Halloween Reflections: The Scary Vs. The Sexy

"Halloween is a day we honor monsters!" - Michael Scott, The Office 

Well, another Halloween has come and past. Now follows the inevitable winding down I always run into, and I'm a bit thoughtful. What do our Halloween traditions mean? I'm sure most don't give it a second thought. And I know most people my age use it as an excuse to drink and party (and for the females to dress like prostitutes. There is NO REASON a Sexy Wookie costume should exist. What the f*** is wrong with people!).

But Halloween is a festival with a deeper meaning. I've got a little bit of the Scots-Irish blood in my veins, and I can say "Samhain" is a bit of my own heritage. Halloween is a big deal in my family. And for me, I've always been encouraged to go for the more frightening aspects- to have horrific costumes, to make ghastly decorations, and to make things scary with the most cheer possible. And my family gives a good reason for this. We need to be safely scared. We need that jolt of horror. When we dress as the Devil, we don't celebrate him- we make a mockery of him, defang him. Because we all know that's not really TEH SATANS under there, it's just some dude.

The point is, we dress as the horrific, the monstrous and the diabolical to rob them of their power over us. We do ourselves a spiritual disservice by dressing as the mundane or the sexy (with, perhaps the exception of those who have an unhealthy fear of eroticism, although in that case I would recommend going for a sexually suggestive costume with distubing undertones- maybe a Cenobite.). The streets should be lined with ghouls, ghosts, the undead, the demonic, the murderers, and the grave robbers, not with witches in two strips of black cloth and a pointy hat and not with Spongebob motherf***ing Squarepants.

Spengbab, on the other hand...

Anyway, hope you all had a gore-riffically ghoulish Halloween. Happy Ninja-Vember to you!

Cthulhu and You: An HP Lovecraft Primer

This, ladies and gents, is Cthulhu.


You might recognize him- or something based on him. He may as well be the patron saint of Internet Culture- as linked with insanity as he is, that's quite appropriate. He's appeared personally or been referenced in numerous short stories and novels, a few video games, the Call of Cthulhu tabletop roleplaying game, the title of a Metallica instrumental, and as of Wedsnesday night, South Park. 


He's an important facet of geek culture- you're really in deep when your first response to tentacles isn't to make a joke at the expense of the Japanese but to shout Cthulhu F'taghn!


But let me assume you're not the huge nerd I am. What do you know about Cthulhu and his ilk beyond the fact that they have tentacles? (And not all of them have tentacles, by the way.) Well guess what, folks? You're about to learn something!

This charming fellow is Howard Phillips Lovecraft. He created Cthulhu and many of the places, characters, and tropes surrounding him. Along with Edgar Allan Poe, he is one of the fathers of modern Horror. While some facets of his work haven't aged very well- specifically his racism and classism- his stories have a spellbinding bleakness and stark horror that humanity might not be worth a hill of beans in the grand scheme of things. In any case, he was an obscure pulp writer in his time and cultivated a small fanbase (notably the creator of Conan the Cimmerian, Robert Howard; and the poet Clark Ashton Smith.) After his death in the 1930's, Lovecraft's fans formed the Arkham House publishing imprint, named after a town that features prominently in his stories.


Speaking of Arkham (and I've run into this a few times) you may recognize the name from the Batman comics' Arkham Asylum. Which I've noticed a lot of people seem to think originated in Batman comics. Well, Lovecraft (considering he died before the first Batman comic was printed) originated the name of the town in 1920 in his story "The Picture in The House", some 54 years before the name first appeared in Batman (in 1974) . The town is a cross-section of contemporary Boston, Salem, and Lovecraft's hometown of Providence, RI. Its most prominent institutions were Miskatonic University (featured in Re-Animator) and the Arkham Sanitarium, which no doubt inspired the Asylum in Batman and was the final stop for many of Lovecraft's protagonists.


Other notable locations in Lovecraft's fiction are the New England towns of Kingsport, Dunwich, and Innsmouth, as well as the Dreamlands. While Lovecraft is most well-known as a writer of Horror, he also wrote a number of fantasy stories, most of which took place in the Dreamlands.


Lovecraft created a variety of bizarre and inhuman entities- maybe aliens, maybe gods- the most well known of which is our pal Cthulhu. However, other entities you'll encounter in his stories include Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, the blind idiot God Azathoth (think a much scarier Galactus), the Yithians, the fungi from Yuggoth...it's a big, scary universe and you are an insignificant and probably tasty primate!


Not quite a character, but just as important are the various ancient tomes that appear in the stories. Most well known is the Necronomicon, or Al Azif if you prefer, but also appearing are the Unaussprechlich Kulten, De Vermiis Mysteriis, and the Pnakotic Manuscripts. Lovecraft's inventions have notably appeared in the Evil Dead films (pretty different, but a notable reference just the same.) and on the Simpsons. And if someone tries to tell you the Necronomicon is a real book and that Lovecraft didn't invent it, I permit you- nay, compel you, to beat them with a 2x4 until they agree that it's a fictional plot device. If a book of such powerful evil did exist, would you be able to buy it at Barnes and Noble?

On second thought, don't answer that.

Lovecraft's influence extends all over the place. You can see it in later writer's work- Stephen King, Clive Barker and Neil Gaiman all take cues from him, as does Mike Mignola. John Carpenter, Dan O'Bannon, and Guillermo Del Toro all take influence as well.

Anyways, if you've never experienced a Lovecraft story, I encourage you to check them out. Penguin Books makes some nice, well-arranged paperback versions of his work, and most of it is also available online. If you'd like to start reading Lovecraft, I recommend starting with "Pickman's Model" or "The Dunwich Horror". "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Rats in The Walls", and "The Colour Out of Space", are also recommended. Anyway, hope you enjoyed this little look into the work of one of horror's most influential figures.

Online Texts: 

Pickman's Model : http://tinyurl.com/23lv3ct

The Colour Out of Space: http://tinyurl.com/27ycfam

My Halloween Mix

Dead Man's Party - Oingo Boingo
Wrathchild - Iron Maiden
Hip to Be Square- Huey Lewis and the News
Cthulhu- Zombeast
Vampira- Misfits
Baby Elephant Walk- Harry Mancini
Bark at the Moon- Ozzy Osbourne
Alone in the Dark- Testament
Ghost of John- Bake West
Dig Up Her Bones- Misfits
California Lady - Fish Lipped Guy and the Band That Plays California Lady
Monster Mash - Bobby Pickett and the Crypt Kickers
My Curse- The Chop Tops
Goin' Down to Dunwich- Darkest of the Hillside Thickets
The Greatest Show Unearthed- Creature Feature
Curse of The Pharaohs - Mercyful Fate
Murder in the Graveyard- Screaming Lord Sutch
Jack The Ripper- The Horrors
Am I Demon- Danzig
Dragula- Rob Zombie
Witchfinder General - Carl Douglas
No One Lives Forever- Oingo Boingo
Kickstart My Heart- Motley Crue
More Human Than Human-  White Zombie
Call of Ktulu- Metallica
Return of the Fly- Misfits
THEM!- Misfits
Shine- Mr Big
Skulls- The Misfits
Rob Zombie- Lords of Salem
The Innsmouth Look- Darkest of the Hillside Thickets

Movie Review: Bram Stoker's Dracula (Part 3)

What a horrible night to have a curse. And I'm cursed to finish reviewing this stupid movie.

I feel...

Okay. So I've gotten this far without saying much about Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing. It's not necessarily a bad performance, it's just really off-putting. I mean let's consider our two most iconic portrayals of the character- Edward Van Sloan in the 1931 film and Peter Cushing in the Hammer series. Van Sloan played Van Helsing as a solid center of moral authority; Cushing played him as a determined and inquisitive scientist. Hopkins (who we're used to playing subtle and deliberate characters) portrays him as animated and over-the-top. It's really pretty jarring. It's like seing Samuel L. Jackson trying to play subtle, it's like "Come on, man! Do what you're best at!".

Anyway, Van Helsing both narrates and acts...drunk. At Lucy's funeral he decides to tell her bereaved suitors that he needs surgical knives to mutilate her corpse (presumably with science). Well that's tactful. That's like showing up to your best friend's wedding and saying "Hey, why don't you give me 15 minutes to grope the bride before she walks up the aisle."

We also get more idiocy from Winona describing how (but never WHY) she is in love with Dracula. This is the worst part of an already bad movie. Seriously, one of the funniest lines in the movie when Keanu, sounding more Ted-like than ever says, "It is the man himself! HE'S GROWN YOUNG!" To which I can only add- BOGUS.

We then switch back to Van Helsing and the Three Stooges as they raid Lucy's tomb. The fact that the ludicrous amount of blood in this scene makes it hilarious is rather sad, because it's otherwise a great set and very nicely put together scene with Lucy looking creepier than...well creepier than Gary Oldman EVER is in this film. The icing on the cake is Cary Elwes screaming his guts out like Reb Brown while hammering the stake in.

And then the Stooges decide to strike at Dracula in his bachelor pad. Meanwhile, Dracula is out and about as Winona is taken up to Seward's Sanitarium for safety. In a room with glass doors and open windows, as Dracula emerges as (what I assume is foul-smelling) green gas. Seriously? Why not just have Dracula traveling as a river of brown sewage to fully drive the point that this film is a piece of malodorous shit home?

He also kills off the already completely peripheral character of Renfield.  Yep. Plot point over.

And following comes the most uncomfortable scene in the movie. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I would kill to be watching Manos: The Hands of Fate. I want to be anywhere but here.

Have you ever wanted to see Gary Oldman as Dale Earndhart and Winona Ryder humping each other in period costume? Well, you sick f***, THIS IS YOUR LUCKY DAY! We get Dracula rambling on about how "nobody can love secksay old me" and then Winona starts slapping him in anger. Not viciously, more like that scene in Blazing Saddles with "You brute! you brute! You vicious brute!"

And then Oldman's shirt comes off. And it gets even more drawn out and uncomfortable. Seriously, this scene seems to go on for ages. To borrow a line from the movie, you will spend oceans of time wishing you were anywhere else in the world. To say nothing of how, for an allegedly Romantic character how rapey Dracula comes across as. Which includes Dracula's O-face and then a big hug. AWWW.

Then the Marx Brothers storm the room and Dracula turns into a Bat-Creature that looked far less silly in the 8-bit Castlevania. Gary Oldman's giant forehead, seriously. And then he becomes a big ole pile of rats. While Winona whimpers "Unclean". You speak for every sane person who just watched that scene, Winona Ryder. 

So then Dracula flees England and we get more Keanu narration (haha, BYOODA-pest) as the Merry Pranksters give chase, attempting to cut him off at the pass (I hate that cliche!) by taking a train. They split up for some reason, Mina and Van Helsing heading to Castle Man-Taking-Painful-Dump ahead of the Stooges. This leads to more bizarre and discomforting cinema as Mina starts gyrating and um...stuff, apparently under the influence of Dracula's Bride-Skanks. She then comes onto Van Helsing.

WHAT.

And then attacks him.

THE F***?

I don't know what happened. It was neither sexy or scary. But it ends with Hopkins pushing a Nilla Wafer onto Winona's forehead and lighting a circle of fire around her. FIRE, FIRE, heheheh. And...the brides...kill his horse or something. This movie does so much in silhouette it's hard to figure out what's actually happening and what's just suggested. Anyway, Van Helsing beheads the brides, chucks their heads into a chasm and (I shit you not) yells DRAGO! Yes. Anthony Hopkins in Rocky IV-2: The Hunt For DRAGO-la.

Following this is the only remotely exciting scene in the movie as Robin Hood and his men in tights ride up the mountain shooting at...Dracula's Non-Union Gypsy Labor...while Winona seems to think she's Saruman as she...I don't know. I don't know what in the name of f*** is happening. But this is a pretty decent scene. So I'll let it pass. Although for some reason the Sun keeps rising and setting. Nonsensically.

Then Vigo the Carpathian bursts out of his coffin in what appears to be a robe made of Gold Mylar and he and Mina stagger into the castle to have a little moment. As Dracula has a knife in his heart he starts to...turn into...JESUS? DRACULA...IS...JESUS?

WHAT. THE-

Then she cuts his head off. Dance party! Movie over!

Movie Review: Bram Stoker's Dracula (Part 2)

Back in London we're introduced to the far more interesting trio of Lucy's suitors, which consists of a bumbling Dr. Seward, a guy mimicking George W. Bush's speech patterns ten years early, and Cary Elwes. Seriously, Elwes is awesome. He's my favorite part of the film. He seems to know what kind of movie he's in and hams it up plenty. Plus he rocks a killer waxed handlebar mustache. It's no wonder the smooth motherf***er ends up bagging Lucy. The guy just has to say "As you wish" and women melt and bend to his will. It's the English Lord equivalent of Bruce Campbell's "Give me some sugar, baby."

We also get a few scenes of Dr. Seward at his asylum, talking to a miscast Tom Waits as Renfield (seriously, he looks like a character in Battleship Potemkin, and I can't get that out of my mind). On top of that, why do they allow a dangerous lunatic to have that little Freddy Krueger glove thing? Does that seem like a good idea? We also notice that the asylum is staffed by Pyramid Head's less creative brothers, and that the Doctor has a little morphine addiction. Which is never referenced again in the film, so the one scene where it's shown is completely pointless. So much for character development.

At one point Lucy runs out to tell Mina that she's accepted Cary Elwes' marriage proposal. Then it starts raining, so they...run around the garden and briefly make out. I'm thinking when he was working on the Godfather, Coppola thought, "You know what would make this movie awesome? Two chicks making out!" While you can't really fault that logic, it does feel more than a little bit forced. It's like the guy has spent his entire career trying to shoehorn a couple of girl-girl kisses into his films and not finding any place for them in Tucker: The Man and His Dream, telling James V. Hart- WHATEVER ELSE YOU DO, I MUST HAVE LESBIANS!

Well, Dracula gets on a ship to England, where he slaughters the whole crew and regenerates into his younger self- a kind of weird combination of Geddy Lee and Dale Earndhart. First thing he does upon hitting the shore? Turns into a weird-ass wolf-bear thing and rapes Lucy. I think this form may be what Penny Arcade was talking about when they mentioned Dickwolves. So there you go. Dracula turns into a Dickwolf and...yeah none of this shit was in the novel. So much for being Bram Stoker's Dracula. Hello, Bob Guccione's Dracula! (Or Draculigula, if you prefer).

So Lucy becomes ill after the Dickwolf attack (Dracula bit her), and Dr Seward calls Dr Van Hannib-um, Van Helsing to come check up on her. This leads to attempting a blood transfusion, complete with gratuitous breast shot for no reason. Of course, this leads to the greatest single moment in the film, when Cary Elwes explodes the doors open with his bare hands and bellows "WHAT IN GOD'S NAME IS GOING ON UP HYAH?"

Frankly at this point my concentration on what's happening is broken by the sheer awesomeness of that. The first time I saw that I had to hit reverse and re-watch the scene about ten times. The occupants of the room are lucky he only hit the doors to open them. If he's kicked the doors in he would have decapitated the two doctors!

(Note to self: SCREENPLAY IDEA.)

In the meantime, Dracula takes to stalking Winona Ryder around London, dressed like Willy Wonka. Or a Victorian pimp. I'll let you decide. The movie tries to play his awkward stalking as romantic. Sure, because bothering an engaged woman, taking her to a nudie theater, giving her absinthe and following her home is romantic and not stalkery and creepy. This is a theme you'll see popping up more and more in vampire fiction from the 1970's onward. And it's a load of horseshit that wasn't in Stoker's text. So my opinion- stalking is not cool nor sexy. I don't care if you're a walking corpse or not. It's just something you don't do. Now, this would work fine if the film was playing Dracula as the villain, but IT CASTS HIM AS THE SYMPATHETIC LEAD! Make up your damn minds, writers!


In the meantime Keanu jumps from Castle Dracula (which, you might notice bears an uncanny resemblance to a guy sitting on a toilet) into a river while Winona waltzes around candle filled rooms with Dracula. He finds his way to a church where he's nursed back to health and the Mother Superior shoots a letter of to Winona, who decides to leave Gary Oldman and his pornstache for more EXCELLENT! waters. She sends Drac a letter and he turns into a blubbering mess, crying purple watercolor tears in bizarre makeup and then yelling, "VINDS! WINDS! WIIIIIIIIIIINDS!" (Thundercats, HOOOOO!)


But wait. He was crying. DRACULA was crying. 

What.

Anyways, Dracula decides to end Lucy because Mina abandoned him, which causes the walls to explode with spouts of high pressure blood. It reminds me a lot of Johnny Depp's death scene in Nightmare on Elm Street and I think they wanted to symbolize Dracula having an orgasm or something...which, if that's what they were going for, it's pretty tasteless. Anyhow, the scene ends up with Lucy dead and Mina on her way to meet and marry Keanu, whose hair is now badly dyed gray. 


So until the next arbitrary cliffhanger...TO BE CONTINUED!

Movie Review: Bram Stoker's Dracula (Part 1)

(This review is turning out to be pretty lengthy and in-depth, so I'm gonna release it piece by piece over a few days).

Bram Stoker's Dracula. Aka Coppola's Dracula. Or as I like to call it: BS Dracula.

This is definitely a weird one to review, because a lot of people really like this movie. While I can see that there are some good things about it- It's one of the stupidest and most disappointing vampire films ever. Let me begin with a rant. This film was directed by Francis Ford Coppola. He made the Godfather films, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now. It stars Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins. It's Dracula. It has no right to be a bad movie. Yet despite all odds, it manages to be SO BAD.

Now some of you might say, "What are you talking about, Chad? Coppola's Dracula is awesome!" Well, maybe I can imagine that. If you've never seen either Nosferatu, the Universal Draculas, or Christopher Lee in the Hammer films, I can see how you might make that mistake. And some others might claim it's the closest Dracula film to the source material. Well here are my answers: 1) No, you're wrong. This movie is watchable, but it's crap. 2) It's true to the letter (sometimes) but not to the spirit of the Bram Stoker novel. I imagine the people that claim this is the best Dracula film are either pretentious types who believe the horror genre is below them, or the people who think the musical version of Phantom of the Opera is superior to the Lon Chaney silent film. Both have a common characteristic of always being wrong.

OK, rant over. 

The movie 'expands' on the novel, linking Dracula with his historical namesake Vlad Tepes, who appears to be Gary Oldman playing Rob Zombie in armor. His lover commits suicide and he renounces God when a Hagrid-looking priest tells him that her soul is damned. Well, he's suitably pissed off. He stabs a stone cross while forsaking God, damning himself to become a vampire...somehow. On the plus side, the blood-spouting cross is one of the best effects in the movie and looks really sweet. Less than five minutes in, best effects in the movie. Yeah.

JAM IN THE BACK OF MAH DRAGULA!

Next we cut to 1897, where Keanu Reeves is setting off to make a most triumphant real estate deal with Dracula. And this is where the movie starts to suck. Even the people who like the film won't defend Keanu Reeves. His attempt at a British accent is as painful as having your nose broken while having Tabasco poured in your eyes. Anyway, we see him taking Thunder Mountain Railroad to Transylvania while Gary Oldman narrates a letter. He gets on a carriage to the Borgo pass where some old dude with a helmet that...dangles quarters on a string gives him a crucifix. Soon after, Dracula's carriage shows up driven by a guy in armor which appears to be modeled after Sam the Eagle. He takes Keanu to the castle, where he's greeted by Gary Oldman cosplaying as Vigo the Carpathian from Ghostbusters 2. I don't even need to mention that his hairstyle looks, literally, like an ass. Let me remind you, THIS FILM WON AN ACADEMY AWARD FOR BEST COSTUMES.

Meanwhile back in England (we flip back and forth, so I'll try to keep the flow going), repressed schoolmarm Winona Ryder is hanging out with Sadie Frost, who can't seem to talk about anything other than sex. Which of course prompt's Winona Ryder's wallbanger of a line, "Lucy is a pure and virtuous girl." Yeah, after you've spent the last few scenes scolding her for having a dirty mouth. So...make up your damn mind, movie. Is Lucy a slut or not?

And I also want to bring up another thing- Sadie Frost actually does a really good job playing Lucy. She's just stuck with horrible lines and ridiculous scenes. This is true of pretty much everyone, but it sticks out like a sore thumb when she's doing so much better than Winona Ryder, who sounds about as English as Walter Brennan.

Back in Transylvania, Keanu is shaving and Dracula sneaks up on him. Like as a prank or something. Keanu cuts himself, Dracula takes the razor and licks the blood off. They exchange some expository banter in which Dracula pretty specifically tells Keanu not to check out the other rooms in the castle. Being the moron that he is, Keanu wanders around the castle, apparently long enough to enter the secret inverted part where Dracula's three hot vampire ladies await. The scene recalls nothing so much as the dream sequence in Ghostbusters when Dan Aykroyd gets...um, ghost head. Only with 300% more lesbian kissing. Now I'm all for girl-on-girl action (sad and lonely individual that I am), but in its proper context! After about 5 seconds the scene gets uncomfortable to watch. Until of course, Dracula shows up to chase his brides away and make us comfortable again. Or not. He pulls a baby out of a bag and feeds it to them. CHRIST. Cue the legendary Keanu scream from the AVGN's Sega CD review.

YOU MEAN THERE'S MORE? 

TO BE COUNT-TINUED...AH, AH, AH...

Movie Review: Friday the 13th Part IV- The Final Chapter

The Friday the 13th series is one that isn't really...that good. Now I will admit that Jason and his hockey mask are pretty cool, and can respect the series for what it is: about 10 hour and a half films of gratuitous murder and even more gratuitous nudity. Possibly (and probably) combined. Now the first two films are actually pretty good, as cheap exploitation flicks go- they aren't short on tension or shocks, and I actually consider the 2nd film to be one of the better slasher films. However, beyond that, the series takes a steep slide down a hill covered in cow pies. While 3 was nothing special, the fourth installment is more worthy of a verbal riffing. So here goes.

The film starts off where the previous one left off (making it take place on what, Saturday the 14th?). We see Jason get carted off to a hospital morgue. We're briefly introduced to two nameless meat puppets- a nurse and an orderly- who proceed to start screwing. And if there's anything that can wake up Jason from beyond death it's sex out of wedlock! Obviously he ends the two rather quickly. Probably saving the hospital a considerable amount of money for the amount of work they must be getting done (considering they're casually f***ing in an unlocked room). I also want to point out that I'm not sure what the orderly was watching- it seems to be a weird cross between porn, a workout tape and a music video. It fails at all three as it's neither erotic, good for your cardiovascular system or particularly rocking.

Anyway, we cut to two separate story threads. Crispin Glover and his douchenozzle friends are taking off to rent a cabin, and Corey Feldman, his sister and his mom are living at a cabin nearby. Neither group of people is particularly interesting, what with Feldman being an annoying little bastard and Crispin Glover, well...Maybe I should just show you.





Anyway, Crispin and pals head to their cabin after making pointless contact with Feldman and family, and promptly break out the beer, pot, and what I can only guess are silent era nudie films. I'm guessing after a few six packs of Old Mil you really don't give a damn what you're watching. And surprise, surprise, our old pal Jason shows up to butcher these heathen youths! Truly, Mr. Voorhees, thou art a servant of the Lord!

Meanwhile, back with the Goonie, we find Corey Feldman...not doing much. He has a dog named Gordon, which isn't funny by itself, but gets much funnier if you shout Brian Blessed's "GORDON'S ALIVE!!!" anytime he's onscreen. We only really come back to his story thread later in the movie, when Feldman and his sister are holding Jason off. Which really gets weird when Corey Feldman shaves his head and- I don't know plays on Jason's psyche with an image of- oh, f*** it. I don't know what it means, but I do think it was pretty funny that Corey Feldman of all people wasted a guy who waded through teenagers like they were rain puddles. And then Jason is apparently dead. BY. COREY. FELDMAN'S. HAND.

There are a lot of scenes in the movie that seem to try and play off Corey Feldman's character as some kind of boy genius- he "is getting pretty good at" making latex masks and can apparently fix his family station wagon with nothing more than a screwdriver. But seriously, I'm just not buying what they're selling.

And frankly? In this series it's not half bad. The expected amount of brutal kills, boobies, and bad acting all show up and...it delivers what you expect. On the other hand, all movies beyond the 3rd were stupid, formulaic slashers, so...whatever. It's not remotely scary, but it has some redeeming values played as a campy (no pun) comedy.