Post Necro

Well, NecronomiCON 2015 has come and gone. I didn't have time to update while it was happening because some of us were actually working the event. But I'm home now, pleasantly exhausted and a few dollars richer for having sold some of my art.

We started the festivities on Thursday night, Lovecraft's 125th birthday, with a massive bash at The Facade on Weybosset where the highlights were the Narragansett Brewing Company's sale of their Lovecraftian beers: Innsmouth Old Ale was by far the best and most popular. The nearby firepit shot sparks and smoke up into the petulant sky, bringing with it the smell of roasting meat and warm flatbread, both of which were eagerly consumed. The music was mysterious and hypnotizing, provided by local band Alec Redfearn and the Eyesores. Their lovely music transformed a mere street party into a gypsy caravan carnival/ceremonial summoning of the Old Ones. I was content to let it wash over me as I wandered, drinking beer, eating meat and bread and watching the flames shoot up into the sky.

Then the headlining act took the stage. Now, I'm not a native Rhode Islander. I've lived here for four years but I wasn't born here, so I didn't realize just how much of a big deal The Big Nazo were/are. It took about 30 seconds to realize how much these guys have earned the adoration of their fans. They're a big, balloony, Banana-Splits-cartoony, candy colored volcano of orgasmic brilliance, exploding with rapier wit, sassy boogie moves and pure, rawbone rock and roll talent. I haven't had that much fun in a long time. It also marks the first time I've ever kissed a life-sized rubber puppet full on the mouth. Yes, I was drunk. No, I regret nothing.

Cthulhu laid down the boogie and played that funky music til he died, and rose again.

Ms. Black Goat of the Wood with a Thousand Young

It was a grumpy, humid weekend here in Providence weatherwise, always threatening to rain but never actually doing it. Steamy, sweaty, muggy, soupy, sticky, armpitty, seven-sticks-of-solid-deoderanty weather. But in the dealers room of the Providence Convention Center, we had air conditioning, high spirits and enthusiastic Lovecraft fans, all of whom were pleasant, generous and not at all grumpy despite the sullen sky. There were so many amazing things to see and buy that my own collection of products seemed very mediocre by comparison, and I was sorely tempted to spend the money I earned on the most gorgeous statue of Shub Niggaruth I have ever seen, designed by Joe Broers of The Miskatonic Valley Fine Arts. At $65 she was a steal, and so achingly lovely that I kept sneaking over to stroke her horns and shooting the death glare at anyone else who dared stop to admire her. She's at the top of my Christmas List. Hint hint.

Just as tempting was Hibernacula, whose jewelry was so exquisite it almost hurt to look at. Voodoo charms, zodiacal symbols, delicate bird skull necklaces, intertwined tentacles designed to rest perfectly in the hollow of one's throat, a dark rainbow of Eldritch eyeballs staring suspended from an aged chain, antlers, skeleton keys... It was all so colorful and sugar-spun steampunk perfect that I had to restrain myself from licking it. I wanted everything at that booth. The girl at the booth (I forgot her name because I suck) happily told us how she hand crafted these treasures, and wasn't at all high on the fumes of her own brilliance, even though if anyone deserves to be intoxicated by their ridiculously amazing talent, it's the people behind these majestic pieces. Take a look at their photos, don't forget to breathe. And remember that I got to see them up close and touch them! ENVY ME!

The legends of Lovecraftian fiction.

It was a cacophonous affair, bright and noisy and exuberant. Ramsey Campbell strolled through a few times with his elegant wife Jenny, stopping and talking to everyone as if they were normal people and not the King and Queen of the NecronomiCON. Ramsey was sweet and jovial, taking my hand in both of his when I rudely barged up and introduced myself. Total sweetheart, that man. I'm always shocked when I meet a famous person and they're not a complete and utter asshole. I've been disappointed so many times. But Ramsey made up for all of it, and the gracious ivory cameo that was Jenny Campbell was a single perfect rose. I'm not even kissing ass here, guys: I'm not getting paid for this. I have nothing to gain, and I want nothing. I just think people should know who the truly good and decent celebrities are and how appreciative they are of their fans. Never a dirty look or a sullen response: everyone there was genuinely lovely and happy to be talking about all things Lovecraft with anyone who happened by.

Abyssian Gazer by Nick Gucker

 This morning I showed up half an hour late but with four boxes of Dunkin' Donuts for the hard working vendors. One box for NecroPress, and I hope Marc Michaud got one before they were devoured by his staff. The branch I went to did not have maple bars - WTF?!, how can you not have maple bars?!?!?! - but Nick Gucker was happy with a double chocolate. I swear, that dude is happy with everything. And why the hell wouldn't he be? I'd be eternally happy too if I were as crazy talented as he. Jason Eckhardt almost melted with happiness when confronted by the sight of half a dozen donuts from which to choose. I almost melted with happiness at the sight of his intricately rendered artwork hanging framed behind his table, reproductions of which were being snapped up faster than...well, donuts in New England. The poor guy had been up late singing cans of Narragansett Innsmouth Ale to be sold at the 'con and was half paralyzed with writer's cramp, no doubt.

I cannot possibly list every single amazing person, unique sight and inspirational work of art that I saw this weekend. It's late, and sadly the birthday celebration is over and I must return to the drudgery of work tomorrow, which means its time to wrap this up and get thee to bed. But I can't close without giving Sam Gafford of Ulthar Press and his wife Carol a special shout out - for working so hard, for sticking it out until the final hour despite their fatigue, for being total legends, for being kind and patient and sweet to the many, many people who picked up their beautiful books, and mostly for allowing me to sit with them for three days, for letting me steal part of their table to sell my wares, for forgiving me when I forgot to bring them utensils with their lunch and - in general - for putting up with me. It was nice to be made welcome in the presence of so many stars - and by stars I mean the celestial bodies of the black variety which hang low in the sky over Carcosa.

See you in 2017!

Lovecraft Arts & Sciences

65 Weybosset Street

Providence, RI. 02903

The Things That Would Not Be (if not for H.P. Lovecraft)

When he died in March of 1937, Howard Phillips Lovecraft believed himself to be a complete and utter failure, both as a writer and as a person. His family, once wealthy and well respected, had descended into illness, madness and near poverty. He’d lived the life of a hermit, plagued by nightmares and chronic depression. The man who could trace his lineage back to British royalty died alone, destitute and in great pain at the age of 46, afflicted with cancer and suffering from borderline malnutrition. During his short life, Howard was paid a pittance for his stories of cosmic horror and insanity, which appeared primarily in the pulp magazines of the time and were not considered to be of any great literary value outside of his circle of friends. Lovecraft was indeed his own worst critic, disowning much of his writing as trash, written in haste for money.

Little could the boy who was born on August 20th, 1890 – 122 years ago today – know, but that he would be one of the reigning gods of horror literature, right up there with his idol Edgar Allan Poe. Even if you’ve never read one of his stories, you’ve heard of Lovecraft. Somehow, somewhere, he has infiltrated your life: subtly, sneakily, creeping in like a fungus. If you’re a Batman fan, thank Lovecraft in part for creating the world of the Dark Knight. If you’re a metalhead, you surely have heard at least once band perform one song that was inspired by Lovecraft. It seems a dubious honor that Lovecraft should be the most famous unknown author in the world of horror, but it’s also somehow fitting. Lovecraft himself avoided the world and was suspicious of most of its inhabitants. Perhaps it’s for the best that his writings waited until he was forty years in his grave before gaining a worldwide following. He was a writer out of time: mourning the past, uncomfortable in the present and reluctantly ruling the future.

Below is a brief collection of films, authors, music and other horror staples, all of which were created/influenced by H.P. Lovecraft. I don’t think I’ve even scratched the surface here, so feel free to add to the list in the comments below.

 (MOVIES): Re-Animator, The Call of Cthulhu, The Whisperer In Darkness, Castle Freak, Dagon, Uzumaki, John Carpenter’s The Thing, The Evil Dead, The Dunwich Horror, The Resurrected, From Beyond, Marebito, In the Mouth of Madness, Hellboy, The Haunted Palace, Die Monster Die!, and probably several hundred others, but you get the idea. You might not like ALL of them, but you’ve got to like at least ONE of them.


(AUTHORS): Stephen King (his short story “Crouch End” remains my personal favorite Lovecraft inspired work), Ray Bradbury, Clive Barker, Jorge Luis Borges, Joe R. Lansdale, Neil Gaiman, F. Paul Wilson, Caitlin Kiernan (who is as close to Lovecraft as you’ll get in this lifetime), Brian Lumley, Thomas Ligotti and the reclusive Alan Moore (who seems to hate everything BUT Lovecraft).

(MUSIC): Black Sabbath, Cradle Of Filth, Morbid Angel, Celtic Frost, Metallica, Mercyful Fate, Fields of the Nephilim, Gwar and probably a hundred other metal bands I’ve never even heard of. The most famous example of this eldritch influence is probably Metallica’s instrumental The Call of Ktulu which appeared on the band’s 1984 album Ride The Lightning. The idea for the song was apparently suggested by late bassist Cliff Burton, who was a Lovecraft fan. Doubtless, raging egomaniac and all around asswart Dave Mustaine will dispute this.

(Arkham Asylum) – That staple of Gotham City, where Batman imprisoned many a nemesis (including the Joker, the Riddler, Scarecrow and Bane), was created by Lovecraft, first appearing in the 1920 tale “The Picture in the House.” Arkham Asylum was in turn inspired by real life madhouse Danvers State Insane Asylum, which you can read about here.



(The Necronomicon) – The Book of the Dead, bound in human skin, inked in human blood and containing incantations so unspeakable that no one but the maddest Arab would dare touch it. You can find several “versions” of the “real” Necronomicon in just about any bookstore, collecting dust in the Metaphysical section. The truth is, there is no Necronomicon. It was a Lovecraftian invention, appearing first in his 1924 tale “The Hound” and based upon such legendary tomes as The Egyptian Book of the Dead and perhaps “The King In Yellow” – a play created by Robert W. Chambers, which is said to drive its readers mad. It too does not exist.

(Miskatonic University) – Need a sinister sounding school, where students emerge from the Halls of Academe forever altered by the knowledge gained within? Miskatonic University of Essex County, Massachusetts, was erected by Lovecraft in 1922 in his serial “Herbert West: Re-Animator.” Since then, it has appeared in numerous films, sometimes as an actual setting, sometimes just hinted at, but always recognized as an Ivy League school, gently rotting on its foundations, its walls leaking a steady flow of madness and decay.

125 years of Lovecraft

Well, it's about that time again. Thursday, August 20th 2015 marks the one hundred and twenty fifth birthday of Providence's son Howard Phillips Lovecraft, and we who live here in the smallest state are gearing up for NecronomiCON 2015.

I'll be there, but unlike the con of two years prior, I shall not be covering press. I have no one to cover press for. I'll be in the dealers room with my friends Maddie and Crimson, who are representing NecroPress, my buddy Sam Gafford - at whose table I shall be lurking and selling some of my morbid creations alongside his books and magazines - and a shitload of other people.

Here's a complete roster:
Guests
Super Duper Famous-as-Shit Guests

Sam and I are hoping to get Ramsey Campbell to Minerva's for calzones and really shitty American beer, but other than that I'll be avoiding much of the star power. NecronomiCON 2013 didn't go so well for me, and was one of the primary reasons I quit the whole "horror movie critic" bullshit game.

But hey, fuck all that. Let's stick to the basics. It's Lovecraft's birthday, yo.

I love Providence. I moved here on November 1st of 2011, with nothing but the clothes on my back and the freaked out cats in their carriers. I moved here because I'd lost my job in September when Borders Books liquidated. I was sick of the ceaseless summers in Northern California's Sacramento valley. I'd been born in the San Francisco Bay Area, but California was not home. It had never felt like home, and felt less and less like home as the years dragged by and the economy faltered and the former bohemian cow country of Sacramento transformed into a soulless, streamlined yuppie pseudo-metropolis, overrun with dotcommers fleeing the overpriced suburbs of the Bay Area and driving the cost of living up for those of us who wanted nothing to do with the pretentiousness of the coast, where one could not hope to live unless one had a six figure salary. California had become one giant strip mall in a sea of petrol fumes and shimmering heat. I wanted to live by the ocean, but could not afford to do so on the west coast.

Wrong ocean, something inside my head whispered. So I looked east.

And here I am, uprooted and transplanted. I suffered mightily those first few months, sideswiped by culture shock, buffeted by the changing seasons, confronted with poverty, joblessness and despair. But I never regretted the decision to move here. I put myself through school, got a job, survived. And it's so beautiful here. Hope Street is a stationary gypsy caravan. Thayer Street is the 1990s forever. Wayland Square is ancient and homey and Minerva's Pizza is a beacon of comfort. North Providence is old world charming with its bakeries and shoe repair shops. Wickenden Street with its sea shanties, antique stores and gelato shops tastes like salt air and smells like art. There are so many houses here that look like Victorian party dresses, so many ghosts haunting the campus of Brown University. The Athenaeum is a church for the dark and the lost, Butler Hospital a looming specter tucked away safely in the hills behind Providence where it glowers and broods. This is where I will stay, and grow old and die.



Lovecraft left his mark on this city: a lonely, haunted mark. He loved Providence, and in the years since his death, the shadow over this city has grown. It's a comforting shadow, reaching out for the alienated and the lost. Providence, capital of Rhode Island, is a small, honeycombed city, easy to hide in, filled with dark corners and secret hiding places, stuffed full of books and dust and weird things. It's a city that encourages hermitage and introspection. There's no need to be ostentatious here, no push to be flamboyantly wealthy. It's enough to be a Rhode Islander, complaining about the road work in the summer and the sand shortages in the winter, bragging about Awful Awful's and Waterfire and Del's Lemonade. It's the little things here: coffee milk, Dunkin Donuts, crab cakes. And Lovecraft, whose posthumous fame is stupendous everywhere but here. Nobody much fusses over him here. He was allowed to live in the anonymity he chose, and sleeps now within it as well. Hollywood can churn out big budget blockbuster movies inspired by his squamous monsters and eldritch nightmares, but Providence lets him rest. Swan Point Cemetery is blissfully quiet. Conventions come and go, tourists visit and leave, and Providence sits gracefully like the grand dame of a tea party, letting them all come to her and leave when they wish, never encouraging or discouraging, always politely obliging.

Cory Udler on the death of Jani Lane

I had no idea that Jani Lane was dead.
Cory Udler enlightened me yesterday, on the four year anniversary of the singer's passing:

The Unglamorous Death of a Glam Star

by Cory Udler

4 years ago yesterday Jani Lane died of acute alcohol poisoning, alone, at a Comfort Inn in Woodland Hills, California. He left behind two daughters, Taylar and Madison.  He was still legally married at the time of his death but supposedly the relationship was basically over except for the paperwork.  It’s a sad ending for anyone.  Forget the fact that Jani was who he was, the “Cherry Pie Guy”.  For anyone to die of acute alcohol poisoning by themselves in a shitty hotel room at 47 years old is fucking heartbreaking.  Especially when they are leaving behind children who have to come to terms with who their father was and how he died the way he did.  It’s just fucking depressing.  What’s most depressing is that, in my opinion, Jani Lane was one of the best song writers of the last 30 years and is now just a footnote on the “glam metal” scene of the 80’s. 

Watch this before you read any more. 

That song was written in the mid 80’s by Lane when he was the frontman in Warrant.  It was never recorded for an official Warrant album.  This version is from an 80’s rock “supergroup” collaboration with Lane and members of Ratt and Quiet Riot.  The other members of the band loved the song and talked Jani into agreeing to record it for this side project.  It’s an 80’s rock song about racism and slavery featuring a Billie Holiday reference.  Pretty fucking heavy shit for a “glam band” footnote. 

Warrant had a reputation as the best band on the Strip who wasn’t signed to a label.  They were one of the last big “glam metal” bands to hit radio.  Their first album came out on Columbia records in the winter of 1988.  Everybody on fucking earth knows this song.

The 80’s rock scene was absolutely douched with these fucking sappy ballads.  I think only Motley did a cool one, about a double suicide, all of the other ones were the same fucking song over and over and over.  Forget that this is just another junior prom theme song.  Listen to the structure of it, the melody of it.  It’s head and shoulders above every other band’s attempt at top 40 radio airplay.  It’s just a good song.  Forget the fucking hair and the hideous matching white leather fringe cowboy suits they were wearing in the video.  It’s a fucking good song.  It could have come out in 1960, 1977, 1988 or 2015.  It’d be huge.  Dispute me all day, it’s true.  I don’t make the fucking rules, man, I just enforce the ever-loving shit out of them.

Warrant was the first rock concert I went to.  Let me just derail for a second.  The first band I really got into was KISS.  Love Gun and/or Crazy Nights was my first KISS album.  It was 29 fucking years ago and I was 11, I don’t remember.  After that a friend introduced me to Anthrax.  The “I’m The Man” ep was a mainstay in my walkman for a really long fucking time.  From Anthrax I found Death.  Leprosy and Spiritual Healing were everything I wanted from metal.  But, that “glam metal” scene was huge around this time so, for some reason, I started to listen to some of that, also.  Seriously, Poison was my band for a long time.  Today, I cannot stomach a Poison song.  But in 1988, fuck yeah.  I never got out of Anthrax or Death or Megadeth or Venom or King Diamond either.  The glam metal thing was just fucking fun.  That was it.  It was fun.  It was big, dumb, drug fueled, STD ridden, piss your pants drunk fun.  To be 13 and live vicariously through these maniacs was an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything.  So, anyway, my first concert was Tesla and Poison.  Warrant was added on for the last leg of the tour through the Midwest.  Their album had been out about 3 months and the first single was doing fairly well on MTV and radio.  “Heaven” hadn’t been released as a single yet.  I remember Jani made a reference to it being the next single when they played it live.  After that, Warrant was writing their own ticket.  Their second album, “Cherry Pie”, was another huge seller with massive hit songs.  Then, in 1991, grunge showed up and any band that was any fun was quickly taken out behind the shed and shot in the head by not only the record labels but by the unwashed masses as well.  Jani once said in an interview that he walked into the lobby of Columbia records and saw an Alice In Chains poster where a Warrant poster used to be and he said, “that’s it.  It’s over”. 

Jani’s career went through a few weird and experimental Warrant records in the 90’s, followed by some nostalgia tours, a solo record, leaving Warrant, rejoining Warrant for a month of miserable performances (due to him being completely fucking wasted drunk), sobriety, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, divorces and, ultimately, the dying alone in a cheap ass hotel room alone at 47 years old.  In case you’re wondering about where Jani was at when he rejoined Warrant in 2008, give this a look.

Brutal.  Alcoholism is motherfucking ugly. 

I remained a Warrant fan throughout.  They were one of “my bands”.  They never let me down, the songs never got old and I never thought they were yesterday’s trend. Warrant carried on throughout all of this with and without Jani.  Jamie St James, of Black N Blue, joined the original 4 members as their vocalist for an album.  After the failed reunion, Robert Mason joined the band and is still their singer. 

I remember seeing Warrant in 91 or 92 in Rochester, Minnesota.  Jani sat down on stage and told the crowd how hard touring was, not knowing day to day, minute to minute where the fuck you are.  He assumed he was in Rochester, New York until about 5 minutes before they went on stage.  It wasn’t said to demean the city or the fans, it was a charismatic lead singer in a rock band being brutally honest to the fans who put him in that spot, for better or worse.  He was an honest songwriter.  When he was on he was the best.  When he was off it was an autopsy.  I always thought Jani would wind up living in Nashville writing songs for the machine, off of the road and away from the temptations, raking in money while doing what came so beautifully and naturally to him.  Writing great songs. 

He’s not a footnote.  He was a fucking treasure.  RIP, Jani.

Satan's Shorts - Mystery Science Theater 3000

There are films so horrifying - so bleak and hopeless and insidiously evil - that they simply cannot run longer than ten minutes. Twenty tops. To run any longer would be to burn a hole of insanity through the very fabric of logic and reason. The horror is too Cyclopean. This shit would make Lovecraft run screaming back to Innsmouth, seeking sanctuary amongst the comparatively normal descendants of Dagon. And yet, these small slices of cinematic Satanism come packaged very disarmingly: vanilla frosted and sugar-sparkle-sweet, straight from the atomic oven of the innocuous 50s, smiling like a suburban sunrise in spring, white as milk, American as pie and as sickening as sixty Twinkies slammed into an empty stomach in less than thirty seconds and chased with a jug of Kool-Aid.

These evil entities are known collectively as "shorts." And much like Legion, they are many, and their ultimate aim is the destruction of mankind.

Fortunately, the valiant warriors known as Joel, Mike, Tom and Crow provided a filter for those of us who couldn't possibly bear the full force of these Hellscapes. In time, these brave men and 'bots shall be known as Saints. Or not. Look, most of us cringe and whimper through these one-reel horrorshows once. These guys sat through them over and over and over again, looking for the chink in the armor, driving home their swords of sarcasm and disdain again and again, until at last the mighty beast falls, slain by the cynical indifference of the generation they themselves birthed.

What follows is a list of the most horrifying shorts ever to be shown on MST3K. I dare not post them in their entirety, for fear of invoking their whitebread menace and possibly becoming possessed of a desire to vote Republican in the next election.

#1 - Mr B Natural (1957)

Remember the Lust murder from the movie Seven? Where the guy who was forced to wear the dildo dagger and fuck the whore to death starts screaming "Fuck! Oh god! Oh god! Please help me! Please help me!" Yeah, I had much the same reaction to this short.

The Plot: Conformity was the law of the land in the 50s, and if you didn't fit in, you may as well be a Commie. Young Buzz Turner is a social outcast at Republican High School. You see, Buzz wants to hang out with Jeanie - aka the cutest girl in school - but even when she asks him over to her place after school, he freezes and runs home to write an essay. His mother, unable to fathom why Buzz is such a dud (but not why she named him Buzz to begin with) frets when he heads upstairs to read. Fortunately, a woman who calls herself Mister pops into his bedroom in a shortie jacket and tights and convinces him that buying a trumpet will turn him into a Popular member of the white race. Buzz spends the rest of his life providing the music for the school sock hops and not dancing with Jeanie because he's on the clock. When rock and roll swept the nation soon afterwards, Buzz - sensing his doom - hunted down Mr. B. and blundgeoned she/it to death with an electric guitar.

The Stars: Bruce Podewell played Buzz at the age of fourteen. He tried his hand at theater production, direction and banjo playing, and died in 2013 at the unripe age of 69. Sadly, his nickname really was Buzz, and his actual dad played his dad in the short. This was Betty Luster's last known acting role (thank God) and after twenty odd years as a showgirl, she married, settled down, lived long and died in 2011.

#2 - Catching Trouble (1936)

The Plot: An arrogant He-Man heads out into the Everglades to prove his masculine manliness by terrorizing two baby bears, whose distressed howls make this short even more despicable. There's no point to this film, it's just an ego-stroker for Ross Allen, who proceeds to rope up the bear cubs and deliver them to a zoo for profit. Would that the bears mother had emerged from the underbrush, taken Ross's head in her jaws and cracked it open like a fucking walnut. Ross also parades around an incredibly depressed looking Native American who is apparently his helper, but is really just there to look primitive and ignorant next to All American Ross, King of the Chest Hairs, Conqueror of Petting Zoos and founder of his own alligator farm.

The Star: Apparently, Ross became something of a hero in Florida after opening a reptile institute and becoming an expert herpetologist. When he died of cancer in the early 80s, they named a goddamned island after him. I, however, choose to remember him as a tormentor of baby bear cubs. His status as an alligator wrestler/rattlesnake milker does not impress me and quite frankly, the details of his declining years makes me wonder if Tobe Hooper's film Eaten Alive was a biopic, starring Neville Brand as a flimsily disguised Allen.

#3 - Cheating (1953)

The Plot: This dark, gloomy, murky little tale of a boy - ostracized by his peers and left to dwell in sorrow because he cheated on a math test - was rumored to have been inspired by Ingmar Bergman's Through A Glass Darkly. I totally made that shit up. John, in his power fueled drive to claim the student council seat and begin his long and prestigious career as a politician, neglects to do his homework, instead caving to his desire for a hamburger. The past comes back to haunt him when his friend Mary gets caught passing him the answers! Her dress would later be inspected by officials and samples collected. I made that up too.

The Stars: There aren't any. I couldn't find a single person willing to admit that they'd been in this film. But holy shit, the director was Herk Harvey! Apparently, Herk had quite a career as a documentarian, churning out such gems as Why Study Industrial Arts?, Why Study Home Economics?, and What About Juvenile Deliquency? By the end of a prolific decade spent shaming schoolchildren into entering the conformity machine, Herk went and took and did a little horror movie called Carnival Of Souls, which was almost as disturbing as Cheating. Almost.

#4 - Design For Dreaming

The Plot: A ditzy pixie drops acid before bed and dreams herself into a car show. Unfortunately, she's still wearing her pink pajamas, so she needs a wardrobe do-over by the top clothing designers in the world. She also can't walk without dancing extravagantly, so her husband (aka The Phantom of the Fucking Opera) has to carry her around. She singsongs her way through her auto wishlist and finds herself planted in the Kitchen of the Future, baking cakes and making June Cleaver look like a guttersnipe by comparison. Finally, she and her oddly masked husband drive away on the Highway of Tomorrow, make a wrong turn and end up eaten by cannibals in the desert hills of Arizona. Or didn't you see the remake of The Hills Have Eyes, featuring Miss Pixie Pants in the pre-credit sequence, pulling a nuclear cake already starred with candles out of the fucking oven?

The Stars: Who cares? The short is the real star here, having gained cult status due to its kitschy, kicky ridiculousness. It's a chilling tutorial for empty consumerism and has popped up in other such embittered films as The Game, The Stepford Wives and a Nine Inch Nails concert. How's that for bleak?

#5 - Body Care & Grooming (1947)

The Plot: See this woman? She is happy. She is content. She has been lobotomized by society, shamed into spending every waking minute of every single day making sure her appearance is pristine. She has been starched and bleached and polyurethaned into the Perfect Woman, acceptable, marriagable and utterly without an identity. Happiness cannot and will not be attained until you pull up your socks, straighten your slip and make the boys like you. Mannequin Mary here is the spokeswoman for Conformity. Suppress your dreams, do not entertain original thoughts, do not question authority or deviate from the imposed norm. Brush your hair, brush your teeth, wear clean underpants, marry and reproduce. And when she finally wakes up sometime in the sixties, she'll be prescribed Xanax and nod off in front of the soaps, a menthol dangling from one hand, a half finished bottle of Jim Beam in the other, hair still in curlers, reeking of Lemon Pledge, while her kids sneak out of the house to smoke reefer and have sex, and her husband boozes away at the Sneaky Tiki, having an affair with a hostess named Leilani.

The Stars: None that I could find. Just squeaky clean whiteness, reminders that high heels and heavy bracelets are a sin and lots of shots of people lathering up and being really, weirdly happy about it.

It Follows

Alright. Time for an as-it-happens film review. I am sitting home, my one day off of work this week and I have a skull full of snot. Did you know that Delsym tastes like badger piss? 

Oh goodie, another victim named Annie that I can add to my collection, thus proving my theory that Annie Always Dies.

Yeah, everyone wants you to believe that beach aerobics are sooo cool.

Wow. Much Sophia Coppola. Many Kodachrome. Such Virgin Suicides.

I must admit, I like the idea of doing away with the middle man and just making Sex Itself the ultimate boogeyman. Although I have to wonder: could a condom prevent the spread of the ghost STD?

"Yes officer, the sex was consensual. However, the part where he chloroformed me, tied me to a wheelchair and forced me to look at a nondescript zombie/ghost and then dumped me in my frilly pink underwear in the street in front of my house was not at all what I had in mind."

"Hey, where's my Jello?! My Depends need changing! My kids never visit me! I am the Great Demon Nana and I will haunt you to the end of your days with stories about severe weather and horrifying tales of raspberry seeds stuck in my dentures! Come back here, you haven't seen my doily collection yet!"









Man, these kids spend a lot of free time watching 50s sci-fi that no one watches anymore without benefit of a couple of homemade robots and a dorky guy.

Whoa! What the fuck is that on the wall over there? That yellow thing with the coiled tail, see it? Is that some weird sort of cephalopod? How is it clinging to the wall like that? What is it in Gods name WHAT IS IT?!?!









Yes, brilliant. Run out to the park in the middle of the night, sit on the rusty swing set that loudly creaks every time you move in it and thereby gives away your position and wait patiently for the Devil of Death By Sex to come find you.

Christ, do these kids live in Cabrini Green?

Great synth music from the early 80s though. Very Tech Noir on Pico Boulevard.

"Hey you guys, I found the Hellraiser set!"












Stop spinning the camera in a circle, I'm gonna barf.

This is by far the quietest horror movie I've ever watched.

Oh I get it - it's like Ringu, except with sex instead of videotape. And since you have to lie to the person you're sleeping with in order to pass the curse on, I guess technically you could call this Sex, Lies and Videotape. Except there's no videotape. Fuck it, nevermind.

Honey, you can't shoot an invisible sex disease.

Also, what the hell language are these subtitles? KoreaRussoTurkish?

"Omg you guys, I totally used too much hairspray this morning."

Way to go, Princess. You escaped It Follows and crashed headlong into Children of the Corn.











Is it just me or does this girl look a lot like Brittany Murphy pre terminal glassy-eyes and insane assload amounts of narcotics?

No guy should ever wear white spandex pants. Ever. For any reason.

Oh great, so she sleeps with that guy next door and he in turn gets fucked to death by an entity that looks like his own mom. Eeewww. I'm just going to go ahead and assume that the director had a massive Oedipal complex.

Man. Would have been beyond embarrassing if she'd swum all the way out to that boat and found out that the three guys she planned on banging were all gay.

Hey! HEY!!! WTF?!?! We've seen bare nekkid boobies all the way through this entire goddamned movie, and finally a nude naked man with no clothes on shows up, just chillin' on the roof, and they've got his dick blurred out by a blob? NOT COOL. I demand fair treatment! I can see tits all day in front of my own fucking mirror. GIMME THE COCK!!!

I doubt it's a very impressive cock, considering it's attached to an old dead guy, but it's the goddamned principle of the thing.



Hey, isn't this how Let The Right One In ended?

Omg daaaaad, like stop throwing TV sets at me!

Ah, the Scooby Doo solution. Throw a sheet over the invisible menace and shoot it. That happened in Scooby Doo, didn't it?

Omg ew, Debbie got her period in the pool!








Okay, not bad. All things considered it was pretty decent. Not as mind-blowingly, be-all-end-all, holy shit I just peed your pants Horror Capital of Scarytown super Godzilla sized frightfest that it was being hyped to be. But it was good. Subdued. Dread heavy. Nicely timeless looking.

Still pissed off about that blurred out cock shot though.

The Venus Complex

Serial killers. Are they born without conscience or compassion? Are they programmed in the womb, their DNA containing the propensity for inhuman violence? Are they made, forced into a monstrous mold by external stimuli like a square peg hammered into a round hole by a warped child? Is it a little of both? Does it depend on the individual? Or can a serial killer choose his or her craft much the way the artist chooses a medium, honing their skills and creating their own unique style, eventually producing masterpieces, not out of oils or acrylics, but from flesh and blood?

Michael Friday is a dark weave of all three profiles. A stone cold narcissist and control freak from the get go, Michael has never committed a violent act in his life, until the night he has his suspicions confirmed. His wife Angela has been fucking someone else. Angela doesn’t even really care that Michael knows. In fact, she’s leaving him and taking her assload of money with her. One horrific car accident later and Angela is dead. Michael himself is grievously injured. And so no one, not even Angela’s parents, suspect that the accident was anything other than exactly that: a terrible accident. Only Michael knows that it was murder – a spur of the moment crime of passion, but murder nevertheless.

The road to recovery is long and painful, but Michael’s body eventually heals. However, his mind and personality have been irreversibly altered. His mood swings are more extreme, ranging from aching black despair to crimson fury within seconds. His sex drive is insatiable. His lusts have taken an unexpected necrophiliac turn that haunt his dreams. Whatever compassion he might once have possessed is utterly absent, replaced by a cold, calculating egotism.

That is, until he falls headlong in love with Elene, a beautiful blonde psychology professor he spots on the campus where he once taught art history. But how to impress this incarnation of perfection? How best to prove to her his vast mental and physical superiority to all other men who might seek to win her affections? Stalking her isn’t good enough. Michael must own her. He must find a way into her life. It must be ingenious. With Elene acting as his unwitting muse, Michael is wholly inspired. He will create works of art so profoundly flawless that they cannot fail to capture Elene’s full attention, inspiring an endless, admiring wonder within her as to the identity of the artist. His canvases will be the bodies of the beautiful women he has carefully selected, seduced and strangled to death. His posing of their bodies and poetry scrawled upon their naked torsos will be his own personal Valentine’s to Elene. Venus, the goddess of love, will unite them in orgasmic sprays of blood and ravenous, mindblowing sex. Wholly convinced of his prowess, his invincibility, his own godlike existence, Michael cannot conceive of anything possibly going wrong. But when his intricate and meticulously planned efforts start to unravel, and Elene fails to live up to his expectations, Michael’s fury explodes like a dark supernova, and his capability for sadism and cruelty proves to have been barely even tapped.

Taking the bold approach of telling this sordid tale from the killer’s perspective, forcing us to accept him as our protagonist and even to occasionally empathize with him, Barbie Wilde – best known to the horror community as The Female Cenobite from Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 – has crafted a serial killer story every bit as warped as Level 26, as exacting as Harris’s “Hannibal” series and more sexually adventurous than Fifty fucking Shades of Gray could ever hope to be. It’s dripping with humid sex juices, slick with sweat and blood, as filthily satisfying as a well fed pig’s wallow in the world’s muckiest mud puddle on the hottest of summer days. Not even in Hell’s deepest, darkest labyrinth could you find anything sicker, nastier or more depraved than the narcissistic conquests of Michael Friday, the killer you should hate, but can’t help but like a little bit. And Wilde’s ability to make this smug, arrogant bastard at all likable is both amazing and deeply disturbing. My moral compass tells me I should hate her for this, but my morbid curiosity demands that she produce a sequel post haste.

Written in journal entry format, The Venus Complex is a quick, dirty little high-speed read, tense and shamefully exciting and almost impossible to put down. Imagine the hottest, horniest fuckbook in the Black Lace library spliced in with a Quantico serial killer profile report and you’ve got The Venus Complex. Read it and try NOT to squirm, either in ecstasy or horror. It simply cannot be done.

Eye Don't Think So

I scratched my fucking cornea.
It doesn't hurt, but it's annoying, feeling the rip every time my eyeball rolls in its socket. And the fucking goo the doctor gave me to put in my eye is a joke: APPLY 1 CENTIMETER RIBBON TO LOWER CONJUNCTIVAL SAC...yeah right. It comes out in a fat glob, half of which oozes down my cheek immediately, and then I walk around for an hour looking like a bargain bin pirate. I don't even have a cool patch to wear.

Anyway, I have severe eye phobia. I do not stick shit in my eye. I don't do drops, I refuse to wear contacts, etc. I feel about my eyes the way I feel about anal sex: nothing is being put in there, period.

Okay, end segue, begin article about horrible things happening to people's eyes.

#1 - Fulci's Zombi.
Double derhey. If you haven't seen this scene, you haven't seen jack shit and you fail as a horror fan.

#2 - Friday the 13th, Part 3
Big dumb guy (or rather, a really terrible looking dummy dressed to look like Big Dumb Guy) gets his neck twisted so hard that his eyeball pops out on its impossibly long stalk and right into the 3D glasses wearing audience.

#3 - May
Eh, she wasn't really using it anyway...

#4 - Hostel
I fucking hated this movie. But hey, a blowtorch to the eyeball? How can I not include this on the list?

#5 - Un Chien Andalou
FUCK NO!!!

#6 - 28 Days Later
Okay yeah, it's the bad guy and he totally deserved it but, ugh. His agonized screams make it even worse.

#7 - The Birds
Wow. I can't imagine the coroner being able to fit "pecked to death by birds who plucked out his eyes like ripe, juicy peeled grapes" onto the autopsy report.

#8 - Session 9
In this case, we don't actually see the guy getting an orbitoclast rammed into his meaty eyeball. We see it being pulled out, slowly, with full accompaniment of horrible, squishy noises. Guh-ross.

#9 - The Fog
Again, we don't see James Canning's eyeballs being poked out, but we see enough: his eyes bulging, the whites glistening in the darkness, the leper zombie ghost raising a long, sharp pokie thing, then RAM! RAM! and audible, wet and gristly popping sounds, like melons being smashed on concrete.

#10 - Jeepers Creepers

Could be worse. You could have been sewn up alive inside of a walrus suit and had both legs amputated.

Honorable Mentions:

The Descent - up to the thumb knuckles in eye goo gore.
Kill Bill Vol. 2 - Daryl Hannah gets plucked like a chicken.
Blade Runner - Roy Batty declares a thumb war.
Cannibal Ferox - No.
Saw 2 - The DIY version.
Audition - Not sure you can do acupuncture on eyeballs, but okay.
The Evil Dead 2 - That'll teach you to open your mouth in a horror movie.
Dead & Buried - Beaten, burned and broken. Think you're safe in ICU? Amateur.
The Beyond - What was Fulci's deal, anyway?
The Butcher - Don't watch this film. Unless you really like POV ass rape scenes and a severe close-up of an eyeball being crudely cut and ripped out of a screaming woman's face. Cruel, vicious, senseless torture porn from Korea. Barf.

Deliver Us From Evil (2014)

I tried watching this movie a few months ago and was promptly possessed by the demon of boredom, who forced unholy yawns out of my unhinged jaw and shouted profane insults at the screen from time to time (mostly "You suck!" and "Get interesting, you fucker!"). After a successful nap exorcism, I have returned, triumphant, to conquer this film once and for all.

Deliver Us From Evil 
Year released: 2014
Starring: Eric "Black Hawk Down" Bana, that Scottish guy who always plays an emaciated creep, Olivia Munn, some other people.
Directed by: The guy who did Sinister, which I quite liked.
Based on the book by Ralph Sarchie, retired NYPD, whose book of the same title was a collection of case files, not all of which I agreed with or even necessarily believed in, but which were fun to read.

And really, if this thing didn't star Eric Bana, a man I've lusted after since 2001, I probably wouldn't be giving it a second chance.

So, here we are in Iraq, 2010, because as we all know, all of the evil in the world is conveniently located in Iraq and its neighboring Muslim countries, because all Muslims are terrorists and all terrorists are Muslim and HezbollahBokoHaremalQaeda blahblahblah Thanks Obama, etc etc etc. Anyway, some soldiery guys wander into a cave and get attacked by something we can't see whilst staring at a wall inscribed with Arabic script which we also can't see.

Fast forward three years and now we're in Noo Yawk.
Look, I have proof:

Is anyone really welcome in The Bronx?

So after a tough night delivering dead baby carcasses to the county coroner, Ralph and his partner amble over to the Bronx Zoo and stupidly wander into the lion paddock in search of a Juggalo. Apparently, this is the scene that inspired the equally stupid scene in Jurassic World where our dubious heroes wander into the Indominus Rex paddock. Anywho, they arrest some schized out scab-bag playing in the dirt and arrest her, figuring she's whacked to the gills on drugs. Some hot, sweaty, rugged young Jesuit shows up and claims responsibility for her. Turns out she tossed her toddler into the lion pit earlier that day and may have been prompted to do so by some dude named Santino, aka the Juggalo, aka, the Scottish guy who always plays a creep, aka one of the soldiers who was in Iraq.

Slip in some sunsplashed footage of Ralph and his impossibly beautiful wife watching their angelic daughter play soccer, and then back to the precinct.

Ralph and his Red Sox loving, one-liner chucking pahd'neh respond to a call about strange noises in a house. The couple who live there don't speak English so their kid translates.

Also, Ralph doesn't like cats. Which makes Ralph an asshole in my opinion, but whatever.

Anyway, lets go down to the spooky, stinky basement where all the scary noises seem to be coming from, and hey there's no lights down there and I know what lets do! Let's rip off the scene from John Carpenter's The Fog and have a corpse plop out of the wall behind Ralph and go BOOGA BOOGA! It's a nice, fetid, ripeass corpse too, swollen with decay and bursting with blowflies who rip out of its eyeballs and abdomen and looks really icky.  Turns out he's one of the guys from the pre-credit sequence who was down dicking around in an Iraqi cave looking for weapons of mass destruction or some such shit.

Oh look, Ralph's hatred of cats is finally personified:

This is found nailed to the wall of Dead Fly Guy's abandoned apartment, which is strewn with garbage, religious paraphernalia and a really pissed off doberman which is thrown into our face as a cheap jumpscare.

Ralph goes home, finds out his wife is pregnant and none too happy about his job. Also, his goldfish aren't too happy with the newest addition to the tank and, as Ralph watches in horror, they go piranha all over its ass and rip it to shreds. Cue ominous, foreboding music: the demons are coming for Ralph and his sugar cookie family.

So there's one more soldier left from Iraq that Ralph and his partner think may be the one responsible for the deaths. Meanwhile, Ralph goes home and yells at his wife and kid. Ralph moseys on back to the scene of a domestic dispute, where the first soldier (not the blowfly guy and not the Scottish creep) beat the shit out of his wife, stabbed Ralph and took off for parts unknown. Ralph finds this scrawled all over the guys wall:

What does it mean? Who knows and who cares? But suddenly, that stuffed owl toy that his wife bought for their daughter inexplicably becomes a catalyst for lots of evil devil Satan things. Shit, guess I'd better throw out those twenty year old troll dolls on my bookshelf before the movie Troll Hunter comes to life and my life is invaded by farting mountain trolls.

Finally, Ralph finds the videotape from the trios excursion into that Iraqi cave and makes a terrible discovery:

Santino has become the lead singer of Gorgoroth!

Ralph hasn't learned jack shit from his experience in the lions den. He bumbles off to the loony bin to visit Miss Scabby VonDroolFace, hoping she'll know where Santino is. In the process he pulls up an image of the Latin graffiti he found and brilliantly sticks his arm between the bars of her cell, hoping she'll have a reaction to the sight. And she does. And fucking bites his arm. Duh.

At this point, I feel I must point out the fact that none of this shit happened in the book, so I'm not entirely sure that the "based on a true story" shit is legit here.

Anyway, blahblahblah, crazy girl escapes, yaddayaddayadda, Santino kidnaps Ralph's wife and kid, blahblahblah exorcism scene, yakyakyak everyone is saved and God wins and Ralph's wife pops out another kid and they all live happily ever after, the end. Oh, and they get rid of that stupid demonic stuffed owl toy, the end.

The final verdict: forty minutes longer than it needed to be, a half step up from the cornball efforts of Insidious and The Conjuring, and not at all frightening. Cartoonish, childish and a waste of Bana's talent. This isn't even a movie, it's just another episode in the neverending show that is BluePrint Horror, following the same, tired out formula that just about every major horror release in the last 10 years have followed to the proverbial T.

This isn't Van Gogh, guys. It's a cheap Paint-By-Numbers.