The Odyssey of Flight 33, Comic Review, by Case Wright

Posted on October 17, 2019 by casewright

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Yes, they have comic versions of The Twilight Zone! I really enjoyed this and I know that some of you are like….hmmm is this horror? Yes… Yes, it is. No further questions! Besides, we have a Twilight Episode to discuss. The Twilight Zone always leaned more into horror IMO. The Outer Limits was all about teaching you a moral lesson, but TTZ was all about the scare factor.

I enjoyed this format too. Face it, a lot of the TTZ episodes don’t hold up amazingly well. It’s the truth….Deal With It! The book has all the components of a good TTZ episode: the setup of perceived normality that takes a terrible left turn. There aren’t many things more normal or boring than air travel. The flight is just a typical run to La Guardia and the passengers appear very normal as well: the chatty passenger, the braggy passenger, and the emotionally unstable passenger.

These archetypal passengers pull us into the story much like the Stephen King stories do. Stephen’s characters are your neighbors and these passengers are too. But, something isn’t right is the friendly skies! They feel hit a pocket of air and their speed goes into the thousands of miles per hour and whammo – they start time traveling! They arrive in 1939 and don’t stop because they want to get back to their own time- So no killing Hitler for these time travelers. Then, they arrive in the Cretaceous and decide not to land because Jurassic Park is so five minutes ago, but then they arrive in the future.

This one troubled me a bit. They are low on fuel and the future has cable and they can’t screw up time. Really, they could just try to make a go of it in their new time. No one seemed like things were that amazing for them in the present. I mean, why not just land? You’d at least make a living on the talk show circuit. The comic ends with ambiguity. They are low on fuel and lost in time.

I would recommend checking these issues out. They’re a lot of fun and have a good creep factor.

Horns, Book Review, By Case Wright

Posted on October 16, 2019 by casewright

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Horns. What if you woke up and realized? Gee Whiz, I’m a demon! Well, that’s exactly how it was for Ig Perrish in Horns. One day he was the pariah of his town because everyone believed he murdered his girlfriend and the next day he’s got budding horns with magical demon powers!

Ig is loathed by everyone for being a rapist and murderer. There was only one problem: he didn’t do it. The lab that would’ve exonerated him with DNA evidence caught fire, leaving him as the likely suspect, but no physical evidence to convict or exculpate. His town and greater world hates him forever.

The horns start growing out of his head and give him powers to cause people to indulge and confess their darkest desires. When he uses the horns, people can see the horns, when he’s done, they’re no longer visible. He goes through the town getting people indulge and confess. He slowly realizes that xxxxxxxx was the killer. Ha! No spoilers! The killer figures out that Ig has discovered his identity so they begin a cat and mouse game that goes all the way to the climax.

The book elicits a visceral response because it deals with the key concepts of human existence: Betrayal, love, revenge, and envy. There are quite a few of the other deadly sins on display in the book as well. The only knock that I give the book is that it really obvious very early on who the real killer is. Nope, still not spoiling!

Is it worth reading? Yes. There is also a very fine audiobook with a voice actor who does a very good job. I highly recommend that as well. You can check out the trailer review for Horns by Arleigh here!

Masters of Horror, “Deer Woman”, Dir. John Landis

Posted on October 15, 2019 by casewright

Happy Horrorthon! There’s a Half-Deer woman (DeerTaur?) on the loose and only Martin Tupper…I mean Detective Dwight Faraday can stop her…maybe. Many of you don’t remember Dream On from the late 80s-early 90s on HBO, but it was awesome. Benben played this kinda cranky book editor Martin Tupper who always thought in movie clips and seeing him act again was like being a wee kid again who quietly watched Dream On after his parents fell asleep. Dream On BTW was hilarious and created by John Landis- Check it Out! Yes, The American Werewolf in London director and he did Thriller.

Well, in the early 2000s Mick Garris got a lot of the greats from the 80s and 90s to do short horror films and Deer Woman was one of them. In Deer Woman, Drunk dudes are getting trampled to death and Detective Faraday is assigned to the case.

Faraday is a down and out detective who no one respects. Martin Tupper was a down and editor who no one respected. Faraday is actually not a terrible detective. He follows up leads and sees where they go. He checks with the coroner and sees that the bodies are riddled with hoof prints. You know what makes hoof prints? Deer-Taurs!!!!

Also, men are really portrayed as dumb and horny. The Deer-Taur picks her next victim up at a hotel bar without speaking a word, but the dudes don’t seem to mind. Once the seduction is on, she tramples him with her hooves! Yes, hooves. I love this show!

What’s not to like?! Deer-Taurs, Detectives, and hooves! There’s also a great dream sequence when Faraday imagines how the kill went down where a Deer in flannel carries off a victim Creature from Black Lagoon style. It’s hilarious. This is what’s great about Landis; his horror is always interspersed with great comic relief.

Anywho, bodies keep dropping and they’re so beat up that their arms are found on rooftops! AWESOME!!! Does Detective Faraday stop the Deer-Taur? Who Cares?! It’s got Deer-Taurs and Brian Benben! I would definitely recommend finding this show however you can. Pretty much all of the Masters of Horror episodes are great. Cheers!

yuou

Creepshow, S1, Ep3, All Hallow’s Eve, The Man in the Suitcase, Review By Case Wright

Posted on October 14, 2019 by casewright

Happy Horrorthon! I’m am once again reviewing Creepshow. It is officially a true Guilty Pleasure, but come on, aren’t those all of our go to pleasures anyway? To the uninitiated, Creepshow is a GOOD horror anthology series, but really it’s a showcase for short-films. How? It’s broken down into two stories and neither of them are over 23 minutes. Aside from giving writers like Christopher Buehlman his big break (before this he’d only written skits for Renaissance Faires….really), they are the short short brought to life.

Many of Stephen King’s short stories are made into movies, but they are always lengthened into something (usually better) than their original quick-paced short story. Creepshow keeps that fast pace…mostly. Well, they keep it for the second story. The second story is always the better story and moves at the quick pace that you’d expect in a short story. Even at 22 minutes, the first story tends to drag.

All Hallow’s Eve follows 5 youths trick or treating in a terrified neighborhood. It was obvious to anyone with a pulse that these kids were dead and out to cause trouble. Turns out that during a vigorous D&D session in their treehouse, some bullies from the neighborhood thought it would be funny to set it on fire, with the D&D nerds in it. As you do. Well, their door gets stuck and they all die. So, they haunt the neighborhood setting fire to one bully each Halloween until they are all briquettes.

The acting in story A is ….ok. Story A is a bit slow-paced, which is really hard to do in 20 minutes, but here we are. I still watched it and so should you. It’s not like 2 Sentence Horror we are talking about, which is garbage wrapped in rotten bacon.

Story 2 was The Man in the Suitcase, which could’ve worked as a twilight zone episode. Justin is a loser stoner who is dumped by his girlfriend and used by his roommate. He is arriving home after visiting his family and he gets a carry-on from the airport and it’s not his stuff that’s inside; it’s a Middle-Eastern man bent so he can fit into the carry-on. It turns out the Man wants to leave the suitcase, but every time Justin tries to move him, it causes the Man pain, which in turn causes the Man to spit out a gold coin.

Well, Justin isn’t sure what to do, but Justin’s roommate and his ex-girlfriend do and they all decide to torture the man in the suitcase so that he’ll spit out loads of gold. The torture gets pretty gross, but Justin eventually has a change of heart and tries to free the Man, but his girlfriend and roommate want to keep the gold so she tries to kill Justin with a wrench, which is just lying about. I won’t spoil what happens next because this was a lot of fun and really makes Shutter worth my subscription fee.

This story really had some good pacing. Yes, it was predictable and very over the top, but that is just the Creepshow way.

Again, relax and enjoy!

The Mangler, Story Review by Case Wright

Posted on October 13, 2019 by casewright

Sometimes you just can’t win! You need to make a few bucks and you take a job at a cleaners, but the laundry press is possessed by a demon and starts killing everyone and the Christmas party is BYOB. This is the premise of The Mangler. This laundry press gets exposed to a bunch of different bloods – animal and virgin human, which summons a demon to possess the laundry press. The laundry machine goes a killing spree, but my collars have never looked crisper! I always liked this story because it’s so awesomely bad. It’s really corny and silly, but unintentionally so. It would be great as a Rifftrax.

As I was reading, I couldn’t help thinking, Self, it really is EASY to summon demons in Maine. It makes you wonder why anyone visits or lives there? Sure, the fall foliage is nice, but you’re always knee deep in clowns, werewolves, vampires, large rats, ghosts, creepy college students, aliens, more ghosts, the devil (kinda), cultists, creepy rednecks, slime beasts, and pederasts. I’ve been to A LOT of Maine and I will attest that the above villains are truly a nuisance and they are all close talkers!

The Mangler is a fun read because it turns into a quick-paced detective story. The cops Hunton and Jackson become ghost busters and try to get the demon out of the machine. I know it’s a short story, but they really embrace the whole – it’s a demon laundry machine really fast. There’s no time where people are like, What? This is stupid! Really stupid! It starts getting really goofy when the machine chases its victims down a gnaws them to death.

At the end, I know it’s not supposed to be a comedy, but it chases the cops around and eats one of them. It’s just kinda silly. Of course, this story is really needed as unintentional comic relief because some of the other stories are just so depressing in Night Shift like “The Last Rung on the Ladder” ….ughhh- best cure for a happy thought. Really, if you think you’re a bad sibling, read “The Last Rung on the Ladder” and you’ll feel waaaaay better about yourself.

The Mangler is not his best story- it’s actually really dumb, but it reads like a fun bad movie. It’s the Sharknado 1 of Stephen King if not ALL literature. In short, it IS entertaining. You have a big iron up to no good and two incompetent policemen trying to save the day. It needs a SYFY run desperately! Happy Horrorthon!

“I Am The Doorway”, Story Review by Case Wright

Posted on October 12, 2019 by casewright

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How free are we? “I am the doorway” by Stephen King is an early work. It was published in 1971, when he was just 24. For context, we’d just gotten back from the moon 2 years prior. The stories in Night Shift were gathered from this time period. “I am the doorway” was published by Cavalier (see above). I always thought that was odd not that Stephen King was getting published, but Cavalier? Cavalier was a “Men’s” magazine. I always thought that was strange and must be unique to the 1960s and early 1970s where people paired their Men’s magazines with literature and poetry. Shel Silverstein wrote poetry for Playboy. I guess that’s where The Sidewalk really ended?

The stories in Night Shift, and “I am the doorway” revolve around free will and how free we actually are by outside influence. The occult is present of course, but that’s tangential. The real meat of Stephen’s stories are always about the people living with the monsters. In these early stories, it’s the people who are the monsters. Either people are pulling their strings, life is pulling their strings, or monsters because this was his life. He was newly married, he had kids on the way, and he was working jobs from substitute teaching and doing laundry to meet the bills. Very few of us are free and if you think you are one of the Select, stop paying your credit card or student loan for a couple of cycles and get back to me.

The will once given up can’t be retrieved, you’re trapped like Richard in Quitters Inc.. Blood called to blood in Jerusalem’s Lot from generations forward, poking free will right in the eye. In Salem’s Lot, Ben Mears described his oddly fortuitous meeting of Susan Norton – Ben Mears’ love interest- as if the “universe were making some sort of cosmic bread.” When the will is taken away, it can be retrieved with a cost like in Jerusalem’s Lot or in this story “I am the Doorway”. The main point is that if we give into the darkness like the teenagers did in Night Surf, we are gone for good. The will itself is like origami beautiful, fragile, and unique to the individual. The will is cajoled, stolen, sold, and bought back. The will for King appears to be akin to the soul. Perhaps that’s why giving up one’s will to a higher power is so challenging and difficult to do?

“I am the doorway” is told as a first person narrative by Arthur who was an astronaut to Venus. He gets exposed to alien cooties and starts to morph…grossly. He develops eyes on his hands, which allows the aliens from Venus to see into our world. Although he is disabled, when he falls asleep, the Venusians hijack his body and make him kill with lightning bolt powers. The first victim is a child. He understands that the Venutians will invade using him as a portal somehow. Maybe he could try Atkins and get really small? To stop the invasion, he tries to burn the eyes off of his hands with Kerosene, but 7 years later, eyes open on his chest or as Stephen King would write “Sometimes They Come Back”.

Arthur can get his will back and stop the murders and the invasion, but the price will be the highest he can pay. Like Arthur, we have these external forces in our lives. Whether we are really free or not, I don’t really think so. However, I know that some will is meant to be abdicated. You give some freedom for the best moments in your life: marriage and children. Both take up time and limit your freedom (no spur of the moment Vegas Trips and getting out the door can be interminable), but they complete a part of yourself that was missing and desperately needed to be found and they kinda look you and act like you, or the UPS man. Maybe giving up some of our will is the only way we can grow? Perhaps the doorway for us is to wisdom.

Quitters Inc, Story Review, by Case Wright

Posted on October 11, 2019 by casewright

Smoking is a nasty habit. I did smoke for 10 years and quit. I didn’t do it any other way than to stop altogether. To this day, when I smell one, I want one- except for Dorals because they’re gross. Don’t let anyone tell you different; it is an addiction. Richard Morrison, the protagonist, is a advertising man who shared my addiction. Richard is in nadir of his life. His son is severely mentally disabled and lives at an inpatient school, his wife nags him constantly, his overweight, and Rick smokes.

He smokes until he meets Jimmy McCann who tells him about Quitters Inc. It’s strictly word of mouth and free. Richard attends Quitters Inc. Once you commit, you can’t leave. It’s free because the founder, a mobster, bequeathed his fortune to get people to stop smoking the way the mob does they threaten you, your family, harm you, harm your family, or all or some of the above.

Richard learns that he will be under surveillance and if he smokes they will beat his wife. If he smokes again, they will beat his son and do escalating harm to his family and himself. They even go beyond smoking and threaten to cut off his wife’s finger if he doesn’t lose weight. Quitters Inc. runs life choices.

This is one of Stephen King’s early works and it’s written very tight. There’s no extra words or passages. It reads like it went through many edits to purposefully ratchet up the tension. You feel for Richard because he’s trying to succeed, but like all of us, he comes close to failure. Every time Richard fails, you feel it in the pit of your stomach because you know the retribution is coming for his family.

The odd part of the story is that his life improves when Quitter’s Inc takes over. You wonder if maybe free will is not for everyone. In Richard’s case, free will destroyed his health and free will got him to accept unknown entity into his life that harms his family. Freedom isn’t free, but giving up free will isn’t free either.

Creepshow, S1 Ep2,Bad Wolf Down/The Finger, Review by Case Wright, Spoilers, but worth it!

Posted on October 10, 2019 by casewright

Happy Halloween Havoc!!!! Is it enough for horror to just be fun and even funny? YES! American Werewolf in London or anything by John Landis really proves that. Creepshow on Shudder is all about just sitting back and having some gory fun. This show is so wonderfully over the top that the 90s have returned. Let’s all put away our black turtle necks and put on some Hammerpants and watch some great horror.

Bad Wolf Down is a werewolves in World War II story…Really! It was a lot of fun. Then, when I saw Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator) playing a Nazi, I realized this show is THE AWESOMENESS! An american platoon gets trapped behind enemy lines and takes refuge in an abandoned police station. They find a woman in the jail who is a french werewolf. This seems relevant because they really spend a lot of time translating.

The Head Nazi (Jeffrey Combs) finds the american platoon and will wipe them out, but the platoon gets the french werewolf to turn them into werewolves and they go and kill a bunch of Nazis. That’s it…Really!

The Finger is your lonely guy adopts a self-regenerating-human-eating-Alien story. I know…I know .. another one?! Clark Wilson (DJ Qualls) is a twice divorced down and out guy who has nothing going for him- until he finds a finger. The finger looks alien and when he spills beer on it, it re-generates into a medium-sized alien and becomes his pet. He calls the alien Bob. Bob becomes Clark’s best friend and as any best friend would do, Bob eats all of Clark’s enemies. He also brings back body parts from the kill like my old cat did. Sidenote: I had a cat who used to bring me squirrel heads. He’d line them on my porch. Bob is like that. The police eventually arrest Clark for the murders, but Bob might break him out.

The finger is told by Clark in real-time narration, which really adds to the comedy. He looks dead into the camera, talking directly to us. Also, it’s especially fun watching DJ Qualls hang out with a bro-alien- Brolien. If you wanna chill, watch this!!!!

Jerusalem’s Lot, Book Review, By Case Wright

Posted on October 9, 2019 by casewright

Jerusalem’s Lot is a short story by Stephen King that is a prequel to Salem’s Lot. Salem Lot was reviewed by Lisa! Lisa’s Salem Lot Review is Right Here! REALLY! I want to make another thing clear: I didn’t read the story this time. I listened to the Audiobook … again. The performance is by John Glover and it’s really like a radio show. John brings it! It’s a one-man-show with different voices and gravitas. John Glover is truly a national treasure!!!

The story takes place in Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine in 1850 and is told as a series of journal entries by Charles Boone and few by Boone’s manservant/pal Calvin McCann. Boone inherits his ancestral home in Chapelwaite, Maine just two miles from the eponymous Jerusalem’s Lot. After he moves in, he starts to hear what he believes are large rats crawling in the walls. It turns out they’re not rats, but ghosts of the damned! The longer that Boone is in the house, the stronger the ghosts become. People acting as a doorway to evil is common in Stephen King’s early works. In “The Shining”, Danny Torrence’s ESP abilities acted as a battery that charged up the ghosts of the Overlook Hotel so that they could interface with our reality. It was weird that the ghosts wanted to kill Danny; they surmised that his death would give them permanent entry into our world; so, why kill Danny? Wouldn’t Danny’s Death remove the energy production?

As Charles stays, the Ghosts leave him and Calvin maps and notes guiding them to the nearby town of Jerusalem’s Lot. It is revealed that Jerusalem’s Lot was a town founded by Charles’ distant ancestor John Boone who became a devil worshiping sex pervert. I used to visit Maine a lot in my younger days and sure there isn’t always a lot to do, but who knew that these Maine residents were only a missed Red Sox game away from creating an inbred demonic sex cult?! Sex cults are in now check out Lisa’s NXIVM Lifetime movie HERE!

John’s demonic sex cult set out to manifest a gigantic intergalactic demon worm to the Jerusalem Lot Chapel by reading from an evil book called “Mysteries of the Worm” by Nicolas Sparks, then have red punch, and Bundt cake. They were apparently successful because the town is deserted. Boone discovers that Boone’s descendants act as a doorway for the inbred demonic sex cult to return because blood calls to blood! Bwhahaha. You can inherit the evil deeds of your ancestors. Oh well, as an Italian, Sorry Celts… Whoopsie.

Charles sets out to destroy the book because he doesn’t want the world to end or have a “Notebook” sequel in circulation. Does Boone save the day? Buy the audiobook!

Night Shift as a whole is a brilliant collection of short stories from a time when Stephen King had just been able to support himself and his family with his writing. His stories are leaner and heavily edited, making them a lot of fun to read because there’s no extraneous elements. I will likely review many more short stories from this book and this period because they are some of his best work. Happy Horrorthon!

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Book Review by Case Wright

Posted on October 8, 2019 by casewright

Happy Horrorthon! Have you ever read something so dark you felt unclean? My Favorite Thing is Monsters gave me that feeling. The reason I felt unclean is because the situations appeared to be based upon real events in Chicago in 1968 and earlier in Europe. Apparently, everyone in Uptown Chicago in the 1960s and in Germany from the 1920s-1940s was just a terrible person who preyed upon the weak, put their own needs first, and made foolish decisions.

Am I being harsh? No….No, I’m not. When a person can question you, “Didn’t the child being sold into prostitution plot sicken you?” and you have to respond, “Which time?” you wonder why this was written at all? Was Emil Ferris’ having an iced tea one summer and thought, “Hmmmm the world seems like it’s missing something….I got it! … the world is missing a murder mystery that revolves around terrible people who actually deserve to be dead.” By the last few pages, I was rooting for Chicago to be hit be a meteor- it’s the only way to be sure. I know … I know… but Case, so many people liked this book… how dare you buck the literary zeitgeist?! I write… tough! This book is beautifully illustrated, but straight up gross and a pain to read.

The central focus of the story is solving the murder of Anka who has a mysterious and dark past … and when I write Dark Past… I mean the absolutely worst life ever. Anka is the ONLY Holocaust survivor who is not sympathetic! Why?! Because in order to escape the Holocaust, she made a deal with a Nazi pederast to take 6 young children from the camp and force them into child prostitution and be raped by Anka’s Nazi pederast benefactor and other Nazis for the rest of their lives. Yes, that happened! This book was recommended by a parent whose daughter was friends with my daughter and she “loved it, it’s my favorite book”… ok, I’m never speaking with her again!

The plot begins with Anka’s body found in her apartment, shot in the chest, and with no forced entry. Karen Reyes, the ten-year-old main character, does not believe the police’s determination that it was a suicide. Therefore, Karen dons a trench coat and detective hat and gets on the case. By gets on the case, I mean Karen goes on a meandering journey of self-discovery and repeatedly ignores the two most obvious suspects: Anka’s jealous husband and her brother who is a part-time tattoo artist, murderer, who bedded Anka who was married (I should note: the brother bedded Anka while she was alive because this book would go there if it could and probably will in the sequel), and quasi-philosopher.

The book does have a redeeming feature: the art is beautiful, which is maybe a symbolic statement about the world itself; the world is beautiful, but the monsters (people) are the ones who make it ugly.

Karen sees the entire world through art and monsters and draws herself as a short werewolf in the story. She finds out more information about Anka – She was born in Germany shortly after WWI. Her mother sold her into child prostitution twice and Anka garnered a pederast benefactor Schultz who is described above.

Germany is described much like Chicago, an evil place filled with predators, who seek to dominate and murder for their lusts. My big complaint is that this behavior is never really judged harshly by the author; it’s matter of fact and without contempt.

Back in Chicago, her brother Deez would use his tattoos as a form of ownership over his female conquests. The most relevant conquest was Anka, who was extremely mentally ill by the time she moved to Chicago, but that didn’t stop Deez. He also liked to tattoo her back after he would take advantage of her sexually. It was beyond disturbing. Later, in the story, their mother gets cancer and needs medical care. Deez gets drafted, but doesn’t go. You’d think he would accept the draft because it would give his family greater stability, nope; instead, Deez continues down the road of hedonism and violence. Then, I truly despise him.

The characters who are decent human beings are subjected to constant degradation, humiliation, and physical violence. The best thing about this book was that it ended. You don’t even find out who killed Anka for sure at the end of the book because apparently there is a hunger for a sequel for this. Maybe we should keep track of the fans of the people who enjoyed this book- light monitoring only. Who am I kidding?! ROUND THE CLOCK SURVEILLANCE!