From Zombos Closet

JM Cozzoli

A horror genre fan with a blog. Scary.

Zombie Tarot Deck

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A smart retro design of classic  zombie and 1950s motifs across these 78 cards, based on the Rider Waite Deck, make this zombiefied Tarot Deck perfect for Tarot Card readers who love the undead, and horror fans who love to give and receive unique zombie gifts.

Replacing the Coins/Pentacles suit with Hazards (although each card’s meaning is the same), the deck maintains the Major Arcana cards (like The Fool,  The Priestess, and The Magician, Strength, etc.) and the Minor Arcana suits (Swords, Wands, Cups, and Hazards). A small booklet of instruction is included, but read it more for the zippy zombie slant than for really learning how to do readings with the deck (see the blurb). There are plenty of books available on the meaning and reading of tarot symbolism.

Strength Card– Your strength comes from within; you’ve stared down the zombie horde and they blinked first. Or they would have, if only they had working eyelids. You’ve learned to trust your instincts and stay on your chosen path. Use that same resolve to cowboy up when the zombies get their second wind.

By the by, the turbanned-zombie face peering out from the box is Alexander, a vaudeville Mentalist back in the 1920s. His tagline was “The Man Who Knows.” He retired in his forties, quite rich from his stage act, and in his retirement explored the spiritual realm.

I highly recommend you explore your own spiritual horror realm with this neat zombie tarot. I’m hoping a zombie Quija is just around the corner.

zombie tarot cards

A courtesy deck was provided for this review.

The Raven (2012)
Quote This Critic: Nevermore!

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the Raven movie

Zombos Says: Fair

After the promising opening moments of James McTiegue’s The Raven are spent with anxious constables rushing to find slashed bodies in a locked room, and the entrance of Inspector Fields (Luke Evans), who approaches the conundrum like Auguste Dupin, John Cusack’s Edgar Allan Poe chews the scenery with his superficial temper tantrums and clumsy gyrations, pulled by contrivance instead of subtextual motivations. For god’s sake, didn’t Cusack and the writers know Poe was a tortured soul with layers of spiritual complexity? Where’s the empty pit of isolation and the breadth of despair he suffered through his boozing and melancholy? Yelling the word “f*ck” is not a suitable drama substitute. If only the real Poe could have lent a hand. I’m sure his dialog would have been richer and more sensible, and his suspense would have been palpable as well as plausible.

Plausibility is a good place to start since this movie adds little of it to tie its sensational events together. A wonderful premise brimming with potential limps instead from indecisive contextual stability as it purloins stock slasher and serial killer tidbits, piecemeal, without understanding their cumulative effect. It’s almost like Saw in gruesomeness scale–the strikingly gory pendulum slice and dice on the rotund Rufus Griswold (John Warnaby)–then restrains its visual assault like Horrors of the Black Museum, then jumps from left to right to be similar to Se7en’s broader cat and mouse conceit. Each staged execution of Poe’s devilish demises by the villain is handled like a fast-food order without condiments, even if imaginatively far-fetched clues propel Poe and Fields one step closer to finding who that killer is and his motive; both of which appear on script cue out of thin air for the denoument’s wrap-up, without any explicit or implied discernment along the way to prepare us for the revelation. It just happens.

Leading up to this, Poe rants, raves, throws his ego all around, sulks, and looks for his next drink–until his mind clears enough to recognize the clues being left behind; Fields, emotionless, analytical, dissects the problem methodically until he develops brain freeze, allowing Poe’s now clear mind to take the lead; the blustery Captain Hamilton (Brendan Gleeson) hates Poe–who wants to marry Hamilton’s daughter–until the captain becomes conciliatory and friend to Poe to help solve anothe clue, even though it’s Poe’s stories that have buried his daughter alive and all of them desperately trying to find her. Hamilton’s daughter Emily (Alice Eve) loves Poe, but aside from an out of place allusion about him giving good head, made during an overly long and lifeless romantic interlude, why she would like a destitute, alcoholic, and egotistical ass such as Poe is portrayed is not clear. Her wispy and cold presence in every scene blends into the upholstery much of the time, so unless Poe is infatuated with sitting on her, I’m at a loss to understand the attraction they have. Even when she’s clawing at the coffin she’s buried in, she’s as cold as a corpse already.

Then there are the vexing facts in the case of the uneven interior lighting from scene to scene. We go from moody interiors correctly matched with their dim gaslight and oil lamp sources to spectrums of bright white, impossible to be produced by the lamplight available, sandwiched between a few suitably bleak, mist-shrouded exteriors: a memorable chase under a gray sky and through a foggy, barren, forest brings to mind The Fall of the House of Usher.

Not much else is memorable except for the murder by pendulum. Its intensity is surprising given the duller deliveries of the subsequent murders. I’m not sure if practical effects were united with digital, but watching that enormous blade slice through Griswold’s belly, him screaming, it cutting deeper with each notch of its giant gears rolling into place, all that blood and glistening chunks of visceral meat splashing wildly, and the blade finally bisecting Griswold into two lifeless parts as it comes to rest, stuck into the wooden table between them, is breathtakingly disturbing, but oddly out of place here. I wondered how the villain managed to build such an immense, clockwork precise contraption by himself. Poe even remarks he hadn’t imagined the counterweight to be so large when he sees it.

I’m torn myself between loving and hating it, given the rest of this movie.

Magazines: Undying Monsters 4
Killer Trees, Monster Games, Creepy Music

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Zombos Says:  Very Good

"Let me in! Let me in! For the love of god, man, let me in!" I screamed while pounding on the garden shed door.

Pretorius, our groundskeeper, unlocked the door quickly, pulled me inside, and slammed it shut almost before I was fully through. He was out of breadth as much as I was. The walking tree trunk we were running away from started slamming against the shed door. I cautiously peered through the small window. Its googly eyes stared back at me, then, frustrated it couldn't reach us, it shambled off.

"What the hell is that thing?" I said to Pretorius. "And…are those your garden shears sticking out of it?"

"Snuck up on me…it did…while trimmin' the rose bushes," he said, in between huffs and puffs of air. "So  startled…I stuck my shears in it. Don't know where…it came from…or why."

Undyingmonsters4I leaned against the wooden potting table and caught my breadth, but my heart was beating a mile a minute.  "Hey, what's that?" I asked, looking at the new bags of fertilizer. I read  the label out loud. "Golgothan Fertilizer.  The very best poop to make your flowers pop. Arkham Nurseries, Massachusetts."

"New stuff," said Pretorius. "Zombos wanted… to cut expenses…so I found–say, you don't think?"

Before I could answer, Zombos started pounding on the garden shed door, yelling to be let in. I opened the door and pulled him to safety.

He tried to catch his breadth. "What the hell…is that thing? Never in… my life…have I–and why are garden shears stuck in its bark?" he asked, in-between taking mouthfuls of air.

From his frock coat pocket–yes, his warddrobe was as old as he was–tumbled issue 4 of Undying Monsters, though crumpled and torn badly. I picked up the magazine. 

"Sorry," he said, "post brought it. I was bringing it…to you when…that blasted stump crept up on me. Magazine…is useless as a weapon."

I uncrumpled the cover. "Hello. Does this look familiar?" I held it up for Zombos and Pretorius to see. 

"Good lord, it looks like the stump chasing us!" said Zombos. "Quick…find out how they kill it in the movie. Maybe that will help us."

I thumbed through the pages of the From Hell It Came film book. 

"Will you stop looking at the pictures!" said Zombos.

"I can't help it, they're very good, and there are a lot of them." I replied. "Let's see. Island prince framed for murder he didn't commit and stuffed in tree trunk, tree trunk, called Tabanga, comes back to life to shuffle slowly after people, and–heh, heh, heh–"

"What are you laughing about?" asked Zombos. 

"I can't believe they went to all this trouble to write up this goofy movie. I mean, come on, look at how slow the darn thing shuffles along. And its limbs are so stubby, there isn't enough room for a bird to nest on, let alone worrying about getting strangled by this thing. If you ask me–"

Pretorius jumped in impatiently. "I'm askin' you: how'd they stop it?" 

"Right, that, well…" I thumbed through to the end, "okay, here it is. They shot the knife that was previously plunged halfway into its heart, pushing it in to the hilt. Bingo!"

Pretorius said,"then all I need do is push the garden shears in all the way. Hmph. How to do that, then?" He looked around the shed until his eyes lit on a long-handled shovel. "Perfect. I won't need to get too close with this baby." He picked it up, looked out the window to make sure the coast was clear, and opened the door. "Who's with me?"

Zombos and I looked at each other for a long time. 

"Fine. I'll take care of this myself, then." Pretorius held the shovel tight and headed out to find the tree trunk.

Zombos slammed the door shut and relocked it. "While we wait until the coast is clear, what else is in the issue?"

"Let's see. Here's a nostalgic article on old monster board games. Shame the pictures are in black and white, but they've got the classics listed here. Nice rundown from the 60s up to the 70s. Good list for a collector. Never knew there was a Mummy Mystery boardgame. Wish I had this Boris Karloff Monster game. Great box cover and board art on these games, too."

I flipped to another page.

"Here's an interesting and lengthy article on Nostalgic Fear for Your Ears! by Ed Gannon. Caedmon, Pickwick, Peter Pan, Troll, Power, Electric Lemon, boy, he's covered the records pretty well. Brings back a lot of memories. Never could get into the spooky sounds records, but these spoken word ones were great to listen to in the dark, late at night."

I flipped to another page.

"Now you, especially, will find this noteworthy," I told Zombos. Here's an article on Clark Ashton Smith paperbacks.  Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, and Smith made up the Weird Tales triumvirate of terror masters. His work is essential reading for anyone who deems him or herself a horror fiction fan."

I was about to mention the article on the Criterion Collection of DVDs, but was interrupted by Pretorius yelling and banging on the garden shed door. I let him. He held the shovel, the handle now broken into two pieces.

"Not long enough," he said.

Zombos looked around the shed. "I have a better plan."

He picked up the chainsaw and handed it to Pretorius. "Go get it!" he said, opening the door.

Graphic Book Review: Young Lovecraft
and His Odd Friends

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Young lovecraft

Zombos Says: Good

What's a cultured and persnickety boy to do? Summon the gods to deal with all that growing-up-nerdy angst? and bullies bullying? and annoying aunts not in tune with those outre wavelengths his brain puts out? Why, yes!

Jose Oliver and Bartolo Torres let young Howard Lovecraft do just that. Even if he does bother Santa Claus every Christmas with requests for a copy of the Necronomicon in his stocking, and although he has little experience with his heady conjurations so they don't always work the way he'd like, and, well yes, those aunts are trying at times, but all in all, little Lovecraft gets by with a little help from his odd friends (and assorted demi-gods); and sometimes, even in spite of their help.

With Young Lovecraft's childhood encounters captured in 3-panel comic strips, the humorous zing has to be measured precisely in three beats, and for the most part, it is, aided by the minimalist, manga-styled and off-kilter artwork. With charmining aunties taking him to origami fairs and picking up evil guitar-playing hitchhikers, and with him over-dressing for Halloween as Harun Al-Rachid, the Caliph of Baghdad, the opportunities for his awkward weirdness complicating things geometrically propagates.

Add to this his penchant for rewriting the classics with the same dreadful theme, picking up dog-like ghouls in cemeteries, and sepulchre-partying with people like Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Baudelaire, and Arthur Rimbaud (though those panels don't exactly raise the dead in their zest), Young Lovecraft does manage to keep things infectiously cheeky for fans of the mythic mythos meister.

Young Lovecraft
While this first volume is not quite as squirrely written and wittily acerbic as Roman Dirges's Lenore, the same lightly dark tone and zany mischief can be found in Oliver's characters and situations, and in Torres's wild-eyed, noseless, facial expressions. Of course, being translated from the original Spanish, the words may lose some of their nuances in the translation.

But if you can imagine Charlie Brown partying among the tombstones and summoning ancient gods to handle life's daily challenges facing a not-your-average kid, with his usual bungling innocence not helping, than you will enjoy Young Lovecraft as much as I did.

Milton Bradley’s Monster Squad Game

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Here’s the Milton Bradley game based on the Monster Squad  Saturday morning series, airing 1976 to 1977, for fans who yearned, like I did, for one of those utility belts they wore. (Click each picture to open in browser, then click again to enlarge. Use your browser’s back button to return.)

the monster Squad board game
the monster Squad board game
the monster squad board game
the monster Squad board game