One of the highlights of Autoptic 2018 for yours truly was making the acquaintance of Minneapolis’ own Peter Faecke, who is producing some of the most distinctive and classification-destroying minis around — and doing it just a few blocks from my own house? Yeah, it’s a small world and all that, but the coolest thing about Faecke’s work is that it’s proof positive that he actually lives on a different world than most of us altogether, one where the rules and conventions of sequential storytelling aren’t so much subverted as they are both adhered to and utterly dispensed with simultaneously.
Before you jump all over me for saying something so blatantly contradictory on its face, relax — I know that last sentence makes no fucking sense whatsoever. But then, neither does much of what’s on offer in Faecke’s comics — yet that doesn’t mean they don’t all work within the…
I got my computer back!!!! Happy October Horrorthon!!!
In every sport or endeavor, we can think of our stars: the paragons. Stephen King is an unquestioned master of horror. In comics, Scott Snyder looks down from that pyramid as well. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Scott Snyder a few times and you would never guess that he was the greatest comic book author in a generation.
I went up to Scott at the Emerald City Comic Con to have him sign my trade paperback. He was surprised because my trade was not rare at all, but I wanted him to know that I loved his art so much that I wanted it signed, regardless of worth. Because of that, he took out time to talk to me even though there was a line of autograph hounds. Stephen King, on the other hand, I have no idea what’s he’s like in real life. I have a hunch that he’s like most people I have known from Maine: DIY, tough, and fair.
American Vampire was a Supergroup: both King and Snyder wrote this book with the beautiful art of Rafael Albuquerque. They took the genre of the Vampire and, much like the theme in the story, they made it evolve. The result was a trio of interconnected revenge stories with wonderfully flawed heroes and anti-heroes. The artists forced you to root even for Skinner Sweet – a man who thinks he’s not only above the law, but beyond it. Skinner Sweet typifies the American Id: dangerous, violent, and oddly fair within his code.
The book opens with two struggling starlets in the 1920s Hollywood: Pearl and Hattie. Pearl is all-in with the art; whereas, Hattie is more of the hack opportunist. They are staying in a cheap apartment complex where a mysterious stranger hangs around. Pearl is invited to Hollywood party where it turns out she is the main course for a host of hungry vampires. Near death, the mysterious stranger finds her dying and he makes her like him: An American Vampire. A vampire, unlike the relics of europe, he can walk in daylight and has few if any weaknesses. When Pearl rises to her new undead life, she goes on a rampage of revenge to destroy those who stole her humanity. Yes, I just got chills too!
The story flashes back to the old west where a lawman, Book, has captured Skinner Sweet, but not for long. He busted out in an awesome train attack by his gang. This is where we learn about the haughty European vampires and how they are arrogant, weak, and in our way. Sweet tells Book that he sent poison to his wife, engendering Book’s revenge story against Sweet. During the train attack, Sweet is turned into a Vampire and when he eventually rises Sweet and Book are sent on a collision course of revenge against the other.
There’s more revenge in this book than a Sicilian novel. It must be burned into my Italian DNA to love these revenge stories, but there’s more to it that my accident of birth. Revenge stories tap into the universal of what makes us human. We’ve all been wronged and we have all wondered what it would be like to mete out own justice and live by our own law. Skinner Sweet is not as much evil as he is part of civilization; he’s the American ID of our rugged individualism. Pearl’s character is part of society, but must seek out her own revenge because as a vampire, she is unable to use society to bring her justice. As the story unfolds, it’s clear that Pearl and Skinner Sweet are the most honest in their quest for revenge because at times Block uses his badge to hide behind his vendetta. In all three stories, the vendettas are so satisfying and pure. This book is rage distilled to its purest form.
Here’s the thing : if I were an editor or publisher, and cartoonist D. Bradford Gambles submitted his new mini, A Lone Deer At The End Of The World, to me — I confess that I’d probably be tempted to reject it. The book’s just too obvious, I’d tell myself (and him). Too unsubtle. Too upfront with its message, perhaps to the detriment of its threadbare narrative. And you know what? I’d be right — but that doesn’t mean my choice to pass on it would be right.
Fortunately, J.T. Yost at Birdcage Bottom Books is a lot smarter than I am, he recognizes sheer artistry when he sees it, and he knows that no matter how overly-earnest the delivery, a message worth conveying is still worth conveying, and that when it’s rendered this beautifully — well, there is that old saying about the iron fist inside a velvet…
At this point in the history of the comics medium — hell, at this point in the history of art in general — irony, particularly humorous irony, by all rights really shouldn’t work anymore. It certainly doesn’t deserve to, the vast majority of the time it doesn’t, and I’m generally of a mind that the more sequential narratives stay the fuck away from it, the better. It takes an extraordinary talent to pull off what’s been done literally thousands of times before, to find something new in such thoroughly-mined territory, but it probably takes something more than that, too — it takes a supreme amount of entirely-earned confidence, as opposed to mere empty bravado. It takes vision, not just an idea. And it takes top-level ability to execute, which goes well above and beyond simple competence.
You’re sitting down and you’re watching the 1985 slasher film Bits and Pieces on YouTube.
“The Bits and Pieces Murderer has struck again!” a television news reporter solemnly intones after a homeless woman finds a dismembered body in a trash bag.
Meanwhile, in a dark bedroom, a phone rings and wakes up Lt. Carter (Brian Burt), a balding man with a mustache. He answers it and is told that the murderer has struck again. “SHIT!” he yells….
A few blocks away, a sweaty man named Arthur (S.E. Zygmont) sits in a filthy basement, surrounded by plastic mannequin heads, half-eaten breakfasts, and flies. He hears a voice telling him to kill and he says, “Yes, mommy…”
Down the street, in a club that appears to be populated largely by elderly woman, the world’s greasiest male strippers perform while a deathless song plays in the background. Do you want/want my body/do you like it like that....
The next morning, college student Rosie Talbot (Suzanne Snyder) tells her mother about the strip club. “I was surprised by the wide variety of the routines,” she says as her mom nods along. Rosie says she never would have had the courage to go to the club if not for her best friend, Tanya (Sheila Lussier). However, for some reason, Tanya is not answering her phone….
That night, Arthur has flashbacks to being abused by his mother so he kills again. When the latest body is found, Lt. Carter receives that call. “SHIT!” Lt. Carter yells….
The next morning, Rosie looks at the newspaper and sees a drawing of the girl who was found in the trash bag and she immediately screams because it looks just like Tanya! She meets Lt. Carter who asks her if Tanya had any strange sexual proclivities. “What type of sexist question is that!?” Rosie shouts….
Later, Rosie walks through a strip mall and runs into her friend Jennifer (Tally Chanel). Rosie tells Jennifer about Tanya but then mentions that she did meet a really handsome policeman and that’s been the only good thing about her day. “That sounds promising!” Jennifer says….
Meanwhile, Arthur lurks behind them, unnoticed despite his unwashed hair, his skinny black tie, and the look on his face that practically screams, “I am a psychopathic murderer and I’m stalking you.” A random man bumps into Arthur and Arthur falls to the ground. “Watch it, apple ass,” the man snaps….
A few hours later and Lt. Carter calls Rosie at home. Carter tells her that this is a social call. Would she like to spend the day at the beach with him? That seems like a great way to forget about all the dead people who are piling up around the city. “I’m really looking forward to it!” Rosie says….
Meanwhile, Arthur flashes back to his mother’s boyfriend forcing him to put on lipstick….
And so it goes.
There’s actually a pretty charming little story about this film. It was told by a student who had just completed a film class. On the last day of class, the professor announced that he was going to show the class an example of how “not to make a good movie.” The movie that he showed was Bits and Pieces and the professor was the also the film’s director. (For the record, the director also appears in the film, as the guy who calls Arthur an apple ass.)
Bits and Pieces may be a bad movie but it’s so amazingly inept that it becomes oddly fascinating. The night scenes were clearly filmed at night, meaning that it’s often next to impossible to see what anyone’s actually doing for at least 10% of the movie. In the role of Arthur, S.E. Zygmont gives a performance that’s so over-the-top that it bring to mind the “Egyptian feast” scene in Herschell Gordon Lewis’s Blood Feast. (“You waaaaaaant to plaaaaaay….” Arthur hisses, at one point.) As well, I don’t know if there’s many other movies out there that mix scenes of brutal murder with scenes of a middle-aged police detective and a young college student happily frolicking on the beach. I guess brutal murder and intense emotional pain brings out the romantic side in some people. The fact that the blood and gore looks real while everything else feels fake gives the film a strangely surreal feel.
Bits and Pieces is currently on YouTube, proving that even inept movies will live forever.
About 20 years ago, a friend and I walked out of a movie theatre for some pizza. On the way to the Pizzeria, I raved about the movie we just watched. The effects were awesome, and the main character was bad ass. My friend didn’t share the same sentiment, and over the dinner, he went on to explain everything that was wrong with the film. Bad CGI (for its time), 2 Dimensional Characters, and a pretty simplistic plot. By the end of my dinner, all of my joy was sucked away. I wanted to believe, deep down that I walked into a quality production, but there was so much room for improvement.
That film was Mark Dippe’s Spawn.
I mention this because after seeing Ruben Fleischer’s Venom, Spawn was the first film that came to mind. That makes sense, given that a lot of Venom’s genesis is from artist Todd McFarlane, who also created Spawn (and gave Spider-Man some of the best webbing I’ve ever known). There are parts of Venom I truly enjoyed, and I can say that there isn’t much of a problem with the acting on anyone’s side. However, the levels of boredom in the film’s first hour will have you wanting to bring in a highly caffeinated drink to sip on, just to stay awake. The lady next to me yawned, which made me yawn and it just cycled through the audience. The good sequences are already visible in the trailers.
Here’s a clip of Venom from the Ultimate Spider-Man Video Game (easily recommended) to give you a rough idea of how he is.
From a plot standpoint, Venom does a good job in giving us a story for how Eddie Brock and his Symbiote meet without factoring in Spider-Man at all. Comic readers remember the Secret Wars, where Spider-Man lost his suit and picked up a symbiote replacement. When the Symbiote proved dangerous, Peter Parker got rid of it and it fell into the hands of his former Daily Bugle nemesis, Eddie Brock. Together, they formed Venom, a beast with all of Spider-Man’s powers and Brock’s hatred of Parker. Venom plagued Spider-Man, who was incredibly dangerous because he was one of the few villains that didn’t set of Parker’s Spidey Sense. He could sneak up on him at any time, assume the likenesses of other people, and Parker would never see him coming.
The Sony Spider-Man series changed this up in Spider-Man 3, replacing the Secret Wars with more of a Blob-like story. Symbiote crashes to Earth, finds Parker. Parker decides to rip it off and it finds Brock. In this new version of Venom, symbiotes already exist in space, and a corporation lead by Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) are trying to bring them to Earth to intermingle with humans. When investigative reporter Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) stumbles on the corporation’s evil plans, he accidentally joins with a symbiote and finds himself with a near insatiable hunger for the living.
You have the best 2 in 1 team up since Leigh Wannell’s Upgrade. I would not be opposed to a sequel for this if they tightened up the writing. Maybe that’s my problem. Both Upgrade and Venom are similar, but only one had an interesting character that looked like Tom Hardy (sorry, but Logan Marshall-Green does bear a resemblance).
Ruben Fleischer’s (Zombieland, Gangster Squad) direction is okay here. With Cinematographer Matthew Libatique (Iron Man, Black Swan) at his side, Venom doesn’t have many problems there. With the exception of the final confrontation, the shots aren’t too blurry or hard to track when the action starts. Even though Venom is a visibly dark character, I couldn’t complain that scenes weren’t well-lit.
For me, the problem with Venom is that at an hour and 52 minutes, it feels like the first hour is just waiting for that symbiosis to occur. Eddie Brock doesn’t really become interesting until Venom appears (also voiced by Hardy), and that’s a rough thing to say, given the cast involved. We’ve both seen Hardy, Ahmed and Michelle Williams in better roles, but they really aren’t given any real meat here. The dialog is a little shaky in some places. Hardy pushes himself hard here, and you see how disjointed Brock gets as he adjusts to the changes. Brock as a character, however, doesn’t really have a lot going for him. Neither did Peter Parker or maybe even Steve Rogers, but there were elements about who they were that helped you to appreciate who they be became as superheroes. Steve Rogers was a weakling with a good spirit, which made him a better Captain America. Peter Parker was a chemical whiz kid and came up with his own web-fluid. Brock just…well, reports. There’s a lot of boredom in that first hour. The best scenes are the interactions between Venom and Brock, full of cute banter. It’s like having an unwelcome guest wanting to meet your parents. It just took so long to get to that point. When it does, however, the movie improves. They do manage to get a lot right about what Venom can do.
The CGI in Venom is definitely good in some places. It stands as the best argument for another remake of The Blob. The symbiotes are creepy in their design and motion, slithering up walls and making their way through vents. Venom, in all it’s glory, is quite a sight to behold, towering over humans. It goes a little overboard over the last 3rd of the film. I can’t say I knew for sure what it was I was looking at, but that’s to be expected with some superhero films.
If you see the film, stay for the mid-credits scene, which teases a future character. Also stay for a near 5 minute sneak peek into Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse.
Overall, if you feel you have to see it in a theatre, by all means, do so. If you can wait for it to come out on Digital, that may be the best route.
My dating experience entirely pre-dates the “Tinder Era,” a fact for which I’m eternally grateful — and who wouldn’t be? After all, as embarrassing as it may be for many people of my generation to confess to their offspring that that they met their other parent at a bar, it seems to me that it’ll require a greater degree of pride-swallowing — and maybe even a bit of “Dutch Courage” — for parents 10 years from now to tell little Jimmy or Jenny that mommy and daddy got together for a quick hook-up on a goddamn matchmaking app and then, hey, things just kinda took off from there.
Still, the times are what they are, and the youngsters seem to like swiping left or right, reducing their fellow human beings to the level of a product being shopped for. It all seems pretty mercenary to me, but lots of people…
Hello Horrorthon Readers! It’s a great day to get scared and Retweet and Reblog my work! “Gerald’s Game” is a throwback for Stephen King. It was published in 1992 and his readers were used to near or over 1000 page tomes. This book clocks in at a meager 332 and is very pithy and often gross. At this point in King’s life, he was in the middle of or just finished a relapse into drugs and alcohol. Gerald’s Game mirrored his life in many ways; he was tormented by his past and incarcerated by his unresolved demons in his present.
The story depicts Jessie, a woman, who has become subservient to her husband. Over the years of their unequal marriage, she has given up her career and identity at his request to be his quiet lawyer’s wife. This manifests into Gerald’s last desire of pure possession. He begins play a sex game with his spouse where she role plays a handcuffed woman and he plays a pirate rapist. To get the full effect, Gerald uses an off season beach house to use for his game because there will be no one who could come to her aid.
When Gerald begins to perform is rape-game, Jessie decides that she has had enough. She stands up to Gerald, but he decides to rape his handcuffed wife. This causes Jessie to snap and kick Gerald right in the balls, giving him a fatal heart attack. Jessie’s road to hell turns into the autobahn. A dog comes by and eats her husband’s dead body, causing her psyche to kick into high gear hallucinations. In order to save herself, she must deal with her past and how all of her decision led her to her current situation.
This book also deals with two horrific acts that recur often in King’s work – Incest and Rape. The rape/incest scene in this book is purely vomit inducing. We are forced to live through Jessie’s horrible present and past. Her psyche appears often as a college friend and her younger self as a puritan who is being pilloried for sexual enticement. The sexual enticement charge being her self-blame for her father raping her. The book makes you live through each and every moment of her losing her sense of self and volition.
As in his other books, King likes the idea of a primitive sacrifice to conquer a monster or a demon. We see that in It, The Stand, Misery, and his many other stories. In this story, her psyche let’s her know how free herself after she deals with the ghosts of her past. The solution: she must …… I’m not spoiling it that much. You know me better than that by now.
I would recommend this book, but the creepy factor is extremely high. I would recommend this book in audio or paper format. It is perfect for a plane ride or if your weekend plans fall through.
Welcome to the second day of October!!! Woohoo! There are a lot of great horror movies to watch and this is not one of them! HERE WE GO! I will only refer to this movie as I AM because the above is too much to write unless I create some shortcut key and I am NOT doing that….EVER!
This film is a sloooooow paced artsy haunted house film directed by Oz Perkins the son of Anthony Perkins of Psycho. The concept is that people die in homes and if they don’t have any outdoorsy interests, they remain in the domicile for eternity and mope about and not do much. Therefore, if you’re an introvert like a political activist on twitter who always takes offense, your spirit will NEVER leave your home and your wifi service will be cancelled….BWAHAHAHAHA!
The story revolves around Lily who is a scaredy cat hospice nurse who is assigned to take care of the dying formerly famous author Iris Blum. Iris calls Lily by the name of Polly throughout the film? Why? Because she was a terrible author. All she ever did was listen to this weird murder victim ghost name Polly and type out what she told her. I couldn’t live with myself if everyone thought I was a great writer, when I was actually just a stenographer.
In any case, Polly was murdered and put in the wall of the house back in the 1800s and ever since she kinda hangs out for no particular reason except to give hack-writers storylines. Why does Polly do this? I’m guessing because she lacked hobbies. There’s a lesson here…get outside! If you’re going to haunt something, do the Appalachian Trail or a library at least; otherwise, you have a very boring eternity ahead of you! Lily continues to take care of this dying author and she just doesn’t want to die. Iris does chit-chat A LOT and Lily is introvert enough to quietly listen. Honestly, Lily going into the great hereafter will likely not be a huge transition except for no copays for dental.
I would put this film in the elliptical watching category except it’s so quiet that you might need really good headphones. It does have Bob Balaban in the film who must’ve believed that he was auditioning to play a lamppost, but with less feeling. Of course, it’s hard to say if boredom wasn’t intentional! Maybe this was a brave choice on the part of Oz Perkins? For far too long, we, the viewer, have expected to be entertained or even have our attention captured. I would find some pharmaceutical or extra coffee to focus you while watching this or you’ll be looking up possible deductions for 2018 and miss some critical scene with an actor wandering around aimlessly.
I hope you are having a wonderful October. Stay Spooky, My Friends!
IT’S OCTOBER!!!! WOOHOO!!!! The Most Wonderful Time of The Year!!!!
All The Boys Love Mandy Lane….for some reason. Let’s begin by admitting Amber Heard is pretty, but …. love at first sight obsession?! Word?! Word?! This film was written by Jacob Forman who went on to …. not much. Jacob Forman does have a few recent credits as a special thanks over the last few years, which means he let someone sleep on his couch or something who was making a movie. I wonder if the film deserved to make enough money to afford the futon that he used to get those special thanks. But it’s on Netflix; so, if you’re on an elliptical and have already caught up on your YouTube subscriptions…. I guess this would be a choice that you could make … on purpose.
Jonathan Levine (director 50/50) directed this mess and he’s a very talented director for … Dramatic Comedy and Drama… Horror…not so much. It was one of his first films (2006) and didn’t get a US release until 2013 … for good reason. He’s very good at filming true to life couch conversations, which was certainly evident in 50/50, but in a Horror/Thriller the camera work/direction has to act as another character to pull us into suspense and punch us with payoffs. This piece uses a lot of shaky cam in a 1980s style with artsy cuts that never allow us to feel worried about anyone on-screen. The direction is like someone constantly spilling water on your charcoal as your trying to get the barbecue going.
The exploitation premise is simple enough: A bunch of boys try to corrupt a naive virginal archetype – Mandy Lane (Amber Heard). Mandy is kind of bland and has a friend Emmet who everyone picks on and gets even by somehow convincing a guy to jump off his roof into a pool and he dies. It’s weird.
After the pool incident, Emmet is a pariah. Mandy, on the other hand, is apparently the paragon of the feminine ideal because every man within 100 miles will give up his eternal soul for a tryst with her. She agrees to go to a ranch in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of dudes and girls who are equally boring. They arrive at the ranch and there’s a ranch hand on the property who is supposedly a Gulf War veteran even though he’s 27 and not in his later 40s. Sigh. Mandy Lane and all the other girls are obviously smitten with the ranch hand and why not….the ranch hand defies time and math itself!!! As the song goes, every girl crazy for a …. man who defies the space-time-continuum! [Sung as ZZ Top] The ranch hand is bored with the teens and returns to his home sweet shed.
Later, the teens start doing a ton of drugs and booze and Emmet or someone (dun dun dun) arrives and starts murdering everyone. They are pretty gruesome deaths and it does border on torture porn at one point, which makes sense because it was written around 2004/2005 when Hostel was all the rage. Even though people aren’t returning, all of the guys continue to try to make out with Mandy in the creepiest ways possible. Mandy Lane has 20 lines of very bland dialogue total in the film and there is a slight twist at the end that fails to thrill.
What bugged me about this film is that horror is always treated as the Red-Headed Stepchild of film. Everybody seems to think the genre is easy to write and do and this film is proof that both of those assumptions are false. First, you need to at least have some sympathy for the people getting killed. Second, you need to explain in someway at the halfway why they don’t just leave. In this film, it’s not clear why the dudes want Mandy to stay at the halfway point of the film when it’s clear that she’s not interested in any of them. Third, the camera work and direction to pull you into the house and into the story to ratchet up tension; otherwise, it’s just boring.
I’m glad that Jonathan Levine found his voice soon after this. Amber Heard did a fair enough performance for what she had to work with. There was good performance by Melissa Price, but from IMDB, it appears that this film probably tanked her career. In any case, I’m crazy excited that October is here!!!
About 20 years ago, a friend and I walked out of a movie theatre for some pizza. On the way to the Pizzeria, I raved about the movie we just watched. The effects were awesome, and the main character was bad ass. My friend didn’t share the same sentiment, and over the dinner, he went on to explain everything that was wrong with the film. Bad CGI (for its time), 2 Dimensional Characters, and a pretty simplistic plot. By the end of my dinner, all of my joy was sucked away. I wanted to believe, deep down that I walked into a quality production, but there was so much room for improvement.
Through the Shattered Lens 