From Zombos' Closet

Book Review: Hammer Glamour Classic Images From Hammer Films

Zombos Says: Very Good

I am reminded of the line Frederick Frankenstein utters in Young Frankenstein after seeing the huge door knockers on the even bigger doors of the ancestral castle: "What knockers!" The comely Inga, poised in his arms as he helps her out of the hay wagon, thinks he is referring to her ample bosom and responds, "Oh, thank you doctor!" The female stars profiled in Hammer Glamour: Classic Images From the Archive of Hammer Films also have ample bosoms; but more than that, they defined Hammer's sensual, supernatural horror mystique, an artistic and commercial blend of Gothic and gore done on a budget, which embellished male stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing's good versus evil action.  I do not believe Lee or Cushing ever had to do bikini-clad pin-up sessions, though, or look alluringly into the camera while posing on a bed of furs.

The book highlights fifty Hammer female stars, including the sultry, self-assured, Martine Beswicke (my favorite), statuesque Ursula Andress, and the sultry and statuesque Raquel Welch. Clad in her doeskin bikini, Welch, helped make One Million Years B.C. the "most commercially successful film in Hammer history, and sealed the company's new reputation for 'discovering' glamorous stars."

In an appendix entitled Also Starring, Hearn includes dozens more who starred in Hammer movies but did not achieve much notoriety beyond that. Faces you will recognize include The Devil Rides Out Nike Arrighi (my favorite) and Twins of Evil's Isobel Black. While Hammer horror buffs are more familiar with actresses like Ingrid Pitt (The Vampire Lovers), Valerie Gaunt (Dracula), and Susan Denberg (Frankenstein Created Women) , it may come as a surprise that Stefanie Powers ('Jane Brown's Body'), Judy Geeson (Fear in the Night), and Nastassja Kinski (To the Devil a Daughter) also appeared in the studio's numerous offerings.

In-between the cheesecake photographs, Hearn does a succinct  job of running through the movies each actress appears in while providing background on their careers' trials, tribulations, and triumphs, and, where applicable, their current activities. His style is very British informal and filled with idioms that make reading very enjoyable--but keep a reference source handy, you may need to look up a few definitions. While writing about those naughty Twins of Evil, Mary and Madeleine Collinson (my favorites), he writes "It wasn't long before they were noticed. In the King's Road, Chelsea, two teenage boys came a cropper when they were distracted by the girls." I looked up came a cropper: it means to take a tumble. By the way, Mary and Madeleine get the naughtiest full-page in the book.

More important for the ardent movie buff are the anecdotes and snippets of interviews that Hearn includes. Not all was glamourous for Hazel Court, Hammer's first pin-up girl (The Curse of Frankenstein), as Hearn recounts the time a reporter visited her on the set of The Man Who Could Cheat Death, or for Susan Denberg (my favorite), whose career spiraled downhill after drugs and dissolution took their toll. It is this mixing of glamour with the realities of show biz, and Hearn's earnest, engaging style--and, okay, yes, the photographs--that make Hammer Glamour more than just skin deep reading.

Come to think of it, all the women of Hammer Horror are my favorites.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Lightning Bug's Lair

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, T.L. Bugg of the Lightning Bug's Lair reveals his initial distaste for the fear, his passion for a guy named Bela, and a rich background in horror.

As Bill Cosby once said back when he did standup and was funny, “I started out as a child.” like Mr. Cosby, I also started out as a youngster and a rather fearful one at that. While I was obsessed with images from the Universal horror films of the 1930’s and 40’s, I could not be coerced by anyone to see a modern horror film. I recall one afternoon when a next door neighbor recounted to me the story of C.H.U.D. It was enough to trouble my sleep for at least a week.

My parents fondly recall when they tried to show me the Disney approved horror film, Something Wicked This Way  Comes. I got about five minutes into the film, the kids saw their own heads getting cut off, and I was done. I have not ever attempted to see that movie since. The last early memory of my yellow steak was when Hellraiser came out on videotape. My folks called me in to see the part where Frank’s body rises from the floor and reconstitutes. It took me some time to recover from that as well.

At the same time that I avoided horror in Technicolor, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff were both great favorites of mine, and each year for Halloween I would request to be a vampire. More than being a bloodsucker, I wanted to be like Bela, or Dracula, the two almost inseparable in my young mind. He was intimidating with only a stare, suave yet dangerous, evil but sophisticated about it. It was around this same age that I discovered old time radio due to my love of Abbot and Costello films. (It surely did not hurt that they crossed over with the Universal monsters a few times.) While my tastes ran mostly toward the comedic programs of Fibber McGee and Molly, and Burns & Allen, there were quite a few nights where I clutched my Walkman to my chest in the darkness of my bedroom and listened intently to the horrors of the Inner Sanctum or (Shock Theater).

Movie Review: The Cat and the Canary (1927)

Zombos Says: Classic

"No, that's not it," said Sosumi Jimmy Jango, Zombos' lawyer. He continued to search his memory while pulling yet another paper from his briefcase.

We were sitting in the library, waiting for Jimmy to shuffle through a few more papers before he read Uncle Hiram's will. After twenty years gathering dust in Zombos' Irish tin box, it was time to finally reveal old Hiram's wishes. He passed away while moose hunting. The annoyed moose helped him on his journey. Seated around the table were Zombos, myself, and Zombos' furthest relative from Nova Scotia, Clorinda. Billy Bounce Boukowski and Jeremy Singleton, more distant relatives on this side of the pond, were also in attendance. Glenor Glenda served drinks all around.
"Glad to see everyone could make it," said Jimmy, reaching deeper into his briefcase. "I got it!"
"The will?" asked Zombos with much hope in his voice. He was getting tired of sitting so close to his distant relatives. I never could get him to explain their names or lineage.
"No, the movie this all reminds me of," said Jimmy. "The Cat and the Canary, the 1927 version. It starts off with an old geezer's will being read after twenty years, too."

"I know that one," I said. "The geezer was Cyrus West, and his relatives are summoned to his old dark mansion, overlooking the Hudson River, by the family lawyer Roger Crosby, twenty years after his death for the reading of his will. He and Uncle Hiram must have been twins."

"On a dark and stormy night," added Jimmy, chuckling. "Just like tonight." We looked at the rain drops splashing against the library's windows when he said it.

"So, what happens?" asked Billy Bounce. His gruff voice punctuated the Bounce part of his name really well. He tipped his third Jack Daniel's, daintily held in the baseball glove he had for a hand, over and down in one gulp.

"It is a silent movie directed by Paul Leni, a German Expressionistic director, whose talents included blending humor with his stylish melodramatic horror," said Zombos.

Billy smiled. "Sounds like an oxymoronic, don't it? Funny horror?"

"It does," I replied. "But Leni's movie provided the creative template--hairy arms reaching through secret panels and around doorways, sliding bookcases leading to secret passages, upright bodies stuffed in closets flopping down when you open the door, sinister housekeepers, spooky mansions--stuff like that was recycled in the old dark house movies that followed, and it provided much comedy fodder for Abbott and Costello, too."

"Hold That Ghost!" piped up Jeremy. "I love that movie. Keeping the money in the moose's head. Hilarious."

"Oh, and Laura La Plante is so marvelous in it." Glenor spilled a drink as she spoke. "I wish I'd inherit a vast fortune like hers."

"When you do, let me know so I can send you the dry cleaning bill," said Zombos dryly, grabbing a napkin to daub off the wet stain on his jacket.

"Whose Laura La Plante?" asked Clorinda.

"She plays Cyrus West's most distant relative, Annabelle," answered Jimmy. "Anabelle's the looker who winds up getting all of West's inheritance if she can prove she's sane enough to keep it. Of course, the trick is to make her go loopy during the night so the next in line will get the money. An escaped homicidal lunatic from a nearby asylum--he's called the Cat-- is on the prowl, too, spicing things up."

"So who's the guy who saves the dame?" asked Billy. "There's always some guy around to save rich dames in movies, am I right?"

"Right you are," I said. "That would be Paul, played by Creighton Hale in glasses and with much chagrin. He's not much of a hero type. Skittish from his own shadow, really. Being a woman in a 1920's movie, Annabelle can only be rescued by her potential suitor, of course. I mean, woman weren't expected to be unmarried with vast fortunes pending and all that. Paul provides the comedy relief, but eventually succeeds in subduing the killer and winning the rich dame's hand."

"I'm not sure I'd want to immediately get married if I inherited a fortune," said Clorinda. "I mean, why spoil the fun of all that solitary spenditure."

"I don't know, but so far it doesn't sound too scary," said Billy.

"Well, of course in its day I'm sure it had enough fright per frame to make it the box office success it was, but Leni directed it more for black humor." I took my White Russian from Glenor's serving tray and took a sip before continuing. "Still, his sharp direction keeps the horror elements moving briskly through the cobwebs and gloom. His eye glides past long hallways filled with billowing curtains in front of opened windows, it plays with each relative’s sinister potential for thwarting Annabelle's inheritance with its expressive close-ups, and it goes beyond verisimilitude as emotionally charged superimpositions coalesce into dramatic scenes. I would have loved to see his camerawork unleashed in Browning's Dracula."

Jeremy, Billy Bounce, Jimmy, and Clorinda looked at me.

"Superimpositions," interjected Zombos, "are images put on top of other images."

"Oh, I get it," said Jimmy. "You mean like the towering medicine bottles that slowly turn into the mansion's ominous silhouette, or the image of the grandfather clock's gears striking midnight over the scene of the reading of the will, as everyone is gathered around the table in the library."

"Right," I said. The Hermle Grandfather clock in the west hallway starting chiming the twelfth hour.

"Ooh, that gives me goosebumps," said Glenor shivering.

"Speaking of goosebumps, that creepy housekeeper, Mammy Pleasant--love that name--played intensely by Martha Mattox, provided the role model for sinister butlers and maids in subsequent movies," I said. "She reminds me of that other creepy housekeeper in Robert Wise's The Haunting, trying to scare everybody with talk of ghosts and such. Of course, being the only person in the mansion for twenty years, it's no wonder she's a bit nipped around the buds."

"Now this is odd," said Jimmy, holding up two envelopes. "I only remember one envelope from your Uncle Hiram, not two. That's funny. This is exactly what happened in the movie. The killer slipped in the second envelope into the wall safe just before the reading of the will. It named the next relative in line for the inheritance should Annabelle not last the night."

"Killer?" asked Billy Bounce. Glenore had given up on refilling his glass and just left the bottle of Jack Daniels with him. "What killer?"

"Well, in the movie, the lawyer Roger Crosby is murdered. It's his body that eventually winds up doing a pratfall from Annabelle's closet. So the movie turns into a whodunit when that happens." Jimmy cleared his throat. "Umm...well. I'll figure this out soon enough. Zombos, where's the checklist I left you? I want to see if I recorded this second envelope twenty years ago."

"Over in the Irish tin biscuit box, by the bookcase there," pointed Zombos. Jimmy stood up, stretched, and walked over to the bookcase.

"The intertitles are lots of fun to read, too." I added. "Nice transitions are used for the text to create a spooky effect here and there. The opening title credits appear as a hand wipes away the cobwebs covering them. For a silent movie it all moves pretty briskly as Leni's gliding, ever inquisitive camera keeps the mood gloomy and spooky, and us in the middle of the mystery. It's a testament to the movie's novelty that it's been remade five times."

"Speaking of time, I say, Jimmy, did you find the checklist? Jimmy?" Zombos looked over to the bookcase. We followed his gaze. "Now where the deuce has he gotten to? Did anyone see him leave the room?

"I'll go check the closets," I said jokingly. No one laughed.

Picture courtesy of Dr. Macro's High Quality Movie Scans

Movie Review: The Final Destination (2009)

Zombos Says: Good

"What are you doing?" asked Zombos.

I dog-eared the page I was reading. "I'm sorry?"

"You have not written your review of The Final Destination," he said.

"Death goes a-deathing. People die horribly. What's more to say beyond that?

"You see, there, that is your problem. You are not creative enough. Now, I have been thinking of ways you can add je ne sais quoi to your reviews. They have been rather stale lately."

"Really?" I said, but not with much enthusiasm.

He continued, ignoring my lack of enthusiasm.

"Yes. For instance, why not look at doing a review in a completely different way."

"Way?" I asked.

"Way." He jabbed his right forefinger into his left palm." Take The Final Destination." He rested his forefinger on his chin. "Let me think, yes, I have the perfect answer to creatively review it: Walt Whitman." He waved his forefinger for emphasis.

"Walt Whitman?" I asked.

"Yes, Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass: I hear America Singing. There. Now go, fly with it!"

He flew out of the room, leaving me with one of those conundrums in a peanut shell situation we all face now and then. I seem to get them a lot, though.

If Walt Whitman were a zombie he'd eat me for sure after this.

 

I Hear the Deathly Screaming
in The Final Destination

 

I hear Nick and Lori, Hunt and Janet screaming, and cussing, and breathing heavy and hard, their varied shrieks of fear I hear,

From death's mechanics, each one swung with his scythe wide, as it should be blithe

and strong, whilst whacking heads and limbs akimbo, bone and muscle, and formerly high spirits,

into fallow, shallow ground of McKinley Speedway,

and everywhere else they run

Nick shrieking his premonitions, he measures his chances, nail and coffin width long, as George the security guard runs in fright from his inevitable smackdown, tries hanging himself,

but still no good
Lori hissy-fitting her bewilderment as she makes ready for ignoring death's hooves fastly approaching, or leaves off
salvation by not believing in Nick's foreshadows of graveyard co-ops, for all, coming soon enough,

Hunt bemoaning Charon's dire boatman dirging of what belongs to him in his rotting boat, the pool man cursing the
sticky mess Hunt leaves behind, all suckered innards spouting in fountains of grue, clearing out the pool real fast, as sparking electrical circuits burn bright

Janet screaming as she drives through her car wash, the bristly-brushes whizzing closer as she sticks her head in their way,
but stay the Grand Guignol hand and spoil the girl,
to vain thoughts of
giddily escaping death's plan
until later, when he can dish it out even worse, of course

Lori's song of mistaken relief, the deathboy's not on his way in the morning, or at nooning intermission, or at sundowning, to sharpen his blade 'gainst wet red oozing twitching body parts

The delicious grinding of the escalator, or zinging of the shearing metal flying, or the phat tire splatting, or the
air-compressed canister flattening, all in marvelously punctuated 3D
Each groaning what body parts belong to him or her and to no one else, though it's all mixed up

The day what belongs to death—at night the parade of dead
teens, robustly still dead, or dying, or waiting their turn
Screaming with open mouths,
when left intact,
their strong outcries in stereophonic crescendos, 'gainst awaiting another destination,
'cause it ain't over yet 'til the fat lady gets hers

or the audience stops coming,

but then they'll reimagine,
rework,
rewrite,
rethink,
rekindle
this franchise till no one else remains,
but death grinning over all

Interview: Gino Crognale's Makeup Effects For Sorority Row

by Scott Essman

When you conjure images of the sets of classic horrors such as Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera, Jack Pierce’s The Wolf Man with Lon Chaney, Jr. or Frankenstein’s Monster with Boris Karloff, and Wally Westmore’s Mr. Hyde with Fredric March, you picture the lone makeup artist creating magical character concepts inside a cramped makeup studio, then arriving with his makeup kit to the set of his movie alone to realize the character for film. Such was the case with Gino Crognale on the new horror picture Sorority Row.

Like many in makeup effects, Crognale originally paid his dues in the trenches of makeup effects studios Los Angeles. “I’m originally from Philadelphia and I lived in LA from 1983 to 2001,” he said. “I left for a good place to raise my kids. I had enough years under my belt so that I could leave and do my thing.”

Heading for Pittsburgh, Crognale had a job teaching makeup at Tom Savini’s school for 8-9 months. “It was a good gig to come back to, but I had to get back to what I really love,” Crognale said of creating makeup effects for movies. “We were in Austin shooting Sin City and Greg Nicotero [of KNB EFX Group, who Crognale has known since 1985] said that they were shooting George Romero’s mega-zombie Land of the Dead movie in Pittsburgh. But George couldn’t get Pittsburgh, so George packed up and went to Toronto and shot it there.”

Later, Crognale returned to Pittsburgh to work in the business when he was offered Sorority Row via the producer on another film, Bill Bannerman. “He thought he had a show that I could knock out myself,” said Crognale. “I got the script and did a breakdown and got the gig. Bill knew the town, and I was the guy. I was working for Bob Kurtzman from KNB on this movie that shot in India. I literally wrapped on his show on September 10 and Bill called me on September 11 for Sorority Row.

After doing a rudimentary makeup effects breakdown by circling everything in the script that would be part of his department, Crognale put together a budget and “build list” for all of his makeups and effects gags based on a schedule of when production was shooting his work. “We had to hit the ground running with this,” he said. “I built the whole show out of my garage. It was old school, like [makeup legend] Dick Smith building in his basement. All of the artwork, sculptures, and molding were done here in my garage and some finishing things at Bob Kurtzman’s. It was a wonderful experience for me after years of doing things. We were treating it like we were 19!”

In all, Crognale executed 11 gags – he was hired September 12, 2008 and started shooting October 5. With a short schedule and working all alone, Crognale drew on his years of experience to create makeups and gags that were both impressive on film and delivered in a timely manner. “When you are pressed for time, you don’t have the luxury of time or R&D,” he said. “I had nobody assisting me in the lab or on set. I had a runner that production gave me to do my supply runs. Pittsburgh has a good plaster place and fiberglass place plus chain stores that have the paints we use.”

Diving into the show, first up for Crognale on the Sorority Row schedule was the creation of the fake head and upper torso to resemble Margo Harshman for her death scene playing the character of Chugs. “It was a complete sculpture all the way,” Crognale said for his initial foray into the effects work. “I had three weeks to crank that out in addition to getting everything else ready. I hadn’t seen Margo Harshman to that point. I had a buddy in LA lifecast Margo’s face and it was shipped to me, but it was totally destroyed. The cast wasn’t great, so I had to do a silicone mold on that and reproduce it from the ground up getting photos from production and online. I finally got it done and took it to set.”

Given his limited time on the build, the Chugs head is a remarkable achievement as even in closeup photos, it is identical to Harshman in every way. “It was made out of silicone and heavily plasticized,” said Crognale of a prop which would have a glass bottle stuck into its mouth. “I had sculpted it a little smaller than the bottle. The fiberglass underskull would give it that stretch of the mouth going open, filling that vacancy in the throat.”

On location, Crognale delivered the Chugs head for filming, becoming one of the best gags in the film. “We had that lock on the location on the north side of Pittsburgh and we only had it for two nights in mid-October,” he explained of the shoot. “Everybody was happy with it and we shot it a lot and got everything we needed. Later in the show, we were shooting in this old film lab place where we did a couple more inserts with the Chugs head with the bottle going down her throat.The director Stewart Hendler wanted a couple of different angles. It was fun being put to that test.”

While preparing the Chugs head, Crognale simultaneously had to get the makeup ready for Jamie Chung whose character gets a flare shot into her mouth for another grisly kill. Crognale explained the evolution of the makeup effects on the performers, such as with Chung’s death. “Once I had all of the gags written out, I sat down with Stewart,” he said. “Those are the best meetings. I have a list of stuff to build and he tells me what they need to see. With Jamie, he still wanted to see her eyes – just make her mouth and neck bubbly.”

Unbelievably, because Crognale had no access to Chung until the actress arrived in Pittsburgh, he unconventionally had to build her whole makeup generically. “I pulled an old lifecast of a female, and sculpted it on her; I didn’t know how it was going to lay down on Jamie until the night we shot it,” he said, revealing some makeup tricks. “I tested it the night we shot it, flying by the seat of your paints. Because I have enough years in, I was able to do it. She got a kick out of it. She had the foam latex makeup on her in an hour and fifteen minutes.”

One key to Chung’s makeup was hiding a wire that the practical special effects team needed to rig a gag with the makeup. “We had to conceal this wire along the side of her face and underneath the prosthetic and glue that bubbling skin over the wire,” Crognale described. “It was a big challenge getting that wire to lay down and blend the makeup off over the wire. The makeup was not bloody – just sore and blistery. We shot it that way, then added some black and did a few more takes.”

Another major task on Sorority Row was creating a full body appliance for the death scene of Audrina Patridge. “I had to build a whole fake chest of Audrina that would bleed,” Crognale stated. “The blood was squirting out but they didn’t use [much of] it the movie. How they edit it and cut it wasn’t as good as what we shot. It was a basic rubber body with a nice paint job on the finish which sold it.”

For scenes taking place long after Patridge’s death in the story, Crognale also had to create a full Audrina corpse. “I kept e-mailing Stewart asking how long she had been dead in that well,” Crognale said of the development stages. “He said, ‘anywhere between a year and a year and a half, but you still have to have some skin.’ I thought it would look cool with hair – old school horror stuff. I did a light hair job and hand punched some around the front and kept doing that with her whole body, mixing and matching skin and bone. When I finally had it done, Stewart just lost it. You know when you hit a homer with these guys when they really enjoy it.”

After weeks of development, the finished Audrina corpse was made out of polyfoam and latex and took an 8-10 hour day painting it to make it look “cool and decayed.” Of the finished look of the corpse, Crognale noted that the paint job was essential, as is the case for many special makeup effects. “It all came together in the paint,” he said.

Another memorable gag was Leah Pipes’ death scene by a “pimped-out tire iron” which she gets right in the mouth. “I had to get a teeth cast of Leah and built these upper and lower dentures that only locked into the back of her mouth – an H-shaped solid piece,” Crognale explained. “The top molars were locked in and bottom molars locked in – I made a dental apparatus that opened her mouth wide and the tire iron centered into. She would feel a little bit of pressure of the weight of it. Then, I poured blood in her mouth with this whole thing anchored in her mouth. I also built a piece behind her hair for an exit piece – but you can’t even see it in the movie.”

For the Pipes gag, Crognale noted its simplicity and how he had to figure out the angle of attack. “Stewart would ask me to change it another 1/8 inch,” he said. “While she was acting on another stage, I would ask for her and get it into the right angle. It went really well the night we did it – it was her last shot on the movie – getting stabbed in the mouth, and I pulled it out, and they wrapped her!

Other gags included an apparatus for another tire iron in the head, a pair of legs set to break with appliance of a bone coming out through a pair of pants, and slashed wrists on a character which are so bloody that you can’t even make them out. For Carrie Fisher, Crognale built a bleeding rig harness for the actress that went over her left breast. It had an exit piece of the tire iron and a piece comes through the front of her that she leaned into.

If doing his scheduled work was not enough, Crognale noted that production later “threw a couple of different ones at me. They wanted an actor to get hit in the back of the head with an ax.” With no prep time and a full plate already in place, Crognale improvised. “I dug through my molds and found an old lifecast. I rigged a whole gag where the guy gets an ax in the back of the head and there is this blood explosion, then he is lying there with the ax handle in his head. I rigged it with paint job and wardrobe. We shot it on an insert stage with four-five takes where I would repack the blood bags. I built a fiberglass plate that he wore in the back of his head. It was a nice camera angle that sells it.”

Looking back nearly a year from production schedule to the September 2009 release of the film, Crognale took stock of his achievements on Sorority Row. “Bill [Bannerman] gave me this challenge, and I didn’t want to let him down, but I knew that I couldn’t have made any mistakes,” Crognale summarized. “It’s a great feeling when you see the light at the end of the tunnel and knew that you could pull it off. It was a challenge personally and professionally, and I just wanted to do right by these guys – they put their faith in me. There were nights where I kept working [long into the night], but it was fine. When it’s all on you, you’ve got to come through. I hope we do another one!”

LOTT D: Pick a Post Sensation 15 Jennifer's Body Autopsy

Beware! The members of the League of Tana Tea Drinkers dig six feet deep to bring you the Jennifer's Body autopsy, to share their varied views on this girl-eats-boy horrorfest.

I Love Horror -- "While the plot certainly leaves something to be desired, nearly every problem associated with Jennifer’s Body can be directly contributed to Diablo Cody’s dialogue."

Kindertrauma -- "The trick is to not think of it as a horror film because the horror elements are really just decorative. This is more of a black comedy like HEATHERS with a bit of THE CRAFT thrown in..."

Dinner With Max Jenke -- "It doesn't reinvent the genre but it's distinctly different from its competition and that alone is commendable. The advertising campaign is totally misleading, though."

Day of the Woman -- "I seriously have always wondered what happens if someone sacrifices a girl to Satan and she wasn't a virgin." (And, on a tangential note, DOTW takes on PoppaScotch regarding the reality of feminist horror films.)

TheoFantastique -- "In the discussion Poole notes that Jennifer’s Body includes a subtle attempt ”to sneak a feminist message into the cineplex, subverting the paradigm of horror films in which women are merely the shrieking victims of male violence.”

Zombos' Closet of Horror -- "Jennifer's Body has artistic touches that come from how it uses dialog, its characters, and its story to create a familiar but stylish rhythm scored with traditional horror tropes."

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Groovy Age of Horror

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, Curt Purcell of Groovy Age of Horror reveals the influences, from Lovecraft to Eurotrash, that keep him in the groove of horror.

I guess having kids makes some people start going back to church. When my dad went back, pre-millennialist dispensational eschatology sank such deep hooks into him that his idea of a bedtime Bible story was reading me the freakiest prophecies and visions from Daniel, Ezekiel, and the Book of Revelation. Whatever religious lessons he meant to impart were lost on young me, but the frightful, bizarre imagery sure made an impression.  My enduring fascination for the weird and fantastic probably traces back in large part to that.

Two of the first books I chose for myself from the library and struggled through mostly on my own were companion collections of Greek and Norse mythology. They probably should have been way above my reading comprehension level, but they were treasure-troves of grotesque creatures and uncanny figures, and I was determined to mine them for all they had to offer.

Movie Review: Jennifer's Body (2009)

I need you frightened. I need you hopeless. (Jennifer in Jennifer's Body.)

Zombos Says: Excellent

With Diablo Cody's pop, slang-twang dialog peppering the lines in Jennifer's Body, imparting a youthful, social media slickness to this story of girlfriends, boyfriends, and evil that is not just high school evil, physical looks can be deceiving. It’s a blend of dark humor involving the gray relationship between the desirable Jennifer and her groupie-like friend since childhood, the desirous Needy Lesnicky, and witty, supernatural gore that revisits and updates 1980's teen horror movie angst with tongue in cheek playfulness and a knowing nod.

Not that this movie is all pom-pom kicks and giggles: Cody's dialog goes down like spooned sugar with Castor oil, her adults are few and out of touch, and her characters are lost, nearly found, then lost again. The ugly demon inhabiting Jennifer's beautiful body is the only one not lost, or uncertain, or confused, or lusting after fame, fortune, love, or identity. Demons are always so damned self-assured in cinema.

Needy (Amanda Seyfried with her beauty toned down to bookworm dull) tells us how it all started, from her room in the asylum, and how she finished it (make sure you stay to watch the ending credits). Like Faith the Slayer in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series, Needy is a confused, antagonistic survivor living by the fingernails she's dug deeply into the edge of the personal cliff she's dangling from. How she gets to that point is a story that starts with her and Jennifer (Megan Fox) as best buddies "since the sandbox," and now close friends in high school.

Director Karyn Kusama (Aeon Flux) and Cody take us around the high school, Needy's thoughts and remembrances, and the blood-spouting boy-munching with an aplomb that easily shifts between somewhat serious and acerbically light. I don’t recall a recent horror movie where the hues from clothes, lighting, and surroundings are subtly blended in each scene to fortify the tone and actions as well as they do here. Die-hard horror fans will rebuff me, I am sure, for my saying this is a horror movie. But it is a horror movie; just one that tops off its deathly pallor with a light polish of black devilish fun.

Which begins when the rock band Low Shoulder comes to the town of Devil's Kettle (named after a weird waterfall-like sinkhole) to play at the local dive bar, Melody Lane. Jennifer is eager to meet the band, the band is strangely eager to meet her, and Needy asks why a band like theirs is playing a backwash, situated-in-nowhere town like the Devil's Kettle. She does not like the band's leader Nikolai Wolf (Adam Brody); he reminds her of the black twisted tree she was frightened of as a child. The band's purpose becomes clear after a fire decimates the bar and Jennifer irrationally insists on going with them in their van. They think she is a virgin because Needy told them so. Needy was mistaken. Only virgins fare well in horror movies; at least better than non-virgins on average, anyway.

When Jennifer returns later that night, she is ravenous, listless, and vomits up black, oily puke all over Needy and the kitchen floor. Needy stays up cleaning the vile mess while a beauty sleep apparently does wonders for Jennifer. She is all pink and perky the next morning and oblivious to what happened.

In a short amount of time, Low Shoulder becomes rich and famous, and Jennifer chases after the boys for a change instead of them chasing after her. Needy realizes her best friend is not herself and researches in the school's library how best to deal with her. In one of those how odd moments, Needy, the bookwormish geek, actually does research using real books instead of the Internet. I suppose book illustrations of demons are more artistically effective to dissolve through onscreen than flipping through them on a computer monitor. On average, how many times have you seen books used to research demons and such, instead of computers, in horror movies?

Needy's "hard-ass, Ford-tough, mama" is no help, and Chip (Johnny Simmons) thinks Needy is losing her grip on reality and him. The Spring Formal high school dance is coming up and Needy has to stop Jennifer from turning the boys into "Satan's chow." A brief glimpse of the loneliness you can find in one of those social dances (believe me, I know) gives way to a showdown between Needy, Jennifer, and Chip, who is close to becoming another helping of "lassagnia with teeth" for Jennifer's hunger.

The smackdown fight takes place in a decrepit, abandoned, pool house overgrown with huge vines.

There is so much style to savor in Jennifer's Body. I disagree with Roger Ebert who said there is no art here (although he did rate this movie 3 of 4 stars). Jennifer's Body has artistic touches that come from how it uses dialog, its characters, and its story to create a familiar but stylish rhythm, scored with traditional horror tropes. That it does so with a slight poke in the eye, which more serious-minded horror fans will possibly not like, should not be held against it.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Reflections on Film and TV

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, John Kenneth Muir of Reflections on Film/TV shares his adrenaline rush with horror, writing, and blogging.

It was a Saturday in 1975, and close to Halloween. As dusk approached, my parents sat me down in front of the TV and, in particular, an episode of a new series called Space: 1999. The episode airing that night was titled “Dragon’s Domain” and it concerned a malevolent, tentacled Cyclops entrapping and devouring hapless astronauts in a Sargasso Sea of derelict spaceships. In an image I’ve never forgotten, this howling, spitting monster regurgitated the astronauts’ steaming, desiccated bones onto the spaceship deck. The episode was one part 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, and one part precursor to Alien (1979). But the direction of this five year old boy’s life was set in stone during those 50 minutes.

By the time I was in sixth grade, a viewing of Tobe Hooper’s intense The Funhouse (1981) at a girlfriend’s Friday night movie rental party – a big thing in those days -- deepened my obsession with the horror genre. The film terrified me on a level I had never before experienced (or even imagined, frankly…), but I survived it. And afterwards, I couldn’t stop thinking about the nerve-tingling experience of being really frightened by a film, or about the specific details of Hooper’s grisly narrative. I wanted to know more, to understand more, and most importantly, to talk endlessly about the experience and what it had meant to me. Many of my friends thought I was nuts. It's just a scary movie, right?

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Zombos' Closet of Horror

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, Iloz Zoc (that's me) lazily borrows heavily from previous interviews to conveniently provide excuses for my cheeky horror excesses.

I remember it all quite well.

I was old enough to hate the babysitter and young enough to play the guilt trip on my parents. So I admit I ruined their night out at the movies by sitting between them during Roger Corman's The Terror. They were married so nothing naughty would have happened anyway; except for the effect on my impressionable young mind. This was my first time at the movies, and my first experience with horror. My most vivid memory, to this day, is watching the girl melt away into bubbling goo as Jack Nicholson looks on in terror and my parents taking it all in stride, like scenes with melting girls happened every time they went to the movies. The horror bug nipped me that night.

And so it began. I loved watching Shock Theater movies on television, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, and my mother--a big horror and sci fi fan--took me to the best and worst movies, like Night of the Living Dead, Dr. Phibes, and Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster. Speaking of that last movie, we actually went to see James Bond in From Russia With Love , but the theater, I don't remember why, was showing that hokey movie instead. We stayed anyway.

LOTT D: Pick a Post Sensation 14

Beware! Once again, the archives have been unburied, and the hideous horrors unleashed! For your entertainment and edification pleasure, of course. Members of the League of Tana Tea Drinkers dig six feet deep to find their past misdeeds...and reveal them to you, one favorite and notable post at a time!

 

Slasher Speak shrinks in terror from The Invasion:

In this third retread of the 1956 sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers (based on Jack Finney’s 1955 novel The Body Snatchers, critics and audiences will likely be caught up in the backstage brouhaha that had director Oliver Hirschbiegel’s original cut deemed “too cerebral” for studio execs, the much-ballyhooed Wachowski brothers of Matrix fame being brought in for eleventh-hour rewrites, and up-and-coming action director James McTeigue V for Vendetta adding extra action sequences to the mix.

Goblin Books shows us Dark As It Gets in short fiction:

“She collected her entire life, but acquired almost a third of them – more than a hundred – during the last two years of her marriage. Those weren’t pleasant years.”
“Where are they from?”
“All over the world. She stacked them on specially-made bookcases that line the room. You might want to prepare yourself. It’s a bit of a shock, walking in and seeing them all…”

The Uranium Cafe goes nutty for the Jekyll and Hyde comedy of Jerry Lewis's The Nutty Professor:

What many people do not realize is the body of work Lewis did behind the camera as producer, writer and director as well as a developer of technogloies still used today. One is the directors video assist system, once referred to as “Jerry’s noisy toy” that he basically invented and owns the patent to after having worked in the television medium in the 60’s. Lewis has become an object of ridicule in the last couple decades and his often crass behavior and sexist and anti-gay remarks have done little to endear him to our newer world. I don’t really care about any of that and I think he is a sadly forgotten talent.

Sorority Row (2009) Press Kit

"When five sorority sisters of Theta Pi cause the death of one of their own during a foolish prank gone wrong, they conspire to discard the evidence and never speak of the nightmare again. But when a mysterious killer targets the group a year later with a series of bizarre attacks, the women find themselves fighting for their own lives amidst the revelry of an out of control graduation party.

"Based on the original screenplay, Seven Sisters, this modern tale of revenge served icily cold echoes the original’s mix of horror and humor while creating a fresh take on terror uniquely its own."

Download Sorority Row_Pressbook

See more movie pressbooks From Zombos' Closet.