Zombos' Closet of Horror

Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns: Saddle Up With This One Pardner

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

Westerns aren't dead: though pocked with bullet holes, they'll probably live on as long as we can keep them new and interesting with near-infinite variations on their central themes. I think that's better than good. (Mike Hoffman, foreword)

I became hooked on the outre Western tale after watching Gene Autry's The Phantom Empire (1935) serial. To see cowboys, ray weapons of mass destruction, a mysterious subterranean empire's technology being sought after by unscrupulous businessmen, and Gene Autry getting a snappy song or two sung in-between the cliff-hangers--left quite an impression on my young mind back then. I didn't consider myself a greenhorn when it came to the weird western genre until Green's book proved me wrong. There's a lot more in them thar hills then I realized.

Paul Green's Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns: Supernatural and Science Fiction Elements in Novels, Pulps, Comics, Films, Television and Games is a rich vein for prospectors mining those dusty hills of the Wild Weird West. It's the kind of book I like to dog-ear and write in, and carry along with me, in my urban saddle bag, to refer to often.

Arranged in A-Z listing format, Green identifies these sub-genres: Weird Western (horror, supernatural, fantasy); Weird Menace Western (horror and supernatural themes, but concluding with a rational explanation); Science Fiction Western (future technology, aliens, alternate histories); Space Western (space opera with Western elements); Steampunk Western (set in the Old West and incorporating Victorian sci-tech); and Weird Western Romance (traditional romance involving time travel or the supernatural).

Gifts For Horror Movie Bloggers (And Movie Loving Fans, Too!)

Right off the bat I can tell you the one thing you don't want to get that horror movie blogger on your holiday shopping list: movies. Yes, that's what I said. Movies.

Sure, they seem like they would go together like bread and butter, Starsky and Hutch, and vampires and romance, but let's face it, if a horror blogger is worth his or her salt, movies are already piled high all around within easy viewing reach. The last thing any horror movie blogger needs is another movie to add to the pile!

So how about giving that special someone--otherwise known as always difficult to get gifts for--something really useful: something they will really appreciate and actually use to hone their skills; something that will even benefit their readers: books on movies.

And not just horror movies, mind you, but books on all-around movies. Books to broaden knowledge of the cinema, its history, its craft, and its always present commercial side, which impinges on the history and craft sides, sometimes to wondrous result, many times not.

Here's an essential bookshelf's worth of reading and reference any smart horror movie blogger would appreciate having in his or her critique la arsenal before letting the slinging arrows of outrageous commentary fly:

Scared Silly: Classic Horror Comedies

This very exciting news comes from Paul Castiglia about his upcoming book on Hollywood's horror-comedies. With Abbott and Costello and Olsen and Johnson included, I am sure this will be quite an entertaining read. Noted character actor, monster movie memorabilia collector and spook show reenactor Daniel Roebuck to write book's foreword. Here's the press release information:

"This Halloween at midnight,veteran writer-editor Paul Castiglia launches a blog to preview his forthcoming book, SCARED SILLY: CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD HORROR-COMEDIES. The blog can be accessed at http://scaredsillybypaulcastiglia.blogspot.com.

"Horror-comedies were so popular that famous 1930s comedy teams like Laurel & Hardy and The Three Stooges were able to bring the form into the sound era, paving the way for brash 1940s comedy stars like Bob Hope and the ultimate horror-comedy players, Abbott & Costello to perfect the genre.

"Castiglia’s blog and book will offer readers a fun overview of horror-comedy films spanning the 1920s through 1966, the year Don Knotts’ “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken” was released.  “In my mind, ‘The Ghost and Mr. Chicken’ was the last traditional horror-comedy, devoid of PG elements that would pepper later efforts,” said Castiglia.

"Also covered will be horror-comedy entries in famous film series including The Little Rascals and The Bowery Boys, and efforts by comedians wildly popular in their day but less well-known now like Wheeler & Woolsey, Hugh Herbert and Olsen & Johnson.  Of note to fans of oddball cinema is the inclusion of Brown & Carney, a team pre-fabricated by RKO to compete with Abbott & Costello and Mitchell & Petrillo, the latter aping Jerry Lewis so well that many viewers thought they were watching the real thing!  Like Abbott & Costello, both teams share beloved boogeyman Bela Lugosi as a co-star."

Book Review: Hammer Glamour Classic Images From the Archiveof Hammer Films

"It's very difficult to be precise about what qualities of a girl catch my interest," said Hammer's chairman James Carreras. "A good face and figure, of course. But it's more than that; she has to have a special kind of magnetism. I can't describe it, but I know it when I see it" (from the introduction to Hammer Glamour).

Rating 4 of 7: 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 Racquel 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."

Butcher Knives and Body Counts Goes Green

This news just in from Vince Liaguno over at Dark Scribe Press...editor for the upcoming Butcher Knives and Body Counts non-fiction anthology filled with slasher love.

"Dark Scribe Press is pleased to announce that award-winning film director Adam Green will be contributing a special introduction to the BUTCHER KNIVES & BODY COUNTS anthology. In “Are We Sick?,” Green ponders the appeal of the genre and the undying loyalty of the slasher fan and recounts his own genre initiation that involved an older brother, some STAR WARS collateral, and the sequel to an iconic 80’s slasher."

Read more.

Deadline for submitting to Butcher Knives and Body Counts: Essays on the Formula, Frights, and Fun of the Slasher Film is May 31. Find out more.

From McFarland: Inside the Dark Tower Series

Another title on horror from McFarland...

Inside the Dark Tower Series
Art, Evil and Intertextuality in the Stephen King Novels
By Patrick McAleer

Stephen King is no stranger to the realm of literary criticism, but his most fantastic, far-reaching work has aroused little academic scrutiny. This study of King’s epic Dark Tower series encompasses the career of one of the world’s best-selling authors and frames him as more than a “horror writer.” Four categories of analysis—genre, art, evil, and intertextuality—provide a focused look at the center of King’s fictional universe. This book reaches beyond popular culture treatments of the series and examines it against King’s horror work, audience expectations, and the larger literary landscape.

Patrick McAleer is a Ph.D. candidate at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He co-chairs the Stephen King area of the annual National Popular Culture Association Conference and has published numerous articles on King’s work.

Other McFarland Horror Titles

One Man's Quest to Find Dracula and Stop Wearing Black

I became the odd little kid who's in love with monsters. There's one in every neighborhood. My favorite book was The Three Little Pigs because of that wolf peeking from just outside the window of the brick house. I loaded up on books about vampires and werewolves at the school library. The grisly woodcuts of creatures loping through the medieval fields and lunching on peasants would keep me awake all night. In the morning, I'd take the books back, promise myself I would never read them again, and check them back out the very next week.
--Paul Bibeau, Sundays with Vlad: From Pennsylvania to Transylvania, One Man's Quest to Live in the World of the Undead.

"Please take your seats everyone, this meeting of Goths Anonymous is about to start," said a frail-looking individual in front of the room. He fidgeted with the lace on his shirt cuffs when no one paid attention to him. "We can't get started until everyone takes a seat," he implored.

"Will you please sit down," I told Zombos. He looked at me with a questioning glance as he pulled out an iPod earbud from one ear. "I said you really need to sit down. The meeting is about to start."

Zombos shut off the iPod. "I really do not know why you dragged me to this so-called meeting. I see nothing wrong with listening to Midnight Syndicate."

"You've been listening to them non-stop." I said. "And even when you aren't listening to them, you're humming Cemetery Gates or Mansion in the Mist ad nauseam. In sum, you're driving me, Zimba, your son, and Chef Machiavelli bonkers. Oh, lord, is that Paul Bibeau?"

Zombos turned around to look. "Why yes, I think it is. He's wearing that same black ensemble he used to prowl the Renfield Country club circuit for his book. My word, how does he manage to walk in those tight pants. I bet his voice has gone up a pitch or two since he put those things on. Paul! Paul! Over here!," waved Zombos.

"No! Don't call him over! I haven't reviewed his book yet. He'll be asking me about it and I won't know what to say," I pleaded, but it was too late. Paul saw Zombos and headed over to us.

"You have not reviewed his book yet? What in Hades are you waiting for, man; it has been over a year," said Zombos, folding his arms. I hate when he folds his arms like that.

Boris Karloff: The Man Remembered

Horror suggests physical repulsion, disgust, and that seems to me a worthless, pointless reaction for any work of entertainment to aim at; it's so easy it isn't worth doing. An eye, say, plopping all bloody into a glass dish may provoke a gasp of revulsion when it is first seen on the screen, but this is an entirely physical thing, and something one can get used to--no doubt with a certain coarsening of one's responses in the process. The second or third time something like this happens in a film, the surprise and excitement is gone, and then you come back to the old, inevitable question. What is there to support it in the way of plot and characterization, to give it some point other than providing an immediate physical shock? In other words, what is there to appeal to the spectator's imagination? --Boris Karloff interview, The Times.

I met Gordon B. Shriver at the Monster Bash in 2007, and again in 2008. He read from his one-man play on the life of Boris Karloff at Max, the Drunken Severed Head's annual party for the notables and quotables attending the annual classic horror convention. Max lets me in anyway.

Boris Karloff: The Man Remembered grew out of Shriver's fascination and admiration for the man whom many horror fans hold in high regard. Karloff's tireless and masterful acting brought life not only to the Frankenstein Monster, but to the Mummy and countless other major and minor roles, whether by using his unique mannerisms and posture, or by using his unmistakable voice,  lisping ever so eloquently, immortalized as the narration for 1966's animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas! Karloff became the personification of embraceable horror for a generation--and beyond, bringing his terror with a twinkling eye into everyone's living room.

While we grew to love him in movies that tickled our fright-bone, much of Karloff's acting also occurred on stage, radio and, in later years, television.Throughout his long career, even when faced with debilitating arthritis and emphysema, he continued to give every assignment his professional all. Shriver's correspondence with many of the people who worked with and knew Karloff provides a view of the man as consummate acting professional, always downplaying his stardom, and tempering his sinister onscreen persona with wit, charm, and an urbane demeanor in real life.

Leslie S. Klinger Confesses--To Annotating Dracula

The Adventure of the California Lawyer
Needful Non-Fiction

In regard to the curious incident of  Leslie S. Klinger's extensive background in annotating fictional works of great significance, which begin with a certain detective--

Mr. Klinger's work is an update and expansion of William S. Baring-Gould's Annotated Sherlock Holmes, a monumental feat of scholarship, published in 1967. It was Mr. Baring-Gould's edition, which Mr. Klinger received as a gift from his first wife in 1968, that initially sent him sliding down the rabbit hole of Sherlockiana. --New York Times, 12-30-04

--And culminate with his elucidation of one singular individual, of dubious notoriety, and ungodly nighttime habits--

In his first work since his best-selling The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Leslie S. Klinger returns with this spectacular, lavishly illustrated homage to Bram Stoker's Dracula. With a daring conceit, Klinger accepts Stoker's contention that the Dracula tale is based on historical fact...employing the superb literary detective skills for which he has become famous, Klinger mines this 1897 classic for nuggets that will surprise even the most die-hard Dracula fans and introduce the vampire-prince to a new generation of readers.

--This much can be said: bring it on. And he did.

Smirk, Sneer and Scream: An Interview With Mark Clark

It's not that actors no longer give good performances in horror films (they still do), and it's not as if direction, editing, and special effects weren't important in the classic horror film era. But in most modern horrors, concept is more important than cast. Horror has become a director's genre more than an actor's genre. During the classic era, the genre's biggest stars were Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Vincent Price and Peter Cushing. In the years since, its brightest luminaries have been Mario Bava, George Romero, Wes Craven and M. Night Shyamalan--Mark Clark in Smirk Sneer and Scream

Mark Clark Talks About Great Acting in Horror Cinema
by John Cozzoli

Director Justin Channell's company acronym, IWC Films, seen on his Heretic Film's distributed Die and Let Live zombies and pizza flick, sum's up the current state of horror cinema rather well: IWC stands for Idiots With Cameras. While I admire his light touch of humor, I fear the ring of truth in those three letters is precisely why horror cinema is mostly relegated to backhanded reviews or begrudging nods of minor acceptance. Making the situation worse, it's not just the idiots holding cameras, but also the ones pretending to act in front of them. Then you have the ones writing incomplete scripts without a hint of drama, pathos or depth, and others directing with those scripts, with nil basic training, because the digital age makes it appear so gosh darn easy to do--and Aunt Edna and Uncle Joey are available Tuesday for free.

Before the digital age gave any idiot with a camera the potential to become another Hitchcock or Romero, but not the sense to learn first, shoot later, horror movies more often than not had drama, pathos, and good acting that was sometimes even great. Even though many of these films were made for a quick buck, too, actors still acted, and writers wrote complete--if not always stellar-- scripts. Directors learned their technique and approached their films seriously. Even if the script was underwhelming and the direction uninspired, you could still count on yesterday's classic horror actor to give it his (or her) stylistic all. It may not have been naturalistic acting, but it was acting that convincingly and realistically entertained. Mark Clark, in his Smirk, Sneer and Scream: Great Acting in Horror Cinema, reminds us of this golden age.

If your looking for detailed plot synopses, look elsewhere: Clark focuses only on the memorable performances that show each actor's ability to bring the house down. And while his predilection for classic horror actors fills part one, the other two parts of his book examine mainstream actors--those thespians briefly caressing the horror genre to leave their permanent scars--and the often neglected leading ladies of fright. From Boris Karloff to Anthony Perkins, and Bette Davis to Jodie Foster, Clark lists the roles that bewitched us into becoming horror fans in the first place.

After reading his fascinating book, I invited Mark Clark to step into the closet and talk about Smirk, Sneer and Scream...