The End of Summer

DROOL

2012-02-22T08:57:00.001-05:00

Filmmaker Jeremiah Kipp was nice enough to pass along a few of his short films. Their style is of the more difficult path to travel - they contain very little to no dialogue. It is up to the visuals alone, as well as the actors' expressions, to carry the story. For what must be low budget affairs, they are all beautifully done. The cinematography, especially, is worth calling out. And Kipp definitely gets points for getting Friday the 13th composer Harry Manfredini on board. His brief score for Crestfallen is somewhat reminiscent of Psycho, which is always a plus.

One of Kipp's short films, Drool, is embedded below. Kipp has been vetted by many of the genre's more offbeat filmmakers. The day you have kudos from both Frank Hennenlotter and Larry Fessenden is the day I stand up and take notice.

Drool is most definitely NSFW.

Drool from Slick Devil Entertainment on Vimeo.

LEVITY

2012-02-21T13:36:00.000-05:00

THE DOOR OPENS

2012-02-20T18:45:00.001-05:00

Finally got around to see The Woman in Black. A nice, old-fashioned Gothic ghost story. It was refreshing to see a horror film for adults.

Marco Beltrami's film score work is pretty hit and miss with me, but I rather liked his stuff for TWIB.

My favorite track:

THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME

2012-02-17T13:58:00.001-05:00

Reading The Devil All the Time is like watching P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia, but instead of your characters yearning for new, misplaced, or rediscovered love, the residents of Donald Ray Pollock’s sophomore novel are only looking to murder, betray, or fuck (both literally and metaphorically). Like the aforementioned film, the characters of Devil are all connected in some way, and most of those ties are built on something depraved and awful. The novel drips with blood, violence, sex, and everything else that makes Pollock's world go around.

The first character we meet is Willard Russell, a veteran of World War II on his way home, memories of his fellow soldiers crucified by the enemies in the South Pacific still weighing heavily in his mind. Despite this morbid recollection, Willard meets a pretty waitress in a diner – and knows on the spot that she will become his wife. It’s a pleasant and even romantic way to begin a novel that soon devolves into acts of depravity perpetrated against both the innocent and the deserving: Animals – even childhood pets – are nailed to crosses in a half-cocked offering to the gods. Hitchhikers are forced to participate in a psychosexual photo shoot, spearheaded by a completely conscienceless couple. Lives are taken for little to no reason.

Taking place in both West Virginia and a charming-sounding town called Knockemstiff, Ohio (both the title and setting of Pollock’s other work – a short story collection), the story spans several years and mostly follows the growing son of Willard Russell, a boy named Arvin who as a child suffered through his father’s mental breakdown after his mother began slowly dying.

While not every character in Devil is a complete sociopath, those that show acts of kindness and grace are quickly punished with a life-shattering occurrence—the death of a loved one, the manipulation of love, or a life of isolation. In Pollock’s world, there is no hope and no love, and if there is a God, he simply doesn’t care.

The chapters are short for what’s most assuredly an adult read—so short in fact that in the book’s 290-something page count, there are over fifty chapters. While I’m sure this was to carry on with the book’s vignette-like depiction, I’m sure it was also to give the reader a break. I doubt there is one sole chapter in the book where a character does not perform an act of evil against another human being, or reflect on one previously committed—and that character’s lack of humane reaction to it.

The Devil All the Time is certainly not for everyone, but for those who aren’t scared of lifting the veil and staring hard into the darker side of life, the journey to Knockemstiff is terribly and disgustingly rewarding.

ATTACHED LIVING

2012-02-15T13:27:00.006-05:00

My parents divorced when I was young, and I stayed behind with my mother in our house while my father temporarily moved to a nearby apartment complex. He remained there for roughly six months before moving out in a hurry. It was many years later that he told me about the strange occurrence he had experienced while living there.

His immediate neighbors were the Thornes, and they consisted of a young woman and her newborn baby. The father of the newborn did not appear to be in the picture. In the first month he lived there, he saw Ms. Thorne and her baby frequently, as they were both in and out of their apartment every day at the same time, apparently maintaining a steady schedule. The baby was always in her arms, cooing away and grasping at the air with tiny hands. My father would smile and nod at them, and he always received a warm greeting right back.

One day, for seemingly no reason, Ms. Thorne broke the routine. She and her baby no longer came and went each day. In fact, several weeks went by – which soon turned into months – and my father had not seen them a single time. He knew they hadn’t moved out of the apartment—he could hear the baby crying through the walls. He had learned for himself after raising a son that infant babies cried often —at all hours of the day and night, and for almost any reason. Because of this, he was patient with the young woman. He did not feel the need to go banging on her door and demand that she quiet the baby’s cries, like some other neighbors would have done. Despite his patience, the crying grew more and more intense over time. He began to wonder if perhaps the baby was ill, and because he was a doctor – he had worked for years in family medicine – he grew concerned. He wondered if maybe the young mother could not afford to take her baby to see a doctor. However, he did not want to intervene, recognizing that it was not his business.

One day at the nearby corner market, my father happened to run into the Thorne woman, who held her baby in her arms. My father approached her under the guise of saying hello, but really wanted to see if he could ascertain just what illness – if any – might have been plaguing her child.

He described the young woman as cordial, if a bit fatigued, and her voice was strained and weak. He made small talk with her, and she politely answered the questions he asked, though she did not volunteer any additional information about herself. Her baby was wrapped in a blanket and a pink knit hat covered her head. She told him her baby’s name was Jessica, who slept soundly as the two spoke. My father explained that he was a doctor and offered to periodically perform check ups on the baby to save her time and money. The young woman thanked him, but graciously declined, telling him she did not trust the care of her daughter to anyone with whom she was not already very well acquainted. My father told her that he absolutely understood, and after a while he bid them goodbye and went back to shopping.

Several more months went by and my father continued to hear crying through the walls. The tiny voice had become hoarse from the constant wails, and my father began to wonder if the child was not ill after all, but perhaps being abused in some way.

One night, the crying grew especially intense. It was full of anguish and he had deduced that the baby must have been in great pain, so he decided it was time to intervene. He placed a call to the local police and explained the situation, requesting that they also dispatch an ambulance to the woman’s apartment. They assured him they were on their way, but after hanging up, he decided to go to the apartment himself.

He walked to the Thornes’ apartment door and knocked several times. The young woman did not answer, and the crying continued. He knocked again, louder this time, but still she did not answer. Finally he tried the knob, and seeing that it was unlocked, he entered. A smell he described as foul and sick hit him in the face—the kind of smell that infests a place not touched by sunlight for months on end. He could smell body odor and rotting garbage. He retched almost immediately.

He followed the crying to a back bedroom, which was large, and most assuredly the master bedroom. He tried flipping the light switch on the wall, but was greeted with an empty click—the lights did not come on.

“Ms. Thorne?” he called into the darkness. “It’s Dr. Jesper from next door.”

The crying in the room continued, but the young woman did not answer him.

“Mrs. Thorne?” he called again. He heard rustling on the bed in front of him. He took one step closer and barely in the darkness he could see the baby. She lay on the bed, blankets draped across her small body. He recognized the pink knit hat that he had seen the infant wearing months earlier. As he crept closer, the crying continued. Finally he reached the baby and picked her up. He brought her out into the hall to examine her under the light.

It was only after he noticed that the baby’s crying seemed to stay behind in the bedroom when he realized he was not holding a baby at all, but rather a child’s doll. Its glassy eyes stared up at him, and in shock, he dropped it on the floor.

“No!” screamed a voice behind him. The young woman hurtled out of the darkness and pushed him aside. He fell back against the wall as the young woman scooped up the doll in her arms and cradled it. “She won’t eat!” she cried. “No matter what I do, she won’t eat!” She fussed with the baby doll for a moment, shoving a bottle of yellow, sour milk into its plastic mouth. She then turned and looked at my father. She opened her mouth wide. And the cries he had been hearing since moving in – cries eerily similar to that of a baby – assaulted the apartment.

On the wall behind the young woman was a photo of a baby—the kind taken at hospitals immediately following arrivals of newborns.

“Baby Jessica” was inscribed on the photo.

And on a small shelf below the photo sat a tiny, golden urn.

SHITTY FLICKS: THE RAVEN

2012-02-14T21:34:00.000-05:00

Shitty Flicks is an ongoing column that celebrates the most hilariously incompetent, amusingly pedestrian, and mind-bogglingly stupid movies ever made by people with a bit of money, some prior porn-directing experience, and no clue whatsoever. It is here you will find unrestrained joy in movies meant to terrify and thrill, but instead poke at your funny bone with their weird, mutant camp-girl penis.

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up.

T h e R a v e n

By Edgar Allan Poe,

by way of Ulli Lommel

Once upon a midnight dreary,

while I pondered weak and weary,

I, not thinking, brought back

The Raven from the movie store.

While I watched, I wished for napping,

to save me from this horrid crapping,

As Ulli Lommel's vicious trapping

made me feel like his dirty whore.

"Tis god awful," I muttered, "this movie I abhor-

I wish I had rented something more."

-----

Ah, distinctly I remember,

this would have offended famous Edgar,

as he clawed the lid of his coffin,

deep below the graveyard floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow;

nothing's brought me greater sorrow,

had I just been somewhat stronger,

I'd've thrown this out the door...

Perhaps shook it off and ascended to the store,

but I stayed for Ulli's hellish tour.

-----

What this movie was about, I can't be certain,

It filled me with boredom-

a boredom I'd never felt before.

An hour's time, the cast sat eating--

and only talking, ain't that cheating?

With nary a reference to Edgar Poe,

what was this movie made for?

If not to honor a genius,

why suffer through this chore?

This it is, and nothing more.

-----

"Damn this movie's scent of farting!

Damn it all!" I shrieked upstarting-

"This movie doth much offend me,

I wish to hear me snore!

Does Ulli think my brain is broken,

perhaps a boob who is soft-spoken,

As to not see in this 1800's sequence

a very modern bedroom door?"

I pressed fast forward; the movie soared,

thought of watching; held it more.

Qouth the Raven – "I'm a bore."

-----

And The Raven, so unfitting,

please leave sitting, PLEASE leave sitting,

It can't bore you if it stays unseen,

sitting in the movie store.

Late at night, it haunts my dreaming,

I even sometimes wake up screaming,

And shake away haunts of Ulli's movie,

filled with nothing but corny gore.

Nightly I pray o'er us all,

my knees tucked 'neath me on the floor,

I pray to God that no luckless soul ever lift

The Raven from the movie store.

Quoth the Raven – 'I'm a snore.'

Tim Burton was glad he was able to bond with Jack Nicholson,
even if it was over their retarded 80s punk hair.

AN INSIDIOUS AGENDA

2012-02-13T22:08:00.003-05:00

You were about eight. You suffered night terrors - these awful fits of pure fear. You were terrified of an old woman you said used to come visit you at night.

I dismissed your stories. I told you to grow up.

Then I saw her for myself.

At first I thought it was a camera problem. Then I saw her again.

In each photo, she got closer...

...and closer...

...and closer to you.

In the back of your mind, you're still afraid to have your picture taken...

... aren't you?

REVIEW: HAUNTED CHANGI

2012-02-10T09:23:00.000-05:00

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a group of filmmakers set out to make a documentary about a creepy, isolated, abandoned location where ghosts and ghoulies and long-legged beasties are said to romp and rave and eat human skin…and then the filmmakers find out that stuff is all true OMG! In that regard, Haunted Changi is nothing new. Following The Blair Witch Project beat-for-beat, we meet our filmmaker characters, they interview locals about the legends of Changi Hospital, and then the investigation begins.

Good news, though: Haunted Changi, shot entirely on location at the real titular hospital in Singapore, is actually pretty decent. It won’t knock your socks off with its originality (or lack thereof), and except for a few scares, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before. But found-footage fans should find it a worthy addition to the sub-genre, as it produces some nice scares and features a lot of pretty Asian women.

Andrew is our director. He seems down-to-earth enough, and isn’t nearly as bullheaded as Blair Witch’s Heather. Sheena is the producer/narrator of the project. She may or may not be completely, head-over-heels in love with Andrew. Farid is the soundman. If ever there were a Singaporean surfer hipster, it’s definitely him. Lastly we have Audi, our cameraman who handles the bulk of the documentary’s filming.

Their project is a documentary on Changi Hospital—once a military barracks during the 1930s/40s, and subsequently a military prison camp before finally becoming a general hospital until closing in 1997. It’s a legitimately creepy place, and once you hear the stories of all the horrors that took place within its crumbling walls – namely the torture of prisoners and the mass beheadings of Chinese natives – the place becomes even creepier.

As is always the case with premises like these, shit gets real.

The Good

For the most part, our characters come across as real kids. They crack jokes and mug for the camera. They are fledgling amateur filmmakers determined to make a documentary on a very creepy legend that has permeated their home since World War 2. That includes walking the long-abandoned hospital’s hallways and tunnels…

Haunted Changi tells the story in a different way—this time, the characters don’t walk into their creepy location never to come out again; likewise, the characters go in and out several times. But what sets Haunted Changi apart from its brethren is the psychology behind it all—what their entrance into Changi Hospital does to our characters’ psyches. And the movie allows us to see that—it no longer becomes a case of screaming “don’t go in that room!” at the screen, but rather, “don’t go back inside that place you moron!”

The movie opens with a well-done snippet from the documentary that the kids are working on, which is an interesting and unique start to the film. It’s a brief, five-minute introduction that provides the audience with all the back-story they would need on Changi Hospital to appreciate the creep that is soon to follow. Part of me wishes the entire runtime of Haunted Changi had actually been an expanded version of this introduction, as it was well done and morbidly fascinating.

One of the joys of watching films from another part of the world – horror especially – is the inclusion of unique and culturally specific legends and myths you’d otherwise not have previous knowledge about. In this case, I speak of the “pontianak,” a vampire ghost, which is said to haunt the hospital…

Begin Spoilers.

…in the form of a Chinese native who has made the old hospital her home. For part of the movie, Andrew is the only one among them to have met this character. To him, nothing about her is strange or aloof. He has no inkling of what she really is.

The pontianak does pretty much what you’d expect it to—attaches itself to a host and gradually sucks the life from it…but because it’s a ghost, there’s no way to fight it. It is this creature that begins to affect our characters in different ways: Andrew falls victim to her first, and becomes a mumbling, giggling fool toward the end of the movie. He begins to go almost mad, having totally fallen under her spell. Farid, too, becomes sick—too weak to even leave his home. Sheena, however, becomes furious at the notion that Andrew seems to be “involved” with this Chinese native, and the group nearly disassembles by film’s end.

End Spoilers.

The Bad

While Singapore is a territory that utilizes twenty different languages, their primary language is English. Despite this surprising fact, our English-speaking cast does not speak 100% comfortably in this tongue. To avoid sounding like a complete ignoramus, I disclose that I am clearly not from Singapore, so I can’t speak with great confidence as to the languages our actors know and don’t know. All I can say is this: their English isn’t the best – not their understanding of it, but their delivery of it – and at times it became a disservice. For a movie like this, the characters have to seem absolutely genuine, or else it just won’t work. Because it’s shot to look real, it has to feel real, and when it becomes clear that some of the actors aren’t entirely comfortable with some of the English dialogue, it takes you right out of the movie. Based on the cast’s delivery of their lines, it leads me to believe that they normally utilize another native language with which they are more comfortable. Perhaps shooting in English was a decision made early on in an effort to make the movie more appealing to a wider range of territories. (Let’s face it, us ‘Mericans don’t like to read.) If that’s the case, then it’s a forgivable decision. But let’s just say I’m glad the DVD came with subtitles.

My only other real complaint about the film would be the ending. It’s not a bad one—not at all…but I wanted more. Found footage movies tend to throw everything and the kitchen sink at you during their last five to ten minutes. And while Haunted Changi does show you more during the ending than it did previously throughout the movie, it leaves you feeling unsatisfied. For instance, the groundwork for mass beheadings has already been laid—and while this is exploited during the movie for a clever and creepy scene, it feels as if it could have been exploited just a bit more. I’m not saying include a scene of a headless body chasing our characters down the hallway with blood shooting from the neck…but maybe – far, far down the hall – have the kids see a barely visible headless specter quickly pass from one doorway through another.

But that’s just me. I like dudes with no heads.

The Low Down

Found footage movies all follow one basic framework to tell their stories: meet the characters, learn the history of their investigation, see the characters die. It is a tried-and-true formula that, to me, is generally a recipe for success. Are all of these movies basically the same? Sure, you could say that. But as far as I’m concerned, a decent movie is a decent movie. If it’s a concept I’ve seen a hundred times, I don’t care—so long as it’s well told, written, and acted. Also, creep helps.

GRADE: B

BEFORE THE PLAY: PREQUEL TO THE SHINING

2012-02-09T12:05:00.004-05:00

By Stephen King

Scene 1: The Third Floor of a Resort Hotel Fallen Upon Hard Times

It was October 7, 1922, and the Overlook Hotel had closed its doors on the end of another season. When it re-opened in mid-May of 1923, it would be under new management. Two brothers named Clyde and Cecil Brandywine had bought it, good old boys from Texas with more old cattle money and new oil money than they knew what to do with.

Bob T. Watson stood at the huge picture window of the Presidential Suite and stared out at the climbing heights of the Rockies, where the aspens had now shaken most of their leaves, and hoped the Brandywine brothers would fail. Since 1915 the hotel had been owned by a man named James Parris. Parris had begun his professional life as a common shyster in 1880. One of his close friends rose to the presidency of a great western railroad, a robber baron among robber barons. Parris grew rich on his friend’s spoils, but had none of his friend’s colorful flamboyancy. Parris was a gray little man with an eye always turned to an inward set of accounting books. He would have sold the Overlook anyway, Bob T. Watson thought as he continued to stare out the window. The little shyster bastard just happened to drop dead before he got a chance.

The man who had sold the Overlook to James Parris had been Bob T. Watson himself. One of the last of the Western giants that arose in the years 1870-1905, Bob T. came from a family that had made a staggering fortune in silver around Placer, Colorado. They lost the fortune, rebuilt it in land speculation to the railroads, and lost most of it again in the depression of ’93-’94, when Bob T.’s father was gunned down in Denver by a man suspected of organizing.

Bob T. had rebuilt the fortune himself, single-handedly, in the years 1895 to 1905, and had begun searching then for something, some perfect thing, to cap his achievement. After two years of careful thought (during the interim he had bought himself a governor and a representative to the U.S. Congress), he had decided, in modest Watson fashion, to build the grandest resort hotel in America. It would stand at the roof of America, with nothing in the country at a higher altitude except the sky. It would be a playground of the national and international rich – the people that would be known three generations later as the super-rich.

Construction began in 1907, forty miles west of Sidewinder, Colorado, and supervised by Bob T. himself.

"And do you know what?" Bob T. said aloud in the third-floor suite, which was the grandest set of apartments in the grandest resort hotel in America. "Nothing ever went right after that. Nothing."

The Overlook had made him old. He had been forty-three when ground was broken in 1907, and when construction was completed two years later (but too late for them to be able to open the hotel’s doors until 1910), he was bald. He had developed an ulcer. One of his two sons, the one he had loved best, the one that had been destined to carry the Watson banner forward into the future, had died in a stupid riding accident. Boyd had tried to jump his pony over a pile of lumber where the topiary now was, and the pony had caught its back feet and broken its leg. Boyd had broken his neck.

There had been financial reverses on other fronts. The Watson fortune, which had looked so secure in 1905, had begun to look decidedly shaky in that autumn of 1909. There had been a huge investment in munitions in anticipation of a foreign war that did not happen, and had not happened until 1914. There had been a dishonest accountant in the timbering end of the Watson operation, and although he had been sent to jail for twenty long years, he had done half a million dollars worth of damage first.

Perhaps disheartened by the death of his oldest son, Bob T. had become unwisely convinced that the way to recoup was the way that his father had couped in the first place: silver. There were advisors who contended against this, but after the calumny of the head accountant, who was the son of one of his father’s best friends, Bob T. trusted his advisers less and less. He had refused to believe that Colorado’s mining days were over. A million dollars in dry investments hadn’t convinced him. Two million had. And by the time the Overlook opened its doors in the late spring of 1910, Bob T. realized that he was precariously close to being in shirt-sleeves again … and building on the ruins at the age of forty-five might be an impossibility.

The Overlook was his hope.

The Overlook Hotel, built against the roof of the sky, with its topiary of hedge animals to enchant the children, its playground, its long and lovely croquet course, its putting green for the gentlemen, its tennis courts outside and shuffleboard courts inside, its dining room with the western exposure looking out over the last rising jagged peaks of the Rockies, its ballroom facing east, where the land dropped into green valleys of spruce and pine. The Overlook with its one hundred and ten rooms, its staff of specially trained domestics, and not one but two French chefs. The Overlook with its lobby as wide and grand as three Pullman cars, the grand staircase rising to the second floor, and its ponderous neo-Victorian furniture, all capped by the huge crystal chandalier which hung over the stairwell like a monster diamond.

Bob T. had fallen in love with the hotel as an idea, and his love had deepened as the hotel took shape, no longer a mental thing but an actual edifice with strong, clean lines and infinite possibility. His wife had grown to hate it – at one point in 1908 she told him that she would have preferred competing with another woman, that at least she would have known how to cope with – but he had dismissed her hate as a hysterical female reaction to Boyd’s death on the grounds.

"You’re not natural on the subject," Sarah had told him. "When you look at that there, it’s like there was no sense left in you. No one can talk to you about what it’s costing, or how people are going to get here when the last sixty miles of road aren’t even paved–"

"They’ll be paved," he said quietly. "I’ll pave them."

"And how much will that cost?" Sarah asked hysterically. "Another million?"

"Nowhere near," Bob T. said. "But if it did, I’d pay it."

"You see? Can’t you see? You’re just not natural on the subject. It’s taken your wits, Bob T.!"

Perhaps it had at that.

The Overlook’s premier season had been a nightmare. Spring came late, and the roads were not passable until the first of June, and even then they were a nightmare of washboards and axle-smashing chuckholes and hastily-laid corduroy over stretches of jellied mud. There was more rain that year than Bob T. had ever seen before or since, climaxed by a day of snow flurries in August … black snow, the old woman called it, a terrible omen for the winter ahead. In September he had hired a contractor to pave the last twenty miles of the road that led west from Estes Park to Sidewinder, and the forty miles from Sidewinder to the hotel itself, and it had turned into an expensive, round-the-clock operation to finish the two roads before the snow covered them for the long, long winter. The winter his wife had died.

But the roads and the abbreviated season had not been the worst of the Overlook’s first year. No. The hotel had been officially opened on June 1, 1910 at a ribbon-cutting ceremony presided over by Bob T.’s pet congressman. That day had been hot and clear and bright, the kind of day the Denver Post must have had in mind when they took "’Tis a privilege to live in Colorado" as their motto. And when the pet congressman cut the ribbon, the wife of one of the first guests fainted dead away. The applause that had begun at the cutting of the ribbon dried up in little exclamations of alarm and concern. Smelling salts had brought her around, of course, but she had come back to the world with such an expression of dazed terror on her vapid little face that Bob T. could cheerfully have strangled her.

"I thought I saw something in the lobby," she said. "It didn’t look like a man."

Later she admitted that it must have been the unexpected heat after all the chilly weather, but of course by then the damage had been done.

Nor was the tale of that day’s reverses all told.

One of the two chefs had scalded his arm while preparing lunch and had to be taken to the hospital closest by, far away in Boulder. Mrs. Arkinbauer, the wife of the meat-packing king, had slipped while toweling herself dry after her bath and had broken her wrist. And finally, the crowning touch, at dinner that night, Bob T.’s pet congressman swallowed a piece of heavy Western sirloin strip steak the wrong way and choked to death in the full and horrified view of two hundred guests, nearly all of them there at Bob T. Watson’s personal invitation.

The pet congressman had clawed and clutched at his throat, he had turned first red and then purple, he had actually begun to stagger among the assembled company in his death-throes, bouncing from table to table, his wildly swinging arms knocking over wine-glasses and vases full of freshly cut flowers, his eyes bulging hideously at the assembled revellers. It was as if, one of Bob T.’s friends told him much later in private, Poe’s story about the Red Death had come to life in front of all of them. And perhaps Bob T.’s chance to make his beloved hotel a success had died on that very first night, had died a jittering, twitching, miserable death right alongside the pet congressman and in full view of those assembled.

The son of one of the guests who had been invited for the gratis opening week was a second-year med student, and he had performed an emergency tracheotomy in the kitchen. Either he was too late to begin with or his hand shook at a critical moment; in either case the results were the same. The man was dead, and before the end of the week, half the guests had departed.

Bob T. mourned to his wife that he had never seen or heard of such a spectacular run of bad luck.

"Are you so sure that bad luck is all it is?" She responded, only six months away from her own death now.

"What else, Sarah? What else?"

"You’ve put that hotel up in the tabernacle of your heart!" She assured him in a shrill voice. "Built it on the bones of your first-born son!"

Mention of Boyd still made his throat roughen, even a year later. "Sarah, Boyd is buried in Denver, next to your own mother."

"But he died here! He died here! And how much is it costing you, Bob T.? How much have you sunk into the wretched place that we’ll never get back?"

"I’ll get it back."

Then his unlettered wife, who had once kept house for him in a one-room log cabin, had spoken prophecy to him:

"You’ll die a poor and sorry man, Bob T. Watson, before you see the first pennyworth of profit from that place."

She had died of influenza, and took her place between her son and her mother.

The season of 1911 had begun just as badly. Spring and then summer had come at more normal times, but Bob T.’s younger son, a fourteen-year-old boy named Richard, had brought him the bad news in mid-April, still a full month before the hotel was due to open.

"Daddy," Richard said, "that bastard Grondin has diddled you."

Grondin was the contractor who had paved the sixty miles of road, at a total cost of seventy thousand dollars. He had cut corners and had used substandard material. After an autumn of frost, a winter of freeze, and a spring of thaw, the paving was breaking up in great, rotted chunks. The last sixty miles of the trip to the Overlook would be impassable by buggy, let alone by one of the new flivvers.

The worst thing about it to Bob T.’s mind, the most frightening thing, was that he had spent at least two days of every week supervising Grondin’s work. How could Grondin have slipped the substandard materials past him? How could he have been so blind?

Grondin, of course, was nowhere to be found.

Repaving the roads was more expensive than the original paving had been, because the original paving had to be taken up. It would not serve even as a foundation for the new road. Once again work had to proceed around the clock, entailing overtime wages. There were holdups and snags and confusions. Wagons drawing the materials up from the railroad in Estes Park lost their wheels. Horses burst their hearts trying to draw overloaded wagons up the steep grades. There was a week of rain at the beginning of May. The road was not re-completed until the first week of July, and by then most of the people Bob T. had hoped to draw had made their summer plans and less than half of the Overlook’s one hundred and ten rooms were occupied.

In spite of the panicked clamorings of his accountants – and even his son Richard – Bob T. had refused to lay off any of the hotel’s staff. He would not even let one of the two expensive chefs go (two new chefs; neither of the two from the previous year had come back), although there was barely enough work for one. He was stubbornly convinced that in late July … or August … or even in September when the aspens had begun to turn … that the guests would come, the rich would come with their retainers and their hangers-on and their careless money. The statesmen would come, the machine politicians, the actors and actresses who graced the Broadway stage, the foreign nobility who were always in search of a new and diverting place. They would hear about the gorgeous hotel that had been built for their pleasure at the roof of America, and they would come. But they never came. And when winter put finishes to the Overlook’s second season, only one hundred and six guests had signed the register in three months.

Bob T. sighed and continued to stare out the wide window of the Presidential Suite, where, in 1922, only one President had actually stayed – Woodrow Wilson. And when he had come he had already been a man broken in all the ways a man could be broken – in body, in spirit, in his believability with the people. When Wilson had come here he had been a sorry joke. There had been talk in the country that his wife was actually the President of the United States.

If Sarah hadn’t died, Bob T. thought, tracing aimlessly on the window with the tip of his finger, I might have laid them off, some of them at least. She might have badgered me into it. She might have … but I don’t believe it.

You’ve put that hotel up in the tabernacle of your heart.

The 1912 season had been better. In a manner of speaking, at least; the Overlook had only run eighty thousand dollars in the red. The two previous seasons had cost him over a quarter of a million, not counting the paving of that double … no, triple-damned road. When the 1912 season ended he had been hopefully convinced that the pump had finally been primed, that his whining accountants could finally put away their pots of red ink and begin writing with black.

The 1913 season had been better still – only fifty thousand dollars in losses. He became convinced that they would turn the corner in 1914. That the Overlook was gradually coming into its own.

His head accountant had come to him in September of 1914, while the season still had three weeks to run, and advised that he file for bankruptcy.

"What in the name of God are you talking about?" Bob T. asked.

"I’m talking about nearly two hundred thousand dollars in debts which you cannot hope to repay." The accountant’s name was Rutherford and he was a fussy little man, an Easterner.

"That’s ridiculous," Bob T. said. "Get out of here." His head cook Geroux would be in soon. They were going to plan the menu for the closing three nights, what Bob T. had conceived of as the Overlook Festival.

The accountant put a thin sheaf of papers down on Bob T.’s desk and left.

Three hours later, after the cook had left, Bob T. found himself looking at the papers. Never mind them, he told himself. Into the wastebasket with them. I'll pink the little bastard, him with his Boston accent and his three-piece suits. He was nothing but an incompetent tenderfoot. And did you keep folks on your payroll after they advised you to go into bankruptcy? It was laughable.

He had picked up the papers Rutherford had left, to file them in the circular file, and found himself looking at them. What he saw was enough to make his blood stop in his veins.

On top was a bill from the Keystone Paving Works of Golden. Principal plus interest in the sum of seventy thousand dollars. Account due on receipt of bill. Below that, a bill from the Denver Electrical Outfitters, Inc., who had wired the Overlook for electricity and had installed not one but two gigantic power generators in the cavernous basement. All of this had happened in the late fall of 1913 when his son Richard had assured him that electricity was not going to go away, and that soon his guests would come to expect it, not as a luxury but as a necessity. That bill was in the sum of eighteen thousand dollars.

Bob T. flicked through the remainder of the papers with growing horror. A building maintenance bill, a landscaping bill, the second well he had sunk, the contractors who were even now putting in a health room, the contractors who had just finished the two greenhouses, and last … last, an itemization in Rutherford’s neat and ruthless hand of salaries outstanding.

Fifteen minutes later, Rutherford was standing before him again.

"It can’t be this bad," Bob T. whispered hoarsely.

"It is worse," Rutherford said. "If my estimates are correct, you will finish this season twenty thousand dollars or better in the red."

"Only twenty? If we can hold out until next year, we can turn the corner–"

"There is no way we can do that," Rutherford said patiently. "The Overlook’s accounts are not depleted, Mr. Watson, they are empty. I even closed out the petty cash account last Thursday afternoon so I could finish making up the staff’s pay envelopes. The checking accounts are likewise empty. Your mining interest in Haggle Notch is closed out, as per your order this July. That is everything …" Rutherford’s eyes gleamed with brief hope. "That is, everything I know of."

"It’s everything," Bob T. agreed dully, and the hope in Rutherford’s eyes was extinguished. Bob T. sat up a little straighter. "I’ll go to Denver tomorrow. I’ll see about a second mortgage on the hotel."

"Mr. Watson," Rutherford said with a curious gentleness. "You took the second mortgage last winter."

And so he had. How could he have forgotten a thing like that? Bob T. wondered with real fright. The same way he had forgotten two hundred thousand dollars worth of payment due? Just forgotten it? When a man started "just forgetting" things like that, it was time for that man to get out of business before he was pushed out.

But he would not let the Overlook go.

"I’ll get a third," he said. "Bill Steeves will give me a third."

"No, I don’t believe he will," Rutherford said.

"What do you mean, you don’t believe he will, you little Boston bean?" Bob T. roared. "Billy Steeves and me go back to 1890 together! I got him his start in business … helped to capitalize his bank … kept my money in with him in ’94 when everybody west of the Mississippi was shitting in their drawers! He’ll give me a tenth mortgage, or I’ll know the reason why!"

Rutherford looked at Bob T. and wondered what he should say, what he could say that the old man didn’t already know. Could he tell him that William Steeves had put his position as President of the First Mercantile Bank of Denver in severe jeopardy by granting the second mortgage when the situation at the Overlook was clearly hopeless? That Steeves had done it anyway under the ridiculous conviction that he owed Bob T. Watson a debt (to Rutherford’s precision-balanced mind the only real debt was a debt that had been contracted for in triplicate)? Could he tell Watson that even if Steeves cut his own throat and agreed to try and get him a third mortgage that he would succeed in doing nothing but putting himself on the severely depressed executive job market? That even if the unthinkable happened and the mortgage were issued, it would not be even enough to clear the outstanding debts?

Surely the old man must know those things.

Old man, Rutherford mused. Surely he can’t be more than fifty, but right at this minute he looks more like seventy-five. What is there to tell him? That his wife was right, maybe, that the creditors were right. The hotel had sucked him dry. It had stolen his business acumen, his savvy, even his common sense. You needed a special kind of sense to survive in American business, a special kind of sight. And now Bob T. Watson was blind. It was the hotel that had blinded him and made him old.

Rutherford said, "I believe the time has come for me to thank you for my two years of employment and give my notice, Mr. Watson. I’ll waive any further emolument." That was a bitter joke.

"Go on, then," Bob T. said. His face was gray and drawn. "You don’t belong in the west anyway. You don’t understand what the west is all about. You are just a cheap tin Eastern chamberpot with a time-clock for a mind. Get out of here."

Bob T. took the stack of accounts due, ripped them in half, in fourths, and with a clench that went all the way up his arms to his shoulders, in eighths. He threw the pieces in Rutherford’s face.

"Get out!" He yelled. "Go on back to Baaaston! I’ll still be running this hotel in 1940! Me and my son Richard! Get out! Get out!"

Bob. T. turned away from the window and looked thoughtfully at the large double bed where President Wilson and his wife had slept … if they had slept. It seemed to Bob T. that a great many people who came to the Overlook slept very poorly.

I’ll still be running this hotel in 1940!

Well, in a way that might be true. I just might. He went into the living room, a tall, stooped man, mostly bald now, wearing carpenter’s overalls and heavy workshoes instead of the expensive Western boots he had once worn. There was a hammer in one pocket and a keychain in the other, and on the ring attached to the chain were all the keys to the hotel. Better than fifty in all, including a different passkey for each wing of each floor, but none of them were labelled. He knew them all by sight and by touch.

The Overlook had not wanted for a buyer, and Bob T. supposed it never would. There was something about the place that reminded him of that old Greek story about Homer and the sirens on the rock. Businessmen (the Homers of the 20th century) who were otherwise sane and hardheaded, became irrationally convinced that they could take the place over and prosper beyond their wildest dreams. This pleased Bob T. to no end. It was finding out that he wasn’t alone in his craziness, it seemed. Or maybe it was just knowing that the Overlook would never stand empty and deserted. He didn’t think he could have borne that.

Despite Rutherford’s protests that he could only salvage something by declaring bankruptcy and letting the bank sell the Overlook, Bob T. had sold it himself. He had grown more and more fond of his son Richard – perhaps he would never be able to fill Boyd’s shoes but he was a good, hardworking boy and now that his mother was dead they only had each other – and he was not going to let the boy grow up with the stigma of a bankruptcy case hanging over his head.

There had been three interested parties and Bob T. had held on grimly until he got his price, always staying just one jump ahead of the baying creditors who wanted to bring him down and divide the spoils up among themselves. He had called a hundred old debts, some of them going back to his father’s time. To keep the Overlook out of the bank’s hands and in his own he had browbeaten a widow into hysteria, he had threatened an Albuquerque newspaper publisher with exposure (the newspaper publisher had a penchant for young, pre-pubescent, actually – girls), he had gotten down on his knees once and begged a man who had been so revolted that he had given Bob T. a check for ten thousand dollars just to get him off his knees and out of his office.

None of it was enough to blot away the rising tide of red ink – nothing could do that, he recognized – but he mustered enough in that winter of 1914-15 to keep his hotel out of receivership.

In the spring he had dealt with James Parris, the man who had begun life as a common shyster. Bob T.’s price – a ridiculously low one – had been one hundred and eighty thousand dollars plus lifetime jobs for himself and his son … as the Overlook’s maintenance men.

"You’re insane, man," Parris had said. "Is that what you want to avoid bankruptcy for? So the Denver papers can report you’re working as a janitor in the hotel you once owned?" And he reiterated: "You’re insane."

Bob T. was adamant. He would not leave the hotel. And for all his cold businessman’s talk, he knew that Parris would give in. The cold talk did not hide the funny, eager look in Parris’s eyes. Didn’t Bob T. know that look well enough? Hadn’t he seen it in his own mirror every day for the last six years?

"I don’t have to dicker with you over it," Parris had replied, affecting indifference. "If I wait another two months, perhaps only three weeks, you’ll crash. And then I can deal with the First Mercantile."

"And they’ll charge you a quarter of a million if they charge you a penny," Bob T. replied.

For that Parris had no answer. He could pay the two Watsons’ salaries for the rest of their lives out of the money he would save by dealing with this lunatic instead of the bank.

So the deal was made. The one hundred and eighty thousand dollars at last mopped up the red ink. The road was paid for, and the electricity, and the landscaping, and all the rest. Bankruptcy was avoided. James Parris took over in the manager’s office upstairs. Bob T. and Dick Watson moved downstairs from their suite in the west wing of the third floor to an apartment in the huge cellar. Their domain was behind a door that said Maintenance Only – Keep Out!

If James Parris had ever thought that Bob T.’s insanity would extend to his work, he was wrong. He was the ideal maintenance man, and his son, who was more fitted for this life than one of affluence and college and business things that made his head hurt to think of them, was his eager apprentice. "If we’re janitors," Bob T. had once told his son, "then that thing going on over in France is nothing but a barroom squabble."

They kept the place clean, yes, Bob T. was something of a fanatic about that. But they did more. They kept the generators in perfect running condition. From June of 1915 to this day, October 7th, 1922, there had never been a power outage. When the telephones had been installed, Bob T. and his son Richard had put in the switchboard themselves, working from manuals they had pored over night after late night in preparation. They kept the roof in perfect condition, replaced broken panes of glass, turned the rug in the dining room once a month, painted, plastered, and oversaw the installation of the elevator in 1917.

And they lived there in the winter.

"Not too exciting up there in the winter, is it?" The bell-captain had asked them once while they were on a coffee break. "What do you do, hibernate?"

"We keep busy," Bob T. had answered shortly. And Richard had only offered an uneasy grin, uneasy, yes, because every hotel had a skeleton or two in the closet, and sometimes the skeletons rattled their bones.

One late January afternoon when Bob T. had been putting a piece of glass over the top of the reception desk, a terrible noise had come from the dining room, a horrible choking noise that had encased him in horror and had taken him back over the years to that first night, when his pet congressman had choked to death on a piece of steak.

He stood stock-still, willing the noise to stop, but the terrible strangling noises went on and on and he thought, if I went in there now I’d see him, staggering around from table to table like some awful beggar at a king’s feast, his eyes bulging, begging someone to help him –

His entire body broke out in gooseflesh – even the thin skin on his back knobbed up into bumps. And as suddenly as it had begun, the choking sound sank to a breathless, gargling moan, and then to nothing.

Bob T. broke the paralysis that had gripped him and lunged for the big double doors that gave on the dining room. Surely time had taken some sort of twist, and when he got inside he would see the congressman stretched out on the floor with the guests gathered helplessly around him. Bob T. would call out as he had on that long-ago day, "Is there a doctor in the house?" and the second-year med student would brush through the crowd and say, "Let’s take him into the kitchen."

But when he pushed through the double doors, the dining room was empty, all the tables in one corner with their chairs upturned on them, and there was no sound but the wind sighing high around the eaves. Outside it was snowing, obscuring the mountains for a moment and then revealing them for another moment, like the flap of ragged curtains.

There had been other things. Dick reported hearing knocking noises from inside the elevator, as if somebody had been caught in there and was rapping to be let out. Only when he opened the door with the special key and slid back the brass gate, the elevator was empty. One night they had both awakened thinking they heard a woman sobbing somewhere above them, in the lobby it sounded like, and went up to find nothing.

These things had all happened in the off-season, and Bob T. didn’t have to tell Dick not to talk about them. There were enough folks, Mr.-High-and-Mighty-Parris among them, who thought they were crazy already.

But sometimes Bob T. wondered if things didn’t sometimes happen in season. If some of the staff and some of the guests hadn’t heard things themselves … or seen things. Parris had maintained the quality of the service, and had even added a feature to it that Bob T. had never thought of: a limousine which made a run from The Longhorn House in downtown Denver right up to the Overlook once every three days. He had kept prices low in spite of the inflation the Kaiser’s war had brought on, hoping to build the trade. Hoping to build a name. He had added a swimming pool to the hotel’s other formidable recreation features.

The people who came to the Overlook to enjoy these features rarely re-booked for a second season, though. Nor did they give the Overlook benefit of that best and cheapest advertising, word-of-mouth, by recommending it to their friends. Some of them would book for a month and then leave in two weeks, shaking their heads in an almost embarrassed way and brushing aside Parris’s earnest questions: Was something wrong with the food? You were treated poorly? The service was slow? The housekeeping was sloppy? It seemed it was none of those things. The people left and rarely came back.

Bob T. had been pleased to see the Overlook become something of an obsession with Parris. The man was going gray over it, trying to figure out what was wrong and having no luck.

Had the Overlook ever had a season in the black between 1915 and 1922? Bob T. wondered now, as he sat in the Presidential Suite living room and looked at his reflection. That was between Parris and his accountant, of course, and they had been a couple of close ones. But it was Bob T.’s guess that it never had. Maybe Parris had never let his obsession get out of hand as the Overlook’s owner and builder had done (Bob T. sometimes thought these days that he had tried to ride and break whatever jinx had been built into his hotel the way his grandfather would have ridden and broken a wild mustang pony), but he was quite sure that Parris had pumped large amounts of money into the hotel every season without getting anything back, as Bob T. himself had done.

You’ll die a poor and sorry man before you see the first pennyworth of profit from that place.

Sarah had told him that. Sarah had been right. She had been right for Parris, too. The shyster might not have been stony broke, but he surely must have been sorry he had ever hooked up to this combination when he died of an apparent heart attack while strolling the grounds this August past.

Bob T.’s boy (although Dick wasn’t such a boy now; old enough to drink and smoke and vote, old enough to plan on getting married this December) had himself found Parris early in the morning. Dick had been down in the topiary by the playground with his hedge-trimmers at seven AM and there Parris had been, stretched out stone dead between two of the hedge lions.

It was funny about that topiary; it had become the Overlook’s trademark in a way, and it had come into being in a very offhand fashion. It had been the landscaper’s idea to fringe the playground with hedge animals. He had submitted a sketch to Bob T. showing the playground area surrounded by lions, buffalo, a rabbit, a cow, and so on. Bob T. had scratched a go-ahead on the memo accompanying the sketch without a pause. He couldn’t remember that he had even thought twice about it, one way or another. But it had often been the playground topiary that the guests went away talking about instead of the meals or the spare-no-expense decor of the rooms and suites. Bob T. supposed it was just another example of how nothing at the Overlook had gone as he had expected.

Parris, they figured, must have gone out for a late evening stroll across the front lawn and the putting green and through the playground to the road. On the way back the heart attack had struck him down. There had been no one to miss him, because his wife had left him in 1920.

In a way, that had been the Overlook’s fault, too. In the years 1915-1917, Parris had spent no more than two weeks of the season here. His wife, a sulky, pretty thing who had been something on Broadway, didn’t like the place – or so it was rumored. In 1918 they had spent a month, and according to the gossip there had been several bitter fights over it. She saying that she wanted to go to the Bahamas or to Cuba. He asking sarcastically if she wanted to catch some kind of jungle rot. She saying that if he didn’t take her she would go on her own. He saying that if she did that she could find someone else to support her expensive tastes. She stayed. That year.

In 1919, Parris and his wife stayed for six weeks, occupying a suite on the third floor. The hotel was getting hold of him, Bob T. thought with some satisfaction. After awhile it got so you felt like a gambler who couldn’t leave the table.

Anyway, Parris had been planning on a longer stay, and then, at the end of their sixth week, the woman had gone into hysterics. Two of the upstairs maids had heard her, weeping and screaming and begging for him to take her away, to take her anyplace. They had left that same afternoon, Parris’s brow like thunder, his wife’s pretty face pale and devoid of make-up, her eyes resting like dark raisins in the hollows of her eyesockets, as if she had been sleeping badly or not at all. Parris had not even stopped to confer with his manager or with Bob T. And when he had shown up in June of 1921, it had been sans wife. The head housekeeper’s sister lived in New Jersey, and she sent out one of those gossip papers saying that Parris’s wife had asked for a divorce on the grounds of "mental cruelty," whatever that meant.

"What I guess it means," Harry Durker, the groundskeeper told Bob T. over bourbon, "is that she couldn’t pan out the gold as fast as she thought she could."

Or was it the Overlook? Bob T. wondered. Anyway, didn’t matter. Parris had been up here on opening day of the season just past, the Overlook’s thirteenth, and he hadn’t left until they carried him off in the Sidewinder funeral hack. The little shyster’s will was still in probate, but that matter was going to be quite straightforward. Parris’s hotel manager had gotten a letter from the firm of New York lawyers acting as executors, and the letter had mentioned the Brandywine brothers from Texas, who were expected to buy. They wanted to keep Parris’s manager on if he wanted to stay, and at a substantially higher salary. But the manager had already told Bob T. (also over bourbon) that he was going to turn the offer down.

"This place is never going to make a go," he told Bob T. "I don’t care if Jesus Christ Himself bought the place and got John the Baptist to manage it. I feel more like a cemetary caretaker than a hotel manager. It’s like something died up in the walls and everybody who comes here can smell it from time to time."

Yes, Bob T. thought, that’s exactly what it’s like. Only ain’t it funny how something like that can sometimes get a hold on a man?

He stood up and stretched. Sitting here and thinking over old times was all very well and good, but it wasn’t getting the work done. And there was a lot of it this winter. New elevator cables to be put in. A new service shed to be built out back, and that had to be done before the snow flew and cut them off. The shutters had to be put up, of course, and –

Bob T., on his way to the door, stopped dead still.

He heard, or thought he heard, Boyd’s voice, high and young and full of joy. It was faint with distance, but unmistakably Boyd’s. Coming from the direction of what was now the topiary.

"Come on, Rascal! Come on! Come on! Go it!"

Rascal? The name of Boyd’s pony.

Like a man in a dream, like a man caught in some slow and slushy delirium, Bob T. turned to the wide window. Again that curious feeling of time doubling back on itself. When he reached the window and looked out he would not see the hedge animals because the year was 1908 and the topiary had not yet been set in. Instead he would see a muddy stretch of hill clumped and clotted with building materials, he would see a pile of new lumber where the entrance to the playground would later be, he would see Boyd racing toward that pile of lumber on board Rascal, he would see them go up together, he would see Rascal’s rear feet catch the top of the pile, and he would see them tumble down, together with all grace gone, and hope of life with it.

Bob T. staggered toward the window where he would see these things, his face dough-pale, his mouth a slack wound. He could hear – surely it was not only in his mind? – hoofbeats drumming on muddy ground.

"Go it, Rascal! Get up, boy! Get–"

A thudding, flat crack. And then the screaming began, the high, unhuman scream of the pony, the rattle of boards, the final thud.

"Boyd!" Bob T. screamed. "Oh my God, Boyd! BOYD!"

He struck the window forcibly, shattering three of the six panes of glass, drawing a jagged though shallow cut across the back of his right hand. The glass fell outward, turning over and over, twinkling in the sun, to strike and shatter on the outsloping second floor roof below.

He saw the lawn, green and manicured, sloping smoothly down to the putting green and beyond it to the topiary. The three hedge lions that guarded the gravel path were crouched in their usual half-threatening, half-playful postures. The hedge rabbit stood on its hind legs with its ears perked up cockily. The hedge cow stood as was its wont, cropping at the grass, now with a few autumn-yellow aspen leaves caught on its head and stuck to its sides.

No pile of lumber. No Boyd. No Rascal.

Running footsteps up the hall. Bob T. turned to the door just as it opened and Dick hurried in with his tool box in one hand.

"Daddy, are you all right?"

"Fine."

"You’re bleeding."

"Cut my hand," Bob T. said. "Tripped over my own stupid feet and hit that window. Guess I made us some work."

"But you’re all right?"

"Fine, I told you," he said testily.

"I was down at the end of the hall, looking at those elevator cables. I thought I heard someone outside."

Bob T. looked at his son sharply.

"You didn’t hear anyone, did you, daddy?"

"No," Bob T. said. He took his handkerchief out of his back pocket and wrapped it around his bleeding hand. "Who’d be up here this time of year?"

"That’s right," Dick said. And his eyes and his father’s eyes met with a kind of electric shock, and in that second they both saw more than they might perhaps have wished. They dropped their eyes simultaneously.

"Come on," Bob T. said gruffly. "Let’s see if we’ve got the glass to fix this bastard."

They went out together and Bob T. spared a single backward glance at the living room of the Presidential Suite with its silk wallpaper and its heavy furnishings dreaming in the late afternoon sun.

Guess they’ll have to carry me out in the meatwagon, the same as they did Parris, he thought. Only way they’ll get me to leave. He looked with love at his son, who had drawn ahead of him.

Dick, too. This place has got us, I guess.

It was a thought that made him feel loathing and love at the same time.

Scene II. A Bedroom in the Wee Hours of the Morning

Coming here had been a mistake, and Lottie Kilgallon didn’t like to admit her mistakes.

And I won’t admit this one, she thought with determination as she stared up at the ceiling that glimmered overhead.

Her husband of ten days slumbered beside her. Sleeping the sleep of the wise was what some might have called it. Others, more honest, might have called it the sleep of the monumentally stupid. He was William Pillsbury of the Westchester Pillsbury’s only son and heir of Harold M. Pillsbury, old and comfortable money. Publishing was what they liked to talk about, because publishing was a gentleman’s profession, but there was also a chain of New England textile, a foundry in Ohio, and extensive agricultural holdings in the south – cotton and citrus and fruit. Old money was always better than noveau riche, but either way they had money falling out of their assholes. If she ever said that aloud to Bill, he would undoubtedly go pale and might even faint dead away. No fear, Bill. Profanation of the Pillsbury family shall never cross my lips.

It had been her idea to honeymoon at the Overlook in Colorado, and there had been two reasons for this. First, although it was tremendously expensive (as the best resorts were), it was not a "hep" place to go, and Lottie did not like to go to the hep places. Where did you go on your honeymoon, Lottie? Oh, this perfectly wonderful resort hotel in Colorado – the Overlook. Lovely place. Quite out of the way but so romantic. And her friends – whose stupidity was exceeded in most cases only by that of William Pillsbury himself – would look at her in dumb – literally! – wonder. Lottie had done it again.

Her second reason had been of more personal importance. She had wanted to honeymoon at the Overlook because Bill wanted to go to Rome. It was imperative to find out certain things as soon as possible. Would she be able to have her own way immediately? And if not, how long would it take to grind him down? He was stupid, and he had followed her around like a dog with its tongue hanging out since her debutante ball, but would he be as malleable after the ring was slipped on as he had been before?

Lottie smiled a little in the dark in spite of her lack of sleep and the bad dreams she had had since they arrived here. Arrived here, that was the key phrase. "Here" was not the American Hotel in Rome but the Overlook in Colorado. She was going to be able to manage him just fine, and that was the important thing. She would only make him stay another four days (she had originally planned on three weeks, but the bad dreams had changed that), and then could go back to New York. After all, that was where the action was in this August of 1929. The stock market was going crazy, the sky was the limit, and Lottie expected to be an heiress to multi-millions instead of just one or two millions by this time next year. Of course there were some weak sisters who claimed the market was riding for a fall, but no one had ever called Lottie Kilgallon a weak sister.

Lottie Kilgallon Pillsbury now, at least that’s the way I’ll have to sign my letters … and my checks, of course. But inside I’ll always be Lottie Kilgallon. Because he’s never going to touch me. Not inside where it counts.

The most tiresome thing about this first contest of her marriage was that Bill actually liked the Overlook. He was up every day at two minutes past the crack of dawn, disturbing what ragged bits of sleep she had managed after the restless nights, staring eagerly out at the sunrise like some sort of disgusting Greek nature boy. He had been hiking two or three times, he had gone on several nature rides with other guests, and bored her almost to the point of screaming with stories about the horse he rode on these jaunts, a bay mare named Tessie. He had tried to get her to go on these outings with him, but Lottie refused. Riding meant slacks, and her posterior was just a trifle too wide for slacks. The idiot had also suggested that she go hiking with him and some of the others – the caretaker’s son doubled as a guide, Bill enthused, and he knew a hundred trails. The amount of game you saw, Bill said, would make you think it was 1829 instead of a hundred years later. Lottie had dumped cold water on this idea, too.

"I believe, darling, that all hikes should be one-way, you see."

"One way?" His wide anglo-saxon brow criggled and croggled into its usual expression of befuddlement. "How can you have a one-way hike, Lottie?"

"By hailing a taxi to take you home when your feet begin to hurt," she replied coldly.

The barb was wasted. He went without her, and came back glowing. The stupid bastard was getting a tan. She had not even enjoyed their evenings of bridge in the downstairs recreation room, and that was most unlike her. She was something of a barracuda at bridge, and if it had been ladylike to play for stakes in mixed company, she could have brought a cash dowry to her marriage (not that she would have, of course). Bill was a good bridge partner, too, he had both qualifications. He understood the basic rules and he allowed Lottie to dominate him. She thought it was poetic justice that her new husband spent most of their bridge evenings as the dummy.

Their partners at the Overlook were the Compsons occasionally, the Vereckers more frequently. Verecker was in his early seventies, a surgeon who had retired following a near-fatal heart attack. His wife smiled a lot, spoke softly, and had eyes like shiny nickles. They played only adequate bridge, but they kept beating Lottie and Bill. On the occasions when the men played against the women, the men ended up trouncing Lottie and Malvina Verecker. When Lottie and Dr. Verecker played Bill and Malvina, she and the doctor usually won but there was no pleasure in it because Bill was a dullard and Malvina could not see the game of bridge as anything but a social tool.

Two nights ago, after the doctor and his wife had made a bid of four clubs that they had absolutely no right to make, Lottie had mussed the cards in a sudden flash of pique that was very unlike her. She usually kept her feelings under much better control.

"You could have led into my spades on that third trick!" She rattled at Bill. "That would have put a stop to it right there!"

"But dear," Bill said, flustered, "I thought you were thin in spades–"

"If I had been thin in spades, I shouldn’t have bid two of them, should I? Why I continue to play this game with you I don’t know!"

The Vereckers blinked at them in mild surprise. Later that evening Mrs. Verecker, she of the nickle-bright eyes, would tell her husband that she had thought them such a nice couple, so loving, but when she rumpled the cards like that she had looked just like a female shrew … or was that a shrewess?

Bill was staring at her with his jaw agape.

"I’m very sorry," she said, gathering up the reins of her control and giving them an inward shake. "I’m off my feed a little, I suppose. I haven’t been sleeping well."

"That’s a pity," the doctor said. "Usually this mountain air … we’re almost twelve thousand feet above sea level, you know … is very conducive to good rest. Less oxygen, you know. The body doesn’t–"

"I’ve had bad dreams," Lottie told him shortly.

And so she had. Not just bad dreams but nightmares. She had never been much of a one to dream (which said something disgusting and Freudian about her psyche, no doubt), even as a child. Oh yes, there had been some, pretty humdrum affairs, mostly. The only one she could remember that came even close to being a nightmare was one in which she had been delivering a Good Citizenship speech at the school assembly and had looked down to discover she had forgotten to put on her dress. Later someone had told her almost everyone had a dream like that at sometime or another.

The dreams that she had had at the Overlook were much worse. It was not a case of one dream or two repeating themselves with variations; they were all different. Only the setting of each was similar: in each one she found herself in a different part of the Overlook Hotel. Each dream would begin with an awareness on her part that she was dreaming, and that something terrible and frightening was going to happen to her in the course of the dream. There was an inevitability about it that was particularly awful.

In one of them she had been hurrying for the elevator because she was late for dinner, so late that Bill had already gone down before her in a temper.

She rang for the elevator which came promptly and was empty except for the operator. She thought too late that it was odd; at mealtimes you could barely wedge yourself in. Even though the stupid hotel was only half-full, the elevator had a ridiculously small capacity. Her unease heightened as the elevator descended and continued to descend … for far too long a time. Surely they must have reached the lobby or even the basement by now, and still the operator did not open the doors and still the sensation of downward motion continued. She tapped him on the shoulder with mixed feelings of indignation and panic, aware too late of how spongy he felt, how strange, like a scarecrow stuffed with rotten straw. And as he turned his head and grinned at her she saw that the elevator was being piloted by a dead man, his face a greenish-white corpsehue, his eyes sunken, the hair under his cap lifeless and sere. The fingers wrapped around the switch were fallen away to bones.

Even as she filled her lungs to shriek, the corpse threw the switch over and uttered, "Your floor, madam," in a husked and empty voice. The doors drew open to reveal flames and basalt plateaus and the stench of brimstone. The elevator operator had taken her to hell.

In another near the end of the afternoon she was on the playground. The light was curiously golden although the sky overhead was black with thunderheads. Membranes of shower danced between two of the saw-toothed peaks further west. It was like a Breughel landscape, a moment of sunshine and low pressure. And she felt something behind her, moving. Something in the topiary. And she turned to see with frozen horror that it was the topiary: the hedge animals had left their places and were creeping toward her, the green lions, the buffalo, even the rabbit that usually looked so comic and friendly. Their horrid hedge features were bent on her as they moved slowly toward the playground on their hedge paws, green and silent and deadly under the black thunderheads.

In the one she had just awakened from, the hotel had been on fire. She had awakened in their room to find Bill gone and smoke drifting slowly through the apartment. She fled in her nightdress but lost her direction in the narrow halls, which were obscured by smoke. All the numbers seemed to be gone from the doors, and there was no way to tell if you were running toward the stairwell and the elevator or away from it. She had rounded a corner and had seen Bill standing outside the window at the end, motioning her forward. Somehow she had run all the way to the back of the hotel and he was standing out there on the fire escape landing. Now there was heat baking into her back through the thin filmy stuff of her nightgown. The place must be in flames behind her, she thought. Perhaps it had been the boiler. You had to keep an eye on the boiler because if you didn’t, she would creep on you. Lottie started forward and suddenly something wrapped around her arm like a python, holding her back. It was one of the fire hoses that she had seen spotted along the corridor walls, white canvas hose in a bright red frame. It had come alive somehow. It writhed and coiled around her, now securing a leg, now her other arm. She was held fast and it was getting hotter, hotter. She could hear the hungry crackle of the flames now only feet behind her. The wallpaper was peeling and blistering. Bill was gone from the fire escape landing. And then she had been–

She had been awake in the big double bed, no smell of smoke, and Bill Pillsbury sleeping the sleep of the justly stupid beside her. She had been running sweat, and if it hadn’t been so late she would have gotten up to shower. It was quarter past three in the morning.

Dr. Verecker had offered to give her a sleeping medicine, but Lottie had refused. She distrusted any concoction you put in your body to knock out your mind. It was like giving up the command of your ship voluntarily, and she had sworn to herself that she would never do that.

But for the next four days … well, he played shuffleboard in the mornings with his nickle-eyed wife. Perhaps she would look him up and get the prescription after all.

Lottie looked up at the white ceiling high above her, glimmering ghostlike, and admitted again that the Overlook had been a very bad mistake. None of the ads for the Overlook in the New Yorker or The American Mercury mentioned that the place’s real specialty seemed to be giving people the whim-whams. Four more days, and that was plenty. It had been a mistake, all right, but it was a mistake she would never admit, or have to admit. In fact, she was sure that she could–

You had to keep an eye on the boiler because if you didn’t, she would creep on you. What did that mean, anyway? Or was it just one of those nonsensical things that sometimes came to you in dreams, so much gibberish? Of course there was undoubtedly a boiler in the basement or somewhere to heat the place, even summer resorts had to have heat sometimes, didn’t they (if only to supply hot water)? But creep? Would a boiler creep?

You had to keep an eye on the boiler.

It was like one of those crazy riddles, why is a mouse when it runs, when is a raven like a writing desk, what is a creeping boiler? Is that like the hedges, maybe? She’d had a dream where the hedges crept. And a firehose that had – what? – slithered?

A chill touched her. It was not good to think much about the dreams in the night, in the dark. You could … well, you could bother yourself. It was better to think about the things you would be doing when you got back to New York, about how you were going to convince Bill that a baby was a bad idea for awhile, until he got firmly settled in the vice presidency his father had awarded him as a wedding present–

She’ll creep on you.

– and how you were going to encourage him to bring his work home so he would get used to the idea that she was going to be involved with it, very much involved.

Or did the whole hotel creep? Was that the answer?

I’ll make him a good wife, Lottie thought frantically. We’ll work it the same way we always worked being bridge partners. He knows the rules of the game, and he knows enough to let me run him. It will be just like the bridge, just like that, and if we’ve been off our game up here that doesn’t mean anything, it’s just the hotel, the dreams.

An affirming voice: That’s it. The whole place. It … creeps.

"Oh shit," Lottie Kilgallon whispered in the dark. It was dismaying for her to realize just how badly her nerves were shot. Like the other nights, there would be no more sleep for her now. She would lie here in bed until the sun started to come up and then she would get an uneasy hour or so.

Smoking in bed was a bad habit, a terrible habit, but she had begun to leave her cigarettes in an ashtray on the floor by the bed in case of the dreams. Sometimes it calmed her. She reached down to get the ashtray and the thought burst on her like a revelation:

It does creep, the whole place – like it was alive!

And that was when the hand reached out unseen from under the bed and gripped her wrist firmly … almost lecherously. A finger-like canvas scratched suggestively against her palm and something was under there, something had been under there all the time, and Lottie began to scream. She screamed until her throat was raw and hoarse and her eyes were bulging from her face and Bill was awake and pallid with terror beside her.

When he put on the lamp she leaped from the bed, retreated into the farthest corner of the room and curled up with her thumb in her mouth.

Both Bill and Dr. Verecker tried to find out what was wrong; she told them, but it was past her thumb, and it was some time before the realized she was saying, "It crept under the bed. It crept under the bed."

And even though they flipped up the coverlet and Bill had actually lifted the whole bed by its foot off the floor to show her there was nothing under there, not even a litter of dust kitties, she would not come out of the corner. When the sun came up, she did at last come out of the corner. She took her thumb out of her mouth. She stayed away from the bed. She stared at Bill Pillsbury from her clown-white face.

"We’re going back to New York," she said. "This morning."

"Of course," Bill muttered. "Of course, dear."

Bill Pillsbury’s father died of a heart attack two weeks after the stock market crash. Bill and Lottie could not keep the company’s head above water. Things went from bad to worse. In the years that followed she thought often of their honeymoon at the Overlook Hotel, and the dreams, and the canvas hand that had crept out from under the bed to squeeze her own. She thought about these things more and more. She committed suicide in a Yonkers motel room in the year 1949, a woman who was prematurely gray and prematurely lined. It had been twenty years and the hand that had gripped her wrist when she reached down to get her had never really let go. She left a one-sentence suicide note written on Holiday Inn stationery. The note said: I wish we had gone to Rome.

Scene III: On the Night of the Grand Masquerade

Downstairs, upstairs, in corners and hallways, the party went on and on. The music was louder, the laughter was louder, the shrieks were louder and sounded less and less like cries of pleasure and amusement to Lewis Toner’s ears and more like cries of agony, the sound of death-throes. Perhaps they were. There was a monster in the hotel. As a matter of fact, a monster owned the hotel now. His name was Horace Derwent.

Lewis Toner, who had come to the ball as a dog (at Horace’s request, of course), reached the second floor and began to walk down the hall toward his room, his shoulders slumped inside the hot costume. The dog’s head, its muzzle set in a snarling rictus, was under arm.

He turned a corner and there was a couple entwined by one of the fire extinguisher hoses, one of the Derwent Enterprises secretaries –

Patty? Sherry? Merry?

– and one of Derwent’s bright young subalterns, a fellow named Norman something. At first he thought the girl was wearing a skin-tight ballerina’s leotard and then he realized it was skin – she was naked from the waist down. Norman was wearing some sort of Arabian nights thing, complete with slippers that came to upturned points. His little toothbrush moustache, grown in imitation of the boss, looked ridiculous in contrast.

Patty-Sherry-Merry giggled when she saw him and made no attempt to cover herself. She was openly caressing Norman. The thing was turning into an orgy.

"It’s Lewis," she said. "Woof-woof, doggy."

"Do a trick," Norman said thickly, breathing scotch fumes into his face "Up, boy, up! Roll over! Shake hands."

Lewis broke into a run, chased by their drunken laughter. You’ll find out, he thought. You’ll find out when he turns on you like he turned on me tonight.

At first he couldn’t get into his room because the door was locked and the key was in his pants pocket and his pants were under the dog costume and the costume’s zipper was in the back. He reached and clutched and got it started and finally managed to get it down, knowing that he must look to them grotesquely like a woman wriggling out of her evening dress, and at last the hot, woolly dog costume slipped off his shoulders and pooled around his feet.

Behind him their laughter went on and on grinding and mechanical, reminding him of a date he had gone on with his first lover, a career sailor originally from San Diego. Ronnie his name had been, and he always had been called San Diego Dago. Just Dago. They had gone to a carnival, and there had been a funhouse, and to the left of the stage out front, under a huge canvas sign that said House of a Thousand Thrills, there had been a mechanical clown that laughed on and on the way they were laughing at him now as he fumbled his room key from his pocket, on and on the clown had laughed, prisoner of some circulating tape loop in its guts, cackling into an uneasy night of shrieking carnival rides and cruising men and beer and unshaded bulbs. Its mechanical body had leaned back and forth as it laughed, and it had seemed to Lewis then that it was laughing at him, a slight boy of nineteen, wearing spectacles and walking close enough to the heavy-set, thirtyish sailor so that their hips brushed from time to time with some miserable electricity. The clown shrieked hoarse laughter, laughing at him the way the halfnaked couple down the hall was laughing, laughing the way all of them had laughed downstairs in the ballroom when Horace Derwent put him through his paces.

Woof-woof, doggy. Roll over. Shake hands.

The key turned in the lock, he was inside, it was locked behind him.

"Thank God," Lewis murmured, and put his forehead against the door. He fumbled at the bolt and shot it. He put on the safety chain. At last he sat on the floor and pulled off the dog costume, pulled it all the way off. He threw the head onto the sofa, where it snarled at itself in the dressing table mirror.

He had been Horace’s lover for how long? Since 1939. Could it really be seven years now? It could. It was. People had told him that Derwent could go both ways and Lewis hadn’t believed them. Hadn’t believed, that wasn’t quite right.

It was immaterial to you, the room seemed to whisper to him.

He looked around gratefully. That was it, that was just it. He had joined the Derwent organization as a bookkeeper ten years ago, in 1936, just after Derwent had picked up the movie studio on the depression market. Derwent’s Folly, people had called it then. They didn’t know Horace Derwent, Lewis reflected.

Horace wasn’t like the others, the quick fumbles in the park, the sailors, the fat and sweaty high school boys who spent too much time in the movie theater bathrooms.

I know what I am, he had told Lewis, and locks and chains of fear, long rusted, had fallen from Lewis’s heart, as if Horace had touched some secret place in him with a magic wand. I choose to accept what I am. Life is too short to let the world tell a man what he should do and what he shouldn’t.

Lewis had been the head accountant of Derwent Enterprises since early 1940. He had an apartment on the East Side of New York City, and a bungalow in Hollywood. Horace Derwent had a key to each.

And some nights he would lie awake beside the big man (Lewis weighed 135, and Horace Derwent lacked eleven pounds of weighing twice that) until gray dawn was prying at the curtains, listening as Derwent poured out everything … his plans to become the richest individual on planet Earth.

The war is coming, Derwent said. We’ll be in it by April of 1942 and if we’re lucky it will go on until 1948. Derwent Enterprises can plan on making three million dollars a year on the aircraft side alone. You figure it out, Lew. When the war ends, Derwent is going to be the biggest company in America.

It was not always business. It was a hundred other things. Derwent speculating on how much could be made on a World Series if you could pocket two of the umpires. Derwent talking about Las Vegas and the plans he and some of his business associates had for it – Vegas will be the playground of America in the 1960s if things go right, Lew. His obsessional fear of cancer, which had killed his mother at forty-six and all four of his grandparents. His interest in geology, in long-range weather prediction, photo-copying machines, and a possible something called 3-D movies. Lewis had listened to these long rambling monologues enthralled, rarely speaking, thinking: He tells me these things. Only me.

And so when people told him that Horace made it a practice to lay any new female studio acquisitions before signing them, when they told him that he kept a woman who was the current toast of Broadway in a 5th Avenue penthouse apartment, when they told him that Horace was a perfect study in amorality, a man who honestly thought himself the only totally alive being in the world, Lewis laughed them off. They didn’t know the man the way he did, they had not listened to him talk the night away, leaping from subject to subject like a ballet dancer … or like something rather more deadly, a fencer perhaps, the greatest natural fencer of his time.

He dragged himself to his feet and went into the bathroom to draw a tub of hot water. His body was slicked with sour sweat. His head ached. His stomach was upset. And he knew that even with a hot tub there would be no sleep for him tonight. And he hadn’t brought his sleeping pills. He had even been lucky to get a seat on a connecting flight from New York to Denver. He hadn’t been invited on Horace’s chartered planeload of revellers. Even his invitation had arrived late. Another studied insult.

The bathroom was spare white tile, old fashioned, hopeless. Lewis put the plug in the tub and turned it on. He would lie sleepless in his bed all night, listening to the shrieks of merriment from below, playing the evening’s waking nightmare over again and again … why had he forgotten his pills?

Roll over, doggy. Play dead. Woof-woof.

Horace had put on the golden chain in 1939, and when it served his purpose he had knocked it off. That had happened tonight.

Lewis had been savaged in front of the whole crowd.

But didn’t you know it was coming? He asked himself wretchedly as the water roared into the tub, smoking. The keys to the apartment and the bungalow had come back to him in a Derwent Enterprises envelope with an impersonal note from Horace’s personal secretary saying that Lewis must have misplaced these. It suddenly became very difficult to see the boss, who was often tied up. Lewis was passed over for the board position that opened up when old Hanneman had a heart attack … a board position that Horace had practically promised him in the spring of 1943. Horace had been seen around New York squiring the Broadway actress, which did not bother Lewis, and also with his new social secretary, which definitely did. The new social secretary was British, a small compact man who was ten years younger than Lewis. And of course Lewis had never been that handsome. Worst, Horace had purchased the Overlook without even telling him, his own head accountant. It had been Burrey, one of the execs in the aircraft division, who had taken enough pity on Lewis to tell him that he was head accountant now in name only, by contract only.

"He’s out to get you, boyo," Burrey said. "He’s got a sharp stick with your name on it. He won’t fire you or demote you, it’s not his style. That’s not how our Fearless Leader has his fun. He’ll poke you with that sharp stick. In the legs, in the belly, in the neck, in the balls. He’ll poke you and poke you until you run away. And if you stay on after he’s gotten tired of the game, he'll poke your eyes out with his stick."

"But why?" Lewis cried. "What did I do? My work has been perfect, my … my …" But there was no way to talk about that to Burrey.

"You didn’t do anything," Burrey said patiently. "He’s not like other people, Lew. He’s like a big, smart baby with a lot of pretty toys. He plays with one until he gets tired of it, then he throws it away and plays with a new one. That limey Hart is the new one. You got the toss. And I'm warning you. Don’t push it. He’ll make you the sorriest man alive if you do."

"Has he talked to you? Is that it?"

"No. And I’m not going to talk to you anymore. Because the walls around here have ears and I like my job. I like to eat even better. Good morning, Lew."

But he hadn’t been able to leave it alone. Even when the invitation to the masked ball had arrived late (with no accompanying letter about the Derwent charter flight from New York to Colorado) he hadn’t been able to leave it alone. He had been invited by Horace’s commanding scrawl across the bottom of the invitation, written in draftsman’s pencil as so much of his personal and inter-office correspondence was: If you come, come as a dog.

Even then, even though the truth of everything Burrey had said was borne out in that one scrawled sentence, he had not been able to let go of it. He had preferred to see it as Horace’s own personal request, albeit brusque, that he attend. He had gone to the most expensive costumer in New York and even as he walked out with it wrapped in brown paper under his arm, he had refused to see it the other way. He had wanted to see it as: Come home, Hon, all is forgiven and not If you come, I’ll poke your eyes out, Lewis – this is your only warning.

And now he knew. Oh yes, he knew. Everything.

The tub was full. Lewis turned off the water and slowly stripped off his clothes. A hot tub was supposed to relax you, they said. Help you to sleep. But nothing would help him tonight except his pills. Which were in the medicine cabinet of his apartment, two thousand miles east of here.

He turned his eyes to the bathroom medicine cabinet without much hope. There was never anything in a hotel medicine cabinet except maybe a box of tissues. Nevertheless he opened it and stared in, hardly believing it. There was a hotel-sized box of Kleenex, a water glass wrapped in waxed paper, and a small bottle labelled simply Seconal. He took the bottle out and opened it. The pills inside were large and pink. They looked like no Seconals Lewis had ever seen before.

I’ll only take one, he thought. Stupid to take someone else’s medicine anyway. Stupid and dangerous. And the hotel had stood vacant since 1936, he reminded himself, when the last owner had gone broke and shot himself. Surely those pills couldn’t have been there since 1936? An uncomfortable thought. Maybe he’d better not take any.

Up, boy, up! Woof- Woof! Good doggy … here’s a bone, doggy.

Well, just one then. And a hot tub. Maybe I will sleep.

But it was two of the pills he shook out into his hand, and after he had unwrapped the water glass and taken them, he decided to take a third. Then into the bathtub. A quick soak. Things would look better in the morning They found him at just past three o’clock the next afternoon. He had apparently fallen asleep in the tub and drowned, although the coroner, who was from Sidewinder, wasn’t exactly sure how an accident like that could have happened, unless the man had been drunk or drugged. The postmortem showed no sign of either. The coroner asked for a private audience with Horace Derwent, and the audience was granted.

"Listen here," the coroner said. “You said on the stand that there was quite a party going on that night.”

Horace Derwent agreed that that was so.

"Could it have been that somebody might have gone up to this fella Toner’s room and sort of held his head underwater? For a joke, I mean. The kind of joke that sometimes can go too far."

Derwent demurred strongly.

"Well, I know you are a busy man," the coroner said, "and the last I want to do is to cause any trouble for a man who helped us to win the war or the man who is planning to reopen the Overlook Hotel …the Overlook always drew a lot of its chambermaids and busboys and so on from right here in Sidewinder, you know …"

Derwent thanked him for the compliment and assured him that the Overlook would continue to make use of the Sidewinder work force. "But," the coroner said, "you have to understand the position I am in."

Derwent said he would do his best.

"With the water in Toner’s lungs, the county pathologist says drowning was the cause of death. But a man don’t just drown in the bathtub. If he falls asleep and his mouth and nose slip under, he will wake up unless his reflexes are severely depressed. But this man had only a trace of alcohol in him, no barbiturates, no nothing. There was no bump on his head to indicate he might have slipped getting out. You see what a cat’s cradle I am in?"

Derwent agreed it was purely a puzzle.

"Now I have to at least think someone might have murdered him," the coroner went on. "Suicide’s out. You can kill yourself by drowning, but I just don’t think you can do it in your bathtub. But murder! Well."

Derwent enquired about fingerprints.

"Now that’s sharp," the coroner said admiringly. "You’re probably thinking of the cleaning that place took in the month before you had your party. The chief of police, he thought of that too, since his sister was one of the girls from Sidewinder that helped to do the job. Why, there was thirty of them up there if there was one, scrubbing that place from stem to stem. And since there was no other help there when your party was held, our chief had a man from the State Police come up and dust the whole room. They only found Toner’s fingerprints."

Derwent suggested that went a long way toward disproving the murder theory.

"Oh, but it don’t," the coroner said, fetching a deep sigh from the foundations of his large belly. "It might, if you folks had been having any sort of a regular party. But it wasn’t a regular party; it was a costume party. And God knows how many people were wearing gloves or false hands as part of their outfits. You know that fella Hart? The limey?"

Derwent admitted knowing his social secretary.

"That guy said he came as a devil and you came as a circus ringmaster. So you were both wearing gloves. In a manner of speaking, Toner himself was wearing gloves, when you think of his dog costume. So you see the bind we’re in?"

Derwent said he saw.

"It don’t make me happy to have to instruct that jury to bring in an ‘unknown causes’ verdict. That will make every goddam paper in the country. Millionaire Industrialist. Mysterious Death. All-Night Orgy in Mountain Resort."

Derwent protested with some asperity that it had been a party, not an orgy.

"Oh, but it’s all the same to those guys on the yellow sheets," the coroner said. "They could find a do turd in a basket of easter lillies. It puts a black mark beside your name before you even get the place opened up again. It makes it so you have to start out under a cloud. What a bitter bitch."

Horace Derwent leaned forward and began to talk. He discussed a great many aspects of life and finance in the small mountain community of Sidewinder, Colorado. He discussed various contracts that might be drawn between the Overlook Hotel and the Municipal Board of Sidewinder. He discussed the town’s need for a library and for a school addition. He commiserated with the coroner on the coroner’s own salary, so inadequate for a retired G.P. The coroner began to smile and nod. And when Horace Derwent stood up, looking a little paler than usual, the coroner stood with him.

"I believe it might have been some sort of seizure," the coroner said. "Accidental death. Unfortunate."

The story made no more than page two, even in the Colorado papers. The Overlook opened on schedule, and nearly fifty percent of the staff came from Sidewinder. It was good for the town. The new library, donated by the Automatic Service Company of Colorado (which was in turn owned by the Automatic Service Company of America, which was in turn owned by Derwent Enterprises), was good for the town. The police chief got a new cruiser and was able to buy a ski-lodge in Aspen two years later. And the coroner retired to St. Petersburg.

The Overlook eventually proved too much for Horace Derwent, too, although it was never able to bankrupt him. But he had conceived it as a glorious sort of toy for him to play with, and the toy had gone sour for him when Lewis had, in a way, turned the tables on Derwent’s revenge by dying so inexplicably in the bathtub.

He had been forced to buy a whole town to even commence operations at his hotel, but that was not the humiliation, that was not what made him hate Lewis for the way he had died. It was being held up for common blackmail by a grinning small-town coroner and having to give in. Years later, long after he had washed his hands of the Overlook, Derwent would wake up the night from a dream of that coroner’s voice as he slowly and efficiently beat him into a corner that he would have to pay to get out of.

He would lie in the dark aftermath of the dream thinking: Cancer.

My mother was dead of cancer at my age.

And of course, he had never really been able to wash his hands of the Overlook, not entirely. His relationship with it ceased, but not its relationship with him. It only went underground. It existed in secret books kept behind vault doors in places like Las Vegas and Reno. It belonged to people who had done him favors, to whom he owed favors in return. The kind of people that sometimes surfaced in the bright glare of some Senate subcommittee’s publicity.

Ownership shuffles. Laundered money. Hiding places and secret sex.

No, he had never really gotten shut of the Overlook. Murder had been done there – somehow – and would be done there again.

Scene IV. And Now This Word from New Hampshire

In that long hot summer of 1953, the summer Jacky Torrance turned six, his father came home drunk one night from the hospital and broke Jacky’s arm. He almost killed the boy. He was drunk.

Jacky was sitting on the front step of the porch and reading a Combat Casey comic book when his father came down the street, listing to one side, torpedoed by beer somewhere down the line. As he always did, the boy felt a mixture of love-hate-fear rise in his chest at the sight of his old man, who looked like a giant malevolent ghost in his hospital whites. He was an orderly at the Berlin Community Hospital. His father was like God, like Nature, sometimes lovable, sometimes terrible. You never knew which it would be. Jacky’s mother feared and served him. His brothers hated him. Only Jacky of all of them still loved him in spite of the fear and the hate, and sometimes the volatile mixture of emotions made him want to cry out at the sight of his father coming, to simply cry out: I love you, daddy! Go away! Hug me! I’ll kill you! I’m so afraid of you! I need you! And his father seemed to sense in his stupid way – he was a stupid man, and selfish – that all of them had gone beyond him but Jacky, the youngest, that the only way he could touch the others was to bludgeon them to attention. But with Jacky there was still love, and there had been times when he had cuffed the boy’s mouth into running blood and then hugged him with frightful force, the killing force just barely held back by some other thing, and Jacky would let himself be hugged deep into the atmosphere of malt and hops that hung around his old man forever, quailing, loving, fearing.

He leaped off the step and ran halfway down the path before something stopped him.

"Daddy?" he said. "Where’s the car?"

Torrance came toward him, and Jacky saw how very drunk he was.

"Wrecked it up," he said thickly.

“Oh …” Careful now. Careful what you say. For your life, be careful. "That’s too bad."

His father stopped and regarded Jacky from his stupid pig eyes. Jacky held his breath. Somewhere behind his father’s brow, under the lawnmowered brush of his crewcut, the scales were turning. The hot afternoon stood still while Jacky waited, staring up anxiously into his father’s face to see if his father would throw a rough bear arm around his shoulder, grinding Jacky’s cheek against the cracked rough leather of the belt that held up his white pants and say, "Walk me into the house, big boy," in the hard and contemptuous way that was the only way he could even approach love without destroying himself, or if it would be something else.

Tonight it was something else.

The thunderheads appeared on his father’s brow. "What do you mean that’s too bad? What kind of shit is that?"

"Just … too bad, daddy. That’s all I meant. It’s–"

Torrance’s hand swept out at the end of his arm, huge hand, hamhock arm, but speedy, yes, very speedy, and Jacky went on his ass with churchbells in his head and a split lip.

"Shitass," his father said, giving it the broad A.

Jacky said nothing. Nothing would do any good now. The balance had swung the wrong way.

“You ain’t gonna sass me,” Torrance said. “You won’t sass your daddy. Get up here and take your medicine.”

Something in his face this time, some dark and blazing thing. And Jacky suddenly knew that this time there might be no hug at the end of the blows, and if there was he might be unconscious and unknowing … maybe even dead.

He ran.

Behind him, his father let out a bellow of rage and chased him, a flapping specter in his hospital whites, a juggernaut of doom following his son from the front yard to the back.

Jacky ran for his life. The treehouse, he was thinking. He can’t get up there, the ladder nailed to the tree won’t hold him, I’ll get up there, talk to him, maybe he’ll go to sleep – Oh God. Oh please let him go to sleep – he was weeping in terror as he ran.

"Come back here, goddammit!" His father was roaring behind him. "Come back here and take your medicine! Take it like a man!"

Jacky flashed past the back steps. His mother, that thin and defeated woman, scrawny in a faded housedress, had come out through the screen door from the kitchen, just as Jacky ran past with his bellowing father in pursuit. She opened her mouth as if to speak or cry out, but her hand came up in a fist and stopped whatever she might have said, kept it safe behind her teeth. She was afraid for her son, more afraid that her husband would turn on her.

"No you don’t! Come back here!"

Jacky reached the large elm in the back yard, the elm where last year his father had smoke-drugged a colony of wasps and then burned their nest with gasoline. The boy went up the haphazardly nailed-on rungs like greased lightning and still he was nearly not fast enough. His father’s clutching, enraged hand grasped the boy’s ankle in a grip like flexed steel, then slipped a little and only succeeded in pulling off Jacky’s loafer. Jacky went up the last three rungs and crouched on the floor of the treehouse twelve feet above the ground, panting and crying on his hands and knees.

His father seemed to go crazy. He danced around the tree like an Indian, bellowing his rage. He slammed his fists into it, making bark fly and bringing lattices of blood to his knuckles. He kicked it. His huge moon face was white with frustration and red with anger.

"Please, daddy," Jacky moaned. "Whatever I said … I’m sorry I said it…"

"Come down! You come down out of there and take your fucking medicine, you little cur! Right now!"

"I will … I will if you promise not to … to hit me too hard … not hurt me … just spank me but not hurt me …"

"Get out of that tree!" his father screamed.

Jacky looked toward the house but that was hopeless. His mother had retreated somewhere far away, to neutral ground.

"GET OUT RIGHT NOW!"

"Oh, daddy, I don’t dare!" he cried out, and that was the truth. Because now his father might kill him.

There was a period of stalemate. A minute, perhaps, or perhaps two. His father circled the tree, puffing and blowing like whale. Jacky turned around and around on his hands and knees, following the movement. They were like parts of a visible clock.

The second or third time he came back to the ladder nailed to the tree, Torrance stopped. He looked speculatively at the ladder. And laid his hands on the rung before his eyes. He began to climb.

"No, daddy, it won’t hold you," Jacky whispered.

But his father came on relentlessly, like fate, like death, like doom. Up and up, closer to the treehouse, one rung snapped off under his hands and he almost fell but caught the next one up with a grunt and a lunge, and one of the rungs twisted around from the horizontal to the perpendicular under his weight with a rasping scream of pulling nails, but it did not give way, and then his working, congested face was visible over the edge of the treehouse floor, and for that one moment of his childhood Jack Torrance had his father at bay. If he could have kicked that face with the foot that still wore its loafer, kicked it where the nose terminated between the piggy eyes, he could have driven his father off the ladder backwards, perhaps killed him (but if he had killed him, would anyone have said anything but “Thanks, Jacky”?), but it was love that stopped him, and love that would not let him just put his face in his hands and give up as the first one of his father’s pudgy, short-fingered hands appeared on the boards and then the other.

"Now, by God –" his father breathed. He stood above his huddled son like a giant.

"Oh daddy," Jacky mourned for both of them. And for a moment his father paused, his face sagged into lines of uncertainty, and Jacky felt a thread of hope.

Then the face drew up, he could smell the beer, and his father said, "I’ll teach you to sass me," and all hope was gone as the foot swung out, burying itself in his belly, driving the wind from his body in a whoosh as he flew from the treehouse platform and fell to the ground, turning over once and on the point of his left elbow, which snapped with a greenstick crack. He didn’t even have breath enough to scream. The last thing he saw before he blacked out was his father’s face, which seemed to be at the end of a long dark tunnel. It seemed to be filling with surprise, the way a vessel may fill with some pale liquid.

He is just starting to know what he did, Jacky thought incoherently.

And on the heels of that a thought with no meaning at all, coherent or otherwise, a thought that chased him into blackness as he fell back on the chewed and tattered grass of the back lawn in a faint:

What you see is what you’ll be, what you see is what you’ll be, what you –

The break in his arm was cleanly healed in six months. The nightmares went on much longer. In a way, they never stopped.

Scene V. The Overlook Hotel, Third Floor, 1958

The murderers came up the stairs in their stocking feet.

The two men posted outside the door of the Presidential Suite never heard them. They were young, dressed in Ivy League suits with the cut of the jackets a little wider than the fashion of the day decreed. You couldn't wear a .357 Magnum concealed in a shoulder holster and be quite in fashion. They were discussing whether or not the Yankees could take yet another pennant. It was lacking two days of September, and as usual, the pinstripers looked formidable. Just talking about the Yankees made them feel a little better. They were New York boys, on loan from Walt Abruzzi, and they were a long way from home.

The man inside was a big wheel in the Organization. That was all they knew, all they wanted to know. "You do your job, we all get well," Abruzzi had told them. "What's to know?"

They had heard things, of course. That there was a place in Colorado that was completely neutral ground. A place where even a crazy little West Coast hood like Tony Giorgio could sit down and have a fancy brandy in a balloon glass with the Gray Old Men who saw him as some sort of homicidal stinging insect to be crushed. A place where guys from Boston who had been used to putting each other in the trunks of cars behind bowling alleys in Malden or into garbage cans in Roxbury could get together and play gin and tell jokes about the Polacks. A place where hatchets could be buried or unearthed, pacts made, plans laid. A place where warm people could sometimes cool off.

Well, here they were, and it wasn't so much – in fact, both of them were homesick for New York, which was why they were talking about the Yankees. But they never saw New York or the Yankees again.

Their voices reached down the hall to the stairwell where the murderers stood six risers down, with their stocking-covered heads just below line of sight, if you happened to be looking down the hall from the door of the Presidential Suite. There were three of them on the stairs, dressed in dark pants and coats, carrying shotguns with the barrels sawed off to six inches. The shotguns were loaded with expanding buckshot.

One of the three motioned and they walked up the stairs to the hall.

The two outside the door never even saw them until the murderers were almost on top of them. One of them was saying animatedly, "Now you take Ford. Who's better in the American League than Whitey Ford? No, I want to ask you that sincerely, because when it comes to the stretch he just–"

The speaker looked up and saw three black shapes with no discernible faces standing not 10 paces away. For a moment he could not believe it. They were just standing there. He shook his head, fully expecting them to go away like the floating black specks you sometimes saw in the darkness. They didn't. Then he knew.

"What's the matter?" his buddy said.

The young man who had been speaking about Whitey Ford clawed under his jacket for his gun. One of the murderers placed the butt of his shotgun against a leather pad strapped to his belly beneath his dark turtleneck. And pulled both triggers. The blast in the narrow hallway was deafening. The muzzle flash was like summer lightning, purple in its brilliance. A stink of cordite. The young man was blown backward down the hall in a disintegrating cloud of Ivy League jacket, blood, and hair. His arm looped over backward, spilling the Magnum from his dying fingers, and the pistol thumped harmlessly to the carpet with the safety still on.

The second young man did not even make an effort to go for his gun. He stuck his hands high in the air and wet his pants at the same time.

"I give up, don't shoot me, it's OK–!"

"Say hello to Albert Anastasia when you get down there, punk," one of the murderers said, and placed the butt of his shotgun against his belly.

"I ain't a problem, I ain't a problem!" the young man screamed in a thick Bronx accent, and then the blast of the shotgun lifted him out of his shoes and he slammed back against the silk wallpaper with its delicate raised pattern. He actually stuck for a moment before collapsing to the hall floor.

The three of them walked to the door of the suite. One of them tried the knob. "Locked."

"OK."

The third man, who hadn't shot yet, stood in front of the door, leveled his weapon slightly above the knob, and pulled both triggers. A jagged hole appeared in the door, and light rayed through. The third man reached through the hole and grasped the deadbolt on the other side. There was a pistol shot, then two more. None of the three flinched.

There was a snap as the deadbolt gave, and then the third man kicked the door open. Standing in the wide sitting room in front of the picture window, which now showed a view only of darkness, was a man of about 35 wearing only jockey shorts. He held a pistol in each hand and as the murderers walked in he began to fire at them, spraying bullets wildly. Slugs peeled splinters from the door frame, dug furrows in the rug, dusted plaster down from the ceiling. He fired five times, and the closest he came to any of his assassins was a bullet that twitched the pants of the second man at the left knee.

They raised their shotguns with almost military precision.

The man in the sitting room screamed, threw both guns on the floor, and ran for the bedroom. The triple blast caught him just outside the door and a wet fan of blood, brains, and bits of flesh splashed across the cherrystriped wallpaper. He fell through the open bedroom doorway, half in and half out.

"Watch the door," the first man said, and dropped his smoking shotgun to the rug. He reached into his coat pocket, brought out a bone-handled switchblade, and thumbed the chrome button. He approached the dead man, who was lying in the doorway on his side. He squatted beside the corpse and yanked down the front of the man's jockey shorts.

Down the hall the door to one of the other suites opened and a pallid face peered out. The third man raised his shotgun and the face jerked back in. The door slammed. A bolt rattled frantically.

The first man rejoined them.

"All right," he said. "Down the stairs and out the back door. Let's go."

They were outside and climbing into the parked car three minutes later. They left the Overlook behind them, standing gilded in mountain moonlight, white as bone under high stars. The hotel would stand long after the three of them were as dead as the three they had left behind.

The Overlook was at home with the dead.

LEVITY

2012-02-09T10:35:00.002-05:00

Arsenio vs. Jason

HEAR MY VOICE

2012-02-08T12:24:00.000-05:00

UNSUNG HORRORS: THE NIGHT FLIER

2012-02-07T09:53:00.006-05:00

Every once in a while, a genuinely great horror movie—one that would rightfully be considered a classic, had it gotten more exposure and love at the box office—makes an appearance. It comes, no one notices, and it goes. But movies like this are important. They need to be treasured and remembered. If intelligent, original horror is supported, then that's what we'll begin to receive, in droves. We need to make these movies a part of the legendary genre we hold so dear. Because these are the unsung horrors. These are the movies that should have been successful, but were instead ignored. They should be rightfully praised for the freshness and intelligence and craft that they have contributed to our genre forevermore.

So, better late than never, we’re going to celebrate them now… one at a time.

Dir. Mark Pavia

1997

New Line Cinema

United States

Stephen King is perhaps the most prolific author who has ever lived. Interesting that his home base is the horror genre—something often derided for its offensive, controversial, or corny subject matter. There’s no arguing the man has given one generation after another unending nightmares about clowns hiding in sewers, corpses in hotel room bathtubs, and recently resurrected childhood pets. He’s written tales of utter fear married with genuine quality, and he, like many of his colleagues, hands his work to filmmakers on a silver platter, hoping they will achieve a same result. Unfortunately, that is hardly the case. In general, nine times out of ten the book will always be better than the movie it inspired, but with King, it sometimes seems as if there is some cosmic force out there willing to do anything to prove it, for the chances of a successful King novel to screen transition is generally 50/50. Famous filmmakers with various levels of prestige have tackled King over the years: Stanley Kubrick, John Carpenter, Rob Reiner…the list is truly endless—yet despite the director’s pedigree, it didn’t always work out. Lawrence Kasdan, for instance – the man who brought you The Big Chill and Wyatt Earp – couldn’t quite turn Dreamcatcher into anything more but a bloated Hollywood A-list joke (although the source material did not reflect the best of King’s work). Tom Holland, who had previously contributed the horror classics Child’s Play and Fright Night (as well as the script for the quite-good Psycho 2), couldn’t pull off Thinner. Even George Romero, who hit one homerun with Creepshow, couldn’t quite make The Dark Half work. Lastly, let’s not forget poor Mick Garris, who just keeps trying.

And that’s just when it comes to novels.

When it comes to King’s short stories and novellas…oh boy. For every decent story-to-film transition (1408, Apt Pupil), there are dozens of inexorably poor attempts (Lawnmower Man, The Mangler, eight – count ‘em – eight Children of the Corn movies) whose odor of excrement still waft across the land. Many filmmakers have tried; most have failed. It would seem that only Frank Darabont possesses that rare ability to repeatedly turn King’s shorter works into amazing films. Most folks point to The Shawshank Redemption as that shining example, but The Mist is an underrated and nasty little tale of monster mayhem and the ugliness of humanity (even if the ending is a bit too mean-spirited for my taste).

With that said, when I tell you that a filmmaker with very little previous credits to his name adapted one particular King tale about a vampire pilot, and it stars the angry guy from Project: ALF, I’d expect you to be suspicious, if not downright cynical.

How horribly wrong you would be. In fact, next to Shawshank and Stand By Me, The Night Flier is perhaps one of the best adaptations of a King short to date.

Miguel Ferrer is Richard Dees, an unscrupulous reporter for a tabloid called Inside View. He has no qualms with hiding in morgues all night, or doing…certain things…with morgue attendants to ensure he obtains the perfect photographs to accompany his stories. And he isn't on-screen for more than ten seconds before he snatches a galley proof out of someone's hand and demands to know where his "god damned dead baby" picture is. It's quite an introduction to a character, and right away let's you know just what kind of "protagonist" you'll be spending your time with.

Dees has made a decent living writing slime (which includes loving homage to other King works, such as Thinner and Needful Things), so it’s much to his chagrin that his equally slimy editor, Merton Morrison (Dan Monahan of the Porky’s films), forces upon him a newbie reporter named Katherine (Julie Entwisle) to be his partner. Dees is not terribly excited at this prospect and does nothing to camouflage his disdain for her.

In a smoky bar one evening, Dees tells Katherine how the job and the sick things she’ll eventually see will crawl inside her like a cancer and fester until she either kills herself or goes mad—citing his former co-worker named Dottie (whom Katherine is replacing) as the example. Dees lives by the coda “Never believe what you publish, and never publish what you believe.” He also lives an isolated life – one primarily spent on the open road – and he genuinely seems to prefer it that way. There’s not a single scene that takes place in Dee’s home—bars, yes; the office, yes; dingy motel rooms, the open road, his own private airplane; all yes. But the man, sadly, has no real home of his own, and that speaks volumes about the kind of person he is. Though he preaches never to believe what he publishes, the job clearly encompasses his whole life. He’s not the most balanced person you’ll meet, and his temper flares with little prodding.

At the editor’s insistence, Dees begins following the trail of Dwight Renfield, a so-called vampire pilot who lands his black Cessna airplane in isolated airstrips and helps himself to the hapless victims unfortunate enough to dwell close by. Before feasting, however, Renfield bestows upon them some kind of trancelike state, leaving his victims lucid and almost high. The victims tend to be elderly (meaning, unable to put up any kind of fight), but those friends and witnesses claim that in the days leading to their death, they never looked better—bright skin and eyes brimming with life; an interesting effect of being preyed upon by a vampiric creature.

There are some creepy and ghastly sights along the way: Someone’s head ripped off their neck and staring, upside down, with their dead eyes; a woman, whose blood was cleanly drained from her body, lying peacefully on her bed; even an utterly demonic looking dog that leaps from the top of a trailer and chases Dees to his car…but then suddenly reappears on top of the trailer again, sitting calmly and stoically, before vanishing altogether. (Scenes like this make me wish the currently out-of-print DVD contained a director’s commentary, because I’d love to know how they made the dog that insane looking.)

During the investigation, Dees cock-teases Morrison by telling him he’s covered excellent ground, but refuses to spill because he can feel the story is about to get bigger and weirder. Morrison, refusing to wait for Dees’ version of the story, instead sics newbie Katherine on the trail, as well—not just in an effort to get the story on the shelves as soon as possible, but also because he gets his rocks off on playing his seasoned reporter and his brand new hire against each other. (In fact, his last scene in the film ends with him maniacally laughing in the dark solitude of his office, knowing the two at-odds reporters are both heading toward an inevitable and ugly confrontation.)

As Dees falls deeper down Renfield’s rabbit hole, he clings desperately to his credo of publishing and believing he has so often followed. Things become increasingly real for Dees, however, until he can no longer help but become entangled in the morbid investigation. The idea of regaining his top dog position at Inside View (which pathetically, at the end of the day, is really not an enviable position at all) becomes too enticing for Dees to pass up. That’s a decision he will ultimately come to regret.

Begin Spoilers.

On the surface, The Night Flier is just your fun and bloody vampire tale, but underneath, there's quite a bit thematically going on. Great pains (though subtle) are made to show that Dees and Renfield are kindred spirits. The first and most obvious would be the fact that they both own planes…a similarity purposely made obvious to lead you to see the less obvious similarities on your own. To start, they both live an isolated life, existing not in a home, but in the skies above. Perhaps most ironically, they are both bloodsuckers, preying on their unsuspecting victims in different ways. Dees has spent his entire life chasing death, while Renfield has spent most of his afterlife spreading it; the actions of both have brought nothing but pain and misery to all of their victims.

The Night Flier is about transition. When Dees speaks of his former co-worker, Dottie, in the beginning of the film, there's a brief flashback of him standing at her bathroom doorway, staring at her lifeless body in the tub. Before you can even begin to wonder why he is there, he raises his camera and takes a picture. At that point, she becomes to him nothing more than headline fodder. At the film's end, Katherine, too, assumes the "role" of Dees and publishes a story outing him as "The Night Flier," also effectively killing the trail of the true killer. There's a strange kind of hope for her character—the film ends with a close-up of her face, hardened by all that she has experienced, but she truly has learned from Dees his one commandment: Never believe what you publish, and never publish what you believe. Having seen Renfield take off into the stormy night, she decides then and there not to pursue. She has seen what chasing the truth has done to a person, and so she shifts the blame to Dees...who all along was just another side of Renfield, anyway. While the true Night Flier is not the one whose face becomes splashed on the front page of Inside View, Dees deserves to be just as vilified.

Speaking of transition, how much credence should I lend to the fact that the film's finale takes place in a car rental agency called Triangle Budget Rental? After all, Katherine becomes Dees; Dees becomes "The Night Flier;" and "The Night Flier" becomes a story that will never be published because Katherine sees the truth of it, and hence believes...which is the only ideal Dees ever really lived by.

End Spoilers.

Dees is truly despicable in almost every sense – he has not one positive trait – yet he becomes a character you root for, even sympathize with, as the story progresses towards its shocking conclusion. It’s the strength of Miguel Ferrer’s performance that enables this conflicted support, as he brings a lot of weight to his role. Ferrer has spent the majority of the last decade working in television, his last meaty film role being in Jonathan Demme’s 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate. He is one of those many character actors that do not receive nearly as much attention as they deserve.

Really, for a low budget affair, the entire supporting cast does a great job. Monahan as Morrison oozes with that special kind of slime you can't help but secretly adore, and Phoebe Cates-lookalike Entwisle as Katherine contributes a believable performance in her first (and only?) film role. Special mention must be made of John Bennes as airplane maintenance man Ezra Hannon. His very brief moment of screen time comes across as probably the most genuine performance in the film. With his engine grease-covered hands and face, and his filthy jumpsuit, he looks every bit the part. Before checking out his career on the ol’ IMDB, I was convinced he was a real New England native who managed to find his way into the movie. It’s little things like this that give The Night Flier its power. Actual effort went into the movie, and it shows. Low budgets can be a hindrance, but talent and passion can and will always make up for it—so long as you’ve got the right people in front of and behind the camera.

The red stuff flies fast and furiously—the legendary KNB FX boys do not hold back. And the last ten minutes contains some of the scariest, most fucked up (without going overboard), and expert execution I’ve ever seen in the horror genre. I love watching this film with people who have never seen it, because this ending sequence always leaves them shifting uncomfortably on the couch.

Composer Brian Keane turns in a nice little score, filling it with sad melancholy and subtle horror. He has spent the majority of his career scoring documentaries for television, and his style of small, under-the-surface music serves the film quite well.

As an aside, The Night Flier is a movie that plays quite beautifully in black and white. The natural noir aspects of the film play well against the stripping of color, and it makes you look at the film in a new way. I definitely recommend turning off the color the next time you watch.

Writer/director Mark Pavia enhanced the original story quite a bit to turn it into a feature length script. The character of Katherine Blair was entirely created, but her inclusion in the story is so appropriate and perfect to the events unfolding, as well as her serving as a perfect foil to Dees, that it never feels forced or long-winded. The ending sequence I spoke of earlier, too, is a creation on Pavia's part. Much of the dialogue remains the same, however, as well as the tense relationships—although it would seem Pavia's Dees comes across as a bit more sympathetic than King's.

Word on the street is Pavia has a new King project in the works…something about an anthology. After the last five years of tepid, King-inspired films, this is something to be truly excited about.

INTO THE FRAY

2012-02-05T22:51:00.000-05:00

I have seen The Grey twice now and it's absolutely fantastic. A movie sold as Taken with Wolves is actually a very humbling tale of a group of men struggling to survive against the elements, animalkind, and each other. Do not be fooled. The movie has brains and heart as well as balls.

The soundtrack is great, too. My favorite track, Alpha, is below:

HIS CLEAVER'S BLADE SO TRUE

2012-02-03T08:55:00.001-05:00

I can't help myself. I have no control over this - this evil thing inside of me: the fire, the voices, the torment. It's there all the time, driving me out to wander the streets...

If we don't, remember me.

SHORT FILM: CREAK

2012-02-02T12:16:00.002-05:00

Received this message in my inbox the other day:

I'm a filmmaker on the South Coast of the UK and I've started an ongoing series of short horror films. The first of these, "Creak," is up online now, and seems to be getting a loving response, which is great! Was never out to reinvent the wheel - just make a fun little "disposable" short film...

Creak from Faster Productions on Vimeo.

Sincerely, Psychopath

SHE'S NOT ME

2012-01-31T09:59:00.000-05:00

The family in the Enfield case consisted of a mother, two daughters and two sons; Margaret, aged 12, a younger sister, Janet, aged 11, Johnny, aged 10 and Billy, aged 7. Billy had a speech impediment. Johnny featured only marginally in the inexplicable events, at least 26 of which the investigators considered could not be accounted for by fraud. These included moving furniture, flying marbles, interference with bedclothes, cold breezes, pools of water on the floor, apparitions, physical assaults, graffiti, equipment malfunction and failure, disappearance and reappearance of objects, apparent levitations, and fires which spontaneously ignited and extinguished themselves.

Among other alleged phenomena they witnessed was Janet speaking using her false vocal folds for hours on end while she was apparently possessed by another entity. Speaking in this way is believed to be medically impossible. When speaking with the false cords Janet said she was "Bill" who had died in the house of a brain hemorrhage. The "Bill" persona habitually made jokes and exhibited a very nasty temper, swearing at Maurice, once calling him a "fucking old sod." Grosse was contacted by a man who claimed to be Bill's son. Recordings were made of these occurrences.

YVES LECOQ

2012-01-30T10:26:00.000-05:00

So much more.

SHITTY FLICKS: THE AMITYVILLE HAUNTING

2012-01-27T08:41:00.011-05:00

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up.

Holy shit.

What's that expression? Something about putting a bunch of monkeys and typewriters into a locked room and eventually they'll write Shakespeare?

The Asylum has produced approximately 65 films, and if we're sticking with the monkey metaphor, they are still at the "hurling turds" stage.

The Amityville Haunting is among the company's newest releases, and it portrays – in the ever-so-popular found footage format – the Benson family moving into 112 Ocean Avenue. Your family unit consists of Doug (the angry Marine father), Virginia (the way-too-attractive-to-have-three-kids wife/mother), Lori (the generic bitchy teen daughter who spends the entire movie texting), Tyler (the shaggy-haired middle child/our cameraman), and Melanie (the generic youngest daughter who quite ably communicates with the ghosts while simultaneously doing nothing to dispel the stereotype of the shitty child actor). They move in, last five days, test your patience, and then die. (Spoiler.)

For those of you who don't know about The Asylum, they are an ultra low-budget production and distribution house that primarily support the horror genre. They've been in the business for over ten years, and in that time, they've developed a reputation for producing "mockbusters," which are rip-offs of more popular – and generally better – mainstream films. And when I say rip-off, I don't mean that Apollo 18 is a rip-off of Paranormal Activity. I mean that in the same year Sony released Battle: Los Angeles and The Da Vinci Code, The Asylum released Battle IN Los Angeles and The Da Vinci Treasure. When Marvel Films released Thor, suddenly Almighty Thor existed.

My personal favorite? The Asylum produced a movie with this log line:

A race of alien robots has conquered the Earth and forced humanity underground. After three hundred years of domination, a small group of humans develop a plan to defeat the mechanical invaders in the ultimate battle between man and machine.

It is so very awesomely called Transmorphers.

There are numerous other examples, but I believe you get the point.

The Amityville Haunting was announced not too long after another, more legitimate project was announced: The Amityville Horror: The Lost Tapes. What was supposed to serve as a quasi-sequel to the 2005 Ryan Reynolds-starring The Amityville Horror was put into turnaround soon after its initial announcement, I believe due to the then-financial woes of MGM. The Asylum snapped up this concept and shot their own movie – from the looks of things – in roughly a day and a half. Aping what was obviously going to be the concept, we have The Amityville Horror meets Paranormal Activity.

While it suffers from the same ailments that plague most low budget horror films (terrible acting, a terrible script, terrible pacing, and a rudimentary attempt to jazz up the execution in hopes to cover the bad odor of those three previous terrible things), I freely admit to you that during the film I became genuinely freaked out. I honestly didn’t think I would experience anything like this during the movie, but it happened. (More on that later.)

As previously mentioned, your host is unfortunately a very precocious child named Tyler. His camera-handling skills are about as adept as a dead man's ability to jazzercise. Numerous times during the film he defends his decision to film everything with the excuse, "It's for my documentary." Not a single explanation for what this documentary is about ever comes up. He also says the line, "I hate it when no one believes me!" at least three times during the movie…to himself. Over the course of five days, he never changes his clothes. Not a single time.

"I'm gonna mumble about ghosts for thirty minutes while
someone plays video games loudly in the background and my
mother makes dinner. Then I'm gonna put this on Youtube and
people are gonna care for some reason."

When the Benson family first tours the Amityville house and decide to buy it, the realtor goes outside and is immediately killed. Man, I knew the current real estate market was hurting, but I didn't think it was full-on murder!

Click me!

Tyler tells us the realtor has died of an "anerism," but still, "it's really weird!" Later, he overhears a conversation between the parents about the house's history – namely the 1974 DeFeo murders that started this whole mess in the first place – and decides the house must be haunted. While I want to commend the filmmakers for setting this film outside of the Amityville world we all know and loathe – meaning the 8 films – and having it be "the real house" in which the DeFeo murders took place, I soon quickly realized this was probably due to a legal loophole that allowed them to make this movie and not have their asses sued off by MGM/Dimension Films, who own the actual film rights. I should also mention that the house where the movie takes place is clearly nowhere near the same shape, size, or in the same location as the “real” Amityville house.

The movie goes to great lengths to establish that much horror has occurred at 112 Ocean Avenue (in the form of both a nervous realtor and a suspicious detective who later shows up and really wants to know why the hell the family would choose to live in such a terrible house). Despite this, when Tyler asks three moving men in the beginning of the film about the "Amityville house" and its legend, the three men laugh, never having heard of such a thing. The black mover even makes a joke about black people dying first in horror movies. One of the other movers responds, "You better watch out, then!"

Huh? He knows. He's the one who just made the fucking joke.

Though The Amityville Haunting desperately tries to ape the Paranormal Activity formula, it fails miserably. For instance, Paranormal Activity features escalating levels of creep and leads to a final-act death of a lead character. It's a subtle film that takes its time, and effectively so. The Amityville Haunting, however, kills six people within the first fifteen minutes (one of whom is enigmatically named Reddit), and yet you still manage to stop caring about anything happening in the film almost immediately.

Many of the events are excruciatingly dull, and those that aren't manage to be interesting only because of the pedestrian manner in which they are executed. At no point do the ghosts actually look like ghosts, but rather bored actors in thrift store suits with a splash of blood across their faces. In fact, the one ghost that Melanie interacts with the entire movie – whose name alternates between John Matthews and John Matthew – is just some random kid. Watch as he sits on the floor, or at the table, and wears very modern clothes. No blood—not even white powder slapped across his face to make him appear the least bit unnatural. He's just...some kid.

Realtor, this is one of my annoying children.

And that's my other annoying child, but in boy form.

Based on how the characters interact, I can only assume a very loose script was used, allowing actors to bounce dialogue off each other and improvise in the moment—and by this I mean they randomly speak over each other's lines, so most of the dialogue never sounds genuine.

For instance:

Mother: (pointing out son who is filming) Don't mind him, he thinks he is the next Steven Spielberg. He films everything.

Realtor: Oh, don't we all?

Huh?

My personal favorite line exchange comes during the second act of the film, when the father discovers his teen daughter, Lori, has been sneaking out late at night to see a boy from the neighborhood. Sitting at the table with a police officer, this masterful wordplay ensues:

Father: My daughter has been sneaking out with...this kid.

Cop: I bet it was that kid!

- "It was that kid, right?"
- "It was that kid!"
- "That fucking kid!"
- "That...fucking...kid."

At one point in the movie, Tyler has Melanie ask the ghost what it wants. The ghost then tells Melanie, who tells her brother, "he wants you, Mommy, and Daddy to leave, and he wants me to stay here forever."

Ouch. Quite a burn for Lori, who is apparently destined for neither leaving the house, nor staying. Have you ever tried being nowhere? It's really, really hard.

As you can imagine, the scary events in the house escalate, leading to a terrifying conclusion. Now see, I said "you can imagine" because you'd have to, as that doesn't actually happen here. Things remain painfully dull up until the last second, in which each family member is murdered in completely unimaginative (and off-screen) ways.

The movie ends with close-ups of "coroner's investigation reports" for each family member killed. An official cause of death for one of the family members reads: heart and lung “separtion."

Good one.

I really wanted to give The Asylum the benefit of the doubt when it came to this movie. First of all, at the end of the day, they manage to make movies. That's something most of us wish we could do, and for those of us that have, we know it's not a terribly easy thing to accomplish. Not to mention that The Asylum's usual budgets are never that big for their productions, which doesn't make things easier for them. Regardless, they sometimes manage to attract people worth a damn (Lance Henriksen, for instance). I was hoping that the ability for them to spend even less on a movie by making a found footage flick would, in turn, allow them to focus more on the script and telling a good story. Sadly, I was wrong. Not only is the movie incompetently made in almost every general sense, I am really starting to feel like we’re all being had—every single one of us that goes out of our way to see one of their movies. I feel contempt from these filmmakers. I feel like they are laughing at us all – in some Andy Kauffman-esque way – as we struggle to remain invested in their work. These people clearly have money (when compared to me, anyway), and as previously mentioned, are capable of attracting people I actually want to see in movies. Why won’t they try? Why won’t they attempt to make something that’s good? Just by odds alone, that should have happened by now.

Oh, right. The thing I mentioned earlier that completely freaked me out? During the movie, I went into the other room and one of my flameless LED candles had turned on by itself!

How did it DO that??

Terrible.

THE DEMONOLOGIST

2012-01-26T09:50:00.005-05:00

The Demonologist, an account of Ed and Lorraine Warren's career in demonology, is one creepy-ass book. The Warrens' names should sound familiar if you’re an "Amityville Horror" obsessive. (I am—with the original conspiracy, anyway, not the tepid film series.) To those who followed the saga of 112 Ocean Ave, either in its heyday, or in subsequent books, television specials, and/or truly abhorrent film adaptations, the Warrens should already feel like family. When the Lutz family fled their brief home after only 28 days and spouted off about the evil residing within, outsiders who eventually became involved in the controversy were actively split in regards to the legitimacy of the claims. In short, they either believed the Lutzes, or they didn’t. The Warrens and other occult specialists did, Law enforcement didn’t, and the media didn't care—but they covered every inch of it like hungry canines.

While The Demonologist does mention Amityville from time to time, the Warrens don’t have much to say on the subject, other than they believed in the Lutzes and tried to help as best as they could. Instead, the book is actually a very detailed account of their careers and their life together—and of the evil that often followed them home from their “exorcisms.” The Warrens generally helped rid two kinds of infestation: oppression (ongoing harassment by a demon to break down a person’s will and make their body easier to inhabit) or possession (the invasion of a person’s body by a foreign entity). The book is largely comprised of direct quotes from Ed and Lorraine themselves, relating their own experience and encounters.

The book’s author, Gerald Daniel Brittle, does a commendable job taking this information and weaving in relevant information to fill in the gaps and create a coherent narrative. Chapters alternate between recollections of more memorable visits to homes where demon infestations once occurred, and the Warrens’ clear explanations of demonology in answers to questions author Brittle poses—and it’s especially helpful that Brittle asks the same questions that you or I would while reading the book.

What exactly is demonology? How does one become a demonologist? Because psychology is so often mentioned alongside cases where demonology (specifically exorcisms) is involved, does that mean there is a correlation between the two? Why don’t more people know about demonology?

Ed mainly handles these questions, answering each with a wealth of information based on his years of experience in the field. While Lorraine, too, is considered a demonologist, she instead refers to herself as a clairvoyant—one who is more sensitive to her surroundings and capable of seeing, hearing, and sensing things that most people do not. Houses infested with demons, she explains in the book, give off moods just like a human being does, and she is able to sense these moods during her preliminary walkthroughs of the houses in question. She also claims to see “auras,” which provide information – in the form of different colored halos – that surround every human being.

The Amityville House: 112 Ocean Ave

Even with Ed matter-of-factly reiterating information from past cases, the book is effortlessly creepy. A typical person who saw 1973’s The Exorcist and found it over-the-top would be shocked at how that film only managed to scratch the surface of what a true exorcism entails, and the traits those infested with a demon or demons may possess. The Exorcist featured unnatural vomit, physical manipulation of the unfortunate host, wildly fluctuating temperatures surrounding the possessed, and the knowledge of previously unknown languages. Ed Warren verifies all of this activity in the book. What The Exorcist didn’t portray was the materialization/dematerialization of objects, faces of the possessed briefly transforming into that of an animal’s, the smell or even physical appearance of excrement, or the presentation of foreign objects not previously located in the house. In one instance during an exorcism, Ed claimed a softball-sized rock appeared in midair and thudded on the floor, and upon having the rock tested by a specialist at a nearby university, confirmed that that specific rock was from a wooded area over 75 miles away. It’s this kind of information – unorthodox, unusual, and inherently unthreatening – that truly makes the claims that much more unnerving. Yes, if during The Exorcist Regan’s face had broken out into that of a cat or dog (or a gorilla, which Ed claims occurs the most frequently), the audience would have broken out into jeers. But with the mere explanation of that having happened in the past before you only in words, your imagination fills in the gaps, and it becomes a genuinely frightening thought—because that simply does not jibe with everything we like to think we know about the subject of exorcism. We think spinning heads and pea soup, not animal noises and mysterious stones falling from the sky and pelting the house of the afflicted.

While the book touches on some rather famous cases, such as West Germany’s Annaliese Michele (which inspired The Exorcism of Emily Rose), and the possession of Robbie Mannheim (alias), a boy from Maryland (which later inspired The Exorcist), a large portion is dedicated to the oppression/possession of the Donovan family. It is during these pages when the book is at its creepiest, and photographs of the damage done by the spirits are present.

Ed shares one particular encounter – not related to a case the Warrens were investigating – that I found especially unnerving, only because of how random the encounter was:

Only a few months ago, Lorraine and I had just been on a television show uptown in New York City. Afterwards, we took a taxi down to Chinatown for lunch. As we were walking along the street we saw there was some trouble at the corner, with police cars all around. So I suggested we cut through a walkway or alley on our left-hand size, which led to Mott Street.

Well, we took the alley, which was full of beat-up trashcans overflowing with garbage. Flies, maggots, and vermin were everywhere. The combination of the heat and the stink of decomposing garbage quickly began to sour our stomachs. Nevertheless, we kept going. Further back, the alley crooked slightly, so that beyond the middle you could no longer see the street.

We walked quickly, but as we got to the middle of the alleyway, at the end of this long row of trashcans, we saw two feet sticking out. I told Lorraine to stand still while I walked up ahead. When I got closer, I saw it was a man—a derelict. He was a Caucasian, between thirty-five and sixty-five—you couldn’t tell. The man was barely alive, sitting up against the wall with his legs stretched out into the path. He was filthier than anyone I have ever seen: covered with sores and scabs, and obviously riddled with disease.

But that just begins to tell the story. Because piled on top of him – as though he were sitting in bed with a quilt over him – were heaps of runny, putrefying garbage. This foul mess covered the man all the way up to his chest and down to his knees. His arms were plopped in the middle of this rotting slop, and flies were landing all over his face and body. Rats had apparently been gnawing on his feet and toes. It was evident the man hadn’t moved in days.

Ironically, his shoes were neatly placed beside him, shined up and ready to go. Now I have been in war and I have seen spiritual abominations in haunted houses but I doubt if I’ve ever seen anything so repulsive or disgusting in my life. How could this happen? How could a human being be reduced to such a stage?

I looked at this poor, wretched soul from the feet up, and was overtaken with compassion and grief. When I finally came to look upon his face, I was stunned and instinctively took a step back. His face was twisted into a perverse sneer—and there was that ugly, inhuman look of delirium in his eyes. Then I knew what had happened to him. And what was possessing that man, in turn, knew me, too.

‘You bastard!’ I said to it, so sickened was I by this scene. It laughed, mockingly. ‘I am killing him,’ it said to me. ‘In a few days, he will be dead. And do you know, there is nothing you can do about it. Because it is already done.’

Also in the book are several pages of transcribed audiotapes featuring Ed’s interrogations with the possessed. A piece of one of those interrogations is as follows:

Voice: I do not choose to be here!
Ed Warren (EW): Why did you come then?
Voice: I am under the Power!
EW: Whose power?
Voice: A white light!
EW: Describe yourself to me.
Voice: No. (A crucifix is then set in place, followed by agonized screaming by the possessing spirit.)
EW: Describe yourself to me!
Voice: I must in truth tell you what I look like. I am wicked—and ugly looking. I am inhuman. I am vindictive. I have a horrible face. I have much gross hair on my body. My eyes are deepsunk. I am black all over. I am burnt. I grow hair. My nails are long, my toes are clawed. I have a tail. I use a spear. What else do you want to know?
EW: What do you call yourself?
Voice: (Proclaiming) I am Resisilobus! I am Resisilobus!

Resisilobus

And another, in which the possessing entity allegedly called himself Fred and spoke in a British cockney accent:

EW: Do you want me to bring a priest in here?
Voice: Yeah, all right. Bring ‘im in here. I’ll kick ‘im in the backside.
EW: What would you say if the Blessed Mother told you to leave, Fred?
Voice: Yeccch. Ugh.
EW: Do you know what this is, Fred? What do you see?
Voice: Uh…a cross.
EW: That’s right, a cross. That cross means your days are numbered here.
Voice: I’m gonna chop somebody’s head off.
EW: The next time I come back here, Fred, you’d better be gone. Because the next time I come I’m bringing a very powerful exorcist with me, someone you won’t want to mess with.
Voice: (There is a long lull.) Ed. Ed. Ed…Ed…Ed-ward.
EW: What is it, Fred?
Voice: Let’s play exorcist. Go get the holy water.

The Demonologist is infinitely fascinating to those with even a passing interest in the subject, regardless of where your belief system might lie. However, I must warn you that this book is definitely not for everyone. If you are a person who fervently believes that the world you see before you is all there is to see—that there’s nothing beyond—then you will probably receive no enjoyment from this book whatsoever. While the history and information would probably be interesting to all readers, its claims would be so easily dismissed from the first page that there would be no point for some people to continue reading. For all intents and purposes, the book is labeled and considered non-fiction—much to the chagrin of the more close-minded that question that label with a smirk.

I am a skeptic, by and large. I don’t necessarily believe in ghosts and demons and everything in between, but I also don’t believe things like that are impossible, either. Unlikely, perhaps—but not impossible. So when Ed recites, without a hint of irony, his experiences with haunted mirrors, or Ouija boards presenting very real dangers, your own personal prejudice is going to determine how you react. Because I am not 100% on board with the beliefs of the Warrens, I found some of the claims bordering on absurdity. However, the Warrens firmly believe in their careers as demonologists, and in the unseen entities they battle on almost a daily basis, and so because of that the book gets my respect. They were fully aware, even during the writing of this book, that they were opening themselves up to mockery by the more close-minded, but they were not deterred by that fact—instead, their aim of the book remains emphatically clear: demons are very real, and can very easily enter our world. The Warrens dictate what kind of people are more open to these invading entities (those who spend most of their days angry, or depressed; those considering suicide; alcoholics/drug addicts), and what things a person has to do to invite them in. (While the Warrens resist talking specifically about what a person has to do to entice these entities, they do confirm certain ceremonies performed by various people who later became victims of demons they foolishly invited into their life.)

To lend a little credibility to the Warrens’ careers, it should be noted that they have never accepted payment from those claiming to suffer from demonic oppression or possession. If you called the Warrens, they came to you, and if they determined your claims were genuine, they stayed until the invading entities were gone—for free. Further, they even insisted on bringing home with them any particular items that may have been the catalyst for an invading demonic entity in the first place. They reason that to leave the objects with the family runs the risk of letting the same demon back into their lives, or to destroy the cursed item would unleash the demon into the world in general. And so, their “dark museum” grew considerably over the years:

There are about a hundred items in the collection so far, and almost every item has a story attached to it. There’s a string of pearls that when worn around the neck, strangles the wearer. There’s the long black spike a satanic witch used long ago to murder her newborn infant as a sacrifice to the devil. There is the sage plaster doll dressed in Victorian clothing that not only took on the features of the old lady who once owned it, but became animated and behaved like a human being for over 20 years. There are the crania of human skulls that have been used as “chalices of ecstasy” for drinking human blood during witchcraft rituals. There’s the coffin in which a possessed man slept each night for his whole adult life. There are stones – some quite sizeable – that fell out of the sky onto homes under diabolical siege. There are crucifies that have actually been exploded by demonic spirits and excrement. There are written pacts with the devil, the black candles and conjuring book from the Hillman case, and by the door to Ed’s office is hung the conjuring mirror take from Oliver Bernbaum’s house in New Jersey. The planchette and burned picture frames from the Dononvan case are displayed on a table not far from a wooden cabinet in which Annabelle, the Raggedy Ann doll, now sits holding a plain wood crucifix in her little cloth hand.

The Demonologist was first published in 1980 and then for a long time afterwards was out of print, but a new edition is available, and time has been well to its contents. The information remains rich, intriguing, and scary. While Ed Warren is sadly no longer with us (he died in 2006), Lorraine has continued the battle against the darkness as a member of The New England Society for Psychic Research.

As I write this, Insidious’ James Wan is hard at work on a film tentatively known as The Untitled Warren Files Project, which will dive into the Warrens’ past to tell the story of the Perrons, a Rhode Island family who dealt with a demon infestation of their own during the 1970s. While the exploits of the family may have been discussed in the book, their name is never used, so it’s hard to say. So far the cast is looking great: Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga will play the Warrens, and Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor will play the Perrons. After James Wan showed what he could do with Insidious, and Dead Silence before it (shut up, I liked it), I look immensely forward to another creepy show.

The book is available on Amazon, naturally, and several chunks can be sampled here.

For more information on the Warrens, be sure to check out their (woefully out-of-date) official website.

MENTAL HEALTH DAY

2012-01-25T09:15:00.000-05:00

REVIEW: 7 NIGHTS OF DARKNESS

2012-01-24T09:48:00.000-05:00

On paper, 7 Nights of Darkness shouldn’t have worked. It was low budget to the nth degree, and Allen Kellogg is not only credited as the lead actor, but also the writer, director, producer, and editor. Ed Wood should have just flashed through your head, as he did mine while the credits of 7 Nights rolled. The film, on its own merits, wasn’t bad. It doesn’t come anywhere near the heights of its POV-ghost-hunting brethren like Paranormal Activity or Grave Encounters, but it could easily have been just another piece of shit direct-to-video trash hole. I’m pleased to say it wasn’t.

I give Kellogg semi-credit for finally committing to film an obvious premise like ghost hunters investigating a supposedly haunted building and actually coming across real ghosts(!) That may come across as a slight against the film (and I guess it kind of is), but seriously…it’s about time someone finally brought that concept to a film. That premise was just hanging around in the air, waiting for someone to grab at it and nail it down. And while it would be easy to just accuse 7 Nights of being a rip-off of the very similarly themed Grave Encounters (which was shot in 2009 and made film festival rounds for nearly two years), I have enough knowledge of low budget filmmaking to know that small, passion projects like these can sometimes take years to complete. In this case, I’ll give 7 Nights the benefit of the doubt that this premise came about organically, and its creator could only say, “oh, God damn it,” when news of Grave Encounters began making the rounds.

The plot is fairly simple: six folks (four dudes, two chicks) are chosen to spend seven nights in Madison Seminary, an abandoned and allegedly haunted building. Those who remain in the building all seven nights will be rewarded with a million dollars to split between them. They are to film everything at all times, and they are to complete a task assigned to them each night they are there. Failure to follow these orders will be considered non-compliance, and the offer becomes void.

Needless to say, the inhuman sounds begin, as do the fuzzy sightings of something leering in the corner. The creepy set pieces begin to escalate…and people start to disappear.

The Good:

Kellogg as a director does a nice job of working well within his budget and manages to create some genuinely creepy moments—some of which you may see coming, but are still effective, anyway. (Fuck that doll!)

Kellogg as a writer is also quite competent. At no point does any character ever do something beyond belief—and one of them even surprises you with a clever revelation of their own. Everyone reacts how one should react (well, mostly…until the end)—and this is a real service to the film.

The ending is quite Blair Witch-inspired (let’s face it, no one ever survives the found footage sub-genre, do they?), and if you’re watching the film under the right circumstances, it’s a satisfyingly creepy conclusion to the journey.

The Bad:

I’ve seen a lot of garbage over the years—ranging from the A-list to off-the-alphabet low budgeters that offend you with the thought of their very existence. When 7 Nights began, I honestly thought it didn’t have a prayer. The caliber of acting in the film becomes painfully clear almost immediately, and my own personal prejudice against low budget horror admittedly made me discard the idea that Kellogg purposely attempted to fill his cast with “real” people instead of raiding a local community acting troupe. While I won’t say the performances are across-the-board bad (Meredith Kochan’s Brooke comes across as very natural and believable), let’s just say some of these folks need to seriously reconsider their future as actors. Kellogg’s own performance as Carter left a lot to be desired: His “natural” attempts at humor came across as forced and utterly obnoxious, and for me he was nearly the most unlikeable character in the film. (That honor goes to Todd, played by Mick Garris doppelganger Larry Nehring, who [betraying my role as a “professional” reviewer for a moment], acts like a total bitch from his first minute until his last.) At one point in the film, when one of the film’s characters insists on investigating a crawl space under a set of stairs, Kellogg’s Carter literally repeats derivates of ”wait,” “stop,” and “don’t go in there,” so many times I literally wanted to rip the DVD out of my player and throw it at my neighbor’s dog. By the time Carter’s tearful third-act revelation in his private diary video entry takes place, which would have been a great service in establishing sympathy, it is too little, too late. And despite his desire to become “the leader” of the remaining characters, he spends the rest of the movie hiding in a room and begging everyone to just stay there with him.

Lastly – and this is more nit-picky than anything else – why is this film taking place in a seminary? At no point in the film is religion mentioned – nor anything having to do with priests. But what we do see, however, is a medical chair allegedly used for lobotomies. Why is this chair in a seminary? Did the filmmakers suffer a brain fart and call it Madison Seminary when they really meant Madison Sanitarium? Or am I just a dumb ass who was asleep when this chapter was discussed during Common Sense 101?

The Low Down:

All in all, I’ve seen a lot worse in this sub-genre. It’s certainly better than both Apollo 18 and Atrocious—two POV flicks that received much more attention and were actually turgid wastes of every filmmaking-related resource. In the right frame of mind, and if you’re forgiving of supremely low budget films, this is a gem, while unpolished, that is still worth your time.

Grade: B–

RANT: FRIDAY THE 13th (2009)

2012-01-23T16:20:00.028-05:00

This past Friday the 13th led me to rediscover my love for the perpetual film franchise of the same name. I’ve been watching Jason run amuck ever since I was a wee one. At the time, I was too young and poor to own actual copies of the films on VHS, so I was reduced to watching versions taped off of television from ABC’s “Million Dollar Movie” and USA’s “Up All Night." Yes, the gore was heavily edited. Yes, there was no nudity to be found. And yes, even terse lines of dialogue like “thank God” were edited to be simply “thank ___.” But at that time, I took anything I could get. And I wore those tapes out without much effort.

Jason Voorhees, both pre- and post-zombie, was kind of my hero. He was a monstrous force of nature with which to be reckoned. He crushed heads and introduced axes to bodies without prejudice. He cared little for the half-naked nubiles that were helplessly straddled on the floor in front of him—he wanted nothing more than to throw them out the window, or to stab them…you know…down there. The Friday the 13th series was even, in essence, my first exposure to sex (and in a largely overblown way, its consequences). I didn’t have the birds-and-the-bees talk with my embarrassed father, nor did my older brother one day sneak home a badly dubbed VHS tape filled with porn (at least not right away), and my inevitable tour of duty in Sex Ed 101 would come far too late. No sir, I learned all about the ways of female anatomy from The Final Chapter.

The series was simply a large part of my childhood. During middle school history class, I would design my own posters for the existing entries, as well as “what if?” concepts:

Jason Vs. The Army

Jason Vs. Jaws

Jason Vs. Some Weird Thing Covered in White Out That’s Supposed To Be Michael Myers (I was a shitty drawer.)

In art class, after being given molding foam to sculpt anything we wished, other kids looked on in confusion as I created a hockey mask, compete with blood-red triangle. A childhood friend and I used to sleep over each other’s houses every time a Friday the 13th marathon was scheduled to air, even though between the two of us we’d seen the films a hundred times. At a “sidewalk sale” at my local mall (where old storeroom items were sold for next to nothing), I just about had a boner-heart attack combo when finding a poster for Jason Lives.

Despite all this, I would understandably never describe any of the series’ entries as high art—not even the first film, which by default receives more love than it deserves. Slasher movies resulting in legitimately good cinema – Halloween naturally comes to mind – is a rarity. Sure, they’re “good” in the sense that you like them, and they are certainly entertaining...but they weren’t written to push your emotional buttons and make you realize something about yourself. They were written so you could laugh as the fat chick on the side of the road gets a pickaxe through her neck. They were made so you could scream as you realize Final Girl is completely alone, and the masked maniac could be around any corner. Slasher movies are buffalo wings and beer. They’re an option, they’re delicious, but at the end of the day, they’re junk. (But that’s okay!)

Unlike the Halloween or A Nightmare Elm Street series, most Friday the 13th fans do not point to the first film as their sole favorite. In fact, a large portion cites it as among the series' weakest to date (the top honor most likely going to the Jason-less A New Beginning). Although indifference towards the first film is a direct result of the lack of Jason, being that he’s become synonymous with the series as we all know it (and rightfully so), I also wonder if the unlove comes as the result of it merely being the first film, and hence should have tried to break new ground. Less was expected of Parts 2 and 3, which were the same old thing, and hence held to less rigorous standards. As for a fan favorite, I think it’s safe to say the Crispin Glover dance-infected The Final Chapter would be the victor. (It’s my preferred entry.)

Despite the lack of “quality” in each successive sequel, insofar as could be expected of Friday the 13th, you cannot claim that each entry post-Final Chapter was not trying something new.

A New Beginning pissed off a lot of fans by removing Jason from the equation and replacing him with a copycat killer. Luckily, the movie boasts a healthy amount of the red stuff, and director Danny Steiner infuses the movie with a slimy yet effective grindhouse tone. Even with the disappointment that the real Jason sat this one out, it’s a natural continuation of the Tommy Jarvis saga, which began in The Final Chapter. It's effectively directed, and had Jason actually been the killer in the film, I believe A New Beginning would be considered a highpoint in the series.

Jason Lives, most would agree, is the most “fun” of the series to date. By then, tongue was firmly planted in cheek and it shows, both on the page and on the screen. For a series in which two of the previous entries took place in summer camps (Jason Lives being the third), we finally have younger kids in the cast, and miraculously they are not completely annoying. Despite all this (and despite the goofy but lovable James Bond-esque opening title sequence), let it not be said that Jason Lives does not live up to its namesake and its reputation. Jason, resurrected from the grave, is back with a vengeance. People are smashed through RV walls, ripped apart, and bent in half. Heads are stabbed and triple decapitations are on the menu. “Fun” tone notwithstanding, the threat is still very real. Thom Mathews (Return of the Living Dead) caps off the Tommy Jarvis story with the best iteration of the character and puts Jason back in the lake for good (haha, not). Director Tom McLoughlin channels Joe Dante and the Amblin Films aesthetic, delivering a hoot-and-a-half of a Friday film. For the first time, characters of all ages (kids! teens! adults! old men!) are included, and it brings an understated legitimacy to the movie.

The New Blood also receives much backlash, though unduly so. Yes, the whole Jason vs. Carrie aesthetic, brought to life by Final Girl’s uncanny ability for telekinesis, was a little absurd, but most fans have been pretty forgiving of that plot point. What they are not forgiving of, however, is the chopped and heavily edited version that finally made it to theaters. Director John Carl Buecher, having previously spent his time in special effects, filled his movie with what could have been the most impressive deaths since Savini’s masterpiece, The Final Chapter. Sadly, except for some recently resurrected and intensely grainy footage, it’s likely these deaths will never be restored for a future edition. Regardless of what the MPAA did to the movie, and not director Buechler, a new direction was explored, albeit unsuccessfully, so the movie is not totally without its merits. Not to mention that the Jason brought to life in The New Blood (played for the first of four times by fan favorite Kane Hodder) was at his most absolutely bad-ass looking—exposed spine and all.

Jason Takes ~~A Cruise Ship/Vancouver~~ Manhattan comes next. Unfortunately, what sounded like a clever and exciting script was hacked apart for budgetary reasons, and so writer/director Rob Hedden had to sacrifice much of his vision. Originally set to shoot scenes in Madison Square Garden (where Julius was supposed to get his head punched off) and the Brooklyn Bridge – and with a finale in the Statue of Liberty – Hedden was forced to shift most of the action to that god damned cruise ship. (In case you were wondering, 34 minutes of the movie's 96-minute running time "takes place" in New York, and roughly two minutes of that time is actually shot there.) What writer/director Hedden can be blamed for, however, is fucking up the series' mythos by impossibly suggesting that Final Girl and Jason were children around the same time, making Jason either both a zombie killer AND a lake-haunting boy ghost, or Final Girl the oldest fucking high school senior on record. Also, while Jason's immortality and uncanny talent for taking lives have always bordered on absurd, Manhattan takes it one step further and bestows on him the completely ludicrous ability to teleport. At film's end, Jason screams like an elephant and drowns in toxic waste.

It had a really fun teaser poster, though:

Once the Paramount reign of Friday the 13th ended and New Line Cinema stepped in to adopt the rotting mongoloid, Jason then went to Hell, space, and Elm Street. Most would agree none of them were a return to form for the masked killer (though I unabashedly love Freddy vs. Jason).

In 2003, New Line Cinema unleashed the very controversial remake of Tobe Hooper’s seminal 1974 classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. While it certainly was a project motivated by money (what Hollywood films aren’t?), it wasn’t necessarily part of the ensuing remake craze that would soon follow—it was merely the first. It was the catalyst that set into motion the realization that brand names like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Halloween all had street value. The strength of their titles would cut through everything else being released and easily compete for the attentions of the masses.

So what happened?

After the mostly-decent Chainsaw remake hit theaters with great success, every single horror movie with the least bit of title recognition had a remake announced. Iconic titles like Halloween and The Omen, the more obscure like Black Christmas and My Bloody Valentine, and the sucked-the-first-time Prom Night and House on Sorority Row—nothing was safe. The horror genre was raped by the movie gods and vomited on screen with mostly pitiful results.

None of them missed the boat as badly as 2009’s Friday the 13th. This, truly, was one of the most disappointing movies I’ve ever had the extreme misfortune of seeing in theaters. It was the first time that I remember even feeling truly embarrassed to be sitting in those theater seats—knowing that I had paid to be there, and before that, excitedly told any chum who would listen that I would be attending the special midnight showing.

Rob Zombie’s Halloween was a complete shit storm from minute one to minute oh-my-god-let-this-fucking-movie-end. I’d cite it as another truly abysmal experience in the theater, and probably a worse movie than 2009’s Friday the 13th. So why the extreme hate towards the latter? Because Carpenter’s 1978 cheapie classic is just that—a classic. While it certainly didn’t create the slasher sub-genre, it created all the rules that Friday the 13th and hundreds of other imitators to follow would beat into the ground: Fuck and die, do drugs and die, the virginal heroine lives, kill the killer three times, etc, etc. And in Carpenter’s film, this collection of soon-to-be-clichés was wrapped around a story of Halloween shenanigans and evil let loose on suburban streets. It was scary because it seemed real, and it felt like it could happen, but mostly because it was just a great movie. Any attempted remake had a lot to live up to. Zombie “tried” and miserably failed. And while the first Friday the 13th ripped off Halloween’s concept, and though the Sean Cunningham-directed flick was not responsible for the familiar slasher tropes that have since become textbook, it solidified them. 1980’s Friday the 13th was a cheap but enjoyable imitation. It was a little special, but not much. And the concept was sinfully basic.

When the soulless production team of Bay et al. announced the remake of Friday the 13th, every horror enthusiast and their mother knew they weren’t actually remaking the first film, in which the killer is not Jason at all, but his mother. Instead, they were remaking what goes through everyone’s minds when you say the words “Friday the 13th”—Jason, with mask, cutting down teens with machetes in the woods. That’s all you need, that’s all Friday the 13th is, and – despite all the later sequels' attempts to try new things – that’s all Jason Voorhees is ever going to be. You can take the killer out of the woods, but you can’t take the woods out of the killer.

When the remake of Friday the 13th was announced I was excited. By this time, Platinum Dunes had already given the world the aforementioned remake of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – which was shockingly good – as well as their follow-up project, The Amityville Horror, starring Ryan Reynolds’ beard and abs. Amityville was mostly greeted with a boo-hiss from critics – both legitimate and fans – but I dug it. It was simple, effective, and provided a few scares. While obviously the victim of “needs more dumb shit!” reshoots, it’s still a competent little flick. Then PD’s version of The Hitcher came along, and was truly anemic in every sense of the word. The script didn't attempt to do one new thing, except change one specific dynamic that was perfect the way it was: the male and female lead characters were swapped so that Sean Bean’s Ryder became fixated on the female lead instead of the male, as it was in the original thriller. Because of this, the oddly homoerotic cat-and-mouse tone of the original became just another formulaic case of a maniac victimizing a smart’n’sassy girl. Been there, done that; truly a lifeless movie.

Still, PD was 2-for-3 in my eyes, and each announcement in regards to the Friday the 13th remake really seemed to indicate they knew what they were doing:

The writers of Freddy Vs. Jason would be writing the script. (Hey, I liked that movie!)

The director of 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre would be getting behind the camera. (Hey, I liked that movie, too!)

Jared Padalecki, star of "Supernatural," would be playing the lead role of Clay— basically a reiteration of Jason-hunter Rob from The Final Chapter. (Hey, I love "Supernatural!" And the kid can actually act!)

The movie was soon shot, set visit reports showed great enthusiasm from all those involved, and the trailer masterfully captured the tone of the original movies, even going as far as mimicking the “death countdown” from thirteen, as the trailer for the original film did 30 years prior.

So how did it all get so fucked up so badly? How did they get all of this seemingly so right and then flush it right down the toilet?

It begins with the script. You’ll never (ever) have me bemoaning the idea that characters in a Friday the 13th movie should have development coming out the ass, because I don’t need that. If I want character development, I’ll go see a movie that doesn’t end in “Part 12.” What I want, desperately, is for the characters not to be truly annoying. I have to spend 90 minutes with these people and I’d rather not spend that time resisting pulling my own face off and begging Jason to show up and vivisect all of them at once. Writers craft scripts like this and then grin at you and say, “the kids feel like real kids!” If Friday the 13th’s kids are based on real kids, Planet Earth is doomed.

Most of the deaths are incredibly lazy and border on that unfun Hostel bullshit, taking the deaths out of fun Friday the 13th territory and instead making them look merely unpleasant and simultaneously boring. Case in point: a character wanders around a dark garage looking for god-knows-what, spending almost five straight minutes talking to himself. The music is mounting and you know Jason’s about to pop up and give this kid a death we all hope is glorious. So what happens? Jason DOES pop up, but instead of something amazing and clever, he shoves a screwdriver into the kid’s throat. It’s not fun, but boring—and uncomfortable. That’s not why we’re here. We've come for titillation, not revulsion.

As far as Jason’s killing capabilities go, I’m a little more lenient than some other fans. If Jason wants to shoot an arrow into some girl’s skull, that’s fine – in previous entries, I’ve seen him throw spikes directly into people’s faces from afar with deadly precision, so I won’t complain about the method – but to then flash to Jason’s old room and show us that he once won a trophy for archery in his youth? Who fucking cares? You mean the writers thought they were clever enough to “explain” why Jason is good with a bow-and-arrow, yet when it came time for him to find his hockey mask for the first time – in a moment that should have been truly iconic – they write a scene where Jason literally finds the fucking thing on the floor?

Come on guys, really?

Speaking of bullshit, what is with these kids and their utter masturbatory obsession with smoking weed? Yeah, I get it. Teens smoke weed. Teens have always smoked weed, and will always smoke weed. You know who else smoked weed? My parents. And yours. We're not doing anything new here, people. But talk about beating your audience over the head with it: The movie opens with kids hunting for a pot field, and then later, more kids come along and smoke weed and laugh, because OMG, weed is fucking hysterical. Since when did weed become synonymous with Friday the 13th? Did these writers accidentally rent Friday instead when writing their script? (That’s a terrible fucking joke, I know.)

Listen, the original Friday the 13th entries are horrendously dated, I’ll freely admit it: There are no cell phones. Kids dance "the robot" and have gigantic hair. The guys wear shorter shorts than the girls. For an entry or two, punk was “in.” But you know what none of these kids ever did? Made a huge goddamn production out of the fact they were smoking weed. And do you know why? Because despite how goofy the Friday the 13th kids of yesteryear might seem to the current masses, they were – and are – fucking cooler than kids today. They didn’t take out their bongs and pipes and do puppet shows. They didn’t go “awwww yeaaaah!” when someone took out an ounce and waved it around like a Polaroid. They didn’t say “this is some good shit!” or laugh “I am so stoned!” They passed the joint, smoked, and played some acoustic. That was it and that was all, and that’s all we ever needed.

I understand PD felt the need to pander to their audience and remind us that we’ve all smoked weed before and we should all remember how cool and fun and hilarious it was when we did. (This generation, after all, is the reason Adam Sandler and Larry the Cable Guy rule the box office. Clearly, our taste is spiraling downward at a rapid rate.) But here’s a news flash for you: my friends and I weren’t total douche bags about it. We smoked and listened to Cypress Hill in solitude. We sometimes wrote in journals. We relaxed and didn’t harp on the fact of what we’d just done. Talking about smoking weed while you’re smoking weed: Is this something kids honestly do? Do they narrate their entire lives this way? “Awwww yeah, I’m gonna eat these Honey Combs and the milk’s gonna fill my belly!” It honestly feels like PD is elbowing me in the side as I try to watch their film. "Remember when you smoked weed, buddy? Remember?" Yeah, I remember. How come every single character in your movie is fucking retarded?

Speaking of fucking retarded, were you seriously going to just masturbate in the middle of the living room since no one was around at the time, Black Kid? The fuck is the matter with you? I remember a lot of dumb shit from the older Friday the 13th movies: a girl serenading her man as he takes a shit inside a disgusting outhouse, and another girl flashing her own tits in the mirror and shouting, "it's showtime!" I do not ever recall a character looking around, noticing that everyone is suspiciously missing, and then deciding that out-in-the-open masturbation is called for.

All of Friday the 13th 2009 feels like a cheap parody of the original series in general.

Multiple references to smoking weed? Check.

Multiple scenes of absurd reasons to be naked? Check. (And seriously, do real people go water skiing topless, or randomly take their breasts out and show them to someone else?)

Multiple deaths containing at least one iota of originality? Uh…

Not helping matters is the truly lifeless film score by Steve Jablonksy. A graduate from Hans Zimmer’s Remote Control Productions (a company in which Zimmer mentors other composers to successfully recreate his own huge and epic sound that could be heard in every major action movie during the mid-90s), Jablonksy is PD’s go-to guy for film scores. Unfortunately, the composer sees fit to keep “ki-ki-ki, ma-ma-ma” and toss the rest—unaware of how effective, scary, and unusual Harry Manfredini’s original music truly was. While I’ve always recognized the success of the original Friday flicks in conjunction with Manfredini’s score, the recently released soundtrack collection from La La Land truly made me realize just how brilliant of a composer he is/was. This isn’t music you can hum, like Halloween, Phantasm, or Jaws. Notes are all over the place and hardly repetitive – more Herrmann than Carpenter – and the collection of harsh strings, harps, and low brass is no less than masterful. It’s a superior film score that deserved just as much respect as Jason himself, but given the complete lack of understanding as to what made Jason a great character, it would seem Harry’s score never had a chance. (For an example of how to do this the right way, see Graeme Revell's score for Freddy Vs. Jason, which effectively marries Manfredini's Friday stuff with Charles Bernstein's Nightmare stuff, all the while writing his own original compositions.)

My only kudos I have for the film is entirely dedicated to Derek Mears as Jason. A long time fan of the series, he understood that – despite what people think – Jason Voorhees really is a “character,” and as such, he should be played by someone who is going to do more than just walk. Mears did a great job bringing some life to Jason—but it’s a shame he didn’t have a stronger script to ensure an appropriate level of quality. If so, future trips to Crystal Lake would have been ensured. (Friday the 13th had a great opening weekend, but bad word-of-mouth caused a severe drop off afterward, thus killing any current plans for an immediate follow up.)

No, I don’t care that Jason runs in the film (because he did in Parts 3 and 4). No, I don’t care that he’s somehow rigged electricity in his childhood home (because he managed to finagle a working toilet in the middle of the woods in Part 2). However, I DO think it’s ridiculous that the movie would purposely establish one backwoods character owning a wood chipper and show him throwing stuff into it, leading us to assume that Jason is going to grab some poor soul and throw them in...which never happens. I DO think it's ridiculous to establish that the town of Crystal Lake knows that Jason is running around in the woods, yet aren't that concerned about it, so long as he doesn't bother them. I DO think it's ridiculous that Jason would chain up a random girl and even go as far as to feed her for a week, all because she resembled his mother. And I DO think it's ridiculous that an abandoned summer camp would be infested with a series of underground tunnels that Jason travels with ease. Why are they even there? Did Jason dig them himself? Were they perhaps left over from the old mining days? If only the writers had taken two seconds – had written ONE line of dialogue – to explain this little development, being that a large portion of the third act takes place primarily within these tunnels.

Instead they opted to explain why Jason is so handy with a fucking bow-and-arrow.

Good work, nerds.

To those at Platinum Dunes: this isn’t Don Corleone we’re talking about here. Nor Indiana Jones, John McClaine, or even Batman. It’s Jason fucking Voorhees. Put a mask on him, dump him in the woods, give him some unannoying kids to kill in clever ways, and add a twist of lemon for freshness. You’re not reinventing the wheel here. You’re only keeping it turning. That’s all we ever wanted. And you totally blew it.

CREEP

2012-01-23T09:21:00.001-05:00

More at:

Fewdio.com

Fewdio on Youtube

EVIL OVERLAY

2012-01-20T12:05:00.000-05:00

Normally don't splurge on stuff like this, but I simply could not resist... This limited run sold out in about 36 hours.

La-La Land Records presents FRIDAY THE 13TH: PARTS I-VI: LIMITED EDITION, a 6-CD BOX SET of acclaimed composer Harry Manfredini's (HOUSE I-IV, SWAMP THING, JASON X, DEEPSTAR SIX) original scores to the Paramount Pictures iconic feature films FRIDAY THE 13TH: PARTS I-VI. This comprehensive box set showcases some of the most chilling, daring and skillfully orchestrated film music ever composed for the genre. The remastered scores for the first six FRIDAY THE 13TH films are presented here - featuring more than 5 full hours of music, much of it previously not available in any official format and most of it exclusive to this special release. Also included - a 40-Page booklet, packed with exclusive liner notes by film music writer Brian Satterwhite that drag you deeper into the music of Camp Crystal Lake and the composer who empowered the unstoppable horror that dwells there, Jason Voorhees. Both the booklet and the six CDs are housed in a frightfully attractive hard-cover slipcase. This is a limited edition of 1300 units.

ABOUT THIS RELEASE: Elements once thought lost were located at Paramount Pictures and at the composer's home. Parts 1 -5 were pulled from Paramount's original music stems, assembled by Neil S Bulk and mastered by James Nelson under composer Harry Manfredini's supervision. Part 6 will sound the best of all. Luckily, those original tapes were still in the composer's possession.

GHOST PHOTOGRAPHY: PART III

2012-01-19T10:29:00.001-05:00

"No ghost was ever seen by two pair of eyes."

- Thomas Carlyle

YIKES

2012-01-18T12:22:00.000-05:00

Yikes indeed.

ONE MORE STORY...

2012-01-17T09:53:00.002-05:00

"My father was a fisherman. He ran a trawler out of Whitley Reef. One night, late, he was coming back in. He was out beyond the reef, out near Spivey Point. He looked to windward and saw a brig under shortsail, heading right for him. And he radioed, there was no reply. Nothing moved on deck, but she held her course. My dad and two of his hands, they boarded the brig, the Risa Jane. No one was on board. There was food on the table, and a hot, steaming cup of coffee. But underneath, the tin cup was rusted to the table. And then something caught my father's eye. It was a gold doubloon, minted in Spain, 1867. My dad picked up the coin, put it in his breast pocket of his jacket, and zippered it up. He came home, told us the story, and he unzippered the pocket to give me the coin. It was gone."

Nagrobek.

COME ON OUT INTO THE WATER

2012-01-16T10:43:00.001-05:00

I'm pleased and happy to repeat the news that we have, in fact, caught and killed a large predator that supposedly injured some bathers. But, as you can see, it's a beautiful day, the beaches are open, and people are having a wonderful time.

Amity, as you know, means "friendship."

Turkey.

Czechoslovakia (ver 1).

Czechoslovakia (ver 2).

Thailand.

Poland.

Japan.

(Kidding - although this is a real movie.)

DELETED SCENE: THE EXORCIST

2012-01-14T10:19:00.003-05:00

Contortionist Linda R. Hager was hired to perform the infamous "spider-walk scene" that was filmed on April 11, 1973. Friedkin deleted the scene just prior to the original December 26, 1973 release date because he felt it was ineffective technically. However, with advanced developments in digital media technology, Friedkin worked with CGI artists to make the scene look more convincing for the 2000 theatrically re-released version of The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen. Since the original release, myths and rumors still exist that a variety of spider-walk scenes were filmed despite Friedkin's insistence that no alternate version was ever shot.

More.

THIRTEENTH

2012-01-13T09:08:00.005-05:00

Darkness Man.

SHITTY FLICKS: SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE

2012-01-12T09:06:00.003-05:00

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up.

NAKED TEENS, MR. CONTANT, FOUND

MASSACRED TO DEATH AT SLUMBER PARTY

LOS ANGELES, California – Four scantily-clad teen girls with substantially-sized breasts, three of their typically annoying boyfriends (including John Minor, the biggest man on campus), their high school basketball coach, and a pizza delivery man were found massacred to death in a suburban home yesterday morning owned by Trish, one of the young victims.

The victims that have so far been identified are Trish, Kimberly, Jackie, Diane, Neil, Jeff, John Minor, Coach, and Mr. Contant, the leering and purposely suspicious looking neighbor.

While considering breaking her own 
"No Kiss on the First Date" rule, 
she suddenly felt John Minor's 
finger south of the equator.

The killer, Russ Thorn - who had easily escaped from the mental asylum where he had been committed - was also found dead in the pool. He was missing a hand, proper character development, a coherent motive, and wearing a denim jacket. It appears that Thorn had used some sort of pneumatic drill to take the lives of his victims, all the while barely getting any blood on himself.

Two other victims were found earlier that day: an unidentified and previously "hot" phone repair woman who was found drilled in the back of her van; and Linda, a student found murdered within her own school - a result of every single door being chained up after classes had let out only five minutes prior.

Janitors of the school are being held for questioning and may be forced to take classes on how to prevent inadvertently creating death traps out of traditionally safe environments.

For a prank, the girls killed 
Mary as she slept.

Two survivors, Valerie Bates and her younger sister, Courtney (an avid fan of ashamed masturbation), took the life of the killer in self-defense and miraculously managed to keep their clothes on.

"I'm not sure how I managed to remain clothed throughout the night," says Valerie. "Us teen girls...it's almost effortless that our tops fall off. But I guess that's why I'm still sucking air! Had my top and bra fallen off, my head would probably be sitting in the next-door neighbor's garbage can."

While Valerie's breasts managed to avoid exposure - or the mouth of a very inexperienced teen boy - her ordeal was not without its detriments.

"This incident has made me go batshit insane," continues the eldest Bates girl. "I probably won't be around to save the day, should something like this ever happen again. Courtney will just have to deal with it, I guess."

Courtney was unavailable for comment, as she was playing the bass at a garage practice for her terrible rock band.

"This is one of the oddest crime scenes I have ever seen," says Officer Kruiger, a member of the LAPD. "If I had to take a guess, it would seem that one of the girls actually ate the pizza delivered to them by that delivery boy who had been tragically killed. That's just strange. Who does that? What a dick head. I just don't get these kids today."

Officer Vorhies, another police officer, adds: "It's such a tragedy, really. These were just your typical girls: eating junk food, having sporadic and shirtless pillow fights, all the while copulating with their obnoxious boyfriends who acted like they had never seen a single breast in their entire lives. It really is a shame - a shame that I wasn't invited. I would've brought Mall Madness."

"And it's weird that their coach ended up here, too," continues Office Kruiger. "I mean, what the fuck is that? Was she a lesbian? A hot, hot lesbian? Were all these girls lesbians together? Man, I hope so. I hope they were all hot lesbians. I hope they were having some kind of hot, sordid, lesbian affair. I mean, I've seen that team play...there wasn't too much practicing going on. Without being too obscene, maybe these dead girls were hot for the clam."

Mr. Contant, the neighbor who was also killed by Thorn, says, "It sucks that I died because I was the best character in this movie. I was awesome, I would just pop up out of nowhere in the darkness wielding a cleaver, so of course everyone would think I was the killer. No sir! I was merely hunting snails in the darkness. That's right, I would be in another person's garage, holding a MEAT CLEAVER above their head. Oh, but I'm not the killer. I'm just killing snails. Hey, me, ever hear of salt? Or better yet, insecticide? But whatever, I can't complain; if I wasn't set up as a red herring every five minutes, I'd barely be in this movie."

Dick Weapon vs Vagina Weapon 2: 
The Quickening

Pam, the carpenter known for suddenly drilling holes through front doors so as to provoke a shocking moment, only to sheepishly claim she is making a peephole, offered her own two cents: "This is just a tragedy. What happened here in this community will never be forgotten. A piece of this community's heart died today. We're really going to miss Mr. Contant."

A nameless friend of Diane remembers her friend as well: "She was so nice. She was a real giver, and she was always telling me when my tits were getting bigger. I'll miss her. Soaping up in the shower room as we talked about penises won't be the same without her."

Rumors that Spy Kids 3D and Assassins actor Sylvester Stallone was sighted at the scene of the crime  could not be confirmed, but when his name was brought up during questioning of the  younger Bates sister, Courtney, her cheeks grew red and she clenched  her legs together.

Rita Mae Brown, author of several books she co-wrote with her stupid cat, Sneakie Pie, says, "Listen, the giant drill, the male killer...I knew what I was doing when I wrote this movie. I'm an angry lesbian, so of course the killer was going to hold the drill between his legs when he massacred the girls. God, that's clever, isn't it?" Brown then drove off in her stained panel van to continue working on her newest book, Men Built This Country But Women Are Better Anyway.

"Hey, look! Tanya's just...hangin' out?"

"OMG, shut up, Susan."

Mrs. Bates, mother of Valerie and Courtney, tearfully hugs her two daughters, thankful for their lives. "I'm just so glad my daughters are safe; they're all I have. I hope no other giggling teens ever have to endure what my daughters endured, especially Courtney, perhaps while at a friend's beach house when she is older. Or even maybe an unrelated girl who doesn't realize that the killer is her crush - that nice boy, Ken."

LEGION

2012-01-11T22:11:00.001-05:00

"I have dreams of a rose, and a long flight of stairs..."

UNSUNG HORRORS: COPYCAT

2012-01-10T09:54:00.001-05:00

So, better late than never, we’re going to celebrate them now… one at a time.

Dir. Jon Amiel

1995

Warner Bros.
United States

Copycat had the extreme misfortune of being released in theaters the same weekend as the-perhaps-you’ve-heard-of-it David Fincher-directed powerhouse Se7en. The two films are quite thematically similar, each featuring a serial killer with a gimmick: the former is repeating famous serial killings from years past, while the latter is using the seven deadly sins as his guide when taking lives. While Sigourney Weaver will always be a cinematic legend, she was sadly no match for Morgan Freeman and the up-and-coming Brad Pitt that weekend at the box office. Because the cast and crew of Se7en now currently enjoy a higher level of fame than those affiliated with Copycat (Fincher would go on to direct Fight Club and The Social Network; screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker would write Sleepy Hollow and The Wolfman), it’s easy to assume that one film is superior to the other – and you would be right…just in the wrong order. Copycat exceeds Se7en in every way possible—from the first frame to the last.

While Se7en begins with a gritty, artsy pastiche of trembling letters and icky gooey things, screaming to the audience, “Our movie is so fucked up, OMG, get ready,” Copycat, likewise, merely just begins…with a panning shot of college students lazing about on a beautiful sunny day. Layered over their laughter is the speech being given nearby in the school’s amphitheater by Weaver’s Helen Hudson—one detailing the 25 serial killers cruising for victims at that very moment. It’s a scary notion, and not much else comes from her speech to allay any fears.

Helen Hudson is a serial killer specialist and she knows her shit, having written books on the subject, and even having testified in a trial against serial killer Daryll Lee Cullum (Harry Connick Jr., in a surprisingly effective performance rivaling Kevin Spacey’s own as John Doe.) Cullum isn’t all that happy about Helen’s testimony, and he lets her know that; after having escaped from prison, he stalks her to the college where she is giving her speech and attacks her with a metal zip line noose and scalpel. Helen survives the attack – the same can’t be said for an unfortunate cop – and months later, she is an agoraphobic, unable to set foot even three feet out her front door without suffering a panic attack. Having become a total recluse, she has sworn off the entire outside world, and the world of serial killers with it…until the headlines in the newspaper begin—headlines warning of a possible serial killer haunting the San Francisco area (a fitting place, being that San Fran was previous stalking ground for the Zodiac, a serial killer never caught).

Inspectors Monahan (Holly Hunter) and Goetz (Dermot Mulroney) are soon introduced as partners (and lovers?) in the homicide department of the San Francisco Police. The two achieve an instant level of believability thanks to their onscreen chemistry, and both give career-best performances. They soon become entangled with the psychologically damaged Helen Hudson, who after seeing the headlines in the papers, can’t help but call the homicide department with frustrated tips of the trade. While the two inspectors are stuck following up on Helen Hudson, their colleagues show their distaste for the woman in different ways: fellow officers make jokes at her expense, referring to her “lunar cycle” theory as the “moon bike,” while their superior, Lieutenant Quinn, refers to her as “the shrink who got the cop killed.” Clearly Helen Hudson’s relationship with San Francisco PD is not a stellar one.

Lastly, we have the titular serial killer Peter Foley (William McNamara), plumbing the depths of history for the perfect murders to recreate. McNamara has the hardest job in the film—to play not a “scary” serial killer, but a real one. And what do people always say about serial killers? “He seemed so nice and quiet; always kept to himself.” McNamara is a handsome, but plain looking fellow, and he works very hard to have a commanding presence onscreen. It comes dangerously close to not working at times, but he manages to pull it off. And going further with this idea of the guy next door being a serial killer, the movie cleverly shows you Peter several times during the movie—though never introduces him as a named character for that “Oh man, HE’S the killer!” shock ending. His unnoticed presence drives the point home: he’s been around since the first minute of the film and he was never noticed. He stood in the police station and watched as crackpots confessed to the murder HE committed, even smiling to himself…even saying hello to one of the detectives working the case. This is the point of the movie: Violence exists in our society and we like to think it wears a noticeable face and a sign on its back—that we know where it originates, what the causes are, and how to stop it. But the truth is, we don’t. The violence we live with every day doesn’t exist on the news or in the papers—it lives next door. It wears glasses and tends to a needy girlfriend and says hello when you pass by.

Helen Hudson is Weaver’s absolute best performance to date—she is a character truly damaged by her encounter with the very thing by which she was fascinated. And she did not bounce back like most horror/thriller movie heroines tend to do; instead she has been changed for the worst. While she, Monahan, and Goetz hunt for the serial killer plaguing the San Francisco streets, Helen Hudson is also hunting for the strength within herself to defeat the demons keeping her captive in her own home—she just doesn’t know it at the time.

Interestingly enough, the movie is also viewed as a pro-feministic one, being that the intelligence and the cunning come not from a generic male lead who lets his gun do the talking, but rather two women who have their own drama bubbling just under their surfaces. I say “interestingly” because earlier drafts of the script had Holly Hunter’s role written for a man, who was then supposed to go on to have a quasi-romance with Weaver’s character. The change was for the better, as it helped bring a fresh perspective to an overdone dynamic.

Copycat was written by Ann Biderman, who would go on to write the immensely twisted Primal Fear, as well as find great success in creating the cult hit police drama "Southland." Director Jon Amiel would later direct the crowd pleasers – if not box office/critical sensations – Entrapment and The Core. Composer Christopher Young turns in one of his best scores to date—an amalgamation of hushed chorus, dreamy, almost shallow pond water-like melodies, mixed with the harsh strings we’ve all come to expect from the horror/thriller genre.

Copycat is a masterful thriller, and though it’s not a bloody show like some of its genre colleagues, not everyone makes it out of the film alive—especially those whose deaths you won’t see coming. It doesn’t need a head in a box to be memorable, and it doesn’t need horrific set pieces filled with mutilated people. It only needs to be, because as it stands right now, it’s perfect.

THE THIRD TWIN

2012-01-08T14:06:00.000-05:00

I won't be bringing this up terribly often, but I was a huge fan of 2010's TRON: Legacy. I loved everything about it, including the amazing visuals and the awesome soundtrack by Daft Punk. Yes, I recognize the film's story itself is weak. I really don't care. I will, however, freely admit that, had I not fallen so deeply in love with the film's score prior to my having seen the film, my reaction to the film might have been lukewarm at best. But that's not important. Bottom line: I love it now.

When the soundtrack was released, an interesting—almost conspiratorial—rumor began circulating; that there was something not on-the-level with the final product of the film's score. Unfounded, unconfirmed, and even downright denied rumors that Disney were unhappy with the famed duo's first musical submission, which was more along the lines of their signature style of crunchy beats and inordinate melodies, exploded across blogs and forums. Allegedly, Disney, expecting something more traditional and orchestral, tossed the music into the trash and told the French robots to start from scratch. (I personally don't believe any of this to be true—any musician who makes the rare foray into film composition ultimately creates something completely unlike anything they previously created under their more famous monikers: ie, Jonny Greenwood for There Will Be Blood; Damon Albarn for Ravenous; John Cale for American Psycho.)

A collection of music silently appeared on the Internets, full of crunchy beats and inordinate melodies, as well as looped vocals and found audio. The music was credited to The Third Twin, a band no one had heard of up to that point. And then the conspiracy became widely known: The Third Twin was actually Daft Punk, who were decidedly unhappy with Disney's treatment of their original compositions for TRON: Legacy, and so were leaking the music they had created. The Third Twin was used as their alias so as to avoid legal ramifications from such an act. This, of course, has been vehemently denied by Disney, as well as by Daft Punk and their representatives. The following statement was actually released after a Spanish newspaper called El Periódico Mediterráneo reported the French duo were scheduled to perform at the Arenal Sound Festival as their new alter ego The Third Twin:

"It has been brought to the attention of Daft Punk's management that the promoters for the Arenal Sound Festival in Spain have recently issued a press release in which they claim that a band called The Third Twin is 'directly connected' to Daft Punk. This is completely untrue. Recent press reports are based on rumors instead of facts. Daft Punk is in no way associated with The Third Twin and the promoters for the Arenal Sound Festival are promoting the show under false pretenses."

Further:

"We never threw out any of their material, ever," says Mitchell Leib, [President of Music and Soundtracks for Walt Disney Pictures and Disney Music Group]. "I want to dispel any of the rumors about that material by that alias group being any derivative of our TRON music, because it's not at all. There's nothing about that music that has anything to do with TRON or any of the original conceptual music that was done."

The conspiracy became quite specific, leading to the claim that one of TTT's songs, Give Us Your Energy, was actually an early test version of Outlands, a track featured on the official TRON: Legacy soundtrack.*

But the rumors don't end there. According to the latest rumor (which is already a year old in what appears to be the now-dead conspiracy), the members of The Third Twin are actually nephews of Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, one half of Daft Punk.

Tracking all the rumors can get exhausting after a while, so feel free to Wiki this and see all the additional rumors that have subsisted since TTT first breached American shores two years ago. After that, check this out, because it just keeps going.

The point is this: music released online by The Third Twin remains free, and quite good. Fans of early Daft Punk should dig it, as well as new listeners.

Tracklists for both releases are as follows. You can snag both albums in one handy zip file below.

Homemade (2010)

1. Technolers
2. Evil Minds
3. Chicago Soul
4. Justice Free
5. Ra Men Kepher
6. Americ Family
7. Empty Fire
8. Worm Earth
9. The Time Is Over
10. Arecibo's Song
11. This Is Love

Direkttt (EP) (2011)

1. Give Us Your Energy*

2. Euphoria

3. The Nightmare

4. Posioned

5. Impulse

GET

Note: This music is being posted here under the assumption that the band purposely leaked their own music for publicity and marketing purposes. If this is no longer the case and this music is now being sold, please contact the blog and it will be immediately removed.

DO YOU WATCH SUTTER CANE?

2012-01-05T13:30:00.001-05:00

Found this custom-made DVD insert the other night. Pretty cool. Props to its (unknown) artist.

REVIEW: THE TUNNEL

2012-01-03T11:13:00.009-05:00

I have one eye keenly focused on Australian horror. And while Wolf Creek came out to great acclaim several years back, and that same director’s Rogue was a fun splash of giant alligatorism, found footage movies are a whole horse of a different color (as is always the case with me). To date, I have seen two Australian found footage movies: Lake Mungo, and now, The Tunnel. To date, both have rocked.

I really can’t get into the actual mechanics of The Tunnel without first shedding light on something important: its marketing campaign. The Tunnel prides itself on being almost entirely fan-funded—an honorary (and sole) member of the self-proclaimed “$135K Project.” A pledge was made to send each person who donated money to the production at least an individual frame of the movie; and the higher the pledge, the bigger the reward/accolade. A goal of a $135,000 production budget was set in place…and it was matched. But why is this important enough to mention? Because upon the film’s completion, it was uploaded to the web for a limited time…by the filmmakers…for free consumption. It was downloaded over a million times. For a major studio, this would be a crushing blow. For a small, grassroots campaign, this is a victory.

I don’t know about you, but if I read somewhere that I could download someone’s movie for free—with no legal ramifications whatsoever—I would be a little hesitant. Thoughts of shoddy movies sold in those cheap slim line cases spilling off dollar store shelves and Target end caps come to mind. I mean, have you seen some of the awful dreck some studios actually paid for, and want YOU to pay for? So if the filmmakers of The Tunnel were just giving this thing away for free, how good could it be?

Pretty good. Great, actually.

Its setup won’t exactly knock your socks off with its originality—every movie of this ilk owes its existence to The Blair Witch Project, which will always be the watermark in the found footage sub-genre—but The Tunnel is told in a not-so-traditional manner. Much like Lake Mungo, The Tunnel is not just 90 minutes of characters wandering around in the dark and being terrorized by an off-screen monstrosity. Sure, that happens, but layered through the movie are sit-down interviews with our characters discussing their harrowing ordeal. As the movie draws out, and we take mental attendance of each character giving an epilogue-ish interview, we already know who will survive the events down in the tunnel…and who won’t. Some might see this as a detractor; others not. In the case of Lake Mungo, which depended on an entirely different story, I did not find this technique to be a detractor—in fact, it was a strength. It allowed the characters more time to convey just how the events of the film affected them on an emotional level. With The Tunnel, which is supposed to be a more visceral, in-your-face experience, I’m not so sure the technique works in its favor…

Investigative journalist Natasha Warner leads a three-man film crew down into an unused tunnel system beneath the streets of Sydney to follow up on plans suspiciously abandoned by the government to utilize an untouched water source in order to combat an ongoing drought plaguing the city. The death knell for these plans seemed to immediately follow the city's process in locating and removing the many homeless who had made the underground tunnels their homes, and the suspicious nature in which the plans were scrapped set Natasha’s journalistic mind reeling. In the movie she states: “When something goes unspoken, I have to ask why. That’s my job as a journalist.” And so her investigation begins.

Upon interviewing a homeless man named Trevor, whom she deduced was living in the tunnels, the crew is startled by his extreme emotional outburst that sends him running from his chair and into far corners of the room, crying and ripping at the walls with his fingernails...all in response to the question, “Has something bad happened to you down there?” It’s a great moment that lets both the audience and our characters know that there’s something under those streets the government does not want to deal with, nor even acknowledge.

With her production crew behind her (Pete, producer; Steven, cameraman; “Tangles,” soundman), she leads the descent into the darkness…and to the unimaginable thing that begins to stalk them one by one.

Our story-chasing news crew feels genuine, and we learn about each character in a very organic manner. It’s important for this kind of movie that each of them are likable, and that the actors playing them are believable. The Tunnel nails this with ease, introducing each character and detailing the relationships they all share with each other—which is to say, complicated. Natasha’s desire to descend into the tunnels is fueled by the notion she needs to prove herself as a journalist, and this impulse to do so may very well be clouding her judgment. Steve considers her to be a flavor of the week, never considering her to be a “real journalist.” He also alludes to Natasha having had a sexual relationship with both Pete as well as their boss, and while this is never verified, Steven is all too willing to believe it with a cocksure smile on his face.

Lazy exposition is a detriment to a film, and that is never a fault in The Tunnel. Through the aforementioned sit-down interviews, the POV footage, as well as news broadcasts, we learn the ins and outs of the story—all of it is presented in a very believable manner.

Now that our conflict is firmly established, we now ask ourselves: do our characters have a valid reason for doing what they are doing? Have they provided enough reasoning for going down into the icky, gooey sewer that makes homeless men cry? Well, being that they are journalists and they see the chance to blow the lid off a government conspiracy (and what journalists out there don’t want to be the next Woodward and Bernstein?) then yes, they have perfectly suitable reasons for going down into the dark. Steven states in the movie: “As a film crew, it’s our job to film and get coverage. It’s not our job to [question orders].” So in this case, we don’t need to be force-fed the reasoning behind their descent into the dark. What we’re given is more than suitable.

Once down in the tunnels, the action respectfully and believably escalates. The noises begin, as do the blurry “what the fuck was that?” sightings of something whisking past a corner. The characters become unfocused, lost, and pissed off. Tensions begin to rise. And then the creature makes its appearance. Here we come to the biggest complaint about found footage movies: Why, when the movie's antagonist makes its appearance, does the cameraman keep filming? Why don't they just drop the camera and run screaming from their adversary? Why do they still hold the camera even when they are trying to help a friend who is being violently attacked by their stalker? Well, as Steven explains earlier in the film, the act of going down into the tunnel never jibed with him—especially after Natasha attempted to bribe the security guard to allow them access, leading them to have to basically break in—so he decided then and there to film everything that happened, making Natasha liable for any legalities they may have occurred. Whether you like and accept that argument or not, at least the filmmakers thought far enough ahead to acknowledge it—something most found footage movies leave undisturbed.

Speaking of the creature, here is where my second and last real complaint of the film comes into play: The Tunnel is inconvenienced by not having more shots of the slimy thing slithering around in the dark. And I don’t mean the film needed a well-lit shot of the creature in all its glory—so clear and focused that I could count its testicles. I didn’t need to SEE the thing clearly. I just needed to see it more often. When the cameras capture brief glimpses of the creature in the dark—and its eyes glow green in the camera’s night vision—it’s creepy. The creature’s visage is captured just enough for you to get a basic idea—something almost human, yet not—but not enough so that it destroys the image your imagination has created after filling in the gaps. For me personally, I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up during these scenes…and I wanted just a bit more. And while this may not be entirely accurate, when I think back, it seems as if the creature isn’t featured all that much. And when that feeling becomes more and more insistent, it feels as if the movie missed a huge opportunity to be more memorable. Despite this, and for such a low budget, the movie is remarkably well made, well acted, and creepy at times.

As previously mentioned, once you can see what kind of technique the movie is employing, the presence of the majority of our main characters during their sit-down interviews ruins some of the tension created in the tunnels. “Oh, so-and-so lives,” etc. Lake Mungo gets away with this technique because 90-95% of that movie is created with sit down interviews; The Tunnel depends on more traditional POV thrills to tell its story, and so it becomes a different monster altogether.

The filmmakers have openly stated they chose this technique in order to differentiate it from other films in the sub-genre, and I can truly respect that. However, I think it’s okay for your movie to be a little more familiar, so long as you're not sacrificing tension and scares. A strong story and strong characters can make even the most tired of premises come alive in a fresh new way, and The Tunnel accomplishes this handily.

While I can honestly say I look forward to the future endeavors of these filmmakers, part of me selfishly wishes they would make another found footage flick. They are clearly capable of creating something really god damn good, and while The Tunnel doesn’t quite reach that level, it comes pretty close.

The Tunnel has been available for some time in a hard-copy 2-disc format (for the more ardent supporters of the film), and comes with a bevy of special features (which can be bought here). Also available is a single-disc release, featuring audio commentary by the director and producer, which can be nabbed here.

GRADE: A-

PANZRAM

2011-12-30T00:10:00.005-05:00

A part of me wishes I could have met Carl Panzram…preferably with an inch of steel or reinforced glass between us. He was a dark man—some might say evil—and the world is probably better off without him.

I can honestly say I’ve never read about anyone so intriguing. He was a man without emotion, empathy, or reason. He existed only to bring torment to those he felt deserved his wrath. But he was, also, a shattered end result of a broken society. In his youth, he was physically abused by almost every person that was supposed to bring him love, guidance, and attention. Not only that, he was also sexually abused by a pair of derelict men one night in an empty train yard after he had run away from home.

He eventually ended up in a reform school, where, due to the shabby treatment he felt he was receiving, he masturbated and urinated into food meant for the guards and teachers. Also a bit of a “fire bug,” he was notorious for setting fire to whichever establishments were unfortunate to hold him.

The angry youth grew to be an angry man—and even more dangerous. For seemingly no reason, Panzram joined the army, where—though he proudly carried the flag in the parade—he was court-martialed almost immediately for vandalizing military equipment. And if all that wasn't enough, he even broke into the house of Howard Taft, seven years after his presidency, from whom he stole cash and gold. Life continued for Panzram; he spent time in and out of jails and detention centers like most folks take vacations. But all throughout, he was continually mistreated by those in power positions. He was chained to pillars, his arms and legs stretched to painful extremes; he was even placed in a tub of water and methodologically electrocuted. And it was because of this that whatever thing festering inside Panzram infected his mind—any human semblance within him simply vanished. He had finally decided: since he was unable to hurt those who had hurt him his whole life, he would hurt others, instead. In a mad paradoxical moment, he decided that society's insufficiency in preventing people like Panzram from committing evil acts was the very reason people like Panzram even existed—that there was no karma, no God, and no reason for anything. The world was chaos' playground, and Panzram would gleefully play. This was something he stated in his memoirs, Panzram: A Journal of Murder, a collection of diary entries written by Panzram himself, and pieced together with objective recreations by authors Thomas Gaddis and James Long. Panzram was a murderer, pedophile, rapist, arsonist, robber, con artist, and all around bitter-barn curmudgeon. He killed men and children, felt nothing, and hated everything—including himself.

He states in his memoirs:

“I don’t believe in Man, God, nor Devil. I hate the entire human race, including myself.”

Though the man will never be cited as a positive role model in anyone’s life, one can’t help but lend a little respect to the man’s tenacity. As far as his hatred towards everything in existence went, he was exceedingly unflinching. He did terrible things—deplorable and perverted and sick—but he never made any apologies for who he was. In this day, if someone cracks an off-color joke, or says something crass without realizing their microphone is on, public apologies are then offered, and poor, sympathy-reaching reflections on a misspent childhood are brought up. When Michael Vick was charged with cruelty to animals—with hanging dogs by their legs and slicing their throats—he fell back on the whole “I wasn’t raised any better” defense, instead of him just outright stating his truth: “They’re just dogs and I don’t care. They have no value to me.” But he did the dance society demanded of him—he made apologies and paid his fees and served his time. And now he is an extremely well-paid athlete. Would his life (and finances) currently be the same if he had just told everyone the truth? Of course not. People like Vick memorize these apologetic lines and look forlorn because society demands they do. Carl Panzram—though he hated himself more than people hate their own worst enemies—never faltered in that. He never broke down and he never whined about the injustices he endured in his youth. He never outright said "I blame my family for abusing me and for the institutions for not raising me right." He blamed society, as a whole, altogether. He blamed my ancestors and yours. He blamed the intangible face of The Man, who in his eyes, was responsible for all the wrong in the world. He blamed every living thing that's ever taken a breath. If a surfer gets bit by a shark, he blames the shark—not the ocean. But Panzram did. He merely accepted that those injustices shaped who he became—and since no one person could be blamed, neither could he be for his own actions.

He states in his memoirs:

“When I was sitting there, a little kid about twelve or thirteen years old came bumming around. He was looking for something. He found it, too. I took him out to a gravel pit about one-quarter mile away. I left him there, but first committed sodomy on him and then killed him. His brains were coming out of his ears when I left him, and he will never be any deader.”

There is neither apology nor sick glee present in his words. He merely recounts what he did to the poor child. He makes no excuses, and panders to no easy scapegoat. Arguments could be made that the purpose of his bluntness is to shock—for sensationalistic reasons only—but those making that argument truly do not understand what kind of man Carl Panzram was. He didn’t want to shock you. He wanted to kill you. And he would have, if given the chance.

After a temporary scheme in which Panzram "hired" ten men for assistance upon his recently purchased yacht (bought with stolen cash) and eventually killed them, he was finally charged with murder. Wanting nothing more than to have his life ended, he warned the jury that decided his verdict: “If I live, I’ll execute some more of you.”

He was then sent to Leavenworth, where he was to live out the rest of his days. Upon arriving, he told the warden, “I will kill the first man who bothers me.” That first man turned out to be a guard named Robert Warnke, who Panzram later beat to death with a lead pipe in the laundry room. He was charged with the murder, and in defiance to Kansas State Law—which had previously outlawed capital punishment—he was sentenced to execution by hanging.

When the Society for Abolishment of Capital Punishment caught wind of this sentence and fought to have it overturned, Panzram literally looked through his prison bars at them and said, “I wish you all had one neck…and that I had my hands on it.”

To ensure his state-sanctioned demise, Panzram even went so far as writing letters to President Hoover, explaining that in no way was his death sentence to be overturned, and for no one to intervene in his favor at the zero hour. Not just according to his own wants, but in conjunction with everything society had always preached, he deserved death, and would not let anyone stand in the way of that.

Interestingly, Panzram’s drive towards death was not just due to his own misery in life, but also because he believed justice would not be properly served unless he was dangling at the end of a rope—and this is something he also states in his book several times. If he were to go on sucking air, it would only showcase the weakness of the judicial system. If anyone were to deserve death, it was he—and if that did not happen, then the system was flawed.

He states in his memoirs:

“I have no desire whatever to reform myself. My only desire is to reform people who try to reform me. And I believe that the only way to reform people is to kill 'em.”

On September 5, 1930, Carl Panzram was hung by the neck until dead. His last words were to his executioner: “Hurry it up, you Hoosier Bastard! I could hang a dozen men while you’re fooling around!”

His last will and testament stipulated that his earthly remains be left to a dogcatcher in his native Michigan…and a curse bequeathed to all of mankind (which I'm sure Panzram wrote with a wry smile.)

A film based on the book/Panzram’s life was made in the mid-90s called Killer: A Journal of Murder, starring James Woods as Panzram and Robert Sean Leonerd as Henry Lesser, a guard to whom Panzer spoke, confided, and eventually handed over his journal scribblings that would soon become his book. While the film is not bad in any sense, most of the more lurid details from his exploits are omitted. His crimes against children are mentioned just a single time, and his claim of 1,000 acts of male sodomy is never mentioned at all. Much of Panzram's original writings are repeated by Woods almost verbatim, but so much was excised that the very thing which gave the book its power—Panzer's own voice—wasn't as prevalent in the film; thus, it never had the chance in being as equally harrowing. The filmmakers might have been afraid of making a movie focused on an entirely unlikeable and unrelatable monster,]. If that's the case, why even bother making it into a film in the first place? James Woods, as wonderfully psychotic in the film as he is, ultimately brings humanity to the role as well…which clashes with the image of Carl Panzram brought to life by his memoirs. If the words he wrote are to be believed, there is nothing human about Carl Panzram at all.

He states, rather famously:

“In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings, I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons and, last but not least, I have committed sodomy on more than 1,000 male human beings. For all these things I am not in the least bit sorry. I have no conscience, so that does not bother me.”

Further excerpts from his memoirs (thanks to Serial Killer Central for the transcriptions):

"It is the nature to be deceived very easily by those who wish and have the power and the intelligence to do so. People believe what they want to believe. Truth isn't liked .. Torquemada, chief inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition, was known as the world's greatest torturer ... I have been to Spain and while there I have visited their museums and big cathedrals where some of those old-time implements were on view. I looked 'em all over. I have read many books which told of the methods then is use. The rack, the wheel, red hot irons to burn out the eyes, pinchers to pull off parts of the body, fire to burn and water to drown ... Everything I have ever seen or read on this subject makes convinced that, though time and methods have changed, men are the same and the actual results are the same ... Torture, pain and agony is a relative thing. When pain reaches a certain point, then it has reached the limit and can be no worse ... The history of mankind goes back only for a few thousand years, but men lived an died on this earth for uncounted thousands of years before the dawn of history as we know it today. Yet in all these thousands of years men have learned little. The men of the world today are doing the same things that their ancestors did ages ago. Men have always had intelligence which has never increased. Only knowledge has kept advancing."

...

"In my life time I have broken every law that was ever made by both man and God. If either had made any more, I should very cheerfully have broken them also. The mere fact that I have done these things is quite sufficient for the average person. Very few people even consider it worthwhile to wonder why I am what I am and do what I do. All that they think is necessary to do is to catch me, try me, convict me and send me to prison for a few years, make life miserable for me while in prison and then turn me loose again. That is the system that is in practice today in this country. The consequences are that anyone and everyone can see crime and lots of it. Those who are sincere in their desire to put down crime are to be pitied for all of their efforts which accomplish so little in the desired direction. They are the ones who are deceived by their own ignorance and by the trickery and greed of others who profit the most by crime. Much depends upon the point of view of the persons who express themselves on the crime question. Those who roar the loudest and are therefore the most heard are the writers, judges, lawyers, and would-be expert criminologists. All of these people make a nice, soft living out of crime. Therefore, they are directly interested in the subject. They don't produce a damn thing. All they do is shoot off their mouths and push a fountain pen. And for doing this they live nice and soft. They wear good clothes, eat the best foods, live in nice homes, have the best of everything the world produces. They have a nice, soft graft, and they know it, too. They are not a lot of chumps like the criminals. Don't think for a minute that they are going around really meaning to do as they say they wish to. Put down crime. Not a chance. There will be no pick and shovel for that sort of people. That's what would happen to them if they really did put down crime. There is two sides to every question. My point of view is just as plausible and a damn sight more probable than all of the hot air that has been published about this question. Others who have expressed their ideas in print on this subject have all been either directly or indirectly interested in receiving some sort of profit or benefit of some kind from what they say or write or do about this crime question. Some have good jobs which they want to keep or perhaps they are trying to get a better one or perhaps they are merely incensed and prejudiced against criminals because they or their friends have been robbed or murdered. I, on the other hand, have not a single thing to gain by writing this. My life and my liberty are forfeited. I cannot gain a single thing in any way for writing this."

NINJA CLOWN

2011-12-29T00:09:00.000-05:00

Watch and learn.

LEVITY

2011-12-28T12:30:00.000-05:00

SHITTY FLICKS: SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT PART 2

2011-12-23T08:25:00.004-05:00

The first Silent Night, Deadly Night is an unremarkable, yet fun and unapologetically gimmicky slasher movie whose late-1980s presence at theaters was very brief; lame parents with lame ideals protested the movie’s depiction of a killer Santa offing “naughty” people and had the movie successfully banned from all theaters. The victorious parents then turned their protesting to the local gay (probably). For a long time, SNDN was a mirage until it was released on VHS years later and became a cult favorite.

Silent Night, Deadly Night isn’t groundbreaking in any way, and compared to today’s standards, where we’re able to see testicles ripped off a man and fed to wild dogs in theatrical films (preceded by commercials for Fanta), the idea of a man in a Santa costume offing people doesn’t just pale in comparison—it’s become its own punchline.

A few years down the road, morons decided that Silent Night, Deadly Night—the movie that no one saw—needed a sequel, anyway. And with an entire first film from which to haphazardly pluck footage, a lazy and monotonous wrap-around story was written so audiences could see the original movie that disappeared from theaters, but in a new way.

Our story begins on Christmas Eve with Ricky, a young man currently residing in a mental institution. He smokes, casts hard glares, and makes black men nervous.

Dr. Bloom, a man who looks eerily similar to the dad from "7th Heaven," sets up his tape recorder and introduces himself.

“Fuck off, doc,” Ricky snarls, and with this first line, the acting for the movie is already pitiful.

“Who killed your parents, Ricky?” Dr. Bloom asks.

Ricky’s eyebrows dance all over his face as he smiles and answers: “Santa Claus.”

And we hit our first flashback.

"Say, Ricky...I don't mean to sound jive, but, gee whiz,
why not pray to Christ?"

Ricky, merely a baby in a car seat, and his older brother, Billy, are on their way to visit the kids’ grandfather. Billy, who is disgustingly adorable, looks precious and asks kid-like questions about Santa Claus. The parents play along until they come across Santa Claus himself in the middle of the road. Santa waves the car down, and when they pull up next to him, he pulls out a gun and shoots Dad in the face. Billy runs off into the bushes as Santa Claus makes Mommy’s boobs tumble out of her sweater. Then, for good measure, he cuts her throat. Ricky bawls in the car as Billy loses his shit in more ways than poop.

The boys are shipped off to an orphanage, where Billy can’t help but get himself into trouble by drawing pictures of an evil Santa, and I can’t help but notice that Billy goes from being an adorable five-year-old to a slightly older boy who looks like his face was fucked by a lawnmower.

Billy is carefully watched over by two nuns: Mother Superior, whose idea of growth and development is to dispense justice, and Sister Mary, who fears that Billy’s mind has been ass-fucked by the massacre of Christmas past.

The boy is punished for his bad drawing of Santa, but Sister Mary frees him from his room and coerces him to go outside and mingle with the other children. On the way there, Billy hears fucking, so he does a bit of spying through a keyhole. He sees tits, freaks out, and fleas. Mother Superior later catches up to Billy outside and tells the boy that what he witnessed was naughty. She tells him that people like that must be punished—that “punishment is absolute.” Then she whips him on the ass with his belt, even though he didn’t do anything.

“Do you dream, Ricky?” Dr. Bloom asks.

Ricky turns and glares. “I DON’T SLEEP.”

Well then.

Billy’s time at the orphanage isn’t the best time anyone’s ever had. Not only does Mother Superior constantly pick on him, the other children inexplicably tie him up at night and beat him with stuff, a la Full Metal Jacket. On Christmas Day, Mother Superior forces Billy to confront his demons and sit on a visiting Santa’s lap. Well, Billy cold-clocks Santa with an admirable right hook, sending Santa sailing to the floor.

Say what you will about Paul Walker, but he's always ready to party.

When Billy turns 18, he leaves the orphanage and works at a job that Mother Superior found for him: Santa Claus at a local toy store. Yeah, she's a dickhead like that.

Billy threatens each child that sits atop his lap, and he handles them with great zest: “You’re being naughty. I don’t give toys to naughty children. I punish them. Severely.”

Later that night at the employee Christmas party, Billy smells sex, and he follows two employees to the warehouse where he spots another tit.

“Naughty!” Billy screams, strangling one of them with a string of Christmas blinkies. “Punishment good!” he shrieks, stabbing the other in the stomach.

The store manager, hearing the disturbance, enters the warehouse and immediately has his head caved in by a claw hammer.

That Billy works fast!

He then grabs a bow 'n' arrow and shoots the last employee: an old bitty woman who attempts to smash the front windows of the store and flee.

We flash forward again to even more titters, where Billy amusingly dispenses justice to a girl with a pair of deer antlers before strangling a dude and tossing him out the window.

Later, while fleeing from the cops, Billy stumbles across two sledders who are just asking for it. He takes their heads and leaves, having fulfilled his expectations for this scene.

Thanks to the help of Sister Mary, the cops make it to the orphanage before Billy does. A cop dashes out of his truck, takes aim at a Santa Claus reaching out to the children, and shoots him.

“One problem,” Ricky says. “It was Old Man Kelsey, the janitor" (although according to the first film, it was actually Father O’Brien).

Billy unsurprisingly pops up and barely farts out “punish!” before killing the cop. He also kills a snowman, because my god, Billy really hates Christmas.

A stupid kid unlocks the door and lets Billy in as Mother Superior stands her ground. “There is no Santa Claus!” she bellows, as Billy raises his axe. Another cop shows up just in time and they’re finally able to shoot the real Santa. (Well, you know.)

“You’re safe now,” Billy says to the kids. “Santa Claus is gone.” And he dies right in front of Ricky, who then says, “naughty.”

Ricky continues his story, which is finally new material.

Soon after the massacre at the orphanage, Ricky is adopted by a Jewish couple who obviously don’t celebrate Christmas. Out on the street, Ricky’s simmering madness flares at the sight of a red drape in a store window, as it reminds him of Santa’s suit.

Five years later, Ricky’s stepdad dies, leaving just Ricky and his mother. After the funeral, he wanders off to be alone where he, just like his brother, effortlessly stumbles across breasts.

“I never told anyone this before, but, HERE IT COMES!” Ricky promises directly to the camera, his eyebrows quivering.

He creepily watches the couple for a few minutes until the man becomes a bit demanding. He slaps her and goes to his jeep for some more beer. Ricky figures he’ll do a solid for the poor girl, and so he drives the jeep over the man, over and over, until it becomes ridiculous.

“Thank you,” the girl stammers, not at all afraid or upset, and stumbles off into the woods.

RICKY FACE # 1: Angry + Found Some Money

Dr. Bloom scrawls

RED CAR!

in his notebook.

“Good point!” Ricky says, spying over his shoulder.

“My old lady couldn’t afford to send me to college,” Ricky bitches. “So I got a JOB instead!” The amount of disdain present in this statement either reeks of genuine disgust or severely tepid acting.

Dr. Bloom gears up for another round of Ricky’s over-acting, but Ricky promises him, “You’ll like this next part, Doc. It was like a squirrel getting its nuts squeezed.”

During this job, Ricky spies one man accosting another over some owed money in a back alley while taking out some garbage. The man after the money takes out a red handkerchief and wipes his face, thus setting off Ricky’s rage. He finds a random umbrella in a trash pile and runs it through the man, snarling “naughty” and opening up the umbrella to punctuate this newest murder.

Dr. Bloom whips out a photo and throws it across the desk. “Who is this?” he asks.

Ricky turns and sees the photo of a reasonably attractive blond, a former flame of his. “Jennifer. She was a knock-out. I never wanted to lose her.”

And so we flashback again so we can meet Jennifer, who has a laughable car accident with our unfortunate lead, and the two kids immediately rub skin. After a tepid love scene, comprised only of side-boob, they go to the cinema to see a film. That film? The first Silent Night, Deadly Night.

Why—oh.

The movie begins, but a rowdy movie-goer in the back row gets on Ricky’s nerves.

“Faggot!” the rowdy man shouts at Ricky.

“Well, we know that’s not true,” Jennifer retorts, as if Ricky might have actually been worried about his sexuality for a moment.

“What’s this movie about, anyway?” Ricky asks.

“Oh, it’s great. It’s about a guy who dresses up as Santa Claus and kills people.”

“What?!” Ricky shrieks and quickly becomes enraged.

Why would you go see a fucking movie without knowing what it is, Ricky, you dickhead?

Ricky then beats the living shit out of the rowdy man.

After the cancellation of Arrested Development,
Executive Producer Ron Howard just couldn't deal.

In his absence, one of Jennifer’s previous lovers, Chip, an extremely unnatural blond fellow who presents himself as the generic cocksure rich boy we all know doesn’t have much time left on Earth.

The next day, while taking a walk, Ricky and Jennifer run afoul of Chip, who immediately oozes with douchebag residue. Chip acts the cock, makes a reference to his “red” car to set up his death, and then has his face melted with the aid of a car battery.

Jennifer shrieks at Ricky that she hates him and tries to flee, but Ricky makes quick work of her with a car antenna.

“Uh oh!” she unrealistically yells before meeting Elvis.

And thus begins the best sequence ever shot for a movie that starred Ricky as the lead.

A cop rushes in, gun in hand, to take care of the murderous Ricky, but he soon has his own brains blown out with a quick flick of Ricky’s wrist.

Now armed with the cop's gun, Ricky strolls down the street, shooting a man who comes out of his house, demanding to know why all the noise. “Motherfucker,” Ricky mutters, and laughs.

He then spots a hapless man putting out cans of trash.

“GARBAGE DAY!” Ricky shouts, shooting him in super cool slow motion.

Ricky continues his stroll down the street, and after allowing a moment to capture the entire film crew in the shot...

...he meets a little girl with a red ribbon in her hair. Despite the red, he lets her go, even smiling at her. And since the movie is making up its own rules, Ricky figures he’ll shoot randomly at a car coming at him until it overturns, crashes, and explodes. In what is actually a legitimately cool stunt, and in a single take, the car flips and narrowly avoids hitting Ricky by seriously only a few inches, had it not been for a quick turn of his body.

Ricky giggles in his typical Ricky self and then continues on with the massacre, or at least tries to. But alas, his murdering was not meant to be. Ricky eventually hits a road block of cops and tries to turn the gun on himself. A look of disappointment crosses his face when he is greeted with an empty click.

"JOKES AND DREAMS COME FROM MY IDEA BALL."

Ricky, it seems, is done reminiscing, since at some point during this story he has opted to murder Dr. Bloom, yet keep talking, anyway. He then flees the hospital to see to some unfinished business… to rent Silent Night, Deadly Night.

Or...

Sister Mary tells the cops that Ricky is most likely going after Mother Superior, now wheelchair-bound thanks to a stroke and living in isolation.

Ricky finally dons a Santa suit for the first and only time in this movie, but sans beard, and calls Mother Superior to let her know “Santa’s back.”

She nervously hangs up and wheels her puny body over to the TV and watches the Christmas parade and babbles typical Christian “Bah, blasphemy!” remarks at the big balloon animals on the screen.

Not too long after, Ricky begins to chop his way through Mother Superior’s front door (which is unsubtly numbered 666) and chases her from one room to the next, smashing doors and delivering really bad one-liners.

RICKY FACE # 2: Angry + Lemons

Mother Superior, who is clearly played by a different actress than the woman in the first movie's footage, wears prosthetic scars on her face that are allegedly caused by strokes. She gets booted down the steps, somehow survives, and escapes in yet another wheelchair.

She grabs a knife from the kitchen and then suddenly grows a pair of nun balls. “You must be punished,” she screams. “You are being very, very naughty!”

“Naughty this!” Ricky nonsensically screams before delivering an admittedly satisfying, yet off-screen blow to Mother Superior’s nun head.

The cops enter and spy Mother Superior sitting motionless, her back to them. I bet you a sawbuck she’s just aces.

A cop gently shakes her and her head falls off a very cleanly cut neck, even though Ricky’s ax thrust was a downward blow. Sister Mary (who is there for some reason) screams at the head and falls down and almost becomes Ricky’s next victim.

The cops shoot Ricky, who is so insane at this point that he can't even feel bullets. One more blow to the chest does the trick, however, and sends Ricky flying through a glass patio door.

“He’s gone, sister. It’s over,” says the cop.

And then Ricky’s eyes open as Sister Mary screams at a head.

Please, no head jokes. A real nun has died.

Ricky further continues his adventures in Silent Night, Deadly Night 3, where he is brought back to life by a mad scientist, and suddenly played by Bill Moseley.

God bless us, everyone.

BEWARE THE CHILDREN

2011-12-22T08:44:00.000-05:00

God said, "Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.” But image does not mean outer image, or every statue or photograph would be man. It means the inner image—the spirit, the soul. But what of those in our midst who do not have individual souls? Or spirits? They have one mind that they share between them—one spirit. They have the look of man, but not the nature of mankind…