Crystalized: Part 4 - The Troopers

"Jason is not a sport. He's not an extracurricular activity, or a trophy or a game." Jerusha spoke evenly and strongly, her voice confident, instantly silencing all who might oppose it with its heroic righteousness. Her words made her powerful, a fierce warrior woman with hair like a battle flag and an aura that shone hard and bright as any maiden's shield. "Jason Voorhees was a human being. He was an innocent little boy who didn't want to die and sure as hell didn't ask to be resurrected by the power of his mother's love. Jason is just the unfortunate vessel of his mother's fractured mind. All of her shame and grief and guilt was too powerful to disperse once her body died, so it found a home in her son, and willed him back to life. Hasn't he suffered enough? He's dead, but he's still being piloted around by this madness. His body ages and decays and yet he keeps going. You're worse than Tommy Jarvis. He should have been left alone, but noooo. You keep poking him and stirring him up and pissing him off and then you act surprised when he comes after you. Why don't you just get your dental degree and go on safari, you soulless shitbag?"

It sounded great in her head. She spoke without a stutter or a pause, just as she always did in her daydreams. And while her headself spoke, she was hypnotizingly awesome looking, tall and Cosmo cover glossy perfect. The people she spoke to in her head never interrupted her, or answered her back or had anything to say at all once she was done and dramatically turning away and leaving them alone to ponder their inadequacies. They stared after her dumbly, awed into silence, and the day was saved. Hurrah hurrah, amen.

And then there was the real world, where she'd unspooled her daydream delivery in the three seconds between the time she knocked at the hotel room door and the time it was yanked open from within. It was 9:07am. They'd made good time leaving Providence at daybreak and pushing the speed limit the whole way, but neither she nor Gus had slept yet. She knew she wouldn't until all of this bullshit was over, but she'd be damned if this asshole was going to rest easy either.

Famous people (even those of the dubious, self-appointed variety) were unfailingly disappointing up close. They always had bad skin, split ends or were just a lot shorter than she'd assumed they'd be. Blake Beland was shorter than she'd thought - maybe five-nine on a good day. He also had lovely skin, acne free and smooth as a thousand stitched together babies asses. He wore no shirt and his torso was torpedo-sleek and impressive. She glanced at the tight bongo drum belly peeping above the waistband of his jeans before she could stop herself. Then she forced herself to look up at his face. Tired, confused, not very bright. His mouth was slightly open and he lacked a tooth on the left side of his jaw. Good. A flaw she could focus on. She took a breath, fully intending to unload her pretentious, long-winded speech upon him. But as her eyes flicked over his shoulder, checking the bed to see if it was empty (it was) she caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror just over his right shoulder. One distorted half of her face, pale and unremarkable as unbaked bread dough, and always bigger and saggier than she thought it should have looked. Her hair - drawn into a tail of convenience just hours earlier - had attempted a half assed escape and had failed miserably, locks and loops and bubble-snarls poking out here and there, frozen in the act. Three more seconds passed as she struggled to free her clumsy tongue from the prison of her mouth. It utterly refused to do as she willed, clucking thickly and stupidly against her teeth. She stuttered once and produced a sound not unlike that of a bull moose who has been roused from slumber by a fiery case of diarrhea. Then her tongue finally ripped free of its moorings and she threw a tangled handful of inarticulate rage in his pretty face.

"You're an asshole!" she said, rather more loudly than she'd intended.

"Huh? Who the fuck're you?" He opened the door three centimeters wider, stopped, closed it two centimeters and then leaned a beefy arm against the frame. "You a cop?"

"Do I look like a fucking cop?" she asked in a lower tone this time. Her jeans were too long and she walked on them, causing the hems to fray into rat-chewed tatterholes. Her ancient Tool T-shirt had bleach stains and wear holes. Her sneakers had once been white and were now gray and scabby with dirt that was all that held the worn fabric together. She wasn't sure her underarm deodorant really was going the full 48 hours that the label had promised and she hadn't brushed her teeth since the night before. "Leave Jason alone." It was all she could get out.

"Pffft. Fuck off." He drew the words out over several seconds, not a drawl but a weary sigh of dismissal. The door shut in her face. So much for her heroic speech. She knocked again, harder.

"I was dispatched with Senator Ainsworth's team!" she shouted through the wood.

"I don't give a fuck!" he yelled back, distant, probably heading back to bed. Where he would sleep peacefully for another few hours. Fucker. "Tif turned eighteen three days ago, bitch!"

"Her dad cares about her! I don't! Leave Jason alone!"

He didn't answer, but she heard a stereo snapped on and recognized Iron Maiden playing at tympanic membrane shattering levels. Great. She'd never be able to hear The Trooper again without unsavory assholic associations.

She had to give them fair warning. She had to, otherwise she couldn't live with herself. Unfortunately, she was severely socially inept and couldn't speak without stuttering to anyone with the exception of Gus and her cats. Somewhere between her brain and her lips, her ability to speak took an off ramp into Aphasiaville.

She clumped sullenly back to the parking lot, her footsteps thuddy and horse-clumsy. She felt like a soggy bale of hay trying to pass herself off as a girl. She hadn't run in years and knew if she tried, she'd be gasping with a hot stitch in her side before five steps could be completed. She was a soft, awkward sponge, pushing mid forties and too fond of baked goods. Once upon a time she'd been twenty three, 120 pounds and could run four laps through the park without sweating. She'd had the stamina of a coked up jazz musician on a weeklong bender. She'd never been The Pretty Girl, but she'd been sleek as a chrome bullet and just as hard to slow down once she got going full force. What the hell had happened?

Gus, who was her age but looked younger and weighed less and could have modeled socks for a Lands End catalog if he chose to do so, was sitting in the car, listening to The Misfits. He didn't care for metal much. He also refused to age and grow decrepit at the same rate she was, but she loved him like a brother and so felt no real desire to slam his face into a brick wall despite his stubborn youth.

"That didn't take long." he remarked, already reaching for the ignition key.

"Oh shut up." she muttered.

"I think I saw Tiffany Whatshername outside while you were in there." he said, swerving in a semi circle towards the exit and gunning it up the highway towards the old campgrounds. "She was talking on her phone and smoking. I almost asked her for one."

"Why didn't you?"

"Menthols." His face screwed into a catbutt pucker of distaste. "She didn't see me. No idea who she was talking to."

"Someone with a name that ends in an "i" I'm sure. Except they don't dot it, they draw a little heart over it."

"Somebody didn't make the pep squad."

She smiled. "Any diners between here and the lake?"

"Shouldn't you know?"

"I haven't been up here for 30 plus. But I need food before the sun goes down." They had six full hours and a handful of odd minutes before sunset. She planned on being inside the barricade long before Blake and his bandwagon had finished gelling their hair and squeezing their muscle shirts down over their oily abs. She wasn't one hundred percent sure that this was going to work, or that she'd survive the night, but she was unenthusiastic about life anyway. Not suicidal, just exasperated. Weighing the options - machete or heart attack? Machete or cancer? Machete or hit by a RIPTA bus in Wayland square? - either way, she had to go sometime, some way. Better Jason than an impersonal disease or an overly buttercreamed cupcake from La Salle's bakery.

She looked up at the sky. The rain had dried up, and the clouds had been smeared with the sunlight into a child's fingerpainting: colorless and uninspired. She wondered if he was awake out there, wandering, searching. Or was he dormant without anything to hunt? The deer and bears up here did not fear him, for he offered them no threat. Animals and children were exempt from his wrath. But she was no longer a child. Was he capable of remembering? Of mercy for a one time friend? Should she have brought a cat for defense?

She prayed then, not to God but to a dead woman named Pamela. She had a feeling it had been Pamela who had paved the way for her somehow, speaking to Jason in a voice only he could hear. Please let him hear you again. Please be on my side. I'm on his, after all.

To be continued...

The Cassandras

"Having spoken, the Doomsayer departs."
~David Drayton, The Mist

I'm not sure there's an official name for the character that every slasher film seems to require at some point. You know, the Creepy Old Guy at the side of the road, warning the city folk not to go messing around back in them woods? It's almost always a guy: a homeless drifter, a drunk, a religious nut, etc. There's a lot of words that could be used to describe them: prophets, harbingers, doomsayers, catalysts, but I've never seen one 100% agreed upon group name for these characters. 

So I made up my own.

The Cassandras
What the Cassandra woman sees is something dark and painful that may not be apparent on the surface of things or that objective facts do not corroborate. She may envision a negative or unexpected outcome; or something which would be difficult to deal with; or a truth which others, especially authority figures, would not accept. In her frightened, ego-less state, the Cassandra woman may blurt out what she sees, perhaps with the unconscious hope that others might be able to make some sense of it. But to them her words sound meaningless, disconnected and blown out of all proportion. ~Layton Schapira

I was originally going to do this as part of a longer Christmas related article in which I profaned the Twelve Days Of Christmas. I came up with Twelve Rummies Bumming or maybe Twelve Dummies Rambling, and then realized, Christmas is over, there's not even 12 days left to the year and I'm not sure I could have seen the whole thing through to the end because I'm always tired and pressed for time. So fuck it. Here's a list of the 12 Most Famous Cassandras ever to foreshadow film plots.

#1 - Elijah - Moby Dick

At sea one day, you'll smell land where there'll be no land, and on that day Ahab will go to his grave, but he'll rise again within the hour. He will rise and beckon. Then all - all save one shall follow.

#2 - Crazy Ralph - Friday the 13th

Crazy Ralph: You're going to Camp Blood, ain't ya?
Enos, the truck driver: Goddammit, Ralph, get outta here! Go on, get! Leave people alone!
Crazy Ralph: You'll never come back again.
Enos, the truck driver: Oh, shut up, Ralph.
Crazy Ralph: It's got a death curse!

#3 - Zadok Allen/Ezequiel -  Dagon, Cthulhu.

Ezequiel: No one leave Imboca. People come, but no one leave.
Paul Marsh: What's happening with all the people in this town?
Ezequiel: They're changing. Changing to go into the sea.

#4 - Sam Loomis - Halloween

I met him, fifteen years ago; I was told there was nothing left; no reason, no conscience, no understanding; and even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, of good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and the blackest eyes... the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil.

#5 - The Derelict - Hellraiser

Bum: [referring to the Pillar of Souls] You want it?
J.P. Monroe: [laughs] Is it yours?
Bum: No. Not mine. Yours.
J.P. Monroe: How much you want for it?
Bum: Whatever you think it's worth.
[receives money]
Bum: Exactly the figure I had in mind. Take pleasure in it.

#6 Mr. Sykes - Prom Night

Sykes: There's a killer loose, a killer loose!

#7 - Mordecai - Cabin In The Woods

Mordecai: Cleanse them. Cleanse the world of their ignorance and sin. Bathe them in the crimson of...
[pauses]
Mordecai: Am I on speakerphone?
Hadley: No, absolutely not. Speakerphone, no, no, I wouldn't do that.
Mordecai: Yes I am. I can hear the echo.
Hadley: Oh, my God, you're right. Hang on one second, I'll take you off.
Mordecai: That's rude. I don't know who's in the room.
Hadley: Fine, there. You're off.
Mordecai: Thank you. Don't take this lightly, boy. It wasn't all by your 'numbers'; the Fool nearly derailed the invocation with his insolence. The Ancient Ones see everything, and they will not - I'm still on speakerphone, aren't I?

#8 - Old Man - Wrong Turn

Chris: [consults a map on the wall] Say, why's this Bear Mountain Road a dotted line?
Old Man: Dirt.
Chris: Dirt road?
Old Man: Bet they ain't even got around to paving it yet.
Chris: Looks like it runs into the highway about fifteen, twenty miles. Is that right?
Old Man: If you say so.
Chris: Thank you very much sir, you take care.
[Chris gets in his car, and drives off]
Old Man: You're the one who's gonna need to take care.

#9 - Walter Paisley - The Howling

Chris: You believe in this?
Walter: What am I, an idiot? I'm makin' a buck here. You want books, I got books. I got chicken blood, I got dog embryos, I got black candles, I got wolf-bane. Look at this: Silver bullets. Some joker ordered them. Thirty-ought-six. Never picked 'em up. I take Bank AmeriCard, American Express, Visa. You gonna buy that or what?

#10 - The Chef - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Chef: Uh... yeah, maybe I've seen something like that up that way. Well now look, you boys don't want to go messin' around some old house. Those things is dangerous. You're liable to get hurt. You don't want to go fooling around other folks' property. If some folks don't like it... they don't mind showing you.

#11 - Torgo - Manos, The Hands Of Fate

Torgo: There is no way out of here. It will be dark soon. There is no way out of here.

#12 - Mrs. Carmody - The Mist

Mrs. Carmody: If we all prepare... to meet our maker...
Jim Grondin: [interrupting her] Oh, prepare to meet shit! Lady, your tongue must be hung in the middle so that it can waggle at both ends.
Mrs. Carmody: The end of times has come. Not in flames, but in mist.
Jim Grondin: Come here. How about if your ass prepares to meet my size ten work boot! How about that?

Have Yourself a Merry Little Shitfest

There's a metric ton of really good Christmas movies out there, movies timeless and classic and so beloved that we watch them every year without fail or complaint: A Christmas Story, How The Grinch Stole Christmas (the animated one, not the hoofwanking Jim Carrey debacle), It's A Wonderful Life (the original, not the several billion trashy made-for-TV knockoffs), A Christmas Carol (take your pic, most of them are decent). Hell, there's even a decent amount of Christmas horror movies out there: Black Christmas (the 1974 original, most definitely NOT the anal drainage bag that was the remake), Gremlins, P2. Hell, it's Christmastime, I'll even be generous and say that Silent Night Deadly Night was... okay. I guess. Fuck the sequel, though. I'd rather have an entire ceramic Nativity set shoved up my ass than sit through that ripe slice of crotchfruit ever again.

Dear MST3k guys: if you release a Rifftrax for Silent Night Deadly Night 2, I will love you forever, amen. But in the meantime, we'll always have Santa Claus conquering martians and battling Satan, because Santa - as we all know - is a blade man, man! He'll cutcha! He's a superfly sex machine with all the ladies. What? Just talkin' 'bout Santa. Can you dig it?

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)

Neopolitan Santa threatens to fart on Servo's head.

Once upon a time, Mars was a proud and noble planet of war. The fearsome Martians were uber mega hella fearsome, feared by every organism capable of fear in the whole entire galaxy. But in the 1960s, when their Martian kids started tuning into Earthling TV shows and rebelling against the establishment, the Martians realize their race is threatened. They require laughter and joy and merriment and all that crap. So, somehow unaware of the fact that they are all clad in green leotards, flouncy capes and bobbly antennae, they set out looking for a way to make their kids laugh. Irony at its finest.

Not creepy at all.

Kidnapping Santa seems like a surefire way to turn their planet into a goofy funworld of fluffy delight and superfluous toys. They also kidnap two Earth kids, whose negligent parents let them wander off into the wintery woods without supervision. Waiting for them on Mars is a ready made Martian Cleaver family with a built-in Martian babysitter named Droppo, a manchild Martian who is so supremely icky and creepy that your immediate instinct is to recoil in horror from his slow-witted predators smile and his slimy exuberance. He's not quite full blown child molestor material, but one could see him dropping his green Martians boxers and yanking one out right in front of the kids. Maybe that's why they call him Droppo.

Anyway, Operation Santa is vehemently opposed by Martian Bad Guy Volmar. We know he's a bad guy because he's the only Martian with a mustache. And not just a regular mustache, but a thick black porno mustache! Other obstacles in the path include a guy in a box painted to look like a robot, and another guy crawling around on his hands and knees pretending to be a polar bear. After about an hour and a half of watching full grown men prancing about in tights and metal jocks with green make-up smeared halfheartedly over their faces and all looking severely uncomfortable and embarrassed, Santa and the Earth kids return home in time for Christmas, Mars elects Droppo to be their own personal Pedo Claus, Volmar is ordered to shave his mustache and little Martian girl Girmar grows up to be Pia Zadora and moves to Earth to star in John Waters movies.

Without the running commentary by Joel and the Bots, this film would be the cinematic equivalent of slamming your face down onto a skillet whilst allowing a sexually ambiguous elf to sodomize you with a jumbo sized candy cane. I can't imagine any child being actually entertained by this movie. Not even kids from the 60s. Not even kids with brain damage. This film is just frames away from being Disney Snuff. It's got that grimy, secondhand grindhouse quality, just inches away from being slimy and possibly produced by an entire guild of child molesters. However, this episode did produce a memorable new Christmas Carol standard in the form of "Let's Have A Patrick Swayze Christmas" penned by Crow T. Robot, who was inspired by the 1989 film Roadhouse. I can't find any information online as to whether or not the late Mr. Swayze was even aware of the carol written in his honor, or what he may have thought of it, but one likes to think he approved.

Santa Claus (1959)

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?!?!?!

I have no fucking idea what this movie is about, therefore I can only draw conclusions based on the images presented. So apparently, Santa Claus lives in a magical star kingdom in space, where he forces all of the Earth children he's kidnapped over the years to perform in racist musical numbers for his sick entertainment. Seriously, what the fuck? Little black kids dancing around in leopard panties and bones in their hair? Jesus fuck, why don't you just hand them little Christmas stockings stuffed full of fried chicken and watermelon? What the hell is wrong with you, you fat, twisted, racist gnome?

Lupita Quezadas, where are you now?

After presenting us with exaggerated stereotypes from all over the world, we move onto Mexico, where we are presented with the sweetest little girl in the whole entire world. Little Lupita is the most solemn child in all of Mexico City and appears to still be in diapers. But she's old enough to grasp right from wrong. She also wants a doll more than anything in the world, and Satan's kid brother Pitch - a flamingly prancy little devil in red silk pantaloons - sees his chance to twist her tiny little immortal soul and turn her into a wicked sinner, urging the girl to steal a doll from the marketplace. She resists temptation, winning favor in the eyes of Santa who watches her through his magical telescope like a total perv. Lupita returns home to the poverty stricken shack where she lives with her mother, baby brother and some greasy guy who might be her dad or might be her mom's pimp/local drug cartel/whatever. Pitch - who could very well be related to Droppo the Martian - isn't done yet and continues trying to turn Lupita into a master doll thief.

In the meantime, Santa is tinkering around with some truly horrifying mechanical reindeer and a gigantic pair of lips installed in his wall. What exactly he does with that huge, juicy, pillowy, suckyfucky seductive pair of glossy red lips in the off season is something I don't wanna know about but which conjures really upsetting imagery nevertheless. The Disembodied Lips would go on to star in a plethora of films after their debut in this film such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Silence of the Lambs and A Dirty Shame, before retiring to Silicon Valley. Hur hur, get it?

Sorry.

Anyway, Merlin the Wizard shows up in a ball gown, Lupita gets her doll (which, Crow T. Robot remarks, isn't a doll so much as a sister, it's that fucking big), the poor little rich boy gets his wish for a baby brother after Santa slips his parents some roofies in two smoking martinis, ostensibly to get them in the mood for some Freaky Salsa Sheet Dancing later that night, Pitch goes back to his tap dance studio in Hell, Santa goes back to his lips and Lupita's dad steals his daughter's doll, stuffs it full of heroin and sends it over the border in a mass smuggling operation the following spring.

HOORAY FOR SOCKS

Cool Pic by Johnny Destructo!

Erik and I are back with Episode 4 of Fear Of A Dork Planet, formerly known as Heart Of Dorkness, but we had to change it because somebody else already had called dibs on that name and %$#@&!!! may you mistake a saguaro cactus for a dildo some dark, lonely night.

But anyway, that's not really in keeping with the Christmas Spirit, is it? In this episode, Erik and I discuss A Christmas Carol, what the Bible has to say about Christmas Trees, Terry Pratchett's Discworld, why Piranha 3D wasn't that bad really and why Die Hard is sexist (and while I'm thinking of it Erik - did you notice that the Rolex that Bonnie Bedelia got from her boss is the one thing that keeps her chained to imminent death until Bruce Willis unclasps it and frees her? Huh? Didja notice that Freudian shit?)

We also spend an unhealthy amount of time talking about socks.

Anyway, it's up, so listen to it.

And please tell us what you think, give us feedback, suggestions, love and insults. You can send them all to:  thenovelsound@gmail.com and we'll try our very best to pretend we give a shit about what you think. xoxoxox! You can also drop by our Facebook Page and leave a comment, a funny picture or a list of your preferred make of foot wear.

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So This Is Christmas...

Although it's been proven that the suicide rate does not reach an all time high during the holiday season, Christmas time can still be the most depressing time of the year for many. The commercialism, the stampedes of door busting shoppers trampling their fellow Christians underfoot, the knowledge that the majority of children in the U.S. will not receive the toys they've been brainwashed into believing they must have in order to be happy ever after because mommy and daddy are too poor to afford them.

Normally, the saccharine discharge of treacly Christmas cinema that trickles out of the open holiday sore this time of year is designed to present the unattainable version of Christmas: sugar frost snowfalls, sparkling magic, flawless family dinners where everyone loves one another and everyone comes bearing crisply packaged gifts with bright colorful bows. Then there's the real world, where annoyed shoppers blow their horns up our asses, soggy puddles of dirty snow clog the streets and the stores are clogged with pinch-faced, grabby bastards who are too busy screaming at the hapless clerk behind the counter to notice that Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" is having much the same effect as "Gloomy Sunday."

It was inevitable that Christmas Despair would finally work its way into movies and television. The fantasy can only sustain for so long. Eventually, the tinsel shine and flickering red and green lights illuminate the emptiness within, and we wonder if anyone else has ever considered drowning themselves in a vat of egg nog.

Oh come on, you didn't think I was going to write a happy article, did you?

The Most Depressing Christmas Scenes on Celluloid

How The Grinch Stole Christmas, 1966

 Watching Mr. Grinch beat the shit out of his dog Max with a whip...and yanking his poor, skinny little limb to the breaking point, and cinching him into a rib-crushing corset and throwing big heavyass bags down on top of him...and poor little Max clearly loves his master for some inexplicable reason and does his very doggie best to serve him. Eventually, Max has his reward, feasting on the biggest, juiciest slab of rare roast beast, but geez! Michael Vick apparently saw this film at an impressionable age and got something very different out of it.


It's A Wonderful Life, 1946

It's Christmas Eve and George Bailey has had his wish granted by an angel second class: he's never been born, and now he gets to see what life would have been like without him. His mother doesn't know him, his wife doesn't want to know him and the local cemetery yields up a headstone with his kid brother's name on it:

Clarence: Your brother, Harry Bailey, broke through the ice and was drowned at the age of nine.
George Bailey: That's a lie! Harry Bailey went to war! He got the Congressional Medal of Honor! He saved the lives of every man on that transport!
Clarence: Every man on that transport died. Harry wasn't there to save them, because you weren't there to save Harry.

Nestor the Long Eared Christmas Donkey, 1977

This is basically Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer for Christians. All of the other donkeys used to laugh and call him names, and then the Roman soldiers hauled them off to Gladiator games. Nestor's mom comes to Nestor's rescue after he is driven out into a Middle Eastern blizzard (wait, what?) and shields him from the subzero temps with her furry body. Nestor wakes up the next morning to find mom has frozen to death and he is now on his own. Later, Han Solo happens by and stuffs a semi-frozen Luke Skywalker into moms hollowed out corpse. No, not really. But one does get the feeling that Nestor ends up in therapy with Bambi and Simba at some point.

A Christmas Carol, 1951

Ebenezer Scrooge has his cruel words thrown back in his face by the Ghost of Christmas Present:

Spirit of Christmas Present: My time with you is at an end, Ebenezer Scrooge. Will you profit from what I've shown you of the good in most men's hearts?
Ebenezer: I don't know, how can I promise!
Spirit of Christmas Present: If it's too hard a lesson for you to learn, then learn this lesson!
[opens his robe, revealing two starving children]
Ebenezer: [shocked] Spirit, are these yours?
Spirit of Christmas Present: They are Man's. This boy is Ignorance, this girl is Want. Beware them both, but most of all, beware this boy!
Ebenezer: But have they no refuge, no resource?
Spirit of Christmas Present: [quoting Scrooge] Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?

Gremlins, 1984

The worst thing that ever happened to me was on Christmas. Oh, God. It was so horrible. It was Christmas Eve. I was 9 years old. Me and Mom were decorating the tree, waiting for Dad to come home from work. A couple hours went by. Dad wasn't home. So Mom called the office. No answer. Christmas Day came and went, and still nothing. So the police began a search. Four or five days went by. Neither one of us could eat or sleep. Everything was falling apart. It was snowing outside. The house was freezing, so I went to try to light up the fire. That's when I noticed the smell. The firemen came and broke through the chimney top. And me and Mom were expecting them to pull out a dead cat or a bird. And instead they pulled out my father. He was dressed in a Santa Claus suit. He'd been climbing down the chimney... his arms loaded with presents. He was gonna surprise us. He slipped and broke his neck. He died instantly. And that's how I found out there was no Santa Claus.

M.A.S.H. - Death Takes A Holiday, 1980

It's Christmas in Korea and the crew of the 4077th faces a moral dilemma when a critically wounded soldier arrives. It's a foregone conclusion that he's going to die, but the surgeons are determined to stave off death until Christmas is over, so that the mans family will not have to remember Christmas Day as the day dad died.






The Twilight Zone - Night of the Meek, 1960

A drunken department store Santa gets fired for being shitfaced on the job and vents his frustration with his squalid, poverty riddled existence in the form of a wish: that the meek could inherit the earth for just one Christmas.

"This is Mr. Henry Corwin, normally unemployed, who once a year takes the lead role in the uniquely popular American institution, that of a department store Santa Claus in a road company version of 'The Night Before Christmas.' But in just a moment, Mr. Henry Corwin, ersatz Santa Claus, will enter a strange kind of North Pole, which is one part the wondrous spirit of Christmas and one part the magic that can only be found in - The Twilight Zone."

The Twilight Zone - The Star, 1985

A bunch of interstellar space guys discover a planet housing the ruins of an ancient alien race who lived in peace for a thousand years, spent all their time creating art and music and beauty and ultimately died when their planet supernova'd. The scientists question how God could allow such a beautiful species to die...until he does the math and realizes that the planet's demise was seen from earth as a bright star in the east, over the town of Bethlehem some 2,000 years earlier.

"...whatever destiny was theirs, they fulfilled it. Their time had come, and in their passing, they passed their light on to another world. A balance was struck, and perhaps one day, whenever we've fulfilled whatever destiny we have, maybe we too will light the way for another world."

Dark Star: HR Giger's World (2015)

I was given a normal childhood in the 1970s. I had no shortage of playmates, toys and an imagination undistracted by text messaging or video games. I spent summer afternoon running under the sprinklers, pretending I was a unicorn. But I also took my favorite teddy bear out into the backyard during an autumn thunderstorm and tried to bring it to life a la Frankenstein. My Barbie Dolls were wrapped in toilet paper and propelled through the air while I made ghostie "ooooOOOOooooo" noises. When I wasn't using the backyard as a mad scientist laboratory, I was burying matchbox coffins containing the corpses of insects beneath Popsicle cross-markers. I had friends, but was happy being alone as well. I was normal, but I was also weird. I had a darkness in me, one that I hadn't asked for but wasn't repulsed by. I was drawn to horror movies, Halloween decorations, skeletons and skulls, all things dark and fearful. Nobody worried about me or wanted me put on anti-psychotic medications. I wasn't hurting anyone or anything. The insects I buried were already dead when I found them. Killing them never occurred to me, because that wasn't natural. I knew the difference between right and wrong. One can be morbid without being twisted.

And so I'd like to believe that I would have gotten along quite well with the late Swiss artist H.R. Giger, a man who started out life as every child does: a bit fearful of the unknown, in awe of the specter of death, but embracing them nevertheless because he recognized their importance, their place in the natural order of things.

But the fear was there too, the driving force behind his art. Much like Lovecraft, who suffered from night terrors as a child, carried by Night Gaunts into twisted worlds of Elder Gods whose sole amusement was to torture the children of men, Giger was plagued by dream visions of monsters, machines and alien beings reaching out to him from some primal dimension that very few are unfortunate enough to glimpse during their short lifetimes. Listening to Giger and his closest friends recount his harrowing nightmares - the ones that drove him up out of sleep and sent him reaching for the notepad he kept by his pillow to document what he'd seen, and would later transfer to canvas, life sized and sanity-shattering - scared the hell out of me. They scared Giger too. He painted them because he was frightened of them, and recreating them seemed to be the only way to gain some kind of control over them. Makes me wonder, though - what the hell were Giger and Lovecraft tapping into? What other worlds are out there? And what's waiting for us beyond this one, squirming in the darkness and coiling around the doorways, waiting for us to wander stray?

But the documentary Dark Star: HR Giger's World doesn't spend its entire running time wallowing in morbid pessimism. Giger wasn't some arrogant Goblin King sitting on a throne in his Alien bar, demanding homage. He was just a diminutive, soft spoken guy fussing over his beloved cat Muggi and taking dinner with his friends in a crowded kitchen. Often he seems overwhelmed by it all, shutting his eyes briefly or staring off into space as if willing himself away from this ridiculous spotlight of fame. He seems utterly unimpressed with himself. He's only spent his life doing what he must, what comes naturally, and the adoration he receives from his fans and lifelong admirers never acts as a steroid applied to his ego. We get to meet his parents through kodachrome photographs. We wind our way through his cluttered house, which narrowly misses being the refuge of a hoarder. We are taken to the mist shrouded Alps to visit his ex-wife, with whom he remains on friendly terms. There's nothing very Hollywood going on here. For Christs sake, the guy had a toy train in his backyard that wound through his gardens and sculptures, and which he rides with all of the enthusiasm of a sugar-high child. It's difficult to be an arrogant asshole when your seventy year old plus sized body is crammed atop a toy train.

But with its mournful soundtrack and hypnotic imagery, no one who has embraced the dark and seen its beauty will want to miss this documentary, now streaming on Netflix. It's a gorgeous, unspooling ribbon of velvet gothic blackness and shining chrome biomechanics. And it's also just the simple tale of a nice old man who only ever wanted to draw what he dreamt. It's a rare thing to be afforded a glimpse into the mind of an artist or a genius...or was he simply a conduit and an emissary? 

Crystalized: Part 3 - The Daisy Chain

Then...



She'd woken in darkness, chilly and damp, the smell of wood rot thick in her nose. There was a glassless window above her and she saw sunlight, heavily filtered by the trees. The time was impossible to discern. She wore no wristwatch and the cabin she found herself in had never seen electricity. Nor indoor plumbing either, to judge by the smell. She didn't mind, she'd smelled worse. Her father was the reason that air freshener had been invented, for God's sake.

At the thought of her dad, she sat up. Was he worried about her? Had he called the police? She sat and listened intently, but after a good minute and a half of separating birdsong, breeze and various animal footsteps, she heard no helicopter blades whupping the air overhead, no dogs barking or amplified voices calling her name in bullhorn stereo, she figured either one of two things had occurred in the wake of her aborted kidnapping: she was too deep in the woods to be found by a foot search, or her father was still asleep in front of the TV, not having noticed her absence when he woke long enough to take a piss and grab another beer with which to fill the void. She knew the latter was more likely; she'd pretty much been left on her own to come and go as she pleased for the last month, so she relaxed and took in her surroundings.

The floor was dirt. Actually, if truth were to be told, the floor was mud and rodent shit and she was smeared with it, covered in it, a tanglehaired mudgirl with dirty scrapes on her bony knees and a bladder that was full to the point of screaming. There was a door six feet in front of her, closed firmly but not locked. She wobbled to her feet and pulled it open, hoping for a toilet. Instead she found a ripe and festering meat garden, blooming with hideous glory under the summer sun.

The floor was muddier here, squelching rudely beneath her ruined sneakers. The blood had done that. There was a lot of it, a swamp of blood, some fresh, most congealed into soupy puddles of syrupy gore. It looked firm enough to skate on. The buzz of flies was loud and thick and lazy, their movements over the remains sluggish and obscene as they gloated over their proud and shameless feast. Fat white maggots squirmed busily, happy as only spoiled babies can be, wallowing in their cradles of decomposing gray meat with nauseating contentment. She saw a hand, palm up, its fingertips eaten away to bone. There was a leg bone growing out of a sturdy hiking boot with shreds of pant leg still fluttering from it. A ribcage was propped in a corner, and beyond the bone doorway, there was just enough sunlight to see something wet and glistening down within, something that moved ever so slightly. The smell of spoiled meat and evacuated innards was richly fruity and dark. She searched her brain for a word that would encompass that reek, but her vocabulary was still expanding and had not yet picked up everything it would need for its collection. Had she been ten years older, she might have used the word foetid, but the best she could do at that age was to associate the decaying reek with a mental image: a cartoon girl with red hair and mismatched eyes buried beneath a fresh and steaming heap of smotheringly gooey horse poo. Or maybe dog poo. From a lot of dogs. The stink was too meaty for a herbivore.

She took all of this in within four seconds, drawing a breath as she did so and immediately expelling it back out again, her gag reflex clocking in for immediate overtime. Her dirty hand, coated with mud and shit and blood, clapped over her mouth instinctively. Her outraged nasal cavity immediately roared in protest and declared war on the invading stench. She didn't vomit, mostly because she had nothing in her stomach to eject, but she dry heaved tremendously nonetheless.

She'd noticed the shrine immediately upon entering the room, but the tidal wave of rot-stink that had rolled out to greet her in the doorway had knocked her back a few steps, disabling her ability to focus. Now, as she took shallow breaths through her mouth and carefully picked a semi-dry path through the bloodpuddles and fleshclumps, she took in the details. The centerpiece was real, she knew that much. Surrounded by candle stumps that had burned out, it had suffered no insect activity, nor had it ever been nibbled upon by vermin or wayward bird. The skin was leathertough and withered dry as an apple now, but she thought the face was still pretty. Her hair was still as blonde as a dandelion just turning to puff. The old fisherman's sweater spread out before her smelled like dead fish and mushroom bellies, but it was still soft. She ran her hand over it and could see the lady wearing it, warm beside a fire, maybe stroking a cat or reading a book or knitting something with a mug of tea lazily steaming beside her.

She suddenly realized that she still desperately needed to pee and looked around. It did not seem proper to pee in here, even though she knew the smell would be swallowed by the rot and chaos immediately and her puddle of wet nothing compared to the gelatinous puddles of blood pudding standing everywhere

Backtracking brought her to an open front door. She chose the outer wall furthest from the shrine so as not to befoul what she knew was a sacred spot. The shadows were deep and cool, the fierce summer sun unable to pierce the foliage this deep. As she emptied herself, she spotted a dozen dancing and nodding spots of white in her peripheral vision and turned her head. And had an idea. One that made her smile for the first time since her ordeal had begun.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So absorbed was she in her chosen task that she didn't notice the light fading from the sky or the sun sinking with an almost audible sizzle into the lake waters, turning its placid surface into molten glass. The door slammed open behind her with a splintering crack and she jumped, but to her credit did not scream. It was only him after all, and she knew he would not hurt her. Not like the other one. She didn't wonder where he'd been all day, if he slept or if he simply materialized out of the shadows after the sun retreated. His eyes - still miraculously intact even as his face rotted away beneath his hockey mask, worn so long that it had become part of his skull - went from her face to her hands, where drooped six remaining daisies, then beyond both to the gruesome but cherished centerpiece now surrounded by flickering candles. She'd found the wooden box of matches secreted away at the base of the makeshift table. Flameglow leapt across the face of Pamela Voorhees. And as her only begotten son looked down upon her, the reliquary that guided his every move, governed his every thought and inspired his every action, her eyes opened. They were bluer than Brazilian blue topaz, crackling with elfin delight. As if on cue, the little girl smiled right along with her, their double grins pure and bright as pearls in a red velvet jewelry box. 

"Isn't she pretty?" the little girl asked, her voice sincere and bright.

"Isn't she an angel?" his mother asked on the heels of the girls inquiry, her voice hushed with reverance and awe reserved for the unveiling of the pink plastic Christ child in the manger on Christmas Eve. But Christmas was a million years from now and beyond the darkened windows, fireflies had begun to flare, competing with the candlelight. Mrs. Voorhees' eyes alighted upon Jerusha, still smiling serenely. The flowers in her hair, carefully pushed through the snarled locks and wilted strands by Jerusha's patient hands nodded and swayed, a perfect crown of snowy stars for an immortal Northern Queen, a goddess of ice and vengeance, flanked by wolves. 

"She's fixed me up so pretty just for your birthday, Jason." Mother said in her lullaby voice, the one reserved just for him, at night, to keep the bad dreams away.

"Take her home, sweetheart. Make sure she stays safe. You are such a good boy, protecting her like that. You've done well. Now take her home. Keep her safe. And make sure you thank her." Just a slight sternness entering her voice now, just the most fleeting wisp of cloud scudding over the sunlight of her daisy framed face. Then the ice melted and the warmth and green grass emerged once more, blinding as diamonds. "After all, look how pretty she's made mother."

Pamela Voorhees fell silent once more, retreating into peaceful sleep. Jerusha was still smiling up at him. He stood and considered carefully, weighing and rejecting everything his eyes fell upon: bone, teeth, blood. None of it suited. Mother approved and appreciated his offering of death, but wouldn't want such a thing for the girl. He remembered dimly, through years of muddy water, the things he'd had as a child from the hands of his mother. Things for good children. He turned and walked back through the door and into the depths of the cabin, smashing through things rather than past them, wood screaming beneath the crush of his footsteps, bleeding dust. Jerusha didn't wonder where he'd gone. She still had six more flowers to place. By the time Jason returned, she had finished and the cabin was holier than a Sunday after sermon. He'd found what he'd wanted, what he'd once loved, now useless in his hands but placed in hers now infused with new life and meaning.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now...

"So what was it?" Gus asked, eyes still on the road before them, unspooling grey and lifeless.

She glanced at her feet where her backpack sat wedged between her ankles. She'd brought it with her, of course she had. It was a weapon more powerful than any chainsaw or machete ever crafted. One eye missing, one foot torn away, bleeding dirty stuffing from its wounds. She'd never named it, but she'd kept it. She'd even loved it. But it wasn't hers. Jason was past due for a birthday present. She'd only been borrowing it because Mother had made him share. Now it was time to return it. 

She thought of all the expensive equipment that Blake Beland had undoubtedly purchased and lugged up here, never knowing that it was all worthless junk in the face of an ancient teddy bear. For this particular battle, she was better armed.

The Damned (Gallow's Hill) 2013

Welp, time to choose a horror movie at random from Netflix's meager offerings. Seriously, Netflix is like an all-you-can-eat buffet table which only ever offered two or three varieties of meat loaf. And when the sad, soggy loaves are slowly consumed, they're not restocked. The glass casserole dishes are left to draw flies, the hardened bits of food still clinging to them turn green and grow fur, and you poke at it all with your fork, knowing nothing edible can possibly still be lingering in there.

So here we go with "The Damned" aka "Gallow's Hill" which features a hill, but no gallows.

Never disregard the locals warning about unsafe driving conditions. The worst thing you can say in a horror movie, besides "Wait here" and "Is somebody out there?" is "He/She is a local, don't listen to them, they don't know what they're talking about." Yeah, um, pretty darn sure that locals actually DO know what they're talking about. They fucking live there. They've probably fucking lived there their whole life and therefore would know more about the terrain than you and your skinny gringa girlfriend.

Another basic rule to follow should you ever find yourself stranded in a foreign country in the middle of a fierce storm: don't gesture to the nearest isolated, grandiose state and announce to all present that "Yonder lies one spooky-ass domicile, let us go hence and bully our way past the curmudgeonly old hermit who does not want to let us in in order to use his phone which has been out of order since 1978." 

Look, if the urge comes on you suddenly to take a wicked piss, don't. I mean, come on - you've just been caught in a flash flood, it's pouring rain, the house looks like it already smells like moldy newspapers and wet dog; just pee in your pants. Nobody is gonna notice.

Brilliant. Wonderful idea, Princess. "Honey, I heard some strange noises coming up from the pipes while I was peeing into this incredibly filthy toilet, I think we should go investigate!" Fuck you, lambkins. You've been in this house for all of seven minutes and you think you have a right to track down the origins of those strange groans and moans? Maybe the guy left the Spice Channel on in his bedroom. MYOB, you nosy twat.

Fine, okay, goody for you - you found a little girl with a dirty face and stringy hair locked in a roach infested cellar room. You think you've just busted El Loco Pervo of Bogota in the act, but I'm wondering why none of ya'll mutherfuckahs has apparently never seen The Ring. Or Silent Hill.

Hmm, perhaps we should have wondered how a little girl managed to survive being locked in a dungeon for so long without food or water before we knocked the old guy who did it right the fuck out of his shoes with a shotgun. Also, maybe we should mention to someone the fact that La Nina has a thing for groping girls' sweater kittens and making lewd remarks? Clearly, Spooky Little Girl is - at the very least - in need of some Thorazine.

She who drinks first dies first. Or at least gets possessed first. Okay, or just wakes up in a puddle of blood on the kitchen floor next to the dead body of the creepy little girl with no memory of what happened. Whatever. Oh no wait, yep, she must be possessed because she's gettin' all sex-monkey with that other girls boyfriend.



Tit shot confirmed. I repeat, we have Tit Shot, it's official.

Whatever you do, Mr. Main Protagonist, do NOT react to the death of your dead wife's sister in any way. No shock, or surprise or grief, just mild incredulity and slight discomfort, as if you're in between bouts of Montezuma's diarrhetic revenge.

And you, spoiled rotten teenybopper in the too-tight-jeans who started all this shit to begin with: even though you've been told that demons lie, I want you to instantly believe everything this one tells you. We don't have time for character development, Sweet Cheeks. We need you and your daddy to separate ASAP and make it easier for the Big Bad Bruja to drive a wedge between you and feed off your weaknesses.

Hey! No! I call "no giggly female demons smashing through rotted wooden walls in order to torment our sole remaining somewhat dubious male hero." Ellen Sandweiss, Betsy Baker and Theresa Tilly beat you to it. And what the fuck is this? Is this supposed to be scary? Because she looks like The Joker. And not even a good Joker, more like a Mary Louise Parker got drunk and ate mommy's lipstick kinda clown. I saved this screen shot to my document file under the name "stupiddemon." Yes I did.

Oh great. Hmm, how shall we end this movie? Ooooo, I know! I just saw Manos: The Hands of Fate the other night when I was really stoned and couldn't figure out how to change the channel. Let's do a full circle and end up right back where we started! Yay!

Fuck you, movie.