I’m in a dense, completely unfamiliar and frankly kind of foreboding, forest, very little daylight penetrating through the thick overgrowth, mysterious and even pained animal calls filling the oppressively humid air — except when I begin to follow one of them to its source, I find it’s not an animal call at all, but instead the sound of a smoking, malfunctioning piece of industrial machinery, and that I’m not in a forest as I had thought, but rather in a dilapidated, disused, crumbling factory.
All of which probably a) tells you more about the hopelessly warped contents of my id than you ever cared to know, and b) doesn’t have a whole ton to do with the comic we’re here to talk about, Anders Nilsen’s Tongues #2. Except —
In my dream, I find out that I’m not where I thought I was, and…
There’s no road map for this series. It eschews all comparison, not so much as a matter of design or intent, but simply because cartoonist Richard Alexander pays absolutely no heed to anyone else’s arbitrarily-imposed “rules” and, as a result, his Richy Vegas Comics is utterly without peer — and frankly even belies very little by way of outside influence. It is the product of a singular aesthetic vision, and speaks in its own self-created visual language.
Which probably sounds like a real mouthful when describing what is ostensibly “yet another” autobio comic. But don’t let’s categorize this so simply. Alexander, after all, operates in a format no one else does — he literally draws on paper plates, and the end result is oversized, spiral-bound comics that engage in a type of hermetically-sealed storytelling specifically suited to this particular format. Each page, in fact, is a self-contained “universe” unto itself, even…
If there’s one thing I find suspect about any number of autobio/memoir comics, it’s how specific they tend to be. On the one hand, of course, I get it : the impetus to cobble together disjointed instances and events into a cohesive, “A-to-B” narrative is natural enough, and logic dictates that it makes for interesting, even compelling, reading. Accuracy be damned, as long as the general gist of things is presented more or less as it happened, that’s the important thing, right? And yet —
Memory doesn’t really work that way, does it? Specifics get lost over time, while the overall character of a given memory tends to swell, even magnify. Events that followed tend to “backtrack” and inform the way we remember things that came before. Time-frames get muddled. People do and say things they possibly never did. The past takes on a dreamlike quality the further we get…
There’s no nice way to put it, but deep in our hearts we all know it to be true : when we’re dead, we’re fucking worm food. We’ve got entire belief systems centered on convincing us that’s not the case, of course, and selling life after death is a multi-billion-dollar industry, but ask the most devout Christian/Muslim/Jew/Hindu/whatever, in their most sincere moment, whether or not their faith is any sort of guarantee, and they’ll admit it’s not — and that they just sorta hope they’re right.
Now, whether or not there’s a “God” is another question, and probably one you’re not interested in knowing my opinion on, but fortunately we’re not here to talk about my conception of what the creator of the universe is or isn’t like, may or may not be, etc. — nor how he/she/it runs this whole “afterlife” thing — we’re here to talk about…
What better way to wrap up Halloween and Horrorthon than with an AMV of the Day?
Anime: Owari no seraph, Vampire Knight, Shiki, Another, Vassalord, Corps Party, Future Diary, Tokyo Ghoul, Deadman in the wonderland, When they cry, Akame ga kill, danganronpa, Shiki
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking.
For our final 4 Shots From 4 Films of this October season, we pay tribute to William Henry Pratt, the patron saint of horror cinema, with….
When we first meet Nadja (Elina Löwensohn), the title character of this odd, 1994 film, she is walking around New York, wearing a cape and picking up men in bars. She speaks with a thick, Eastern European accent and when she’s asked what she does, she explains that she comes from an old and very wealthy Romanian family. As we quickly guess, Nadja has lived for centuries. She’s a vampire, a daughter of Count Dracula. Everything she says and everything she does is drenched in the ennui of someone who wishes to be set free but who knows she is destined to live forever in the prison of her existence. Even when she has visions of her father getting a stake through the heart, it doesn’t provide her with the relief for which she was hoping.
It probably won’t come as a surprise to learn that it was a member of the Helsing family that drove the stake through Dracula’s heart. However, having killed the vampire, Van Helsing (Peter Fonda) finds himself in trouble with the police. Apparently, the cops don’t believe Van Helsing when he insists that he was just killing a vampire. As far as they can tell, Van Helsing just killed a man with a sharp piece of wood. Fortunately, Van Helsing’s nephew, Jim (Martin Donavon), also lives in New York and can bail his uncle out of jail.
While Jim is dealing with his uncle, Nadja is meeting a woman in a bar, a woman named Lucy (Galaxy Craze). Both Lucy and Nadja feel empty and unfulfilled. Lucy, who happens to be married to Jim, is soon inviting Nadja back to her home and becoming obsessed with her. However, Nadja is more concerned with her brother, Edgar (Jared Harris). Edgar lives in Brooklyn with his lover and nurse, Cassandra (Suzy Amis). When Nadja visits Edgar, she decides to take Cassandra away from him. Of course, Cassandra just happens to be Van Helsing’s daughter and Jim’s cousin!
Nadja is an odd film. On the one hand, it’s pretentious in the way that only a mid-90s, New York art film can be. Director Michael Almereyda shot the majority of film at night and a good deal of it with a PXL-2000, which was basically a toy video camera that was specifically marketed to children. As a result, the black-and-white images are usually dark and grainy. Sometimes, it’s a bit of struggle to tell just what exactly is happening on-screen. And yet, at the same time, it kinda works. Those hazy images, combined with the largely deadpan performances of the cast, give the film an undeniably dream-like feel. When we see Nadja walking through the city, we feel her ennui and otherworldly presence. At its best, the film achieves a hypnotic visual beauty. If ever there was an American city that benefits from being filmed in grainy black-and-white, it’s New York City.
The film plays out like a satire of the typical decadent vampire film. (Nadja even has a Renfield of very own.) Nadja is so obviously a vampire that it’s impossible not to be amused by the fact that hardly anyone else seems to pick up on it. However, the film’s most subversive element is Peter Fonda’s performance as Van Helsing. With his long hair and a demented gleam in his eye, Fonda totally upends all our assumptions about who someone named Van Helsing should be.
In many ways, Nadja plays out like an elaborate inside joke but it’s just strange enough to always be watchable. David Lynch, whose influence is obvious, has a cameo as a morgue attendant and he feels right at home. This deadpan vampire film many not be for everyone but then again, few worthwhile films are.
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking.
Today, we pay homage to one of the most important horror directors of all time with….
4 Shots From 4 John Carpenter Films
The Fog (1980, dir by John Carpenter)
The Thing (1982, dir by John Carpenter)
In The Mouth of Madness (1994, dir by John Carpenter)
By the early 1950’s, the type of Gothic horrors Universal was famous for had become passe. It was The Atomic Age, and science fiction ruled the roost, with invaders from outer space and giant bugs unleashed by radiation were the new norm. But the studio now called Universal-International had one more ace up its collective sleeve: THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, last of the iconic Universal Monsters!
Scientist Dr. Maia, exploring “the upper reaches of the Amazon” with his native guides, discovers a fossilized hand that may be the evolutionary “missing link”. Taking his finding to the Institudo de Biologia Martima, he teams with ichthyologist David Reed, David’s pretty assistant/fiancé Kay Lawrence, institute chief Dr. Mark Williams, and fellow scientist Dr. Thompson to form an expedition. They charter the steamer The Rita, skippered by Captain Lucas, and head down the river into the Black Lagoon. Maia’s Indian guides…
If at first you at least partially succeed — then keep going! That seems to be the modus operandi of micro-budget horror filmmakers from Nigel Bach to Ryan Callaway to — shit, everyone in the game, right? You don’t have that much money you need to earn back from these things because they didn’t cost that much to make, obviously, but if you get a few months’ rent or mortgage payments in the can every time you put one out, then why not keep on keeping on?
Turner Clay is no exception, and since he probably recouped whatever “investment” of time and money that went into 2017’s The Blackwell Ghost, plus a little something extra for the effort, there was literally no reason for him not to go back to the well in 2018 and crank out The Blackwell Ghost 2. Amazon Prime picked up the first one, so…
Through the Shattered Lens 