Movie Pressbook: Twisted Nerve (1968)
Ever notice how troubled youth in horror movies always reach for sharp implements first instead of talking to a guidance counselor? Or use those sharp implements on the guidance counselor (or other suitable authority figure) instead of more constructive communication? Go figure.
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Book Review: Nocturnal by Scott Sigler
Zombos Says: Very Good
Bryan Clauser and Pookie Chang, two San Franciso Homicide Detectives, step into it badly when a department conspiracy turns into a monstrous nigthmare for them and the rest of the city. The monstrous part comes from a cult of monsters. A big cult of them, living underground and coming out only at night. Their prey is the homeless, the vagrants, and the unnoticed. Keeping them at bay is the Saviour, an arrow-shooting, cloaked avenger with unusual abilities and weapons. When Bryan and Pookie muck up the Saviour's aim with their good intentions, the monsters, who have been around for a century or so and just itching to hunt freely and without fear, quickly grab the opportunity in this escalating horror thriller by Scott Sigler. Combining police procedural with mind-numbing genetics gyrations to make it all plausible between the covers, Nocturnal's 500 plus pages accelerate faster and faster until the blow-out payoff grudge match.
Along the way there's character growth, some stunting, and enough lively banter between Bryan and Pookie to define their natures so much you care what happens to them. Pookie dreams of bringing his cop opus, Blue Balls, to television; Bryan can't quite get his hands around the concept, or his ex-girlfriend Robin, either, as she suddenly finds herself running the City Morgue and soon involved in a knee-deep police coverup. Pookie is overweight and wears suits a size too small. He also drives like he owns the road. Bryan's the one with the deadly aim, cool exterior, and odd history that churns up disquieting things from a dark sediment he'd rather have left alone.
If you've read Clive Barker's Cabal or saw that novel's movie version, Nightbreed, you will have a slight familiarity with Sigler's bizarre creatures. If you've seen Slither, there's one particularly unpleasant scene early in that movie you will vividly recall when you read about Mother and how she gives birth to all those nasty monstrosities with cute names. The monsters' underground home reminded me of the Goonies (ancient ships figure in both), but I'll leave it up to you to see if it does the same.
I bounced between very good and excellent rating this novel; I felt a few less pages here and there would have moved the action faster for me, especially in Book 2: Monsters, the part of the story where everything starts going to hell more quickly than in Book 1: People. And that's only because I kept fighting the urge to skip past paragraphs as I became increasingly ansy to find out what would happen next.
The writing style is more movie-ish than literary–cheeky dip dialog, straightforward, visually concise action descriptions, and people with just enough needs, foibles, and dirty nails to make them interesting in a nutshell–so the pages turn quickly as plotlines converge. Sigler's habit of sizing chapters to measure the pace even more may leave you as breathless as Bryan and Pookie when push comes to shove.
One important note for zombie and romantic blood-sucker aficionados: although these monsters enjoy chewing on humans, there are no zombies among them. Or romantic vampires. The only things Nocturnal's monsters love to do is hunt and kill.
Strangely enough, Bryan enjoys those activities, too.
A courtesy copy of Nocturnal was provided for this review.
Around the World Under the Sea (1966)
Movie Herald
What caught my eye here is the illustration and the clever use of the tagline. I also like David McCallum and Lloyd Bridges. Keenan Wynn's kind of fun to watch, too. And how can you pass up Marshall Thompson (It! The Terror from Beyond Space)?
I briefly met David McCallum in the 1980s, when I was shlubbing the shelves at B. Dalton's Software Etc. store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. He was close to my height (okay, yes, short!), so we could see eye to eye. I liked that. I forget what computer program he was looking for, though.
Chernobyl Diaries (2012)
Short a Few Entries
Zombos Says: Good
The cleverest moments in Chernobyl Diaries come early: scenes of young American tourists enjoying the sites of London, France, and eventually Russia as seen through the digital camera recording them. But director Bradley Parker and scripter Oren Peli are just teasing us. This isn’t, thankfully, a through-the-lens or found footage movie, although more professionally handled handheld cameras do follow the six Americans as they head to Prypiat, the ghost city near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
Their tour guide is Uri, a beefy entrepenuer with special forces training, offering “extreme” tours through the abandoned, desolate buildings and less radioactive areas of ground. The cleverness stops somewhere between their boarding of Uri’s rundown van and a little after its breakdown as night approaches, leaving them stranded in Prypiat.
Given this real and eerie environment, suspense builds for us while concerns mount for Uri and the six adventurers. Their this-is-cool mood, filled with playful banter and a few false-start scares that leave them acting giddy, filled with the sense of doing something special and naughty–like American youth traveling abroad, in horror movies anyway, are supposed to act–changes to recriminations, fears, and blame-gaming. The change is on a dime, so it surprises me; where do all these pent-up feelings come from? Not from the script: it doesn’t pinch harder than necessary to line up the usual suspects for this phase of the movie, shifting everyone into last-one-standing mode.
Uri pulls a handy gun from the glove compartment as stray sounds and vicious, starving, dogs frazzle nerves. I would have put my money on Uri (Dimitri Diatchenko) to bring this story up a few notches. He looks tough, acts tough, and is built like a brick wall. Perhaps it was too much to expect that the story would break out of the mold for parts unknown, but Uri, the biggest and baddest of the group is still written out early, leaving six bickering, frightened, American numbnuts to go find him or, at least, his gun while they figure out what to do next.
It’s the figuring part that wears this movie like yesterday’s fashion (which admittedly, for the majority of the horror movie industry, is worn everyday); shaky-blur “found footage” of an attack on the van; darkened interiors punctuated by flashlights to disorient us and tease at possible terrors lurking outside the light; phantom assailants we never see clearly, and a lot of screaming, shouting, and running away from them, leading deeper into ever tighter passageways, a maze of claustrophic, bunker-like rooms, and the Chernobyl Power Plant, still hot with radiactivity. If you’ve ever screamed through a haunt attraction with your friends (or a bunch of strangers), the overall effect is similar to watching Chris (Jesse McCartney), Michael (Nathan Phillips), Paul (Jonathan Sadowski), Zoe (Ingrid Berdol), Amanda (Devin Kelley), and Natalie (Olivia Dudley) be terrorized, although more usually happens in the haunt attraction.
Chernobyl Diaries is well acted, atmospheric, loaded with promise, but leaves a bland taste. Some people will find some scares (or recognize them from the trailer), but seasoned horror fans will find a well-worn roadmap to boredom with too few interesting stops along the way.
Double Bill Pressbook:
Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory
and Corridors of Blood (Part 2)
Here are the press luncheon invitation, action accessories, catchlines, and more promotional gimmickry for this very appetizing double bill pressbook. And to think, today we only have the Internet to do all this. Bummer. And remember, There’s gold in them thar Chills!
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Double Bill Pressbook:
Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory
and Corridors of Blood (Part 2)Read More »
Double Bill Pressbook:
Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory
and Corridors of Blood Part 1
This pressbook is in my top ten favorites. Black and white, 12 inch x 17 inch format, perfect tagline, werewolf-making kit theater giveaway, suitably atmospheric press luncheon, and excellent publicity articles–what more of Nervo-Rama can you ask for? (Click to enlarge pages. And don’t try this on your mobile phone: these are BIG pages.)
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Double Bill Pressbook:
Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory
and Corridors of Blood Part 1Read More »
Dracula Game
By Waddingtons
I found this Waddingtons’ Dracula Game on eBay some years ago. I was mesmerized by the box illustration; a little Spanish influence, don’t you think? The colorful game pieces are also neato, especially the green vampire bat mask.
Book Review: Zombie Island
A Shakespeare Undead Novel
The play's the thing, and in Lori Handeland's Zombie Island: A Shakespeare Undead Novel, that play would be The Tempest, wherein Prospero's temperate isle becomes the fertile ground for raising zombies, or tibonage as they are known by necro-vampire William Shakespeare and his fair chasseur (zombie hunter) amour, Kate. This is the second book in Handeland's adventures of the vampiric Bard and his beloved Dark Lady of the sonnets, but stands alone well enough to keep you happily marooned, along with them, for its 250 and some odd pages.
The zombies are as balmy as the island's weather, so this is not a tome for hardcore gore fans. With the undead's constant "Brrr!" murmurings, they're the all- the-brains-you-can-eat phenotype of walking dead risen up from the shipwrecked and doomed crews Ariel's tempestuous storms swell onto the shore.
Ariel, the magical spirit Prospero freed from a tree, is bound to his bidding, although she hates killing so many innocent people for Prospero's mad dream of retaking his lost throne. Ariel's feminine gender here–in Shakespeare's play Ariel is a man–plays an important part: she's blue, fetchingly flies around naked, although invisibly, gives off impressive sparks when angry, and yearns for an emotion she doesn't understand. Calaban helps her with that, but he's all paws and razor claws which presents some tactile issues to surmount.
Emotional and tactile interlocutions abound as much as the zombies, providing the true bite and sustenance on Zombie Island. This is a love story: Prospero loves to have more zombies; the zombies love to have more brains (to eat); Shakespeare loves to hold Kate within his arms; and Kate loves for Shakespeare to hold her in his arms.
She also loves to kill zombies, and that's why she finds herself, at Ariel's scheming, on the island. Ariel creates the zombies, she wants Kate to kill the zombies. All works as well as could be given the circular reasoning of one magical sprite desperate to stifle Prospero's plans, but Shakespeare's unexpected arrival on the island, while at first beneficial, becomes problematic. Being a necro-vampire, he can easily raise the dead into zombies at the full moon. If Prospero finds this out it could thwart Ariel's plan.
Handeland intertwines Shakespeare's familiar words with his vampire counterpart's visions, emotions, and speech into breezy reading through the chapters. All players are directed with their needs, tempers, spleen, and desires foremost, and with romance while zombies go about their business. There is no strutting to fret about here; only a simple and enjoyable tale of love and zombies' labors gained and lost. Just add a banana daquiri or coqui, sip it while stretching idly on a tropical beach as you pause between Zombie Island's chapters, and read on.
A courtesy copy was received for this review.