ROCK

UNSUNG HORRORS: THE NIGHT LISTENER

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. 

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

Dir. Patrick Stettner
2006
Miramax / IFC Films
United States

“You're the kind of guy who needs proof. The hell of it is, we're only as loved as we think we are.”

We so often see “based on a true story” splashed across marketing efforts for genre films being released even today that it’s almost become a cliché. Not helping is that films using this claim have become increasingly absurd to the point that when we see that “true story” disclaimer, we’ve begun to accept it as the complete opposite. Even The Conjuring – a film I admittedly loved – exploited that pledge of authenticity. After all, since Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson were playing real people who really existed and who really investigate(d) paranormal phenomenon, I suppose they were right to cover every inch of their trailers and posters with the words “true story.” But when does that become a fair marketing ploy? What makes “it” a true story? That it actually happened, or that someone merely claimed it did?

What if it’s both?

That’s The Night Listener.

Robin Williams plays Gabriel Noone, a celebrated author and host of a late-night radio show called Noone at Night. Things aren’t going so well for him, as he’s currently separated from his longtime partner Jess (the always wonderful Bobby Canavale) and this separation is severely affecting his ability to continue on with his show. Instead, he dives headfirst into his work, trying to find something to distract him. Ashe (Joe Morton), a literary publisher and friend of Gabriel's, gives him a raw, unpublished manuscript; written by a teenage boy named Pete (Rory Culkin), it is a recounting of the disgusting abuse he suffered at the hands of his biological parents – his being forced to “star” in dozens of videos in which he was raped by friends of his parents. Riddled with disease following his abuse, Pete only has a couple months left to live, and in the meantime has been adopted by his social worker, Donna Logand (Toni Collete). Gabriel and Pete share an unlikely but sweet bond. Gabriel offers fatherly advice when he can, and Pete describes his day-to-day trials and tribulations of his hospital life. The two trade letters and phone calls,  (ahem...Playboys), and talk smack on each other – just how friends would. Gabriel even receives a photo of Pete in a red sweater and simple bluejeans, finally giving a face to the name.

After Gabriel corresponds regularly with Pete and Donna on the phone for over a year – a year! – Jess hears Donna and Pete talk over speakerphone and plants a seed in Gabriel’s head that sets The Night Listener’s events in motion: Jess is pretty confident that Pete and Donna are the same person – that Donna is fucking with Gabriel’s mind, going at great lengths to convince him that Pete is real. Gabriel becomes obsessed with discovering the truth: if Pete Logand actually exists, or if Gabriel is one of the many victims of a psychologically unstable charlatan desperate for attention and trying to escape a history of abuse that perhaps did happen after all.

There are dozens of people who know them.

Who?

Doctors. There's a nurse who comes and stays at the house.

You've only been told that.

What about the photo?

It could be anybody.

There's ways to prove this...

Echoing what I said in my Unsung Horrors write-up for Insomnia, I love it when Robin Williams goes serious. With that, this, and One Hour Photo, Williams has consistently proven he can do dark drama just as easily as comedy (and far better). I wish I knew what it was about him as a performer that allows him to carefully shed the manic screwball persona he's had since the days of "Mork & Mindy" so I could more ably analyze what it is about him I love, but I've got nothing. The guy just is – he's just as at-home bouncing off the walls and doing his army of weird (kinda stupid) voices as he is using just his eyes and his sad smile to convey a hundred different emotions at once. He's so good, and perhaps underrated, though thankfully filmmakers keep giving him the chance to defy convention and go for the throat. It's resulted in one much deserved Oscar for the actor already (for Good Will Hunting).

It's difficult to applaud young Rory for his role as Pete, as he hardly ever appears on screen. Because of the whole "is he/isn't he real?" approach, it was wise to limit his physical appearance, except in scenes in which he is corresponding with Gabriel over the phone, and Gabriel is using his imagination to fill in the gaps and paint this picture of Pete he's attempting to assemble using random bits of information gleamed from their conversations. Most of his "presence" is his voice on the phone, and the filmmakers do a great job of switching back and forth between Culkin and Toni Collete, making us unsure as to who is who, and when.

The Night Listener, however, is Toni Collete's film. She really is a powerhouse here – one minute she has our every sympathy, and the next we can't stand seeing how far she's willing to perpetuate her lie; at times we're nearly demanding the truth because we just can't take it anymore. "You've got a fucking lie for everything," Gabriel even tells Donna in an ugly confrontation. If it is a very unglamorous role. Her clothes are too big and her hair is greasy. Her "blind look," consisting of thick sunglasses, foggy blue contact lenses, and unkempt appearance create the look of a shut-in – one who never ventures out except to visit her normal stops and collect the sympathies of the folks in town who know her. She spends most of her role asking for and inviting this sympathy, but when she wants to be scary, she can be scary. I'll point to the scene towards the end in which Donna teases Gabriel with the "ending" his story requires and lures him to a motel – this after after she's emptied her Wisconsin house and moved, unable to be found. As he cowers in a dark corner and watches her leave, she slowly turns to look – look – at him out of the corner of her eye, as planes at the nearby airport scream in the background.

Chills every time.

Besides for “based on a true story,” another oft-overused and sometimes completely inappropriate phrase that inundates genre film marketing, once a critic utters the magic words, are “a Hitchcockian thriller.” If said phrase were reserved for actual students of Hitchcock, like Brian De Palma, or Richard Franklin, it could be forgiven. I think critics sometime forget that Hitchcock wasn’t just a storyteller, but a pretty renowned and stylistic director, too, which means it’s nonsense to describe any film that has a mystery as “Hitchcockian.” Cases involving mistaken identity, femme fatales, or quirky and potentially dangerous leads are hallmarks of Hitchcock filmography, let’s not shit ourselves, but that still doesn’t give you the right to label any old thing with the master’s name. Just because you can locate the most tenuous connection between a modern film’s gimmick and tie it back to that same trope once utilized by Hitchcock himself – sorry – that doesn’t suddenly mean the new Liam Neeson film in which he tears across Berlin kicking ass and trying to remember his name is a Hitchcockian thriller.

Even when filmmakers subject audiences to a story not as compelling as it should be, I am always struck much more by said filmmakers’ abilities to successfully channel the look and feel of a Hitchcock film. De Palma, no matter how outlandish his films have become, has this down in spades. He likely created the ultimate homage to Hitchcock with his 1992 film Raising Cain, turning John Lithgow into a psycho long before "Dexter" ever did. The Night Listener director Patrick Stettner seems a student of Hitchcock, but perhaps in less an obvious way. I love that a film with so much character interaction is still experienced solely through Gabriel's eyes and brought to life through his imagination. When Gabriel pictures Pete during a phone call, the boy is wearing the red sweater and bluejeans he's also wearing in his photo. And the first time Gabriel speaks to Donna, she doesn't have a face until Pete jokes that he's "got a thing for redheads" – and that's when we first see Donna, red hair and all. It's subtle, but effective if you realize the trick.

Every inch of The Night Listener is drenched in cold and pale tones. Effortlessly, it ups the bleak quotient and decreases any feelings of hope or joy. Pretty appropriate for a film in which not just Gabriel, and not just Gabriel's friends, but even a small Wisconsin town all fall victim to the lies of a deeply troubled woman. And every single one of them were in a small way guilty of helping to spread the lies and bring them legitimacy. It's interesting in that it forces us to take a step back and consider just how many things we hear on a day-to-day basis are actually falsities – either big or small – and how often we repeat them without actually knowing the truth.

The Night Listener is about escapism, and what we're willing to do and say – to ourselves and to each other – to perpetuate a lie and try to make things less unbearable. Jess confronts Gabriel in the film and demands he tell him where the couple were when Jess told Gabriel he was HIV-positive. Gabriel responds, "in the park in front of the guys playing drums." The real place was a crummy diner somewhere in the city. But Gabriel's version was more romantic, and it reads better on paper. A white lie, perhaps, but a lie all the same. Perhaps more telling, there's a scene on the plane while Gabriel is flying out to give Pete and Donna a surprise visit – fed up with the excuses being lobbed his way about why his previous invitation to visit them is being constantly rain-checked. Gabriel's seat mate on the plane asks him the purpose of his visit. Gabriel responds he's flying out to visit family: his son. Because he needs this. Now that Jess needs Gabriel a little less, Gabriel needs this idea of a new family more. It's no longer fact-checking the events of a pretty horrifying book – it's yearning for family, and not wanting to believe that's the last thing waiting for him at the airline's departure gate.

We tell lies because they're preferable to the truth, but sometimes we tell lies because the truth is just too painful to endure. We all wish we could live in the fantasy world we create for ourselves perhaps for only minute at a time  – where the person for whom we pine wants us just as much, or the struggles we daily face are no longer existent. While nearly none of us are willing to hold onto lies and bring them to artificial life like Donna Logand, the only thing stopping us is a lack of conviction and the imagination to do so. And that's kind of scary.

THE LOST TAPE

MACABRE ART: BENJAMIN KÖNIG

© Benjamin König

YIKES

REVIEW: ANTISOCIAL

I didn't need a movie to tell me that people obsessed with social networking websites are actually slobbering brainless psychopaths, but, thanks anyway. (Just kidding!)

(Not really.)

A spiritual sequel (of sorts) to films like The Signal, Pontypool, and even George Romero's The Crazies, Antisocial is the next step in realizing a wide-scale outbreak of mass hysteria and madness, this time seemingly perpetuated by the world's dependence on social networking sites. 

It's New Year's Eve, and college student Sam (Michelle Mylett) joins a group of friends to do what college kids do best: drink too much and act like buffoons. But random news reports of murder-suicides occurring on college campuses across the country threaten to put a damper on the New Year...that is until it begins occurring at their own. One by one their friends begin to exhibit the signs of being infected: bleeding from the nose and ears, incoherence, and finally, bouts of brutal violence thrust upon the self or others. 

With the windows and doors boarded, and doing their best to remain calm, the friends do whatever they must to survive.

We've seen Antisocial so many times before I have to wonder why filmmaker Cody Calahan bothered. Is it to let us know we've become so overdependent on Youtube and Twitter and the slowly dying Facebook that we're turning into mindless monsters? If so, we know. Still, Calahan has delivered a competent film that manages to pack a few layers of freshness into an overused dish. The aforementioned Romero himself tried this a few years back with Diary of the Dead, only this time using social networking as a positive - a means to get the real truth surrounding the zombie outbreak as opposed to relying on the highly censored and manipulated media - but Antisocial remains the superior film. 

While Antisocial is obviously a low budget affair, thankfully that's only prevalent when it comes to the nature of the story and location, not the look or feel. And our young cast are all up to the task, which is another miraculous feat, because so many in films of this ilk are not. The pretty Michelle Mylett makes for a sympathetic lead, though she shares her most of her screen time with the ensemble cast.

Great musical score, too.

Antisocial asks the question: If we were slowly going insane, would we turn to social networking sites to share this insanity? Would we broadcast our newfound madness to our hundreds of fake friends and strange followers just as we do when uploading our dinners to Instagram or offering status updates saying "had the worst day and i DON'T want to talk about it!!!"?

Probably.

And that's when Antisocial is at its most horrifying. Heavy-handed and at times completely unsubtle, it still manages to be energetic and effective. Though it offers up many things you've already seen, it gives you a few you haven't. (Don't miss the bit with the Christmas lights.)

CLOSE CALL

LIGHTNING

We had just moved into a little ranch house in the suburbs. Storybook neighborhood – quiet, friendly neighbors, picket fences, the whole nine yards. Suffice it to say that this was supposed to be a new start for me, a recently single dad, and my three-year-old son. A time to move on from the previous year’s drama and stress.

I viewed the thunderstorm as a metaphor for this fresh start: one last show of theatrics before the dirt and grime of the past would be washed away. My son loved it anyway, even with the power out. It was the first big storm he’d ever seen. Flashes of lightning flooded the bare rooms of our house, imparting unpacked boxes with long creeping shadows, and he jumped and squealed as the thunder boomed. It was well past his bedtime before he’d finally settled down enough to go to sleep.

The next morning I found him awake in bed and smiling. “I watched the lightning at my window!” he proudly announced.

A few mornings later, he told me the same thing. “You’re silly,” I said. “It didn’t storm last night, you were only dreaming!”

“Oh…” He seemed somewhat disheartened. I ruffled his hair and told him not to worry, there should be another storm soon.

Then it became a pattern. He would tell me how he watched the lightning outside his window at least twice a week, despite there being no storms. Recurring dreams of that first memorable thunderstorm, I figured.

It’s easy to hate myself in hindsight. Everybody assures me there’s nothing I could have done, no way I could have known. But I’m supposed to be the guardian of my child, and these are useless words of comfort. I constantly relive that morning: making my coffee, pouring milk over my cereal, and picking up the newspaper to read about the pedophile local authorities had just arrested. It was front-page stuff. Apparently this guy would select a young target (usually a boy), stake out their house for a while, and take flash photos of them through their window while they slept. Sometimes he did more. My stomach sank as the connection was made.

At the time, it was merely something from a child’s imagination. In retrospect, it is the scariest thing I’ve ever heard. About a week before the predator was caught, my son came up to me in his pajamas. “Guess what?” he asked.

“What?”

“No more lightning at my window!”

I played along. “Oh, that’s nice; it finally died down huh?”

“No! Now it’s in my closet!”

I’ve yet to see the photos police have collected.

Story source.

NEW YEAR'S...EVIL

HEY, KNOW WHAT'S A REAL MOVIE?

CHRISTMAS PRICE

O HOLY

Grzegorz Kmin

THE MAGIC SLICER

 

He carved the ham himself!

(Sorry...)

ONE, PLEASE!

JOLLY

CREEPY CHRISTMAS

Here's the thing: Modern-day Christmas is pretty weird already. It's a conglomeration of legends involving everything from a supernatural home invader with flying pack animals to a talking snowman. So when it comes time to make holiday decorations, the line between festive and nightmarish is razor thin. That's how we wound up with ... 

Text and images from Cracked.

See the rest.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

 

In my youth, I would stare over and over at the horrifying pictures in two books that my parents happened to own: The first was A Pictorial History of Horror Movies, which featured ghastly photos of Vincent Price and Lon Chaney Jr./Sr. in their lurid make-ups, and the other, surprisingly, was an illustrated edition of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, one of the most famous ghost stories in literary history. (I wouldn't find this out until much later, but a ghost-centric Christmas story wasn't an anomaly during the era in which it was written: telling ghost stories at Christmastime was actually part of the yuletide tradition, and it's one I wish would make a reemergence. It'd be way better then debating politics with your drunken uncle.) If you're somehow unfamiliar with the story, an old curmudgeon named Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by four ghosts one Christmas Eve night to tell him he's been an asshole for his entire adult life and he needs to knock it off before he dies and people impugn his name for as long as anyone remembers him. Because of the ghostly element, the tale definitely lends itself to some frightful imagery – particularly when it comes to the final ghost of the night – but you might still find yourself taken aback when seeing the visual representations of this story brought to life by artist Roberto Innocenti. Even in the more "normal" acts of the story, illustrations of everyday people – the children especially – look just a little bit off.

Below are just a few scans of the eerie creations found below in the 1990 edition of the book, published by Stewart, Tabori, & Chang, Ing./Creative Editions Inc.

SOLSTICE

© Benjamin König

OH, HELLO

MUSIC FOR FILM: RAVENOUS

Except to a cineaste, the musical score might be one of the most important aspects of film that is consistently taken for granted. Tasked with both complementing the action on-screen as well as manipulating your emotions, film scoring is essential to creating an effective tone and generating the appropriate response from its audience, whether that response is fear, melancholy, excitement, or jubilation. Regardless of the actual film’s quality – whether great or ghastly – the score is the only component of the film that will live on in perpetuity in a separate form. Some of these scores stand head and shoulders above others and deserve to be recognized. This is one of them. 

Ravenous is an interesting first choice for what I hope to be a reoccurring column, because its score flies in the face of perhaps the oldest and still ongoing of debates: Does a musical score exist only to serve the images flashing on the screen, or should this same musical score also serve its own function and be just as effective, entertaining, and well-constructed, while playing independently of that image? Meaning, the scores for films like There Will Be Blood and Sinister are incredible in the way that they make the on-screen images ten times more effective…but can you listen to them independent of their respective films and still find them to be just as effective? And should it even matter if they simply don’t work on their own, given they were never supposed to be anything other than a companion to their film?

Ravenous seems to be gunning for the latter – that this film score exists only to serve this story of soldiers falling victim to a maniacal cannibal in the dead of winter during the mid-1800s. The Mexican-American War is in full swing, and soldiers are stationed at Fort Spencer to be on hand should their services be required. They spend their days getting high, writing music, or screaming in rivers, and seem to be risking death via total boredom until a stranger named Colqhoun arrives near dead from exposure. Once cared for, warmed, and given proper nourishment (heh), he rattles off his terrifying tale of being trapped in the woods and being forced to rely on cannibalism to survive. Everyone hearing the tale seems to instantly believe the stranger except Boyd (Guy Pearce), who finds the stranger to be more than a little suspicious.

Then a bunch of dudes get eaten!

(For a more in-depth breakdown/examination of Ravenous, read its Unsung Horrors entry. Sadly, its director, Antonia Bird, left us this year.)

The score by composer Michael Nyman and singer/songwriter/record producer Damon Albarn is wonderfully eclectic and quirky, as well as traditional and fucking eerie. Nyman has been composing for over forty years, though his name might not sound familiar outside of cult-like film-score devotees. He rarely scores anything outright “Hollywood” and opts to work in more classical environments. So it’s only natural he would bring with him less traditional ideas – and it’s those unusual ideas that begin the official soundtrack release.

(Note that I’ll only be highlighting the tracks I consider to stand out from the rest.)

“Hail Columbia,” the first track, is based on a pre-existing arrangement, but one that Nyman re-orchestrated specifically for Foster's Social Orchestra. This is important to mention because this orchestra is comprised of non-musicians, meaning the music as played sounds mostly sure-footed, but shaky and awkward. It certainly doesn’t sound polished. This odd approach was also used for “Welcome to Fort Spencer,” probably the least confident and most shakily recorded track in the batch. It literally sounds as if a group of musicians two weeks into their instruments are assembling and playing in a group for the first time. You might wonder why one would bother with such an approach – why purposely include awkward or even terrible sounding music? Because there’s no better way than painting the military as clumsy and primitive; and the inhabitants of Fort Spencer fare even worse.  This track, filled with horn squeaks and screechy strings, make these men seem like miscreants, degenerates, and completely unrefined. Rather than having the men themselves do and act in a manner that screams “idiot,” instead let the music do that for them. “Noises Off” is the final track to take this approach – all the usual out-of-tune notes are in attendance, but also seems to have been recorded at far slower than was intended, making it seem even less confident.

If “Hail Columbia” was the first of a three-part series featuring unsure players, “Stranger in the Window” would be the first of several tracks to drop the altogether dopy and amusing sound and instead go for one ominous and foreboding. The music up to this point has been either goofy or non-threatening. “Stranger in the Window” plays as Colqhoun makes his first appearance – right off you should know there’s something not right about him.

“Boyd’s Journey” and “Colqhoun’s Story” have been credited to Albarn without question. Here, and in some of his other contributions, the musician incorporates found audio, recordings from scratched vinyl records, and vintage field recordings into his original compositions. The latter track repeats one measure of what seems to be an old jaunty tune that likely sounded much more jolly in its original incarnation. Here, though, it provides the syncopation on which Albarn builds his ideas – none of them jolly. I love music that starts small with a simple pattern and builds, and continues to build, adding more instrumentation and ideas until it seems unrecognizable from when it first begin. “Colqhoun’s Story” delivers this in spades.

“Wendigo Myth” is one lone voice performing a Native American vocalization. I personally know nothing about this track or its lineage, but I’d love to know how it was captured. Was a vocalist brought in to record in a studio? Was it recorded in the field? The sound quality isn’t quite 100%, as it’s slightly echoey and tinny. I prefer to think this was recorded in the wild, but maybe because that’s the more interesting and romantic option. [Update: IMDB confirms: Milton 'Quiltman' Sahme's chant was recorded by Damon Albarn in Quiltman's living room on the reservation. Albarn was referred to Quiltman by Joseph Runningfox.]

Following “Trek to the Cave,” “He was Licking Me” will easily get under your skin. A more straightforward composition (by which composer I’m not sure), it’s likely the most brooding track. It’s something Wojciech Kilar would have composed for his take on Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  “The Cave” seems to be full on Albarn, utilizing repeating musical stings, unsure drum beats, a Glockenspiel (of all things), and something very non-instrumental also sounding off in the background. Soon these sounds fade into an elongated string punctuated every so often by a single piano key. It transforms very quickly from something unusual (while the soldiers are still outside the cave) to something incredibly suspenseful (after they enter), and into a full-on sprint (once Colqhoun enacts his savage plan). Running over seven minutes, “The Cave” transforms and mutates more than any other track, especially at 4:15 when those drums mercilessly kick in. It then becomes a whole other beast entirely. “The Cave,” to me, sums up Ravenous’ entire soundtrack: It’s a bevy of different ideas that one would think could never work, but somehow all comes together and provides something special and unforgettable.

“Run” is the only track which can boast that it sees to fruition the film’s sudden tonal shift from utter terror to (temporary) hillbilly humor. It’s at this moment when Colqhoun flicks his fingers at one of the surviving soldiers (not many are alive at this point) and tells him, simply, to run. Had this scene been scored by something terrifying filled with screeching strings, Colqhoun’s cat-and-mouse games would have seemed disturbing and psychotic. But instead, mixed with hillbilly hooting and fiddle, it actually becomes a little hilarious, and we realize that, for Colqhoun, this is nothing but a good time.

I love a good track that gets the adrenaline pumping, and “Let’s Go Kill That Bastard” kills it. The pounding drums and fiddle remain consistent, but the other instruments come and go, so the song is constantly changing its sound. If there were any track I would listen to on repeat, it’s this one (and I have).

“The Pit” at times seems like it should belong in a Disney film, not in an extremely bloody gore-fest black comedy about cannibals. Harps, swelling strings, and female ululations will make you wonder if Boyd, following his crushing plummet from the cliff, is actually dreaming. He’s not, though. Instead, he’s eating Neil McDonough.

If Ravenous were to have a “theme,” I suppose it would be “Manifest Destiny.” This track manages to encapsulate all the music we’ve heard – and well as the different interpretive approaches – while creating a new musical composition. Like in the earlier track I praised, the track starts off simply and then builds and builds.

“Saveoursoulissa” is the longest track – as well as the eeriest –in this whole thing: repeating discordant notes on a scratchy record, pounding drums, warbling electronic noises, moaning vocalizations. And that’s just the first two minutes. This track goes on for a staggering 8:43, and never sounds like anything other than a nightmare. If you’re a horror writer, play this track in the background during your next writing session. Your imagination will end up places you never thought you’d go.

“End Titles” is a reprise rendition of “Boyd’s Journey,” which is fitting, being that since Boyd is currently pinned to Colqhoun in a bear trap and is slowly bleeding to death, he’s about to begin a new journey: either to death, or to his rebirth, as he ponders Colqhoun’s final words: “If you die first, I’m definitely going to eat you. But the question is…if I die first, are you going to eat me?”

So…having said all of that, what’s the verdict for Ravenous? Is it something only to be appreciated alongside the film, or can it be enjoyed solo? The answer is: both. At least it is for me. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen Ravenous countless times and count it among one of my favorites, so some images that certain portions of score are married to are fresh in my head. Yeah, I might skip the Foster's Social Orchestra tracks, but the rest of this stuff is bloody good.

FIVE MONTHS OF PEACE

"The winters can be fantastically cruel. And the basic idea is to cope with the very costly damage and depreciation which can occur. And this consists mainly of running the boiler, heating different parts of the hotel on a daily, rotating basis, repair damage as it occurs, and doing repairs so that the elements can't get a foothold. Physically, it's not a very demanding job. The only thing that can get a bit trying up here during the winter is, uh, a tremendous sense of isolation...for some people, solitude and isolation can, of itself become a problem."

If we don't, remember me.

M SHOW FAN CLUB

When I was 9 years old I had a favorite TV series. It had human actors and actors in animal suits and funny and educational clips in between. I don’t want to name it because it was a really good show and this story is not at all a fault of the show. I will just call it “The M Show.”

The M Show was running for years and I had been watching it for as long as I can remember. I always sat down, straight after school with my older sister Scarlett and my best friend Brandi, who lived next door.

It was our ritual, every day the three of us sat together – with sweets, if our moms allowed it, or else with apples or grapes – and in the breaks of the show we talked and gossiped about all those important issues in our lives.

Then, I remember it was a warm summer Friday, Scarlett found a prize competition in one of her girl magazines. It asked questions about the show and first prize was a travel with your parents to Disney World. But even better, everybody who sent in the correct answers would become a member of The M Show Club, a fan club for the show. The same day, after watching the M Show, the three of us huddled together on the couch to answer the quiz.

The questions were very hard; they asked details about old episodes of the show. Without Scarlett, Brandi and I would never have managed to answer all the questions.

Scarlett begged our mom for stamps and envelopes and we filled the three envelopes each with a paper with our names and contact details and the answers to the questions. Scarlett even told us to vary our answers slightly so that we wouldn’t be called out for cheating.

The letters were sent off and every day we all rushed to the mailbox to get our The M Show Club badges. When the first snow began to fall we stopped checking the mailbox. Brandi was still passionate about the show and watched it every day, but Scarlett lost interest. When Scarlett stopped watching I too began to skip the show. Brandi still came over, but she was the only one watching. I sat next to her while working my way through Scarlett’s old girl magazines.

It was early spring. I remember there were tulips in our garden and my mom reprimanded me for plucking two to decorate the kitchen table. But right after her lecture she handed me a small square letter with my name printed on it. The back said “Welcome to The M Show Fan Club.”

There was not much in the envelope – only a short leaflet that welcomed me to the club and a small ID card with my name on it, a big logo of the show and in black letters “The M Show Fan Club,” and in the line below, in big black letters, the word “Member.”

Brandi got her envelope the same day. She was glowing with happiness. Scarlett was jealous at first, but two days later she got her envelope too.

From then on, every Friday, each of us received a leaflet about the show with photos and anecdotes and background information on the characters. Occasionally the leaflets also called on the club members to promote the show and to watch out for “The M Show Tour.”

Either way, it worked: We loved the show afterwards. I think from that day on, after I proudly stuffed the membership card in my bag, I didn’t miss a single episode.

Then, in mid-June, we all got two leaflets. The first was the usual one with facts and photos. But the second was an ad:

“The tour bus is in town – this is your chance to become an ‘Elite Member’!”

The bus was coming the next Sunday to our town. We were all allowed to go. We were beyond excited.

The leaflet didn’t have much information and that was before we had a computer at home. The tour bus would arrive at 1pm and the main characters of the show would be there to welcome everybody and play games with us. Those that participated in at least four games would be upgraded to “Elite Member”-status and receive a new, golden membership card.

Those nine days of waiting for “The M Show Tour” were some of the longest in my life. Brandi and Scarlett and I planned every day how we would take photos with each of the characters and then play games with them. I secretly dreamed of beating Scarlett at the “knowledge game,” where our knowledge about the show would be tested.

On Saturday Scarlett went to a birthday-sleepover at one of her friends’ houses. The parents were supposed to bring Scarlett back by 12 on Sunday.

Around 12:30 Brandi came running to our house. She knocked on the back door, like she always did, and I let her in. Brandi was beyond excited; her mom had volunteered to accompany the three of us and she wanted to go early so that we wouldn’t miss anything.

My mom called the house of Scarlett’s friend, but they didn’t pick up their phone. She said that Scarlett would be home soon – early enough to go on time.

At 12:45 Brandi’s mother came over to ask for us. She said that we would have to leave so that the queues wouldn’t be too long. My mom said we should wait for Scarlett, but Brandi threw a tantrum; she was scared that she wouldn’t be able to hug all the characters if we came late.

Brandi’s mom decided to drive. I wanted to come along – but my mother said that she would drive Scarlett and me. I felt like I was being punished for Scarlett’s being late. I begged. I cried.

Nothing helped; Brandi went alone.

Her friends’ parents dropped Scarlett off at 13:40. I was mad at her, but my mom said if I made a scene we wouldn’t go at all. I relented.

We arrived around twenty minutes later at the big parking lot where the bus was scheduled to stop. We saw the crowds from the distance, parked the car and walked over.

I asked my mom where the characters of the show were; she said that they were just behind the crowd.

They all held the “The M Show Tour” flyers, but it looked as if the crowd were mostly parents. They stood in a half-circle towards the edge of the parking lot. Some of them looked concerned, but most of them were laughing and talking.

My mom spotted Brandi’s mother at the other end of the half-circle; we walked over to her. Brandi’s mother was one of the worried ones.

She told us that the bus had been there, together with all the animal figures from “The M Show.” They had a large bus with the “The M Show” logo and they handed out sweets.

One of the animal figures had explained to the parents that they had built a set outside of town where we all could make our own short film with the characters of the show. They said they would drive everybody there.

They took the children first. They were all so excited that few parents objected. Still, three or four parents came along and that calmed the rest. The next bus was supposed to arrive within a few minutes, to bring everyone to the set.

When I heard that I was excited like never before.

I ran to the street to look around so I could be the first on the bus. Scarlett followed me.

I didn’t see the worried expression when Brandi’s mother talked to mine.

I didn’t understand why the police came not even an hour later.

In Monday’s episode of “The M Show” one of the characters came on stage and told us to call our parents to watch the show. Our mom was already sitting with Scarlett and me.

The character said that “The M Show” didn’t have a fan club.

That week Brandi’s parents cried a lot. I was still sure that Brandi was okay, I thought she just had so much fun that she didn’t want to come back.

She must have had a lot of fun; she never came back.

Brandi’s mother cried even more, that Friday, when the small parcel arrived.

There was a new “The M Show Fan Club” membership card for Brandi. It was golden and said “Elite Member” in big, bold letters.

The parcel also contained a video. It was only a minute long; a minute of Brandi at the set of “The M Show.” She was wearing the same dress as when she came over to our house that Sunday morning.

On the video she Brandi smiling; an actor in a big animal suit stood next to her, silently.

“Hi mom, I really like it here,” said Brandi. “I really wish you could be here.” Then she laughed.

“I’m sorry the others were late. I’m sure they would have loved it too.”

Story source unknown.

UNKNOWN ENTITY

I received the following information and image from Ken Pfeifer. It was forwarded to Ken by one of his readers...then sent to me so it could be published:

Nov. 2012 - I was working the night shift on an x-ray crew at a material gas plant. This was around 3 am and there was only four of us in the plant at the time. I took this picture after seeing something swaying side to side out of the corner of my eye. I was in the basket of a man lift coming down when I took the picture. By the time I unhooked my harness to get out of the basket the creature was gone. The police were called and walked premises. The officer told me there were 26 UFO sighting calls throughout that night. If you zoom in you can see the silhouettes of eyes and elongated mouth. I have no doubt of what I believed I seen that night. The other person that saw it with me took off running for the truck.

Story and images source.

TEOS RECOMMENDS: THE RESURRECTIONIST

 

Lovers of the icky and depraved might want to take note of The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Spencer Black, an astounding (and first) novel by New Jersey native E.B. Hudspeth. A story about an anatomist named Spencer Black who, after growing frustrated with his inability to educate the modern world about natural deformities, plummets down a rabbit hole of animal experimentation - later becoming human experimentation - in an effort to create his own brand of mutation.

Presented as a fact-based account or dossier, Hudspeth fills in the reader on Black's history, his rise to fame and infamy, his increasing madness, and his mysterious disappearance. Accompanying this narrative is a book within the book, The Codex Extinct Animalia, Dr. Black's personally penned and self-described "Gray's Anatomy" for animal mutations. Page after page features beautiful illustrations of mythical creatures of which you're already like aware: the chimera, the minotaur, and even the mermaid. Each creature has pages and pages dedicated to their anatomical breakdown, and their every layer is sketched with artistic and scientific precision: the skeletal system, the muscular system, the epidermis, and the "final" presentation.

The first part of The Resurrectionist is less than a hundred pages, but an awful lot of gruesome details and events are packed into them. It ably paints a portrait of a man suffering from madness and delusions of grandeur over a specific time period, spurred by the untimely deaths of his children and the scientific community's constant dismissal of his theories and ideas. The text is comprised of historical accounts, snippets of correspondence, "reviews" of his work by his colleagues, and cleverly vintage advertisements in support of Dr. Black's later colorful career.

I am drawn to creations such as these that skew as closely to reality as possible while still being a work of complete fiction. Likely the same reason why I'm attracted to films of the found-footage/fake documentary format, or those likely bogus ghost-hunting shows that every network seems to have these days, I want to be fooled. Occasionally I want to realize what I've been reading or watching has made me take a step back to determine if it's possibly real. Even within the text of The Resurrectionist, Dr. Black is painted as a man clearly losing his grip with reality. By the end of Part One, you're ready to see the man committed and removed from society entirely. But then when you begin Part Two - The Codex Extinct Animalia - and you see him approaching these mythical beasts with a scientific and analytical mind, and you see all the fancy Latin terminology he's using to label each and every single appendage, you can't help but think, "Shit, maybe this guy wasn't so craze-balls."

That's when you know you've got a good book open in front of you.

To reiterate in complete amazement, this is E.B. Hudspeth's first book. I can't wait for the next.

Get.

ENCOUNTER

FRIDAY THE 13TH

Worst game ever.