From Zombos' Closet

Movie Review: Alice In Wonderland (2010) Or Is It Underland?

Zombos Says: Good (but not so Frabjous)

Once upon a time, mercury was used in the making of hats. It affected the nervous systems of hatters, causing them to go bonkers with mood swings and flights of fancy and trembling distress and, well, to become as mad as a hatter. Which is all well and good to explain the Mad Hatter's unpredictable behavior in Wonderland--or is it Underland?--but what about Tim Burton? He never ever is really ever quite the same, being the same as before, I mean, nor all grown up now will he be again, I'm afraid.

"Look, my good man, I'm going to croak by the time you get to that review. Time to jam the jelly and all that."

I looked around. I was walking in the garden when a low voice, seeming to come from the daffodils, interrupted my reverie. My reveries are often interrupted, but usually by Zombos, not voices coming from daffodils. The flowers had bloomed unusually early this year.

"Down here, and mind your big feet."

I looked down. A toad, dressed in a Harris Tweed suit and driving a very Mini Convertible Cooper, blew puffs of smoke from a long cigar as he looked up at me. He raced the engine, allowing the car to jump forward every now and then. I seem to have a penchant for meeting odd creatures that smoke long cigars and talk when they really should not be able to. Besides, don't they know smoking isn't healthy?

"I beg your pardon?" I said, for want of anything better to say.

"Your review. You know, of Alice in Wonderland. Burton and Woolverton want to do me next."

"I...beg your pardon?" I said, repeating myself. A bad habit, to be sure, but I can't help it.

The toad took a quick puff, shifted the car into park, and hopped up on the front seat. He took the cigar out of his mouth and opened his arms wide. His bright green complexion and brown tweed clothes contrasted quite colorfully against the yellow and white of the daffodils.

"Don't you recognize me?" he asked, incredulous. "It's me, Mr. Toad. Your bestest buddy from childhood. Dear oh dear, talk about the wind in the willows; more like you've got wind blowing round in that noggin of yours."

I thought for a moment. "You're Mr. Toad? From Toad Hall?" I said, not at all sure because my bestest buddy from childhood was The Little Prince as I best recalled.

"Kaching! A winner every time!"

"But, I don't understand. Oh...wait a minute, this is silly. I can't be talking to Mr. Toad from Toad Hall. I must have dozed off and...and I'm dreaming...yes. Next I'll be seeing the White Rabbit running by, telling me to hurry up and write my review, too."

"No, you won't," said Mr. Toad. "That groundskeeper of yours, Cretinous—"

"You mean Pretorius," I corrected him.

"Yes, whatever. Look, anyway, he ran over the White Rabbit with his Mini Moke. Blind as a bat that man is. Last time I saw poor old Bre'er his lifeless legs were dangling off the kitchen table. Looks like you're having rabbit stew for dinner.

"That's simply not possible," I said with certainty. "I hate rabbit stew."

"Suit yourself. But you must get to that review, and until you do, I'm not budging one inch nor one ounce. Been slacking off you have, and I'll have none of it when serious blogging work's to be done." Mr. Toad folded his long arms across his plaid vest and puffed away at his cigar.

"Look," I said, "the movie's not even horror. Why do you expect me to—"

"Not horror! Not horror he says! Then what do you call that ghastly dance the Mad Hatter does on Frabjous Day?" said Mr. Toad.

"Well, yes, now that you bring it up, it was pretty terrifying to watch."

"And what about Bandersnatch's eye getting plucked right out of its socket?" added Mr. Toad to strengthen his argument.

"Hmm...true. Definitely a horror-gimmicky kind of effect. But there was no blood or stringy bits so I'm not sure you can—"

"Splitting hairs are we?" Mr. Toad folded his arms tighter and glared at me.

A minute passed by in silence.

"I suppose I'm not dreaming."

"Correct, sir." Mr. Toad continued glaring. He tapped the long ash at the end of his cigar onto the daffodils.

Another minute passed in silence.

I sighed. "All right, then. I guess I'm reviewing Alice In Wonderland."

"Yippee!" said Mr. Toad. "Callooh! Callay!" He danced round the car seat with delight.

"Better watch your—"

Big feet.

I tried to warn him, but it was too late. His large left shoe kicked the gearshift into drive, and his equally large right one slipped off the front seat and wedged itself over the gas pedal and under the brake. The car sped out of sight with him croaking in terror and frantically grabbing at the steering wheel. I didn't see the crash, but it did make quite a crunching noise. I couldn't tell if the plume of smoke rising into the air was coming from his cigar or the wreck. After thinking it over for a few minutes, I decided to investigate, although doing so went against my better judgment, given the circumstances. As I walked toward the plume of smoke, Pretorius' yellow Mini Moke drove past. I saw Chef Machiavelli riding in the back seat.

"It's rabbit stew and frog's legs tonight!" yelled Pretorius. Chef Machiavelli smiled at me as they rounded the bed of daffodils and headed toward the garage.

Now this is just not right, I thought to myself. I didn't like frog's legs, either.

 

Upon observing the now grown up Alice, the laconic Blue Caterpillar, Absolem (voiced by Alan Rickman), rudely tells her she's lost much of her muchness. So has Tim Burton, it seems, in bringing his visual feast of Squire and Knave (Crispin Glover), big-headed and right-headed Queens, and a millinery Joker to moribund life; and strife, as the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) rules Wonderland with an iron scepter, and her pet Jabberwocky (voiced by Christopher Lee) broils the landscape along with those slithy toves.

Eschewing the brillig and mimsy, Alice In Wonderland picks up years after the young Alice (Mia Wasikowska) stumbled down the rabbit hole. At 19 she is famished from lack of sleep and lack of independence. Avoiding betrothal to a popinjay Duke (Leo Bill), she flees the unexpected engagement party to follow that worrisome White Rabbit (voiced by Michael Sheen) once more to Wonderland; or should I say Underland. Silly Alice apparently got the name all mixed up after her first visit; it isn't Wonderland at all, just Underland. Under all of us, I take it, but especially underneath Alice's thoughts and dreams.

Linda Woolverton's story is neither a remake, undermake, overmake, or reimagining: it simply sits among the borogoves with hat firmly in Johnny Depp's hands as the Mad Hatter. Only this time he's not all that mad, but still quite colorful in a Kabuki-Creole sort of way with his Bozo-frizzy hair, pouting white face, and kaleidoscopic bow tie. And he's quite the dancer, too, with his unnatural and illogical futterwacking after the climactic battle, to celebrate Frabjous Day. There's more than meets the brow with this hatter, I am sure of it. It's a shame we don't get a chance to see it. This could have been quite the road trip movie with Alice and the Mad Hatter hitting those weird Wonderland-now-Underland trails. Instead, we get a Happy Kids Meal-styled futterwacking Mad Hatter, and a conventional wicked-Queen-needs-to-be-usurped modus operandi, complete with the usual cryptic scroll of destiny laying it all out in pictograms. And everyone waits for Alice to do the job with Vorpal Sword in hand, clothed in shining armor fitting her like a glove.

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

While the Vorpal Sword and evil Jabberwocky follow Lewis Carroll's nonsense, Woolverton and Burton also follow a familiar trail of Walt Disneyisms, bringing a Narnian-like battle to the forefront of their girl-to-woman-to-independence growth in Alice. Although Burton's dark visual palette infuses the nonsense, Woolverton's script follows the conventions, leaving both tepid, much like the bickering between Tweedledum and Tweedledee (Matt Lucas). The irreconcilable characters inhabiting Underland have no wonder in them, leaving Alice to decide alone whether to fight the Jabberwocky to free them all, and by doing so, free herself to pursue her own destiny in Aboveland, or succumb to her uncertainty and a loveless, pointless marriage.

Through all this, Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter hints at sadness, madness, and a peculiar life story begging to be told. He dances instead.

And why is the Red Queen so mean? Comfy pigs for her feet and screaming "Off with their heads!" does not reveal why she desires to rule Underland so wickedly. But rule she must, so she sends the elongated Knave of Hearts to do her dirty work.

All of this is weird to a point, but stays conventionally so, which is unusual for Tim Burton. He weighs seriousness in every scene, ignoring Carroll's underlying insouciance, and the culminating battle as the armies of Red and White Queens clash on a chessboard-battlefield while Alice fights the dragon-like Jabberwocky for Underland becomes one of many such battles fought in many such movies.

How a darkly whimsical and maniacally nonsensical work from Lewis Carroll can lead to such a conventionally safe movie like Alice In Wonderland makes me wonder much, indeed. 

Book Review: The Best of Joe R. Lansdale: Dark Flavors Over Gristle

What Batman did for me, though, was make me understand that the world was bigger than I knew, that there were things beyond getting out of high school and going to work and waiting for retirement. Like Batman, I wanted to be something special. (Joe R. Lansdale, from his introduction to The Best of Joe R. Lansdale)

Take a big fat oak barrel, pack in Ray Bradbury and Charles Bukowski, slice and dice a few big young scorpions with all six juicy segments of their tails, add some boiled spinach and watery buckwheat, pickle all with half Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey and half Southern Comfort, piss, and spit some chawing tobacco into the mix, then seal it up good. Let the barrel sit for a few years, forgotten, in a beat up Pontiac pickup truck parked in the last row of the last aisle in the last drive-in down a long dusty road. When you finally open it up you'll find an author like Joe R. Lansdale. Just stand back a bit when you do 'cause he might be cussin' up an awful lot and swinging low.

Lansdale is as important an America Original as Mark Twain, only if he had written The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, he'd have had good ole boy Tom bashing Huck's brains in with a tree branch, for chump change and just to see him bleed, on a bright sunny day, close to a white picket fence to show the blood spatter better. Then he'd have Tom go smiling off to eat some warm apple pie as a hungry dog ate the rest of Huck up, with both enjoying every bit of their meal. Slowly.

There is something just not right with Lansdale and his stories. No one is ever really content, breathes in life easily, or dies happy--let alone quickly enough. Except for maybe Elvis in Bubba Ho-tep, and perhaps that resourceful survivalist woman who had an Incident On and Off a Mountain Road. But for every survivor, there's dead meat walking; for every flight from the Goat Man there's always a rickety bridge to cross to safety; and for every swim among the ghostly fishes in the primordial, phantasmic desert sea of Fish Night, there's a big old shark waiting to gobble down. It makes you wonder what kind of childhood Lansdale had. He tells us all about it in his introduction, Crucified Dreams, that it's filled with comics and good times, but I think he's hiding something. His childhood seems too normal for a guy who writes so twisted like he does.

You will find the long and the short of his stories here; human monsters, prehistoric monsters, mummified monsters, drive-in monsters, they all cast long moonlit shadows or walk boldly in sunlight. Like in Mad Dog Summer, they even live close by and shake hands warmly while they wait to spill your blood. Some are old, some are young, and some are timeless. Even their victims and near-victims and future victims are old and young and yearning to be timeless. Aging, death, and the molding process in-between provide the katas to many of his stories.

On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert With Dead Folks we meet up with the bounty hunter Wayne and his fugitive Calhoun, at a honky-tonk called Rosalita's, for cold beer and dead dancing. Since the lab stuff escaped into the air there has been a lot of dead folk to take advantage of, let alone dance with. There's also a new time religion, a busload of zombies wearing Mickey Mouse hats, and nuns that give their all for Jesus to make this the really far side of the desert; as far as Jesus Land.

The Night They Missed the Horror Show turns out to be a hell of a night for one mangy dog and two buddies working their way hard to boredom. Leonard doesn't like the black guy in Night of the Living Dead; he doesn't like any black guys. But skipping the drive-in turns out to be the worst decision he will ever make. The second worst is what he does to that dog. Those Rednecked, snuff movie-watching, dog-loving fat ole boys do the rest. The imagery in this tale of human monsters, both dog-hating and dog-loving, is too real for a comfortable read. Stock up on those happy thoughts before you read this one: you'll need them to get through it.

Like a freak show banner unabashedly heralding the grotesque and arabesque, in this collection you will see the amazing aging Elvis finding his mojo again by taking care of business, watch in awe how Godzilla falls off the wagon in Gozilla's Twelve Step Program, taking most of the city with him, and nervously laugh at the Fire Dog for the fire department, which is a great job while it lasts, especially since they stopped using dogs a long time ago. And once Lansdale has you inside his ballyhoo tent of nightmares, there's more waiting to shock and horrify you.

Profanity-laced words coalesce into sentences punching with the precision of a martial artist, which he is. There is no complexity to his paragraphs, no grammatical excess in how he describes his people and places, but his chi (some would call it mojo) is  always directed to letting his characters tell their stories through their words, their actions, with insinuations of what makes them either unsure, fearful, or to be feared. Like a mischievous Jean-Paul Sartre, Lansdale shows them where the exit is, but takes great pains to block their way to it. There is no seeing the light or finding the faith here, and salvation comes at a cost.

A New York Times review quoted on the front cover states Lansdale has "a folklorist's eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur's sense of pace." Obviously the reviewer doesn't know him like I do. I rather imagine Lansdale's stuffed that folklorist's eye into his back pocket just before he ran down the back-porch steps with a steaming apple pie stole hot from that raconteur's kitchen. The eye's to toss to that mangy dog that ate poor Huck up because no one wants to be bothered when they're eating homemade apple pie. Not even Lansdale.

An uncorrected advance reader copy was used for this review.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: All Things Horror

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, Mike and Chris from All Things Horror tag team the terror to the delight of their readers.

Mike:

I fell in love with horror around age seven by spending Saturday afternoons in the public library. After soccer games, my Dad would drop me off while he went grocery shopping. For whatever reason, the Dracut library stocked the juvenile section with folklore books. The history of witchcraft, true hauntings, werewolves and vampire mythology were all at my finger tips. These were pretty hardcore-in today’s namby pamby world I can’t imagine there’s much on the kid’s shelves about Vlad Tepes impaling his subjects then dining amongst the carnage, nor stories about ghost that appeared on elevators moments before the cables snapped and the cart plunged, sending everyone to their cruel demise. I gobbled up everyone I could check out. Granted they left me so scared if I woke up in the middle of the night to pee I’d clutch a statue of Virgin Mary in front of me while tiptoeing down the hall, just in case a vampire jumped out of the shadows. Just as fifth grade let out for summer vacation, I finished reading The Amityville Horror. That night I woke up covered in itchy splotches and my skin felt like it was on fire. I was terrified that I’d been turned into some sort of demonic hell spawn. It was the chicken pox.

On Open Letters and Cans of Worms

Chuck Norris Ate My Baby wrote about the tiff over Let's Get Dangerous' Open Letter to Gorezone, which appears to not have been received all that well. I'm surprised, however, that an offensive position has been returned, instead of addressing the points of Jamie's critical opinion expressed in his open letter. To call its contents defamatory and slanderous is stretching things a tad silly. Here's the open letter so you can make up your own mind. Let me know what you think with your comments.

Not to kick Jamie any more, but his grammar needed a bit of proofing, too (you Brits are weird with grammar). I'd like to see Gorezone (and readers of Gorezone) respond to his critical assessment regarding this one issue. If any of you have read the issue, can you corroborate or disagree with Jamie's critique? Civilly.

Here's Jamie's Open Letter To Gorezone (with some additional commas, typos corrected, and my personal observations in bolded italics sprinkled here and there. One last note: it is rather ironic that a blog called Let's Get Dangerous actually lives up to its name.

Congrats on that Jamie.

 

"Dear GoreZone Magazine,

"Firstly, well done for having a glossy and fairly nice looking magazine that has managed to stay afloat during a climate almost designed to make just that very difficult. It is definitely an achievement that a niche magazine has kept on keeping on, and I salute that.

"I first bought GoreZone about a year, maybe a year and a half, ago when the mag was still in its relative infancy and I was thoroughly disappointed (I did the same thing and felt a little disappointment: just not my cup of tea really). So I decided I would stick to Fango. But then yesterday, I saw the mag in a shop in Manchester and spotted a review of Enzo Castellari’s Bronx Warriors movies. So I figured I would give it another whirl.

"Now, I am not one of these guys who gets all heated about grammar and spelling but come on, this is just ridiculous (okay, I thought you said you weren't the type to get all heated about grammar?). I’m assuming that none of your articles get proofread at all as the level of grammar and spelling really is atrocious. Which is something that needs to be rectified if you are going to continue calling yourself “The world’s most upmarket horror entertainment magazine” (bit of a jump here, but I'll stay mum: still just expressing concern, not slander). Basic spelling and grammar are an absolute must for any professional-looking publication, and when you skip on it it makes you look like a bunch of amateurs. And if some Mary Whitehouse type were to pick up the magazine as fodder for her latest crusade against people having bloody fun then she would probably think the horror community is a bunch of uneducated degenerates fixated on big boobs (yet people still read the Weekly World News: go figure*).

"And so in lies my main problem with GoreZone: I don’t like that you assume that all horror fans want to see bikinied-up girls flaunting it around (dear Gorezone: Jamie's on his own with this one). I’m a red-blooded male gorehound who loves the ladies, but when I pick up a horror magazine I want to read about what gory flicks are coming soon and about classic genre flicks that get our jugulars pumping. If I am honest the reviews are well written for the most part, and the features go into some level of depth which is good. Now just sort out the content.

"Females are maligned in this genre we love as pure eye-candy, or examples of pure evil (I agree, but it sells movies and issues because enough males want to see it). This is the most progressive genre in the world (have you seen the DVD shelves, lately?), the genre that showed women can be heroes with films like the Night Of The Living Dead remake, but even though people are striving to make something more of the genre, other people (such as yourselves) are dragging it back down (an argumentative stretch here: which people are striving for what? Get your notes ready). For example, in your Christa Campbell VS Joe Bloggs piece, the question “Are big breasts accessory or necessity?” is thoroughly unnecessary, and Christa’s answer pretty much set the women’s movement back god knows how far “The bigger the better no? You have to get their attention somehow…” (sadly, she's right, whatever we dislike about it: my question is, was this intended as a satirical article?)

"It just really seems like “the world’s most upmarket horror entertainment magazine” is Nuts for horror fans (or even the celebrity obsessed Heat), as opposed to “Vogue for horror fans” as you have printed on your cover.

"Now I’m no prude, I love the movies of Fred Olen Ray, Jess Franco, Russ Meyer and Jean Rollin but with Women In Horror Recognition Month on the horizon, lets just try and remember that there is more to women than lumps of fat on their chests (damnit, okay, but it won't be easy: I'll second the notion. Oh, wait, the month's over!). Be as progressive as the genre (still not seeing that progressive genre yet) allows, and focus more on the horror that all your readers love (you can't presume to know what all of Gorezone's readers would like) as opposed to the scantily-clad ladies (which I assume appeals to at least a percentage of your readers). Imagine what could be accomplished by a truly “upmarket” horror publication from the UK, that focused on movies and the genre rather than the interchangeable commodity that are actors (I don't think actors would like that sentiment: they work hard at horror, too.) that would truly be an achievement!

"So GoreZone please: more horror, less half-naked girls (again, dear Gorezone, this is Jamie's personal request only, and he did say less, not none)
Regards,
Dangerous Jamie"

*Just so we're clear, I find Weekly World News a hoot, though I try not to read it in public.

Movie Review: The House of the Devil (2009) The Devil's In The Details

Instead of another homage (like Cabin Fever) or glossy remake (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), he [Ti West] has come up with a period pastiche that mimics the low-res vibe and look of early-1980s horror, along with the same bad hair and clothes. And he’s done so with more shiver than splat (Manohla Dargis, New York Times review).

There are times all too often these days, sadly, when I wonder which movie I'm watching; whether it's the one those other critics have seen or a cinema-changeling version of the movie swapped in just to bedevil me. After reading the New York Times' Manohla Dargis's review for The House of the Devil, I can only assume it was the cinema-changeling movie I watched and not the more entertaining, more sinister, and scarier movie she saw. In fact, it was her review blurb on the DVD cover that egged me on to buy it: I admit I fell for that one. I try not to be so gullible, but it does get harder and harder. She said it was "a horror movie with real shivers." I wish I had watched the movie she saw. I didn't shiver a bit. And adding insult to injury, USA Today's "unbearably suspenseful" blurb helped cinch the deal for me, although I would say it's more bearably unsuspensful.

Boy, have I learned my lesson about hypeful blurbs on DVD covers. In this case I would have preferred an energetic homage or glossy slick remake.

To be fair to Dargis, her review is thoughtfully written and argued, and she does point out her disappointment with the ending. After so much "sweet time" director Ti West takes to set up his Rosemary's Baby-lite, the climax flickers instead of bursts. West's attention to 1980s horror movie elements is virtuosic; but I wanted more attention paid—beyond recreating a decade's movie style—to the story itself; that would have been more rewarding for all my anticipation leading up to those flickers.

I will say Tom Noonan as Mr. Ulman is marvelously creepy. He can act creepy by just staring at you, but he does more than that here. (I dream of seeing Noonan play the Tall Man's brother in a Phantasm movie.) Even the dark old house is creepy, and Ulman's wife (Mary Woronov) is creepy. She's the kind of woman you recoil from when she touches you. I'll also bow to Jocelin Donahue's Samantha, who uncannily channel's that effervescent 1980s unsuspecting victim charm in her looks and acting. When she dances around the old dark house, to the tune of the Fixx's One Thing Leads to Another, I felt the urge to dance with her.

But all these impeccable acting and creepiness things do not lead to another frightening excursion into Satanic mischief. West's exacting attention to recreating an earlier decade's shadows, textures, and pacing renders a faithful replication with its truthful-camera technique, but at the expense of its malevolent events, which are few and far between, and its overall suspense, which is lessened by familiarity. Frankly, many movies from the 1980s—not just the horror ones—are tedious to watch now. Times change. As a project to capture the look and feel of another decade, Ti West has succeeded admirably; as a horror movie, The House of the Devil fails to elicit scares or tension because he has succeeded admirably at recapturing that look and feel without playing with our expectations.

Samantha, a college student, is moving into a new apartment and badly needs money. Dee Wallace has a brief cameo as the landlady. Worrying about how she will pay the rent, Samantha notices a flyer seeking babysitter help, next to the campus pay phone (Wow, remember pay phones? I mean the ones that hung on the wall?) She leaves a message, waits for the return call while listening to her portable cassette player (Ditto wow on cassette recorders. How many of you mixed your own?), and waits some more. I had forgotten how big those portable cassette players were back then.

She finally reaches Mr. Ulman, whose voice is also very creepy. She agrees to babysit and convinces her friend to drive her to the old and secluded house, past the cemetery. When they arrive, Mr. Ulman greets them with enough weirdness to make Samantha uncertain about staying. Money eventually persuades her, so her friend leaves, and much of the movie is spent watching Samantha grow uneasy about the situation, the empty house with photographs showing a different family in them, and the locked doors hiding dark secrets. A lunar eclipse and a skulking, sinister "handyman" (AJ Bowen) help make us uneasy, too.

This being a re-enactment of a 1980s horror movie about devil-worshiping fiends, Samantha does what you normally expect a ripening female victim to do: she pokes all around, upstairs and downstairs, orders pizza, and tunes to a horror movie on the television; gets bored, dances all around again, upstairs and downstairs, with her headphones and portable cassette player, and eventually eats the pizza, which tastes funny.

Hint, hint.

I will admit I was horrified when she held the pizza box the way she did, but that was the only tense moment for me. Defying the gravity effects on cheese and tomato sauce like that is really asking for it.

Revelations of the person she's babysitting, of the Ulmans' evil goal, and the significance of a lunar eclipse provide the climax that flickers instead of bursts.

Ti West also wrote and directed The Roost (also aided by a very creepy Tom Noonan playing a very creepy horror host). You may find that movie more rewarding.

I did.

Movie Review: The Asphyx (1973)

Zombos Says: Good

"What was that all about?" asked Zombos.

Paul Hollstenwall looked perturbed. "What? You didn't like it?"

I looked at my fingers and started counting. Right. That makes eighteen times Zombos has said "What was that all about?" after watching a movie Paul brought over, and twelve times Paul's responded with "you didn't like it?" I'm not sure why I bothered to remember all this, but it did make me warm and cozy inside for some reason. I sipped my Mocha Bon Machiavelli and smiled with self-satisfaction, and waited. Right on cue they both looked at me and waited for some sort of guidance, absolution, support, or what exactly I'm not sure. I never could pin that one down.

Of course they were desperate. Outside the snow was piling up, and every so often I heard Pretorius, our groundskeeper, cursing above the sputtering whirl of his malfunctioning snow blower. I was desperate, too. The three of us were bottled up tight with Paul and his cache of DVD oddities as our only diversion. I will admit his choice of The Asphyx was a better choice than his usual preference for schlocky dollar-bin bargains, but the day was still young.

"It's got me flummoxed," I finally said. "I like it, but I'm not sure why. I'm also not sure why Black & Blue Movies is going to do a remake. You've got a rich amateur dabbling in paranormal science, a screeching hand-puppet creature called the Asphyx, which rushes to a person's soul when said person is expiring—greatly aided by very accommodating people dying in ludicrous ways—and it's all nonsense, really, but still oddly watchable."

 

Sir Hugo Cunningham (Robert Stephens) dabbles in paranormal research. He's so brilliant he's invented a moving picture camera, and so rich he's not bothered to patent it. His hobby is to photograph the dying, looking for evidence of the soul as it leaves the body. What he finds in his pictures are mysterious smudges appearing next to each of the dying people he's photographed. He explains to his step-son, Giles (Robert Powell), those smudges are evidence of the soul leaving the body at the time of death. He thinks they're appearing in his photographs because of a special developing solution he's concocted. By now, watching this movie, you will have noticed the Hammer Studios-like period hairdos; but while the movie is in color, like that studios' Gothic horror stories, its direction by Peter Newbrook lacks the slick, underlying urgency and tension of a Hammer-directed costume drama.

A boating accident leaves Sir Hugo distraught with grief and determined more than ever to find out what those smudges are. Recording a public hanging with his camera and using another of his inventions, a bright spotlight powered by crystals that give off an intense blue light when water drips on them, he inadvertently discovers those smudges are not made by the soul departing the body, but by a netherworld-postman coming to pick it up. His spotlight traps the ugly, screeching, little monster  in its beams, keeping it from taking the soul and leaving, which for some odd reason keeps the person alive and unable to die, no matter how much dead they may. He dubs the creature an Asphyx, and it looks like a hand-puppet in action.

Lingering periods of discussion about what the creature is waste time, but eventually Sir Hugo reveals the true reason for exploring death: he wants to be immortal. He believes that if he keeps the crystals powering his spotlight wet, the light can trap the Asphyx so he can stay alive indefinitely. I guess he's assuming there's only one little cosmic monster to handle all those soul pickups.

The trick is to coax the Asphyx to come for his soul so he can trap it. He needs to be dying to do that because the creature only comes when someone is, uhmm, dying. How the inexhaustible crystals (Star Trek's dilithium crystals perhaps?) will power the blue light forever is not dwelled on, but he's devised a constant drip drip drip to fall onto them, a box to hold the creature under his spotlight contraption, and a room with a new-fangled combination lock on the door to keep the Asphyx trapped in the box forever.

Illogical? Yes. Remotely plausible? Nope. Entertainingly off the wall? Delightfully so.

Especially when Sir Hugo and Giles devise fiendish Grand Guignol contraptions to bring death so very close, just enough to summon the Asphyx by using electrocution, the guillotine, and asphyxiation by gas. Simply strangling each other appears to never have crossed their minds. Yet through all this seriously and impeccably performed silliness, peppered with outrageously impossible artifice, it’s fun watching the accidental deaths pile up as Sir Hugo tries again and again for immortality and insists his family keep trying, along with him, one by one.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal. In this installment, Emily from the Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense explains how Fangoria and Chucky made her childhood.

Like many a child born in the Reagan era, Fangoria and Chucky were as integral to childhood as Crayola and Grover. My love for horror was a pleasant blend of nature and nurture, birthed in the womb courtesy of a lovely pair of parents who still make me jealous with tales of catching Night of the Living Dead at the back-end of a drive-in double feature. Sure, I have the honor of discovering how to kill an extraterrestrial klown at the age of 6, but even someone with taste as bad as mine knows that when it comes to movies, the late '80s were more fun than revolutionary. Oh. And maybe that applies to other aspects of society, but let's maintain our priorities, eh?

Alas Poor Awards, I Knew Ye Well

I think I came to this decision at 10:15 this morning. I was pondering it much of last night; spinning it around all angles most of yesterday. This morning, after reading over my Google Alerts, I realized it was time to rein in those slings and arrows of misinformation and boldly make my quietus with a bare post (bodkins are too sharp and hurt like hell).

Google Alerts pointed me to a news item mentioning the Bloody Bloggers Awards and how voting would be done by the League of Tana Tea Drinkers only. It was a well-intentioned and gracious bit of news, but not quite correct: it said voting would be done by League members only. Actually, voting for the awards would have been done by email, sent to me (I removed myself from nomination to remain impartial) by anyone who wanted to vote for their favorite nominees. And while the nominees themselves had to come from League members' making the recommendations, really, all a horror blogger needed to do was let us know about you and what category or categories you felt you best fit in--there were 13 of them to choose from. My goal was a simple one: promote horror blogs, especially lesser known ones, through an impartial, unbiased, non-commercial awards contest, and provide a mechanism--and motivation--for exploring lots of other horror blogs. The mechanism was a list of links to all nominee blogs and the motivation would be the awards themselves and the voting process.

At least I thought it was simple. It would have allowed every horror blogger to participate without commercial or biased endorsements skewing the results. It also recognized there were more possible categories for awards than simply the best horror blog, whatever that is. But here's the rub: my perception was not everyone's perception, and that has caused a little tempest in a teapot that makes for very bad tea, especially among members of the League itself.

And it has made members of the League of Tana Tea Drinkers appear elitest; cucumber sandwich-eating snobs who think we're hot shit when it comes to knowing horror and blogging about it. Well, I admit I like cucumber sandwiches, but we are certainly not elitest--sure, we like to joke a lot about that, but we're only joking--and while we do know our horror--just like you--we blog for the fun of it. Read our mission statement. No where does it say "we the members of LOTT D are elitest hot shit, so poo poo on you." What it does say is Our mission is to acknowledge, foster, and support thoughtful, articulate, and creative blogs built on an appreciation of the horror and sci-horror genres.

But that good intentions road-paving crew has pulled up outside. I see it's time to apologize for rushing into something I should have thought more about and especially for causing dissension that is hurtful and non-productive, and for forcing an argument where one should never have arisen.

I'm calling the Bloody Blogger Awards on account of foul weather. For all those who did participate, I thank you very much; you've alerted me to many sites I didn't know about. For those who tossed those slings and arrows, I'm sorry. In my rush to foster community spirit, I stirred up some restless ghosts that I should have paid attention to more. Perhaps in time I'll try it again. But it's stopped being fun.

Besides, with the new kid on the block, the Horror Blogger Alliance, I think our community has grown a lot bigger already. I wish them all the luck and support I can muster. Based on my recent experience, I know they'll need it.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Horror Crypt

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, Bloofer Lady* from Horror Crypt explains the dark shadows that led her to horror.

My mom named me after a witch that appeared on the soap opera Dark Shadows, so I was kind of born into loving all things dark and macabre. My father used to take me to cheap double features when I was a kid and that's how I first saw Xtro, Galaxy Of Terror and Dracula AD 1972. I don't remember a time in which I wasn't allowed to watch horror films. I grew up to be relatively sane and well adjusted so they didn't really do me any harm. Or did they?

I started to get heavily into gothic horror-type films when I was in high school, which was also around the time I became a goth/punk weirdo. They kind of went hand in hand for me. It was much more fun to dress like somebody out of a Hammer film than to be 'normal' after all! Soon after that I started to get into Italian horror. The Church was the first Italian horror film I ever saw and I loved the look and feel of it so much that I was instantly hooked. Soon I was watching any Euro-Horror film I could get my hands on, and over the years that particular horror genre has become my favorite.

I started doing horror movie reviews for a couple of different independent sites five or six years ago, but I wasn't completely happy writing for somebody else all of the time. After quite a few years of thinking 'My goodness, wouldn't it be fun to have my own site!' I finally got the nerve to buy my own domain name back in the beginning of last August and created Horror Crypt. I mainly started it as a venue to post my own horror movie reviews, but I have kind of branched out into other things such as recommending really morbid things that I like to others. One day I would like for it to become a full-fledged site because that would be nifty and peachy-keen!

*Zoc Note: "Bloofer Lady" is what the children called Lucy in Bram Stoker's Dracula. After she turned...

Book Review: Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns

Zombos Says: Very Good

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

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

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

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

The Western genre, whether old-timey or saddle soap new, provides a simple backdrop for quintessential themes of characterization, plotting, and rip-roaring action that is ripe for mixing with the bizarre, the steampunk, the techno-goth, and the traveling horror sideshow's worth of oddities. From aliens to zombies and the robotic to apocalyptic, Green does a good job of rounding up diverse material to explore further, especially in areas you may not have thought much about, like The Prisoner's Living In Harmony episode (p165), or the Beany and Cecil episodes Phantom of the Horse Opera (p30) and Dragon Train (p30). A short synopsis describes each entry. Here's an excerpt from the one for The Phantom Empire:

Twelve-part serial starring Gene Autry in a unique mix of singing-cowboy and science fiction genres. The ancient civilization of Mu, located beneath Autry's Radio Ranch, is threatened by speculators buying the Muranian supply of radium. Autry attempts to save the people of Mu and protect his Radio Ranch.

Hokum? Sure. Fun and imaginative? Yes, without a doubt. And that is what the weird western is all about. From the not so serious to the sublime, the frisky to the outlandish, Green provides a broad range to send your posse after. His bibliography will also point you to additional Internet and print resources. An appendix categorizes entries by genre, which I find the most useful for discovering new comics, movies, and other weird westerns I haven't read or seen yet. Illustrations are sprinkled throughout.

So saddle up pardner and don't hit that winding trail without the Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns as your guide.

Book Review: Peter Straub's A Dark Matter: Mesmerizing To A Fault

A DARK MATTER evolved out of a desire I had to think about the various sages and gurus I had seen pass through Madison, WI, in the mid-sixties. I think there were three altogether; at least, I witnessed the actions and behaviors of three of these gents. They were all articulate, interesting, and predatory. Almost all of what they said was nonsense, but they did get a bunch of kids to look into the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

I started to wonder: what might happen if one of these sleazy wisdom-merchants did actually reveal a portion of the Other World, the World Unseen, in the course of a home-made ritual. (Flames Rising interview with Peter Straub)

Zombos Says: Good (but clever structuring overpowers the simple plot)

Peter Straub opens wide his magic bag of literary tricks in A Dark Matter, weaving a mesmerizing occult tale of mystery, told through colorful characters, each in turn recalling memories of a tragic day in 1966. But this illusory tale, while executed with masterful artifice, is tepid in its effect, and climaxes into a theistic mumbo-jumbo of outrageous imagery and philo-babble wordplay that intrudes, more than it reveals, with its copious stream of self-conscious dime-store novelty diatribe.

Straub wields his sleight of sentence flourishes with ease. Meta-fiction rolls adroitly across his fingers as author Lee Harwell, spurred on by a chance meeting with recollection, and goaded on by Garvin, his agent, to maybe try a non-fiction book to rekindle his writing ardor, begins to ask what really happened to his school chums in the agronomy meadow on that day in 1966; a day that left one torn apart, one missing, one blind, and one, speaking only in quotations from literature, confined to a mental institution

But can we trust Harwell? Is Straub subtly misdirecting us with the role of his questionable narrator, making us doubt how much his fictional author is actually telling us. Harwell is a writer after all and through his distillation of interviews with each survivor of that day, can we really be certain he relates everything exactly as revealed to him by the others? Especially since his wife, Lee Truax, nicknamed the Eel, is the most important person to be affected by what transpired in that meadow so many years before.

Straub's conjuring assistant for this literary illusion is Spenser Mallon, a vulpine-faced guru of the Esoteric who can recite lines from Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy as easily as lallation utters from a baby. Agrippa's major and minor arcana fever dreams provide Straub's flourish of textuality in fleshing out anthropomorphic visions of saviors and destroyers and unholy bystanders prowling the border between reality of the moment and the moment of reality for each of them, which leads to a dark matter within and without and in-between that shadows their lives.

Using dialog and vivid recollections--made by equally vivid characters--divvied into chapter and section beats evoking a 1960's syncopation of artsy and preppy, acid-trip intellectualism and pot-induced, faded blue jean mysticism, Straub unfolds his story revealing a little more each time, until at last the Eel reveals her meeting with those things inhabiting the borderland, unleashed by Mallon's parlour trick sorcery. The meeting is a tale wagging its own, and spins round and round in gorgeously compelling but obfuscating imagery and meaning. (The style and kind of which authors love to read because it inspires them to prove their mettle.)

A Dark Matter is intensely structural-conscious, executed with a skill few authors possess. But its structure delivers style over suspense and terror, and its denouement cops out with a let's-think-about-this-cosmological-horror-significance stream of consciousness wordplay that underwhelms with its lengthy pedagogical digression.

A bound galley from Doubleday was provided for this review.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: KinderScares

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, read all about the horror with Colum and Shelagh of KinderScares.

Horror has been an integral part of our family’s life from the very beginning. Our first date was a horror movie. Our wedding favors were spoofs of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie poster, and we own a film collection that rivals the inventory of most smaller video stores.

Needless to say, our children were born into a world where Frankenstein's Monster makes a great playmate, a foot-tall Leatherface resides atop the bookshelf, monster lore makes its way into everyday conversation, and the Rue Morgue Festival of Fear is an event to look forward to every summer. But it wasn’t until we stumbled upon Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich (by Adam Rex) when our oldest was a toddler that we realized there was a whole world out there of horror stuff for kids - you just have to look.

We’ve been looking ever since.

Our daughter had a Hallowe’en themed birthday party this past October, and it seemed only natural to display some of our spooky books with the rest of the decorations - and people loved them! The surprised delight of people flipping through our monstrous volumes made us realize we weren’t the only people who were looking for this sort of thing...and that our years of scouring for the fun and creepy tales that would delight little monster lovers might be of use to someone other than ourselves. By November, KinderScares was born!

Writing about horror-themed children’s literature has been a blast so far. It’s like all of our favorite things rolled into one, and well worth the work it takes to post daily (a lengthy and oft-interrupted affair when you have your own pack of little monsters wanting your undivided attention!).

Whether you’re a horror expert who wants to know every far-flung corner of the genre, a parent looking for something different to read to your kids, or a book enthusiast who gets excited by the strange and unusual, we’re here to help you out. Mini monster-lovers and future horror fiends need great books too!