Dread Carcosa

The Drive-In by Joe R Lansdale

2012-02-05T05:27:00.000-08:00

Joe R Lansdale’s “The Drive-In” (1988) is a much darker story than I expected. Indeed it’s a much darker story than it is regularly promoted as being, having much more in common with the likes of “Lord of the Flies” than the fun, b-movie-style romp it’s supposed to be. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, as being able to write that style of hopelessness and desolation is certainly a rare talent, but perhaps those who have promoted the book as something else would do well to read beyond the first chapter or so to see exactly how dire the “romp” is.

Sure the references to splatter movies of the past and the setting itself (arguably the world’s biggest drive-in) are “fun”, and of course Lansdale writes with that trademark humor of his and creates characters that are both funny and relatable, but when the actual plot rolls around (and by that I mean more than the self-references in the early going), things get very dark very fast – far darker than most “serious horror” would ever hope to be.

Typically in this sort of thing the monsters (or monster in this case) and ultra-violence are played for laughs, or written in such an over-the-top manner that the reader is somewhat desensitized to the whole thing, that it really does seem like something on the movie screen, this is not the case in “The Drive-In”. The violence is subtle in many cases and very real, the desperation of the characters and the hopelessness of the situation sap any “fun” that Lansdale creates in the early chapters – even the total insanity of his “monster” and some of the extreme situations that arise never seem “fun” or played for entertainment, they’re always very real, very grisly, and – in some cases – even very sad.

Handled by anyone else they might not be. No, I take that back, handled by any writer of the current era, raised on self-references and horror comedy they would not be, handled by someone who knows actual horror and can make you “feel” it they definitely are and Lansdale, as we all know, is one of the finest writers the weird genre has ever known.

The story itself is at once simplistic and off the wall. Hundreds of people descend on a drive-in theatre in Texas for the all-night horror show. During the first reel a comet of some sort passes overhead and traps everyone within the drive-in, creating a flesh eating wall of blackness around the property. That’s the weird angle. From there on in it’s a battle for survival as the crowd slowly loses its collective mind – then the “b-movie gods” show up and create a monster dredged from the deranged and desperate psyches of everyone at the show.

So yeah, written like that it doesn’t seem overly serious but in reality it is. If you look beyond the carnival trappings that Lansdale uses to draw readers in what he’s written isn’t exactly “horror” – at least not in the rattling chains or stalk and slash sense – but rather a story of survival and, deeper than that, a story about the frailty of humanity. Beyond that what he’s written is just plain crazy and no doubt one of the finest modern weird stories we have.

I wouldn’t recommend “The Drive-In” for those looking for something the style of “The Evil Dead” (which is played on loop throughout the entire story) as it just isn’t that light-hearted despite some of the trappings and certainly won’t leave you feeling the way a Raimi movie does. If you want real horror tinged with utter insanity written by a man who truly knows what he’s doing however, and don’t mind feeling a little less faith in the world towards the end of things, I couldn’t recommend this one any more highly.

- Aaron

The Ash Tree by M.R. James

2012-01-23T14:48:00.000-08:00

For the longest time I’ve avoided the works of M.R. James (well, not so much avoided as didn’t seek out) because they’re described predominantly as “ghost” stories and I, being a bit of a weirdo and monster fan, have little or no interest in “ghosts”. Or spectres. Or phantoms. Or anything of the like. I find them boring quite frankly and, well, they make sounds in the middle of the night a little weird…

Anyway, long story made short, I decided to give James’ “The Ash Tree” (1904) a try for, well, no real reason. I wasn’t feeling especially “ghosty” or anything, I just flipped to the story and gave it a shot. And it was good. Really good. The kind of good where a fan of weird fiction says “wow, this is why Lovecraft cited this guy as an influence” and “wow, I’ve got another author I need to study and seek out works by”. That kind of good.

It also wasn’t a ghost story. At all. Makes me wonder how many of his other tales have been lumped under that banner while having no rattling chains, spectral voices, or old dark houses.

Ok, “The Ash Tree” has an old dark house…but what short from this era doesn’t?

Anyway, the story goes something like this. There is a cursed room in and old country home that has taken the lives of a number of members of an old family. One night, feeling boastful and not entirely believing in spooks and the like, the latest in the line takes the room and nothing happens. He hears some scrapings on the window by moonlight but chalks that up to the old ash tree outside. The next night he returns, determined to take the tree down the next day, and never wakes up.

Ok, so that does sound a little like a “ghost” story. Cursed room, creepy sounds by night, man dies without any obvious intrusion, but I swear it isn’t – what kills him is much, much cooler.

Spoilers below…

It turns out the tree is harbouring the body of a witch lynched in the tree years earlier and the spiders that live in the tree have become huge and man-eating via her evil. They swarm in through the night and kill the man in his sleep, heedless (perhaps) of lineage or any other supernatural leaning – they simply wish to feed (or at least that’s how I read it) which makes the “haunting” angle of the piece null and the story much more interesting.

Now, I can’t suggest that the rest of James’ stories are nearly so interesting or that they shuffle off the ghost trappings in the same way that “The Ash Tree” does, but I will say that the man was a fine writer and a very obvious influence on the weird writers of the 20s and 30s.

So once again I’ll be forced to hunt down further stories to see just how mislead I’ve been by the labelling of an author’s work. I’m not saying this is a bad thing as I now have yet another body of work to enjoy, but things are only bound to get weirder from here…and maybe a little spookier…

Well written, well executed, and with a great twist that I honestly didn’t see coming. Highly recommended for any fan of classic weird fiction.

- Aaron

A return to form...

2012-01-23T14:35:00.000-08:00

So...it occurs to me that my sometimes beloved Dread Carcosa has lost some focus over the last few months...this is something that pains me somewhat and something I feel should be made right as quickly as possible.

It seems that, because of a lack of time (admittedly a poor excuse at best) and a shift in focus somewhat my literature blog has become home to much more filmed material than written - this is something I had hoped to not do as, obviously, there are more than enough blogs, websites, and message boards covering horror films, and precious few focused solely on weird fiction (particularly of the era I like to cover).

So...no more.

I have gone back over the past few months and removed some of the film posts (mostly just those that I reposted from the website I used to operate) and the dearth of them will end now and I will return to the original mission of this humble blog (for better or worse) - to bring to light some of the hidden literary gems of the pulp world.

To those I've lost in the shuffle, I apologize. The ship has been righted, the massive tentacle of modernity hewed off from the mast, and things are back to normal...well, so close to normal as we get around here.

- Aaron

The Women of Dread Carcosa: Elvira Edition

2012-01-19T17:16:00.000-08:00

And now, to wash some of the bad taste left by the below garbage in the mouths of self-respecting horror fans the world across, the "Hostess with the Mostest" finally joins the ranks of The Women of Dread Carcosa.

For more reasons than I'd care to go into, I can't imagine anyone who deserves it more...

- Aaron

Creature from the Black Lagoon by Jim Shepard

2012-01-19T17:13:00.000-08:00

Jim Shepard deserves a slap in the mouth and a kick in the ass – probably at the same time. Whether he thought it was cute or clever or what to do…this to one of the most iconic monsters of all time I can’t figure out, but whoever it was that decided to publish this thing, and whoever it is that has decided since to republish this trash in horror anthologies, deserves much the same treatment.

Unlike the other Universal monster the Creature is cool for two reasons – his looks and the fact that he is utterly inhuman. He has no “real” emotions (other than the Kay thing), he has no personality, and he sure as hell isn’t angsty – he’s a force of nature and nothing more. For some reason Shepard decided to do away with that and make the creature a whiny, emo-style caricature trapped in the primordial slime.

The “story” tells much of the original movie from the monster’s point of view with some “humour” the author gained by watching the movie and pointing out some of the short-comings of the suit and acting. Beyond that the whole thing is the monster’s personality “shining” through as he reminisces about his past and his own shortcomings.

Nothing works here. Even if I wasn’t a huge Creature fan this story would suck, but because I am its all the worse. I wouldn’t recommend this trash to anyone. It’s pointless, disrespectful, boring, ridiculous, and not worth the 20 minutes it takes to read. Skip it and watch the movie – that’s where the real talent was. And the heart. Not in this garbage.

- Aaron

Blind Dead Art

2012-01-10T14:16:00.000-08:00

Foreign poster art for some of the Blind Dead films...just that kind of day.

- Aaron

Random Imagery Vol. 9

2012-01-08T15:25:00.000-08:00

Movie posters and Playboy Bunnies. Pretty good sign of a pretty good Sunday.

- Aaron

The Rats by James Herbert

2012-01-06T06:10:00.000-08:00

Even if it was one of the originals – at least so far as horror novels are concerned – it’s hard not to consider James Herbert’s 1974 classic “The Rats” derivative – or at least very, very similar to – the countless other “animals on a rampage” films and books that have come since.

As I stated in the post below, so far as The Rats and Hutson’s “Slugs” are concerned, you could switch the first half of either book and no one would know the difference. Yes that’s a flaw in Hutson’s story (as it came much later and very obviously borrows a great deal from The Rats), but when the same could be said for at least 90% of these things (either in film or literature), well, I guess you know where I’m going.

That’s not to say that Herbert’s book isn’t good – even great – because it is and, as something of a connoisseur of this sort of thing (from Girdler straight on to today cinematically and in every stripe so far as b-literature go), I will state that Herbert’s treatment is one of the best ever, his finale is head and shoulders above most of the rest of this genre, and his style is very influential on a great deal of the 70s and 80s pulp horror writers (almost, I would say, to the degree that Laymon’s is on today’s “hardcore” horror writers). Long story short, familiar as it may be, The Rats is still a great story and obviously a very important part of the history of this sort of thing. The story, well, we’ve been there before…or since, as the case may be.

Black rats become larger than normal, more cunning, and develop a taste for human flesh as they swarm from the ghettos of East London. Enter a group of locals who die after being introduced and a teacher who somehow becomes caught up in the eye of the storm as the human population struggles to undo this gnawing holocaust that seems immune to our every attempt at obliteration.

By the books, right? Again, having waged this war countless times over my 30 years on this earth, one doesn’t expect much more from this style of horror as it is very hard to really make any finer a point than that dealing with this subject matter. You really can’t expect true horror or anything overly sophisticated when the better part of your cast is either eaten by or a member of a pack of bloodthirsty vermin, so certain things must be forgiven.

Certain other things, well, not so much.

As good as Herbert’s book is there are a number of flaws that really stick out and (to a degree) lessen the book. First is his focus on the politics of London and obvious desire to “make a change” with his writing. I’m sure the slums in England are a problem – as they are everywhere else in the world – but killer creature horror is not the place to raise that soapbox as the reader simply will not take it seriously at best or be distracted and bored by it at worst. Herbert also spends a great deal of time introducing two characters (each receiving a full chapter) at the start of the novel before instantly killing them off which is somewhat distracting and, in the case of one of the characters, a little depressing. A page or so would easily have sufficed to set up these characters, though the obvious loss in page padding would have been more than noticeable to publishers and possibly potential buyers.

At any rate, flaws and all, The Rats is still one of the best and most important killer creature features ever. It is (for the most part) well written, decently plotted, and manages to avoid many of the pitfalls that have ruined such things over the last thirty years.

Obviously very highly recommended for the b-movie reader or any fan of decent, splatter horror.

- Aaron

The Women of Dread Carcosa: Cynthia Myers Edition

2012-01-03T16:21:00.000-08:00

After Fran Gerard you can't do much better than Miss December 1968. No real horror or weird connections with Cynthia, but her centerfold was in the third "Coffin Joe" movie "Awakening of the Beast". Yeah, we're that kind of obsessive around here...

Enjoy.

- Aaron

Around the corner with the rats and slugs...

2012-01-03T14:15:00.000-08:00

Just started reading James Herbert's "The Rats" last night and man it's amazing how similar Shaun Hutson's "Slugs" was. I mean, it was copied damn near down to the letter. Bums being introduced and eaten, the scene with the mother and baby, the setting, the style - everything.

I'm sure it plays out differently eventually, but goddamn is "Slugs" derivative of this one.

- Aaron

A few thoughts on Mega Piranha (2010)

2011-12-27T15:39:00.000-08:00

Tiffany comes up against more giant mutant monsters in “Mega Piranha”, the latest Sci-Fi original hoping to capitalize on something else (“Piranha 3D”) while absolutely sucking and making no sense. And I mean that this time. This one makes zero sense and seems to go out of its way to suck.

How’s that?

Well, while it wants to remind the viewer of “Piranha 3D”, it features none of the things that made that movie good – no blood, no boobs, no fun, and no frenzies. Instead we get giant fish launching themselves out of the water to crash into office buildings. Yeah…for real. I don’t get it either. I also don’t get why most of the movie focused on a Mack Bolan wannabe running around acting hard rather than Tiffany and her “stars” (see the review of “Mega Python vs Gatoroid” to get that reference), the killer fish themselves, or anything even remotely entertaining.

You don’t call a wannabe special forces movie “Mega Piranha” – that just doesn’t fly. We’re here for the fish and Tiffany’s cleavage – not the tough guy. Right?

Right.

So the story deals, as they always do, with some crap being flushed down a toilet or spilled into a river or something and making the local aquatic population grow to incredible sizes and become man-eaters. The tough guy is around for some covert military business and sees what’s going on while Tiffany is a marine biologist or something. Naturally they get together and try to stop the fish before they ruin everything…well, everything else. They wreck a lot of shit before anyone is able to get ahold of them.

Obviously this one is bad – and I mean that even by Sci-Fi standards. It tries to be something it shouldn’t while totally neglecting what makes this sort of movie watchable. Maybe it’s because they made it for TV, maybe it’s because they really just don’t have a clue how to make a decent movie – I really don’t know. I do know that no one – absolutely no one – needs to waste two hours of their life on Mega Piranha. I already did that for you.

You’re welcome.

- Aaron

Wouldn't be Christmas...

2011-12-24T05:45:00.001-08:00

..without a Brunette.

Second greatest Playmate of all time, Cynthia Myers. Happy Hanukkah.

- Aaron

Presents...

2011-12-23T18:06:00.001-08:00

Elvira, Valerie Leon, and...Charles Bronson? Yeah, must be Christmas. Happy Holidays everyone.

- Aaron

Sunday Stuff...

2011-12-18T14:32:00.000-08:00

So I got engaged over the weekend - Friday actually. That's my excuse for the no new posts. I did manage to watch "Burial Ground" though, which is gnarly as I remembered and still a pretty cool Euro-zombie movie (even if they don't follow most of the zombie rules). Man Peter Bark was creepy though...

In other news how about some Valerie Leon?

Also picked up the new Blue Underground 2-disc Suspiria DVD over the weekend (gift to myself, she got a ring). Kind of thinking about posting some of my old Last Site on the Left movie reviews here on Dread Carcosa. Might help fill some of the dead air between posts when I'm busy (which I usually am). Anyone object?

- Aaron

Peter Cushing and the Blind Dead

2011-12-15T17:39:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite actors and my favorite zombies (this side of Burial Ground) - if only.

Can't remember where I found this, if anyone knows shoot me an email or comment and I'll post a link.

- Aaron

A few thoughts on Critters 2 (1988)

2011-12-15T17:11:00.000-08:00

So all through the first “Critters” I was thinking about the sequel and the one scene I could vividly remember from the series, wishing I was watching that one and romanticizing how much better it was than the original movie. The obvious thing to do was sit through the sequel, right? Give it a go and see if it really is that much better.

You can probably guess how that turned out.

Despite the theme – man-eating space monsters descend on a small town – and that one scene that I could remember – the alien turning into a naked Playmate (Roxanne Kernohan), complete with staple in the stomach – this one is way, way more family friendly than the original movie and almost seems to be shooting for the kiddy crowd where the original, for whatever reason, just happened upon that vibe naturally. Not a good thing. At all.

I don’t know. Maybe memory has coloured this series differently that it actually was. Were these meant for children or am I just so jaded with gore and skin in “real” exploitation movies that the whole thing comes off as lightweight and a waste? The theme itself and that scene would suggest otherwise but everything else is straight out of “Petticoat Junction” (or something equally vapid) so, well, I’m really at a loss here.

The monsters are still kind of cool, that transformation scene is as good as I remember it, and there’s even a scene with a guy getting his junk eaten by the monsters but beyond that I can’t quite figure out why I – or anyone else – ever liked this series.

I’m gonna give it one, maybe two more movies to figure out. I’m not hoping things get any better – that ship has long sailed – I just want to know what in hell it was that made these movies popular, relevant, or even watchable to begin with.

- Aaron

PS. Mick Garris directed this one. Who knew, right? He was a "Master of Horror" and directed a lot of really cool movies (well...Sleepwalkers and a couple of King adaptations) - what the hell happened here?

PPS. Roxanne Kernohan will eventually be a "Woman of Dread Carcosa". You're welcome.

Monster/Love

2011-12-14T13:22:00.000-08:00

Promos for two of my favorite things - the Creature and "Vampire Lovers" (with a little Madeline Smith thrown in for good measure).

- Aaron

Witch Compass by Graham Masterton

2011-12-14T13:10:00.000-08:00

Graham Masterton takes a shot at the classic “monkey’s paw” theme with “Witch Compass” putting, of course, his trademark sleaziness and brutality to the forefront and effectively modernizing the tired theme while at the same time playing the “getting what you want isn’t always what you want” idea pretty straight.

Well, as straight as rape, necrophilia, murder, and death via lightening get.

Yeah, it’s Masterton, so even something as buy-the-books as the cursed paw theme get weird, gnarly, and entertaining (hey, I’m a big enough man to admit to being utterly tasteless).

The titular compass is a dried gourd that leads its owner to whatever they want only asking that they make a moral decision when they find it. The owner in this case is a recently deposed business owner who is run out of Africa by some shady officials and trying to start over with nothing back in the States. Of course the first thing he needs is money and, wouldn’t you know it, that girl he always loved just got a divorce and is feeling sorry for herself. Perfect timing, right?

Unfortunately as entertaining as “Witch Compass” is it is also short and somewhat hard to write about as there really isn’t all that much to say. If you’re a Masterton fan you know his style – which his as good as ever in this short story – and what kind of sleaze he gets into, beyond that the story pretty much tells it all.

It works but, as you can probably guess, doesn’t really break any new ground as it really does follow the same queues that theme always does, it just does them a little dirtier and updates the whole thing. I enjoyed it and most fans of modern horror will probably at least get a kick out of how sleazy Masterton manages to make the thing, but there really is nothing here to make the story overly memorable or to make it stand out alongside a lot of better current horror.

I’d recommend to Masterton fans (obviously) and those looking for something a little classic dragged kicking and screaming into the new-horror style, but beyond that “Witch Compass” really doesn’t offer enough to make it worth hunting down.

- Aaron

The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce

2011-12-11T05:09:00.000-08:00

No doubt an inspiration in theme for Lovecraft’s “The Colour out of Space” (1927), Ambrose Bierce’s classic “The Damned Thing” (1893) is obviously an inspiration for many other stories and their writers in style. No spooks, no monsters, no demons or devils - just the evil of science in one of the first horror stories to do away with the supernatural and bring evil to a more reality-based medium. It’s there, it still means to do us harm, and we still cannot understand – or even comprehend it – but now there’s a reason we can’t. It isn’t superior, we’re inferior, and that will be our doom.

Sounds an awful lot like a certain Mythos, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately Bierce is largely underappreciated in the modern age when compared to many of the writers who would ply their craft a few years later, but it is worth saying – and hardly arguable – that without stories like “The Damned Thing” we may not ever have had those authors, or if we did, their tales would likely have played much more along the Stoker tradition than the ground-breaking styles they did.

Pretty heavy praise for a story only 6 or 7 pages long I know, but every word of it is the truth and fans of weird fiction of the golden age really do owe Bierce and this story a huge debt.

Told in the very familiar post-horror style of Lovecraft and many of the other Weird Tales alumni, “The Damned Thing” tells the tale of a simple mountain man who is found dead. The only witness is a city man he had invited by for hunting and fishing who goes on to tell the strange story of how the man met his maker. It seems they were out hunting quail one morning when they saw a strange disturbance in a bush that frightened them both. The mountain man fired into the bush and was summarily dispatched by some invisible force that the witness could not describe but which shook him to his core.

Of course the inquirers into the man’s death do not believe such a thing despite his diary describing the horror and explaining exactly why it could not be seen nor heard.

Bierce’s use of the phenomenon of birds simultaneously lifting off despite no warning cry or apparent leader really lends a lot of credence to his story and suggests that whatever this thing is it very well could be real and the cause for such things, an idea that really resonates with the reader and makes you question exactly what you are seeing (or at least it will with me the next time I go traipsing through the woods). This subtle “proof” of the thing and Bierce’s reliance on science rather than the supernatural really make the story work and surely have helped it stand out as the cornerstone to weird fiction it rightly is.

Obviously any fan of the Mythos or weird fiction of that era has no excuse to have not read this story as it truly is the first word in that cannon. New readers and writers would do well to give Bierce’s classic a read as well, as the story itself proves the same thing that the man’s dairy did – you don’t have to see the horror to be scared by it.

- Aaron

Lucky or...

2011-12-10T11:14:00.000-08:00

...maybe not so much?

Picked "Slither" up today for $1.99. Not sure if I'm bragging or looking for sympathy...guess we'll know sooner or later.

- Aaron

A few thoughts on Critters (1986)

2011-12-10T11:10:00.000-08:00

Jabbering little balls of hair and teeth fall out of the sky and descend upon the idyllic American Midwest! Did Fox News not prepare us for this!?!

Yeah, I watched “Critters” last night and yeah, it’s about what I – and probably you – remember it being. A little funny, a little bloody, but sorely lacking in all the things that make bad movies worth watching. The high point of the whole thing? The kid having a “Mutant” (Forbidden World) poster on his wall.

Coolest kid ever? Just maybe…even if he did look like the little brother of the main chick in Jeff Lieberman’s “Squirm”. How’s that for an obscure reference?

I don’t know. I just watched the movie and kind of enjoyed it but really can’t think of a whole hell of a lot to say about it. The monsters were well done, the story was alright, the parts that were supposed to be funny kind of were, and the whole thing got me feeling kind of nostalgic but, well, then you kind of go cold.

I can’t really say I’ve ever been a huge fan of any of these “little monster” movies – this one included – so maybe that’s what rubs me the wrong way. Could also be the lack of nudity and gore. Or that some of the characters are incredibly annoying. Or that I thought the scene where the bounty hunter turns into the centerfold was in this one and not the sequel. Or…

Ok, enough of that. I’m wrapping this one up quicker than usual because there just isn’t anything to say.

These movies – or at least this first one, I’ll find out about the rest shortly – work better as a distant memory or a lumped version of the first and second films. Sure it’s kind of enjoyable but the feeling doesn’t last and I really don’t see how in hell they managed to get four movies out of this idea.

Am I fool enough to sit through them all to find out? You bet your ass I am…

- Aaron

Random Imagery Vol. 8

2011-12-04T14:24:00.000-08:00

Hot chicks, monsters, and movie posters - yeah, I have nothing else to talk about. Enjoy fiends...

- Aaron

A few thoughts on Mega Python vs Gatoroid (2011)

2011-12-04T05:26:00.001-08:00

I’m not even going to pretend that, going into things, I had any idea what a Gatoroid was. As a matter of fact, I’m not even going to pretend I know after seeing the movie, but I’m pretty sure it was either popular in the 80s, really bad CGI, or a little bit of both. The Mega Python, well, that one kind of explains itself.

So yeah, despite probably knowing better (ok, despite most definitely knowing better) I decided to give SyFy’s latest opus a go – the result was “Mega Python vs Gatoroid”, 2 hours of my life gone in a shot, and that dirty feeling a man only ends up with after a particularly bad movie (or a night with Debbie Gibson I’m guessing).

Alright, it wasn’t that bad. Well, it was, but a lot of it was bad in a good way. Obviously you don’t expect much going into something like this. You don’t expect good acting, decent special effects (they’re still way, way worse than bad even a decade on with these things and show no signs of improving), or a story that makes sense – you just expect a train wreck that you can’t stop watching. You get that.

Literally.

A giant snake opens its mouth and swallows a speeding train rolling down the tracks. For real. No kidding. One also bites a zeppelin (with the “The Asylum” label on the side for good measure) and flies away with the punctured balloon. Mickie Dolenz (that’s right, the best Monkee of the all) also gets eaten and Tiffany’s cleavage, well, it’s the only special effect that’s worth looking at in this piece. Everything else is ridiculous.

MPvG (that’s right, I’ve acronymed it) goes back and forth between being serious and being a somewhat self-aware comedy and that’s a little distracting (as is Tiffany’s huge cleavage, but not in the same way) as it never seems to be quite sure what it’s shooting for.

On the one hand we have the “serious” environmental story which deals with the snakes being let loose in the Everglades and killing off the gator population (hence Tiffany pumping the gators full of steroids to grow bigger and fight back). Then we have everything else. The song lyrics, the cat fight, the Monkee, the deputy, the ludicrous story, and the worst ending in one of these creature features I think I’ve ever seen – all of this crap just doesn’t jive with the “message” and sure as hell doesn’t jive with the “we’re making a horror movie” idea that they should have been shooting for.

So, long story short, MPvG doesn’t quite know what to do with itself, is a total mess at some points, but manages to be a lot more entertaining than most of these giant killer reptile movies ever do. I’d recommend it if you dig this sort of thing (and how can’t you?) or if you really, really want to see the depths of bad filmmaking.

- Aaron

PS. There is no huge battle between the monsters as one might suggest, as there are dozens of the things running around and (at times) seemingly working together. Yeah, kind of a tease, but the cat fight between these two more than makes up for it.

A few thoughts on Subspecies (1991)

2011-11-27T15:30:00.000-08:00

The people behind at Full Moon really need to get a handle on the whole “little monster” thing. It worked (kinda) in the Puppet Master series, and sure, a few of their offshoots and knockoffs have kind of worked as well, but not every GODDAMN MOVIE YOU MAKE NEEDS SOME KIND OF PINT-SIZED TERROR IN IT!

Case in point is "Subspecies", which is a vampire movie, and that’s fine. Bunch of folks hang around Transylvania (more like Pennsylvania), a vampire shows up, shit goes down – standard formula. Been working since Stoker. No one needs to mess with it.

First scene the evil vampire (I say that because there’s also a good one) is trapped, snaps a couple of his extra-long fingers off, and they turn into stupid looking little CGI blood demon things that are roaming around for the rest of the movie for absolutely no reason – they serve no purpose whatsoever. They go and do stuff for him because he’s too lazy to walk three feet and that’s it. They exist, and I can’t stress this enough, for no other reason than to exist and to fill that quota that Full Moon seems to think people want filled.

We don’t, or at least I sure as hell don’t, and I probably buy more of your crappy movies than anyone else, so just give it the hell up.

Alright, back to Subspecies.

Other than the tiny terrors it actually isn’t bad. The whole thing starts out with Angus Scrimm (the Tall Man from Phantasm) wearing a poofy wig and getting killed by the evil vampire (Radu – no to be confused with the spaghetti sauce). Jump forward a few hundred years (or maybe a weekend, it never really says) and we have some normal gals show up and start hanging around town. For some reason the evil vampire wants a piece of them (in more than one way if you know what I mean) so his brother shows up and they fight and things go a little haywire before everyone decides that, hey, maybe being a vampire isn’t so bad after all.

Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense, but when a movie starts out with the Tall Man in drag you don’t argue, you just watch the train wreck unfold.

If nothing else at least Full Moon regular Ted Nicolaou (who did the rest of this series and a couple of the puppet movies for the company) trots out plenty of blood and boobs to keep things interesting. The evil vampire is also kind of cool looking with his Nosferatu-style fingers and manages to be almost menacing a few times (something Full Moon has never achieved before so far as I remember).

So is it worth watching? That depends really. If you dig the Full Moon aesthetic – and yes, these movies all have a certain “look” to them – you’ll probably dig Subspecies as it does hit on most of the bad movie cylinders, but if you want something that makes sense and isn’t cheap and exploitative (the chained girl was so obviously a plant – come on guys, shirts don’t rip like that, but God bless you for thinking they do) you may want to look elsewhere.

Obviously, right?

I kind of dug it even with the little monsters (who I’m hoping skip the sequel) for She-Scrimm alone, but I’ll guess I’m the only one who’s willing to say that…even if we all feel the same way.

- Aaron

The Sucking Pit by Guy N Smith

2011-11-26T06:41:00.000-08:00

I’m not exactly sure what Guy N Smith was going for in “The Sucking Pit” but I do know two things – it is nowhere near as good as that title suggests and I could have (and have) done a hell of a lot better. How some of this stuff got published – other than on the demands of a horror-greedy public and a cool title – I can’t figure.

So what exactly is it about? That’s probably the first question when you read a title like that. The short answer is not a hell of a lot, the long answer is a bunch of gypsies, a prostitute, and some quick sand.

The story starts with an old man dying in the woods. His niece comes across his body, moves into his house, drinks a potion from an old “Romany” spell book and turns into a whore. Enter the local gypsy boogeyman who falls for her and the two launch into a scheme to get rid of the local landowner so they can move all their gypsy pals into the woods. The titular pit is a bottomless mud puddle in the middle of the woods where all the bodies get tossed. It also houses some kind of malevolent gypsy god that can bring people back from the dead, give superhuman strength, and do some other stuff that’s never really explored because Smith is more interested in writing erotica that doesn’t work.

Man this book has problems. No one said Smith was the world’s best writer but what the hell was he thinking here? The entire short length of this novel is nothing but mediocre sex writing peppered with a few weak death scenes and glaring jumps in plot and emotion. What’s that mean? Characters meet and within 24 hours – by their own admission – they’re in love and looking to get married. Yeah. That’s right.

Doesn’t seem that crazy here, but in the context of the story it stands out way too much and makes the rest of the story – which isn’t that good to begin with – seem all the worse and all the more hackneyed. Then the ending comes and the main antagonist dies off-screen while everything else is wrapped up a little too sweetly for my liking.

Bottom line is that Smith has (or had) no teeth in this one and seemed to be just pissing around while writing this. He never goes for anything story-wise, the sex and horror is an afterthought, and the whole thing just seems unfinished, unpolished, and unnecessary.

Everyone knows that Smith is a pulp writer and churned this stuff out at a pace that no one short of Robert E Howard could ever hope to compete with, but that’s no excuse for an otherwise workable story being this bad, this inconsistent, and this boring.

Skippable, though the new hardcover from Mansion House Books is absolutely beautiful and far better than this piece deserves.

- Aaron

So...

2011-11-23T11:21:00.000-08:00

About 70% of the way through Guy N Smith's "The Sucking Pit" (best title ever, the actual story not so much) and Dread Carcosa is looking a lot more like a movie blog than a book blog (not that there's anything wrong with that). Fear not though fiends, I have not given up the written word, I've just been watching more movies than reading and being busy with life and work and all that fun stuff.

Anyway, long story short there will be more movie posts the next week or so before I get back into reviewing old stories and paperbacks, so enjoy it while it lasts.

- Aaron

A few thoughts on Tarantulas: Deadly Cargo (1977)

2011-11-22T18:17:00.000-08:00

A man expects certain things from a DVD with a huge tarantula on the cover sporting a title like that. He expects death and destruction and someone swelling up with poison and maybe a shower scene and someone with a flamethrower kicking arachnid ass and Tom Atkins (oh wait, he was there…for five minutes) and a scene of a ton of the little buggers scurrying down the town main stream with all eight of their eyes gleaming with a “we own this place” light that only a truly evil bastard of a spider can manage.

A man expects those things. A man ends up getting a bunch of crap, the most annoying kid since that little punk in the original “The Blob”, and folks a lot more worried about the illegal trafficking of produce than killer spiders. In other words a man gets a swift one where the sun don’t shine and is expected to smile about it as more and more garbage is trotted out until the movie just ends and all the spiders are still sticking around, two or three people have died, and everyone starts smiling towards the end for no damn reason whatsoever.

I didn’t mind them playing fast and loose with the science behind spiders (what with them being attracted to oranges and going comatose at the sound of hornets or bees – not to mention with domestically sold tarantulas being “the most venomous in the world”), but for the love of God people at least make the damn thing entertaining. Kill a few (more) people, show the spiders doing something more than sitting around on top of orange bags, throw in some boobs and someone exploding from poison injection, and maybe, just maybe, have an ending for the damn movie that doesn’t involve people just walking the hell away.

Sure it’s a TV movie and that limits some of what you can do – or what you could do in the seventies – but there is zero excuse for the crap that is trotted out here, Atkins getting shoved off in the first reel, and the spiders never really doing anything. If it weren’t for the little kid dying, the girl hitting her head on the tree when she rolled down the hill (I’m guessing it was an accident because that looked painful as hell), and someone as sophisticated as myself being able to make fun of the whole thing for better than an hour there’d be nothing here – and if that stuff doesn’t float your boat, well, you’re up that special creek with empty hands.

Long story short (notice I didn’t go into the story on this one? Spiders show up in some illegal coffee bags and take over a town – the end) Tarantulas wants to be one of those “ripped-from-the-headlines”-style horror flicks that’ll make everyone worry about where their coffee/oranges are coming from but never manages to be scary or interesting and just, well, it just plain and simple bites.

And no, that wasn’t a pun…

Ok, it was – the move still sucks though. Not recommended at all for anyone anywhere at any time. What the hell were they thinking? What the hell was I thinking?

- Aaron

A few thoughts on Bloodrayne (2005)

2011-11-18T15:50:00.001-08:00

Man, seems like I can’t get away from Udo Kier getting his as a holy man lately. First “Mother of Tears” then “Bloodrayne” – it’s getting a little weird to be honest with you. Of course, you ask me it’s a little weird Udo playing a holy man anyway. Guy’s always given me the creeps and looks a lot more like one of the trench coat squad than a man of the cloth anyway.

Keep your jokes to yourselves.

I suppose though it’d be strange if he wasn’t in Bloodrayne though, as the movie features every single genre mainstay other than Ron Perlman and Jeffrey Combs. Udo, Michael Madsen, Meatloaf, Billy Zane, Michelle Rodriguez…I’m sure there were a few more I’m forgetting too, but damned if that isn’t enough. Throw in Uwe Boll as the director (who I like and I don’t care who knows it) and you’ve got the better part of a second-rate horror convention trotting out the fake fangs, leather corsets, and stage blood. Yeah, that’s a good thing.

Is the movie though?

Well, I kinda dug it, but anything with those actors, a bunch of gore, cleavage, and kung fu fight scenes and I’m more than happy. Throw in Kristanna Loken’s boobs and I’m feeling no pain. The rest of you, well, that might be a different story.

If you don’t like Boll and his anti-artistic filming style you won’t like this movie as it is straight up video game-style entertainment. The story is stupid and plods along just to keep the action, skin, and blood on screen and, despite the cast listed above, the acting sure isn’t much to write home about. Of course, everyone is doing the medieval carnie skit the whole time, so you really can’t blame them, right?

So the story goes a little something like this. There’s a vampire count (Ben Kingsley) who’s trying to take over the world, a society bent on stopping him, and a half-vampire chick trapped at a carnival who might be the key to it all. Long story short all their paths soon cross and the whole thing comes to a bloody head as secret family ties are exposed, vampires get cut to dog meat, humans get drained, and Michael Madsen looks tired and disinterested the whole while (hey, when does he not?).

Like I said before, all that is mostly just an excuse to slap some of the good stuff on screen and see what happens. Works for me, if you’re a little classier or looking for more than fights, boobs, and blood it might not for you.

Boll very obviously wasn’t going for the highbrow crowd here or trying to win any awards for storytelling, acting, or anything else. He just wanted to make a straight, entertaining move and once again he succeeded. Sure you could find better vampire movies, but Bloodrayne is a lot of pulpy fun and, if you don’t mind looking like the rest of us, it just might be worth checking out.

- Aaron

The Women of Dread Carcosa: Moran Atias Edition

2011-11-13T04:41:00.001-08:00

The Mother of Tears herself...man, she really was the most beautiful one...not much competition though...I mean, hell, a third of them were invisible.

- Aaron

A few thoughts on Mother of Tears (2007)

2011-11-13T04:33:00.000-08:00

So I’m not going to pretend I fully remember all the events of the first two “Three Mothers” movies. The last time I saw Suspiria was at least ten years ago and “Inferno” never did a hell of a lot for me so I don’t believe I ever saw it more than the once. That said when Argento finally completed the trilogy with 2007’s “Mother of Tears” I wanted to see it, but I didn’t “need” to see it – not in the kind of way I did back in the early 2000s when I was a huge Italian horror nut (and, to be fair, I always leaned more to Fulci, Bava Jr., Deodato, and Lenzi than Argento as I was always more of a blood and guts kinda guy than an artsy fartsy type).

Anyway, we’re not going to talk about my love – or once love – for Italian horror cinema in this article. We’re going to talk about Argento’s final kick at the witch can with “Mother of Tears”.

Like I said, I don’t remember the old movies that well, but I do remember they were nothing like this – whether that’s good or bad, well, I guess that’s up to the viewer. I kind of dug a lot of it (and really didn’t dig some of it) but I was never a fan of the over-the-top artsy stuff, so the things I liked – the unflinching gore, the regular camera work, the rather straight story, and the reliance on nudity and violence to carry the movie – might be a bit of a put off for those who view (or viewed) Argento as something more than a director.

And before anyone says otherwise there are people like that out there.

So I liked the gore, the blood, the girls, and the story – such as it was. Argento didn’t get too fancy and actually made the movie entertaining rather than confusing. This is working man’s Argento while the rest of the “Three Mothers” movies are anything but. Previous knowledge or not one can enjoy this movie, can’t really say that about “Inferno” (or even some of his unrelated genre stuff from the eighties).

The story is simple enough. The third mother – the Mother of Tears – is resurrected when an ancient urn is unearthed and returns to spread terror and death throughout the world. A young woman (Asian Argento) becomes wrapped up in her plans when her friend is killed and the two duke it out to the bitter, bloody, naked end. Pretty simple, right?

Right.

That’s what sold this movie for me. That and the blood. And the boobs. And Moran Atias. And Asia (who still has it all these years later). You also get a lot of that trademark Argento stuff that you just never see anywhere else (the eye obsession, the score – doesn’t compare to Suspria but what does? – the crazy camera work, and his showcasing of architecture and Euro-artwork).

What kind of blows is that Argento seemed to be going for a bit of a Harry Potter thing with the rampant magic, talking ghosts, and cheesy dialogue between Asia and her dead mother. There’s also the thing of the acting (which is especially bad for some reason – even from Asia) but you have to expect that on an import so we won’t go into that for now.

Alright, bottom line is this. “Mother of Tears” probably isn’t going to be a big fan favourite for those who still love the classic Argento of the seventies and eighties as it really doesn’t have that same flare and style that he became famous for. For those who lean more to the “normal” side though – which I do – “Mother” is a lot of fun, piles on the nudity and gore, and is totally unapologetic as it trots out depravity after depravity.

In other words one hell of a good time.

I’m not sure if Argento has lost it or found it but I’ll go on record now as saying I’d watch “Mother of Tears” before either of the previous films. Whether that says something about the movie or the viewer I’m not sure…

- Aaron

Because she's on my mind...

2011-11-10T08:33:00.000-08:00

...and for no other reason some Rosalba Neri.

You're welcome.

- Aaron

Imp of Satan by Hugh B Cave

2011-11-10T08:22:00.000-08:00

* “Imp of Satan” first appeared in the March 1935 issue of “Horror Stories” *

Unlike most of the stuff I talk about here on Dread Carcosa Hugh B Cave’s 1935 “classic” “Imp of Satan” is not a weird tale, but rather a weird menace story. What’s the difference you ask? Good question – and don’t worry if you didn’t know, only us really, really weird (and obsessive) types do.

Weird menace stories were kind of companion pieces to the weird tale, featuring the same lurid titles (obviously), the same pulp style, and the same entertainment-first policy, but where weird tales were always weird and almost always featured something that never did or couldn’t exist, weird menace stories played the story out the same way, but then threw in an explanation at the end to make the whole thing a little more real. These weren’t fantasy or horror, they were adventure with a villain who’d read a few too many Weird Tales. They also tended to rely a little more of the sleaze, sex, and violence than traditional weird tales (of that era), which also kind of separated them from the “norm”.

Or maybe it pushed them further into the norm… Either way they’re different from weird tales and the story we’re discussing today, Hugh B Cave’s “Imp of Satan” is one of them.

Cave was mostly known for the weird menace pulps and is – arguably – the Lovecraft/Howard/Smith of that brand of pulp fiction. He wrote with the same fire as Howard, was as weird and brilliant as Lovecraft, and could form a sentence and express an emotion as well as Smith. Does that put him in the same boat as those other writers? Arguably yes, but because weird menace is much less appreciated in this PC day and age than the standard weird tale Cave kind of treads water rather than enjoying the celebrity of those – and other – pulp writers of the era.

See, that long-winded explanation at the head of the article had some merit after all. Wish you hadn’t skipped it now, don’t you?

So “Imp of Satan” is a short and punchy story written in the exploitation vibe. A straight man and his somewhat “dark” wife live in an ancient mansion on the edge of a swamp with her dying father. The place is decrepit and filled with moving shadows that would suggest that all is not right – and sure enough it isn’t. Seems a curse has been put upon the young couple and a shadowy figure has been seen skulking about.

Given the title you can probably guess what it is, but you’d be wrong. The half-pint horror that’s stalking our hero is actually a man – a jilted former lover of his wife – who has been shrunk by being poisoned while adventuring in South America. As we all know girls don’t like short guys, so someone has hell to pay…

“Imp” is written very straight forward, everything is taken very seriously, and the sleaze – from bloody violence to the standard tied down and topless woman scene (which was no doubt featured on the cover of the magazine this one was first published in) – is trotted out and put on display whenever possible.

That’s not to say it’s pure exploitation, as Cave also manages some decent atmosphere and the story itself – if a little far fetched with the menace reach – is interested, original, and even a little spooky at times.

My only complaint is the way that the whole thing was tied into reality rather than playing at the weird angle but, again, that’s to be expected if you know what you’re reading, so it really isn’t all that off-putting and really doesn’t make the story any less interesting or effective.

So obviously I’d suggest “Imp of Satan” for fans of both weird tales and weird menace stories, as well as fans – or future fans – of Hugh B Cave. Recommended – as is most of his other stuff.

- Aaron

Sticks by Karl Edward Wagner

2011-11-06T10:39:00.001-08:00

Karl Edward Wagner’s “Sticks” (1974) is interesting, not because the story itself is particularly good – it’s actually a rather weak take on some very familiar Cthulhu Mythos themes – but because, for the most part, it deals with something of a background on the original “Weird Tales circle” (heavily fictionalized obviously) and casts some obvious clones of Lovecraft and Wright in a story that would have been much more interesting were the men themselves actually written as themselves.

Confused yet? Sorry.

Basically the story features some characters who are obvious takes on Lovecraft and Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright (as well as a third, main character based on no one in particular) and throws them into a plot straight out of the Mythos. That’s the interesting part. The rest is, well, “Sticks” itself.

Wagner’s actual story deals with an artist stumbling upon some strange stick structures in the woods one day. He follows the odd symbols to a crumbling old house, enters, descends to the cellar and is attacked by a skeletal thing that should be long dead but has an iron grip. He escapes and pushes that horror to the back of his mind as he is shipped off to fight the Nazis.

Upon returning he has changed, though the truth is he changed long before setting foot in Europe. Lapsing into something of a hermit lifestyle the artist is eventually contacted by an old friend from the pulps who commissions him to do some illustrations for a famous pulp author (a take on Lovecraft). Of course he incorporates the imagery of the sticks into his artwork and all hell breaks loose as a cult arises that is very much real and seeking to raise the Great Old Ones.

Wagner never explicitly mentions the Lovecraft Mythology – or any of the places, gods, or creatures associated with them – but rather hints at the idea and creates some of his own (which, like the story itself, come off as poor imitations of Lovecraft). Even with this though the story is very obviously part of the Mythos – even if it doesn’t want you to know it is.

So how exactly does one recommend a story such as this that, while well written and a little on the spooky side, does so much wrong? Wagner’s writing has never been my favourite (though I’ll admit to not having read a lot of his stuff) and his decision to beat around the Mythos bush comes off as a little disrespectful and off-putting, but I’d still have to recommend “Sticks” for its use of a shadow Lovecraft and Wright and his very Chambers-esque (as in Robert W.) way of writing insanity. The idea of the cult itself is also somewhat interesting and I also liked his somewhat rural take on cosmic horror (wherever did that idea come from…).

Hardly the classic many weird fans seem to think it is, but worth a look for those interested in another take on the Mythos featuring Lovecraft himself (or the next best thing) and a rare appearance by the editor.

- Aaron

A few thoughts on Pig Hunt (2008)

2011-11-05T18:43:00.000-07:00

I was promised more than this. I was promised a commune of seductive, psychopathic hippie women, I was promised killer rednecks, I was promised soldiers in the woods, and more than all of that I was promised a giant killer wild boar tearing stuff up.

The good news is the first three things are delivered. The bad news is the last one isn’t. The worse news is that, even if all those other things were delivered, the movie still sucked. Sucked and blew.

And the pig didn’t show up until the last ten minutes!

Arriving under the Fangoria Frightfest banner (which doesn’t mean much as Fangoria sold out around the time David J Schow stopped writing for them – which was also around the time the magazine become 65% advertisements for crap) “Pig Hunt” (2008) promises a hell of a lot of things. It promises blood (and, fair enough, it delivers), it promises to be the only other killer pig flick than Razorback (which it isn’t), and by its plot, “star”, and theme alone promises a good time (which it in no way delivers.

The story is at once simple and convoluted. A group of soldiers home from Iraq go pig hunting and encounter – amongst other things – a giant pig. Terror ensues. There is also a hippy commune, a bunch of evil rednecks (aren’t they always?), and hand-raised emus. Good times.

Ok, not so much.

It isn’t that “Pig Hunt” has too many irons in the fire, it’s that it never does anything with any of them. None of the ideas are really fleshed out, none work, and the goddamn giant pig never shows up until the last ten minutes! Sure there is some gore and one good scene where a bunch of naked hippie women (better than it sounds, trust me) pal around in some sort of hot spring, but that hardly makes up for the movie promising so much and delivering so little.

Bottom line is this is five bucks and 90 minutes I’ll never get back. If Fangoria didn’t have a black eye before, it sure as hell does now.

- Aaron

Random Imagery Vol. 7

2011-11-03T08:11:00.000-07:00

Cushing, Lugosi, old comic covers, Caroline Munro, and Cthulhu - yeah, must be time for more random imagery...hey, what do you expect on a man's birthday?

- Aaron

PS. Got that new signed, limited edition of Guy N Smith's "The Sucking Pit" from the woman for my birthday - marriage time? Might be...

The Beast In The Cave by H.P. Lovecraft

2011-10-31T14:20:00.000-07:00

Lovecraft’s “The Beast in the Cave” (1905) was written – allegedly and probably closely enough – when the man was 15 years old. This has to be taken into consideration when discussing the tale – it also has to be taken into consideration that, while most of the rest of us were chasing girls and playing video games (or sports, but that’s probably less likely for anyone reading this), Lovecraft was writing stuff like “The Beast in the Cave”.

I don’t know whether to be in awe, pissed off, or just disgusted at myself – and everyone else – for being so bone lazy and downright poor useless.

That’s not to say that “Beast” is one of the man’s best stories – obviously his later output, the Mythos themselves, and his correspondence and influence on all of horror shadows stuff like this – but it’s still a damn fine short horror story (and short it is) that has some obvious influence on many later tales and shows the early signs of his trademark style.

The story deals with a man trapped in a vast cavern (the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky) who’s just lost the use of his “electric torch” and is now trapped in near impenetrable darkness. He resigns himself to an eventual starvation quite easily but becomes less sure of the merits of mortality when he hears an odd shuffling step coming towards him. Instinctively knowing it is not the guide coming to rescue him, the man decides life is worth living and takes up a pair of stones which he pitches at the sound and manages to fell.

Of course the blanket is lifted shortly after as the guide returns and sheds some light – literally – on the “monster”, a gangly humanoid that has known far too many years below the earth, feeding on the blind and desperate cave dwellers in the darkness.

In typically Gaines-fashion (and untypical Lovecraft style) the beast is actually a human and thus the shock is rolled out.

Not much is explained as Lovecraft was obviously only going for the jump ending, but this actually works in the story’s favour and Lovecraft does more than enough with his fine description of the isolation and blackness to make up for any shortcomings there. Less is more, right?

Now, obviously one would have to stretch from here to Innsmouth to draw any parallels between “Beast” and the Mythos or anything else, but being utterly insane I will give it a shot. I’m going to suggest that, perhaps, the “beast” discovered at the end of this story was one of the Martense clan (from “The Lurking Fear” (1922)). Not a blockbuster connection, nor one of any importance, but any line is worth tracing when it comes to Lovecraft.

So, long story short this short story (about five pages if you read a Del Rey print) is worth reading because it more than works and, beyond that, sure as hell lights a fire under those of us who would like to call ourselves writers.

He did this at 15. What the hell is wrong with the rest of us?

- Aaron

The Women of Dread Carcosa: Pam Grier Edition

2011-10-30T09:27:00.000-07:00

Time for a little ethnic diversity in the Women of Dread Carcosa feature methinks. Pam Grier - Foxy Brown - one and the same. The greatest of the blaxploitation era. Corman's best gal. The baddest chick to ever stomp a mud hole in a honk...never mind.

- Aaron

The Crate by Stephen King

2011-10-28T16:03:00.000-07:00

Strange that, at the same time Stephen King’s short story “The Crate” (1979) was both the best part of the original “Creepshow” film (along with “Where’s my cake, Bedelia?” and King himself turning into Swamp Thing) and one of his hardest short stories to find (in pre-internet days at least). One would think that, given its popularity and reputation (at least so far as the film goes) it would have been included in one of his many collections, but it’s been overlooked for decades now and left out of most of his collected works.

At any rate I found a copy in hard print (in the “Masters of Horror and the Supernatural” collection) and decided to at long last put some ink to my favorite “Creepshow” short. I’d heard good things, I liked the concept of the story and the film version, so it should be worth reading. Right?

Right.

Well, it is and it isn’t. That’s the short answer. The long answer is that it tells the exact same story – nearly down to the lines, only in a little different order – as the film version but, and this pains me to say somewhat, just isn’t as good. The monster isn’t as cool, the bitchy wife isn’t nearly as fleshed out (and no, that isn’t an Adrienne Barbeau pun), and the story falters a little with its punny ending, leaving the reader a little disappointed and – worse than that – under whelmed with what was otherwise a pretty cool EC-style short.

The story, for those unfamiliar with the film, focuses on a crate being discovered under a staircase in one of the old buildings of a university by a janitor chasing a quarter. Naturally the box harbors some sort of monster and the janitor, along with the professor he happens upon, unleash the thing – kinda.

For no real reason the beast never leaves its box and that leads to the aforementioned bitchy wife getting her comeuppance when her husband learns the thing’s hunger can’t quite be sated. Monsters and revenge rolled into one – anyone else remember when King was really, really on top of his game?

As I said earlier the short and the film stick to pretty much the same plot and things play out almost identically. The only real difference is that the monster is no longer the hairy, savage looking thing it was in the film (its hardly scene but mentioned as being more reptilian and much smaller than in the film which kicks logic in the head, but hey, you can’t really talk about logic and weird tales in the same article) and the other half of the story – the wife angle – is hardly mentioned until the end and then it’s just that – the end.

I’m not saying the story is bad – it isn’t – it just isn’t as good as the film because it was a little more evenly focused on both sides of the story and, shallow as it may be, the film version of the beast was just a hell of a lot cooler.

So is the story worth hunting down? I’d say no unless you’re a huge fan, and even at that you might end up disappointed as I was.

Taken together they’re really, really cool, but for once the book doesn’t hold a candle to the movie.

- Aaron

A few thoughts on Demons (1985)

2011-10-26T11:59:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to “I Vaguely Remember That Theatre” here on Dread Carcosa. Tonight’s splatter classic that I’m re-watching for the first time in over a decade is Lamberto Bava’s “Demoni” (aka Demons) - one of the essential Italian gore/monster movies of the eighties.

Unlike most of the other films I’ve recently re-watched due to a move and a lack of cable I did have a pretty good memory of this one and I knew exactly why I liked it – its crazy as hell, full of blood and monsters, and is easily one of the gnarliest, nastiest, damn well best ways to spend 90 or so minutes of your life I’ve ever run into.

Right from the get-go Bava never lets up with this one, throwing a bunch of people into the meat grinder and constantly making things crazier and crazier and bloodier and bloodier. The monsters are gross and look great, the gore is some of the sickest ever put on film, and the story – such as it is – rocks along at the kind of pace that makes every minute of this one entertaining (unlike a lot of the so-called gore classics of the era which plod along for damn near an hour before the first death and then blow their load with a couple of over-the-top death scenes that everyone focuses on and forgets the rest of the boring, go-nowhere movie).

Sure the acting is terrible – and I’m not just talking the dubbing – and the story is barely existent and doesn’t bother to explain much of anything, but who needs that when you have some of the coolest transformations ever, bodily violence in every conceivable way, a helicopter decapitation, and a dude riding through a theatre on a dirt bike killing demons with a samurai sword?

Lamberto might not be the more famous of the two Bavas, and his movies might lack a lot of the “artistic flair” his father was so famous for, but give me that any day over style and substance. “Demons” goes for the throat, pushes the limits, and delivers in every way imaginable.

Most of the splatter flicks from the eighties don’t deserve the reputation or the followings they currently enjoy, but this movie – and its sequel – sure as hell do.

- Aaron

Beware by Richard Laymon

2011-10-24T12:46:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure what Laymon was going for with “Beware” (1985). Sure it’s all Laymon right from the get-go, but one minute he’s channelling Dennis Wheatley, the next it’s Don Pendelton (that’s right, the creator of “The Executioner” Mack Bolan), then it’s into some decidedly Joe R Lansdale territory and then back again – and that’s not even mentioning the whole “Invisible Man gone bad” thing the whole story is wrapped up in.

That’s not to say “Beware” is a bad book – it certainly isn’t even if it’s all over the place style- and plot-wise – as it is written in that classic Laymon style and really, really goes all out right from page one. If everything else the man wrote was grindhouse (or worse), “Beware” is his kick at the b-movie can, and if you’re a fan of Laymon’s over-the-top style, well, that alone should sell the book for you.

The plot starts out with an invisible serial killer chopping up some folks in a small Tucson watering hole and ends up with a massive, North America-wide Scientology-style cult battling that serial killer, a mercenary of the Bond variety, and a Mickey Spillane-wannabe. This one has everything short of the Beast House beast, a UFO, and the Devil himself (though the latter may well be the girl who also goes invisible).

Naturally all of this is written with Laymon’s usual unblinking sexual sadism and brutal violence and plays along at a pace that’s never boring but does get a little convoluted (I have no idea but it seems like the last chapter or two of this piece was either totally rewritten in a huge hurry, or penned by someone else entirely as it kind of sticks out plot-wise and features none of the nastiness Laymon usually saves for the closing credits).

Beyond the slapdash ending there are the usual problems, but these are mostly in Laymon’s style itself and his reliance on extreme perversity to make things horrible. If that stuff doesn’t bother you – or you count yourself a Laymonite as I do – this isn’t a problem, for everyone else it’ll be something to hang the “he had no talent” hat on and pick apart the novel.

Bottom line is the novel is a lot of sick fun and one of the best uses of invisible men ever (and I’ll guess something of an inspiration for the dreck that was “Hollow Man”), magic beans (yeah, you read that right), and super-human mercenary types I’ve ever read (and I’ve read a lot of the aforementioned “Executioner” novels in my earlier days).

I’d recommend “Beware” for any Laymon fan (obviously) or anyone who wants a b-movie style gore and shock fest with precious little redeeming value or artistic merit. I’m not going to say they don’t make them like this anymore – they sure as hell do – they just don’t make them this good.

Or this weird.

- Aaron

A few thoughts on Phantasm (1979)

2011-10-20T16:26:00.000-07:00

So recently I seem to be rediscovering horror movies I haven’t watched in at least ten years. I don’t know why, the DVDs have been kicking around the whole time, but the desire has suddenly returned to sit down and re-watch some of the “classics” I either don’t remember that well, never quite finished watching, or never really gave a chance in my younger, more unforgiving days.

The latest such cinematic victim is “Phantasm” (1979), which I remembered being a big fan of – or at least a fan of the series as a whole – but honestly couldn’t remember that well why I liked the movie. I remembered The Tall Man and his Darth Vader-esque ways, his army of killer midgets, the silver balls, and Reggie’s bald head – not to mention the Barracuda – but I’ll be damned if the story stood out that well or the acting or anything else.

Maybe for good reason.

The story makes sense – at least looked at from a distance – but it isn’t that good, nothing is really explained, and what does go down honestly isn’t all that interesting despite the numerous monsters and the rampant craziness. There also isn’t much in the way of nudity or gore beyond one or two scenes, which I found a little disconcerting given my own personal memories of the piece.

The acting, well, it was something of an amateur piece despite some nice visual polish and, honestly, the whole thing really doesn’t do that much despite a lot of ideas and some cool monsters and visuals.

Long story short Phantasm is a decent movie for what it is – and what that is I’m still not entirely sure – with some cool visuals, a decent villain, and a ton of good ideas, but in the end it’s some unsatisfying and really isn’t as memorable as it should be given the film’s cult status and multitude of sequels.

- Aaron

The Squaw by Bram Stoker

2011-10-17T16:14:00.000-07:00

I have to admit, despite his absolutely overwhelming influence on all of horror – be it film, fiction, or just the general feeling and idea associated with the word – I’m not a huge fan of Bram Stoker. Dracula is NOT the best vampire story written, nor is it even an overly well written story. The characters – or at least those of the Count himself and Renfield – are classic and narrative, as it is, is perfect for that sort of monster, but in so far as actual talent and storytelling ability goes, Stoker was no Le Fanu so far as the bloodsuckers were concerned, he just got lucky with an interesting take on the myth when the time was right.

Bram Stoker was The Beatles of classic horror fiction. First time it’s ever been said? Yeah, most likely.

So it was with some trepidation that I started digging through Stoker’s short stories. I figured perhaps in smaller doses, without having to rely on the same theme, that I might find some love (beyond just the admiration and appreciation all horror fans have to have) for Good Abraham.

Obviously the first story I decided upon – though admittedly not the first of his shorts I’ve read by a long shot – was “The Squaw” (originally published in “Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Tales” (1914) ).

I’ll admit I had no idea what to expect here given the title, which makes sense, as there is no squaw in the story and the character is mentioned only in passing and has absolutely no impact on the story whatsoever.

That’s right – no evil Indian woman, just an evil cat. Yes, you read that right.

The story begins with a young couple vacationing somewhere in Europe and meeting up with a boisterous American tourist who they quickly befriend and begin to travel with. Shortly thereafter they’re sightseeing on a tower and the American, seeing a cat and her kitten below, drops a stone to “play” with the animals and ends up killing the kitten. This enrages the mother cat and she eventually does the man in.

With an iron maiden.

So “The Squaw” sounds kind of silly on paper, and in reality it is, but Stoker makes it work and, surprisingly, the whole thing is told in a much more serious – and gruesome – manner than you’d expect. Stoker goes all out with the blood and gore in this one, which is very surprising given its age. Cat brains, slashed open eyes, a full body impaling – all described without flinching, making the reader experience every bit of nastiness Stoker drags up in this short story.

That – and his more traditional way of telling the story (unlike much of Dracula) – make this one actually fairly entertaining and nasty in a Tales From the Crypt kinda way. In other words well worth checking out for those seeking something different – though every bit as bloody – from Stoker’s more famous work.

Recommended.

- Aaron

A few thoughts on Anthropophagus (1980)

2011-10-14T13:28:00.000-07:00

I don’t know about you, but I remember George Eastman being a lot uglier in this one. Not to mention a lot bloodier. And more violent. And, you know, in it more than five minutes.

The first time I saw “Anthropophagus” I was a much younger and much more bloodthirsty man. I was absolutely inundated with the Italian splatter movies of the late seventies and eighties and this one was one of the “must see” pieces of that infamous era. Joe D’Amato’s masterpiece – one of the best cannibal/monster movies ever – all the books said. Something that every self respecting gore-hound must not only see, but damn well own in triplicate.

So I watched it. And wasn’t impressed – and the move settled into the back of my consciousness and lingered there for seven or eight years. Then I started writing again, and was working on a cannibal scene, and thought about Eastman and “Anthropophagus” and all the talk there used to be (and in some circles still is) about this piece and got to thinking that maybe I hadn’t given it a fair chance.

Maybe it was a decent movie that had something more of value (be it shock or otherwise) than that one scene, so I gave it another go.

Guess what? It’s the same damn movie.

It still plods along forever doing nothing, Eastman still doesn’t show up until you’re just about ready to give up on the thing, and the whole thing really does only end up being about that one scene before ending abruptly and – yeah, I’ll say it – in one of the most unsatisfying “climaxes” in movie history.

Hard to say about a man eating his own intestines I know, but watch it and you’ll see (or remember) what I mean.

Now, I’m not saying there’s nothing here. Eastman is creepy as the man-eater, the gore is really good once it gets started, and the foetus-eating scene is still crazy as hell and really has no equal, but is all that worth sitting through a lot of boredom and nothing for an hour? Hardly.

D’Amato should have used some of his porn skills – or some skill at all – and made the rest of this movie as entertaining as the ten or fifteen minutes that Eastman gets on screen to go crazy rather than creating an entire movie around one scene that ends almost instantly.

So back to the recesses of the mind for Anthropophagus. Its title, its legacy, and that one scene will remain, the rest of it can go straight to hell or that island or whichever comes first.

- Aaron

The Roaches by Thomas M Disch

2011-10-13T06:24:00.000-07:00

Thomas M Disch’s 1965 short story “The Roaches” is one of the few of yet another of my favourite weird subgenre stories – the roach swarm horror. It starts out – and is somewhat indicative – of the short piece from the first “Creepshow” movie but takes a decidedly different and, well, much less satisfying turn towards the end than that classic insectoid gross out.

Unfortunately Disch decides to go the humour route as his story progresses rather than stick with the straight horror that he sets up early – and hints at – while starting the narrative. I suppose this could be expected – or at least accepted – were it not marketed as a horror story by latter day weird fiction collectors, but then, I guess we can’t really blame Disch for that 40+ years on, can we?

The narrative concerns a young woman who moves from Minnesota to New York and, while parting from the Midwest, unearths her own deathly fear of cockroaches (it really isn’t explained for what reason she has this fear, but I suppose it’s easy enough to understand for most). Anyway, once she arrives in the Big Apple she sets out on a one-woman crusade to keep her life as roach-free as possible, which goes well until a seedy family moves in next door and the roaches come right along with them.

This is where you’d expect the horror to come in but, well, it just gets weird.

So one night she discovers she can telepathically communicate with the six-legged devils (again, it’s never explained) and sends them to kill – or at least scare the bejezus out of - her dirty neighbours so they go the hell away. Then the roaches tell her they love her, and she tells them she loves them, and Guy N Smith never shows up and the whole thing ends with a fizzle…

So yeah, Disch’s “The Roaches” is a set up for an insect take on “Willard” that never follows through. Kind of disappointing really – for me anyway – but I guess what the reader wants and what the author has to give are not one and the same.

I wanted some roach on human violence, Disch wanted a fluff piece that was kind of funny (and it really is) and a little gross (which it never manages to be for those of us who mention Guy N Smith in casual conversation). The writing is good, the idea is a solid, and the story – or at least what we get of it – is worth reading, but horror this is not and – worse than all that – it leaves the reader (or at least this reader) wanting more.

Worth a read if you follow it up with the aforementioned “Creepshow” short or one of the many bug-related horrors currently available, but on its own “The Roaches” is little more than a well-written comedy piece that really should never be marketed as horror.

Weird maybe – it is that – but certainly not horror…I’m talking to you Pronzini…

- Aaron

I can explain, I swear...

2011-10-13T06:21:00.000-07:00

Yeah yeah, more excuses. But this time they're real - or at least buyable. I moved - we moved - and there was no internet for a week or so. Plus there's work, vampire hunting, show scorpion breeding, and all that to keep me busy.

Anyway, long story short, I've got a few articles pre-written to be posted over the next week or so, which means there will actually be a little life around here.

For once.

For now.

- Aaron

A few thoughts on The Dunwich Horror (1970)

2011-10-02T05:58:00.000-07:00

While it's obviously based on the Lovecraft story of the same name, "The Dunwich Horror" (1970) plays pretty fast and loose with the original story, never comes anywhere near to being as cool as Lovecraft's story, and really kind of makes a mockery of a lot of Lovecraft's coolest demonic imagery.

Honestly other than the sacrificial altar set (which is still cool 40 years later and really hasn't been equaled in any rural-style horror flick that I've seen since) and Sandra Dee dropping the Gidget gear, stripping off, and doing the nasty with Yog-Sothoth this one doesn't have a hell of a lot to offer.

Naked hippies in place of outer-space demon visions, Wilbur Whateley going from a mutant half-human space monster hybrid to a guy with a dorky mustache, perm, and marker tattoos, the whole thing being thrust forward into the seventies and all its lame imagery (all we needed were some BeeGees), and Wilbur's brother going from an unstoppable invisible mountain to a cheap "Beholder" knockoff. Yeah...

So the story, for those unfamiliar and I'm sure there are still a few, actually plays along some of the same lines as Lovecraft's story. The Whateley family calls "something" down from the sky which impregnates Old Wizard Whateley's daughter and she gives birth to two sons - one "human", the other "something else". Flash forward a few decades and the human son - Wilbur - is looking to bring his daddy down from the skies to destroy the Earth for the injustices placed upon his family.

That's how they're the same. How he goes about it, all the imagery, all the mythology, and anything remotely scary is how they differ.

Honestly enough if one wasn't familiar with Lovecraft's story and just looked at this as another in a long line of Satanic seventies flicks it wouldn't be so bad, as it does have some decent performances and the imagery - from a non-Lovecraftian standpoint - is alright, not to mention utilizing one of Lovecraft's better straight horror themes. If you are familiar with the Lovecraft story though, it is lacking.

So long story short if you hold it up next to (arguably) one of Lovecraft's best stories this one falls flatter than Sandra Dee (ok, lame analogy, but it was kinda funny), if you're unfamiliar with the original story - or just don't care - its alright bordering on good. That altar set is still cool as hell though...

- Aaron

The Skull by Shaun Hutson

2011-09-23T16:56:00.000-07:00

Shaun Hutson's second novel "The Skull" (1981) is nowhere near as well known or infamous as his first novel "Slugs" (same year) - and for good reason. While "Slugs" was entertaining, a little original, possessing of more than a few very memorable scenes, "The Skull" is completely the opposite. It's an overlong, boring, poorly scripted monster-on-the-loose loser that really could have been half as long had the titular artifact not played so prominent role.

The story basically concerns an exhumed skull that slowly - very slowly - regenerates its flesh and creates a monster that ravages a small English town. Caught in the middle are an unlikely and boring couple, something of a mad scientist type, and a bunch of other sad sacks. Not to mention the rain. It rains constantly and goddamn are we reminded of it - every single page.

About the only good thing that can be said about Hutson's novel is that it's evocative of Clive Barker's "Rawhead Rex" - mostly because of the setting and the fact that the monster is naked and running a rampage for no good reason. There's also frequent mention of the beast's junk - to no end - which brought to mind the infamous baptism scene in Barker's story.

So long story short this one - like a lot of Hutson's stuff - is skippable. The monster is rarely used - a homunculus - but as boring and go nowhere as the rest of the story, the first half of the story is an utter waste, and Hutson really doesn't seem to be trying this time - not like in his first novel.

I don't know, maybe I was expecting too much given the grandeur of "Slugs" but this one was a real disappointment. Stick with Hutson's gastropod horrors and skip this one - trust me, you'll thank me.

- Aaron

Random Imagery Vol. 6

2011-09-18T16:50:00.000-07:00

Pulp magazine covers, ancient Rome, Frazetta, and Starcrash. Yeah...pretty obvious where you ended up...

- Aaron

A few thoughts on The Serpent and the Rainbow

2011-09-15T05:12:00.000-07:00

I tried Wes Craven's "The Serpent and the Rainbow" (1988) again last night for the first time in over a decade and, well, it's still the same movie, isn't it?

For some reason - despite some cool imagery and my being a fan of at least a few of Craven's other films - I just never got into this movie - and I think I finally figured out why.

It doesn't make any sense.

Ok, maybe it kind of does make sense, but the way it's filmed (and moreover the way it's cut) make it incredibly hard to follow unless you pay extremely close attention (something I have a hard time doing when the movie itself isn't all that good). One minute the main character is buried alive, the next he's wandering about happy as hell. He's getting a spike pounded into his groin, then he's up walking through the jungle having a fine old time. Cut into those inconsistencies a bunch of voodoo nightmares and the whole thing becomes that much more distorted and hard to follow.

Of course, that's probably what Craven was going for, as a lot of the movie may never have happened anywhere other than in the character's polluted brain, but it still plays hell with the narrative and makes the whole thing difficult to watch and even more difficult to follow.

On the plus side - and yes, there is one - a lot of the imagery is really cool and "Serpent" seems to play a little more realistically with the voodoo religion and mythology than most other horror movies that have utilized it. There are also a couple of good arachnid-related scenes and the aforementioned torture scenes are pretty intense and more than a little brutal. Beyond that though this one just doesn't bring anything to the table.

So long story short I guess Craven's voodoo "classic" is still as unremarkable as it was almost 20 years ago. Sure it does a good job of accurately representing an interesting religion and has some cool imagery and a nice pulpy feel, but if all of that is lost in bad acting and a mangled narrative what's the point?

- Aaron

The Devotee of Evil by Clark Ashton Smith

2011-09-11T14:46:00.000-07:00

Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Devotee of Evil” (1933) is a short and rather uninvolved story – as a matter of fact, it really isn’t even a full story but something of a take on a theme that seemed to be popular at that time in weird tales – but it is worth mentioning as it appears to be Smith’s attempt to write Lovecraft (for real this time).

Granted one could say that a lot of Smith’s horror stories were attempts at writing (or writing like) Lovecraft, as the two were friends and Lovecraft was regarded as something of a “master” by Smith (and Howard, Bloch, etc.), but “The Devotee of Evil” really, really goes for the Lovecraft. Horror from space, skewed science, a world we can’t see, inherited evil, mental illness, and – perhaps most telling of all – the vocabulary used to describe the many indescribable evils the narrator encounters.

Essentially a more direct version of Lovecraft’s “From Beyond” (1920), “Devotee” tells the story of a man obsessed with evil because of some hinted-at trauma in his past. After meeting the somewhat dim narrator we discover that not only is the man totally off his rocker, but he’s also built a device that will allow him to channel all the evil in the universe – which stems from some central point apparently (Azathoth?) – into a room in his home.

Needless to say things don’t end well.

Sounds more than a little like that Lovecraft story, doesn’t it? Sure the nutcase in question here is a little more knowing in his quest for unknown evils, but the story could well be a sequel – or at least retelling – to the Lovecraft classic. The question though, for those crazy or bored enough to ask, is this: is Smith’s story as good as Lovecraft’s?

The answer might not be as obvious as you would think.

Both stories play the exact same cards, both have essentially the same climax, and both are written with the kind of talent that horror and weird fans plain and simple no longer see. Smith’s story is more accessible – as his “evils” are not quite so alien as Lovecraft’s and the imagery and terms he uses are more biblical than space-horror – and his choice of language – despite being something of an ape on Lovecraft – is infinitely more readable.

That’s what it has. What it doesn’t have is Lovecraft’s inherent weirdness or his skills with making dread slowly crawl over the reader. It also doesn’t quite have that “this could maybe happen” quality that “From Beyond” has (due to its science being a little more plausible) or the connection to the Cthulhu Mythos – and thus much, much more back-story - that makes the whole thing stand out that much more.

So that wasn’t really an answer at all, was it? I’d call both stories about equal. They are essentially the same, with one being slightly weirder and the other being slightly more accessible, and both well worth reading.

Of the many writers of that era that copied Lovecraft, Smith was one of the few that didn’t have to, but it sure is entertaining reading his take on his mentor and friend’s style. Well worth checking out along with the Lovecraft story – just don’t get any bright ideas…

- Aaron

While we're at it...

2011-09-04T17:50:00.000-07:00

Deathstalker poster.

Man, why don't they do proper art posters anymore?

- Aaron

The Women of Dread Carcosa: Barbi Benton Edition

2011-09-04T17:42:00.000-07:00

Deathstalker and its sequel out on DVD. Conan in theatres. Sword and Sorcery on my mind - who better for the latest "Women of Dread Carcosa" than Barbi Benton? Sure her role in Deathstalker wasn't the biggest or the most important but, well, give me a brunette any day of the week.

- Aaron

The Empire of the Necromancers by Clark Ashton Smith

2011-09-04T17:07:00.000-07:00

* The Empire of the Necromancers first appeared in the September 1932 issue of Weird Tales *

Like many of Clark Ashton Smith’s more fantastical tales, “The Empire of the Necromancers” reads very much like a “real” mythology. It vaguely hints at lands that we should know and mentions kings and empires that, were we truly within that world, would no doubt lend some credence to the story at hand. Something of a “you know it has to be true because this happened too” kind of deal despite the fantastic nature of the story. Smith did that better than any of his Weird Tales contemporaries, and while this isn’t exactly the best use of his pseudo-mythology, it is worth mentioning that this method of storytelling – or, beyond method, style – makes “Empire” a much better story.

As if an army of skeletons weren’t good enough…

The story here concerns exactly what the title suggests. A pair of necromancers are exiled from normal society because of the their evil magics and, seeking some sort of vengeance and acceptance, create their own army - their own kingdom - from those killed centuries before by some horrid plague. This all goes well enough until one of the skeletons becomes slightly more self-aware and decides to take his kingdom back in suitably bloody fashion.

So there you have it. If nothing else, Kingdom of the Necromancers is the first – and quite possibly only – story to feature a heroic living skeleton.

Obviously little has to be said about the quality of the work, as Smith’s prose is as fine as ever and this style of story – unlike his more “straight” stories or Cthulhu Mythos entries – really shows that. His “dark fairytale” style is at its best here and this story – despite being short and not quite as good as some of his other tales – certainly deserves to be counted among his best, and quite possibly used a backdrop or furthering of the mythologies created in some of his better fantasy stories.

Empire of the Necromancers would be a good starting point for any reader seeking to dig a little deeper into Smith’s fiction than his more famous stories. It’s short, to the point, and features that dark fantasy style of his that has become somewhat overshadowed by his more “modern” horror stories – at least so far as current fans are concerned.

Very highly recommended as a companion piece to the likes of “The Double Shadow”, “The Isle of the Torturers”, and “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros”.

- Aaron

A few thoughts on Conan (2011)

2011-09-03T10:08:00.000-07:00

Yeah I suck. This post is late and I never did deliver on actually writing something new about something old, but every other pulp-related blog has an article on the new Conan movie, so I figured I might as well knock the cobwebs off this place and write something quick up before heading out to work.

So I saw it opening weekend (yeah, took me this long) and I have to admit I wasn't expecting much - I never do when it comes to stuff I really love being handled by someone other than the original creator or an author or filmmaker I feel has some kinship with that original creator. So obviously anyone handling anything written in Howard's time isn't going to have that going for them, plus there's the lousy track record everyone but Howard has had with the Cimmerian so...well, long story short, I wasn't expecting much.

Probably the best way to go into this sort of thing, right?

Anyway, I went in expecting the worst and have to admit I didn't get it. Sure once again Conan's actual character got the boots put to it, and the mythology was messed around a little too much for my liking, but this movie was head and shoulders above the old ones - even if the monsters were a little lacking. Momoa did a decent job as the Cimmerian too, and wasn't as overblown - physically or ham-wise - as Arnold was the first time around. Still a little too pretty for a barbarian, but hey, if they made him look like Conan actually should by that age, you probably couldn't put the face on posters.

The story itself wasn't bad. Once again Conan is out for revenge against those who wronged him/his people, and by and large that works. The inclusion of Conan as a pirate was kind of cool as well, as was the overarching story the main villain - can't think of his name now - shared with his witch daughter and (possibly) demonic wife.

Beyond that the pulp adventure trappings were all there - the crumbling city towards the end of the movie and the skull mountain were really cool and looked like they'd just fallen out of an old Weird Tales magazine - as was the violence (which was great and stomach churning at some points) and the skin (not as much as there probably should have been given the source material, but again, you really can't film Conan as Howard wrote it), so all in all they more than satisfied.

So I guess the bottom line is the new Conan is a better shot at the actual Conan than the old Conan was, but it still isn't perfect and likely never will be. The stories are still the best part of the mythology, followed by the comics, and finally by this and the eighties-era movies.

Worth a look, but most people would be better served investing in the Del Rey collections than movie tickets and greasy popcorn.

- Aaron

PS. I did miss the "best in life" jive, I have to admit that.

Random Imagery Vol. 5

2011-08-21T12:06:00.000-07:00

Still nothing new fiction-wise, but I'm working on it - I swear. More random imagery - mens adventure, ugly fish, Madeline Smith, and the original magazine cover for "Black Amazon of Mars" (see below).

If you want some actual writing - well, some actual writing from me - check out Born at the Drive-In.

- Aaron

Random Imagery Vol. 4

2011-08-18T18:52:00.000-07:00

No new (old) story articles - yeah, I've been slacking off again but I have some time off next week, so fingers crossed - so yet another round of random imagery that I thought was kinda cool. Raquel, monsters, Harryhausen, and mens adventure pulp art. Good times.

- Aaron

Black Amazon of Mars by Leigh Brackett

2011-08-11T15:53:00.000-07:00

* Black Amazon of Mars was first published in the March 1951 issue of Planet Stories. *

I’d like to be able to say I’m more familiar with the John Stark stories than I am, as the stories – written between the late forties and the mid-seventies by science fiction icon Leigh Brackett – are very evocative of many of my favorite pulps. If you’re unfamiliar – or at least more unfamiliar than I – think “Almuric”, which was basically Conan or Tarzan on another planet…which is essentially “A Princess of Mars” retold again. In other words, it’s more of the same, but its great same and a hell of a lot of fun.

It’s also written by a woman, which adds something more to the mix, as true weird tales of that era and before written from a female perspective – even if the main character is male – are few and far between and always an interesting, or at least different, take on largely the same themes.

And speaking of same themes, let’s talk about “Black Amazon of Mars”, one of the later original John Stark stories (the character was revisited decades later towards the end of Brackett’s career). Once again we have a once civilized wild man on a world he didn’t create battling corruption, ancient evil, and insidious locals bent on destroying their own planet – we also have sword play, insanity, Martian magic, torture, battle, and the kind of physical endurance one can only read about in the pulps.

The story is very evocative of Robert E Howard’s “Worms of the Earth” (with a healthy does of his Almuric or Burroughs’ John Carter stories thrown in for good measure) as it tells the tale of a modern man using ancient, ancestral magic to overthrow and ancient enemy – effectively turning one enemy against another. Grated this comparison is very basic but the story plays out very much like Howard’s story (though make no mistake it is nowhere near as good as that Bran Mak Morn classic – though few weird tales are)…once we get to it.

The bulk of the story actually concerns Stark’s meeting Ciaran, the chieftain of the local barbarian hordes, his capture and torture by that group, and his eventual exposing of Ciaran as Ciara, the beautiful but deadly “Black Amazon”. Then he’s captured by the civilized people…and a war breaks out…and before all that the back-story of Stark and his reason for traveling to the fabled “Gates of Death”…and…

Yeah, so that right there is the problem – there’s far too much getting to the Gates and nowhere near enough actual use of them or their alien occupants. Instead Brackett focuses on the battle (granted well written) and Stark’s thoughts on those he meets and his tour of the alien world (also interesting, but not so much as evil ice aliens).

There’s also the problem that, other than the aforementioned ice creatures, the “aliens” of Mars are just humans – and not even different colored humans ala John Carter – which makes the whole thing smack a little too much of “weirdness shoehorned in” for my money. Truth be told were the story cut of its final third and a few words changed one would never know they were reading science fiction rather than historical adventure, and that really doesn’t sit that well with me.

Brackett does a great job with the writing and her characters are interesting and engaging, but the weirdness and the science fiction angle just don’t play in enough and leave one wanting for the fantasy of Burroughs or the horrors of Howard. That’s not to say the story isn’t worthy, or that the Stark stories don’t get better (or weren’t better before), but Brackett’s Mars is nowhere near as interesting as Burroughs or countless other takes on the Red Planet.

For a female perspective on the pulps or a decent story for those not overly concerned with the weird angle, “Black Amazon of Mars” is well worth checking out, as Brackett was a great writer and her action scenes easily rival those of many of the male writers of the era, but if you’re looking for truly weird take on Mars (or an Amazon a little more deserving of the title) you may want to look elsewhere.

- Aaron

The Women of Dread Carcosa: Fran Gerard Edition

2011-08-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

Soon - maybe - I'll get back to some posts I actually have to, you know, write. I just need to finish "Black Amazon of Mars" and tear into one of the new short story collections I have hanging around. Also I need an extra hour or two in the day.

Always excuses...

Anyway, yet another edition of The Women of Dread Carcosa, this time featuring my favorite Playboy Playmate ever. Miss March 1967 Fran Gerard.

- Aaron

PS. Yeah, there's nudity, but it's tasteful enough that no one should complain. You shouldn't either, Barb - she could be your twin...well, she could have been in 1967...or if we had a time machine...man, I need a time machine...

Black God's Shadow by CL Moore

2011-08-02T15:13:00.000-07:00

“Black God’s Shadow” was originally published in Weird Tales in 1934, the same year and the same magazine as the original Jirel of Joiry story, “Black God’s Kiss”. Convenient as it is essentially a direct continuation of that story – not so convenient that it is nowhere near as entertaining and more than a little redundant of the first story.

Yeah, yeah, I know a lot of the pulp series basically rehashed the same plot for the same character ad nauseum, but this is exactly the same only not as good – and honestly most of the interest was wrung from Jirel’s shadow world the first go ‘round so, well, it’s just that much more apparent here.

Anyway, the story this time finds Jirel mourning the death of Guillaume, who she killed in the first story by giving him the “Black God’s kiss” – which was essentially transferring the evil of that nameless deity to the man and crushing his soul. At the end of the first story we discovered her remorse for this and her love for the man she killed, this time around she ventures back into that alien hell below her castle to save his soul from eternal torment.

Women, right?

Anyway, that’s the gist of the story, and that’s fine as it does continue the mythology and expands a bit upon this dark world within the earth – the problem is the execution. The narrative is lost almost entirely as Moore describes the queerness of the world and describes Jirel’s somewhat mundane travel through it.

When alien worlds are done well they can carry entire series – as many of the pulp adventure and horror sets of that type more than prove – but an alien world alone is not interesting when there is no real narrative to speak of, the threat never really comes alive, and the whole thing is little more than a walking (running) tour of a nightmare world consisting mostly of shadows.

That’s not to say that Moore’s writing is bad, as it isn’t. She’s as crisp and readable as ever and her character is still interesting – even if she doesn’t do much and her moods seem to jump from one extreme to another a little too much – and seems bound for much better things (we’ll find out as I continue to read through Jirel’s adventures). The problem is just that nothing interesting happens, and when it does, there never seems to be any threat.

Granted this is something of a given in character-driven pulps, as really, no one ever expects Conan or The Shadow or Doc Savage to actually kick the bucket, but at least there was the threat – not so much here.

Still for those interested in a female equivalent to the pulp heroes of the day actually written by a woman, Moore and Jirel are well worth checking out and the story, while not comparable to the original Jirel short in any way, shape or form, is probably not as bad as I made it sound, as Moore’s Jirel stories were never of the action-packed variety, but rather more emotionally driven and “real”.

Well, as real as shadow worlds beneath crumbling castles get anyway…

- Aaron

The Women of Dread Carcosa: Edwige Fenech Edition

2011-07-29T09:42:00.000-07:00

Edwige Fenech...yeah, you might not be overly familiar with her unless you're a fan of Euro-cult cinema, but looks are universal and she's got a ton of them. You're welcome.

- Aaron

The Lady in the Grove by Scott Lette

2011-07-27T05:07:00.000-07:00

Scott Lette’s “The Lady in the Grove” is a lot more Mike Hammer than H.P. Lovecraft – as many of the latter-day Mythos tales are – up until the finale when it becomes much more like Robert Bloch’s “Notebook Found in a Deserted House”. That might not mean much to those unfamiliar with the Mythos, but that’s a good thing.

A really good thing.

Granted I’m not going to compare this story to Bloch’s, as most Mythos stories simply can’t compare to that effort, but in theme and execution (no pun intended) it’s very similar and works – in small part anyway – on the same level. The backwoods play a large part in many of the founding Mythos stories – those actually written by Lovecraft/Howard/Smith – but latter day stories have strived too much to bring Cthulhu’s cult into the modern world and beyond, and have forgotten the “decadence” that made so many of the original stories work on a level beyond the cosmic.

The story here concerns an Irish mobster being taken along to a posh party for…some reason. I guess it’s suggested he’s muscle for the professor he’s with, but it’s never explained why he’s needed nor what he’s actually supposed to do once the plot is revealed. Anyway, that isn’t overly important. The story is all from the mobster’s point of view as he attends the party, meets a girl, blacks out, and ends up in the woods, surrounded by a group of chanting pagans who want to turn him into haggis.

Yeah, I know that isn’t culturally correct, but it’s apt to what they actually want to do to the guy. Things end on somewhat of a high note…kinda. High as compared to what Lovecraft or Bloch would have done to the guy anyway.

So the story isn’t that bad. The ending is really good and the appearance – or at least the presence – of Shub-Niggurath is, as always, rare and welcome in Mythos fiction. Why the Black Goat is relegated to the back burner for most Mythos writers I’ve never been able to figure out, as the imagery associated with her – the living trees, the dark woods, the fertility and possession – are all potent story-wise and make the creature seem that much more of a character, rather than the overwhelming presence that the other Mythos “gods” are.

She’s also very Dennis Wheatley in her cults and themes – or Satanic if we want to go back to the roots of the thing – so that makes the character work on yet another level.

Alright…once again I’ve gone off topic talking about a minor Mythos deity rather than the story itself. “The Lady in the Grove” is an entertaining take on the tough guy pulps crossed with Lovecraft’s Mythos. The writing is tight and entertaining, the story works, and the use of Shub-Niggurath (and her all-female cult) are excellent. The slight Christian angle is a slight put-off, but considering what actually happens, it almost works.

At any rate highly recommended for fans of the Black Goat and new-era Mythos fiction.

- Aaron

A few thoughts on Zombie Flesh Eaters

2011-07-25T04:28:00.000-07:00

I’m going to start out this article by totally discrediting myself (something I usually reserve for the second to last paragraph) – for my money, Lucio Fulci’s “Zombie Flesh Eaters“ (aka. Zombie, Zombi 2, and a dozen other titles of varying quality) is head and shoulders a better movie than George A. Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” (the film it claimed to be a sequel to). So there goes half the audience in one sentence. I think that might be a record.

So, you might be wondering, what exactly has happened to this man that he feels a cheap knock-off that relies entirely on gore is better than Romero’s classic film, with its pot shots at consumerism and oh-so-subtle social commentary? Well, the truth is a lot of things have happened to this man that would make him feel that way, but the main thing – the driving force behind such insanity on my part – is that Fulci’s film is just a hell of a lot more fun to watch, doesn’t take itself anywhere near as seriously, and its shambling corpses are way, way cooler looking than Romero’s grease-paint ghouls.

Oh yeah, there’s the gore too. And the zombie fighting the shark. And the eyeball scene. And the topless scuba-diving scene. And the undead conquistadores. And all the gnarly neck bites. And…

So yeah, it’s the low road that draws me, but that really shouldn’t be a commentary on Fulci’s film. It’d be a worthwhile effort even if the gore wasn’t some of the best in all of horror cinema and the zombies arguably the coolest of all the Italian gut-munchers.

Zombie Flesh Eaters knows exactly what it is, and it never tries to go the highbrow route or change the way you think about things or influence you in any way, shape or form – it just wants to entertain. Dawn of the Dead is the girl you want to go to the dance with, Zombie Flesh Eaters is the girl you can hang around watching bad movies and eating cheap pizza with (no Barb, I’m not comparing you to zombie movies again…I swear).

That might be the cleverest, most fitting thing I’ve ever written. Maybe I’m smarter than I thought I was.

What’s that? I said Zombie was better than Dawn? Guess not, right?

I’m not saying Dawn of the Dead is a bad movie – it isn’t – it just isn’t as good as Fulci’s movie. It isn’t as much fun, it isn’t as flashy, it’s overlong, and it tries to do way too much with what it has. Does the commentary work? Sure, but it’s blunt and really, at the end of the day, who cares about that when you can see a zombie kick a shark’s ass?

The smart people, yeah, and the pretentious ones (there are pretentious horror fans if you can believe it – the kind of people who’d rather watch “The Exorcist” than “Sleepaway Camp 2”…yeah, I don’t get it either), but they probably didn’t make it this far into the article, so w won’t worry about them.

People can call it a knock-off or a cash-in or a cheap splatter movie with no redeeming qualities all they want, the bottom line is this – Zombie Flesh Eaters is a zombie movie and it does what zombie movies do best – spill blood, raise the dead, raise hell, and make 90 minutes or so fly by – and it does that a hell of a lot better than any of Romero’s movies, and a hell of a lot better than any other zombie movie ever made.

Except maybe “Return of the Living Dead”…or “The Beyond”…or “Burial Ground”…or “Flesheater”…”Dr. Butcher, M.D.”…

- Aaron

And while we're at it...

2011-07-22T05:24:00.000-07:00

...and because there can never be too much Raquel...

- Aaron

The Women of Dread Carcosa: Raquel Welch Edition

2011-07-22T05:17:00.001-07:00

The queen...my one true love...returns. Gentlemen, pay your respects...

- Aaron

Worms by Pat Harrigan

2011-07-22T04:50:00.000-07:00

Pat Harrigan’s “Worms” (from the Chaosium “Arkham Tales” collection) is a Cthulhu Mythos story, but only in the loosest sense and only if you are familiar with some of the terminology used to describe Lovecraft’s alien gods. Beyond that it’s the tale of something of an anti-Christ, who doesn’t quite seem to know that’s what he is, weaving a tapestry of dissidence across the world in preparation for the end of days.

That sounds pretty good, and on paper it is – well, on paper in that condensed version anyway – but the story itself doesn’t really do much with that theme and, for my money, focuses on the uninteresting parts of the end of the world – that being the somewhat mundane life of the prophet of doom.

The eventual revelation that the man has been “infected” by the Crawling Chaos (Nyarlathotep) and that the end of the world is the rise of Cthulhu (dated the same year the story was published originally) is kind of cool and makes the whole thing seem a little more worthwhile, but it’s hardly interesting enough when the backdrops to the story are Lovecraft’s immortal “Call of Cthulhu” and his short “Nyarlathotep”, which are both much more effective than “Worms”.

Sure that’s obvious, and yeah, it would be hard to compare to at least one of those stories for any author, let alone a relative unknown like Harrigan, but if I can get the same theme that much better in the latter Lovecraft story, the eventual question is “why bother with this one”?

For the modernization? That’s about all that this story offers – that and a few clever nods to the original stories – and quite frankly that really doesn’t make it worthwhile in my eyes. Sure given the mythology this same thing is bound to happen a number of times (the rise of Nyarlathotep and his leading humanity against itself and the rise of Cthulhu), but this really isn’t that interesting of a take on it and focuses on entirely the wrong subject matter.

I guess for those who’ve read everything else – impossible I know, but still – “Worms” might be worth a read because it’s short, well written, and at least a little entertaining, but you can get this same theme from the master himself and many of the other Mythos authors over the years so, well, that about says it all right?

- Aaron

"Twins of Evil"

2011-07-15T09:32:00.000-07:00

That title could go both ways, right?

- Aaron

Geometry of the Soul by Jason Andrew

2011-07-15T04:17:00.000-07:00

Like the first story in the Arkham Tales anthology, “Mysterious Dan’s Legacy”, the last story sets up a new sub-mythology within the Mythos that seems like it might work out really nicely were the idea expanded upon, but likely never will and leaves me wanting to write the stories myself.

And Yig knows I have so little to do with my time now…

Jason Andrew’s “Geometry of the Soul” is a much better story and much more ably written than “Mysterious Dan’s Legacy”, and the mythology it creates lends itself to a lot of really cool ideas, as the main gist of the finale is a setup of the famous Pinkerton Agency taking to the dark corners of the Earth to throw a little light on some of the foul things that have crawled down from the stars.

That’s the mythology Andrew creates anyway, the actual story deals with one detective speaking with an insane man to uncover why all the members of his expedition ended up missing or partially eaten in a setup taken from literally dozens of Cthulhu Mythos stories. Of course, it turns out the man is anything but your run-of-the-mill cannibal and what they actually uncovered up in the hills was the lair of what sounds like Abhoth (Clark Ashton Smith, The Seven Geases) and it’s legion of deformed minions. Soon enough they’re all start-raving crazy, possessed by the ancient demon, eating each other, and set out to do the thing’s bidding. Alright, let’s take a slight break from the story for a second and examine that.

In almost all other mentions Abhoth is described as being much like Azathoth – all powerful (at least where it happens to lie), but possessing of almost no intelligence and certainly no direct malevolence. Like the Blind, Idiot God, Abhoth simply exists and its poison spreads because of that, creating and infecting whatever happens to surround it, perhaps creating malevolent – or at least flesh-hungry – offspring, but in no way really being overly “evil” on its own accord. In “Geometry” Abhoth – or what appears to be Abhoth – actually does have some intent as it possesses the members of the expedition in the hopes they will “pave its way” to…well, who knows?

Bottom line of that whole aside is that the basic nature of the being is changed in this story and, if one wants to add this title to Mythos cannon – and you could argue one way or the other if you should – then Smith’s deity becomes even more unwholesome as it actually desires destruction now, rather than just causing it by existing. A departure from the “beyond human emotions” motif normally employed by the better Mythos writers, but good for the story, so, well, there you go. Derleth strikes from beyond the grave.

Getting back to “Geometry”. The story is well written and the small slice of that mythology that it does offer certainly makes the reader want more. The characters are typically Lovecraftian (though the detective comes off more of the Mike Hammer variety than Lovecraft’s typically soft-spoken heroes) and the setting – the Arkham Asylum – offers a little personality, but far and away the best part of the story – must like Smith’s “Geases” is the description of Abhoth’s lair. Half stone, half flesh, and teeming with unnatural life – an organic Hell on Earth that seems at once monstrous and infectious, physical and chemical. Andrew doesn’t write it that well, but teamed with Smith’s idea of the place, you can damn near smell the dead-yet-living flesh as it pulses with ancient life.

Ok, once again I’m getting away from the story. No more Abhoth fandom, I promise.

So the story is good. It isn’t classic-era Mythos good, but for a current piece “Geometry of the Soul” is good and makes me want to read more of the Pinkerton vs Old Ones mythology – if it existed.

Certainly worth checking out for Mythos fans, “Geases” fans, and fans of “The Source of Uncleanness”.

- Aaron

They Thrive in Darkness by Ron Shiftlet

2011-07-12T05:49:00.000-07:00

Whether it’s the poor editing or the lack of spell check I can’t say, but a lot of the stories in Chaosium’s “Arkham Tales” collection come off kind of “fan-ish” - like the sort of thing you’d read on the internet. That’s not to say the stories aren’t good, or at least entertaining, but they all seem to lack a certain polish.

Such is the case with Ron Shiftlet’s “They Thrive in Darkness”, which modernizes Arkham, the Pickman-ghoul mythology, and the Lovecraft Mythos in general. The story is entertaining, the writing isn’t bad, and a lot of the references and themes are spot-on, but there’s a certain skilled hand that seems to be missing – though I suppose such things are expected when dealing with a collection of fan-style fiction.

At any rate, the story is interesting and goes something like this. Two men meet in a bar over some drinks and head back to one of the men’s homes…no, this isn’t going where you’re thinking. Turns out the man has a weird, phosphorescent outline of a door in his basement and is bound and determined to prove it to his new friend.

Enter the home – which Shiftlet makes sure to mention does not look like a typical “Lovecraft home” – and the men are in the basement, hacking away at the wall to see what’s behind it all. Soon enough they’re plunged into the blackness of a subterranean world where giant glow-in-the-dark fungus is the norm and there’s something dog-faced shuffling around in the darkness…

Welcome back to Pickman County.

Shiftlet does a good job of bring that mythology – and Pickman himself in a brief cameo – into the current age and lays down the ground for something of a “ghoul invasion” that might be interesting if handled in a, dare I say it, less-Lovecraftian manner. I’m talking blood and guts, Brian Keene style horror, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, right?

The story is interesting for fans of the Pickman mythology and does a decent job of half-aping, half-updating Lovecraft’s own themes, but it’s hardly going to win any awards and, like I stated earlier, comes off a little amateurish which might but some readers off given that the book really doesn’t mention this.

At any rate I’d certainly suggest it for ghoul-fans and anyone familiar enough with latter day Mythos stories to forgive some quality issues, but you won’t be blown away and, even the better part of a century later, Lovecraft’s last couple of sentences in “Pickman’s Model” are still the best part of this mythology.

- Aaron

The Pool by William F. Nolan

2011-07-05T17:52:00.000-07:00

Anyone who’s visited Dread Carcosa for any length of time knows I love weird monsters – the weirder the better – and they don’t come much weirder than sentient oozes. How could they? What you basically have is a puddle of goop with an agenda. An oil slick that wants to eat you. A swimming pool with a dirty mind and dirtier fingers…fingers that used to belong to a pretty little girl…

The latter, un-obviously for those unfamiliar with William F. Nolan’s “The Pool”, is the subject of this article. It’s not quite as cool as some of the other malevolent goop stories we’ve checked out or read in the past, but when it comes to sentient ooze, well, beggars can’t be chosers and you damn well take what you can get.

So the story, just so I can get things on track in this article, goes something like this. A young couple wins a fancy house in Bel Air in a poker game and move in. The place is a stunner, fully decked out, and comes with a massive “natural” pool in the backyard that’s kept “eternally fresh” by an underground stream from up in the hills. Never a good thing if you’ve read even one issue of Weird Tales, but these people don’t know that…well, the girl kind of does, but she hops in anyway. Short story shorter that night they go for a swim and whatever it is that’s taken residence in the always-dark waters gobbles them up and co-opts their body parts for its own nefarious uses.

Not a long story, not an especially good one, but it stars an evil slime so I had to check it out.

Now, despite my having said a number of times already that “The Pool” isn’t all that good, it isn’t all that bad either – it’s just really short and Nolan really doesn’t do too awful much with the story or the monster itself. It’s a short, punch in the gut style thing that goes right for the gross-out (if you find flesh-eating slimes gross that is) and skips on pretty much everything else. Here are your characters, here is your setting, everyone dies. The end. Almost poetic, right?

Ok, maybe not.

At any rate “The Pool” is definitely worth checking out for anyone with a penchant for evil oozes (and I know there have to be more of you out there than me) as the field is somewhat limited. For anyone “normal” who doesn’t obsess about this sort of thing (and if that’s you, really, what are you still reading for?) Nolan’s story is short and skippable.

- Aaron

The Rhythm of the Rats by Eric Frank Russell

2011-07-02T07:44:00.000-07:00

Eric Frank Russell’s “The Rhythm of the Rats” is a weird story – convenient given it first appeared in the July 1950 issue of Weird Tales – but I really can’t say if it’s a good story or not. Russell does a good job of creating a strange atmosphere and making the reader think that something is really, really wrong in the small town the narrator ends up in – not unlike Lovecraft’s impression of Innsmouth and Dunwich in those two stories – but when the “wrong” finally does show up, well, let’s just say it’s neither fishmen nor invisible giant.

The story, as I said, concerns a queer small town in some desolate area of the backwoods. A plane crashes stranding a man in the town where he has to remain for the night as he’s too injured to be transferred back to civilization. The townsfolk are all stoic and grey and there are no children nor domesticated animals to be seen.

Soon enough night falls and the “weird” shows up, in the form of a lute-playing fool who draws our protagonist to his barred windows with his melodies while the townsfolk hunt the night trying to bring the musician down. They all hate music there…hate it.

When the eventual revelation comes (SPOILER: the musician is the Pied Piper of Hamelin, the townsfolk’s children have all been turned into rats, and the narrator is a boy of nine) the story makes a lot more sense and some of the weird angles that Russell describes throughout kind of hit home, but it’s hardly the earth-shaking revelation it should be and the story kind of falls flat because of that. The title is also somewhat misleading as any fan of Weird Tales reading that will assume, as I did, that they’re in for some malevolent rat horror, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Still, Russell’s story is well written and never really gets bogged down in the telling. He does an excellent job of making the town seem sinister without ever really telling us why, and the eventual revelation is at least somewhat satisfying, if a little bit of a let down given (at least my) expectations given the title.

Easily the best part of the story, and the most memorable, is Russell’s “fool” character, which reads much like an even more demented version of Dwight Frye’s Renfield character from “Dracula” (1931) and comes off as truly scary while at the same time being wholly absurd and even somewhat evocative of Nyarlathotep in the Lovecraft short story of the same name.

And before you ask, no, I’m not going to try and tie “The Rhythm of the Rats” into the Cthulhu Mythos – I promise…

In closing I’d certainly suggest “The Rhythm of the Rats” to any fan of Russell’s or to anyone with even a passing interest in who “the fool” turns out to be, as it is a somewhat interesting take on that legendary character. Those expecting something along the lines of Lovecraft or Kuttner so far as the rats are concerned would be better served looking elsewhere. Perhaps Herbert…

- Aaron

The Women of Dread Carcosa: Valerie Leon Edition

2011-07-01T10:21:00.000-07:00

To celebrate my finally making Dread Carcosa look a little better (well, I think so anyway), how about another edition of "The Women of Dread Carcosa"?

Valerie Leon this time - the sexiest mummy Hammer ever unleashed on the silver screen. Well, part mummy...descendant of a mummy...lust object of a mummy...whatever.

- Aaron

Lovecraft Country...

2011-07-01T09:02:00.001-07:00

Hand-drawn map of witch-haunted Arkham by Lovecraft himself - how cool is that?

- Aaron

Undead undead undead...

2011-06-29T06:35:00.000-07:00

Ok, a little off topic from the sort of thing that's normally posted here, but I've been reading a lot of vampire fiction lately, and what better music to read bloodsuckers by than the immortal "Bela Lugosi's Dead" by Bauhaus?

Yeah, you're welcome.

- Aaron

Pacific 421 by August Derleth

2011-06-28T07:45:00.000-07:00

"Pacific 421 originally appeared in the September 1944 issue of Weird Tales"

Much like many of the Weird Tales stories of the era, August Derleth’s “Pacific 421” should have been introduced by Gaine’s Crypt Keeper, as it features that tried and true “murderer gets his via the supernatural” theme and a twist at the end as black as the Old Witch’s rotten teeth.

And for those who either don’t know or would like to be smart about it, yes, August Derleth did write stories outside the Mythos, yes, we have covered them here before, and yes, I am a fan of Derleth’s work – even his Mythos stuff – so we’ll try and keep things civil in this article and avoid any “he ruined the Cthulhu Mythos” business.

Now, on to “Pacific 421”.

The story itself features a ghost train – don’t laugh, it works – but that’s actually a minor part of the plot and hardly a character, as the main thrust of the story actually deals with the main antagonist (if we want to think of him as such) plotting to get his inheritance from his miserly stepfather, which of course eventually sees him taking the old man to be scared to death by the ghost train.

Unfortunately the old man can’t actually see the train (it’s some sort of selective haunting apparently), but he does feel it as it splatters him all over the disused train tracks and our hero figures he has it made – until he’s hanged for killing the old guy.

Gallows humour at its most literal, right?

Derleth does a pretty good job on this story, but it’s hardly one of his most memorable and really only worth talking about because it seems so much like a “Tales from the Crypt” story and actually appeared around the same time that comic was taking off (1950). Beyond that, well written as “Pacific 421” is, it’s not really worth hunting down, as it’s short and somewhat unmemorable and hardly indicative of the talent Derleth possessed.

The twist at the end manages to bring a smile, as does the old man’s somewhat unexpected end, but we’ve seen this same variation on that theme a dozen times in more interesting stories, so even that really isn’t worth recommending this one on.

Derleth managed to write a lot of really good weird tales beyond his work in the Mythos, but “Pacific 421” really can’t be counted among them. If you’re a fan of ghost trains or Derleth, this one might be worth hunting down, otherwise you’d do better with some of August’s more influential and lasting tales.

- Aaron

The Women of Dread Carcosa: Sophia Loren Edition

2011-06-26T17:15:00.000-07:00

I figured given my recent laziness (which I promise to soon make up for) it might be a good idea to return to Dread Carcosa a feature that I removed a few months ago, that being "The Women of Dread Carcosa", and who better to start with than Raquel Welch...what's that? We just had a Raquel post a little while ago?

Ok...how about Sophia Loren? She's kind of pulpy, right? No...how about "Legend of the Lost" with John Wayne, where they hunted for treasure in a lost city in the desert - very Robert E Howard, right? A little El Borak maybe?

Yeah, excuse enough for me. This'll be weekly, I promise, and things will pick up soon in new...er, old and exciting...er, weird at least ways.

- Aaron

The Vampire by Jan Neruda

2011-06-26T16:45:00.000-07:00

Jan Neruda's 1884 (approximately) short story "The Vampire" features a creature with some obvious supernatural leanings, and more than obviously the "look" of the undead, but is actually something entirely different. Beyond being psychic or perhaps farseeing, the creature isn't typical of what we consider a vampire, but when one digs a little deeper into the meaning - that being a humanoid that thrives on the death of others, indeed feeds off death - it turns out that Neruda's vampire is indeed a bloodsucker, though perhaps more of the lawyer variety than the standard Dracula formula.

"The Vampire" runs less than half a dozen wide-spaced pages and indeed most of that text is taken up describing the beautiful town of Prinkipo with the vampiric "twist" coming at the tale end of the narrative, so the story obviously doesn't have much to dig into, but I'll give it a shot for the sake of memory and for the use of those who might have interest (I'm sure there are some out there) but are unable to track down this somewhat rare tale.

The story begins with a small group - a family, the narrator, and a pale Greek - travelling to the aforementioned Prinkipo for a vacation, as the young daughter of the family is ailing and they feel the surroundings will boost her spirit. Sure enough it does as the group lounges in the sun beyond their hotel and the Greek, who they somewhat distrust, sketches their picture against the backdrop of the quaint town.

Everyone feeling much better they retire as the sky purples and hear a disturbance downstairs. The young bridegroom asks the hotel keeper what the problem is as the old man comes upstairs and he tells him he's just gotten rid of the Greek, who the locals know as "The Vampire", for he seems to have artwork of the recently dead on the very day they die.

You can probably guess who passes faint away to never return just as those words are uttered.

Ok, it's not the greatest story in the world, or the longest, and yes that same theme has appeared in the pages of Weird Tales and countless other pulps ad nauseum over the years, but it's use and the use of the vampire terminology are somewhat entertaining and the twist and the story's title make it all somewhat interesting.

The vampire's changing character in short stories of that era is always interesting. Granted most are pale imitations of wolfmen or Dracula or inhuman ghouls, but there are so many variations of the "the blood is the life" theme that it's always interesting to check out these strange takes on the idea.

Neruda's story isn't the best of the era or even the best use of that particular twist, but it is an interesting story and the twist is as black as the Greek's sunken eyes. It's a short read and well written, so I'd certainly suggest "The Vampire" for anyone seeking something beyond black capes and fangs in their vampire literature.

- Aaron

Note. "The Vampire" was originally written in Czechoslovakian and later translated into English. Whether anything was lost in this or not I can't say. Neruda wrote a number of other short stories, but this was his only weird tale - that I know of.

Clickers 2 by JF Gonzalez and Brian Keene

2011-06-19T10:09:00.000-07:00

"Clickers 2" picks up a few years after the original "Clickers" let the giant crab/scorpion hybrids loose on a small town on the East Coast and, unfortunately, more than a few years after Mark Williams - one of the co-writers of the original novel - passed away. Fortunately (...maybe) Brian Keene stepped in to fill his shoes and the literary legacy of the Clickers continues unabated.

Kind of.

I'm not going to suggest the original Clickers was one of the best books ever written, nor was it even the best giant murderous crustacean novel ever written, but it had a lot of charm, approached things in a little-boy manner that kept the story interesting and enjoyable, and featured some pretty original material (and thankfully wasn't just a Guy N Smith ripoff). Clickers 2 also features much of that mentality, but it also takes things a little further than it should and, for my money anyway, kind of does away with the "feel good" style of the original novel and replaces it with what I can only call "Keene-ness".

Of course, we all know that means gross sexuality.

Luckily this is kept to a minimum, and I can't even say for 100% sure that it was Keene that wrote that scene, but it really distracts from the overall story and makes the whole thing feel way dirtier than it really should. Bottom line on that before we move on and discuss the rest of the novel is this - sex with my violence and giant monsters? Fine, the more hot chicks the better. Rape with my violence and giant monsters? No thank you. Sure this goes back to Laymon and "The Cellar" and maybe even before that (I'm only focusing on the popular rise of rape's use in low-run horror fiction), but there are times when it's more acceptable than it ever would be in a Clickers novel.

There, bitching and moaning complete.

The story in Clickers 2 is basically the same as the story in the original Clickers only on a larger scale. Once again the Dark Ones drive the Clickers up onto land to overthrow humanity and feed, only this time there is some conscious thought (the Dark Ones are seeking revenge for humans killing some of theirs the last time) and things end a little quicker and a little more disappointingly than they did in the first novel.

The original novel's ending sucked. Clickers 2's ending blows. Ok, maybe the bitching and moaning wasn't so complete, but really, a decade on we should have come up with a better ending than "they went back into the ocean"...again.

So is there anything redeeming in Clickers 2? Yeah, a hell of a lot. Sure I've pissed around on the novel through most of this article, but it really is an enjoyable read and it does some pretty cool things with an already cool franchise, particularly the inclusion of giant Clickers, the Dark Ones becoming a more evil force (rather than the elemental force they were in the first novel), and the President of the USA being a complete and total religious nutjob who denies the whole thing is happening as a crab the size of a football field strolls down the road towards the White House.

The gore and crazy monster invasion angle is also back in full force and, I'll admit, a little better written than it was the first time around. That same thing can be said for the entire novel for all that, as Keene's easy to read, pulpy style is well used in Clickers 2 and the transitions between the authors are more or less seamless.

So, the bottom line is this. Clickers 2 misses the mark on a few things, but it is a worthy sequel and overall an entertaining read. I'd still put the first book before this one, but considering half the original writing team is no longer available and the subject matter is kind of hard to write seriously, it does a good job and keeps the series alive when it seemed like we might never have found out what was going on in that cave...

- Aaron

Random Imagery Vol. 3

2011-06-03T10:32:00.001-07:00

Ok, I've got no new articles to post, and I'll be away all weekend and not around to read any paperback trash or ancient pulps, so in the interest of not letting Dread Carcosa die (again), we have yet another round of Random Imagery.

You'll note this time around the images are somewhat Pam Grier heavy. I honestly have no excuse beyond my adolescent infatuations never leaving home, but considering it's Pam Grier, do I really need one?

- Aaron

A few thoughts on Countess Dracula (1971)

2011-06-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

Countess Dracula is no Vampire Lovers, even if it does star Ingrid Pitt, mention Dracula (rather than Le Fanu's Carmilla), and feature a lot more naked English girls than Vampire Lovers.

Movies aren't made on Stoker mentions and boobs alone though, despite what I may have said previously.

Based loosely - very loosely - on the real-life accounts of Elizabeth Bathory, Countess Dracula plods along and does very little as we're treated to largely one set, an aged Ingrid Pitt (granted it's makeup, but still), the most effeminate male love interest Hammer ever offered, horrible hats, facial hair, and costumes, and a story that really goes nowhere and does nothing despite having a little something to work with.

Granted the Bathory legend really doesn't make for a lot of bang, bang storytelling, but a little better could have been done with it than Hammer manages in Countess Dracula. They could have, at the very least, set us up with some of the lesbian overtones that Vampire Lovers is famous for, as Pitt encounters a number of "virginal" young ladies while draining their blood for her eternal youth.

Bottom line is this one would have been much better served had it either deviated from the somewhat boring "let's all hang around the castle" storyline or been a little sleazier. Maybe Jean Rollin would have been the man to see about something like that, or Jess Franco - anyone other than Peter Sasdy and his reliance on Pitt as a big name star (which, granted, she was but hardly enough to carry something this thinly plotted) and silly hats.

Hardly a passing grade on this one, but it is something of a "classic" because of Pitt and her frequent nudity - not to mention the infamous blood bath scene. I really can't recommend this one to anyone but the most hardcore of Hammer and Pitt fans, but if you aren't expecting much, or are genuinely interested in the Bathory legend, there might be something here.

For my money though, stick with Vampire Lovers. It's got everything Countess Dracula offers and then some. Plus Madeline Smith...

- Aaron

Clickers by JF Gonzalez and Mark Williams

2011-05-30T07:52:00.000-07:00

What is it with the literary killer crab? The books seem to become legendary almost overnight, damn near impossible to find, and the sort of thing that all the weirdos who follow this sort of thing either absolutely love or think is absolute trash. I'm obviously in the former category as killer crustaceans are easily in my top ten favourite things ever, but I can certainly understand why these novels have their detractors.

Well, at least the Guy N Smith ones. No way anyone could hate Clickers, right? I mean, how many killer crab novels do you know that feature creatures bad ass enough that the killer crabs are a food source?

J.F. Gonzalez and the late Mark Williams' "Clickers" is a cult classic and has been ever since it's original publication over a decade ago because of just that. It's certainly not that there's any great literary talent on display here, nor is the story that original (Smith's "Crabs" novels were said and done before this was ever written), it's just the fact that the story is so crazy, and so evocative of 50's b-movies and the giant monster craze (not to mention dementedly bloody and gory) that it’s impossible for readers of my generation and leanings not to love.

Of course, not everything here is perfect, but we’ll talk about the story first, then I’ll pick the book apart a little bit for the benefit of those who haven’t read it, but want to know what the fuss is all about.

The story involves author Rick Sychek moving to a small town in Maine for the summer to write his latest horror novel and get away from the big city. Of course, he’s not in town five minutes before he runs over a weird creature in the road, wrecks his car, and is hauled in by the local authorities. That’s your setup. A day later the town is more or less overrun with giant crabs with a taste for human flesh and every mammal along the coast has to take up arms to repel the crab invasion.

That’s the easy part.

Turns out the crabs – or Clickers – aren’t out hunting, they’re running away from something even worse that’s hunting them. Think Lovecraft. Think Innsmouth. Think humanity doesn’t have a fucking chance.

That combination of evils is my favorite – and arguably the best – part of Clickers. Sure anyone could throw together a cheesy novel about killer crustaceans, but when they’re just another victim, how cool is that? Throw in a ton of gore, some cool characters (Sycheck is pretty well what most of us want to be I think), and a straight forward, pull no punches narrative and you’ve got a classic.

Well, at least a classic for a certain part of the horror-reading population.

Understandably there will be many readers who won’t dig Clickers as much as I do. It’s not scary – nor does it really try to be – the characters are broadly written and in many cases stereotypes (particularly the local law), the book relies on gore more than a lot of readers would probably like, and the story, well, as much as I like it it is kind of silly.

Long story short you’ll either love or hate Clickers. It’s great at what it sets out to do, but anyone looking for serious horror or “good” literature, well, you should probably look somewhere else than a killer crab novel. Honestly I can’t recommend the book enough if it sounds at all like something you’d dig, but it is best to know what you’re getting before you shell out the dough for this one.

- Aaron

PS. The creatures hunting the Clickers in the novel are obviously a strain of Deep Ones from Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” (this is even mentioned by one of the characters in the book), but given that they go by a different name, are far more vicious than Lovecraft’s creatures, and behave differently (they have no real trace of humanity at all unlike Lovecraft’s Deep Ones), I wouldn’t classify Clickers as a Cthulhu Mythos novel, though it certainly could be thought of as one given the subject matter and the obvious suggestion that the Dark Ones are at least related to the fine people of Innsmouth.

The Cat from Hell by Stephen King

2011-05-20T15:37:00.000-07:00

(The Cat from Hell was originally appeared in Cavalier Magazine in the 1980s)

I picked up Stephen King’s “Just After Sunset” for two reasons. First it was a hardcover remainder on sale for $10, and I really couldn’t pass that up, and second because it contained “The Cat from Hell”, which was and is the best part of the short-lived “Tales From The Darkside” franchise, and I had to see if King’s story was as good or better than the filmed version.

Strangely enough things didn’t turn out the way you’d think.

For those unfamiliar with the story – and, by and large, the short story and the film share the same basic plot – a wealthy old man hires a hitman to kill a cat that’s living in his mansion. The killer figures the old guy has lost it but decides that a crazy man’s money is as good as anyone else’s, and accepts the job. Turns out the cat has already killed a few of the old man’s cronies, and while it cottons to the hitman for at least a little while, it isn’t yet willing to shuffle off the mortal coil. Things, of course, get difficult for everyone involved.

That’s the whole story, and while written out like that it seems kind of silly, it actually is kind of a cool idea and King does a good job of making as ridiculous a premise as a killer housecat feasible, though hardly scary. I assumed as much. What I wanted to know though, and what I laid down a perfectly good tenner to find out, is if the movie’s best scene is in the short story and, if so, just how King handled the writing of it.

The scene I’m referring to is, of course, the scene in which the cat finally dispatches the hitman by crawling down his throat and tearing him apart from the inside. Sorry if I ruined that for anyone, but honestly, you’ve had 20 years to familiarize yourself with “The Cat from Hell”, so that’s your own fault.

Anyway, the scene is in the book – though slightly different from the film version (mostly in location) – and while it is missing the brutality of actually seeing it, its damn near as effective and every bit as creative and violent, something which again makes me wish King had stuck to his pulp roots rather than what he’s been producing the last two decades.

Long story short the movie version of the story is better, but King’s short story is still really cool and a good example of the crazy bastard he used to be. I’m not sure it was worth ten bucks to remind myself of that (I honestly have very little interest in the rest of the short stories in the book), and I’d have much rather read it in the skin magazine it originally appeared in, but it’s nice to think about what kind of a nutcase we used to have at the head of the horror fiction tide, as opposed to what we have now.

- Aaron

A few thoughts on Priest (and further bloodsucking)

2011-05-19T05:06:00.000-07:00

So recently my lovely lady and I saw "Priest" in theaters for some reason (lack of anything better to do I guess), and while I'm sure everyone can tell exactly what it is from the trailers, or beyond that doesn't give a damn, I will state that while the movie was never exactly boring, it's hardly worth seeing.

The imagery of the world the characters live in was interesting - think Mad Max but controlled by the Catholic Church - as was the physiology of the vampires themselves (which were more bestial and less human than we normally see, as well as somewhat insect-like in their social structures and habitats), but beyond that the movie is a by-the-books action piece with a ton of ridiculous, superhuman feats (from the humans) and precious little characterization or focus on the plot, which is little more than an episode of "Have Gun, Will Travel" with vampires in place of men in black hats.

Somehow the people behind "Priest" also managed to leave out all the gore and nudity that this thing surely would have benefited from. I have no idea how, but that's the way it went down.

As bad as all that is though, at least Priest was original, and didn't manage to kick nostalgia in the junk the way the remake of "Fright Night" (one of the best vampire movies of all time - I don't care what anyone else says) surely will.

No Brewster, no Evil Ed, no Peter Vincent - no way.

How many people do you suppose we'll have to kill to stop the remake train from rolling right over us?

- Aaron

All Apologies

2011-05-18T10:18:00.000-07:00

Yeah yeah, I haven't been around for a month and what do I bring when I get back but a crappy article on a book about murderous houseflies that nobody but me has ever bothered to read. Guess I need to think of a way to make up for my absence and general crappiness, and how better than with the Goddess herself, Raquel Welch.

- Aaron (still alive, still weird, still in love with Raquel)

Killer Flies by Mark Kendall

2011-05-18T09:29:00.000-07:00

"Killer Flies" (1983) goes the straight and narrow route of "creature horror" (and if you've seen and read as much of this stuff as I have, that should just about tell you everything you need to know about the story). A scientist creates a strain of "super fly" to rid California of invading and destructive fruit flies, the truck carrying them wrecks in New Mexico, and without fruit flies to devour the new super bugs turn on the human population.

How many times have we been there? Not nearly enough if you ask me, but I've been told I have problems.

Mark Kendall (a name that may or may not be a pseudonym for someone more famous in this circle - if anyone reading this knows, let me in on it) tells the story straight enough, with little deviation from that main narrative in the books 150-odd pages. Few and far between are side plots, further away is any character development, and the plot holes, well, who really cares about them when you've got killer flies devouring people's eyes and peeling their faces off?

Obviously this is only going to appeal to certain readers, and I'm proud to say I'm among them. That's not to say that "Killer Flies" is a good book (even compared to the likes of "Crabs" and other killer animal novels of the era), as it's rife with poor plotting, bad characters, inanity that damn near makes you want to close the covers, and not nearly enough gore or sex to make the book any sort of worthwhile beyond the one reading and tossing it back into the pile.

Kendall's way of writing women (think a worse version of Laymon) and his racism towards Mexicans (which is quite apparent right from the get-go) are somewhat distracting as well, and really have no place in what should otherwise be a fun book.

He does a few things right - mostly the eventual appearance of giant flies, his straight-forward style, and the shortness of the narrative - but it's hard to recommend such a flawed novel to even the most hardcore killer insect fans.

If I was the sort of guy that graded things, surely "Killer Flies" would be well below the passing mark, but as it is I'll just say that you could do a hell of a lot better with novels of that era (again, Smith) and later (Pinborough, etc.), even if the actual killer fly subgenre is sadly lacking.

- Aaron

Random Imagery Vol. 2

2011-04-19T11:32:00.000-07:00

Yeah, we're back to this because I have nothing else to talk about.

- Aaron

PS. I have no idea who the girl is, but I really, really wish I did.

The Lake by Richard Laymon

2011-04-18T10:21:00.000-07:00

“The Lake” isn’t one of Richard Laymon’s better novels. It’s overlong, convoluted, somewhat boring, and never really goes where the title promises. There’s also precious little actual horror in the novel, and the death scenes are spaced literally hundreds of pages apart. Long story short, this is one to skip, but short post longer, I’m going to type a little more about the novel so that a) I remember what it was about it I didn’t like (and therefore don’t eventually reread it) and b) I might warn new Laymon-ites to steer clear of this one and pick up some of his better stuff.

So, just where did everything go wrong? Well, to begin with “The Lake” was published a few years after Laymon passed away, and may well have been rewritten, finished off, bulked up, or slapped together by someone else from notes or drafts of the original manuscript. That’s the best way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it – and with some of Laymon’s later works in mind, perhaps the right way – is that this just plain and simple wasn’t that good of a story, and most likely should never have been published without some serious editing. Truth is there’s a good chance it wouldn’t have been had Laymon not passed on, but hey, live and learn.

Well, you know what I mean.

The story itself is a mess. There are several weirdos running around and messing with a young mother and her 18 year old daughter. The cops, a killer largely unrelated to the overarching story, and various other menacing characters all show up as red herrings until the eventual mash-up of a finale, which makes precious little sense and is crammed with so much deus-ex machina that you can hardly believe anything of what you’re reading.

The rough thing is that getting to that mangled ending takes over 400 pages and precious little happens in the interim. The only thing that makes this novel even remotely readable is Laymon’s fresh, quick style and the fact that the whole thing is so goddamn crazy.

A psychic lesbian Amazon shows up, as does a house full of (possibly) cannibalistic old ladies, and a guy that everyone knows is a serial killer but still manage to find something about him they want to joke about. The worst part? This all happens on the same damn street.

Alright, that’s about enough. I really hate bashing Laymon – even if I do it regularly here – because he was such a huge influence on horror fiction, and an even bigger personal influence, but some of his novels just plain and simple don’t fly and “The Lake” is one of them. If you’ve absolutely exhausted everything else the man wrote, it might be worth a shot as it is written in his trademark style, but for anyone else I’d suggest against picking this one up, it really isn’t worth much, and is kind of a black mark on the man’s career.

- Aaron

Cthulhu in Carcosa

2011-04-17T09:01:00.000-07:00

You know your girlfriend is the coolest ever when these guys - along with the new Deadite edition of Clickers - are your Easter gifts. Not that there was ever really much doubt before, but I'm now officially the weirdest guy in Saint John.

Thanks Barb.

- Aaron

PS. Ignore the Science Illustrated issue in the background - that really doesn't help matters either.

Long Time, No See

2011-04-15T04:56:00.000-07:00

The post below still stands. I've got the better part of "The Lake" filed away in my rotted gray matter, but beyond that I've been absolutely fucked with the worst cold/sore throat/absolute ass beatings I've had in a long time. Maybe ever.

I know what you're thinking, man up you fucking mental cripple and type something, but the thing is, I can't work, I can't post random crap here either.

Things'll get back to normal soon enough.

- Aaron

Heading to the lake...

2011-04-10T09:01:00.001-07:00

May be a slight lull in posting the coming week (yeah, I'll start the suicide watch now) as I'm working my way through Richard Laymon's "The Lake", which is pretty good - if a little convoluted - at about the 100 page mark.

"The Lake" is one of the books that was pieced together/finished off after Laymon passed away in 2001, so I expect things will get sloppy and/or slapdash eventually, so we all have that to look forward to.

Anyway, that's about all I have to say for right now. The next post should be in regards to Laymon or some randomness I come up with along the way.

- Aaron

A few thoughts on A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

2011-04-06T05:22:00.000-07:00

Growing up the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise meant a hell of a lot to me - probably even more than I should be willing to admit. For a lot of years I was absolutely obsessed with Krueger and Langenkamp (my first love). I mean I had the t-shirts, Freddy posters on my walls (still have one), the doll, the comics, the novels - everything - and sure the obsession eventually checked out (or rather was replaced with other, more esoteric obsessions), but my love for Krueger and the original series still remains, which is why I was so reluctant to put myself through the remake.

Then it came on TV last night, and my resolution wavered and I decided that, hey, it couldn't be as bad as what they did to Jason, right?

Wrong.

I have no idea what they were going for here, but the only word that can really sum everything I bore witness to last night is "clusterfuck". Well, that and "insult". Dropping Robert Englund - who, let's be honest, will never be replaced as Krueger - was bad enough, calling this abortion a remake of Craven's classic is even worse, and what they actually did give us, well, I don't even know what to call it.

Essentially they took the best parts of the original movie/series, threw them away, and played around with some of the stuff that didn't work, all while effectively destroying that helpless feeling that the original movie managed so well. The also managed to destroy one of the series' coolest effects (Freddy coming through the wall and leaning over Nancy while she slept) by replacing it with cheap CGI (not to mention them ruining Kreuger's look and the "dragging across the ceiling" death), turn the protagonists into annoying caricatures of what they originally were, and make Freddy a wimpy, crying pedophile that no one in their right mind would ever enjoy watching. Granted that's kind of the point, and sure he was a diddler in the original movies too, but you still kind of liked him regardless because he was so cool. Haley is not cool. He was as Rorschach, he's not as Freddy.

Alright, that's about enough. I think I've sworn and complained more in this short post than on the entire rest of the blog. Bottom line is this "remake" (or whatever you want to call it) is an embarrassment and a slap in the face to all the diehard fans of the original series.

None of these remakes (post eighties Carpenter and Cronenberg) are worth a damn, but this one has to be the worst of them all. It's shit like this that makes me glad they don't remake books. What's that? They do? Christ...

- Aaron

Dead Sea by Brian Keene

2011-04-04T05:10:00.000-07:00

Brian Keene goes back to what he (arguably) does best in Dead Sea, which is, essentially, unleashing a horde of the living dead on a small group of isolated survivors. This is better known Night of the Living Dead Part 641 to those who have any interest whatsoever in zombie fiction, films, or history. Just because it’s derivative though – and let’s be honest, this and pretty much every zombie story since Romero’s first movie are – doesn’t mean it’s not entertaining.

Keene does a good job of moving the story along, his writing style is clean and easy (as usual), there’s plenty of nasty gore, and he even manages to add a few surprises to this otherwise stagnant theme. The story though, well, it’s hardly worth mentioning.

Right from the get-go the zombie infestation is well under way and we meet our protagonist – Lamar Reed – as he tries to escape from his home in Baltimore, as the entire city is not only infested with the dead, but also burning to the ground. As Lamar escapes his apartment and makes his way toward the waterfront in hopes of a nautical escape, he meets a few more of the story’s protagonists and things move along as you’d expect.

The group eventually boards a coast guard cruiser along with fifteen or so other people and they set off, free of zombies, but not free from the greatest danger in any claustrophobic zombie story – each other. You can probably guess where things go from there, as in-fighting and eventual infection cut the numbers down and it comes down, once again, to a thing of being eaten or starving to death.

Sure we’ve all been down that road a dozen and one times (maybe more…ok, definitely more), but Keene really does do some cool stuff that distracts from the story being so by the numbers. The inclusion of zombie animals – in particular extremely cool scenes with zombie sharks and a massive zombie whale – make the story that much more interesting as does Keene’s use of some over-the-top gore. Luckily he also manages to avoid his usual reliance on sexual violence and grossness, so we don’t have that to worry about.

On the negative side there really isn’t much to say beyond, again, the overused zombie story tropes. Keene also kind of hammers us over the head with the fact that his main protagonist is a gay, black man, and while this is at least slightly “new” in the overarching zombie theme (though Duane Jones might suggest otherwise), the message really doesn’t come across all that well and comes off as more distracting and unnecessary than anything else. It’s a minor complaint though, and I can see where Keene was going with it, so I’m not gonna harp on it too much.

Overall I’d say that this is one of Keene’s better novels – mostly because he played things straight (if you’ll pardon the pun) and avoided a lot of the Edward Lee-style gross sex that seems to be prevalent in so much of his stuff lately – and even a pretty good take on the standard zombie scenario. Some of the ideas he uses in the book would have benefited from being fleshed out or used a little more, but for all I know they have been in subsequent books and short stories, so I won’t even go there.

I guess the best way to close this is to say that Dead Sea is a good example of the power and talent coming from modern horror writers. A lot of people – myself included – seem to dismiss a lot of the modern stuff as being overly derivative or too reliant on extreme gore and sex (and to a degree that’s true) but a novel like Dead Sea really does give one a proper appreciation for writers beyond the Stephen King era.

Obviously highly recommended for fans of Keene, zombies, or plain old b-movie style horror.

- Aaron

On Sentient Ooze and Rafts...

2011-03-31T14:33:00.001-07:00

Because I can never, ever let things go, how about a few more thoughts on "The Raft"?

So the monster in the story differs from the monster in the movie in a couple of ways, and I'm pretty sure that I might be able to drag things back to Lovecraft (smile and nod Barb).

To begin with the creature in King's novel shows a slightly higher level of intelligence than the creature in the movie. Sure neither of them are overly bright - they're basically eating machines that can sense when a food item is nearby - but the story's creature seems to move more fluidly (no pun intended) and at times seems to be trying to out-think it's human prey (or at least plot to eat them when it knows they are onto it). That's kind of a minor difference, and hardly noticeable unless you obsess on these things the way I do. The next one is kind of cool though.

In the story the monster has the ability to hypnotize it's prey, something that arguably isn't seen in the movie version. The story creature actually draws it's prey towards it with "beautiful colors and shapes that play on it's surface". Maybe I'm the only one that sees (or hears, whatever) "shoggoth" (*) in that, but hey, I take it where I can get it. This also plays into the story's somewhat lackluster ending as the creature (ala Color Out of Space) seems to have something of an environmental affect on those it encounters.

The monster also has something in common with everyone's favorite sentient ooze, "The Blob", in that it dissolves it's prey and, well, it's a blob essentially. That's as far as I'll go with that though, as almost every sentient ooze dissolves it's prey and shares, at least in passing, a resemblance to Steve McQueen's mortal enemy.

King never goes the route of explaining exactly what the creature is in the story either, whereas they do in the movie (it's shown as being some kind of government created "thing" in the last frame of the film), though I think it could be argued that it's alien in origin, if for no other reason than the way King writes about it (and, again, it's mental domination over humans).

Alright, that's enough pondering on a creature that exists in only a few pages and only a few minutes of film. Obviously I didn't have a hell of a lot to go on so far as the thing's back story or habits or anything go, as it really is just a passing mention, but I'm a fan of the idea and I figure there have to be a few more weirdos out there like me, so maybe this is a start, or at least an idea.

- Aaron

* Obviously the primary characteristic of the shoggoths isn't their ability to hypnotize their prey, but it has been suggested - in further Cthulhu Mythos tales - that they do possess, to a certain extent, a similar ability. There is also a physical similarity that begs no mention and their diets, well, once again...

The Raft by Stephen King

2011-03-31T07:58:00.001-07:00

I, like most people who would be bothered reading this, love (and grew up with) the Stephen King/George Romero classics Creepshow and Creepshow 2. They were great movies and really played up the talents of both men while, at the same time, bringing back that nostalgic horror feel that I’ve always really dug – even when I was too young to be nostalgic.

My favorite story from the two movies was always “The Raft” from Creepshow 2. I’m not sure what it was about it. Maybe the feeling it inspires, that “end of summer, the cold is coming let’s go out and damn well do something” feeling that never fails to make me feel a little better and a little worse at the same time. Maybe it was the crazy monster, which was supposed to be an evil oil slick, but actually looked more like an evil garbage bag. Maybe, and this is the most likely scenario, it was the fact that, beyond the monster, the story was incredibly mundane and something that anyone could relate to.

I mean, who hasn’t been stuck sitting on a raft, not wanting to slip back into the cold water?

Anyway, with this in mind I finally sat down and read King’s original short story of the same name. Well, it’s not the original, and not of the same name, as he actually wrote (or rewrote) “The Raft” after having more or less lost his original version of the story, “The Float” after selling it to a shady porno magazine at the start of his career. I wish I had that kind of talent – I mean being able to perfectly rewrite a story, not getting my stuff published in shady porno magazines. Actually, right about now I’d take both or either…

How about I talk about the story itself now?

By and large it’s the same as the movie version, which is what most of us will be more familiar with I’m guessing. Four kids, two guys and two girls, head out to celebrate the end of the decent weather by swimming out to a forgotten raft in the middle of a lake. When they arrive they discover that, how about that, there’s something in the water. Something that likes to eat people. That’s pretty well the long and short of it.

King digs a little deeper into the characters, or at least one of them, than the film version of the story does and the death scenes are a little grislier. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the best scene in the film version – the “survivor” racing for the shore and being overtaken just as he reaches safety – isn’t in the story. That really bugged me, I don’t mind telling you that, and the actual ending of the story, well, you can kind of see why someone – maybe King for all that – altered it for the movie.

Beyond that one bit of disappointment though “The Raft” is really good and still manages to evoke that nostalgic feel that the film version does. King also mentions that the monster should screw off somewhere and audition for a Roger Corman movie, which I loved to no end.

Bottom line I guess is that both versions of the story are good, but they’re a hell of a lot better combined. Maybe “The Float” was the real classic of the three, we’ll never know, but if you get a chance to do the story and the short film back to back, I’d highly recommend it.

- Aaron

A few thoughts on Dead Snow

2011-03-29T19:10:00.000-07:00

Nazi zombies? Zombie Nazis? Either way I didn't have a hell of a lot of choice. Too absolute staples of exploitation and bad film/literature, how could I possibly not watch it? It's usually at this point that the other shoe falls and flattens my empty head like a pancake, but goddamn if Dead Snow isn't one of the best cheapo splatter movies I've seen in a long time.

It doesn't make a lick of sense, the "zombies" don't behave or conform to the usual standards at all, and the whole thing is little more than an ape of Evil Dead (or, more accurately, Evil Dead 2), but that all kind of works for it as six shades of crazy break loose and the whole thing goes absolutely apeshit as the undead Third Reich take on a cabin full of medical students who go from victims to an army of Ash's in about as long as it takes for the fat guy to get his skull split open.

That's about the whole story, but I'm not complaining. Yet.

Unfortunately all is not well in Dead Snow, and I'm guessing most of that is because of the (apparent) lack of budget. There's very little nudity (which is really unforgivable in a movie like this), the gore is sadly lacking in a lot of spots (though made up for in others), and the zombie makeup/effects are poor at best and at times somewhat distracting in their minimalism. I also had a bit of a problem with a lot of the undead Nazis not sporting the trademark armbands, but that may be more of a personal thing than an actual problem.

Bottom line I guess is that Dead Snow is kick ass - if you're used to low budget trash and are familiar with a lot of the eighties movies that very obviously inspired this piece. It was lacking in a few important aspects, but these are easily forgotten when the hot chick has sex with the fat guy in the outhouse, the feminine guy goes Rambo and mounts a forties-era machine gun on his snowmobile, and the two geeks beat the asses out of the Reich with hammers, chainsaws, and butter knives.

Yeah, it's an all-around good time. Check it out.

- Aaron

The Seed from the Sepulcher by Clark Ashton Smith

2011-03-28T05:24:00.000-07:00

* The Seed from the Sepulcher originally appeared in the October 1933 issue of Weird Tales *

Anyone who frequents this blog – for things other than pictures of Raquel Welch anyway – should know that I am a huge fan of all three things that “The Seed from the Sepulcher” encompasses. Clark Ashton Smith, the story’s writer, the fact that it showed up originally in Weird Tales, and the fact that it is among the rarest of the rare – a killer plant story.

What’s not to love, right?

This is usually where I’d write something suggesting otherwise, but the truth is, once again, Smith really delivers and while “Seed” might not be the best killer plant story ever written, it is a great weird tale and quite possibly the best use of killer plants ever. Somehow Smith actually makes the whole thing kind of scary, which we rarely see in sentient vegetation stories. How many times do you think that sentence fragment has been written?

A lot of the reason that Smith’s story is scary while others are merely weird or entertaining is because the whole thing has an almost surreal feel to it – both main characters are suffering, to one degree or another, from jungle fever throughout the tale – and the way that Smith writes the way that the plants undo their human hosts, well, it’s at once very evocative of Jack Snow’s “Seed” (which came years later) and very, very grisly. Particularly when we realize that the hosts become at least somewhat “willing”.

There really isn’t a lot to say story wise, which is why I skipped over that section earlier, but after that last paragraph it might be worth at least touching upon. Essentially we meet two orchid hunters and their Indian guides mid-adventure in some desolate part of Venezuela. Both white men have some sort of fever and it’s soon discovered that one man has become “implanted” with a seed from a pit full of bodies. The rest of the story involves the thing’s growth and the lengths his friend goes to to understand and stop the process. For a while anyway.

Smith also suggests that the plant’s might be alien – as in from another planet – as they’re found within ruins that seem unearthly, so that might tie into other weird stories (of both his and Lovecraft’s), but because the connection is tenebrous at best I’m not going to go into it.

At any rate “The Seed from the Sepulcher” is another fine example of Smith’s writing and, beyond that, one more to add to the short list of classic killer plant stories. Highly recommended for fans of classic weird fiction, the ludicrously talented Clark Ashton Smith, and any and all killer plant enthusiasts (there have to be more than me out there…right?).

- Aaron

PS. For those who don’t know, and because it has become an uncommon word, a sepulcher (often spelled sepulchre) is a tomb or burial vault. It can be used in reference either to the burial of bodies or, in some cases, the burial of treasure and relics. The titular sepulcher can be thought of as containing either of those things, as well as extraterrestrial plant life.

And just like that you know more than you did five minutes ago…

Randomness Vol. 4

2011-03-27T05:50:00.000-07:00

I picked up a new (the new? the last?) Bryan Smith paperback the other day, "The Killing Kind". I'm not sure why after the last time. Call it desperation, or psychosis, or a total lack of knowing what to do with five bucks, but either way it's mine and the pain is coming.

--

Having recently viewed "The Fly" again for the first time in years, I think I can safely say that I really wouldn't mind being half-human, half-fly. Of course, I'm referring to the original movie, not the Cronenberg one. That would make things a lot different.

--

So my girlfriend actually rented Sharktopus the other day - with surprisingly little prompting from me. I'm pretty sure that makes her a keeper. Now I just need to get her reading Lovecraft, watching eighties splatter movies, and listening to the Thickets...

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Twitter is kind of a stupid thing. I mean, a lot of internet stuff - blogs included to a certain degree - is stupid, but Twitter is really, really stupid. And now for something else painfully obvious...

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So since Caligula shuffled off the mortal exoskeleton I've been back on the "I want a giant centipede" bandwagon. For the most part those close to me are still against it. Sure they're poisonous and fast and overly aggressive and I have a hard time keeping my hands to myself, but it really isn't that bad an idea...

--

I think I actually like a song from the modern era - how weird is that. Seems I hear it every time I hang out with "normal people", and the damn thing is stuck in m head. I'm not sure what it's called but it starts "Hey there Delilah, what's it like in New York City". I think what little cred I have left is blown.

- Aaron

Witches' Hollow by August Derleth

2011-03-24T11:23:00.000-07:00

August Derleth’s 1962 short story “Witches’ Hollow” treads much the same ground as Lovecraft’s classic “The Dunwich Horror”, so much so that one could easily claim this story is a sequel to the other. It’s worth stating, though perhaps obvious, that “Witches’ Hollow” is nowhere near as good as “Dunwich”, and even though I freely admit to being a fan of Derleth’s work (why is it I seem to be the only one?) his heavy handed style really doesn’t work in this story as well as it does in others.

That’s not to say it isn’t enjoyable (and considerably better than many of the Mythos clones to come later), but the free use of Mythos elements, magic, the Necronomicon, forbidden knowledge, and many of the other Mythos tropes takes something away from the story, and it doesn’t quite manage to ever be scary – at least not in the way Lovecraft’s subtle horrors could be – though Derleth does capture that backwoods feel quite nicely.

The story, as I mentioned, is much like “The Dunwich Horror”, though set in the titular Hollow (which itself is written as little more than a smaller, less imposing Dunwich) and concerned with a school teacher trying to aid a strange boy in his class. He goes and meets the boy’s family and they are, more or less, the Whateley clan (that family is also mentioned as having members in the Hollow, and it’s suggested that the leader of this new clan and Wizard Whateley were related).

Soon enough the race is on as the teacher and a friend he meets while reading the Necronomicon (yeah…) decide to banish the evil from the family that the old wizard called down years earlier.

Like I said, much the same narrative – albeit it a truncated version – of Lovecraft’s story, but with a slightly more upbeat ending and a different evil alien god doing the possessing (it’s subtly mentioned towards the end, but the demon in this case resides on the Lake of Hali, which would suggest it is either Hastur or one of it’s emissaries).

Derleth does a good job of making the story interesting, and his writing style is, as always, engaging and easy, but it’s certainly understandable how – in at least this story – that his handling and interpretations of Lovecraft’s Mythos might put some readers off. Luckily – or perhaps otherwise – I have no problem with Derleth’s use of the mythology, so I quite enjoyed the story, but for those who prefer to stick with Lovecraft’s ideas (essentially taking the morality and humanity out of the myth cycle) this one will likely offend as much as Derleth’s more “biblical” Mythos tales.

At any rate I did enjoy it – particularly the mention of Hastur at the end – and would certainly recommend it to fans of Derleth (if there were any more but me) and Mythos fiction. For those, as well, simply looking for a story set in that universe, but with a slightly more cinematic feel, this story would be an excellent starting point.

- Aaron

Weed Species by Jack Ketchum

2011-03-21T09:36:00.001-07:00

I’m more than willing to admit that I originally thought Jack Ketchum’s “Weed Species” was about killer weeds. I don’t know why – I know Jack and Jack doesn’t write stuff like that – maybe it was the cover image or the name or my hope that an author as talented as Ketchum would go the “weird” route, but that’s what I thought. Eventually I learned different but I still wanted to read the story just on the off chance that I was wrong for a second time. I wasn’t.

“Weed Species”, like most of Ketchum’s stuff, is about human sickos and serial killers – more the former than the latter but I guess they’re the same thing anyway. It’s a short story and mostly details the exploits of a young woman and her husband, and once he’s out of the picture, other men that she turns evil. I guess the suggestion is that she’s the weed corrupting others. Or something like that. I’m not going to get too philosophical, remember, I wanted this to be about killer plants.

Like everything else Ketchum does “Weed Species” is well written and the man’s very obvious talent comes through on every page, the narrative though, and the point of the whole thing, well, they’re kind of lost on me. Basically what we have is one sicko “true crime” scene after another, each one more than realistically written and given in every detail. I’m not sure why, or for whom, this was written, so I’m cutting this one short.

Ketchum is a great writer and easily one of the most talented authors to ever settle into the horror genre (if you want to call his stories horror, which I’m somewhat uncomfortable doing), but stories like “Weed Species” (and much more in longer works like “The Lost” and “The Girl Next Door”) just don’t seem to have any purpose beyond being off-putting.

If you dig the true crime style of horror stories this one might be for you, but I’m not going to recommend it at all. Might be obvious, but I think this would have been much better handled by someone like Charles Band, you know, the kind of guy who actually would have included some killer weeds…

- Aaron

A few thoughts on Leprechaun 2

2011-03-17T11:37:00.000-07:00

So it's St. Patrick's Day and what better way for a weirdo like myself to celebrate than with an annual viewing of one of the Leprechaun movies - in this case, Leprechaun 2, which I somehow saw when it first came out but have managed to avoid seeing again until right now. Like the little guy says, sometimes your luck runs out.

I'm sure everyone's aware of just how bad this series got when the Leprechaun went to space and, even worse, when they turned the whole series "urban" and had him rapping and fighting thugs and, well, I'd really rather not relive the last couple of movies. Anyway, I'd been under the impression that the series "went bad" - I was wrong - it's always been bad. Not as bad as the "Hood" movies, but still, pretty damn wretched.

The first movie had Jennifer Aniston and the pogo stick death. The second movie has...well, not a whole hell of a lot.

This time out the Leprechaun is looking for a bride for his 2000th birthday (waited even longer than me) and runs into a bunch of trouble with the girl, her boyfriend, and his old Jewish guardian. Horror ensues.

Allegedly.

It seems to me that the gore was dialed way back in this entry, not to mention the story (granted there wasn't much in the first either, but the Leprechaun being a villain alone made it at least somewhat original), the nudity, and sure as hell the acting. The love interest (for man and monster) has to be the worst actress I've ever seen - and I've seen a lot of bad horror movies.

Really there's nothing to recommend this movie on. Sure a few of the jokes work if you find Warwick Davis and his antics amusing, and the scene with the pot of gold in the old dude's stomach was alright, but beyond that this movie is horrible and really doesn't stand up after 17 years.

Imagine that...

I'd like to say something to sum the whole thing up - or at least come off as clever like so many of the guys that write about bad movies do - but there really just isn't anything to say about this movie. It tries - God does it try - but in the end it's boring, derivative, heavily censored, and severely lacking. I can well imagine the sea of shocked faces at that discovery.

- Aaron

One True Love...

2011-03-16T10:39:00.001-07:00

Mine is apparently giant spiders, what's yours?

I say that because today I bought "Feeding Ground" by Sarah Pinborough despite a ton of factors working against it - namely my not having read the first book, the book coming from those asshats as Leisure, and perhaps most telling the fact that Sarah is a...girl. Yeah, I'm kind of sexist when it comes to splatter, what can I say?

Here's hoping I'm proven wrong.

- Aaron

PS. I also picked up "Joyride" by Jack Ketchum, mostly because it also contains "Weed Species", which I had originally thought was about killer weeds, but it looks like I might be wrong.

PPS. Kind of off topic but, considering the post title, maybe not - it's not a good idea to read Jack Ketchum and listen to Terry Reid at the same time. You thought you were depressed before...