From Zombos Closet

JM Cozzoli

A horror genre fan with a blog. Scary.

Night Monster (1942)

/ Universal Monsters / 2 Comments

Night monster
Zombos Says: Very Good

“Do you hear that?” asked Zombos.

“Hear what? It’s quiet,” I said, puzzled by his question.

“That is my point: the quiet. The cicadas have gone quiet.” He looked over his shoulder.

“By George, you’re right. I wonder what…” I looked over my shoulder, though I wasn’t sure why.

We had been walking the beach close to the mansion, enjoying the West Egg summer night’s mix of sticky humidity and soft breeze coming off the water. With the sudden quiet, we had stopped and were now intently looking at the dense woods a few feet away on our left.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” I reassured him. “Come to think of it, it reminds me of that movie…let me think…the one with that swami guy, Bela, and those croaking frogs that stop croaking in the middle of the night just before a murder happens.”

“Oh, you mean Night Monster,” said Zombos, not taking his eyes off the woods.

“That’s it!” I said, not taking my eyes off the woods, either. “You know, we should retreat to the cinematorium for a showing.” Zombos agreed wholeheartedly and we dashed back to the mansion, looking behind us every so often as we ran. Though I’m not sure why.

 

An old dark mansion, blood stains that keep appearing in the carpeting, and thick fog swirling off the slough; if that’s not creepy enough for you, Night Monster, an unusual Universal B-horror movie energetically directed by Ford Beebe, also has Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, and some thing—scaring the croaking frogs into silence—going around killing people inside the brooding Ingston Towers mansion and outside it.

Of the many B-movies that Universal churned out in the 1940s, Night Monster stands out as a tidy little exercise in country-gothic horror, and, while not truly a mystery, although it plays like one, it retains an eerie atmosphere with its fast-paced tale of grotesque preternatural goings-on, Hindu mysticism, and familial madness at the Ingston Estate nestled deep in the southern woods.

Curiously enough, while Lugosi and Atwill are given top billing in the opening credits, both have only supporting roles: Lugosi plays the persnickety butler, Rolf, and Atwill is Dr. King, whose mortal coil is shuffled off rather early in the movie. They make the best of their limited time onscreen with enough preening and posturing between them to satisfy any fan of the classic horror genre. Perhaps Lugosi was supposed to be the plot’s red herring, but if so, that aspect of his role got lost in the translation from script to screen.

Evil things are afoot at the old Ingston homestead. One look at Torque (Cyril Delevanti), the sour, hunched-over gatekeeper, and Sarah (Doris Lloyd), the starch-collared and tight-lipped housekeeper, is enough to see the household is not doing all that well. Margaret Ingston (Fay Helm) worries she’s got hereditary bats in her belfry, so she invites psychiatrist Dr. Harper (Irene Hervey) to visit and bring a cup of sanity. Kurt Ingston (Ralph Morgan), her crippled brother, stews in his own juices, cynical of the modern medicine that failed him, and hating the three doctors responsible for his disfigurement. Yet he invites them to a little-dinner-and-a-lot-of-vitriol weekend to see a demonstration of something beyond their science, beyond the natural laws of nature, courtesy of his very own yogi master, Agor Singh (Nils Asther).

Surprisingly, the important Hindu mystic role is not played by Lugosi, who did wear a turban as Chandu the Magician in The Return of Chandu, and as psychic, Tarneverro, in The Black Camel. Instead, Asther, an actor born in Denmark, provides the foreign accent and dark features this time around, perhaps necessarily less than Lugosi would have mustered given his iconic gravitas.

It’s when Agor Singh does his after-dinner demonstration for the guests, calling forth a skeleton from an ancient tomb far away to appear out of thin air, with blood dripping from its outstretched bony fingers, that the story takes a welcomed spooky detour from the usually more straightforward B-movie fare. Singh has been teaching Kurt Ingston the ancient art of cosmic substance control. With his mind properly trained, Ingston can replace his amputated legs with new ones created by his mind, enabling him to walk again; or instead, he could kill those incompetent medical bastards one by one with his new, cosmic stuff-filled limbs.

I wonder which way he’ll go? A puddle of blood is found where the skeleton appeared; an odd byproduct of the arcane mind control, comments Singh. A quirky little toss away detail that adds a touch more to the weirdness.

Jack Otterson’s (The Mummy’s Tomb) art direction and Charles Van Enger’s camera build a gothic atmosphere and slick gloss for Beebe’s movie. Enhanced by moody, terror-tense music, some of it previously heard in The Wolf Man, the secluded mansion’s menacing shadows, secret passageways, and flickering, fireplace-lighted gloom, all surrounded by a miasma of swirling fog, show a hypnotic palette of images. Window-frame shadows play across daytime interiors, and ominous shadows cast by furniture give a noir-ish textural depth to ordinary scenes, showing unexpected creativity and artistic preference in this budget production. The sudden quiet of the boisterously croaking frogs, followed by the screech of a door opening in the garden, signals the approach of the monster, a clever gimmick to heighten the suspense. In the 2007 movie Dead Silence a similar technique is used to equal effect.

The air of dread and impending doom is sustained by the mansion’s characters and their questionable intentions: Laurie (Leif Erickson) the chauffeur has nothing but dames and hanky-panky on his mind, but it’s not clear what else he’s involved in. Rolf acts sinister and supercilious until the bodies start showing up, and Sarah secretly has the hots for Kurt Ingston and looks guilty just standing around.

Providing comic relief are Constable Beggs (Robert Homans), who investigates when Millie (Janet Shaw) the maid is found strangled next to a puddle of blood, and Dr. Phipps (Francis Pierlot), the diminutive physician with a penchant for gland research. The more serious romantic roles are handled by Dick Baldwin (Don Porter), a mystery writer invited to the little gathering by Kurt Ingston (okay, why invite a mystery writer?), and Dr. Harper, who’s trying to get to the bottom of Margaret’s fears.

The weird murders happen fast and furious. While Dr. King is strangled off-camera, the discovery of his body is shown through the reactions of others, followed by a close-up of his lifeless clenched hand.  Dr. Timmons is surprised in his room next as a silhouetted figure steps out of his closet, its shadow growing larger on the wall as it lunges toward him. A close-up of his lifeless hand is shown. Then timid Dr. Phipps is attacked when he opens his bedroom door, thinking it is Laurie come to take him away from the mansion. We see him through the killer’s eyes as he recoils in fear, unable to scream as death approaches.

In the climax, Dr. Harper and Baldwin make a dash for it as the frogs stop croaking and the garden door creaks open, while Margaret decides to throw a hissy-fit with Sarah and play with fire. Will the killer be revealed? Will Dr. Harper ever get her blasted foot unstuck from the rotted foot bridge that Dick insisted on fleeing across? Will we ever find out why the, up-till-now, very reserved and strong-willed psychiatrist starts screaming like a B-movie girl instead of concentrating on getting her foot unstuck before Dick gets his ticket punched by the monster?

I’m sure you’ll enjoy finding out.

Special thanks to HHWolfman at the Universal Monster Army. While at the 2007 Monster Bash, I mentioned I wanted to review this neglected film. He soon surprised me with a copy of it, hot off the back of a hearse. Thanks HH. Thanks also to Richard Scrivani, who screened it at the Monster Bash, rekindling my interest in it.

Interview: Richard Scrivani
A Journey with Zacherley

/ Books (Non-fiction), Horror Hosts / 6 Comments

Good Night Whatever You Are book coverZombos Says: Very Good

But most of all, for kids born under the bomb and black-and-white TV, the revolution that was the 1960s began with Zacherley. (David Colton, Preface to Goodnight, Whatever You Are)

We take a lot of things for granted. I don’t mean all those little inconsequential things that we siphon from our daily wake through the great white waters of life, but the really important things like our relationships with people, the places we go, and the history we take part in. Living our lives takes so much effort, so much involvement, that we scarcely get a chance to look back and reflect before it’s all, suddenly, too late.

Richard Scrivani did look back, and his reflections on those things he didn’t take for granted back in the 1950s and 1960s are the stuff of history, and childhood culture, and all those really important things many of us, who grew up in those churning and yearning years, have tucked deeply, and absent-mindedly, into our back soul-pockets.

Now I know it would be narrow-minded of me to say that the ’50s and ’60s were a wonderful time for everyone who grew up then, but I can say with certainty that there was one wonderful part of it that anyone could share in, whatever you were: Zacherley. In Richard’s book, Goodnight, Whatever You Are!: My Journey with Zacherley, the Cool Ghoul, he reminds us of a time when monsters ruled the nascent airwaves, and Zacherley reigned as the TV horror host with the most, and flaunted it to the horror of many parents and authoritarians.

Zacherley came on the scene when Screen Gems opened the cinematic vaults in 1957 to release the Shock! Theater and Son of Shock! films, unleashing many classic—and many spastic—horror and suspense movies onto the little screen, awakening the monster-lust in many a young fan with their arcane terrors. In the middle ’50s, the first lady of terror, Vampire, helped open the crypt door to future horror hosts who put their bite on the jocular vein, in welcome contrast to their show’s more traditional, or just plain godawful, fright offerings.

As TV stations around the country scrambled to market their Shock! package of films, Philadelphia’s WCAU-TV came up with a creepy character named Roland to play host for their show. John Zacherle, already acting in a western aired by the station, was asked to play the surly, acerbic-witted, but humorous crypt-kicker.

Richard Scrivani documents Roland’s creation, and the ghastly business-side antics that led to Zacherle’s eventual move to ABC-TV in New York to become the nationally known ghoulish gagster, Zacherley. With lots of photos, and a clever interview format that continues throughout the book, this look at Zacherley’s rise to notoriety provides a revealing look at early television, which was a roll-up-your-sleeves time when local stations created much of their own programming and broadcast live entertainment.

Scrivani pays close attention to the progression of Zacherley’s career across TV stations up to and including the move to UHF and WNJU-TV 47, where pop-music and pop-horror meet in a broadcast-live dance show called Disc O-Teen, aired every weekday at 6 P.M. from the Mosque Theater in Newark, New Jersey, starting in 1965. He attributes his first meeting with Zacherley to luck; the cute girl he danced with, Sami, caught the attention of the camera men and Zach. His luck would lead to a return visit for a Halloween show, and many more visits that spanned the three years Disc O-Teen was on the air.

Notable rock bands and their music in this era of social transition, and the dancers that made Disc O-Teen a happening show week after week, along with Zacherley’s uniquely wacky sense of “grumor,” are vividly told. Against this backdrop, Scrivani writes about the  friendship that grew between him, a shy kid from New Jersey, and the palid punster whose iconic persona became the eternal poster child for monsterkids everywhere, whatever they were.

It’s hard to describe a time in American culture when the word “plastic” was confined to model kits, and not used pejoratively, but Scrivani manages to capture the innocence, the angst, and the harsh reality of the black and white TV age. Along the way in this personal journey, his friendship with Zacherley hits its idle periods, but picks up as John Zacherle moves from horror icon to radio announcer and back again.

I was lucky to meet Richard at a little private soiree thrown by the Drunken Severed Head at the 2007 Monster Bash Convention. While I didn’t have a cute girl like Sami to grab his attention, we were wedged in tight enough–small hotel room, many notable guests–that he couldn’t escape my asking a few questions.

How did your friendship with TV horror host Zacherley get started?

It started with a visit to Zach’s dancing show, Disc-O-Teen, in August, 1965. My younger brother’s band, Herald Square, was competing in a contest on the show and the winning group was to be awarded a recording contract with World Artist Records. My dance partner and I were invited back for the upcoming Halloween show. That was the very beginning of what would become a friendship with Zach.

In your book, Good Night, Whatever You Are, you write about an era of television and culture that, sadly, no longer exists. Why is that?

Because there are no longer any local TV personalities like Zach, Chuck McCann and Soupy Sales to host live programming. Everything is tightly scheduled and sent out like mass-produced cookies. Videotape is also becoming a thing of the past because stations are now broadcasting with hard drives.

The days when you could walk into a studio where a show was being taped (like sneaking under the circus tent), sadly, have long disappeared.

What’s your first monsterkid memory?

My very first “monster kid memory” has to have been the first time I saw THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS in the movies with my father and younger brother in 1953. I remember the picture had a slight greenish tint to it!

What other monsterkid memories can you share with us?

I remember my first experience with a vampire film. I was about 10 years old and THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE was being shown on a local TV station long before the “Shock!” package was released. It was the scene where Nina Foch kisses her fiance and the camera swings over to reveal Lugosi as Armand Tesla hiding in the shadows. The female vampire was obviously following his command and it terrified me to think that a vampire could pretend to kiss you and instead drink your blood.

Also (probably on the same station around the same period) Glenn Strange changing into a werewolf and stalking an old man in THE MAD MONSTER scared the life out of me. But the most intense memory was Bramwell Fletcher’s abbreviated scream in THE MUMMY after coming face to face with Karloff’s reanimated Imhotep, followed by that insane laughter. I watched the rest of the film with the sound so low it was barely audible; I wasn’t going to be frightened like THAT again!

Having grown up on the early horror movies, what’s your impression of the current crop of movies?

Every once in a while I see one I really like, such as THE OTHERS or the remake of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. For the most part, though, I’m not a big fan of current horror movies. I did actually like M. Night Shyamalan’s  THE SIXTH SENSE and THE VILLAGE, and I don’t know if this qualifies as horror, more likely fantasy, but I thought PAN’S LABYRINTH was one of the best genre films of all time.

Zach02_2 What’s the one question you’d love to be asked, and what’s your answer?

The question would be: “What makes Zacherley so unique and appealing?”

My answer: To a kid my age (12) in the uptight, conservative, tow-the-line 1950s, there were no TV personalities who broke the rules by poking fun at the stations’ programming and even their bosses. When Zach came on the scene he seemed to be speaking just to us and it felt like he was one of us. He also wasn’t afraid to make himself a filthy, disheveled mess while doing his crazy “experiments” and that was very much like the behavior of another kid!  I think radio personality Pete Fornatale, who calls Zach a “televisionary”, sums it up best –  it was like Zach was telling one big joke and we were all in on it.

Goodnight, Whatever You Are is a terrific trip down memory lane for anyone who grew up as a monsterkid. For everyone else, it will make you envious that you missed out on all the fun. But remember, it’s never too late, whatever you are.

Comic Book Review:
Papercutz’ Tales From the Crypt 1

/ Comics/Manga / 2 Comments

Zombos Says: Fair

Welcome, dear readers, to another unbelievably gruesome tale for your morbid delight. Pull up a coffin and sit for a spell, won’t you? Tonight, we look at another vain and feeble attempt to resurrect the dead. What’s that you say? No, it’s not good old Frankenstein up to his old tricks, nor voodoo zombies dancing in the moonlight. It’s more diabolical than that! It’s Papercutz’ Tales From the Crypt, Issue Number One!

The office is quiet. The clock on the desk shows midnight as the sleepy-eyed artist finishes his work. Reaching for his long cold cup of coffee, he accidentally spills red ink across the freshly drawn page.

“Damn,” he says out loud, but there’s no one to hear. Or is there?

“Hahahahaah!” cackles a mucous-filled throat.

“Who’s that! Who’s there?” says the artist, jumping out of his chair.

“Only us,” replies another voice, as if clogged with fresh earth from a newly dug grave.

Gasp! The artist trips over his chair as he spins around. Standing behind him are two figures. They glare at him from the darkness his desk lamp can’t reach. Their clothes hang in tatters, and moist earth drops in little clumps from their rotted limbs.

“Oh my god, you…you’re…” The artist staggers backward in disbelief, raising his hands in horror.

“Yeah, I’m Feldstein, and he’s Johnny Craig. Look, we’re not entirely happy with what your doin’ with our baby, the Crypt-Keeper.” Feldstein’s finger drops off as he points vigorously at the artist. “Not again, damnit! Now where did it go?” He motions to Johnny Craig while he looks for his finger.

“What he said,” snarls Craig. “I mean, just look at that artwork for the first story, Body of Work. Are you kidding me? Jack Davis was so upset he went to pieces. Wally Wood’s still back at the cemetery trying to put him together. Just look at these colors; bright, cheerful? And what the hell do you think you’re drawing, a Picasso? And don’t get me started on that storyline. Horror writer my ass! I’ll admit it’s kind of witty, and the tone of the story and art style work fairly well together, but that ending? C’mon, how original to use the old PG-standby, heart attacks. These are fiends, man! Thirsting for blood!”

“But I didn’t draw the first story; I drew the second one, For Serious Collectors Only,” pleaded the artist.

Feldstein stands up, grabs the tape dispenser off the desk, and tapes his finger back onto his hand. Then, in a fit of inspiration, he staples it for good measure.

“There, that’s not going anywhere now. Now what was I saying? Oh, yeah. The Crypt-Keeper may be demented, but he’s still educated. Who wrote those godawful word balloons for him anyway? You’d think he was a bit comic doing a dead vaudeville shtick the way he talks. Where’s the puns, the biting sarcastic wit? From Ralph Richardson to this? I can’t believe it. Even Kassir did a better job.”

The artist cowered. “That’s Salicrup. He did it. You can’t blame me for any of that. I told him it was too juvenile, too pedestrian. All I did was draw the second story.”

“That second story’s a doozy, too. It’s “250% more cursed” is right. How many times have I seen comic book stories about nerdy comic book collectors who live in their mom’s basement? Gee, let me count those times on my fingers. Damn, ran out of fingers!”

Once more, Feldstein’s overly dramatic hand gestures send another finger flying through the air. His pinky lands in the artist’s coffee cup.

“Gross,” says the artist, pushing the cup away in disgust.

“Damn, not again!” says Feldstein, reaching for the tape dispenser and stapler.

“He’s right,” says Craig. “These stories are so overly done and so predictable. Where’s the witty but ironic endings, the twist of the fickle finger of fate? Tsk, tsk.”

“There’s no unique Tales From the Crypt look, either,” says Feldstein. “No bold ink lines, or saturated morose colors, or salient looks of dread on fear-stricken faces. Where are the tombs, the crumbling cemeteries, the rotting zombies? Is this the best you got? All I’m sayin’ is show the respect due, that’s all. Don’t just throw anything together and call it Tales From the Crypt. I want to see more effort put into the second issue or else.”

Feldstein leans forward to emphasize his “or else.” As the artist frantically jumps backward to avoid the snarling corpse, he trips over his own two feet, and cracks his head open on the edge of the heavy steel desk. His blood pours out from the large gash in his skull, mixing with the red ink already spilled.

“Damn, didn’t see that coming,” says Craig. “His artwork wasn’t that bad, either.”

Both Craig and Feldstein hurriedly stagger off. Light begins to enter the office windows. The clock on the desk shows 6 A.M., the time the artist usually goes to Starbucks for his morning cup of coffee. He won’t be going to Starbucks today.

Well, dear readers, the poor artist has learned, only too late, that the comic book business can be murder. Perhaps he’ll be drawing a pair of wings next. Hehehehehehe.

Interview: Sight Unseen

/ Comics/Manga / Leave a Comment

Sight Unseen book cover Zombos Says: Good

Robert Tinnell and Bo Hampton’s graphic novel, Sight Unseen, is an American Gothic story that, in true style, keeps the evil all in the degenerate family. With tight pacing, shadowy, emotive art panels that read like a cinematic storyboard, and a premise that doesn’t overwhelm the story but allows it to unfold, it delivers a tidy mix of eerie imagery and believable-within-context situations; along with a damned, J-Horror-styled spirit that simply loves to hurt people.

While seeing dead people through special optics like eyeglasses has been done in print and film before, that’s not the focus of the story. It just so happens that Frank Byron, blinded in a lab explosion, seizes the “opportunity” to explore a different type of sight; one based on his observation that his seeing-eye dog apparently sees things that no human can see. Dead things.

In the course of his experiments he distances himself from his daughter while becoming closer with the dead. But the dead are not entirely the focus of the story, either, except for one dead person in particular, still residing at The Birches Estate, recently put up for sale. She’s quite a handful as Frank gravitates to exploring the mystery with his newfound second sight when people start disappearing.

The artwork and story work well together, and the heavy line strokes combine with the shading and coloration across panels to sustain a morosely detailed and creepy sense of dread.

I met with director and author Robert Tinnell at the 2007 Monster Bash Convention, and took the opportunity to ask him a few questions.

How did Sight Unseen come about?

I met Bo Hampton at Wizard in Philly and we clicked. He read The Black Forest on the plane on the ride home and then called me and asked if I was interested in collaborating. I’m still trying to figure out why! He had ideas – the notion of a blind guy who could see ghosts.  I had a story involving the haunted house – and wanted to do the southern gothic thing – and we just sort of married the stuff…[Note: The last few pages in the book are devoted to the collaborative creative process involved in bringing Sight Unseen to print.]

With much of your creative work done in a horror vein, what is it about the genre that motivates you?

I think there are a number of factors, and while it may be embarrassing, there’s no denying nostalgia’s influence. Working in the genre brings to mind the things that inspired me in the first place – and the accompanying emotions. Of course, there’s more to it than that. In general, I think horror allows us to explore other aspects of life – sex and death are certainly primary examples. I mean – how can you watch Invasion of the Body Snatchers and think it simply exists to try and scare you? Of course, I do love trying to scare people. Always have.

Tell us about your monsterkid background and when the horror bug first bit you.

I remember seeing an ad for Hammer’s Kiss of the Vampire – it was going to be on CBS late night television, and I was immediately drawn to it – but forbidden to watch!  Later it was Dark Shadows and the Hammer films – still later the classic Universals. And in the seventies I was heavily into horror film fandom – did my own fanzine. I guess it was a cumulative effect of all that stuff…

Sightunseen02 Did your directing experience influence your writing in The Black Forest, The Wicked West, and Sight Unseen?

Not so much on TBF but definitely on the latter two. On TWW the book itself is certainly a rumination on film – at least one aspect of the book is. As far as Sight Unseen goes, I think even more as I was definitely tapping into cinematic methods of eliciting scares – and Bo was doing the same thing – drawing on his experience as a storyboard artist.

What was it like directing Frankenstein and Me?

Truly the best and worst of times. My personal life was in great upheaval. I don’t think the film is what it should have been – and I blame myself. But on the other hand, I did get to make it and did get to pay tribute – however flawed – to all those films and people who inspired me. Just standing around on the Brides of Dracula set and the Night of the LIving Dead location (I should clarify – recreations used for the film) was fantastic. And there are moments in the film – like when the kids are watching Dark Shadows that are very rewarding for me personally. I just wish I could go back and redo it.

Which horror films are your favorites and why?

The scary ones! Although I am partial to some that aren’t so much scary as they are beautiful to look at or thought-provoking. But here’s a partial list – The Uninvited: a ghost story that really delivers the chills.  It’s a very evocative little film – and I like the fact it doesn’t try too hard. The Innocents: a ghost story that’s about something, elegantly photographed, eerie in its simplicity. I’m a big fan. Night of the Living Dead: verite horror – this is a text book case about how to scare – and not because of the gore – which is actually the weakest part of the film. The Horror of Dracula – scary, sexy, economical, elegant, beautiful to look at, brilliantly directed. What more can I say? The Exorcist: you don’t have to like it – but you have to respect it. Scary because it takes its time, building its case, so that once you are confronted with the actual supernatural events you have no choice but to believe. The Old Dark House: The original James Whale version – scary and fun and sadly under-appreciated.

The list goes on and on – and my hands hurt from typing – so I’ll just note: THE CAT PEOPLE, FRANKENSTEIN, THE INVISIBLE MAN, DRACULA, DRACULA’S DAUGHTER, SON OF DRACULA, THE WOLF MAN, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, BRIDES OF DRACULA, DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS, THE DEVIL RIDES OUT, FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN, FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED, QUATERMASS FILMS, SUSPIRIA, DAWN OF THE DEAD – whew – the list is literally exhaustive…

What current and future projects are you working on?

I am writing two graphic novels – EZ Street for artist Mark Wheatley, and Bo and I are co-writing and he’s drawing Demons of Sherwood. I just finished the graphic novel, Eagle: Legacy, for Neil Vokes and once he’s done drawing that he starts our monthly comic, THE VOICE – which is my first foray into Mexican horror. I’m writing a big horror adventure screenplay and at the same time writing another more mainstream screenplay. After that I’m going to adapt Lee Maynard’s novel Crum – which is a brilliant book about Appalachia. I’m preparing to direct the movie version of my graphic novel, Feast of the Seven Fishes…I’m sure I’m forgetting something…Oh yes – writing the book, Jump Cuts, with Mark Clark – which we hope will serve as a interesting study of how horror movies have tried to scare us…

What’s the one question you’d love to be asked, and what’s your answer?

What are some dream projects?

I’d love to direct the movie version of The Living and the Dead, the graphic novel I wrote with Todd Livingston that Micah Farritor drew. I’d love to adapt Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife, though apparently that will never happen thanks to some convoluted rights’ issues. Tim Lucas wrote a marvelous novel, The Book of Renfield, that would be a joy to adapt as a screenplay.

Primeval (2007)
What a Croc

/ Movies (Bad) / 1 Comment

Zombos Says: Fair

Director Michael Katleman’s Primeval is a film filled with monsters. There’s Gustave, the four-legged, meat-eating kind, and Little Gustave, the two-legged and hungry for power kind. Both do not help make Primeval a good horror movie. The story’s tension and scares are lost in the flip-flops between social commentary, which requires lingering and thoughtful scenes, and horror, which requires the exact opposite.

Based on a real-life crocodile that’s been attacking people along the Rusizi River in Burundi, Africa, you’d think the story would pretty much write itself: the largest man-eating crocodile in history, born out of a genocidal civil-war raging in Burundi. With so many bodies floating around in the river, it’s no wonder Gustave develops a taste for human flesh. Yet, Katleman’s film misses the real horror of this human tragedy.

…

Primeval (2007)
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Book Review: Apple of My Eye

/ Books (Fiction)

“The corpse plants are blooming,” yelled our groundskeeper, Pretorius.

It was a rare day when any one of our amorphophallus titanums bloomed, and to have them all opening their fetid inflorescence at once is quite a red letter day.

Zombos poked his head out of the window. “I thought I detected a whiff of their potent fragrance. Excellent.” He took a deep breadth. “It will make a perfect centerpiece for our Fourth of July party.”

He noticed I was still in my doldrums.

“Haven’t you finished it yet?” he asked.

“No. Lost, lost, simply lost. I’m not sure why I’ve been so writer’s blocked on this.”

“My word, this is the longest time you’ve spent hemming and hawing on a simple review.”

“That’s the problem,” I said. “It’s not that simple.”

“Well, then, perhaps if you think it aloud, that would help.” He sat down by the window, closed his eyes, pressed his fingertips together, and took a deep breadth.

I looked at my empty cup of coffee with a sigh. Times like these required strong coffee, and lots of it. I sighed. “Well, after reading Amy Grech’s thirteen-story collection, Apple of My Eye, I can safely say she has a fetish going for coppery-tasting, bright red blood, shiny sharp implements in dangerous hands, and bad relationships built on—usually terminal—masochistic tendencies. I can best describe her approach if I liken it to walking down a Brooklyn tenement alleyway late at night. Lined with shaded windows, I imagine her standing tiptoe on shaky garbage cans to peak into the rooms beyond. Not all of her clandestine observations are as clear as we voyeurs would like, but there’s a hint of the darker side of human nature in many of her stories that makes reading them an unsettling experience. Her characters tend to act a little out of kilter with our reality, giving them a dreamy, or nightmarish tinge of behaviors that don’t quite make sense if you only take them at face value.” I paused.

“That’s good. Make sure to write that down,” Zombos said without opening his eyes. “What else?”

I thought about it. “Her work is somewhat vexing because she has a habit of ending her stories much too soon.”

“Like waking from a dream without getting the full sense of what it was about?” Zombos observed.

“Quite. That’s a good way of putting it. I find her dialog a little off, too. Sometimes it’s too pat in places,” I said.

“I sense another thought on the verge of discovery,” Zombos said quietly.

“I’m not sure what…well, now that you mention it.” I picked up Apple of My Eye and paged through it while I collected my thoughts. “I’m not really into very adult dark fiction. Her stories can be erotically-charged. Take the lead story, Apple of My Eye for instance. The main character is a nightmare in red heels, cruising the darker watering holes of Greenwich Village. She hooks up with some schlub who’s looking for a good time in private, but she has ulterior motives that are unsavory.”

“And you were aroused by Grech’s prose?” Zombos asked, rather astutely I might add.

“Why, yes, I found the story very effective in that regard. But it’s a weird vignette. Why would any man go back to her apartment knowing her daddy’s a psychotic, mother-killing, incestuous fruitcake who doesn’t like seeing her with other men?”

“But you did find the story evocative?”

“It’s creepy as hell, yes. Just out of kilter with my normal expectations for—”

“But dreams and nightmares have no expectations, do they? They just create a mood which can often be disturbing, but rarely does any of it make sense at face value.” Zombos crossed his legs and leaned further back in his chair.

“I suppose that’s true,” I said.

“Which story is your favorite?” he asked.

“It’s a close call between Rampart and Damp Wind and Leaves. Rampart reads like some P.G. Wodehouse’s evil doppelgänger’s bizarre sense of humor. It’s a Tales from the Darkside-like episode about a very rich man going very very bonkers as he’s trapped in a castle whose walls are not content to remain still. The narrative is cucumber sandwich-flippant, and the characters and tone light and breezy. The story reminded me just a little of Charlotte Gilman’s more serious The Yellow Wallpaper. In Damp Wind and Leaves, which is also available from Amazon Shorts, Grech uses a masterful touch of understatement to describe one very special Halloween in a horror fan’s life. It’s a precisely measured story of loneliness and love, and like a soft gust of cool air on an Autumn day, that rolls over your cheek, it’s there and gone in a moment; but the feeling lingers. The imagery is vivid, as are the characters and their feelings.

“Then there’s Ashes to Ashes,” I continued. “A story that’s reminiscent of Bradbury’s Dark Carnival in tone and imagery. The very idea of a husband’s ashes no longer silently resting in his burial urn is wonderfully Gothic, but she writes it with a modern touch. The story seems to end too soon, but the mood it leaves you with, like many of her stories, is similar to the feelings you have after waking from a dream as your dream-emotions linger, leaving you with a curious feeling that’s hard to describe.

“I also have a soft spot for Raven’s Revenge. How can you not love a haunted Brooklyn apartment with a restless spirit looking for revenge? I’m not sure about Snubbed, though. It reads more like a woman’s revenge fantasy rather than a realistic portrayal of a woman’s revenge on her ex-boyfriend now rapist. Say, you know, this has helped me a great deal in…”

Zombos started snoring. His head had sunk to his chest, but his fingertips remained steadfastly pressed together, and his legs still curled tightly around themselves. I stood up, stretched, and finished my review. It was getting late. The guests for our Fourth of July party would soon be arriving so there was much to do. As I picked up my empty cup of coffee, looking for a much needed refill, I thought about Sanchez in Perishables, one of Grech’s very short stories that didn’t need any more words to convey its horror. Funny, I thought to myself, as I wondered what perishables we had in our pantry as I bounded down the stairs. Our guests would be hungry.

The Return of the Vampire (1944)

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Return of the Vampire publicity stillZombos Says: Good

Bela Lugosi’s career didn’t fare well after his initial fame withDracula. Having apparently failed the makeup screen test forFrankenstein—though he wasn’t overly found of playing the monster anyway—his reserved and aloof demeanor kept him from ingratiating himself with the Hollywood in-crowd. That, and the rapidly rising stardom of Boris Karloff after his noted portrayal of the Frankenstein Monster, put Lugosi in a deteriorating career position.

Although he created intensely unique and effective characters such as Dracula, Murder Legendre in White Zombie, and Ygor in Son of Frankenstein, he spent much of his time acting in lesser roles. After Dracula,
he portrayed a “real” vampire onscreen only two more times; as Armand Tesla in The Return of the Vampire, and as the more comedic count in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Lew Landers’ The Return of the Vampire plays like a Brothers Grimm fairytale. You have your evil villain, the occultist turned vampire, Armand Tesla (Bela Lugosi), his reluctant servant who is tragically caught between good and evil and lycanthropy, and a wartime beleaguered, bomb-ruined London as backdrop seething with revenge creeping in the foggy night.

The story begins as the first World War ends. Lady Jane (Frieda Inescot) and Dr. Saunders (Gilbert Emery) must come to terms with a vampire in their midst. After he attacks a child, Dr. Saunders convinces Lady Jane that their problem goes beyond scientific understanding, and the two set out to find the blood-sucking fiend. But not before Dr. Saunders reads up on the annoying supernatural pests, written by one Armand Tesla, noted authority in the field.

It is an ironic, somewhat foreboding comment Dr. Saunders makes regarding the limitations of science to convince Lady Jane of the existence of something not analyzable under her microscope; only a few years later, the inexplicable horrors of the supernatural world will be supplanted by the inexplicable mutant horrors wrought by science and radiation. After World War II and the atomic bomb, vampires and werewolves would appear less frightening compared to the threats from giant ants, giant spiders, and giant blobs.

The shift from personal destruction to mass destruction has begun.

As night approaches, Lady Jane and Dr. Saunders find Tesla in his coffin and drive a steel spike into his heart, freeing Andreas (Matt Willis), Tesla’s werewolf servant, from his evil grasp, and ending Tesla’s reign of terror. Years later, in the aftermath of a World War II Nazi bombing raid, civil defense workers mistakenly remove the spike from Tesla’s heart, freeing him to seek vengeance on the family that stopped his vampiric-evil many years before. The scene is reminiscent of a similar scene in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, when Larry Talbot is freed from his tomb by two similarly bumbling, but not very civil-minded, grave robbers.

Andreas, whom the good Lady Jane took in as her laboratory assistant, once again succumbs to Tesla’s evil mind control and turns back into his rather huggable werewolf form, gleefully killing people in order to help Tesla assume a new identity and execute his nefarious plan of vengeance against Lady Jane and her loved ones. Andreas’ hirsute persona is more Jekyll and Hyde than a straightforward, rip-out-your-throat, bay at the
full-moon, kind of werewolf. He’s fully conscious of what he’s doing, but simply loves killing people and being downright nasty when under Tesla’s control.

Against the backdrop of bombed-out London—the aftermath of real horror brought about by the “Jerries”—Andreas and his undead master walk quietly amid the ruins unnoticed, anachronistic folkloric monsters in a tableau of a larger monstrosity, the death and destruction of war. It is an eerie composition; dark spookshow theatrics of cemeteries and fog mingling with scenes of carnage and black-out curtains.

The film moves well and Lugosi, while older, still plays the vampire with a sufficient touch of malice. The addition of his werewolf servant is an odd touch, especially since his servant doesn’t act like a werewolf—he talks a lot and wears a suit—but it does provide a unique aspect to the storyline and the need for redemption as Andreas fights for his salvation at the end. Why he becomes a werewolf when Tesla takes control of him is not explained, but Andreas retains his tie and voice whether he’s hairy or clean-shaven, which is either sublimely ridiculous or deeply meaningful.

I vote for the former as it’s more fun to watch than try to explain.

After Dr. Saunders dies in a plane crash, his manuscript, detailing the exploit with Armand Tesla many years before, falls into the hands of Sir Frederick Fleet of Scotland Yard (Miles Mander). Lady Jane is warned she may be implicated in a murder if Tesla’s body is found, but Lady Jane takes up the good fight as she tries to convince Sir Fleet that body is still above ground and a vampire is prowling London. In true stiff upper lip fashion, she pouts in calm determination as Sir Fleet tish-toshes the notion politely, but both still work together to stop Tesla for good. As a woman of science and reason, Lady Jane’s strong-willed professionalism foreshadows the career women that will soon grace many a sci-fi horror film in the decade to follow.

The Return of the Vampire is a good B-Movie that got lost in the transition from the Gothic-horror cycle to the
scientifically-induced horrors of the 1950s. By 1944, Lugosi, the talking movie screen’s first great monster star, exchanged his opera cape for a lab coat in Voodoo Man, and again in 1945 in Zombies on Broadway, playing a mad scientist. In the emerging world of science gone amoral, mad science became all the rage.

For poor Bela, his return was short-lived. He got lost in the transition also. He deserved better.

1408 (2007)
Room for Terror

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Zombos Says: Very Good

While I readily admit that some hotel rooms I’ve spent time in were murder, none of them ever tried to kill me. Unfortunately for writer Mike Enslin (John Cusack), room 1408 in the Dolphin Hotel punches his number with a vengeance. With an ominous song blaring from the one-hour clock-radio heralding doom, hot and cold running ghosts, and concierge service to die from, he’s in quite a pickle; but, after all, he did insist on spending the night in it.

What is it about writers? Especially depressed ones that have lost a loved one and search for some truth behind that long dark curtain of the night? Enslin’s on a quest to find just one ghost, one real moan, one real hint of life beyond the pall. He’s so obsessed, he’s lost track of his own life, and wife, while spending night after fruitless night searching for hope shining off a ghostly glimmer. I feel for him. I watch Ghost Hunters on the Sci-Fi Channel again and again, hoping for just that moment, that one shining, incontrovertible bit of proof there’s more to death than meets the unseeing eye. If and when that moment comes, I hope it doesn’t try to kill me, too.

That’s the mystery of room 1408: what is the malevolent force residing in that room, driving people to mutilate and kill themselves? In true J-horror fashion, we never learn the answer, but the question is well-illustrated in psychological, not gory, terms, driving Enslin to fight both the room’s and his own inner demons. And they keep coming on strong, giving him little respite nor a good night’s sleep.

The postcard warning him to stay out of room 1408 is too enticing for him, so instead of heeding the warning, he heads to New York City to the Dolphin Hotel, to insist on spending the night in a room that’s killed fifty-six other guests—with one drowned in his chicken soup. The hotel manager, Olin (Samuel L. Jackson), sums it up best: “It’s an evil f**cking room.”

Not even Olin’s detailed scrapbook of news clippings and death photographs convinces Enslin to forgo 1408 and spend the night in the penthouse suite; but it does provide for a chilling, tension-building walk as Enslin peruses it, page by gruesome-death page, during his walk from the elevator to 1408. Once he enters the room, and nothing immediately jumps out of the closet, he relaxes a bit and pops open the bottle of high-priced liquor Olin tried to bribe him with; but that lets the spirits out, metaphorically speaking.

And once they’re out, hell starts to follow as the room’s evil entity makes its presence known by blaring “We’ve Only Just Begun” by the Carpenters, and fooling around with his turn-down service. When he can’t get out of the room, now that he realizes it really wasn’t a good idea to enter it in the first place, his hand-held recorder becomes more than a voice-recorder; it allows him to vent his fear, his anger, and his thoughts, giving us a front-row seat to watch his mental state go from cocky to scared sh*tless in no time flat.

As the room’s temperature shifts from hot to arctic, and the paintings on the wall take on a Night Gallery-style life of their own, Enslin’s fear turns to rage as he fights the good fight to leave the room on his terms, not splattered on the pavement below, or, like one previous guest, stitching up his own, self-inflicted throat slice from ear to ear.

Cusack handles the three-sixty mood swing with verve, and his disoriented performance brings us into the room alongside him. Horror is best when served alone, and he proves it by keeping us asking if and how he’ll find the way out. Without lavish gore, director Mikael Håfström increases the shocks by first showing little, disquieting events that rattle Enslin’s composure, then increases the assault on his nerves with CGI-enhanced calamities that build in intensity. Gabriel Yared’s effective music is mixed in with harsh, discordant sounds and the pleasant-sounding, but tauntingly malign voice on the other end of the telephone, promising more unpleasant room service to come. All of this plays on our nerves, as well as Enslin’s.

Never has room service been this bad, or this much fun. In a summer of horror that can too easily become mired in uninspired by-the-body-count nihilistic splatter, 1408 goes back to the old school for its scares.  And it works.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)

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Zombos Says: Fair (misses the fantastic spirit of the comic book story by a mile)

I was grievously disappointed with Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. I wasn’t grievously disappointed with the first Fantastic Four film, just very disappointed. But this second film definitely cut me to the quick. Deeply. I expected so much more.

In what’s called, by older comic fans, the Silver Age of Marvel Comics, the arrival of Galactus and his herald, the Silver Surfer, is a high point in the very successful collaboration between Stan Lee, writer, and Jack Kirby, illustrator. In this landmark story, the turbulent Sixties’ philosophical struggle between the Flower Power hippies and the war machine Establishment is reflected in the relationship between the quintessential flower-child, Silver Surfer, and his nasty job for the ultimate status quo Establishment man, the Devourer of Worlds and wielder of the Power Cosmic, Galactus. Aside from making for terrific illustrations used in those nifty psychedelic black light posters, the depth of the storyline—unusual for comic books up until then—was heavy, man, and downright righteous. But you’d not know any of that after watching this film.

Ff02Instead, what we get is more standard chuckles between Ben and Johnny, Susan’s concern over how their celebrity is ruining her marriage and family plans, along with another one of her “Oh, damn, I’m nude again in public” scenes, and simplistic children’s twaddle that completely erases the grandeur, nobility, and greater depth depicted in the comic book for gosh sakes. Digest that last sentence again: the 1960’s comic book storyline had more depth than this movie.

In this film, the Silver Surfer has more depth in his navel then in his relationship with the Fantastic Four or Galactus. More thought was devoted to introducing the toy-potential Fantasticar than the significance of dealing with a power cosmic wielding, mass destruction godlike being whose hunger for sustenance must be fed at all costs. It wasn’t bad enough they changed this giant, purple-suited human-like being into a Dyson vacuum commercial, they also had to remove a key plot element also: blind Alicia’s relationship with the Silver Surfer.

In the original comic book storyline, it is Alicia’s philosophical arguments and pleadings that open the Silver Surfer’s eyes and long-dormant heart, causing him to turn against the big guy. Instead, Sue Storm just bats her eyes and the Silver Surfer is reminded of his long lost love; how convenient. Gone are the philosophical debates about life in all its forms being important. I suppose that’s too sixties for today’s more sophisticated audiences.

Ff01 Apparently, what’s more appropriate is writing down to the audience by relying on the usual funny banter and sight gags, with by-the-script Fantastic Four family squabbling. Hello, anybody notice Armageddon approaching yet? While Reed does the disco hustle at his bachelor party, and Johnny dons his Keebler-endorsed blue suit, whatever happened to a little suspense? Except for that brief planet explosion in the opening, more time is spent away from the impending doom than on it. I got it that being a celebrity is annoying, but hey, so is having your planet chewed on like rock candy while you’re still standing on it.

Another critical character missing is the Watcher. Another big, toga-robed bald guy, the Watcher does just that. He’s an observer and doesn’t involve himself in the little problems of life and death. Until he sees the Silver Surfer heading for earth. For the first time, he takes a stand and steps in to hide the planet from Galactus’ herald, but fails, leading to the drama that is sorely missing in this film, and the Silver Surfer’s redemption.

Ff48 At this point, you’re probably saying to yourself, man, a purple-dressed and toga-robed duo of giants would have been laughable on screen. Perhaps, but you bought everything else up till now, right? You’re okay with a flaming man, an invisible woman, a rubber guy, and an orange rock pile with a head, not to mention the Alcoa Reynolds Wrap riding the sky on a silver surfboard without any swim trunks. At least their appearance in the film would have made the story more—ironically—human and visually interesting.

Doctor Doom makes his obligatory sequel appearance. This time he’s very interested in the Surfer’s mode of transportation, the energy-empowering surf board. While this plot actually does happen in later issues of the comic book, why rush into it here? Planet-eating bad guys not enough? Interestingly, Kirby decided on the hang-ten board mainly because he was tired of drawing spaceships, but maybe his sub-conscious nudged him into this dichotomy of having a being that can cruise the universe at will like some surfer-dude riding out the eternal big one, but only just so far as his servitude to the man would allow, like some cosmic weekend warrior living free in his SUV until Monday rolls around again.

Doom ingratiates himself to the military, and too easily snatches the board away. Speaking of depth, there’s much more to Doom in the comic books than you’d ever guess from his weak portrayal here, but at least he does wear his suit of armor and cape this time around. As the Fantasticar makes its commercial appearance—kiddies, it’s already available at Toys “R” Us!—Doom fights to keep on surfing, even though the planet’s about to be pulverized. Go figure. Maybe he just wants to live up to his name.

Jumping to another issue in the comic book series, Johnny’s ability to absorb the Fantastic Four’s other powers, which amazingly comes after his run in with the Silver Surfer, gives him powers like the Super Skrull (Fantastic Four Issue Number 18), and he goes after Doctor Doom. Before that brief showdown, his predicament provides the underpinning for most of the too easy, audience-tested chuckles as wacky antics ensue because of it.

In one of the most anti-climactic “why didn’t he think of that in the first place if it were that easy” denouements, all’s right with the world as the Silver Surfer realizes the error of his ways and saves mankind. Considering the title of this film is Rise of the Silver Surfer, I suspect a spin-off franchise is in the works. Just think of the marketing potential. I can see the silvery toys lining those shallow shelves now.

Like I said, I was grievously disappointed.

Hannibal Rising (2007)
Sympathy for the Devil?

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Zombos Says: Fair

Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
If you meet me, have some
courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some
taste
Use all your well-learned
politesse
Or I’ll lay your soul to waste
from the song by The Rolling
Stones

How does one give sympathy to the devil? That’s the challenge Thomas Harris faced when writing his background story on the birth of one of the most riveting fictional human monsters, Hannibal Lecter.

Of course, the first question to ask is why do it? Giving tea and sympathy to a consummately evil character that sends shivers down your spine with just that look and just that smile is quite an accomplishment. Why ruin
it? When the Borg where humanized in Star Trek The Next Generation, the franchise lost a perfectly frightening bunch of monsters with no redeeming social values, and future stories lacked the visceral fear of resistance
is futile, prepare to be assimilated.

Not only do we learn how Hannibal becomes a cannibal—blame it on a traumatic life experience—we have to hear it through Thomas Harris’ flowery-mouth dialog appropriate for literature, not a movie. For a laconic character that’s short on words but long on cuisine, this is not a good thing; a known unknown-evil is more worrisome and scary than a known known-evil (to coin a phrase from Donald Rumsfeld).

Director Peter Webber ponderously poses every scene with self-conscious importance. This slows the pace throughout, and scenes where Hannibal begins to succumb to his guilt and insanity are lackluster because of
it. James A. Michener-styled background tableaux abound. With near-risible martial arts aunt’s (Li Gong) offerings to ancestral samurai, and a poorly thought through revelatory exposition capped by Hannibal crying “you ate my sister!” I imagine popcorn bounced off theater screens everywhere as audiences chuckled.

Adding to this undercooked souffle, Hannibal Lecter (Gaspard Ulliel) postures in every scene as if he’s doing a Vogue layout for Hannibal Lecter fashions. His ominous leering and malicious grinning doesn’t evoke any of the uncanny calmness of Anthony Hopkins more menacing portrayal. The look of this movie is given more importance than its substance.

Great care is taken to preserve this fashionably slick look, making everything ce chic when it should be
ugly and revolting. Hannibal’s growing insanity, growing thirst for revenge, looks so beautiful, like seeing his life story captured in a photo shoot for Vogue or Elle.

It’s Word War II, and young Hannibal, and his younger sister, are fleeing the Nazi’s. Their parents thought they had a safe haven in the woods, but that turns out to be a magnet for more atrocities. Tragedy strikes and both parents are killed. He and his sister must face the long, cold winter alone in a hostile environment. Mercenaries looking for food and a warm place to hide endanger the children. Food is scarce. Starvation sets in and hungry eyes stare at the children. The hunger is too much and it’s now a quick cheek pinch here, an arm tug there to find which, boy or girl, has more meat on their bones. Hannibal’s sister loses. He’s helpless as she’s brought outside to be slaughtered.

Eight years later. Hannibal has lost everything, including his dignity, as his home is converted into an orphanage for bully-boys that grow tired of his nightmare-induced screams. Soon he’s off to Paris to see his aunt, Lady
Murasaki Shikibu, who prays to her ancestors’ samurai-suited shrine, and teaches Hannibal the fine art of hitting people with a stick while wearing copious padding. Hannibal admires her long and sharp Katana and enjoys rubbing it with clove oil to keep it sparkling.

An encounter with a fat butcher at the local market sets him down the non-vegetarian road of self-destruction. He takes time away from his medical school training to return to his crumbling home to retrieve the dog tags of the vile men who ate his little sister. He tracks them down one by one, making tasty dishes of cheeks and mushrooms, Emeril Legasse style. Either beheading them, or drowning them, or munching on them, there’s little revulsion generated. There is no suspense and no hint of that complex mix of Hannibal’s genius and madness.

As the bodies pile up, along with Hannibal’s growing culinary prowess, Inspector Popil (Dominic West) is hot on his trail. With insightful observations like “It’s vanilla. He reacts to nothing. It’s monstrous,” when viewing Hannibal’s polygraph test, and “What is he now? There’s not a word for it yet. For lack of a better word, we’ll call him a monster,” I had no doubt the inspector would fail to get his man.

In the final confrontation between the man who led the mercenaries to consume Hannibal’s little sister and the revenge-consumed Hannibal, the meeting is passionless. But it looks good.

Hannibal Rising is presented like one of those plastic fake food displays you see in Japanese restaurants.
They look almost good enough to eat. Almost. But plastic is plastic.

Book Review: Tim Curran’s Dead Sea

/ Books (Fiction)

Deadsea

Zombos Says: Good

They expected torment and death. They expected thirst and drowning. They expected starvation. They expected suffering in all its guises and, yes, they expected things to come at them out of the mist, the sort of things that had crawled alive and breathing from nightmares and cellars and dank dark places. And on this matter they were right.

–Dead Sea

“Oh, stop being such a spoilsport,” Zombos said, helping Zimba aboard the yacht. Chef Machiavelli, dressed in his Speedo Fiji Garden watershorts, pouted as he passed me, waving his finger.

“No. No. And no again.” I was adamant. “Let others go down to the sea in ships. I’m not setting foot on that deck, no way, no how.”  Zombos threw up his hands in disgust. I folded my arms tighter in defiance.

After reading Tim Curran’s novel, Dead Sea, there was no way in or outside of hell I was going to put one foot aboard any ship. I didn’t want to have my eyeballs sucked out of their sockets through my butt, nor did I want some gelatinous, throbbing, hairy ovoid turning my insides out. Between Jaws, the Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch, and now Dead Sea, I hate the water and every hungry, slimy thing swimming through it. Jacques Cousteau be damned.

And damned is what the crew of the Mara Corday find themselves when the oily luminous fog washes over them and knocks out all of their high-tech navigation equipment. Unlike Scott Carey’s increasing problems with his diminishing stature in The Incredible Shrinking Man, after a similarly bizarre encounter with a luminous mist while boating, the Mara Corday’s crew has to deal with the increasing encounters–and sizes–of the ubiquitous and ever-larger pelagic inhabitants of an ungodly and unearthly ocean. And boy are they hungry; both the crew and those slimy, endlessly-tentacled inhabitants, that is.

While reading Curran’s deadly sojourn into this alien body of water, I was reminded of Hammer Films’ The Lost Continent, which was derived from Dennis Wheatley’s Uncharted Seas. An avowed William Hope Hodgson fan to boot (interview), Curran loves the sea so much he apparently wants to frighten the rest of us away so he can enjoy it all to himself.

Making doubly sure he covers both cosmic and supernatural bases, Curran tosses in a little Lovecraftian spice in the guise of a master evil that prowls around his alien seascape, sucking out the minds of unfortunate victims like a 7-Eleven Slurpee through a straw.

Curran anchors his story around George Ryan, a first-time seafaring man who reluctantly goes on the voyage for the needed money, and rocks the boat with Saks, a loud-mouth, “slab of cement,” that you keep wishing would get his comeuppance. The other crew members are colorful and full in personality, and as their predicament becomes more dire, act in all the right and wrong ways you would expect people to do in such a situation.

Then there are the others. As the crew enters the mist and things go to hell, Curran’s version of the Graveyard of the Atlantic, in which they’ve unwittingly entered, is populated with an ever-increasing assortment of briny, spiny, and deadly sea-life that not even Diver Dan would want to talk to. No sooner do they enter the mist than a crewman starts screaming about something inside him and off he goes over the side. Or was he dragged over the side? Then another crewman is snatched by something coming out of the thick fog. And before you can say “thar she blows,” the Mara Corday is struck by another ship and soon everyone is into the water trying to stay alive.

We follow their struggle for survival, alternately moving between the survivors in the raft, the lifeboat, and those just bobbing up and down on the debris from the sinking vessel. Fighting off the increasing attacks by the bizarre sea creatures–and their own petty squabbling as Saks just can’t keep his mouth shut–they slowly realize something else is seductively prowling around in the heavy luminous fog. Something that sounds like a woman’s voice, but it’s not a woman, making the hairs on the back of their neck stand on end. Then there’s that buzzing sound over the radio. It’s not static, but they’re not quite sure what it is.

Curran keeps the action moving, but does lapse into an overly long discussion–made by the survivors–of where they are and what the hell is going on. He also tosses in references to pop culture TV shows that make you self-conscious of the narrative you’re reading, disrupting the mood he is so carefully building. But his power at describing the alien and supernatural horrors of this Sargasso Sea will keep you reading page after page, hoping this or that character will survive, and wondering about the next horror to come splashing up out of the water.

Or out of the mist. In one tightly-written and creepy encounter with a derelict ship, the USS Cyclops, Curran steers his story neatly into an eerie and scary rendezvous that lies between ghostly terror and icky creature-horror. You’ll feel shivers down your spine just as the crewman who board her do.

Not satisfied with describing fibroid horrors feeding on the survivors, or multi-legged beasties with puckered mouths hungering for their flesh and blood, or an irradiated horror that melts the flesh from their bones into sticky puddles, Curran tosses in a UFO, the Fourth dimension, and a building climax of impending doom if they don’t find a way out.

Dead Sea is a good choice to read at night, when you’re all alone. Author Tim Curran displays a masterful touch at mixing genres, and in keeping the pace moving as he shifts the story back and forth between the separate groups of survivors struggling to stay alive and the horrors that wait patiently all around them.

 

“I say, what’s that thick fog rolling in?” Zombos said, just as he was casting off the tether lines. “Is it glowing? Zoc? Zoc?”

I didn’t answer him. I was too busy running as fast as I could to the safety of the mansion.

Hostel Part II (2007)

/ Movies (Gore)

 

Zombos Says: Very Good

I wanted to take a long hot shower after watching Hostel: Part II. I felt dirty. The horror genre is a distasteful, discomforting one to begin with; that’s what sustains it. It’s supposed to both titillate and frighten us at the same time with shocking images, unpleasant sounds, and extreme, sometimes disgusting, subject matter. But then there’s Eli Roth’s Hostel series, rolling up all those elements into a nice and tidy puke-ball of horrifyingly intense and nauseating brutality. The problem is that he does it so convincingly well.

Unlike another, albeit less gruesome, torture-flick, 1970’s Mark of the Devil, there are no gimmicky vomit bags to be handed out here to lighten the experience, though now’s the time they’d come in handy. Time was, you went to a horror movie to be grossed-out, but in a fun way. Thrills and chills, and some red spills, but ha-ha, just make believe your sick and keep that vomit bag pristine because it makes a wonderful souvenir.

Of course there are many horror films, from grind-house to art-house, that do their best to make you upchuck your last meal or your complacency, but Roth’s fictional Slovakian village, filled with menacing townspeople—including the children—pushes your complacency right out the window, then stomps on it’s fingers as it desperately dangles from the windowsill trying to avoid that long fall downward.

…

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