bony face like a skull, enormous eyes staring in confusion and shock.
Mary Henry (Candace Hilligloss) is surfacing from a car submerged after plunging off a bridge in a drag racing accident. Of the three women within, she is the only one to escape. So begins Carnival of Souls (1962), an understated, sometimes surreal film which manages to deliver real chills despite being shot in three weeks with a minuscule budget, a cast of mostly amateur and B-grade actors, and a director (Herk Harvey) whose ouevre otherwise consists of over 400 industrial and educational films ((Carnival of Souls is bracketed by Jamaica, Haiti, and the Lesser Antilles (1962) and Pork: The Meal with a Squeal (1963)). The score, by Gene Moore, is made up entirely of organ music, cold, sinister, and unrelenting. Candace Hilligloss is an excellent lead for a horror film ((she also starred in The Curse of the Living Corpse (1964)), a woman who would be beautiful if she didn’t so closely resemble a mannequin with a wig, staring silently with wide lifeless eyes.
Mary Henry leaves town soon after the tragedy, strangely emotionless, perhaps traumatized by events. She drives to Utah to start a new life as a church organist, although without much religious fervor (“To me, a church is just a place of business.”). Here her troubles begin in earnest.
A strange and frightening (and perhaps dead) Man (Herk Harvey) haunts her, appearing and disappearing, his eyes burning into her soul. The enormous, abandoned carnival pavilion outside of town (“played” by the Saltair Amusement Park outside Salt Lake City, which has since burned and been rebuilt on a smaller scale), a hulking dark shadow on the shore of the Great Salt Lake, exerts a terrible fascination on her.
Her boarding house neighbor (Sidney Berger, who also had a part in 1998's Wes Craven Presents: Carnival of Souls, a film with a dissimilar plot and no redeeming characteristics) at first provides some distraction from her fears, but becomes disturbing in his over-persistent quest for her favors, and metamorphoses into a potential rapist with a drinking problem.
But this is nothing compared with the terror to come. The world changes, and she is temporarily cut off from humanity, unseen and unhearing, walking through the town in total silence, ignored by all (“It was as though for a time I didn’t exist!”). Has she been driven mad by her brush with death? Why does she feel so alone, so empty?
While sound and communication return, things continue to decay. The concerned Dr. Samuels (Stan Levitt) tries to sooth her nerves and diagnose her illness, but it is her idea to cure her problems by facing the carnival pavilion by the lake to which her attention is so strangely drawn, a spooky, desolate jumble of abandoned buildings and rides. Watching her walk through these empty spaces of shadow and silence is almost more terrifying than what is to come, full of palpable menace that brings to mind the oppressive, deserted hallways of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining(1980).
The final ten minutes of the film begin as a descent into madness, an exercise in horror mounting excruciatingly. The final three minutes, unfortunately, detract from the overall atmosphere. There’s a silly supernatural hide-and-go-seek scene not in keeping with the brooding horror of the rest of the film, and finally an unnecessary bit of explanation to clue in those who failed to grasp the not-so-subtle plot points beforehand.
Despite these flaws, despite a very simple plot, despite generally mediocre dialogue and some off-putting flubs (Hilligloss’s hair appears suspiciously dry as she emerges from the river), Carnival of Souls somehow succeeds in frightening. This is not overt, go for the gross-out horror, but a well-crafted and quite creepy supernatural thriller to raise the hairs on the back of your neck.
As an added bonus, it’s somehow encouraging that a group of low-grade actors and a director of educational films, on a tiny budget and a few weeks time, could produce something creepily enjoyable enough to become a cult classic. One can only imagine they had a lot of fun doing it, too. Herk Harvey certainly seems to be enjoying himself, in a macabre sort of way, smiling an evil little smile as he stares into the camera in his ghoulish pancake makeup, far, far away from the mundane concerns of Why Study Home Economics? (1955) and What About Prejudice? (1959).
Carnival of Souls is available as a free download from www.archive.org.

This review was originally published at the (now defunct) horror webzine Tales from the Moonlit Path.

The Road

2010-01-07T19:38:00.002-05:00

It's a post-apocalyptic world, but the apocalypse isn't due to zombies for a change. In fact, there's no explanation given for humanity's downfall in Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winner The Road. It doesn't really matter. You can insert your own reason: divine wrath, supervolcanoes, total war, environmental devastation, etc. The important thing is that it has happened, and the sad remnants of the human race are engaged in a nasty, seemingly futile struggle for survival in a dead world. The tale of a father and son journeying in desperation through the cold and the ash is the most gripping novel I've read in a long time, full of incredible sadness, beauty, and horror. Reading it is a little like being punched repeatedly in the stomach. Nevertheless, it remains quiet and understated, which contributes to the sense of reality - McCarthy leaves you feeling that this is exactly how a post-apocalyptic world would be.

A Review of Kwaidan (1964)

2010-01-04T20:09:00.000-05:00

The word kwaidan denotes ghost stories, particularly those from Japan’s Edo Period. The film is based on stories collected by Lafcadio Hearn (his Kwaidan: Stories And Studies Of Strange Things was published in 1904, the year of his death; some of the film’s stories are from earlier collections). Hearn, a journalist, traveled to Japan on assignment in 1890. The country enthralled him and he never left, working as a teacher and writer, marrying a local and becoming a naturalized citizen, even taking a Japanese name.
Kwaidan the film consists of four of Hearn’s stories:

In “The Black Hair”, a faithless samurai (Rentaro Mikuni) leaves his wife (Michiyo Aratama) to marry a wealthier woman (Misako Watanabe). Unhappy with the exchange of love for gold, tormented by guilt, by visions of his wife, and by the sounds of her loom, he eventually returns to the dusty desolate house where they lived, hoping against hope to be taken back.

“The Woman of the Snow” is the best of the stories, a classic fairy tale filmed in an inventive fashion. Two woodcutters (Tatsuya Nakadai and Jun Hamamura) are caught out in the forest in the midst of a terrible blizzard. Stumbling through the darkened, silent woods, with eerie auroras like staring eyes on the horizon, they take shelter in an empty hut, only to be set upon by a spirit of the snow (Keiko Kishi). She agrees to spare the life of the younger woodcutter if he never tells anyone about her. As the years pass and he settles down with a wife and children, the woodcutter grows complacent…

“Hoichi the Earless” tells of a blind novice monk, Hoichi (Katsuo Nakamura) so musically talented that the ancient ghosts of warriors killed in a sea battle rise up and command him to sing the tale of their battle, night after night. It is an offer he can’t refuse. Can the head monk (Takashi Shimura) save him before the ghosts claim him for their own?

“In a Cup of Tea” finishes off the quartet with a writer telling the tale of a samurai (Kanemon Nakamura) who sees an odd reflection in his teacup. Soon the intruder appears in person, followed by other slippery spirits who are difficult to get rid of. How will the story end?

Kwaidan, directed by Masaki Kobayashi, was an expensive, ambitious production in its time. The cinematography is expressionistic, the performances are highly stylized. The film was shot primarily on huge indoor stages, and there is an air of the theater to the stories, with obviously artificial sets, backdrops, and lighting effects. Kwaidan won the Special Jury Prize at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival, and received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film in 1966.

The main flaw in Kwaidan is the slow pace of the stories; they are all simple tales, reliant on sumptuous settings and imagery rather than action or dialogue. Sometime the images sabotage the stories: “Hoichi the Earless” spends far too much time setting up the history of the ghosts by panning over paintings of the ancient sea battle, the snow spirit has a stiff-armed way of walking that looks silly rather than supernatural, and the supernatural effects in “The Black Hair” are hardly apparent at all. Kwaidan is an interesting piece of exotica, but in the end it may be more satisfying to simply read Hearn’s stories and let one’s own imagination provide the imagery.

"Look! It's moving. It's alive. IT'S ALIVE!"

2010-01-03T20:40:00.000-05:00

Hello and welcome to my blog. My purpose here is to survey the best and worst in horror movies and literature, the old and the new, from the hair-raisingly scary to the dreamily supernatural. I want to share my love of horror with you, dear reader, and perhaps steer you towards some works you're not familiar with. Likewise, I hope to discover something rich and strange, obscure masterpieces of terror and the supernatural, as I go. Join me, won't you?

PS - The blog title refers to Robert Aickman's 1975 collection, Cold hand in mine: Strange stories, which contains some of his best, including my personal favorite, "The Hospice".