To my small cadre of loyal readers, I want to wish you all a safe, scary, and happy holiday season! Thank you all for indulging me in my little rants on one of my favorite subjects. I had a very nice holiday season myself, as I'm sitting on new copies of Laid to Rest, Sweeney Todd, Murder Party, and Dance of the dead.
Stick around. We got more podcasts, more interviews, more top ten lists, and more demented ramblings! Me and Professor Demon Bunny both thank you for your support and wish you a happy new year.
Every Halloween, and probably now after every Twilight movie, damn near every entertainment website publishes a list of their favorite vampires. As a complete...um...sucker for these kind of light articles, I always wind up a bit disappointed afterward. The lists are basically the same. It's the guy from Near Dark, the guy from Lost Boys, Edward, the kid from Let The Right One In, and a bone thrown to Count Orlock from Nosferatu as the scariest vampire ever captured on screen. By and large, these vampires tend to fall into two categories: the tormented creature of the night and the overenthusiastic predatory date rapist.
Don't get me wrong, the lists are usually pretty good. But there are a lot of great vampires out there that don't get a lot of recognition. So, without further ado, here's my favorite vampires:
Dracula
My elementary school had a deal with Scholastic books where they sold tons of young adult books at discount. I'd bring their catalogue home and my parents, indulgent creatures that they were, bought me everything I wanted. Among the little treasures I picked up were kid-friendly versions of classic novels like Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Dracula.
I loved those books. They introduced me to the fog-swept streets of Victorian England and the monsters that lurked among the cobblestone streets and tastefully-appointed drawing rooms. The books were wonderful gateways to imaginative fiction and classic literature. My favorite was, of course, Bram Stoker's immortal Dracula.
I loved the creepy Transylvanian Count, the decaying old keep on the mountainside, the sexy vampire women that inadvertently ushered me into puberty, the polite first meetings with the Count, Lucy wasting away, the chase across the mountains, and the exciting final battle between hero and monster. That shit was FUN.
The Count was cool. He was elegant and predatory and threatening. He hadn't been shellacked with that layer of romantic angst that vampires would pick up in the following years. Reading that book was a wonderful introduction to the character and it left a lasting impression on me. I have a copy of Dracula I picked up from my trip to Transylvania, I have a piece of masonry from Vlad Dracul's actual castle a few inches from me as I write this, and I've collected a bunch of goofy memorabilia. Dracula always was and will be the man.
Louis and Lestat
The whole romantic vampire thing started here. After Interview got published, vampires became less about monsters and more about power fantasies. Still, I have a lot of fondness for the silly, soppy little vampires of Anne Rice's tales.
I first encountered Lestat and Louis during my freshman year in high school, when I was all Gothic and susceptible to flowery prose. Until that point, vampires were undead soulless things, but getting to see history and morality from a vampire's point of view was fascinating.
I empathized more with Louis when I was younger. While all the superpowers and glamor sounds fun, I would have shared his distaste with hurting people. As time went on and my morality crumbled like a sand castle in a tsunami I came to love Lestat's "gentleman death" vibe. I didn't stick with the series long enough for him to become a Jesus allegory and I have come to understand that Anne Rice has since renounced her earlier work after her return to Catholicism. But I still greatly enjoyed both Interview and The Vampire Lestat.
Morbius The Living Vampire
Among my many nerdy obsessions, I was a huge comic book geek. I started reading during the late eighties, when dark-tinged supernatural heroes like Ghost Rider were big. Marvel, seizing on the popularity of the character, created a crossover series called Midnight Sons, reintroducing classic horror heroes into their own series. The best of all these books focused on Spider-Man's former vampiric nemesis Morbius The Living Vampire.
Morbius was unique in that he was not a supernatural vampire. The product of a botched medical experiment aimed at saving him from a life-threatening disease, Morbius developed powers and limitations suspiciously similar to a traditional vampires. While compelled to kill by a near-overpowering thirst, he was horrified by his actions.
One of the things I liked about Morbius was how intensely he struggled with his need for blood. Vampires are often a metaphor for addiction, though many romantic vampires jettison this aspect of the mythos. Morbius was a good man brought down by his curse, and the only way he reconciles himself with his needs is to prey on killers and other urban scum. He straddled the line between morality and damnation, and was pretty damn entertaining because of it.
Alucard
Do you guys remember the third Castlevania game? In it, you could pick up one of three allies in your quest to take down Count Dracula. The most useful one was undoubtedly the wall-climbing pirate guy, but if you were willing to to cross the map you could enlist the assistance of Alucard, Dracula's estranged vampire son.
I loved the notion of playing a vampire. Sure, he didn't really do much beside change into a bat, but it was still a cool idea. Konami later expanded Alucard's role into a full game, the cult favorite Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Alucard was elegant and cool, and the notion of a son slaying his father for the greater good made for some interesting drama.
Drusilla
I'm not the world's biggest fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but they did get some things right. One of them was Drusilla, the mad seer vampire.
I loved Drusilla. She was gorgeous, she wore clothes and hairstyles from a different age, she spoke in delusion-fuelled poetry, and unlike most of the Whedonverse's vampires she never stopped being a nasty piece of work. Many of Whedon's vampire antagonists eventually came over to the light and often became diluted and boring but Drusilla remained a monster. She's one of those characters I'd like to transport into other horror stories because she shines a dark little light whenever she appears.
Cassidy
Garth Ennis's Preacher series, a cross-genre Vertigo series about a supernaturally-gifted preacher's search for God, gave us Proinsias Cassidy, Irish uprising volunteer turned vampire. He was one of the richest characters in comic history. Cassidy avoided the classical tropes of vampire. He didn't have fangs, he wasn't particularly elegant, and he was selfish and irresponsible. Unlike ninety percent of vampires-both good and bad-he was defined by who he was rather than the rules he had to live by.
I really liked Cassidy's backstory, particularly his involvement in the 1916 Easter uprising and his chance meetings with several historical and literary figures of Ireland and America. Vampires have the advantage of immortality and have the opportunity to witness history in the making. Most writers treat this aspect of vampirism in a very glib, shallow manner, but Cassidy's experiences are all cleverly filtered through his hard drinking, party-boy lifestyle. His wry observation on Brendan Behan's drinking and social habits are worth the price of admission alone.
Cassidy's lifestyle of overindulgence, fuelled by his body's ability to take whatever punishment life can throw at it, made him into a selfish, immature, weak person. He betrays his friends, sinks into drug addiction, hurts the people who care about him, and leaves a trail of ruined friendships in his wake. After burning every bridge and pissing away any shot at redemption, he reaches out to his last friend, trying to dig his way out of a very human damnation. Cassidy was a shit, but he's one of the best characters I've ever spent time with.
Bunnicula
Hm. I was a little kid. I like vampires. I like bunnies. Just ask Professor Demon Bunny.
Therefore, I loved Bunnicula.
Blade
Remember that scene where the guy winds up in a strange dance club underneath a meat warehouse? He's in a weird crowd, enticed by a mysterious girl, and suddenly blood pours from the sprinklers. He screams, everyone cheers, and he realized they're all vampires. He runs away in terror, stumbles to the floor, crawls to safety, and just when all hope is lost...
Blade.
Another one of Marvel's Midnight Sons characters, Blade really came into his own after he got into the movies. His world was dark and exotic, full of hedonistic vampires and the trappings of extreme wealth. Blade and his blue-collar operation wreck havoc on the vampire's ordered little world. It's all muscle cars and shotguns and harsh language, a far cry from Van Helsing's genteel efforts.
Invincible super-killers tend not to interest me, but Blade has some depth to him. As the series goes on we get the sense that Blade's quest borders on the fanatical He's at war with his predatory nature, he hates the vampire community yet he doesn't seem to like humans all that much. He exists in a terrible outsider state, orphaned and alone, turned cruel by his quest. Even when he's reunited with his supposedly dead father figure, the coldness Blade shows to the man while trying to figure out if he's turned reveals just how disconnected he is. It's a lonely life and Blade struggles to get by. He's just plain cool, and he is the obvious inspiration for Blacula Hunter Jefferson Twilight from The Venture Bros.
Eli
I have covered Let The Right One In at length before, in one of my better articles. The same stuff still holds true. I loved Eli's relationship with Oskar, I loved the weird combination of regret and viciousness that characterized Eli's personality. I loved the savage brutality of Eli's feeding, which is about a million miles away from any sexy neck nibbling. Like Cassidy, Eli works primarily because he/she is a great character. I am absolutely terrified about how bad the upcoming American remake will be.
Vampire: The Masquerade
There are two articles sitting on my blog dashboard that I haven't figured out a way to complete yet. One is on chilling Slave Labor Graphic mini-series Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and one on the now-defunct White Wolf RPG Vampire: The Masquerade. Both works had a tremendous impact on my adolescence.
V:tM is a game about secret societies of vampires operating beyond human awareness. You create a vampire and attempt to negotiate the Byzantinian politics of supernatural society, committing evil deeds while attempting to hang on to their last shreds of humanity.
V:tM worked because it covered every possible variation on vampirism. There were elegant vampires, thuggish vampires, exotic vampires, saintly vampires, devil vampires, and everything else in between. You could have a lot of fun creating an alternate persona for yourself. The system wasn't perfect and the mythology crumbled under its own weight, but it was a fun world to game in.
Nothing
Back in the harsh and angst-ridden years of my mid-adolescence, I got involved in the Goth scene. My entire wardrobe went black, my music became much more down-tempo, and my hair got longer and very multi-colored.
I went to a small-town high school without much access to a counter culture, so me and my few "babybats" had nothing but the internet, some CDs, and old copies of Propaganda and Carpe Noctem magazine. We passed these little items back-and-forth between us and they lead us to the work of Gothling writer Poppy Z. Brite.
At the time, Poppy Z. Brite was famous in the Goth scene for writing Lost Souls, a vampire novel full of Goths, violence, New Orleans, and gay sex. Lots and lots of gay sex.
Seriously. Lots.
Obviously, this isn't a bad thing. Reading Poppy Z. Brite definitely broadened my mind. Once my frail little Catholic boy brain recovered from the shock, I found a really great story. Nothing, the moody protagonist, mirrored the isolation and impatience I felt from being a little odd in a square community. His slow awakening into his vampire heritage is fascinating to watch, and Brite is very good at painting Southern Gothic decay. It's a great book and writing this blog post has compelled me to re-read it.
Anyway, those are some of my favorite vampires. I hope you dug this list, and I'm sure I'll come up with a few more right after I publish this. In the meantime, enjoy the deluge of vampire romance.
There is nothing more controversial in the internet horror community than Rob Zombie's Halloween remakes.
Some people think the are vicious, uncompromising, take-no-prisoners masterpieces of modern horror. Others think they're a travesty of John Carpenter's original work, soaking the eerie horror of Michael Myers in Zombie's white-trash aesthetic. Either way, ever since the "hobo Myers" images released some months back, the boards at Bloody-Disgusting have been essentially one big screaming match. Because of that, I can't really write this essay in a vacuum.
I didn't like Zombie's Halloween remake much. I do think humanizing Michael Myers removes a lot of the mystique of the character, Zombie's shock-offensive dialogue sounded ugly and unnatural coming out of the mouths of innocent teenagers, and the jump in focus from Myers to Laurie Strode resulted in a movie that felt like it was missing its center. Despite all this, I can't seem to stop myself from watching the movie every few months or so. Underneath the problems I have with Halloween, it was clearly made with an enthusiasm that makes the experience infectious.
That pretty much describes my feelings toward this new one.
I was kinda optimistic, despite all the hobo/maskless Myers stuff. The trailers hinted at a supernatural angle, which I really missed in the original. The trailers emphasized a supernatural element, something I felt was missing in the original. Michael Myers's life, crimes, and death were all pitifully human. It made him a psycho, but it really didn't make him a monster. This one appeared to have Michael Myers' mother commanding him to kill Laurie and reunite the family in death. Sure, that doesn't really jibe with his mother's nicer incarnation in the earlier movie, but at least he's got some of his old mojo back.
I think Zombie has a lot of potential. The Devil's Rejects was a helluva movie and I like directors who take their horror seriously. Having said that, the dude does have a white trash aesthetic that doesn't necessarily jibe with the subject matter. When he's writing a bunch of outlaw banditos the dialogue works, but when he's writing teenagers in a small suburban community he completely misses. This is where I get all "but it's not the Halloween I rememmmmmberrrrr..." but I always remembered Haddonfield as a boring suburb, not a rotted meth-lab town. I don't remember Laurie Strode talking like an angry metalhead trying to shock her parents. This is kind of a goofy thing to say about a horror movie, but it's all meaner and uglier than I want it to be.
One of the core problems of the remakes is Zombie puts too much focus on too many characters. The movie would have been better served with following Laurie bouncing between her, Myers, and Dr. Loomis. The iconic Dr. Loomis really gets the short end of the stick here, as he spends the movie being unpleasant until he dies for no reason. Speaking of unpleasant...
I do have to give credit to Rob Zombie and Scout Taylor Compton for making Laurie Strode's damaged mental state believable. The best final girls, from the original Laurie Strode to Scream's Sydney Prescott are all traumatized by their experiences. They become isolated, suspicious, and destructive, and their vulnerabilities become as much of a challenge as the maniacs that stalk them. Zombie's Laurie Strode is a very honest portrayal of how a terrified young woman would behave. She fluctuates from chaotic to destroyed, and it's a really good portrayal. Unfortunately, she's not particularly likable. I liked her room mate/friend Annie Brackett better. I gotta get this out of the way: I have a HUGE crush on Danielle Harris, the actress who played Annie Brackett. I keep meaning to write a big I HEART DH article on her, but the long and the short is I think she's more adorable than a basket of bunnies, even Professor Demon Bunny. But Annie comes off as a much more sympathetic and likable character than Laurie. She's much more composed, much more confident, and much more capable than Laurie, even though she was arguably put through far worse in the first film. I thought it was interesting that she lived with and took care of Laurie, but was not in her social circle anymore. She even occasionally seemed exasperated with Laurie's behavior, which wouldn't have been out of line given that Laurie seemed to go gutter-punk chic.
So having Michael Myers rape and butcher her was a little bit much.
We all knew she was going to die. The trailer shows her running away from Myers. But Myers goes a step further and rapes her. It's not entirely out of character, as Zombie's Myers is a much angrier and more vicious creature, but raping Annie took the character and the story into a much uglier direction.
Horror creators have a symbiotic relationship to their creations. Brian Pulido looked very similar to his Evil Ernie and Michaeal Myers looks kinda like Rob Zombie on steroids. I do kinda wonder what compelled Zombie to include such a scene.
Beyond that, quibbles. Why did Myers show up to the party, zero in on Laurie's one friend, and disappear after murdering her? Why is Mrs. Myers such an evil bitch now after being such a nice person in the original? What exactly was Dr. Loomis thinking when he entered that shack in the end? What was with all the goddamn close-ups?
Whatever. Despite all the grips, I'm still gonna see it again and I'm probably gonna own the DVD. Unkle Lancifer at Kindertrauma wrote an amazing article defending the movie. Also, here's a Rob Zombie interview. Finally, here's the cream-of-the-crop of the horror blogadoo world weighing in on Old vs. New Myers. Enjoy!
My loyal readers, I come to you hat-in-hand to admit that I am a prejudiced person.
When I wrote my Living Deadreview, I spoke a little bit about Almost The Last Story By Almost The Last Man, a fantastic story by Scott Edelman. His credits listed that he'd been previously published in Eden Studios anthology tie-in for their All Flesh Must Be Eaten zombie role-playing game. While writing my review, I wrote something vaguely snotty about how I was surprised that a writer this good could come from the gaming world.
Fast forward a few days later. Someone involved with the anthology contacted me and asked, very politely, if I'd ever actually read the book. I hadn't. I've read plenty of tie-in novels growing up and most of them were poorly written. I put my ear to the ground, heard some generally positive feedback, and decided to give The Book of More Flesh a fair shake.
Turns out I wasn't disappointed.
A big part of the anthology's success is due to the fact that the writers aren't particularly bound by the source material. Most role-playing games come with elaborate settings that writers are expected to adhere to. All Flesh is less about building a specific world and more about giving the players a wide variety of options to build their own flavor of zombie apocalypse. Without any particular constraints from the franchise, the anthology featured a bunch of talented young writers giving the whole zombie thing their best shot.
The whole say-something-about-individual-stories thing seemed to have worked well for me before. Let's do it again:
Goobers by Scott Edelman: When I was a teenager, the slacker philosophy among my moron friends went something like this: Don't be known for working to your full potential. People will come to expect it of you. After being knocked on my ass by his contribution to Living Dead I expected a repeat performance. It's pretty good but it didn't rattle my cage like his previous efforts. It has that jokey construct a lot of horror stories have, where the tale is a big lead-up to the shocking final punchline.
The Husks by Paul Finch: Paul Finch is a British police officer and, reading between the lines of the story, he's dissatisfied with the leniency of the British penal system. This story is essentially a cathartic "he-had-it-comin'" revenge piece. Generally I'm all for these, but it reads like a lecture and the American psychic "hero" is shrill and unpleasant. Still, it had a serviceable, EC-style twist ending.
The Hounds of Love by Scott Nicholson: Astute readers among you will remember that my co-reviewer and confidant is one Professor Demon Bunny.
PDB lives with me. He is, indeed, evil. He tears my furniture up, seduces my womenfolk, and attacks my house guests without provocation. Despite all this, I love the little bastard. So I was a little bit pissed off when The Hounds of Love started with the graphic killing of a cute little bunny.
I was all set to HATE this story. Killing defenseless bunnies is a no-go for me. Yet somehow Scott Nicholson got me back on his side. Abusive parents, budding young sociopaths, and rural gothic settings are nothing new, but Nicholson made them emotionally engaging. I felt BAD for the bunny-killing bastard, and the way zombies were integrated into the story was inventive and unexpected. This was definitely one of the high points of the collection.
Fading Quayle, Dancing Quayle by Charles Coleman Finlay: So, apparently Charles Coleman Finlay is smarter than me. The notes in the back of the book describe the story as being inspired by the works of "cognitive science philosophers." This term is new and sexy to me, so I'm going to use it as a pick-up line at bars and parties. I didn't really take anything away from the story. It was frantically paced and had a confusing narrative voice. Still, I gotta assume I'm too dumb to understand it.
Trouble by Mark McLaughlin: I loved this story. Seriously. Loved it.
Part of it is that I am a pretentious art guy who likes hanging out with a pretentious art people. McLaughlin gets the general tone of reminiscence and acrimony that would fit in well with that type of crowd. It's somewhat artificial, but he has enough gusto to pull it off. The story also has the most unique composition of any tale in the book, and I'm a big fan of genre writers breaking the traditional narrative format. Framing the tale as an interview allows the characterization to come to the foreground, and the tale ends with the satisfying, creepy end.
Naked Shall I Return by Tom Piccirilli: I liked the collegiate town feeling of the story and I liked the lead character's relationship with his immature roommate, but this story had too many people explaining stuff to me.
Falling Into Naught by Douglas W. Clark: Y'know, ever since (as far as I know) Joe R. Lansdale's On The Far Side of the Cadillac Desert With Dead Folks there's been a stream of pseudo-western zombie tales featuring lone tough guys wandering through a wasteland of violence, depravity, and sleazy zombie brothels/gladiator pits. I like these types of stories. They provide a more gung-ho counterpoint to the endless stream of existentialist angst that a lot of zombie tales apply with a trowel. This one was pretty entertaining, even forgiving the earnestly hokey final line.
Sitting With The Dead by Shane Stewart: A touching and tense story about a young man standing vigil over his grandmother's body, this was another favorite of mine. The notion of having cathartic moments with your dead relatives is a fairly unexplored idea among the zombie anthologies I've read and the leads have a great rapport with one another, particularly the dead grandma who finds a new honesty in death. This one would make a great stage play.
The Black Rose by Don D'Ammassa: This little tale of cowboys and curses is a little talky and a little pokey, but it's got a lot of great characters, a sexy femme fatale, and a razor-wielding madam with a heart of rattlesnake venom. This would have made a tremendously messed up episode of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman.
Charlie's Hole by Jesse Bullington: My first impressions of Charlie's Hole was largely negative. It felt like the writer got a copy of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and wanted to copy the Vietnam-era nastiness without the artistic context. It started out unpleasant and forced, but redeemed itself when the characters went deep into the claustrophobic tunnels and encountered the creepy Lovecraftian sorcerer in the catacombs. There's some great horror set pieces and a fantastically gruesome ending. Overall, a win.
The Dead Kid by Darrell Schweitzer: This story also appeared in the Living Dead anthology. My review stands. Good stuff.
Brainburgers and Bile Shakes by Jim C. Hines: There's a lot wrong with this story. It's a big cocktease for one. It takes place in an amusement park where the living dead are shackled in bondage and the teased breakdown of order never happens. The lead character is an introverted nebbish whose appeal to his love interest is mystifying. Basically, nothing happens in particular. Still, I had a great time wandering around the amusement park with these two characters. They were sweet and sad and kinda charming. It gets a tentative thumbs up.
ZOMB, Inc. by J. Allen Thomas: Another incredibly fun popcorn story, the Kafka-esque struggles of a temp doing drudge work in a zombie-staff office until his brain is soft enough to eat completely rocks my socks off. The jokey impatience of the lead character's point of view is painfully familiar to anyone who has spent time in a cubicle farm. Post this on the company bulletin board and wait for the internal memos to circulate.
Life Sentence by David Dvorkin: So, help me out with something here. The criminal's plan was to have his organs removed, have his skin hardened with a chemical, be sent to space to mine precious minerals side by side with zombies, sneak said precious minerals past the guards (while naked), and sneak back in time for back alley surgery before his life supplies run out? What, the future had no armored cars to rob? This one lost me early.
Martin's Inferno by Tyler Sigman: Arr matey! Creature be fascinated by dark stories of nautical adventure! This story could have been handed to me inscribed on the flesh of a leper and I still would have found something nice to say about it. Fortunately I don't have to, as it was pretty danged good. Thar be pirates and treasure and curses and the walking deadskies, all told in a breezy, entertaining style. Definitely one of my guilty pleasures.
Memory Remains by Steve Eller: Being that zombies are dead and young writers love writing melodramatic stories of loss and Human Suffering, zombie stories occasionally get weighed down like leaky water balloons with capital-M Meaning. This one has a depth of feeling and sometimes gets cumbersome under the weight, but it does a pretty good job tying the character's rapidly desiccating body with the loss of his soul. I'd buy this story a beer, but I'd probably get bored if the conversation went on too long.
The Little Death of Mr. Phillips by J. Robert King: Easily the best story of the collection, this tale follows a Walter Mitty-esque insurance salesman as he applies his practical, unruffled mind to the problem of his zombification while pining for a pretty receptionist.
There's a ton of stuff to like in this story. Poor Mr. Phillips is such a sweet, compelling character, marching gamely toward his doom while trying to enjoy life a little. The story draws a lot of horror from the actual process of decay, something rarely touched in zombie fiction. Finally, it doesn't simply ape the zombie cliches. There's no desperate survivors trapped in a global apocalypse and the only thing threatening about zombie Mr. Phillips is the stench. The reader is instead treated to a story of love, loss, and missed potential, all capped by a beautifully written, poetic ending. Seek this one out.
The Hyphenated Spirit by Scot Noel: Oh my. Tea and crumpets. In the same way I'm a fan of piratical tales, I'm a sucker for high society aristocratic Britannia, especially when it focuses on conjoined twins and a zombie sibling. In this story, zombie-ism is an affliction left undiscussed in polite society, yet the relationship between the prim (if perverse) Apollonian half and her carnal Dionysian sibling eventually degenerates in a manner that would make monocles drop into champagne glasses. Everyone is so wonderfully well mannered and erudite and gloriously perverse!
Inheriting Red by Alexander Marsh Freed: One of the most unique and inventive zombie stories I've read, Inheriting Red is told from the point of view of the psychic entity controlling the zombie hordes, who sees their gruesome path of consumption as an act of love. I really liked the hive-mind's point of view, and her memories around her messianic brother were lyrical and lovely. This tale could easily have been expanded into a compelling novel.
Goddamn Redneck Surfer Zombies by Michael J. Jasper: First off, you can't lose with a title like that. Second, this story has that fun, unflappable tone of one of Joe R. Lansdale's tales. Third, it's genuinely funny. Forth, it has one of the best narrative POVs in the book. Fifth, it's called Goddamn Redneck Surfer Zombies. I'm gonna give this story to girls I have a crush on. If they like it, they're a keeper.
Night Shift by Rebecca Brock: Don't get me wrong, I liked this story on the aggregate. It's a solid, classic Romero-zombie siege yarn, with good writing and tense scares. The lead character, a relief worker at a juvenile care facility, is an absolute prick. He's vicious toward his charges, rude toward his coworkers, and eager to abandon the situation. Sure, he's got a pregnant wife to get home to, but he's such an unpleasant person that I was actively rooting for his family's annihilation. I gather the writer wanted to create a hard-bitten tough guy, but even tough guys gotta have something good about them.
Bright Angels by K.Z. Perry: I was a little skeptical of this story at first. The notion that people would 'adopt' dead children who'd been domesticated to mimic emotion struck me as a prime example of the uncanny valley theory in action. Still, when the orphanage lights go down and the reader gets a glimpse of what goes on behind the domestication, the story becomes tantalising. The first layer of this story is a little flabby, but the stuff under the skin is very enticing.
So yes, I'm very happy that I took a look at the anthology. It took me some winning over at first, but they got some interesting new writers telling really good stories. At some point in the future I'll write about my experiences running All Flesh but for now go check out this book. It's a bit tricky to run down, but it's definitely worth the hassle.
I'm always hesitant to be too harsh to creators who have real passion for the genre. Horror needs new blood and if you've got guys like Rob Zombie and Adam Green out there who genuinely love and revere this stuff, you've gotta support them and hope their talent grows. The big problem with fanboy creators, unfortunately, is that the stuff they bring to the table tends not to be anything original but reheated leftovers marketed as "homage" to the genre classics. Horror in general suffers from a strong desire to cannibalize its past rather than look to its future and I think this was one of those things that hamstrung my enjoyment of Hatchet.
Don't get me wrong, I had a very good time watching the movie. It's well-shot, it's got a wacky sense of fun, it's completely over the top, and the acting is really good. But after the movie was over, after the popcorn bowl was empty and my co-reviewer Professor Demon Bunny
was put away for the night, I left the movie with that "I just ate too much fast food" feeling. I'm full, but I'm not really satisfied.
Fanboy films spend way too much time playing to the audience. Characters just about turn to the camera and comment directly on the tropes of the stalk and slash genre. The humor is way too self referential, in a way that breaks my connection with the story. It does no good, for example, to comment on how dumb a certain action is when the characters go and do it anyway. And while I love and admire the work of Tony Todd, Kane Hodder, Robert Englund, and all the other chappies they wrangle into these things, their appearance is kinda distracting. I see Tony Todd in his AWESOME cameo as an eccentric voodoo tour guide and I get distracted by salivating fanboy glee.
That sense of self-satisfaction torpedoed one of the other major aspects of the the movie for me, which was that Hatchet wasn't particularly tense-scary. Oh, it's got blood by the buckets, courtesy of effects maestro and Friday the 13th Part VII helmer John Carl Buechler, but we see the monster too often, he's not particularly subtle or mysterious, and it's just a series of jump scares between strings of jokes.
Having said that, one of the things that really worked for me was the cast. I've been known to complain about the slasher movie tendency to make their stock victims complete assholes, but the characters in this movie were all really fun and likable, from the sweet Midwestern couple to the theatrically goofy tour guide. Also, I tend to think it's crass to go on about how attractive a leading lady is but if I went to high school with Tamara Feldman I totally would stutter around her.
In the end, I thought Hatchet was fun in a very superficial way. I don't want to come down too harsh on the movie or on Adam Green. I watch DOZENS of slasher movies a year and most of them are crap. His, at least, was kinda nifty. But I hope that he's got something more inventive and original than "Old School American Horror" up his sleeve. That ground has been trampled on by so many feet it's impossible to distinguish any one individual mark.
Posts
