ROAD HOUSE (1989)

 

If the dictionary were a living, breathing, human man and you asked him to define “road house,” he would tell you that it was a roadside establishment in a country setting, off the beaten path, where one could seek alcohol, music, dancing, and perhaps some gambling. However, if you were to ask me — an actual living, breathing, human man — to define “road house,” I would tell you, “It’s the greatest film of all time, chicken dick.”

Both of us would be right. One of us would be more right. (It’s me.)

Road House is the kind of film that (wrongly) doesn’t feel like it belongs in Patrick Swayze’s filmography. More well-known for his contributions to the date-movie genre — Ghost, Dirty Dancing — or his closeted sobbing pedophile genre — Donnie Darko — and certainly not to speak ill of the dead, but Road House's joyous, unfettered insanity and manliness feels much more like a Kurt Russell vehicle. (Kurt Russell was a handy example because for the first fifteen years of my life, I was convinced they were the same person. Watch Road House and Tango & Cash back-to-back and tell me I’m wrong.) Sure, Swayze tussled in the action genre with Next of Kin, Red Dawn, Black Dog, the immeasurable if equally absurd Point Break, and that one which was clearly a Mad Max rip-off, but none of them ever caught cultural fire like Road House did. And none of them have its rewatchability, strange uneven tone, or its amount of Red West.

Frankly, it’s kind of a shame that even after having contributed three mainstays of the action genre with slightly ironic classics that Swayze couldn’t find surer footing with future solid action fare. For as celebrated as they are today, that Road House, Red Dawn, and Point Break didn’t solidify Swayze as at least an action semi-icon seems strange, but perhaps it was his ability to visit several different genres (often for the ladies) that made such an action-icon status elude him. Based on what kind of person he was, he would have really been tickled to have his name spoken in the same breath as Schwarzenegger and Stallone. Sadly, his last high-profile film project was a cameo in the Dirty Dancing sequel no one asked for.

Road House is a tough film to explain to those who haven’t seen it, and not because the plot can’t be cracked, because it certainly can — it’s a 1989 modern western which sees Swayze’s Dalton, he of the mysterious past, cleaning up a corrupt town and sending a handful of good-ol’-boys to their earth boxes pushing up daisies. No, what can’t be cracked is the extremely odd tone, which bounces back and forth between the kind of fun-and-fancy-freeness indicative of the ’80s and a sort of angry viciousness that never seems to gel. [Spoiler: The most telling example of this comes in the dispatching of the film’s primary villain, Wesley, as played by Ben Gazzara, in which members of the town he’s been victimizing kill him in cold blood. He’s shot full of holes and dies bloodily, but then everyone laughs when an idiot among them makes a stupid comment about a stuffed bear.] However, admittedly, it’s this same uneven tone that makes Road House such an entertaining watch. Having fun while spilling blood, being sexually explicit while also vying for romance, Road House plays by its own schizophrenic rules to incredible results.

As for my Kurt Russell theory, here's another thing to keep in mind: close your eyes and picture each of our manly mulleted men, Russell and Swayze, uttering the line, "Pain don't hurt." Go on, indulge me.

Now, let me guess: your version of Kurt Russell said it with a wink and a smile, right? That beautifully cocky but lovable delivery Russell has perfected over the years? Because when Swayze says it, his face is still, stoic, and serious. He means it. And that's the difference.

Road House became a midnight movie in recent years, as people began to embrace the sheer lunacy brought on by a film that has so much going on you don’t know where to look. And MGM, its home studio, knows of its marquee value. A direct-to-video sequel was released in 2006, starring a cast of actors who generally only appear in direct-to-video sequels, while a remake with Ronda Rousey stepping into Dalton’s shoes (lordy) under the direction of The Notebook’s Nick Cassavetes (lordy) has been threatening to emerge since 2017. What all this means is the Road House name still means something, and using that simple two-word title suggests to the audience a certain kind of experience, successful or not: uncorrupted ass-kicking.

I sincerely doubt there’s anyone reading this who hasn’t seen Road House by now, but if you haven’t, that’s likely why you aren’t realizing just how empty your life has been. Once you see Road House for yourself, you will then realize you haven’t fully lived. Road House isn’t a “good” film — not by any stretch — but it is a damn fine time, with all the fight scenes, sexytime, cartoon villainy, and Sam Elliott you could want. A great soundtrack, some rafters-shooting performances, and a strange tone of broad comedy meets disturbing violence make Road House a unique experience and an essential missing component of your life. I mean, Jesus Christ, it was even directed by a guy named Rowdy. What the fuck else do you need?

Patrick Swayze’s wife shared that, in his final weeks of life, he’d expressed fear that he wouldn’t leave behind a legacy that would still have people talking about him long after he was gone. He, like the rest of us, feared that he hadn’t left a mark on this world, that he’d be forgotten. Anyone could have pointed to a half-dozen titles in his career that would ensure such a thing would never happen, regardless of which genre they prefer. And, like anyone knows, the movies that come from the collaborations of actors both remembered and forgotten are bigger than any one person; because of that, titles like Ghost, Dirty Dancing, Point Break, and The Outsiders alone would've ensured Swayze's immortality. But when it comes to Road House, one thing is certain: his character Dalton (first name or surname, we’ll never know) will long be held in high regard as one of the most infamous and celebrated action heroes of all time.

And that’s a legacy worth leaving behind.

HOUSE OF HER NIGHTMARES

All Margaret wanted was a nice home where she could raise her small daughter. An ad for a colonial house seemed like a dream come true, but upon stepping inside, it felt more like a nightmare - a nightmare that didn't quite end when she walked away. This is Margaret's story...

I was living in Houston, Texas, and my daughter was only two years old. I wanted a house very badly, but couldn't afford one. That did not stop me from looking at the Sunday paper, however, and dreaming.

One Sunday, I read an ad for a house for rent: a two-story colonial with a large yard, mature trees, and a garden. The best part was it was only fifty dollars more than I was paying for my apartment. I couldn't resist. I called the number listed and the lady told me that she and her husband owned a plant nursery not far from the house. She said if I drove to the nursery, I could follow her to the house.

I wasted no time in getting dressed and heading over. It was a bright day in June, the sun was shining, the birds singing, the grass was green, and there was just a hint of a breeze. It was the perfect day to find a home.

I arrived at the nursery and met the lady and her husband. They were wonderful people. If I were going to have landlords, these were the people I wanted to have. They told me the house needed some painting, and if I wanted it they would let me pick the colors. Also, if I wanted to do anything to the yard, I could come to the nursery and pick out anything I wanted free of charge. They would also let me have the third month rent free so that I could make some improvements I might want to do.

A BAD FEELING

It seemed too good to be true. I followed the woman to the house. Sure enough, it was a large white colonial with black shutters and gigantic oaks in the front yard. As I climbed out of the car, I caught just a glimpse of what appeared to be a garden gate on the side. There was no grass in the yard, maybe because there was too much shade, but I could overlook that. I had a full nursery where I could choose shade-loving plants.

The woman opened the front door and went inside. I took a step to follow her and froze. A chill ran through me. Goosebumps broke out on my arms and the hair stood up on the back of my neck. Even my breath caught in my throat. Everything in me said, Do not go into this house…, but that was ridiculous, wasn't it? I had come all this way. The lady was inside waiting for me. How could I explain it? I had to go in.

I pulled myself together and tried again with the same results. Something deep within me rebelled at the idea of going inside. I realized I was afraid - very afraid. I could hear the lady saying something to me from inside, but I couldn't make out the words. I couldn't just stand here outside the threshold, I had to go in. I didn't want to, but I couldn't come up with a logical reason to leave.

A CONSUMING DARKNESS

I gathered my courage and stepped inside. The first thing I noticed was how dark the house was. Outside it was bright and cheerful, but inside there was no light. I couldn't even see the walls. I could barely make out the vague shape of the woman who had led me here. She knew the house and flicked on some lights, but it hardly made a difference. It was as if the house sucked up all the light, releasing only shadows and dark corners. I couldn't understand it... the windows were huge. Where was the light?

Add to this the feeling of being watched. I felt there was something there quietly watching us. She showed me the living room and the kitchen, for all the good it did. It was as if I were going blind and couldn't force my eyes to adjust. She showed me the backyard, which did have grass and another large tree. I was puzzled. I could see the light outside and couldn't imagine why it did not pierce the darkness inside.

There was a shed in the yard, and she explained to me that the man who lived here before had left unexpectedly without any notice and had left all his clothes and furniture behind. She told me that she and her husband did not know what to do with his things and they didn't want to throw them away in case he returned for them. They had put everything in the shed. She told me not to worry, that they had changed the locks on the house, and if he didn't come back in a couple of months, they would empty the shed.

THE SYMBOLS ON THE FLOOR

She showed me the little gated garden I had glimpsed from the front yard. I liked the garden and could imagine planting it with my daughter, yet I could not see us living here. She led me into the dining room, complaining the entire time that she couldn't understand why anyone would paint the walls black, not only the walls but the windows as well. The former tenant also had drawn some weird symbols on the floor in some sort of luminescent paint. She had no idea what they were.

I did. I have never been a devil worshiper, of course, but I have seen enough movies to know what a pentagram looks like. It was beginning to make a little sense.

She took me upstairs, a bare blub barely brightening the way. It lit perhaps two steps before losing to the darkness. As I followed her up the stairs, I kept looking behind me. I was certain something was there - something that was watching me on its best behavior because it wanted me to move in. Something frightening that was not in the dark, but was the dark.

She showed me two equally dark bedrooms, and when she opened the door to one small room no bigger than a large walk-in closet, I had to blink. It was filled with light! A charming little pink room that could be my daughter's, if not for the fact that I kept imagining the two of us huddled in this room afraid to leave and venture out into the rest of the house. I thought of me clutching her in the middle of the night, staring at the doorknob, watching it turn. The image was a little too real.

I left the house. Needless to say, I didn't rent it, and the story might have ended there as the amusing tale of an active imagination were it not for a dreary rainy day in November five months later.

THE THING IN THE ROAD

I was taking a friend to work at a bar in small suburb just outside Houston. It was a cloudy, drizzly evening shortly before Thanksgiving. The days were getting shorter, and even though it was not quite six-thirty it was already dark. I had dropped him off and I was driving home with the radio playing, planning for the holiday. I was on a little blacktop road that was barely large enough for two cars to pass. This nondescript road connects Houston to this little suburb, so it is very busy during rush hour. The headlights of workers heading home to the burbs rushed toward me like an endless string of pearls. Almost no one was going in my direction.

Suddenly, from out of nowhere, something stepped in front of my car with outstretched arms. Something huge. Eight or nine feet tall with glowing red eyes. I swerved to miss it. My worst nightmare is to hit a person while I am driving. My mind told me it couldn't be a person, but I ignored it. It must be a person. I cannot miss it... it is too close.

I closed my eyes for the terrible bone-cracking impact, but there was nothing. I waited for the bump of the wheels bouncing over the body... but again nothing. The tires caught the mud and wet grass on the side of the road and the car spun out of control and was heading for a wide oak tree. I prayed for help and managed to regain control of the car in just enough time to miss the tree by the skin of my teeth.

I got back on the road and turned into a convenience store just up the road. I was shaking. Did I really see what I just saw? It had both arms outstretched, the fingers spread wide. What passed for hair were actually five pointed horns standing out on its head in the same way a child draws the sun. Its eyes were glowing red slits. It couldn't be. It had to be a person, and if it were a person, he could be lying in a ditch on the side of the road.

WHERE IT CAME FROM

I got out of the car in the drizzle and starting walking down the road, retracing the way I had come. It was uncomfortably cold and wet, but I had to check. As I walked, I noticed that none of the cars had slowed. No one was avoiding anything in the road. I looked in the ditch past the wet, drooping leaves. Nothing.

I came to the tree I had nearly hit. I could see the tire tracks in the mud, but no body… no nothing. Confused, I stood there for a moment and was about to head back to my car when I saw, directly across the road from where I had nearly hit the thing I saw, was the house I had seen in June!

Whatever it was had come from that house! It somehow knew that I was there. And since I had not moved in, it had tried one last time to take me. It had tried to kill me! The guy who had lived there had dabbled in some form of Satanism and conjured up something he couldn't get rid of and he had left... or worse, he was still there, somewhere within its walls.

The house was still empty that rainy night. No one had moved it. I fear for anyone who does. I never saw it again. I would never go that way. I told a few people this story, but not many. One asked if I would take him there, but I refused. I told him I'd give him directions, but I would never go there.

Story source.

SMILING

Back in school I had a good friend named Ryan, and well, he was my only friend. After school we always went to his house to hang out. His house sat almost in the middle of a big grazing field, which mostly worked in our advantage as it gave us a lot of room for playing outside. Since the house was in the middle of the field, you would have to follow a long driveway to get there. But that’s enough description so let’s cut down to the flesh of the story.

It was 8:00 in the evening and a huge fight broke out between my parents and me. I was frustrated and couldn’t stand it any longer so I called Ryan’s house, as I needed to break away from this mess. He picked up the phone and was surprised hearing from me at such a late hour (we were kids back then), but after hearing my story he said I could come over, although he said he was going to be away at football practice until 9:00, so I would have to wait for him.

I agreed.

A mistake.

It was night and it was dark. It didn’t mind the dark, but I never liked the road that led to his house. Its wavy pattern would sometimes make me sick, especially if I was traveling in a car. But now that was not the case, I was on my bike. The disturbing part of this story will not happen on this road, though. It will happen once I reached the house.

Parking my bike by the side of their empty garage, I walked up their front porch and reaching the door, rang the bell. The door opened almost as soon as my finger let go of the button, giving me a jump. There was no wait; it literally opened up almost instantaneously. Then I saw.

It was his mother. I always liked his mother; she was kind, sweet, and always offered her support whenever I felt down.

But I could tell something was wrong with her.

Her usually bright eyes seemed darker. Her hair was not neatly tied in a bun behind her head; it fell upon her shoulders. Before I had the chance to examine her further, something much more unsettling caught my eye. She was smiling.

She did not greet me, or start talking. Just kept smiling and stared right at me.

Feeling very uncomfortable, I asked if everything was all right. “Come inside and have some tea with me,” was her answer. Before I had the chance to answer she went back into the house. It was then that I noticed that she was wearing her bathroom robe. Having neither the disrespect to decline her offer, nor the guts to stay outside in the night, I entered the home and closed the door behind me.

Heading towards the kitchen I could hear her humming a strange tune. The moment I entered, she stopped humming and an overwhelming silence took over. Without waiting for a conversation to start, I took a seat at the kitchen table. She was standing in front of me, with her back turned in my direction. I tried not to look at her and started awkwardly looking around the room, until the tea was ready. I was thinking. Ryan’s mom would always seem warm and loving and eager to talk about anything concerning my school, family life, and anything else. Now she was just silent. Saying nothing. I spent the next five minutes in this deep thought.

And then it occurred to me.

She hadn’t moved at all during the whole time I was in the kitchen. With her back towards me, I could see that her hands were hanging down her shoulders. Her head was tilted to the left. Thinking something was wrong, I stood from the chair and approached her from behind. Making an awful lot of noise while doing so, she did not move a single bit. Carefully I approached her from the right side to look at her face to see if she was all right. The following sight still haunts me to this very day.

Her eyes were wide open and she was smiling.

Being as unsettled as I was, I decided it’d be best to go back home. “I think I better be off now, I have a lot of schoolwork for tomorrow,” I lied, and receiving no answer in return, I headed towards the front door and stepped outside onto the porch. I wasn’t scared, well maybe just a little bit, but mostly I was just weirded the fuck out.

As I was moved down the porch towards my bike, I caught a glimpse of two lights at the far end of the wavy road. It was a car. “Finally,” I thought. Ryan was around ten minutes late. However, as the car was nearing the house, I began wondering who was driving Ryan back from football practice. His dad was at a business trip, and wouldn’t be back for another two weeks. Ryan himself was too young to drive a car so who else? I was getting more and more anxious as the car was nearing the house. Who was driving Ryan back? The car pulled into the garage and stopped. Ryan was the first one to get out, giving me a “What’s up, man?”. But the person who came out of the car next was his mother. She noticed me and asked how everything was.

Source.

THE HAUNTING (1999)

I blame Mike Flanagan and his brilliant adaptation, The Haunting of Hill House, for how unimpressively 1999’s The Haunting plays in our modern era. Though both are based on Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel, ironically, it’s the miniseries which strays far from the novel’s surface story that’s the most successful adaptation, whereas The Haunting, though sticking very close to its source material (until the stupid finale), totally dismisses Jackson’s moral – the implications of loneliness, the dangers of isolation, and the emotional damage inflicted by the inability to feel “part” of something – in favor of lame spookshow spectacle, lame third-act twists, and Owen Wilson. The Haunting didn’t enjoy high marks upon its release in theaters what feels like a hundred years ago, but it’s one of those perfectly reasonable titles to touch base with from time to time for some superficial popcorn entertainment – one of those late-‘90s relics which hails from that moment in cinetime where CGI was just starting to become front and center in large-scale genre filmmaking. There’s 1997’s Mimic and Spawn, 1998’s Deep Rising and Species II, and 1999 had so many examples that it would be obnoxious to list them all, but let’s take a quick stroll down Memory Lane with Deep Blue Sea, The Mummy, End of Days, and House on Haunted Hill. There are a reckless number of examples from this era where studios spent over a hundred million dollars on horror productions, and mostly because of their visual effects. This approach didn’t result in any good movies, but it did result in some fun ones, and for some audiences, that’s enough.

Because of this ‘90s CGI explosion, this era’s offerings all look, feel, and sound the same – 9-0-C-G-I might as well be its own zip code in Hollywood because of how hilariously primitive and concretely tied to an era its films look when compared to some of the visual achievements pulled off by the recent likes of War for the Planet of the Apes or The Jungle Book. This was the biggest complaint with The Haunting way back when, and that complaint not only remains valid, but it’s actually much more relevant because of how far CGI has come – this alongside the mini revisionist renaissance we’ve seen and enjoyed regarding the rebirth of our favorite horror properties, which had long succumbed to near self-parody, now rebranded as serious and mature storytelling. NBC’s Hannibal rescued Hannibal Lecter from the ho-humness of Red Dragon and Hannibal Rising, purging Anthony Hopkins’ increasingly toothless take on the title character; 2018’s Halloween wiped away 40 years of baggage-filled sequels and made Michael Myers scary, mysterious, and motiveless once again; and Mike Flanagan went back to the most famous haunted house story in the land to create something beautifully terrifying and terrifyingly beautiful. (Its follow-up, The Haunting Of Bly Manor, is streaming now on Netflix.)

If you’re familiar with Robert Wise’s adaptation of The Haunting from 1963, then you know his approach was built on a foundation of suspense first and terror later – without ever falling back on a single visual effect. Spooky offscreen noises, ominous pounding on oaken double-doors, and the creepy insinuation that the other living occupants of the house weren’t to be trusted – these are what made The Haunting so frightening. It’s tempting to dismiss this no-frills approach to genre filmmaking in the modern era, considering all the horror flicks that have since come down the path that relied heavily on visual imagery – The Exorcist, Suspiria, right up to the modern era with The Conjuring (also starring Lili Taylor) or Hereditary – but 1999’s The Haunting never had enough faith in itself to rein in some of the stupid CGI in lieu of the fantastic production design of the house itself and the character dynamics that still (somewhat) contained enough ambiguously sinister behavior that suggested not everyone had Nell’s best interests at heart.

Ultimately, it’s for these reasons that The Haunting fails to leave any kind of lasting impression: the distillation of the characters as presented in the novel, and the overreliance on (poor) CGI instead of trying to establish a mood and tone, are enough to keep The Haunting from being, at the very least, a sturdy addition to the haunted house sub-genre. For the most part, screenwriter David Self (Road To Perdition) preserves the novel’s character archetypes with commendable loyalty: Lili Taylor’s Nell is an outcast, ostracized and belittled by her sister (Virginia Madsen) and brother-in-law, and desperate to forge her own path in the world. Liam Neeson’s Dr. Marrow seems well meaning and genuinely motivated by good doctorly intentions, even if his “sleep study” is a manipulation that eventually leads to a situation he can’t control. Catherine Zeta-Jones maintains Theodora’s passive aggressive flirtations and socialite-like flamboyance, although her open bisexuality, which had been left purposely ambiguous in Jackson’s story (a surprising addition for the 1950s) is just as broad and obvious as the rest of her character. Lastly, there’s Owen Wilson, ably playing Luke the California mimbo, exorcised of his implied substance addict canon and his ties to the owners of Hill House that would’ve threatened to make him an interesting character. (I still remember our theater’s audience laughing every time Owen Wilson was on screen, even when he wasn’t vying for comedy relief.) Ironically, in concept, everyone is perfectly cast to capture their characters as presented in the novel: Neeson is esteemed and trustworthy, Zeta-Jones is airy and free-spirited, Wilson is fun-loving and free of responsibility, and Taylor is lost, lonely, and wanting nothing but to be accepted. The groundwork is there, but for whatever reason, the film can’t seem to lure the performers’ take on the characters across the finish line. The ensemble’s performances are fairly mundane with most of the cast not going out of their way to overextend themselves for a project that, in their estimation, didn’t call for it, despite this being one of Steven Spielberg’s earliest producing credits through his brand new Dreamworks Entertainment banner. Zeta-Jones’ Theo comes off as a teenaged girl, rattling off some of the film’s most bone-headed dialogue, especially as she refers to her boots as “savage kicks,” and poor Taylor does her best during the final act when she’s forced to spew the kind of confrontational dialogue that’s directed at the house’s main threat but is actually provided solely so the audience knows what the hell is happening in the very movie they’ve been watching for the last eighty minutes. If one of cinema’s Ten Commandments was Thou shall not have characters speak aloud unto themselves for the betterment of observers’ understanding, The Haunting would be the most blasphemous of them all.

Everything else aside, there remains the most important question for a horror film, especially a haunted house horror film: is it scary? Well, you guessed it: no. It’s not. In fact, except for the demise of Wilson’s character, in what remains one of the dumbest kill scenes in horror history, The Haunting is so neutered that its PG-13 rating almost feels like an insult to kids twelve and under. I guess we can blame Spielberg, who apparently hated the movie and had his name removed, for the inadvertent overblown spectacle, as he chose Jan de Bont, cinematographer-turned-director known for his previous unsubtle action-adventure hits Speed and Twister (and not-at-all-a-hit Speed 2: Cruise Control), to direct the update of a classic flick known for its low-key subtlety. That de Bont had never before (or since) directed a horror flick could certainly point in the direction of his hiring being a mistake, but to date, he only has five directorial credits, with a mere two of them enjoying solid reviews and healthy box office. (His last credit as a director was the awkwardly titled Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life waaay back in 2003.) While The Haunting does have a fair bit to boast about, mainly Jerry Goldsmith’s flourishing musical score, gorgeous production design, and Hill House’s foreboding façade (the opening flyover shot of the house complemented by sounds of massive and weathered preternatural breathing sets a tone that the rest of the film fails to live up to), they’re all soon upstaged by some embarrassingly dodgy CGI, as if the movie didn’t have enough faith in itself to rely solely on its intricately designed environments to captivate audiences. In 1963, Wise paid a grip to knock loudly on the other side of some bedroom doors. In 1999, Spielberg paid a visual effects team millions of dollars to turn a bedroom into an ominous face, complete with bloodshot window-eyes and a bed that sprouts spider-like legs. The first is scary, the second is not. High on visuals, low on creativity: that’s late-‘90s genre in a nutshell.

Neither time nor advances in approaches to classic material have been kind to The Haunting, which, even putting aside the CGI, very much feels like a ‘90s production, dated by its look, feel, and some accidentally hilarious moments like when Neeson reassures his sleep study group that, in case of emergencies, he has his “trusty cell telephone.” Old school audiences enjoyed the novel and the subsequent adaptation that came along four years later. Brand new audiences well acquainted with elongated storytelling as essayed by services like Netflix and HBO found much more substance to enjoy with 2018’s The Haunting of Hill House. This leaves 1999’s The Haunting lost entirely in no man’s land – not nearly frightening enough to command attention, nor “deep” enough to reach the audience’s hearts through its characters, The Haunting is just kind of there – a harmless but mediocre slice of popcorn entertainment that doesn’t come close to haunting its viewers.

SHITTY FLICKS: DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE

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.

Horror movies in the late 70’s and early 80’s were really bossy. You weren’t really allowed to go anywhere or do anything.

Don’t Go in the Woods. Don’t Go in the Basement. Don’t Go to Sleep. Don’t Go Near the Park. Don’t Go in the Bedroom. Don't Answer the Phone. Don't Play with your Peeno at Grandmother's.

Preeetty sure you were allowed to go in the house, though.

Don’t Go in the House.

Ah, farts.

Don’t Go in the House is about a man named Donny who is obsessed with fire. So much that he works in a factory whose job is to burn things. One day on the job, Donny tosses a can of something—maybe spray paint— into one of the furnaces just to see it explode. It doesn’t, however, so Donny walks away, disappointed.

And then BOOMO.

The can explodes right in the face of a hapless worker who walked over to do whatever it is these people do to the furnace. Donny watches as the man, covered in flames, twirls around helplessly. People quickly come to his aid as Donny continues to be useless.

“A man goes up in flames and you just stand there like a faggot!” yells his boss later in the locker room.

“I am not a faggot,” Donny says, defending himself, as if one has anything to do with the other. “It covered him up. He wasn’t evil, but it covered it up.”

That’s crazy if you ask me.

“You’re crazy,” agrees the boss. “I always said you were crazy.”

"I think YOU and ME oughta go OUT some time
because we would MAKE a good COUPLE."

Donny, who isn't crazy, thinks fire has thought patterns and seeks out evil to purify it.

But he isn't crazy.

He drives home to his sick mother, as several disembodied thoughts whisper in his mind.

But he isn’t crazy.

Donny prepares chamomile tea for his mother who sleeps softly in the chair. After a few gentle jostles, mother does not stir. Donny fruitlessly tries to wake his sleeping mother, but it’s too late for her. She’s a fucking dead corpse. He paces the room and tries to convince himself that she is merely sleeping and that she will wake up soon.

“I MADE YOU TEA I MADE YOU TEA,” insists Donny at her dead body.

The voices then begin talking to Donny, trying to calm him. They whisper sweet nothings in his ear and promise that things will be okay, that they will take care of him.

“Can I play my music loud?” asks Donny. He then immediately puts on some disco (loud) and begins jumping on chairs and smoking inside the house.

What a life for Donny this is! Adios, dead mother!

A la better movies about sons who had formerly-abusive and now-dead mothers, Donny begins to hear her voice yelling at him. Donny inspects his dead mother and sees that she’s still dead, but the voices tell him that she must be burned to be purified. Donny doesn’t ask too many questions as he gathers up a box of matches. He then has a flashback of the time his mother the asshole flipped out because her husband left them and she blamed Donny for it, telling him he was evil, and she pulled Donny’s little arms over a stove flame.

Think that’s what made Donny crazy about fire?

Me neither.

We're pretty dumb, though.

The next morning, Donny calls out of work and begins to build something in his house. It’s too soon to tell what it is, but knowing Donny, it’s probably a roller rink.

You know. For disco.

Then he runs off to a store to buy a flame-retardant suit complete with overly-dramatic and creepy face mask.

Later, he charms his way into a closed flower store, telling the girl he would like a small arrangement for his sick mother. He pays for the flowers and then hesitantly leaves, looking disappointed at himself in his truck parked outside the store. Whether it was because he didn’t have the balls to ask her out or kill her remains unseen, although, he does manage to coerce her into accepting a ride from him after she misses the bus.

“Why don’t you come inside and say hello to Mother?” Donny asks along the way.

The girl agrees for some reason and off they go.

Back at the house, Donny leaves, telling the flower store woman that he will be right back. Donny disappears momentarily in the kitchen, but then comes back.

“Mother must be upstairs! I’ll be right back!”

Donny runs up the steps excitedly.

“Mother!” he calls, as flower store woman looks nervous, regretting having agreed to come into the house of a man she doesn’t know and who clearly has issues. He then comes out a few moments later looking worried.

“Mother’s even sicker than I thought! I’ve gotta call the doctor!”

Donny, what the fuck is your plan?

After Donny makes a fake phone call to the doctor, flower store woman insists on calling a cab. She begins to make said call before Donny helps her to be asleep with the aid of a blunt instrument.

She groggily awakes, nice and naked and strung up in a strange, metal, windowless room.

Donny, meanwhile, sits in his own room, staring at the box he schlepped home from his night errands. I wonder what it is.

Oh, that’s right—the flame-retardant suit complete with overly-dramatic face mask.

He walks into his new dungeon of sorts, pours a can of gasoline over the naked body of the flower store woman, and then proceeds to blast her with a fucking flame thrower. She screams in bloody agony as she burns to death, which is almost as painful as having to sit through this movie.

Lars von Trier's remake of Schindler's List was
banned almost immediately, but some critics
secretly hailed it as "fucking bad ass."

Donny watches inside his big astronaut suit, pleased with how his burn room is faring.

The next day, Donny pulls up alongside a woman on the side of the road experiencing car trouble.

“Would you like a lift to the next gas station?” he asks innocently enough.

aka

"Would you like to feel my flames on your cheeks?"

The woman gratefully gets in the truck with him.

“Mind if we drop some stuff off at my house? It’s on the way!”

“Sure!” the woman happily obliges.

Later, as her smoking body hangs from chains and hand-shackles, Donny continues to look more and more pleased with himself.

At a nearby convenience store, Donny spies an attractive woman paying for some items. He blocks her attempt to exit by offering such manly services as, “some help” carrying her groceries, as well as “a ride home.”

The woman clearly isn’t interested and brushes past him, as Donny becomes more insistent.

The clerk intervenes, telling Donny that he’s only bothering her.

“You’re right,” Donny exclaims. “I better go apologize!”

Later, Donny carries that woman's body into his mother’s room and he introduces the two of them. Then, despite how things have been going, Donny begins going even crazier, having spotted his mother’s ghost’s reflection in the mirror behind him, which is genuinely creepy thanks to an intrusive music sting.

He then hears all of his burned women, whose skeletons he keeps in rocking chairs in a room in his house, giggling and laughing at him.

“You bitches!” he screams at them, slapping their charred faces. “You think you can laugh at me? Well…no more laughing!”

He then goes downstairs and puts on his music. Loud.

Despite this loudness, he falls asleep and dreams of women grabbing at him from crevices in a blue desert. He shakes himself awake and sees his flaming, green-faced mother at the top of the stairs, bellowing, “I’ll get you, Donald! I’ll get you!”

Boy, asleep or awake, Donny’s life is the pits.

Donny goes to church to steal holy water to ward off his insane mother, I guess, and has a philosophical argument with the priest about evil. Donny makes his confession and then comes home to forgive his mother. He anoints her face with holy water, making the sign of the cross.

There. All better.

Donny almost doubled-back after leaving the house, having
forgotten to turn on the humidifier for his mother, but then he
remembered she was a burnt corpse, and he smiled, relieved.

Donny calls his boyfriend from work and the two make plans to take some girlies to—you guessed it—a disco!

I love the '70s!

Donny goes to buy a shirt, which takes years. Every second he spends on screen not burning naked women makes this movie that many seconds too long.

He goes to the disco to meet his pallies for the evening, and if you can make it through this scene without checking your watch or e-mail, then you’re a stronger person than I am. To say that nothing even remotely interesting happens in this whole scene would be an insult to nothing.

Donny proceeds to sit and watch everyone dance as he looks boring and nervous. When his date for the evening sachets over and tries to yank him to the dance floor, Donny picks up the candle off the table and smashes it into girl’s face, which is a perfectly acceptable way of declining to dance.

He makes his escape and drives home, as the voices in his head whisper that everything is okay, and that he did good.

Then he picks up two giggling girls along the side of the road.

Jesus, Donny. How do you do it? Is the secret to your success setting women on fire?

Because I’m willing to try that…

Donny takes the girls home and they wander around admiring his big house. Then he shoves them into his secret burn room, and introduces them to his fire. However, he grows distracted in his room of bodies and doesn’t finish the job of burning them alive, which disappoints me greatly, because why else am I watching this movie?

Donny’s boyfriend, concerned about his friend’s growing insanity, goes to get the priest, and together they go to Donny’s house. They rescue the sadly unhurt girls, and the priest wanders upstairs to find Donny.

And find Donny he does. Along with Donny’s flamethrower.

Say, what do you get when you set a priest on fire?

The end of this movie, thankfully?

Almost.

Disco Inferno, anyone? ZING!

Donny's collection of burned women get up off their chairs, and in another genuinely creepy scene, slowly creep toward him, their skeleton arms outstretched. If only this movie didn’t have that whole thing called the “beginning” and “middle” to drag it down...

Donny flips shit and burns them—and himself—to death.

The movie ends with a lame attempt at setting up a sequel as a completely unrelated boy gets smacked around by his mother, hears creepy voices in his head, and stares dumbly at the camera.

Cut to Black.

AND DISCO!

WNUF HALLOWEEN SPECIAL (2013)

 

A package awaited me on the porch as I approached my front door. The return address didn't look immediately familiar, and inside the package was nothing but a single VHS tape.

No typical accompanying press release. No pre-sale ad. No tear sheet. Just that lone, ominous VHS tape with the hand-scrawled label:

WNUF Halloween Special.

Naturally I was intrigued. Who wouldn't be?

I was hesitant to pop in the tape, halfway expecting to see shaky, nightime footage of myself asleep in my bed, unaware of my image being captured by my phantom visitor. Also, Bill Pullman might be playing fusion jazz saxophone right behind me. (Lost Highway reference, for the win!)

After a bit of research, I found this:

Recently discovered VHS videocassettes of the infamous and terrifying Local-TV Halloween Show broadcast-gone-bad. Only 300 in existence!

Taped off of WNUF TV-28 on Halloween Night, 1987, this strange broadcast follows local news personality Frank Stewart and a team of paranormal researchers as they set out to prove that the abandoned Webber House – the site of ghastly murders – is actually haunted, through a fascinating live on-air program featuring shocking EVP recordings and one-of-a-kind Call-In seance.

Thoughts of the BBC's Ghostwatch popped into my brain and my excitement grew. Needless to say, my Halloween-loving fires were stoked. I popped in the VHS and awaited my adventure in live TV gone wrong.

The Weber house: Twenty years earlier the scene of a double-murder, where a young son named Donald decapitated both of his parents with an axe. The legend states that young Donald was found sitting on the curb in front of his house, mumbling "demons made me do it." He was later executed for his crimes. And it is this very same house where local television station WNUF will be filming their Halloween special, featuring anchorman Frank Stewart, husband-and-wife paranormal investigators Louis and Claire Berger, and Father Joseph Matheson. Frank will lead his team into the Weber house for the first time since it was sealed following the murders in an effort to put to bed the rumors that the house is haunted — including the rumor concerning the headless specter that was often spotted in the house and on the grounds. Almost immediately upon entering they hear noises in far off rooms. Then some unseen force destroys their equipment. Are the legends true? Is the Weber house haunted? Or was young Donny framed and the real killer still stalks the grounds?

Frank et al. will find out...whether they want to or not.

Can I just say flat-out that I fucking loved the WNUF Halloween Special? As I hit play on my VCR (which I literally had to dig out of storage strictly for this occasion), I'll admit to expecting something other than what I got. What I found, however, was something I adored not five minutes in. 

I don't think I am ruining anything when I say this is not "recently discovered" video of "an actual television broadcast." Sure, it's a fun way to promote a film, I get that, but I'd like to think that the distributors know that we know better. And I bring this up not because I want to spoil the fun, but I kind of have to if I am going to successfully applaud co-writer/director Chris LaMartina for his flawless recreation of an extremely realistic 1980s television program. This may not sound like a big deal to some, but these some have certainly not seen the film for themselves. To a tee, LaMartina and his crew have created an uncanny homage to this gone-but-not-forgotten decade, not just of television, but of pop culture, fashion, and even the political landscape. 

The WNUF Halloween Special (which is the film's actual title) is a painstaking recreation of the following: a news broadcast, broken up by commercial breaks, which then leads into the actual "live" special, which is also broken up by commercial breaks. It looks as if someone literally hit "record" midway through a news broadcast and let the tape capture everything that followed. From the actors playing the news anchors to those taking part in the special, everyone (for the most part, anyway) comes across as perfectly genuine. The news anchors, after highlighting a typical schmaltzy human interest story about a local dentist instituting a "Halloween candy buy-back program" to lower the risk of cavities, even spit out insufferable cornball exchanges because that's just what they did in the '80s.

I like to think that LaMartina is a super-fan of the genre, because that would mean all the easter eggs I grinned at like a schmoe weren't coincidental. I think it's safe to assume that the "Weber murders" actually refer to the DeFeo murders, which took place in Amityville, New York, and inspired an infamous book and film series. And I think it's safe to assume that Louis and Claire Berger are based on Ed and Lorraine Warren (of recent dramatized fame in James Wan's The Conjuring) who investigated the Amityville house. But when it comes to Louis' on-screen look, am I going out on a limb when I see a purposeful recreation of legendary writer (and Halloween enthusiast) Ray Bradbury?

  

And what about the name of the priest, Father Matheson (as in Richard)? And am I really reaching when I recognize a reference to Shadowbrook Road, aka the location of the mansion in which Dracula and his monsters dwelled in The Monster Squad (which was also released in 1987)?

I'm not sure what makes me a bigger geek — either recognizing the references before me, or seeing connections that are strictly happy accidents. Either way, I don't really care, because this thing was a hell of a lot of fun.

Speaking of fun, that's actually something I should emphasize. Despite the film's marketing campaign, the WNUF Halloween Special is actually pretty hilarious. And it's supposed to be. If you've seen any of Christopher Guest's mockumentaries (Best in Show or Waiting for Guffman), then you're familiar with his dry style and his ensemble of oddball characters. LaMartina takes this style and weaves it through a fairly typical (at least at first) television special, including interviews with slack-jawed gawkers who shouldn't be anywhere near a microphone. Not every gag is knocked out of the park, but it's a safe bet that at least all of them will have you smiling.

My personal favorite aspect of the film is probably the bleakest, and might also very well be the most under-the-surface and easily missed — and this would be the world of 1987 versus the world of today. LaMartina isn't content with simply pointing his finger and laughing at bad '80s culture. He's quick to remind you that the world — and our country, specifically — has changed. This comes across in the commercial that depicts an airline offering wide and comfortable seats and gourmet meals, which ends with a stock shot of the New York skyline pre-9/11. Because this is a thing of the past. With soaring gas prices and a suffering airline industry, all the old airline perks have been tossed; seats were condensed, and forget gourmet meals — if you want a cold tuna sandwich and an apple, it's gonna cost you big time. And this goes with the oil company commercial, too, which pledges to do its best to contend with "unavoidable and accidental" spills. And don't even get me started on the commercial for the shooting range, stressing "fun for the whole family" and the importance of exercising your "second amendment rights." It's not my intention to bring down the mood, but it's clear the world was incredibly different 25 years ago, and while the film makes this obvious in the lighter and more comedic moments, it also wants to state the same thing in a more somber yet less confrontational way. It's in no way political, but present all the same. I think it's safe to say it's the last thing I expected in what is essentially a low budget horror film majorly assembled by stock footage.

As a film in and of itself, the WNUF Halloween Special is mostly successful. For the most part, the acting never feels forced or disingenuous. The humor works like gangbusters, but the horrific aspects are slightly less successful. Earlier I mentioned Ghostwatch, a legitimately frightening scripted narrative also masquerading as a live on-air special. The WNUF Halloween Special comes nowhere close to matching that film's level of intensity, but it doesn't want to, either. That's not its goal. What it wants to do is recall a time in our not-so-historic history where things seemed purer — when people bought heavy metal compilation CDs or took in-store lessons on how to use "floppy discs" — and this forgotten time also includes Halloween, as our society simply doesn't seem to care as much about October 31st as it once did. And this super legitimate approach to maintaining the "recorded off television during the actual 1987 events" vibe might turn off some viewers who want an uninterrupted experience; the commercial breaks, especially, may start to annoy some. But I purposely left this point last because what I really want to stress is this: whatever level of success the WNUF Halloween Special attains as a film, it is a flawless and impressive recreation of 90 television minutes from 1987. The VHS tape on which this special was recorded is appropriately degraded and fuzzy, as if it were a copy of a copy of a copy — something shared amongst the curious like so many bootleg films from another era without proper distribution. And from the corny news broadcast to the commercials to the live broadcast, it captures late-'80s television in its essence and during a time in which people were hopeful about the future, and who only had a haunted house in their neighborhood to worry about. In that regard, the WNUF Halloween Special is perfect.

WNUF Halloween Special is now available for purchase on extremely limited edition VHS. I cannot encourage you enough to grab yourself a copy.

CROSSROADS

Meeting with the Devil at the Crossroads

A “vision,” as told by Henry Goodman

Robert Johnson been playing down in Yazoo City and over at Beulah trying to get back up to Helena, ride left him out on a road next to the levee, walking up the highway, guitar in his hand propped up on his shoulder. October cool night, full moon filling up the dark sky, Robert Johnson thinking about Son House preaching to him, “Put that guitar down, boy, you drivin’ people nuts.” Robert Johnson needing as always a woman and some whiskey. Big trees all around, dark and lonesome road, a crazed, poisoned dog howling and moaning in a ditch alongside the road sending electrified chills up and down Robert Johnson’s spine, coming up on a crossroads just south of Rosedale. Robert Johnson, feeling bad and lonesome, knows people up the highway in Gunnison. Can get a drink of whiskey and more up there. Man sitting off to the side of the road on a log at the crossroads says, “You’re late, Robert Johnson.” Robert Johnson drops to his knees and says, “Maybe not.”

The man stands up, tall, barrel-chested, and black as the forever-closed eyes of Robert Johnson’s stillborn baby, and walks out to the middle of the crossroads where Robert Johnson kneels. He says, “Stand up, Robert Johnson. You want to throw that guitar over there in that ditch with that hairless dog and go on back up to Robinsonville and play the harp with Willie Brown and Son, because you just another guitar player like all the rest, or you want to play that guitar like nobody ever played it before? Make a sound nobody ever heard before? You want to be the King of the Delta Blues and have all the whiskey and women you want?”

“That’s a lot of whiskey and women, Devil-Man.”

“I know you, Robert Johnson,” says the man.

Robert Johnson, feels the moonlight bearing down on his head and the back of his neck as the moon seems to be growing bigger and bigger and brighter and brighter. He feels it like the heat of the noonday sun bearing down, and the howling and moaning of the dog in the ditch penetrates his soul, coming up through his feet and the tips of his fingers through his legs and arms, settling in that big empty place beneath his breastbone causing him to shake and shudder like a man with the palsy. Robert Johnson says, “That dog gone mad.”

The man laughs. “That hound belong to me. He ain’t mad, he’s got the Blues. I got his soul in my hand.”

The dog lets out a low, long soulful moan, a howling like never heard before, rhythmic, syncopated grunts, yelps, and barks, seizing Robert Johnson like a Grand Mal, and causing the strings on his guitar to vibrate, hum, and sing with a sound dark and blue, beautiful, soulful chords and notes possessing Robert Johnson, taking him over, spinning him around, losing him inside of his own self, wasting him, lifting him up into the sky. Robert Johnson looks over in the ditch and sees the eyes of the dog reflecting the bright moonlight or, more likely so it seems to Robert Johnson, glowing on their own, a deep violet penetrating glow, and Robert Johnson knows and feels that he is staring into the eyes of a Hellhound as his body shudders from head to toe.

The man says, “The dog ain’t for sale, Robert Johnson, but the sound can be yours. That’s the sound of the Delta Blues.”

“I got to have that sound, Devil-Man. That sound is mine. Where do I sign?”

The man says, “You ain’t got a pencil, Robert Johnson. Your word is good enough. All you got to do is keep walking north. But you better be prepared. There are consequences.”

“Prepared for what, Devil-man?”

“You know where you are, Robert Johnson? You are standing in the middle of the crossroads. At midnight, that full moon is right over your head. You take one more step, you’ll be in Rosedale. You take this road to the east, you’ll get back over to Highway 61 in Cleveland, or you can turn around and go back down to Beulah or just go to the west and sit up on the levee and look at the River. But if you take one more step in the direction you’re headed, you going to be in Rosedale at midnight under this full October moon, and you are going to have the Blues like never known to this world. My left hand will be forever wrapped around your soul, and your music will possess all who hear it. That’s what’s going to happen. That’s what you better be prepared for. Your soul will belong to me. This is not just any crossroads. I put this “X” here for a reason, and I been waiting on you.”

Robert Johnson rolls his head around, his eyes upwards in their sockets to stare at the blinding light of the moon which has now completely filled tie pitch-black Delta night, piercing his right eye like a bolt of lightning as the midnight hour hits. He looks the big man squarely in the eyes and says, “Step back, Devil-Man, I’m going to Rosedale. I am the Blues.”

The man moves to one side and says, “Go on, Robert Johnson. You the King of the Delta Blues. Go on home to Rosedale. And when you get on up in town, you get you a plate of hot tamales because you going to be needing something on your stomach where you’re headed.”

More. 

CREEP

So a few years back I was visiting some friends in a nearby city. The night went well; it was good to catch up with them again, as I hadn't seen them for a while. As the hours wore by, we began to walk towards one of their houses.

Which would be when we heard a blood-curdling scream coming from a side-street. Now, normally in a strange city, I wouldn't investigate this - but we were in a vaguely suburban area, it was relatively well lit, and there were a few of us. So, the girls in the group stayed on the main road, and the guys went to take a closer look.

The screaming did not stop. It sounded like it was coming from a nearby house, and it sounded like the screams of a woman. Maybe a child, perhaps. The lights in this house were on, and as we approached it I vaguely considered calling the police.

But the scream was not coming from the house; it was coming from the garden in front of it. In the gloom I could not see anything distinct, but I could now tell that the scream was coming from the branches of a tree. Something inside that tree was rustling violently, although thanks to the darkness I could not tell what. I exchanged glances with my friends, we paused, and suddenly the shaking - and screaming - stopped.

Silence for a moment. My friends and I exhaled.

And then something moved through the trees, rapidly, and before we could react it was gone. Glances exchanged again, but we were quickly satisfied that whatever it was had left. We walked back to the girls, and continued the evening as planned.

The next morning, I walked back past that same street.

On the road, there was a fresh chalk outline of a body.

Creep source.

Image source.

OLD MACDONALD HAD A FARM

Back in 1994 my brother Josh was working as an on-site technician for a large phone company. His role was twofold: Firstly to set up new lines, and secondly to find the problem with and fix broken landlines.

He was based in a small town, but most of his time was spent catering to farmers in the nearby areas. The problems were usually hard to find but easy to fix. Sometimes Josh had to walk half a mile up and down dusty roads to find where a particular cable was broken – and the repair didn’t even take ten minutes.

One of those calls, in August of 1994, led him to a rather large family-owned farm. A girl called Kasey had called in from a neighbors’ house, saying that the family’s phone was dead. Josh drove out the next day.

I don’t know how it’s done now, but back then Josh told me that phone cables are buried together with other cables, sometimes even together with piping, in hollow tubes of either hard plastic or cement. In areas where that wasn’t possible the cables were usually placed on high poles. But in rural areas where not all houses were connected to the electric grid, it was sometimes more cost effective to lead the wire, covered in a thick plastic coating, simply along a road.

When Josh was called out to a farm those ground-led cables were usually at fault. A machinery drove over the cable, an animal ripped it or maybe some bored kid cut through it. Either way, those jobs kept Josh employed and so he didn’t mind slowly driving along country roads, stopping every few meters to stop potential breaks.

The MacDonald farm was an easy case. Already while on the route to their house Josh spotted the ripped cable. It was a clean cut and the separated ends had been pulled apart for several meters. Josh figures it was likely from a plow or similar device, a simple accident, likely done by the farm owners themselves.

He had all the right tools and Josh fixed the cable break within half an hour. Then he drove to the farm to tell the family the good news and make sure that the problem was fixed.

He arrived at the MacDonald farm around 4pm. The heavy wooden gate was open and so Josh drove his van straight inside to drive up to the house.

When he turned into the gate Josh saw a cow lying on the driveway. He was used to that. He honked the horn to shoo the cow away. Usually that worked but this particular, all-brown cow refused to move.

Josh slowed down, drove closer and tried the horn again – longer, this time. Still the cow didn’t move.

There was no way around the cow, other than to drive into a ditch next to the driveway and Josh didn’t want to risk breaking the car. Finally, just a few steps away from the cow, he stopped and let the motor roar. When the animal still didn’t react Josh carefully and well-aware that a diseased cow might attack him without warning, got out of the car. He grabbed his toolbox from the back, then slowly walked around the car to pass the animal from behind.

Only then, two steps in front of his car, did he notice the puddle of dark brown, dried blood around the animal.

The animal was lying, with its head on the floor and towards the direction that Josh had come from. He saw a large, gaping cut through the brown throat and three long slits through the enlarged stomach.

Josh was on edge, but not seriously worried. Occasionally farmers have to put pregnant cows down when the calf refuses to be born – and to get rid of a cow’s body is not easy and it can take days for the specialist to arrive.

Josh figured the MacDonald family or the veterinarian had tried to save the calf by cutting open the mother’s body, like a cow’s C-section, just without the anesthesia that humans would receive. Likely they killed the mother first, by cutting her throat, then, when the animal sank on the floor, they cut the body open.

From the looks of it, Josh concluded, they hadn’t succeeded. The bulge in the cow’s body was clearly visible; the calf without a doubt still inside. The skin had been placed back into its original position, only the cuts and a small gap between skin flabs was still visible. Josh resisted the urge to look inside the animal’s body.

Holding his nose, Josh walked around the cow and further towards the farm. The driveway was long. To his right was a pasture with several cows, some were standing, but most were lying on the grass, probably chewing the cud. To Josh’s left was a thick corn field that made him feel slightly uneasy.

Josh reached the farmhouse about five minutes later. He called out and rang the doorbell but there was no response. He knocked against the wooden door and called out again. He thought they might be out, trying to organize the removal of the cow’s body in the driveway.

To make sure that they weren’t just not hearing him Josh turned to the right and circled the house. He glanced through the windows while he passed them, first the kitchen, then a living room window, but everything inside seemed calm and dark.

At this point, before he saw it, Josh told me, he began to feel uneasy. There was nothing unusual, except the dead, pregnant cow, but still he felt a tingling in his legs and back, like a warning of bad news.

Then he turned the corner.

Josh only saw the scene for a few seconds, but he says he still remembers it today in vivid detail; like a photograph burned into his brain.

A large dog lay on the back porch. His body was slit open lengthwise and the organs and intestine were pulled out.

Right next to the dog’s body laid the bodies of an older couple. The man’s body was naked, his head separated from the body and placed between his leg. Two large cuts went through his body, one from the throat to the groin and one from left to right through the abdomen. His intestines were pulled out and placed to the left of the body, near the dog.

The woman’s body was dressed, but the clothes were cut open. A deep cut went through her throat and a large sideways cut through her abdomen. She too was gutted. But what Josh remembers the most, the thing he still has nightmares about, are the bloody spots where her breasts should have been. There were two straight cuts, as if someone had carefully sliced the breasts off her body.

Both, the man and the woman’s eyes and mouth were sewn shut with a thick, dark thread. The man’s lips were split in several places, as if he had forcefully opened his mouth, but the thread had been stronger than his lips.

Josh threw his toolbox on the floor and ran.

He turned back around the corner, ran back onto the driveway towards the dead cow.

While running he saw that some of the cows on the pasture were looking at him, following his movement. But most of them were still on the floor. Most of them still hadn’t moved. Around one of them he noticed a large, dark puddle on the grass.

Josh ran so fast that he twice nearly fell over stones or potholes. He stumbled towards the cow, curved to the left around the body and ran around the back of his car to get to the driver’s seat.

Just before he reached the driver’s door Josh stopped dead in his tracks. The cow was still there. But the flap of skin was pushed further open. The bulge was gone. Inside the cow’s abdomen, where Josh had thought was a calf, was now just a large, gaping hole.

Panicked Josh ripped the car door open. He screamed when he felt the thick, brown-red liquid on the door handle. Still he pulled the door open, looked inside the car and jumped on the driver’s seat. He felt a large, squishy ball exploding when his feet pressed on the accelerator.

He looked down to his feet to see what it was – and just in that moment noticed movement in the corn field to his left. He slammed the key in the ignition, turned it, heard the motor howl, threw the car in reverse and hammered his foot through the squishy mass back on the accelerator.

The movement in the corn field came closer. The car moved backwards and swerved; Josh was barely able to avoid driving into the ditch at the side of the driveway. He slowed down to regain control over the car, saw the corn being pushed aside, then pushed again hard on the accelerator.

The car sped backwards, through the wooden gates and back on the country road. Back in the driveway, just when he was out of the driveway and backing onto the road Josh saw a figure emerging out of the cornfield, a few steps away from the cow. He swears the figure looked like a teenage girl with dark hair, covered from head to toes in dried blood.

Then Josh sped off.

Josh walked into the police station with the cow’s heart still stuck around his right foot.

The newspaper articles said that the MacDonalds didn’t have any children. 

Story source.