From Zombos' Closet

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Dreamin' Demon

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, Morbid from Dreamin' Demon tells us why he mixes true crime with his horror. Be warned; what follows is not for the squeamish.

The reason why I blog about the subjects I do are a direct result of Steven Spielberg and the 1989 death of a 16-year-old stripper. My love affair with horror began when my parents decided to take me and my brother to see Jaws at the Thunderbird Drive-In. My brother fell asleep, I screamed throughout.

The resulting nightmares eventually faded and my love of horror was born. Not just in film, but in about everything. I used to get those UFO and ghost story books in the school library. Fascinated by the blurry photos of objects in the sky or white blobs in the stairwells of old houses, I loved reading the stories of the Green Man and The Dead Hitchhiker or The Devil's Footprint. This continued as my mother, not having anyone around who liked the horror genre, took me along to see whatever horror film came out. Classics like The Shining, Friday the 13th, The Exorcist, God rest her old-school, horror-loving soul and not caring about the looks she would get as her young son stuffed his face with Mike & Ikes while staring wide-eyed at the young girl on the screen raping herself with a crucifix.

Movie Review: Frostbite (Frostbiten 2006) Swedish Vampire Chills

"The night that all the film crew will remember is when we shot a scene with a vampire who had clambered up a lamppost after devouring a messy meal (another dog). This shot involved a large crane and the actor, who was wearing a thin layer of clothing, was strapped to the lamppost.

"At the time, the temperature was a relatively mild 10-12 degrees below zero, but during the shoot, rain came down from the heavens. I have never witnessed anything like it, and I have no idea how rain can fall when it is way below 12 degrees centigrade. The effect of the rain is that when it lands on anything--particularly metal--it freezes instantly, covering everything with ice. One of the crew very aptly described the rain as napalm, but its effects are the other way round. Within seconds, the camera, crane and crew were covered in ice.

"The poor actor, who was strapped to the lamppost, covered head-to-toe in fake blood, froze in thirty seconds. And that was his first day of shooting and introduction to Frostbite. We actually had to pry off the camera assistant who was stuck to the crane--he was stuck fast to his seat. I think it will be some time before we do another film in the snow" (from the interview with director Anders Banke conducted by Jay Slater, in The Dark Side, Issue 125, 2007).

Zombos Says: Very Good

Once I got past the incongruity of the wise-cracking dogs, I realized Frostbiten, directed by Anders Banke, is meant to be fangs-in-cheek fun, just shown seriously. If you can imagine Fright Night with more blood and bite to it you will know what I mean. This unorthodox blending of opposites makes Frostbiten an off-kilter visual experience: dogs chat it up with Sebastian as he slowly becomes a vampire thirsting for blood; an incredulous police officer is heavily, and comically, outfitted in riot gear before he interrogates Sebastian, now a full-blown vampire; teenagers party it up with helium-inhaled voices one minute, then climb all over the house--really climb--as vampires the next, thanks to Sebastian's stash of stolen red pills. Sebastian (Jonas Karlstrom) is the medical intern who swallows one of the pills when he should have known better than to swallow one of those pills.

Frostbiten is filled with unusual touches that go beyond talking dogs, lending this first Swedish venture into the vampire genre an offbeat quality--lying somewhere between The Fearless Vampire Killers and 30 Days of Night--making it hard to explain but easy to describe.

It begins in 1944 with a skirmish in the Ukraine. Soldiers fleeing to safety come across a snowbound cabin, find no one in it, although the stove is hot, and assume whoever lived there fled when they saw the soldiers. Unable to sleep, they start to wonder how the people in the cabin could leave it since it was snowbound. The answer, of course, is they did not leave, which leads us to the present day. All of this happens before the title credits role, including a surprising visual flourish that sweeps our view from inside the cabin, quickly through its small window, and up to the winter moon; and to present day Northern Sweden, where dawn is a month away.

Annika (Petra Nielsen) and her quiet daughter, Saga (Grete Havneskold), move to a small town so Annika can work at a hospital where renowned geneticist Gerhard Beckert is conducting research. At school, Vega (Emma Aberg--exuding a sultry, classic Hammer glamour, appeal) takes a fancy to the more reserved, but cute, Saga and invites her to an upcoming party.

Vega is the wildest one in the school clique and insists Sebastian bring suitable drugs from the hospital to liven up the upcoming party. What Sebastion eventually finds are the red pills Beckert has devised as a sort of vampire vaccine. With Vega's help, the pills eventually make it to the party, and into the punch bowl. The action now moves in-between teenagers at the party getting a blood rush, Sebastian slowly turning into a vampire after swallowing one of the pills, and Annika discovering Beckert's secret.

Sebastian's awkward situation--he is meeting his girlfriend's religious parents for the first time over dinner at their apartment--is the funniest: crucifixes adorn the walls making Sebastian uncomfortable; when he shakes her father's hand his hand starts smoking; the main course for dinner includes sea trout braised in garlic; and when he succumbs to his blood lust by draining their little pet bunny dry, their pet dog thanks him for getting rid of the attention-getting hippity-hopper. His thirst for more blood lands him in police custody after killing a dog. Seen at the top of a lamppost, he is apologetic to the dog's owner, who stares at him in disbelief.

Back at the party, Saga is locked in the bathroom, helping a teenager going through the vampire metamorphosis, when the punch bowl is empty and the pills have taken full effect. Suddenly plunged in darkness, the teenager's glowing red eyes are the only thing to be seen. When the light comes back on, the teenager is on the ceiling and looking for more punch. There is blood everywhere as Saga makes her way through the carnage. Vega, now a real vamp, goes after her, leading to a serious, but comical, denouement with a garden gnome. As the police arrive, and call for "so much f**king backup," they have their hands full as one vampire quips to them "Don't worry. It'll soon be over. Dawn is just a month away."

The vampires in Frostbiten hop around in high jumps, have vampire-vision--a reddish, squiggly haze--along with glowing red eyes, super hearing (there are humorous subtitles as Sebastian listens to his neighbors), and their faces morph into snarling, devilish creatures as their teeth stretch longer when the need for blood takes hold.

Frostbiten captures a cheekiness for nocturnal sanguine horror that you do not often see nowadays. It delights in mixing its bloody discharges with edgy wit and humor, and showing it through a veneer of seriousness. All of this brings a fresh approach to an old genre.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Cinema Fromage

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, League of Tana Tea Drinkers' member Casey Criswell of Cinema Fromage shares his nerd love for cheesy horror. Bring the crackers.

Horror wasn't the driving force to my movie watching ways back in the day, but it was definitely a factor. I watched movies, period, and was happy to do so. When the VCR became an affordable venture and mom and pop video stores started to run rental deals to lure you away from the new chain stores cropping up, this led to countless hours spent wandering the stacks and being overcome by the wonderment of the gruesome scenes depicted in ink upon the old cardboard canvases that was the VHS box. More than anything, it was the artwork that lured me in every time. They say never judge a book by its cover but that is what I did. If the cover looked amazing, I had to see the movie.

U.S. Stamps Honor Twilight Zone and Others

The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, appear on one of 20 first-class stamps released by the U.S. Post Office, featuring 1950's hit television shows. The stamps include images of Dragnet, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Honeymooners, I Love Lucy, Lassie, The Lone Ranger, Ozzie and Harriet, Howdy Doody, and Perry Mason.

(Don't miss the Edgar Allan Poe 200th birthday commemorative stamp either.)

Here's the press info on the classic TV series:

One of America’s most revered canines was among 20 television icons that came out of retirement today to be honored on the U.S. Postal Service’s Early TV Memories 44-cent commemorative First-Class stamp sheet. Lassie participated in the first-day-of-issue dedication ceremony that took place at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in North Hollywood.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Billy Loves Stu

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, League of Tana Tea Drinkers' member Michael Petrucelli of Billy Loves Stu looks for the gay and lesbian subtexts in horror movies as well as the 'straight' scares.

My love of horror began at a tender age. As a kid I was exposed to the classic Universal horror films Dracula, Frankenstein, etc) by my father. When these movies came on the television, he’d call me over and we’d watch together in the small living room of our row house in South Philadelphia. Often, my dad would add to the flavor of the films by talking like the characters, he did (and still does) a terrific Bela Lugosi as well as Boris Karloff. Later on, well after the movie had ended, he’d come into my room as I was preparing for bed, and freak me out by telling me that he was in the basement earlier and found machines that were probably once used to create a monster, or that he thought our next door neighbor was a vampire (our next door neighbor, Mr.Calabrese worked nights). Needless to say, I was mortified – and yet at the same time, I was fascinated. Many sleepless nights ensued (and I always kept my eyes peeled for Mr. Calabrese), but I never turned down an invitation to watch a scary movie with my dad.

There was this old movie theater a few blocks from where I grew up, you know, one of those palatial houses with marble arches and velvet curtains; and on the weekends, they’d show triple feature horror films, usually something from Hammer studios in England. Often, they would also incorporate a “spook show” between films (which was usually some poor usher made up like a low-rent werewolf walking up and down the aisles of the movie house) and give out prizes for those “brave enough” to make it through the afternoon of horrors. Over time, I accumulated dozens of cheesy door prizes that I displayed as proudly as some kids did with their baseball trophies.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Uranium Cafe

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, League of Tana Tea Drinkers' member Bill Courtney of the Uranium Cafe describes the influences, the places, and the challenges for keeping his love of horror and cult movies alive.

As a kid I was lucky enough to have a dad who was not the least bit interested in watching sports on TV over the weekends. He loved movies and comic books. This was in the 60’s and I grew up on a healthy diet of classic films, TV, and Marvel and DC comics. We had a b/w TV set with rabbit ears and basically three channels to choose programs from. Later, PBS would come along but who the hell ever really watched that. I grew up watching a variety of programs that included weekly showings of Sword and Sandal films, serial Westerns, and of course classic horror and sci-fi features.

A couple films I recall as being really shocking to me are actually pretty tame fare by today’s standards. One was The Mummy with Boris Karloff and in particular the scene where he suddenly rises up and peers into the camera. The other film, also with Karloff, was called Die, Monster, Die! And I recall being terrified to death, and dad telling me it was just a movie and it was all make believe. I would soon be saving up my lunch money from school and going to the local grocery stores and buying loads of comics and Warren Magazines. At the most I would save up two or three bucks but back then Famous Monsters of Filmland was .35 or .50 and I could get six or so comics for a dollar. Matinees were cheap and I remember watching more Spaghetti Westerns and B-horror movies than I can recall.

Movie Review: The Collector (2009) Have Trunk Will Travel

Zombos Says: Good

At the end of The Collector I felt cheated. I cannot tell you why as that would give the ending away. But here is a clue; in Sabotage, Alfred Hitchcock regretted blowing up the bus. While he wanted the audience to feel uncomfortable from the buildup of tension between the boy, the bus, and the bomb ticking away, he felt he cheated the audience by blowing up the bus, killing the boy and everyone on it. In a word, his payoff for putting the audience through the wringer was negative, not positive. Hitchcock realized he let his audience down: no one wanted to see the bomb go off after all that suspense.

In combining Cube-like lethal traps with a hint of Saw-styled ingenuity and malice, and yet another relentless masked-slasher victimizing a family in unsavory, bloodily grisly ways, Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton (Feast) do their darnedest to pulverize the audience with fears of helplessness, torture, and death. They almost succeed, but choose to blow up the bus by going the usual horror franchise-building byway at the end with a negative payoff. In their case, however, the bomb takes the form of a trunk for the one he always takes.

lucky survivor and continue on his bizarre journey to perdition (and potentially a hot franchise). He also likes to devise fiendish traps and set them throughout the house, though I am not sure why since he ties up his victims before he sets his don't-step-in-the-bear traps, don't-pick-up-the-phone traps, don't-step-in-the-glue-on-the-floor-because-it-burns-like-acid traps, don't-walk-into-the-razor-wire-strung-across doorway traps, and don't-go-near-the-window traps. Where he finds the energy and time to build all these devilish traps I do not know, but if he devoted it to stamp and coin collecting, even comic books, he would be awesome.

The uncomfortable--for us--increasing tension begins with the unexpected intrusion of an ex-convict looking to pay off his ex-wife's loan shark debt before midnight. His wife and daughter's lives depend on him completing his heist. While opening the safe, Arkin (Josh Stewart) hears screams and goes to investigate. After he realizes what is happening, he tries to help, but the Collector's traps are demoralizing and painful, and the people he tries to save do not trust him and are crazed from fear and pain, making them loud and unmanageable. The house is isolated, of course, so he needs to quickly make a decision whether to save them or himself.

He tries to leave and realizes he is also trapped in the house. How he narrowly escapes the Collector's traps while trying to evade capture, make the midnight deadline and save both families, including the little girl he had a tea-party with earlier that day, keeps his feet in motion, his breathing heavy, and his situation changing from unpleasant to bloody-hell messy unpleasant. Images of spiders and bugs crawl through the movie, and in one tender moment--for the Collector--the masked maniac lovingly frees a spider from the house into the yard. A thunderstorm provides classic gloom, and there is a gruesomely poetic revelation of a web-like trap, illuminated briefly from a flash of lightning, just before Arkin stumbles into it. 

The dilemma facing Arkin, to save both families or his own skin, is something not often seen in horror movie fare. It provides a catalyst for audience involvement that goes beyond vicarious body-count watching. When the Collector goes after the little girl, forcing Arkin to make difficult choices between physical safety and his conscience, it made me root for this home team to hit a home run.

But all Dunstan and Melton can do is get stranded at first base. They dote on the bloody-hell messy parts of the movie, replacing most of the suspense with typical--for a psycho-butcher-torturer movie--outcomes. Closeup views of lip sewing, chisel to teeth, shears poised to snip a pliers-held tongue, carving a roast without the roast, and, really, just about every dire torture-gore situation and its outcome we now anticipate due to their overuse is here in lavish closeup. It is stylish, it is done well, but it has all been done before.

So, I felt cheated. But I also felt like double-checking the doors before I went to bed, too.

Warning to cat lover's; don't see this movie. For dog lovers who like drool-dripping, snarling and snapping hounds on chain leashes, this one's for you.

Interview: The Sleeping Deep with J. B. Palmer

Jeffrey Blake Palmer's Lovecraftianesque The Sleeping Deep screenplay is winning a lot of film festival awards these days. Before his head swells bigger than a blowfish--what with all those kudos and attention--I thought it best to snatch him away from his busy schedule and lock him in the closet for a bit, until he answered a few questions about his work and his inspirations.

 

Tell us about the young monsterkid who grew up to be Jeffrey Blake Palmer.

Ooohh, perhaps my mother would be better suited to answer that question…

FADE IN:

I was born and grew up in the quaint New England mill town of Dover, New Hampshire, which I would later capture on film in my feature On the Fringe. It was idyllic, charming, safe. I was fond of dismantling anything electronic (radios in particular), doodling in my notebooks, goofing off around the neighborhood. Seems I was always lost in thought, my head cluttered with artsy-fartsy ideas all vying for attention. Definitely was a bit of a daydreamer. But I never terrorized the neighbors’ pets, only my younger brother.

I do have fond memories of spending Saturday afternoons during the summer watching Creature Double Feature on Channel 56 in our cool basement entertainment room. Man, those were the days.

Where does your ambition to film and script movies come from?

I think my ambition really boils down to embracing an artful life. Film and filmmaking is a collaboration and combination of so many disciplines, from composing musical scores to special effects to acting, costume design, writing… it’s truly a celebration of the spice in life.

The deal was sealed when I stumbled onto a film class in college and was surrounded by freaks, nerds, weirdos and misfits. I immediately decided to pursue a film degree at Keene State College, a small state school in south-western New Hampshire and I’ve been at it since.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Freddy In Space

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, blogger Johnny Boots of Freddy In Space reminds us of when colorful VHS tapes ruled the shelves, and all the straight to shelf DVD crap crowding the shelves today was only a twinkle in a lucrative genre's eyes.

My earliest horror memories pretty much all revolve around one character; Freddy Krueger. I have many fond memories of watching the Nightmare on Elm Street movies with my mom when I was probably far too young to be watching a burnt-faced razor-gloved man in a Christmas sweater slice and dice horny young sleeping teens. But that was my childhood and I cherish it to this day. Thankfully none of the movies ended up damaging me too bad, although I know some people that would disagree with that...

I can remember going into Blockbuster, what seemed like several times a week, and perusing the selection of sun faded horror VHS tapes, tapes I still hold on to and collect. My eyes would inevitably always end up on the section of flicks adorned with the image of Freddy Krueger and I would actually try and convince myself that I hadn't seen all of 'his' movies yet. I knew deep down that I had, and several times over a piece at that, but I wanted so badly to believe that one day a new Freddy adventure would magically pop up on the shelf. Sadly, it wouldn't be till many many years later that my wish actually came true. And you better believe that in 2003 when Freddy vs Jason came out, say what you want about the movie, it made me feel like that little creepy antisocial Freddy loving kid again, albeit in a much less appealing Blockbuster environment. That's what it's all about for me.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Love Train for the Tenebrous Empire

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, League of Tana Tea Drinkers' member Tenebrous Kate of Love Train for the Tenebrous Empire tells us about her love for the unusual. Hop aboard!

Between my Halloween-themed birthday parties, early interest in the creepiest fairy tales, and exposure to my Dad's incredible impersonation of Bela Lugosi's Dracula, I was pretty much fated from infancy to be some flavor of spooky. My youthful dreams of earning a living as a vampire hunter were squashed (I read pretty much every book filed under the Parapsychology & Occult section of my local library), so by the time I was fourteen, I began delving into the wild world of horror cinema in earnest.

Applying the same sort of tenacity to my movie-viewing that I'd put into my childhood reading, I methodically worked my way through the "Horror" category at a number of video rental stores. Unlike a lot of my horror-loving colleagues, I entirely missed out on the slasher flick craze due to parental protectiveness and a notoriously weak stomach for on-screen depictions of blood-and-guts. After dipping a toe in the waters of explicit fright films with "Suspiria" (I'd read laudatory words about this movie most likely in an issue of "Cinefantastique" or "Video Watchdog"), my love affair with off-the-wall exploitation epics was born.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Cinema Suicide

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, League of Tana Tea Drinkers' member Bryan White of Cinema Suicide tells us how he leveraged his love of horror into free stuff, a successful blog, and a lifelong passion.

My family picked up stakes when I was seven years old and moved us from Binghamton, New York, to the Lovecraftian seaside of Marblehead, Massachusetts. It took me no time at all to seek out the channels with the best cartoons and in the process of this Saturday morning exploration, I found something that Binghamton didn't have. At least not to my knowledge. This morbid discovery also managed to silently change my life in ways I wouldn't understand until I was well into my 20's.

The Creature Double Feature on WLVI was your classic afternoon monster matinee on TV. Bookended by an echoplex voice-over set to Emerson, Lake and Palmer, The Creature Double Feature introduced me to vampires with British accents, men in rubber monster suits stomping on models of Japanese cities and more pie plates decked out to look like flying saucers than you could possibly ever conceive of. It was all in good fun and just shocking enough to scare the crap out of a 7 year old; enough to keep me coming back week after week in hopes of seeing Karloff, Price, and Lee again.