The Sounds of Autumn

Why does Christmas get all the music love? Everyone from Johnny Mathis and Bing Crosby to William Hung has a fucking Christmas album. Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas, but I’ve also worked retail for 20+ years and I absolutely fucking dread the holiday season, during which the PA mercilessly pipes in the cheesiest and most nerve-grinding Christmas music ever recorded. One year, a supervisor of mine actually ripped a CD containing an incredibly annoying version of “All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth” out of the changer and ordered me to make it disappear. I threw it up on the roof where it may very well still sit, covered in pigeon shit and half melted into a silver puddle by the sun.

Music for Autumn and Halloween remains limited and pretty unimaginative. If you own one Midnight Syndicate CD, you pretty much own them all. And yeah, of course I love The Monster Mash, but come on – you can’t play it on a loop all night and not expect to get murdered by your party guests sooner or later.

Do yourself a favor. Inject some fresh blood into that stiff, embalmed corpse you call a “party mix.” Try throwing some of these autumnal inspired albums into the player this season.

Album: October Rust

Artist: Type O Negative.
The late great Peter Steele loved autumn so much that he wrote an entire album dedicated to it. His synesthetical visions of autumn’s flaming beauty and cold, bitter grimness just can’t be fully appreciated in the heat of summer. I know many people who will wait for the onset of autumn with an almost religious reverence before blasting this CD at the highest possible volumes. It’s a seasonal treat, right up there with candy corn and pfeffernusse.

Best Track: Picking just one track off of this flawless album is difficult, to say the least, but I’m going to have to go with In Praise Of Bacchus closely followed by Love You To Death and Wolf Moon.

Album: A History Of Horror.

Artist: Various.
A two disc collection of every major main theme from most every major horror movie, from the instantly recognizable (John Carpenter’s “Halloween”) to the obscure and nearly forgotten (“The Devil Rides Out” and “Peeping Tom.”)

Best Track: Goblin’s Suspiria. I used to play this one over the PA system at my old job. Freaked everyone the fuck out. I was accused of playing “Satanic Disco” by one curmudgeonly shrew, but she listened to Rush Limbaugh every morning so she deserved the assault on her ignorant eardrums, as far as I’m concerned.

Album: The Purple Knif Show, by Lux Interior.

Artist: Various.
In 1984, legendary Martian shapeshifter and escaped sideshow freak Lux Interior (aka lead singer of The Cramps) recorded a little radio show deep in the steamy bowels of Los Angeles. The month was July, but the music reeks of late October, boasting a collection of rare 45s, spooky singles and weirdass transmissions from the funkiest depths of space. Okay, I might have made part of that up.

Best Track: I can't possibly pick just one, the range is simply too vast. Everything from The Addams Family theme to kitschy skullwhackers like Baby Brother and onto the tiki lounge standard Cafe Bohemia. The whole album experience could only be duplicated by riding an acid soaked timewarp wave into a velvet Shag painting on a psychedelic surfboard with a scorpion bowl in each hand and a punk version of every Universal creature giving chase right behind you.

Album: The Devil’s Music.

Artist: Various.
An exhaustive compilation of the scariest, most frightening and blasphemous classical music ever recorded. Get your baroque on, mutherfuckers.

Best Track: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor: Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. You simply CANNOT have horror without Bach’s Toccata and Fugue! It’d be like sex without bruises!

Album: Høstmørke. Literally translated: “Autumn Darkness.”

Artist: Isengard.
One of the many, many side projects of Gylve Nagell, aka Fenriz, aka “The Boss in Darkthrone” this has been categorized as black metal, folk metal and Viking metal. I’m not even going to try and shove it into a category. I’m just going to say that Fenriz has snow in his lungs and pine tar in his blood. This cold and spooky half hour long cacophony fairly reeks of wolf hair and wood smoke.

Best Track: Over de Syngende Øde Moer. YouTube it up and prove me wrong. Gylve’s thunderous “Oofs!” and growly “Heys!” make me all orgasmy fangirly and stuff.

 

Album: Closed On Account Of Rabies.

Artist: Various.
An ode to all things Poe, featuring his short tales and poems read aloud by the likes of Marianne Faithfull and Iggy Pop. Every Goth worth their dyed black salt must own this double disc set. No excuses.

Best Track: Obviously the popular vote is for Christopher Walken’s recitation of Poe’s most famous poem: The Raven which suffers not at all under Walken’s heavy Noo Yawk accent. My personal favorite – for obvious reasons of vanity – is Gavin Friday’s hauntingly lovely For Annie.





Album: Projekt: Gothic.

Artist: Various.
The Projekt label has been putting out some of the best underground gothic music for years. Anything that says “Projekt” on the cover is worth your while if you’re a fan of the bleak and melancholy.

Best Track: Mysterium by This Ascension, closely followed by Lycia’s Excade Decade Decada.

Album: Vampire Themes.

Artist: Various.
This is a collection of vampire inspired punk/goth/darkwave music recorded by some of the most iconic bands ever to be totally ignored by My Chemical Romance worshipping Neo-Goths. Do yourself a favor kiddies – try some Leather Strip, Electric Hellfire Club and The Damned.

Best Track: The iconic Bauhaus goth staple Bela Lugosi’s Dead. Duh. Close behind it is Razed In Black’s weirdass technogothic Salem’s Demise.

Album: Evidence Of Heaven.

Artist: Faith & The Muse.
Edwardian parlor games, Ouija boards, seances and silken ectoplasm: the spirit of the late 1800s/early 1900s is perfectly captured on this severely underrated album by criminally overlooked goth band Faith and The Muse. From 17th century ballads to modern metal, this entire CD is chilling and ghostly.

Best Track: Plague Dance, a scratchy black-metal-esque wailfest punched up by Monica Richards banshee-like cries.

Album: Hellbilly Deluxe (13 Tales Of Cadaverous Cavorting Inside The Spookshow International)

Artist: Rob Zombie.
The carnival freakshow barker’s metal homage to all things horror couldn’t get anymore Halloweenie if you rolled it around on the sticky floor of a movie theater and stuck it inside of a rotting pumpkin. Rob Zombie is Halloween incarnate as far as his music goes and far surpass his remakes of the popular franchise.

Best Track: Return of the Phantom Stranger, closely followed by Living Dead Girl and Dragula.

Malevolence

I finally got around to watching Maleficent last night.

It's rare that I venture outside of the horror genre into actual "Hollywood Film" territory. Rarer still that I'll approach anything even remotely connected with Disney. I fucking hate Disney and everything it stands for: sanitized fantasy, commercialistic reality, all that plastic crap. I truly don't understand how anyone who has passed through the gates of puberty can actually enjoy Disney. It's like saying that you truly prefer those individually wrapped slices of processed (and unnaturally orange colored) cheese food to an actual wheel of Havarti straight from Copenhagen. Disney - to me, anyway - personifies the blackest emptiness of the loneliest soul. How's that for fucking profound as fuck? Huh? You smelling the existential shit I'm stepping in over here?

I watched Maleficent for three reasons, and three reasons only.
#1 - I like Angelina Jolie. I give no fucks what you think about that.
#2 - I would totally fuck Sharlto Copley.
#3 - I love fairy tales. Real fairy tales. I'm talking Grimm as shit, not the squeaky clean super-kiddified shit that passes for fairy tales these days. You ever read an actual fairy tale? Like Sleeping Beauty, the tale upon which Maleficent is based? Yeah, ain't no prince kissing that bitch out of her coma. In the original tale, the Handsome Prince fucks Sleeping Beauty while she's asleep. Straight up whips his cock out and fucks her while she's just laying there, unable to say Yes, No or Bitch, buy me dinner first. She only awakens from her coma after giving birth to Prince DateRape's twins.

But the hour is late, and I am tired, so I'm not going to linger on this subject. Lets get straight to the review.

Maleficent - the short review: It was okay.
Overall, it was a tad too pretty for me. A little too whimsical, a touch too fluffy.
After having watched it, I found myself a trifle irritated by the lack of character development. Sure, Aurora is a sweet girl, but what the fuck are her interests? Does she even want to marry a prince? Maybe she would prefer a career as a Key Grip or something? And who the hell was her mother? Leila lasted all of, what, seven minutes total on screen? Who the hell were Maleficent's parents and where are they? Why is the most powerful fairy in the world all alone, and by what right does she claim herself to be Queen? And what about Stefan, the peasant boy who betrayed Maleficent? What were his motivations? Did he ever really love her? Does he...wait.

Wait just a fucking minute.
Do I really need Stefan to have an excuse?
Is it possible that we've finally reached a point in cinematic adaptations that we've stopped trying to create sympathy for the male asshole?
Maybe Stefan is just an opportunistic, self-absorbed, narcissistic jackass with zero compassion, an utter inability to take responsibility for his actions and a big fat fucking void where his goddamned heart should be.

It was at this point of realization that I appreciated Maleficent just a little bit more.

Stefan is an Absolute. He doesn't have a backstory. He doesn't need one. Anything he'd tell you about himself would probably be a lie anyway. Oh sorry, does that sound bitter? Tough shit. Stefan's introduction to the audience is as a thief. He's stolen something - I forget what - from fairy land and is forced to return it by little Maleficent. From that point on, he steals everything: Maleficent's trust, her first kiss, her innocence and finally her wings. Yeah yeah, we all know that the wing cutting scene is a metaphor for rape. That's been established. What I was more interested in was the complete and utter ruination of Maleficent herself. He murders her soul. The light in her eyes is utterly extinguished. She darkens, literally and figuratively. All of her joy has become sorrow. A warped filter is draped over her vision. Every person becomes suspect, every motivation questionable. Even the adoration of a toddler is seen as a cunning ploy to a woman destroyed. Surely no one seeks out her company for any good reason. Always she is wondering: "Well, what do you want? Why are you here? And how long before you hurt me too? Maybe I'll hurt you first, because I cannot bear to be broken again."

William Congreve coined the phrase Heav'n has no rage like love to hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd. And frankly, I've never seen it better personified than by Jolie's Maleficent. I think every woman who has ever been dumped by a man she truly loved, and believed loved her in return, can relate to the hollow look on Malficent's face upon discovering just how coldly she has been used and cast aside. It's the silence that follows that gnaws at us the most, that feeling that not only doesn't he care, but he never did to begin with. And whenever we hear of him scorning yet another woman, blaming them en masse for all of his troubles and/or dismissing them as a species completely unrelated to him, we wonder how someone could possibly be so heartless. How can they live with themselves? Why can they admit no wrongdoing? There will never be an admission of guilt, or an apology forthcoming, because guys like Stefan have already exonerated themselves and excused their actions. You are the bitch for reminding them of just how truly flawed they are. And that, dear children, is the tale of true evil in the world: not the destruction itself, but the imprint it leaves behind.

Drunk on ego
Truly thought I could make it right
If I kissed you one more time to
Help you face the nightmare
But you're far too poisoned for me
Such a fool to think that I can wake you from your slumber
That I could actually heal you..

People Who Don't Pay Their TV Licenses Against the Nazis!

Happy Labor Day, mutherfuckers. I just worked an eight hour shift, came home and slammed two beers on an empty stomach and am now drunk off my fat girly bottom. In fact, I am far too arseholed to come up with a clever segue into this article. I just really love The Young Ones. I've loved The Young Ones since 1985, when they started showing episodes on MTV, in the olden days before MTV became a void of empty commercialism and vainglorious self-masturbation. Do they even show music videos on there anymore?

Anyway, I don't even remember how I hit upon the idea of writing an article about The Top 10 Most Gross Out Moments of The Young Ones, but I did, and I'm doin' it and you can't stop me. So here it is.

The Top 10 Most Gross Out Moments of The Young Ones

In no particular order at all...

#1 - Rik Hates Rats, Okay?
Episode 1 - Demolition

In this pilot episode, Rik spots a pair of filthy vermin just chilling in the soon-to-be-demolished flat he shares with lentil-obsessed hippie Neil, violent punker Vyvyan and Mike Thecoolperson, and does what any terminal wally would do: he grabs a guitar out of the refrigerator - a guitar that was made entirely out of matchsticks by Neil's grandfather who was on his deathbed at the time - and proceeds to beat one of the rats to death with it, leaving the remaining rodent to cannibalize the remains. Adding insult to injurt, Rik flicks a triumphant V at the mutilated remains once he's done.
 
#2 - (pffft! number twos!)
It Was Bound to Happen Sooner or Later
Episode 2 - Oil

The gang moves into their new flat, which looks like a gigantic lavatory, and Vyvyan promptly gets bored. When playing "Murder in the Dark" proves unsatisfying, he heads down to the cellar and starts smashing his head against the floor, discovering an untapped vein of black gold in the process! Forcing Neil to mining detail, the stupid bloody hippie accidentally slams a pickaxe through the back of Vyvyans skull, permanently nailing both his crash helmet and a stray boulder to his head in the process. Vyvyan is surprisingly forgiving of the faux pas, but doesn't die immediately, staggering to his feet just long enough to eject a mouthful of rancid bile in protest of the "Passage Of Time" gimmick.

#3 - You can't do acupuncture with 6-inch nails
Episode 11 - Sick

The guys are all ill. Horribly ill. Even SPG is all covered in snot. There's nothing left for anyone to wipe their noses on, and Rik's shouting isn't helping at all. Neither is Neil's volcanic sneezing, every expulsion releasing a projectile avalanche of thick green snot. Even sealing him up inside of Rik's laundry bag comes too late as Neil's bogie flood has already ignited a street riot. Mike fails to return from the chemists with The Cure so Madness is forced to perform instead. Worst of all, Neil's parents are coming round to tea in thirty seconds!


 #4 - So I took my dungarees off, and...
Episode 10 - Time

Rik wakes up after a wild party and finds a girl beside him in bed. The thought of him actually having maybe engaged in sex is disgusting enough, but then he fumbles out of bed and stumbles to his feet, revealing the nastiest, stankiest, poo-stained, farted-up, semen-soiled, piss-crusty pair of worn out underpants in the known fucking universe. Maggots would barf upon encountering this wasteland of masturbatory despair. It's shocking that Helen the Completely Mad Murderess didn't die gagging on the fumes, dutch-ovened as she must have been for even a brief second. The thought of the scabby balls, flaky skin and lice-infested pubes which surely must lurk beneath that rotting shroud is stomach churning horror in its purest form.

#5 - I think I'm going to be violently and copiously sick.
Episode 10 - Time

Vyvyan - suffering from a violent hangover on the same morning that Rik's leprous underpants are revealed for the first time in all of their brown smudged glory - echoes our sentiments when, already nauseated and forced to listen to Rik's total bullshit story about the sex he didn't have the night before, suddenly leans forward in his chair and vomits all over Rik, spraying out a chunky, yellowish mess that looks downright appetizing compared to Rik's Y-fronts. Thank you, Vyv.

#6 - What's Domestos?
Episode 11 - Sick

Neil makes the appalling suggestion that Mike fetch something with which to clean the toilet while he's at the chemists. Mike, Rik and Vyvyan are outraged. After all, all that Blue Loo scene is for squares. When Cliff Richard wrote "Wired for Sound" no way was he sitting on a clean lavatory! Intent upon keeping the character that the toilet has thus far possessed, Mike refuses to entertain the notion of purchasing a cleansing agent. However, upon witnessing the bowel splattered bowl cannibalizing the brush, he has second thoughts.

#7 - Being rude first thing in the morning is a terribly trendy thing to do!
Episode 4 - Bomb

Rik has got a lecture today and he thinks his appearance is going to be rather important. Which is why he's popping a very real looking zit right into the camera at the start of the episode. I swear to god that had to have been a real zit that cropped up on Rik's face just prior to filming, because it looks angry and appears to be truly bleeding as he forcibly pokes at it. Knowing the Late Great Mayall, he probably woke up, spotted a spot and thought: "I have got to work this into the show somehow! That'll make the kids love me!"


#8 - Do Not Lean Out of the Window.
Episode 7 - Bambi

Vyvyan learns a very important lesson about travel safety when he foolishly ignores a sign posted on the train to Manchester imploring him not to lean out of the window. Which he promptly does. Just seconds later, his spotty, mohawked head is clipped from his spinal column at 200mph, and Vyv retracts a blood-spurting stump from the window with a horrible disembodied scream. Furious at himself for being such a dumbass, he commences to kicking his own severed head down the railroad track like a lopsided soccer ball in true British punk fashion.


#9 - Next time, throw that paper out as well!
Episode 2 - Oil

It's their first night in their new flat and the boys are relaxing after setting Neil's bedroom on fire. Vyvyan is downstairs playing murder in the dark, Rik is attempting to go to bed but it's been turned into a roller disco, Mike is practicing his golf game and Neil is taking a colossal dump in the toilet, which Vyvyan has considerately thrown out of the window. Mike's golf ball plunks right on target, between Neil's legs and into the mess below. When Neil throws it back, Rik conveniently catches the feces slimed, sopping wet object in both hands, and promptly begins screaming in disgust.  It can't be all that bad though, considering Neil is a vegetarian.


#10 -It's the toaster for you!
Episode 4 - Bomb

Vyvyan's pet hamster SPG (short for Special Patrol Group, which is a really stupid name for a hamster) attempts to electrocute Vyv by plugging in the TV set that Vyv has just digested. In violent retaliation, Vyv stomps his hamster to death beneath his Doc Marten boots and then proceeds to stuff SPG's pancaked corpse into the toaster, shouting "BURN!" as the rodent audibly sizzles. It's alright though: SPG was basically the "Kenny" of The Young Ones. Vyvyan killed him several times during the series, and the little fucker always came back.

Put a Period on That

I got my period a few days ago. At work. In the middle of a rush. And I forgot to slip a tampon in my purse. And nobody else had one to spare. So I stood at the bench, counting pills into bottles and answering the phone and squeezed my thighs together and hoped for the best. Thank god I always wear navy blue/black scrub pants.

Right now, I can literally hear a million male faces squinching up in horror and retracting like a cats anus. Look, deal with it assholes. I've had to deal with it since I was 10 years old and, quite frankly, if any man within reach dares make the "never trust anything that bleeds for a week and still lives" joke, I will snap their nuts off like bottlecaps and ram them up his own asshole. It's about goddamned time you guys knew how much we women suffer once a month: it's not just blood flowing out of our ladyholes smooth as Karo syrup and food coloring. It's chunky. It's blobby. It stinks. Every time we sneeze we feel a huge, thick squirt into our panties, as if our vaginas had suddenly become giant hot glue guns. Inserting tampons is like trying to shove a size ten matchstick into a size four drinking straw, and pulling them out again is akin to pulling your own small intestine out of your navel. I live in fear that someday I'll tug that swollen cotton finger out of my cooch and all of my insides will come shooting out right behind it like thick, blood-foamy champagne released from a bottle when the cork is pulled too suddenly.

Listen, if you can watch neo-grindhouse torture porn, Italian gutmucnhing/Japanese Pinky Violence horror movies, you can hear about a girls period in vivid detail. Man the fuck up, pussies. At least I spared you the details of the organ crushing cramps and the torrential diarrhea.


Anyway, onto the list of films which accurately depict the menstrual cycle in all of its squishy, flowy, stinky nastiness.

#1 - Carrie

Duh. Like I wasn't going to pick this one? This is THE menstrual horror film. The period on the period at the end of the sentence. It is every teenage girls worst nightmare: getting your period at school and everyone knows because you bleed right through your designer jeans and left a blood puddle on the seat in Calculus. And knowing your luck, you left your hoodie at home and have nothing to tie around your waist with which to hide the miniature murder scene that is spreading on your ass. This film reinforced the belief that getting your period was shameful, and to allow anyone to find out about it was unforgivable. Honestly though, the book did a far better job of delving into the connection between Carrie's first period and her latent telekinetic powers. In the movie, it happens, it's over and is never mentioned again. The book starts with a period, climaxes with the mother (pun intended) of all periods, and ends with a period (Sue Snell, who is either having a miscarriage or has simply miscalculated her menstrual cycle. Either way, she ends up the same as Carrie: covered with blood in public, screaming in horror and scarred for life.)


#2 - Ginger Snaps 

Brigitte: Are you *sure* it's just cramps?
Ginger: Just so you know... the words "just" and "cramps," they don't go together.

No, they fucking don't.

Ginger's reaction to her first unwanted and unasked for menstrual period was much the same as mine: disgust and mourning. Because unlike Ginger, I was not ready to be a woman and had no desire to grow up just yet. I kept it a secret from my schoolmates for as long as I possibly could, because I knew once the word was out, I'd be expected to start wearing a bra and shaving my legs and buying perfume and tacking up those fold-out posters of the cast of The Outsiders that came in Tiger Beat magazine up over my bed and daydreaming about being Mrs. Ponyboy. Yuck. Actually now that I think about it, my actual reaction to my first period was less like Ginger's and more like Sarah Conner's: "I didn't ask for this honor and I DON'T WANT IT! ANY OF IT!"

#3 - The Company Of Wolves

Nobody really considers this a menstrual horror film until I point out this line of dialogue in the early scenes:

Mother: Where is she? Did she miss tea again?

Sister Alice: She said she had tummy-ache so she's sulking in her room.

They're talking about Mother's youngest daughter and Alice's little sister Rosaleen, who has indeed shut herself in her attic room and locked the door, restlessly sleeping off what is probably her first bout of cramps. Like me, Rosaleen isn't ready to leave childhood behind just yet either. But the wolves give her no choice. She's one of the pack now whether she likes it or not, and they drag her - kicking and screaming amid her broken dolls and worn out teddy bears - into hairy, savage, blood soaked adulthood.

#4 - Janghwa, Hongryeon

Better known as A Tale of Two Sisters, the original title of this Korean tale translates into Rose Flower, Red Lotus. How better to personify a young, menstruating virgin than with a red flower? Unspoiled and pure, but still somehow sexually aware. Young Su-Mi's blossoming is poisoned by the death of her mother and the cruelty of her stepmother, and the sudden appearance of a menstruating ghost and her sisters sheet-staining period showing up in the middle of the night seem to be the catalyst for all of the violence which soon follows. A single ribbon of crimson running thin and delicate down an ivory inner thigh quickly becomes a metaphor for the butchery of innocence and the deliberate murder of sanity, like a rose on the edge of its first blooming throwing its petals open to reveal a core of corruption and rot.

#5 - Valerie & Her Week of Wonders

So here we have a daisy instead of a rose, virgin white purity stained by the first drops of blood falling from Valerie's lacy skirts as she walks through the garden one night. Upon awakening on her first full day as a woman, Valerie finds that her impending womanhood has attracted the means: a cadaverous vampire who might also be her father, a lecherous priest, an amorous boy who may also be her brother and an endless parade of buxom, wiggly girls who love nothing better than squirming on tree branches and kissing each other. Valerie is as confused as we are, but soon finds her place in the weird world of adults, where people's emotions seem as backwards as Alice's Looking Glass world, and seemingly upstanding denizens commit unspeakable horrors in the name of love/lust.

We don't bleed once a month and live.
We bleed, and cramp, and shit, and writhe, and suffer blinding headaches and violent mood swings, and somehow we still manage to go out into the world the whole entire time, walking around with cotton stuffed up our lady holes, in pain, working, going to school, running the usual errands, and most of you never know when it's That Time Of The Month because we are experts at hiding it, and dealing with it, and sucking it up and going about our business, for a whole week.

If you ask me, that's pretty bad ass.
I'd like to see a guy do it for a single day.

The True Story of A Nightmare on Elm Street

I decided to repost this, partly in honor of Wes Craven's recent passing, but mostly because I wanted to remove the old link. Now maybe the Almighty Admins can stop hitting my page.

Bangungot
~The Facts Behind A Nightmare On Elm Street~
by Annie Riordan

“Wes Craven had come across a few articles about some teenagers who were absolutely terrified – terrified! – to go to sleep.”
~Adam Rockoff

“In the middle of the night they heard these horrendous screams and crashings and they ran in and he’s thrashing on the bed. They ran to him and by the time they got to him he was dead. They did an autopsy on him and there was nothing physically wrong with him. And I just thought: “My God.”
~Wes Craven

September 28, 2009, Monday, 4:37 AM: I sit down at my iMac, coffee in hand, postponing the looming workweek ahead as long as possible by screwing around online for a few precious minutes. I’m in luck. MySpace has posted a trailer for the remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street, due out in April of 2010, a long seven months from now. Normally, I’m not so eager about impending remakes of the cherished horror movies I grew up with, but this is different. Jackie Earle Haley is in it, and the weird little crush I have on him is outdone only by my 20-year-old crush on Freddy Krueger. Look, I never said I wasn’t deeply disturbed.
30 minutes later, as I begrudgingly stand beneath the shower, readying for the day job, which starts in an hour, the elusive muse of writing finally arrives and smacks me upside the head. The writer’s block I’ve been semi-panicking over for about a week now (i.e. what in the HELL am I going to write about for October’s Cinematic Haunts column that hasn’t already been written about a kazillion times already?) disappears, replaced by inspiration.
With only fifteen minutes left before I have to haul my ass to work, I sit back down in front of the computer. Without any solid information to go on, I simply type “true story nightmare elm street” into the Google search box and take my chances.

The results were disappointing, to say the least:
www.youaregayandscaredoffreddy.com/net
It (is) impossible that “Nightmare on Elm St” is based on true events. If someone told you that, they were either teasing you, they were talking about a different movie or if they really believe it, well… what I can I say, they must be gullible, too.
True story? I highly doubt it.
Yeah, well guess what, Virginia? There really is a Santa Claws. (Sorry, couldn’t resist the pun)

Alas, there is no wisecracking, burn-scarred pervert lurking around our subconscious in a tacky ass Christmas sweater and homemade razor glove. But venture into Asia and you’ll find a rich culture brimming with folklore about nocturnal demons and lethal nightmares responsible for over 230 documented deaths of young men.

In the early 1980s, newspapers in Chicago and Los Angeles ran a few brief, forgettable articles about a strange epidemic that had seized the Southeast Asian population. Perfectly sane and healthy young men were complaining about horrific nightmares and refusing to sleep for days on end. Convinced that their dreams were being invaded by a demon, the frightened men became addicted to black coffee and other stimulants in a desperate effort to stay awake. Eventually, their exhausted bodies would inevitably surrender to sleep and relieved family members would carry the young men to bed…only to be summoned hours later by blood curdling screams coming from the victim’s bedroom. The young men would be found thrashing on their beds in the grip of a powerful nightmare and, before they could be awakened, they would suddenly and violently expire. Autopsies turned up nothing. Fear within the Southeast Asian neighborhoods grew and whispers of bangungot began to circulate. It was these articles which caught the attention of a young Wes Craven, inspiring him to write the original Elm Street script and adding in a couple of childhood traumas: a schoolyard bully named Krueger who had terrorized him, and a badly dressed bum who had given him quite a scare one night.

“In the Philippines, it’s called bangungot, in Japan pokkuri, in Thailand, something else.” says Dr. Robert Kirschner. “But it all roughly translates as the same thing: nightmare death.”
Bangungot seems to be a bastard cousin of Old Hag Syndrome, or “sleep paralysis” as it is more commonly known. I once had a friend who suffered from severe sleep paralysis and he related to me the following tale: upon waking from a deep sleep late one night, he found himself unable to move. His arms and legs were frozen and useless. Taking a breath was impossible. When he opened his eyes, he saw a small, pale creature sitting on his chest. As he watched, the creature took out a dagger and began cutting him open, as if performing an autopsy on his still living body. My friend said he could feel the knife, could feel the pain of being cut open, could feel the weight of the “demon” sitting on his chest. Only when he screamed was he able to move at last.

If this scene has a familiar ring to it, it may be due to the fact that the famed Gothic artist Fuseli perfectly captured the experience in his 1781 oil painting appropriately entitled “The Nightmare.” The painting depicts an incubi sitting upon the chest of a sleeping woman while a demonic horse (a night mare, perhaps?) looks on. Interestingly, despite the subject of the painting, sleep paralysis rarely afflicts women. Reports of nocturnal attacks by incubi were common in mediaeval Europe and were always of a sexual nature, whereas the succubi (the female incubus) were more often described by their male victims as a suffocating presence pressing down on their chests.

Sometimes it’s a demon, sometimes it’s an old woman pushing on your chest with her cold, gnarled hands. Some theorize that the alien abduction phenomena of the 80s and 90s could be partly blamed on sleep paralysis as well, so I guess you can throw an alien shoving an anal probe up your ass into the mix as well. Whatever the cast of characters, it’s a very real and very frightening experience for the afflicted. But for those of Asian descent, it could also be a death sentence.

Nearly every country and culture in the world recognizes this affliction. The people of Turkey call it “the dark presser.” In Africa, it is known as the “devil riding on your back.” The Hmong know it as “the crushing demon.” But Turkish, African and American men very rarely die from this sleep disorder. The Hmong, however – along with the Vietnamese, Laotion, Chinese, Japanese, Cambodian, etc – do. The Center for Disease Control christened the disorder Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome. It is also known as Asian Death Syndrome and Brugada Syndrome.

The Japanese have taken a different approach to pokkuri, or “peaceful death” usually during sleep. Somewhere near Osaka there is a temple dedicated to pokkuri, where the elderly go to pray for a sudden death. Long, lingering deaths are not dignified and bring unwanted burdens onto family members. Dying suddenly in one’s sleep is seen as a blessing, and thousands of people flock to the temple every year, hoping to receive the gift of a quick and sudden death without a long illness.

No one knows for sure why exactly this disorder only seems to be fatal to the male Asian population. Some theorize it is due to a high carbohydrate intake shortly before sleep. Others attribute it to survivor guilt as many of the afflicted were refugees fleeing Pol Pot’s bloody Khmer Rouge regime in the late 1970s. Recent reports state that the hearts of the victims were slightly enlarged and showed defects in their conduction systems which caused their hearts to literally “short out.” It has been also been speculated that the disease is a hereditary one and may be linked to a sudden and unexplained inflammation of the pancreas, although neither of these explanations has been positively proven as of yet. To this day, no one knows for sure whether the physical defects caused the nightmare death, or if the nightmare death caused the physical defects. The exact causes of sleep paralysis and the Asian Death Syndrome remain as much a mystery to this day as dreams and nightmares themselves. Despite all of our advances in the medical field, the world of dreams and night terrors continue to defy scientific explanation. Perhaps, maybe – just maybe, mind you – the principle of Occam’s Razor applies. Maybe the simplest explanation is the correct one, and the creatures that haunt our dreams are real.

Pretty terrifying thought, isn’t it?
Marge Thompson: What the hell are dreams, anyway?
Dr. King: Mysteries, incredible body hocus-pocus.
Truth is, we still don’t know what they are
or where they come from.

Wesley Earl "Wes" Craven (August 2, 1939 – August 30, 2015)

I actually hated the movie The Serpent and the Rainbow. 97% of my hatred for it was due to the fact that I find Bill Pullman about as riveting as a lint trap. The other 3% has a lot to do with the fact that I find the practice of Vodou and all of its variations - Obeah, Santeria, Palo Mayombe, etc. - to be incredibly beautiful and demanding of awe and respect. I'm not a religious person at all, but frankly Vodou scares the shit out of me. Doesn't stop me from pinning photos of Baron Samedi and Marie Leveau onto my Pinterest boards, but I'm not about to start summoning loas or purchasing grave dirt like a stupid white person. You don't mess with that shit. You just don't.

That said, I found TS&TR to be incredibly silly and not scary at all. I didn't give a shit about Bill Pullman. Stupid scrawny ass honky goes wandering into Haiti not respecting shit and gets what he deserves, idiot.

I read the book of the same title and found it as boring as burned toast, so I understand the need to create drama, shock and horror where there wasn't any to begin with. I understand too that American audiences have preconceived notions about what Vodou really is. They expect snakes and spiders, bonfires and chanting and lascivious black women in flowing white dresses, gyrating madly to bongo drums. Fine, whatever.

I've actually never seen a horror film about "voodoo" that I really liked. The Believers, Angel Heart, fucking Skeleton Key...I mean, all of them have nice ambiance and stuff but somehow, they all just fall short of the mark. They overdo it on the freaky shit and underplay the sincerity of the practice itself.

But I'm veering way off topic here. I'm supposed to be paying tribute to the late great Wes Craven, who unexpectedly died yesterday at the age of 76 from brain cancer. I didn't even know he was sick, let alone suffering from such a vicious form of the ultimate malady. Shit, I didn't even know he was 76. He has - had - a serious case of baby face.

I never met Craven, but he was part of the Horror Triumvirate that I grew up with throughout the 70s and 80s. Him, John Carpenter and George Romero were my childhood idols. Haven't met Carpenter either. Met Romero once! I was drunk as hell but he was sweet as pie. Wait, sorry - veering off topic again.

That's okay though because there's really no point to this post. It's not about anything, I just wanted to talk about Wes Craven's films; the ones I hated, the ones I loved and even the ones I thought were just "meh." I really don't think he'd mind. Unlike a lot of people in the film business, Craven didn't strike me as a pretentious asshole. After all, this was the guy who once said: "I thought there would never be a sequel (to A Nightmare On Elm Street). Boy was I stupid."

So, excluding the already discussed Serpent and the Rainbow, here is a list of all of the Wes Craven films I have seen and my unasked for opinion on each one. If it ain't listed, I didn't watch it, so shut up.

The Last House on the Left 

Holy fucking shit. I rented this movie when I was 18, knowing nothing about it except that it had been directed by the guy who had done A Nightmare On Elm Street. This is a deeply sick and upsetting movie. It cannot be enjoyed. I can't conceive of anyone actually owning this and watching it numerous times. "Unpleasant" is an understatement. That said, I actually did watch this one twice - once when I rented it at the age of eighteen, and again when I had to review it and felt that too much time had passed to base my review on memory. Both times, I took a long hot shower afterwards. Much like I Spit On Your Grave, this is effective as an anti-violence vehicle by being as unglamorously violent as possible. Even the killers look sickened.

The Hills Have Eyes 

snerk, I accidentally misspelled that as The Hills Have Eeyes and it looked like The Hills Have Eeyores. Now that would be frightening. Anyway,I liked the premise of this one - nuclear family VS. nuked family. Looks really badly dated now and moves a bit slow in places - how long can we sit and watch Papa Jupiter and Michael Berryman jog through the desert? - but still, a strong statement about violence and the illusion of civilization.

The Hills Have Eyes 2

This one gets no accompanying picture.
Because it sucked the fart out of a dead mutants asshole.

Deadly Blessing

Craven's mom was a religious nutzoid, hence his abhorrence for strict, puritanical rule.Some of the best things in the world have come from strict religious upbringings, i.e. Maynard James Keenan and...um...Maynard James Keenan. I'll give this one props for the Spider Swallow scene, featuring a very young Sharon Stone. Also for the snake in the bathtub scene, which would be repeated in A Nightmare On Elm Street with razor fingers instead of a garden variety rattler (or whatever the fuck species it was). Interesting premise, although I will never be able to fully scrub the afterimage of a sweaty Ernest Borgnine frenziedly whipping a young man. Yick.

A Nightmare On Elm Street

It looks dated now and some of the acting has gone from wooden to stone cold petrified, but God I loved this movie. Still do. Such an amazing concept, such an original boogeyman. I had a full color poster of Freddy Krueger on my bedroom wall for years. I was such a diehard, dedicated fan that years later I did some digging that no one else had yet done and wrote THIS article, which went viral (my fifteen minutes of fame, yeehaw) and then promptly got plagiarized. But dammit, I was there first.

Deadly Friend

He liked the word "deadly" didn't he?
Anyway, this one was cute. I was 16 when this came out and remember renting it to watch at a slumber party with a bunch of girlfriends. Honestly, I only remember bits and pieces of it, and couldn't be fucked to give it a re-watch before writing this, but I do remember the Basketball-in-the-Face being a great highlight. Best part of the movie, actually.

Shocker

Honestly, don't remember too much about this one, except being disturbed by the fact that Skinner from The X-Files was cussing and not wearing glasses. Also, omg the hair metal! Megadeth's cover version of Alice Cooper's No More Mr. Nice Guy (way too much Republicanism in there for me, considering Craven was a liberal), Dangerous fucking Toys and...does anyone even remember Saraya?




The People Under the Stairs

Didn't really care for this one. I liked the idea, I appreciated the casting of project dwelling, gangsta-livin', poverty stricken blacks as the heroes for a change, but the whole thing felt like a Tex Avery cartoon. Just a tad too over-the-top. Yeah, I get that it was supposed to be an urban fairy tale, but...just not my thing, I guess. I don't like the style. I didn't like it when Joe Dante did it for his "It's A Good Life" segment for the Twilight Zone movie either, even though I prefer that one to the diabetic treacle that was Speilberg's adaptation of "Kick The Can" (yeah, I got a can you can kick right here).

Wes Craven's New Nightmare

Meh.
So much promise, so little development of the storyline or arc of the mythos.
Oh well.
Even Freddy looks too streamlined and snazzy. I prefer him as a dirty, ragged old pervo bum.

Scream

<--- That's better.

I know there are genre fans who hated everything this film represented, which was a total mocking of the horror genre, but I enjoyed the hell out of it the first time I saw it. I was impressed by the brutal Psycho-esque butchering of what we presume is the main character 5 minutes into the film. I appreciated the fact that I couldn't figure out who had done it. I wasn't  the horror expert then (cough) that I am now, but I liked it. Fucking sue me.

"She's got a bony ass... and fat thighs... and ugly skin."

Cursed

I love werewolf movies.
This one was...okay. Glad I had a free pass for it. But it had a lot to live up to, being a female werewolf movie following so closely behind Ginger Snaps, a female werewolf/menstruation film the likes of which hadn't been seen since The Company of Wolves. However, even if it failed to impress me as utterly as either Ginger or Company, it wins an award for Best GIF Ever to Come Out of a Female Werewolf Movie.

Red Eye

I had a free pass to this one too, but I would gladly have paid full price. This one was so much fun, and not just because Cillian Murphy does such a good, cold, smug-faced creep. Strong resourceful female + face-paced unrelenting action + AWESOME chase scene + a deep hatred for retail customers = WINNER.


So, thank you Mr. Craven. I may not have liked everything you did, but I can at least appreciate the ripples you created in the horror pool. You changed the genre forever, at a time when change was needed.

"Horror films don't create fear. They release it."
~Wes Craven

Prophecy (1979)

Prophecy
Year released: 1979

Directed by John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, Black Sunday and, well, lets just forget about that remake of The Island of Dr. Moreau shall we?)

Starring: Mrs. Rocky, Some white-afro'd mod supercool mustachioed 70s dude with groovy pants suits, that guy who would later go on to play that other guy in John Carpenter's The Thing and gets his arms ripped off by an alien chest cavity, Armand Assante and his ramrod straight spinal cord, a grizzly bear turned inside out and lots of pine trees.

The 1970s were one long teaser trailer for me. I was born in 1970. That first decade of my life was incredibly formative. I learned, in the space of ten short years, that my father was a scumbag, my sister was mental and horror movies - much like growing breasts and kissing boys and staying up late on school nights - were just beyond my reach. It was a lot like the tiny little sips of beer that my Dad allowed me to take from a Dixie cup at dinnertime: not enough to get me drunk, but enough to let me know that this would be something to which I would return in time, immerse myself in and master. Great goals, huh? Thanks dad, I was determined to be a drunk by the age of 8. But I was more determined to be a horror movie expert long before my first sip of Budweiser.

By now I'm sure I've told you all the story of my first horror experience at the age of three when I saw a TV trailer for The Exorcist, about as many time as your mom has told you all about the days she used to walk to the bus stop, up hill, both ways, barefoot, in ten feet of snow.

The year after that, I saw the trailer for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and put it on my mental To-Watch list. Then came Carrie and The Omen. The Hills Have Eyes, Dawn of the Dead, Halloween. 1979's television trailers were the equivalent of a decadent dessert tray rolling slowly past me: Alien, Phantasm, The Brood, The Amityville Horror and, last but not least, Prophecy. I had no idea what the word Prophecy even meant. All I knew was that something BIG was crashing its way through the treetops, a thing so big that no flashlight beam could pin it down. I had to know what the Prophecy was. What did it look like? Did it have big ripping teeth and claws the size of Ginsu knives? Did it eat people?

Anyway, the 80s finally arrived and it was a pretty shit decade all things considered: Reaganomics, lots of cocaine, shit pop music and fluorescent green leg warmers. Bleagh. But finally I was old enough to start watching horror movies and I quickly ran down the list I'd made in my head. Except for one. I never did get around to watching Prophecy. Not sure why. It must have been available to rent at some point, but it just never happened. No matter. It is now the 21st century and ultimately, thank god for YouTube.

Okay, so finally, after 35 years of waiting, here we go.

Never go bobbing for french fries.

Hmm, pretty straightforward so far. White Man has ruined the earth and poisoned the water in the name of profit. Native Americans do not approve and are, of course, the scapegoats who are blamed whenever the White Men need someone to blame for their own fuck ups. Mr. 70s EPA agent sympathizes with the Native community and sets out to do whatever he can to prove that the local paper mill has contaminated the water supply with lethal amounts of mercury, which has also been causing the wildlife to mutate into icky, gooey, twisted former versions of themselves, i.e. giant blobby tadpoles, bigass duck-eating salmon and a couple of baby bears caught in a fish net who look like the horrible aborted offspring of a wax dummy and a cheese pizza. Their pathetic little grunty cries and hoarse baby tantrum shrieks are excruciating to listen to and throw newly pregnant Talia Shire into a panic. After all, she's been eating the local fare - what the hell will her baby come out looking like? The Lovecraft fan in me wonders if this agonizing scene was inspired by the freakish, waterlogged corpses of indescribable monsters washed up on the riverbanks of Vermont following a Biblical flood.

And suddenly, out of nowhere in a thus far dead serious eco-horror tale comes this:

HahahahahahahHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! What the fuck was that? Did footage from a Friday the 13th flick sneak its way into the editing room? This is fucking hilarious! The moral of this campfire story seems to be: never try to bunny hop your way out of danger. Also, never pack your sleeping bag with nitroglycerine, because a single, half-hearted swipe from a pissed off, irradiated bear will cause you to explode, leaving nothing behind but a shower of goose feathers.

So Dr. WhiteGod, a nauseated looking Talia, Armand Apseudo-Indian and a handful of disposable bear bait go fucking off into the wilderness with their squishy bear babies, hoping to get them to a news outlet and expose the Horrible Truth, but Momma BurnedBearRoast is following them every step of the way, kinda like that scene in Jurassic Park 2 where the T-Rexes come after Vince Vaughn in a desperate attempt to prevent him from doing True Detective Season 2. She even crosses a lake at one point in dogged (bearred?) pursuit, and the remaining cast helpfully stand stock still, waiting for her to catch up so they can scream their stupid heads off and have the nerve to look surprised. Quick! Lets us take shelter in a nearby cabin and wait for the bear to smash  its way in. And, oh hey look! We have WEAPONS! We could have been using these the whole time! I wonder why we waited so long? Let's use them now and kill the thing in a frenzy of outraged anger, thereby invalidating all of the prep work done so far to prove to the audience that not all White Men are bad and can learn how to live with nature and take responsibility for their mistakes. Nah, screw that - KILL THAT FUCKING BEAR!!! Grunt a lot while you do so and make it manly! Both fists, come on you pansy! Assert your alpha masculinity! Oh, and make sure you use Armand's arrow as your final weapon so as to insinuate that you have somehow been accepted as one of them and are the incarnation of the White Mustachioed Savior come to bring them into the 21st century via The Bible and Home Shopping Network.

So yeah - definitely not worth the 35 year wait.
Except for that fucking sleeping bag scene.
Still giggling.

"Hey! I'm walkin' here!"