WHEN YOU'RE AFRAID

 

RETURN OF THE WITCH-FINDERS

Police Warn Children Are At Risk Over Return of the Witch-Finders

Children in Britain are increasingly at risk of being branded as witches and tortured, police are claiming, following the high-profile case of Kristy Bamu – tortured and murdered by his brother for being a kindoki witch.

The threat comes from the rise of the West African belief, which states children can be possessed by evil spirits, according to a specialist unit set up to investigate witchcraft.

It is thought to be widespread among some immigrant communities, fuelled by a growing number of small fundamentalist Christian churches.

The belief is not confined to the poor or ill-educated and many cases of children being abused may never be uncovered, the officers fear.

Det Supt Terry Sharpe, leader of specialist witchcraft unit Project Violet, said: "We know this is an under-reported crime and a hidden crime."

The warning came after a London couple were convicted yesterday of torturing a 15-year-old boy to death because they were convinced he was possessed by evil spirits.

Murderer Eric Bikubi – who with his partner, Magelai Bamu, subjected her younger brother, Kristy, to four days of torment before drowning him – was obsessed with kindoki.

Kristy, 15, was attacked with a hammer, knife, and pliers before being drowned in a bath after he begged to be allowed to die.

Kristy and his four other siblings were staying with the couple at their east London flat over Christmas 2010. But when Kristy wet himself, Bikubi – described as "feral and out of control" – took it as a sign he was possessed by evil spirits.

The boy was beaten for four days before he was killed.

The couple even forced his brothers and sisters to join in the "staggering act of depravity and cruelty."

At one point, Bamu, 29, twisted her brother’s ears with a pair of pliers before ordering her 21-year-old sister, Kelly, to do the same. Kristy suffered 130 injuries; a metal screw, which he was forced to eat, was found in his bowel.

The boy’s parents, Pierre and Jacqueline, who live in Paris, yesterday said they took "no comfort" from the guilty verdicts.

But a family statement read: "To know that Magalie did nothing to save him makes the pain that much worse. We are still unaware of the full extent of the brutality – we  cannot bring ourselves to hear it."

In a phone call on Christmas Day, Bamu told her father: "Dad, you’ve got to pick up the children – they’re witches, and you’re a witch, too."

Kristy’s younger brother, then 13, told the Old Bailey he and his older brother Yves, 22, were forced to join Bikubi as he broke tiles over Kristy’s head.

His teeth were also smashed and his finger broken with a claw hammer.

It was one of 83 witchcraft cases Project Violet has investigated in London in the past ten years

Expert Dr Richard Hoskins said kindoki was widespread in the country where Bamu and Bikubi were born. He added: "Kindoki remains a force that is feared by lots of people over here, even here in London."

Story and image source.

GOLIATH

The goliath tigerfish is one of the most fearsome freshwater fish in the world and said to be a much bigger and deadlier version of the piranha.

The giant fish has 32 teeth that are of similar size to those of a great white shark and has been known to attack humans and even crocodiles.

Read more.

RUDE AWAKENING

“Sometimes hatred can even give unbelievable power to people.”

DEATH

CLOSE CALL

On the night of March 22, 1970, Kathleen Johns was driving from San Bernardino to Petaluma to visit her mother. She was seven months pregnant and had her 10-month-old daughter beside her. While heading west on Highway 132 near Modesto, a car behind her began honking its horn and flashing its headlights. She pulled off the road and stopped. The man in the car parked behind her, approached her car, stated that he observed that her right rear wheel was wobbling, and offered to tighten the lug nuts. After finishing his work, the man drove off; yet when Johns pulled forward to re-enter the highway the wheel almost immediately came off the car. The man returned, offering to drive her to the nearest gas station for help. She and her daughter climbed into his car. During the ride the car passed several service stations but the man did not stop. For about 90 minutes he drove back and forth around the backroads near Tracy. When Johns asked why he was not stopping, he would change the subject. When the driver finally stopped at an intersection, Johns jumped out with her daughter and hid in a field. The driver searched for her using his flashlight telling her that he would not hurt her, before eventually giving up. Unable to find her, he got back into the car and drove off. Johns hitched a ride to the police station in Patterson.

When Johns gave her statement to the sergeant on duty, she noticed the police composite sketch of Paul Stine's killer and recognized him as the man who abducted her and her child. Fearing he might come back and kill them all, the sergeant had Johns wait, in the dark, at the nearby Mil's Restaurant. When her car was found, it had been gutted and torched.

Most accounts claim he threatened to kill her and her daughter while driving them around, but at least one police report disputes that. Johns' account to Paul Avery of the Chronicle indicates her abductor left his car and searched for her in the dark with a flashlight; however, in one report she made to the police, she stated he did not leave the vehicle

 

Wiki.

A MADHOUSE?

"What do you know about caring? Have you ever seen the inside of one of those places? The laughing, and the tears, and those cruel eyes studying you? My mother...there?"

If we don't, remember me.

LEVITY

OLD MAN

I live alone with my dad, and he works long hours of the day, so I stay home by myself a lot. We’ve lived in this house for 12 years and nothing paranormal has occurred, at least that I know of, but recently some weird things have been happening to me while he’s gone or asleep. This morning around 4am, I decided to go to sleep and turned off my laptop.

My bed is next to a window facing a wall, but there’s currently nothing behind it because we’re rebuilding the headboard/desk that was back there. When I turned off my laptop, I thought I saw the frame of what appeared to be an elderly man standing behind me in the reflection from my lamp. I turned around but didn’t see anything, and chocked it up to sleep deprivation. I went to sleep, but had a strange dream where I killed a huge group of kids with what looked like two knives carved out of wood.

Today, I received a text from my dad a few minutes after I woke up saying that it was nice to see me up early for a change, and that he hoped I had a good day. I asked him what he meant by this; I had gotten up late in the afternoon. He said I had walked downstairs and had breakfast with him, and we had a conversation about not knowing when you’re going to die or where you’re going to go afterwards. This was kind’ve weird to me, both because I’ve read about doppelgangers on this site and because I’ve never walked in my sleep and have a good memory, but I ignored the feeling and told him to have a good day too.

A couple hours later, I was upstairs in the bathroom putting on some makeup when I saw something out’ve the corner of my eye in the mirror. My room was across the hallway, and when I looked in the doorway I saw what looked like a charred black arm. It was twisted and just sort’ve hung there. I screamed and ran downstairs, and immediately began talking to some friends about it online. After a few minutes of convincing, they got me to go back into the room to see if someone had broken in.

Once in the room, I searched it all over and found nothing. I sat in my bed and started messing with my phone, when I felt something sit down next to me. There was a big depression in the bed, and I felt something touch my leg. I felt nauseous suddenly and it felt hard to breathe, and once I was able to move again I bolted out’ve there. Not so sure I’m going to sleep in my room tonight, but I’m really curious about the dream and the possible(?) fire and if they relate at all to the old man.

Story source.

CAT'S EYES

I had a rather strange experience when I was around 15 years old.

My room was in the basement of my parents' house. Picture a typical half finished basement: concrete floors, a few rooms, small windows scattered around, old furnace, you know the drill.

We lived in a heavily wooded area out in the country; many of our childhood days were spent playing in the woods.

My room was being finished and it only had a partial wall at the time. While lying in my bed, I could see across part of the basement to the further wall. Against the wall was a washer and dryer, and above that was a small egress window.

I remember waking from my sleep one night with a strange feeling, almost like something was in the room with me. I slowly opened my eyes, straining to adjust to the darkness. My eyes were affixed on the window across the basement. There was something floating in the air. Something strange and yellow.

A mixture of confusion and fear gripped me. What was across the basement? As my eyes adjusted, I realized it was another pair of eyes looking back at me. Our gaze was locked for what felt like an eternity. No movement, nothing.

After a while, there was some movement in the window; the eyes bobbed from side to side. I was truly terrified at this point. As I slunk deeper into my covers, I started to see the outline of a creature. It turns out it was a black cat, staring at me while I slept. It ran off and I didn't see it again for many years. It wasn't our cat - we didn't even own a cat. I never saw it before or after...well, so I thought at the time...

Fast forward to my mid-twenties. I was dating a girl who loved cats. It just so happened that she had a large black cat (which reminded me of the incident from my childhood). She is a nurse and often works overnights. I would go over her place in the evening and go to bed. She would come home very late and snuggle in with me.

One night, I was lying in her bed, half asleep. I rolled to my side and had a strange feeling...something was watching me. I slowly opened my eyes to see a pair of yellow orbs staring back at me. Initially, I thought it was her cat (as she often let them outside). I began to feel some relief. That's when I heard her cat next to me in bed, hissing at the cat outside, hair on edge.

Being more freaked out than ever, I quickly turned to face the other direction. I slowly rolled back over and the cat was no longer outside the window.

I now live in a house with small windows in the basement. I'm waiting for the day where I fall asleep on the couch downstairs, closed eyes facing towards the window...

Story source.

MACABRE ART: 1000 SHADOWS

Brazilian street artist Herbert Baglione has somehow managed to make an abandoned psychiatric hospital in Parma, Italy even creepier with his paintings of shadows.

The way Baglione’s shadows creep out from disused wheelchairs and lurk ominously on the walls makes it easy to imagine that they belonged to the tortured souls that used to inhabit the place.

The work is part of Baglione’s "1000 Shadows" project, where he paints silhouettes on floors and walls.

Herbert Baglione.

READ: THE LAST POLICEMAN

If you were a homicide detective who got the call on a dead body, which, when investigated, had all the makings of a suicide and very little of a murder, would you investigate it, anyway? Would you ignore all the obvious makings of someone having taken their life and investigate it as if the deceased were murdered?

And, if the world was doomed to end courtesy of Maia, the asteroid, which was scheduled to hit the planet in a matter of months, would you still investigate? 

That's the big question at work in Ben H. Winter's The Last Policeman, the first in a trilogy involving Detective Henry Palace, a detective with the Concorde, NH, police department.

Falling within the genres of soft science fiction and mystery, though described as an "existential detective novel" by its author, The Last Policeman is an entertaining and enigmatic police procedural, and while these are always fun, it has the added effect of playing out against the apocalypse, which forces several of our characters to confront the big question: why bother? If the world is doomed to end in six months, why bother going to work, eating healthy, walking the dog, solving that murder? What's it all going to mean in the long-run?

The character of Detective Henry Palace easily fits the mold of what has become the typical investigator. He's hard-boiled, haunted by his past, cynical (though not to the point of indifference), and mostly, just trying to do his job that he's being paid to do: a man has apparently taken his life (not an uncommon occurrence in the months leading up to complete devastation), and Detective Palace dutifully investigates the scene. The "victim," Peter Zell, is found in the bathroom stall of a local McDonald's, his belt tied around his neck, strangled to death. Everyone around Palace seems ready to write it off as a suicide and move onto the next thing, but the scene bothers Palace too much - to the extent that he's willing to become a pain in the ass to his superiors and dismissive of the rules and conduct of a New Hampshire police officer. As is demanded by the mystery/noir genre, nothing is what it seems, and Detective Palace peels back layer by layer of what everyone has labeled a standard suicide, revealing something far more surprising beneath. 

The Last Policeman is thrilling, funny (in that sardonic kind of way), introspective, certainly existential, and haunting. The reader will root for Detective Palace from the start, because even though his task to investigate a suicide as a murder seems like a fool's errand in the face of Maia the asteroid and humanity's growing apathy, it's more comforting to believe that there is someone out there who cares enough to embark on such a quest on which most people have already given up. (Plus he's a kind of a generous tipper, throwing down thousands of dollars for his $15 breakfast.)

The Last Policeman is followed by Countdown City, and the final part, World of Touble, is a brand new release from the author; all three are available from Quirk Books (publisher of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.)

NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL FAST FOOD!

 

Amiright???

(rimshot)

JERSEY DEVIL

In Freehold, New Jersey, in 2007, a woman supposedly saw a huge creature with bat-like wings near her home. In August of the same year, a young man driving home near the border of Mount Laurel and Moorestown, New Jersey reported a similar sighting. He claimed that he spotted a "a creature resembling a gargoyle with enormous bat-like wings" perched in some trees near the road.

On January 23, 2008 the Jersey Devil was spotted again this time in Litchfield, Pennsylvania by a local resident that claims to have seen the creature come barreling out of the roof of his barn.

On January 19th, 2009, nearly 100 years after the frequent Jersey Devil sightings, a local New Jersey citizen from Swedesboro claimed to have seen the Jersey Devil. He was driving towards Woodstown at night and saw a large creature fly in front of his car. At first he thought it was a deer, so he slammed on the brakes, then he realized that the creature was flying and was much larger than a deer. The shape of the creature was unclear. The creature swiftly flew across the street and disappeared into the darkness of the woods.

In September 2009, a young man driving home on Interstate 80 near Parsippany, NJ, claims spotting what he saw as "a black long-necked creature with a long tail" run across the road, and disappear into the darkness on the other side of the road.

Several witnesses were camping outside of town and late at night one of them was attempting to put out the bonfire when he heard the most awful and horrifying scream. It resembled that of an injured dog crossed with a scream of a woman. The witness dropped the flashlight and was joined by another witness.

Suddenly out of the woods a hideous and gruesome creature appeared. It did not look human, somewhat satyr-like in appearance and walked on two legs. It had a long tail like a dragon and wings like those unicorns in fantasy books. The beast took several steps towards the witnesses. One of them picked up and yelled at it and then shone his flashlight at it. The creature then turned towards the bushes and ran away from the area.

 

Location/Date: Near Trenton, New Jersey.
March 4, 2002, near midnight.

Story and image source.

YIKES

WATCH: THE CONSPIRACY

There are certain factions of the American populace who are a little...off. If I were being as respectful as possible, I would say that those people who have broken off from society and chosen to live in survivalist camps, hording non-perishable food, water, guns, etc., convinced that society is soon going to collapse and leave people scrounging for survival...well, let's just say I don't have too much in common with them. Though there are times when I have grown so exasperated and disillusioned by my own government, the idea behind which is to provide law, order, aid, support, and "freedom," but which instead is fine with being as useless as a three-ounce paperweight, that I've sworn off my social security number and credit cards and threatened to pull an Into the Wild and go off the grid entirely. Granted, though the chances of me ever following through with this threat are pretty slim, the fact that my sometimes anger and disenfranchisement has lead me to even consider it perhaps shows that I do share something in common with those aforementioned groups.

I bring this up because, at the heart of these kinds of thoughts, sometimes lies any variety of conspiracies. I can look at the government and think the only thing driving them is greed and their blind stunted political ideology. But others can look at the government and think all kinds of shadowy conspiracies are afoot. We are a country that has long been obsessed with conspiracies. From the JFK assassination to Area 51, we as a people like to, or need to, believe that we're never being told the whole story. We don't want to believe that it was simply one jack-ass who managed to kill the most powerful man in the world; we need to believe it was the mafia or Castro or the succeeding Vice President Lyndon Johnson, or all of them, who were responsible. But, sometimes, it really is just one jack-ass.

The Conspiracy, a mockumentary approach to unveil the world's most powerful secret society, presupposes that World War I, the Vietnam War, and 9/11, among other deadly events significant to American history and culture, were caused not because of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, a naval attack in the Gulf of Tonkin, and religious extremists, but were all actually perpetrated by something called the Tarsus Club: an Illuminati-esque group of the most powerful individuals across the globe.

The documentary within The Conspiracy begins with focusing solely on a man named Terrance (an awesome Alan  C. Peterson), whom our documentary filmmakers, Aaron (Aaron Poole) and Jim (James Gilbert), are studying. Terrance has some wild claims about the Tarsus Club, but his public tirades delivered via loudspeaker are mostly ignored. Aaron seems rather taken with Terrance while Jim seems only amused...that is until the filmmakers, one day, have trouble getting in touch with their subject. Calls go unanswered, messages unreturned, front doors unopened. They eventually gain access to Terrance's apartment and find that it has been ransacked and vandalized; his blanket of newspaper clippings linking together five random news stories in order to construct one single conspiracy, has been torn off the wall.

Aaron feels compelled to take the evidence left behind from the ransacking and continue the investigation where Terrance had left off, and gradually, as he unearths more and more about the Tarsus Club, they welcome into their lives more and more layers of danger, beginning with a black SUV that seems to follow them everywhere they go, and ending with an upfront and terrifying confrontation with the very club they are investigating.  

The Conspiracy, an amalgam of JFK, the non-sci-fi aspects of "The X-Files," Conspiracy Theory, Interview with the Assassin, and many more like it, is simply put, fantastic. Written/directed by Christopher MacBride, it is a hyper-realistic, well-written and well-acted piece that presents you with some pretty fantastic claims, but never in a way where they feel fantastic. The cast is sympathetic and entirely convincing (and special mention must be made of character actor Julian Richings, perhaps most famous for his reoccurring role of Death on "Supernatural," whose entire performance is limited to two scenes, a blurred-out face and artificially deepened voice, and who is still, somehow, entirely recognizable).

(Image from "Supernatural.")

Your personal mindset will determine how much belief you'll need to suspend (while some of you may even believe everything you're watching is 100% real). The Conspiracy is a film that both deserves and demands your attention; the more details you soak up and infect your brain, the more rewarding the outcome will be. (For instance, if you consider the ending "ambiguous," then you simply hadn't been paying attention.) This was a film I'd been waiting to see for two years or more once news broke of its existence; all these years later, it was more than worth the wait.

* For the record, it was through absolute random chance that I've chosen to highlight a film about conspiracies related to the American government on this, the anniversary of the country's founding. But, I don't feel bad about it, either.

THE FAIR-HAIRED CHILD

BLACKBIRD OF CHERNOBYL

Beginning in early April of 1986, the people in and around the little known Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant began to experience a series of strange events revolving around sightings of a mysterious creature described as a large, dark, and headless man with gigantic wings and piercing red eyes. People affected by this phenomena experienced horrific nightmares, threatening phone calls and first hand encounters with the winged beast which became known as the Black Bird of Chernobyl.

Reports of these strange happening continued to increase until the morning of April 26, 1986, when at 1:23 am, reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant suffered a catastrophic steam explosion that resulted in a fire which caused a series of additional explosions followed by a nuclear meltdown. The power plant, located near Pripyat, Ukraine, Soviet Union, spewed a plume of radioactive fallout which drifted over parts of the Western Soviet Union, Eastern and Western Europe, Scandinavia, the UK, Ireland and eastern North America. Large areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia were badly contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people. The Chernobyl Disaster, as the incident was dubbed, is considered the worst accident ever in the history of nuclear power.

Following the meltdown, and subsequent explosions and fires, Soviet helicopters were dispatched to the scene, equipped with special fire fighting gear, these helicopters circled the plant dropping clay, sand, lead and other extinguishing chemicals on to the burning facility. Most of the fire was put out by 5 am with the fire burning with in reactor 4 continuing to blaze for several hours after. The firefighters who responded were unaware of the nature of the fire, assuming that it was simply an electrical fire, and received masses overdoses of radiation leading to many of their deaths, including Lieutenant Vladimir Pravik, who died on May 9, 1986.

The workers who survived the initial blast and fire, but would later die of radiation poisoning, claimed to have witnessed what has been described as a large black, bird like creature, with a 20 foot wingspan, gliding through the swirling plumes of irradiated smoke pouring from the reactor. No further sightings of the Black Bird of Chernobyl were reported after the Chernobyl Disaster, leaving researchers to speculate just what haunted the workers of the plant during the days leading up to the disaster.

The most commonly accepted theory suggests that the Black Bird of Chernobyl may have been the same creature spotted in Point Pleasant, West Virginia leading up to the collapse of the Silver Bridge on December 15, 1968. Investigators have suggested that the appearance of this creature is an omen of disasters to come in the area in which it shows itself. The physical description of both the Black Bird of Chernobyl and the Mothman, the creature sighted in West Virginia, are very similar, and the reports of nightmares and threatening phone calls leading up to these disasters are shared in both cases.

A second, less accepted theory, suggests that the Black Bird of Chernobyl was nothing more than the misidentification of the black stork, an endangered species endemic to southern Eurasia. The black stork stands nearly 3 feet tall and has a wing span of nearly 6 feet. This theory however fails to take into account the menacing phone calls and the the disturbing nightmares. Also the physical description given by the majority of eyewitnesses who actually saw the Black Bird of Chernobyl does not in anyway match the physical appearance of the Black Stork.

Both the Black Bird of Chernobyl and the Mothman have not been sighted since there respective disasters, leaving us with many unanswered questions. All we can do is wait for the beast to show itself again and give us a chance to figure out just what it may be, unfortunately it would appear that for this creature to show up again we will have to anticipate some form of disaster in the area it has selected to appear.

Story source.

THE OCEAN FLOOR

 Found 85 miles offshore.
3200 feet under water.

SHITTY FLICKS: THE WICKER MAN (2006)

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. 

 

Nicolas Cage's eyes bug wildly out of his head (his trademark expression) as he spins around, wielding his gun. He is surrounded by a group of angry women, intent on putting bees on his face, breaking his legs, and burning him alive inside the grundle of a large man made of wicker.

You bitches!" he screams as they fall on him, applying bees. "Oh my God, they're in my eye!"

The utter terror he is facing isn't the end. It's only the beginning. They lay his legs out over a large tree-trunk and smash his legs.

"Awww, my legs! My legs!" he screams, letting the audience know his legs are being broken. I want to look away but I can't. I am enthralled by this scene. "Killing me won't bring back your GOD DAMNED HONEY!" he suggests, trying to escape their wrath.

Ms. Summersisle, the queen bee of this pack, sports William Wallace-inspired make up as she replies, "but I know it will!"

Oh. Well then.

It's worth it for tasty honey.

The Wicker Man, just one of the many remakes of famous horror movies bombarding audiences, will go down in history as one of the most baffling films in ages. The film produces more questions than stomach pains caused by Hot Pockets.

What evil forces reside on Summersisle?

How many men have fallen victim to the womens' deceit?

Why does Nicolas Cage over-act in one scene, and then barely act in another?

What's with bee-beard girl?

Is this film supposed to be hilarious?

The questions are numerous. The laughs: even more so. The scares: missing in action.

Neil Labute once saw a horror movie on television: The Addams Family.

He was terrified.

He longed to make a film that scary.

He wrote and directed The Wicker Man, utilizing the same scare tactics. He crafted a film so horrifying, he himself has trouble watching it without squirming. I also find his film terrifying. But for different reasons.

The film begins...and Cage is delved into a question wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma. He is also allergic to bees.

Uh-oh.

He goes to Bee Island anyway, at the behest of his runaway ex-fiancé, Willow, to help her find their missing daughter, Rowan. Upon arriving at the island, Cage meets a friendly group of oddball natives who stare at him as he talks, clearly perturbed by his presence. The group holds a wriggling sack that drips a rich amount of blood.

“What’s in the bag? A shark?” Cage asks stupidly, he, himself, unsure if he was even joking or not. The natives ignore him and question how he has made it to their beloved island of bad dialogue and bees. The sack wriggles once again and as Cage almost looks interested it, they dare him to look inside. He approaches the sack, and when it wriggles and shrieks, he decides that he doesn’t have to investigate the sack at all, even though he’s a cop. And then the natives laugh at him.

Method acting led to Nicolas Cage trying to teach children
astronomy. Right around after he taught them that space
was, "huge, bigger than Detroit," he was dismissed by
his chaperon.

Cage goes inside a cabin thing and asks for a drink from the bar maid. He receives said drink, but then instantly offends everyone by killing a bee.

“I’m allergic,” he reminds us, and then turns, holds his badge and tells everyone uninterestingly of the missing girl. The patrons, castrated men, stare at him with a look of bemusement. Cage gives up on trying to make an impact and begins his investigation.

He stops by a classroom to inquire about the missing girl. The teacher reacts to him with suspicion and annoyance. He demands to know her name, and when she responds with “Sister Rose,” he turns to the class and says “Rose, of course! Another plant!” as if the students would be amused and sympathetic to his plight.

All the children claim to not know the missing girl, as Cage walks around holding a picture. When Sister Rose claims she was not one of her students, Cage responds by checking the Teacher Book, which reveals the name of the missing girl.

Upon finding her name, he turns to the class of young girls and snarls, "You...little...liars." Then he turns to Sister Rose and states, "and you...you're the biggest liar of them all."

He begins to search the classroom, and upon doing so, releases a crow that was trapped by the students in an open-top desk. “What?” Cage barely manages as it flaps by his face, in the same manner you might say if I tapped you on the shoulder in a super market and told you, "elephant pie is made of chicken beats and my love for dead men."

Cage continues his investigation, which leads him down by the dock. He sits down and suffers through TWO nightmare sequences in a row, which he punctuates with an over-the-top and completely inappropriate “GOD DAMN IT."

"I'm thinking PANCAKES this morning, my lovelies!"

Cage investigates and comes across an old burned doll that was hastily discarded next to some decrepit foundation. He turns to Willow, holds the doll to her and beckons to know: "HOW'D IT GET BURNED?? HOW'D IT GET BURNED HOW'D IT GET BURNED??"

Later, Cage runs across Sister Rose, riding her stupid bike down the path. She taunts him in her stupid bitchy banner, leading Cage to whip out his gun and demand that she “step away from the bike.” Upon relinquishing the bike, Cage takes it from her, and icily retorts: “Take your STUPID mask.”

Cage flips out and begins to storm each cabin, ripping masks off of all young girls, desperately trying to find his missing daughter.

The investigation leads to the inevitable conclusion that foul play was involved in the disappearance of the girl, and this leads to the best the second best scene in recent cinema history: Cage stares at a very mannish woman named Sister Beech, who relishes in his inability to solve the case of the missing child, and then: WHIPASH! Cage lets loose an admirable left jab to her square face, knocking her down for the count.

But the woman beating isn’t over yet.

Leelee Sobieski, also known as Helen Hunt’s better-chested clone, pops up to feign the idea she is capable of doing anything except feeding my desire for pale boobs, before receiving her own helping of Nicolas Cage: kicks, served cold. Cage’s ratatat karate chopping sends her flying back into the wall, shattering all manner of framed photos before depositing her dumpy ass on the hard ground.

As a joke, Nicolas Cage had slipped some ecstasy
into Ellen Burstyn's tea earlier that morning, but by mid-afternoon,
as the crew stood around, burning daylight, no one was laughing.

Cage shakes it off, picks up the beefy woman’s bear costume that she was to wear in the Summersisle Bullshit Parade and exits.

When Cage meets up with Willow during the parade, he amusingly lifts the mouth flap of the bear head and asks, “Why didn’t you wait for me?”

“I had to come,” she blandly retorts, shutting him up pretty easily.

The parade ends at what looks to be a pyre where - AAAAHHHHH!! - his daughter is lashed to a tree and is mere minutes from GETTING BURNED??? GETTING BURNED GETTING BURNED????

Cage, still in full bear regalia, storms this pyre, and in long shot form, applies a glorious right hook to her face, sending her sprawling down the hill.

Cage attempts to escape with Rowan, but alas, it’s no use. Once the paraders locate their location in the woods, Rowan runs to her mother, Willow, who it seems was in on it the whole time. Oh no, Willow. How could you?

Now, this is when things get interesting: depending on which version you are watching, you have the option to being treated to two magnificent endings:

ENDING # 1:

In the PG-13 cut, we see Cage laid out over a large leg-breaking beam, but we then fade to a montage of parade marchers making their way to the titular man of wicker as you hear audio of bones snapping and Cage screaming, "My legs! MY LEGS!"

ENDING # 2:

In the “unrated” cut, we see Cage again laid out over the large leg-breaking beam, only this time we experience the actual leg breaking, which is so ineptly done that it creates its own amusement. Once the leg smashing is complete, a modified and ancient-looking bird cage is placed over Cage’s face. Once it’s secured, a hatch on the top is opened and BEES are poured liberally in, as Cage bellows: “No, not the bees! Oh my God, they’re in my EYE!”

"Oh, come now; we can surely fit one more.
Fish Man came all the way from New Zealand for this."

The bird cage is removed and we move onward to the finale: Cage is shoved in a wicker man and burned alive as he screams.

I eject the disc and I smile, knowing that no matter how bad life gets, that no matter how much bullshit will rear its head and get me down, I can take solace in the fact that Nicolas Cage will always be just an unsnapping DVD case away, on an island full of women, dressed as a bear, and punching like a Greek god.

Some films test the boundaries of human emotion. Some films haunt our inner psyche. Some films aren't about bees. The Wicker Man is none of these. The Wicker Man is something truly unique. The Wicker Man has to be seen to be believed.

HEY, KNOW WHAT'S A REAL MOVIE?

LEVITY

That's quite an exit.

MACABRE ART: COME IN

Come In

czaknoris

TEOS RECOMMENDS: THE IMPOSTER

 

A good documentary can competently present relevant information in a non-biased manner. A great documentary can do all that, but also challenge your preconceived notions on the topic being discussed. A fantastic documentary can present the info, challenge you, but also thrill you and affect you on an emotional level, presenting you with a story so unbelievable that you would bet your life that it was all completely made up on the spot.

The Imposter, which revisits the surreal 1994 case of a missing Austin child who suddenly shows back up three years later and is embraced by the family, but who is also a completely different person, is a fantastic documentary. To use a completely cliched expression, The Imposter is a roller-coaster ride of emotions. When first presented with the family of missing thirteen-year-old Nicholas Barclay, how do you not immediately sympathize for each member as they tearfully recall the events in which the boy went missing? And how, when you're first introduced to "the imposter" Frédéric Bourdin,  who talks about his background of physical abuse and his feelings of helplessness and his longing to reboot his life and start over and who longs for a real shot at happiness, are you not supposed to feel tempted to forgive him before you've heard about how he carried out his plan, or what effect it had on the Barclay family...or what kind of person he really is?

The Imposter is an immensely frustrating experience, and it has nothing to do with how it was executed, but rather everything to do with the complexity of the human brain, and how so easily it can be overridden by our rampant-running emotions. How can you be a mother or a sister or a brother to someone for thirteen years, mourn their loss and probable death when they go missing, celebrate at the news that "he" was found in fucking Spain of all places, be reunited with him, and believe that he is your missing loved one? How do you not know? How do you listen to claims that he was kidnapped by the military and experimented upon (a side-effect being the changing color of his eyes) and buy that? How do you not realize that the boy who claims to be sixteen years old is actually approaching his mid-twenties? It is so very easy for you and me to judge this family and assume they must have been completely empty-minded to have fallen for it...but then again, I have never been in their shoes. I've never had a loved one go missing, and even if I did, I can't even imagine how tempted I would be to believe they've returned to me all those years later, even if they do seem to be an entirely different person. Feelings of mourning and regret and guilt are normal following what is essentially death, but are they powerful enough to cloud everything in your mind?

 

And your imposter, Frédéric Bourdin, adds to the frustration. His first few interview segments are full-on confessional moments delivered right to the camera. And you silently judge him at the same time you delude yourself into thinking that he seems like such a haunted and genuine "character" that you stupidly believe you'll eventually be served a typical Hollywood happy ending, where the family realizes he is a fake but welcomes him, anyway. But this version of Bourdin soon fades and is replaced by the proud sociopathic habitual liar who cannot help himself. Watch him grin as he recounts what he feels are the more especially clever moments of his ruse. Watch him have the audacity to judge the family that took him in, asking the audience the question, "How could they not know?"

And try to stomach the claim he makes against the family, attempting to explain why they embraced him as easily as they did.

The Imposter ends with questions both answered and unanswered. It ends with revelations, but also ambiguity. It ends with emotions running untempered and a disgusting amount of pride. But one thing is for sure: it hasn't, nor will it ever end, for the Barclay family, and for Frédéric Bourdin. One will continue to mourn, and the other will continue to boast. The Imposter is beyond thrilling and beyond upsetting, and it's entirely, 100% true.

UGLY DOLL

"His real name is Charles Lee Ray and he's been sent
down from Heaven by Daddy to play with me."

JOHN DIES AT THE END

BARE NECESSITIES

RAT KING

Rat kings are phenomena said to arise when a number of rats become intertwined at their tails, which become stuck together with blood, dirt, ice, excrement or simply knotted. The animals reputedly grow together while joined at the tails. The numbers of rats that are joined together can vary, but naturally rat kings formed from a larger number of rats are rarer. The phenomenon is particularly associated with Germany, where the majority of instances have been reported. Historically, there are various superstitions surrounding rat kings, and they were often seen as a bad omen, particularly associated with plagues.

Story and image source.

RUDE AWAKENING

BURNIN' FOR YOU

Her favorite song!

Ugh. Sorry.

LOST FOREVER

It was true that the ghastly sounds I had heard through the fog had greatly upset me but far worse was what emanated from and surrounded these things and arose to unsteady me, an atmosphere, a force - I do not exactly know what to call it - of evil and uncleanness, of terror and suffering, of malevolence and bitter anger.

HUH...

NURSE, HAND ME THE- WHOOPS!

MA'NENE

A village in Indonesia has a bizarre ritual that involves giving decomposed corpses a new look.

Family members of the deceased exhume their ancestors’ bodies and change their clothes as a way of remembering them. They then walk the dead around the village, almost like zombies.

The ritual, called Ma’nene, happens every three years to honour the villagers’ love for the deceased. It is carried out in the Toraja district of Indonesia’s South Sulawesi Province.

Locals believe dead family members are still with them, even if they died hundreds of years ago, a family spokesman said.

The ritual is held once every few years when family members gather to clean the graves and change the clothes of their deceased relatives to honor their spirits.

Story and image source.

REVIEW: ADJUST YOUR TRACKING

My first ever VHS was the Blockbuster exclusive release of John Carpenter's Halloween. I was in sixth grade, and I had ridden my bike the equivalent of 25 city blocks to my nearest Blockbuster to buy it. It was a defining moment. On that day, I became a collector. And that mindset continued for years.

One of my biggest regrets in life was giving into the changing tide and, box by box, relinquishing my VHS collection, which I had spent over ten years collecting. I had well over a thousand before the VHS era came to a sad, unceremonious end. I held out for as long as I could. I held out until they stopped putting new releases on VHS and switched to DVD (and if I remember correctly, I believe the very unmemorable Mike Figgis film Cold Creek Manor was the very last new release to utilize the VHS format). 

In a way, what could I do? I was a movie collector, and I had a choice: refuse to buy that new release I so desired because it was on a format against which I was silently rebelling, or give in. So I gave in, and since I was going to give in, I might as well begin to upgrade my current collection, tape by tape. 

No one would argue that VHS offers better picture or sound quality over DVD, nor would they argue they enjoy a complete lack of special features over the sometimes-up-to-three extra discs of content. But as far as nostalgia goes? Oh yeah, VHS wins. Hands down. When the last DVD is pressed, the format will never be mentioned again. No one will ever look fondly back on it, because when that happens, everyone will have fully moved onto either blu-ray or digital downloads, which, as far as quality goes, is closer to DVD than DVD was to VHS.

And that's what Adjust Your Tracking, a documentary that presents a collection of sit-down interviews with low-budget film directors and independent video label owners discussing their love of the format and their own VHS collections, is all about: Nostalgia. If you ever were, or are, a collector of the format, nothing they say will surprise you, and everything they say will strike home.


Written and directed by Dan M. Kinem and Levi Peretic, Adjust Your Tracking is essentially sitting around with like-minded collectors and listening to everyone share their memories of visiting mom-and-pop video stories to hunt down the newest titles for their collection. And you can't help but get caught up in the memories of visiting your own mom-and-pop stores and remembering which particular VHS covers captured your attention (definitely I Spit on Your Grave and Deadmate for me).

In Adjust Your Tracking, you won't learn about the inventor of the VCR and the VHS format. You won't learn about its mechanics, and how it was created, and other such typical information. But that's okay, because honestly, I don't care. That's not why I'm here. I'm here to live vicariously through our talking heads as they discuss their undying love for VHS and proudly show off their immense collections. And once the one particular fellow who talks of his 22,000 tape collection ends up in the doc, suddenly my own once-collection seems like small time by comparison. Though I no longer own not a single VHS tape, I can still recall the fondness I had for them. I can still recall how (to sound lame) magical it felt to uncover that one particular VHS at that flea market or thrift store, gaze at its cover art, and get that unmistakable feeling that the movie in your hands has become completely forgotten - a strange relic lost in time. For that reason, VHS felt more special than DVD ever did, and ever could. 

Adjust Your Tracking, lovingly shot on VHS (natch) but available on a 2-disc DVD stacked with special features, is a testament to that.