DANCING PLAGUE OF 1518

In July of 1518, Frau Troffea of Strasbourg, France (then part of the Holy Roman Empire), began to dance frantically in the streets.  Within a month, 400 people began to do the same, eventually collapsing and dying of heart attack, exhaustion, and stroke. 

Doctors at the time were at a loss. Notes from the city council revealed that the cause of the dancing was unknown, only that the victims were not dancing willingly. 

Then, as suddenly as it began, in August, the Dancing Plague of 1518 was over, leaving almost 400 dead, a population baffled, and a mystery that has lasted half of a millennium. 

Some have blamed the dancing plague on mass hysteria, the result of eating contaminated bread, or even religious ecstasy. 

Although the plague never reappeared in France, a similar case of the frantic dancing cropped up in Madagascar in the 1840s.  In both cases, the cause was never found.

REVIEW: K-11

You know how everyone has that one friend who, no matter what kind of story you're telling, somehow has a story even more amusing or ironic? Well, god forbid you ever begin a story with "I had the WORST day recently...!" around K-11's Raymond Saxx, because he would respond, "Well, one morning I woke up from a really fucked-up drug and booze binge, found myself accused of murder, and discovered I was locked up in a special transgender wing of a prison ruled by a deviant security guard and a tranny named The Queen."

Yeah, he'll always win with that one.

Goran Visnjic ("E.R.") is the unfortunate and aforementioned Raymond Saxx being dragged through the dingy halls of an ominous looking prison. He has no idea what he's done to find himself in such a place, but there he is all the same. After being held in isolation along with a fellow inmate named Butterfly (Portia Doubleday, the upcoming Carrie remake), he is eventually added to the gay and transgender wing. You see, the malicious and perverted Sgt. Johnson (D.B. Sweeney, Fire in the Sky) finds Raymond rather attractive, and with him locked up in his domain, he can wait until just the right time to...you know...strike.

While locked up in K-11, we meet its inhabitants: Mousey aka The Queen (Kate del Castilo), the head honcho who makes the rules; her bitch Ben (Jason Mewes, Clerks), who runs a mini drug operation; and Detroit (Tommy 'Tiny' Lister, The Dark Knight), an irreformable child molester, among many many other flamboyant characters. The prisoners of K-11 are colorful, to say the least, and though there is some drama from time to time, mostly these cellmates seem to get a long. But the arrival of Raymond has shaken the wing's establishment, both in front of and behind the locked cell doors.

K-11's own marketing describes it as The Shawshank Redemption meets John Waters. That's a fairly accurate representation, especially when taking the former into consideration, as we have seen this kind of story before: Before Shawshank there was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and before that, Cool Hand Luke. A new inmate shows up, unites other inmates thanks to his intelligence, non-conformity, and human spirit, and leaves everyone changed just from his existence. K-11 attempts the same thing; the problem is it's nowhere near the magnitude of those other films.

K-11 is, except for Visnjic's Raymond, extraordinarily well-acted. del Castillo as Mousey is scarily good. Apparently quite the heralded actress in her native Mexico, a quick glance at her filmography confirms I am not familiar with any of her past work. Because of this, having nothing previous to go on, I found her especially convincing. She seemed dangerous and intimidating, but also conflictingly beautiful. All except for the bulge beneath her tiny underwear. Alternately, Portia Doubleday's Butterfly seems simple-minded but good-hearted. Her and Raymond become fast friends, and he soon develops a paternal protection of her. But, like previously mentioned, Visnjic seems rather flat and unconvincing. When he's playing a muddled mess he does just fine, but otherwise it feels like anyone could have played the role. His character is also maddeningly inconsistent. He seems to alternate between being a drug-added sweating mess, desperate to get out of K-11 by any means necessary, to a smiling, just-fine inhabitant, taking delight in Butterfly's bubbly personality, or the prisoners' ...er...fashion show.

The most frustrating aspect to K-11 is that it's impulsively watchable. The interactions between all the characters are very good, and D.B. Sweeney is especially effective as the very slimy Sgt. Johnson. The interplay works; the everyday-life of such a place seems genuine and realistic, though at the same time surreal and foreign. The things that occur are oftentimes so crazy you almost want to believe they are real, because in all honesty, what the fuck do you or I know about the transgender prison populace? But the reason I chose the word "frustrating" is because when the movie's conclusion happens, and the film ends, your immediate question will be "so what?" If co-writer/director Jules Stewart wanted nothing more than to shed some light on such places in a docudrama fashion, then mission accomplished. But if there was supposed to be more to it - if Raymond Saxx was supposed to learn where his life went astray and become a better person for it - if his character was supposed to "grow" - it certainly wasn't earned. There was no epiphany. Whole scenes of inmate camaraderie or catharsis seem to be missing. And the film doesn't end so much as it stops happening, and it sadly makes the journey up to it a little irrelevant. 

The DVD comes with commentary by director Stewart and producer Tom Wright. It's an okay listen, but I'm surprised that Stewart didn't have more to say about her odd choice for a directorial debut. She points out a little trivia from time to time, like explaining that the color of jumpsuit K-11 inhabitants wear are purposely different from those of the general population, but we never get anything meaty or useful. The track starts off with energy, but soon devolves into "and this is what's happening now"-type observation which is audio commentary suicide.

K-11 was an interesting watch, and one I don't regret. I feel as if a curtain has been lifted on a world on which I never gave much thought - whether it exists or not - but it's a shame that this world wasn't utilized to its maximum potential. At the end of the day, K-11 feels like nothing more than a really compelling missed opportunity.

K-11 streets on DVD and Bluray on April 23. Pre-order the DVD here.

SS OURANG MEDAN

In February, 1948, distress calls were picked up by numerous ships near Indonesia, from the Dutch freighter SS Ourang Medan. The chilling message was, “All officers including captain are dead lying in chartroom and bridge. Possibly whole crew dead.” This message was followed by indecipherable Morse code then one final grisly message… “I die.” When the first rescue vessel arrived on the scene a few hours later, they tried to hail the Ourang Medan but there was no response. A boarding party was sent to the ship and what they found was a frightening sight that has made the Ourang Medan one of the strangest and scariest ghost ship stories of all time.

All the crew and officers of the Ourang Medan were dead, their eyes open, faces looking towards the sun, arms outstretched and a look of terror on their faces. Even the ship’s dog was dead, found snarling at some unseen enemy. When nearing the bodies in the boiler room, the rescue crew felt a chill, though the temperature was near 110°F. The decision was made to tow the ship back to port, but before they could get underway, smoke began rolling up from the hull. The rescue crew left the ship and barely had time to cut the tow lines before the Ourang Medan exploded and sank.

To this day, the exact fate of the Ourang Medan and her crew remains a mystery.

Image source.

SHADOW PEOPLE

Emerson County has had reports of strange shadowy creatures/people since 1957. In August of 1997, roughly 2 miles from where the first reports originated, a video camera was found and turned into local authorities. What they saw on the old tape was scary, mysterious, and remains unexplained to this day. Some people refer to this "shadowy creature" as a "Shadow Person."

 

THIS IS SOME SPOOKY SHIT WE GOT HERE

Do you own a video camera?

No. Fred hates them.

I like to remember things my own way.

What do you mean by that?

How I remembered them.

Not necessarily the way they happened. 

If we don't, remember me.

REAL VAMPIRES

In Rhode Island in the late 1700s lived a 19-year-old girl named Sarah Tillinghast. Sarah was a dreamy girl, spending her days wandering small graveyards where Revolutionary soldiers lay. She was known to bring a book of poetry to these places and seat herself on a grave slab and read for hours on end. One day as she returned home from one of her visits she professed herself ill and took to her bed. Soon after she had a horrible fever and within weeks she was dead. 

The Tillinghast family was still grieving some weeks later when Sarah’s brother, James, came down to breakfast looking pale, shivering and complaining of a weight on his chest. He claimed that Sarah had come to him and sat on his bed. Sarah and James’ parents thought it was nothing but his grief playing tricks with his mind. 

The next day James was even paler and could barely breathe. Soon after, James was also dead. 

But Sarah and James were just the beginning - shortly after their deaths two more Tillinghast children died, both saying beforehand that Sarah had visited them. These claims were quite frightening for the Tillinghast parents, for it meant that Sarah was returning from the dead to draw the life from remaining family members. The rumors spread through the town, all saying one word - Vampire! 

Not before too long there were more deaths, and all of the victims claimed that it was Sarah that they saw right before the sickness took hold.  Then finally Honour Tillinghast, the mother of all the dead children, too became sick. Honour lay in her death bed swearing that her lost children were calling out to her. 

This was when Snuffy Tillinghast, the father, finally took a stand. With the help of his farmhand, Caleb, he went out early morning to the cemetery where Sarah was buried. He took with him a long hunting knife and a container of lamp oil. 

The two men reached Sarah’s grave and together dug up her casket and opened its creaking lid. Even though she had been put to rest 18 months ago Sarah looked as if she were asleep, there was no decomposition. Her eyes were open, according to one account, fixed in a stare, and fresh blood was found in her heart and veins.  After seeing his daughter’s face flushed as if with blood he took his knife and cut out her bleeding heart. It is said her body gushed with blood. Snuffy Tillinghast then set his daughter’s heart on fire and burned it to ashes.

After the heart was burned the deathly ill Honour Tillinghast recovered fully and there were no more strange deaths or Sarah sightings in the Rhode Island town again.

REVIEW: THE PROSPECTOR'S CURSE

 

As I watched filmmaker Josh Heisie's short film The Prospector's Curse, I was struck by just how much the tone and over-the-top nature of the story's events felt as if they had been plucked from the pages of the old EC comic line, or from the Creepshow film series.

After watching the film and checking out the press kit sent by the filmmaker, I saw this:

The Prospector’s Curse will be pitched as the first “chapter” of an anthology horror feature (IE, “Tales From the Crypt” and Creepshow). Each chapter will pay homage to a different genre of B-Movie, including this spaghetti western inspired ghost story, a film-noir thriller, a 1950s style creature feature, and a psychedelic slasher flick.

Glad to see we're on the same page. And I'll even do the filmmaker one better. The Prospector's Curse feels like a lost film from the efforts of Sam Raimi and Co., perhaps made and forgotten somewhere during their other little seen opus Within the Woods. Your plot is a rather simple one: Two fugitive men on the run during the height of the U.S. gold rush come across a dying prospector who begs them to give his gold to his sister, and to give him a "Christian burial." The two men agree, but do neither, intent on finding his stake and picking up where the old prospector left off. Well, in line with the old morality tales that "Tales from the Crypt" made famous, the two men will end up regretting their decisions.

The Prospector's Curse is wonderfully quirky and outrageous, but would benefit more from being surrounded by other short films of its type. As a one-off, I could see some viewers being standoffish with it if they're not "in" on the joke. Some people like their horror straight-laced and serious; some like it goofy. The Prospector's Curse is definitely goofy. One can come away with no other opinion following a scene in which a character thinks he is passionately kissing his long-lost love before seeing that it's actually the dead and bloody prospector...and spitting beard out of his mouth. I hope this anthology idea works out; from someone who misses the format, it would be something to look forward to.

Check out the film's official Facebook. 

The Prospector's Curse - Trailer from Josh Heisie on Vimeo.