LITERAL REMAINS

After The Howling II, me and the series parted ways.  I didn’t visit those hairy little darlings again for a long time.  The original, love it.  The second one, forget about it–I don’t call and we walk down opposite sides of the street to avoid meeting.

Smash-Cut to about five years ago.  I was convinced to watch The Howling V:  The Rebirth, and, I would confess this under oath of truth lest my eyes and tongue be forcibly removed–I liked it.

The Rebirth begins in the Middle Ages at a castle.  Everyone is gathered for a good time until a mass murder/suicide erupts and the bloodline is ended.  See, they be lycanthropes, and a select few think their reign must stop.  Their reign, their murderous, savage, ways, what have you, they put the brakes on it.  But not everyone is killed, a baby survives….

In the present day, that same Hungarian castle is opening for business.  It seems someone thinks tourists may find the history of it interesting enough to shell out some bucks and spend a few nights in the creepy old place.  The guests that arrive, though, have been invited; they were chosen for mysterious reasons which will be revealed later in the movie, so try to catch a copy of this one.  I don’t think I have to clue anyone to the fact that these guests start dying, one by one, in violent attacks.  The killer that stalks the halls of the castle may not even be human…but you probably knew that already.

The Howling V has distinct echoes of And Then There Were None…, and a bunch of other movies.  I have a friend who often suggests movies should be remade with a werewolf twist to them:  “Hey, dude, The Hound of the Baskervilles, but with a werewolf!”  That might could work…but somehow, it does here, oddly enough.

Of course, The Howling V:  The Rebirth (use a creepy voice to say it) ain’t no big budget affair.  It was released straight to video in the golden era of VHS (every time I type those letters, I get chills).  What it lacks in, shall we say, quality talent, it makes up for with some camp and fun at guessing who’s next and who’s the toothy one.  The castle is pretty cool, too.

the_novacula

Lets continue with a little more family fare this weekend.  If you can’t share the scare with the ones you love, who can you share it with?

Who Done It? isn’t a horror film, let me say that up front.  It’s a comedy mystery.  It’s Abbott & Costello; for that alone, you should watch it.

I grew up watching Bud and Lou.  One of the local syndicated channels beamed out of Nashville used to air Abbott and Costello double features on Saturday nights starting at midnight.  We used to stay up late and watch them.  They showed Bud and Lou after they stopped airing Elvira and Kung Fu Theater.  It wasn’t easy being mad, we did get to see Abbott and Costello, but we missed Elvira.

Who Done It? is my favorite Abbott and Costello movie.  Bud and Lou play soda jerks at the counter of a radio station; this was before television, and the radio station is like the size of the Empire State Building.  The guys want to break into the big time of radio broadcasting with their radio plays, hoping to write for their favorite program Murder At Midnight.  Well, murder does indeed happen at midnight, live on the air, and Bud and Lou decide it’s their chance to show what they’re made of:  they are going to solve the murder.

Like I said, it’s not a horror movie, but Who Done It? is a nice little mystery movie that’s safe for all ages.  It even has some excellently moody shots.  Plus it’s funny as all get out, especially Costello’s run-ins with an adolescent adversary who scams him at every opportunity.  The peek inside the world of radio dramas is interesting, in and of itself.  Can you imagine a world with no Internet, no cell phones, or IPods, or computers?  Can you imagine people using, what are they called, uh, a phone booth?  With a rotary phone?!

I may be wrong…it may be a glimpse into our horrifying past:)

the_novacula

Nothing goes with Halloween like good music.  The standard tunes of the season are “Monster Mash”, “Psycho” Theme, “Halloween” Theme, and the like.  Now, I do like some “Monster Mash” and “Funeral March of a Marionette”, but I thought I would put together a list of ten tunes that I feel have a certain disturbance to them.  Some of them are most blatant, but a couple of them, I think, you may not have guessed. True, they are not about Halloween, but I think they suit it to a certain degree. They are in no particular order–I’ll leave that up to you.

“Sympathy For the Devil”
The Rolling Stones
Beggars Banquet

“Jerry”
John Mellencamp
Mr. Happy Go Lucky

“The Howling”
Within Temptation
The Heart of Everything
 

“The Heart’s Filthy Lesson”
David Bowie
Outside

“Hell Hound On My Trail”
Robert Johnson
The Complete Recordings

“7 Days to the Wolves”
Nightwish
Dark Passion Play

“Cryptorchid”
Marilyn Manson
Antichrist Superstar

“I Put a Spell On You”
Marilyn Manson
Smells Like Children

“Just Like You Imagined”
Nine Inch Nails
The Fragile

“Heartbreak Hotel”
John Cale
The Island Years

the_novacula

Today I thought I would suggest something the whole family can enjoy:  The War of the Worlds.

I was in middle school when I first saw The War of the Worlds (1953).  I can remember sitting in my seventh grade English class watching the sequence at the dance hall when the power fails.  It disturbed me.  For some reason it really bothered me that people’s watches all stopped.  Along with the phones and one man’s hearing aid.  There’s a tension there, knowing the aliens are among us and the people of Pine Summit are none the wiser.  Communication breakdown, baby–we bein’ invaded!  Back in the seventh grade, I really didn’t know much about metaphors or Communism, I just knew it freaked me out a little bit.  The rest of the day I kept checking my watch to make sure it was still ticking.  Looking back, I think a couple of my teachers may have been Communists.  A few, for sure, were Sadists.

In case anyone doesn’t know the story of The War of the Worlds (it should be vocalized in a big booming voice), it is based on the H. G. Wells novel concerning a Martian invasion.  The 1953 film (better than the 2005 interpretation) moves Wells’ story from good old Victorian England to, you know, 1953  southern California.

A meteorite lands in Pine Summit.  Before you can say ZAP! the big rock from the sky opens up and the Martian machines come forth firing off their death rays.  People are fried, women scream, men look tough and shoot back, and it’s all done in that wonderful Fifties fashion.  The military arrives, they drop atomic bombs on the darn things and that doesn’t kill them.  It’s a mad free-for-all as people take flight from the roving killer space invaders.

The War of the Worlds (big booming voice) was filmed in beautiful Technicolor, and although you can see the wires on the hovering Martian machines (thank you DVD clarity), it doesn’t diminish what a great movie this is.  This movie zips along, never missing a beat, and still has time for romance, comedy, thrills, chills, spills, battles, looting, and a race against time.

Switch off the lights and pile the family on the couch.  The movie is about to begin….

the_novacula

Christine is a loan officer in a bank.  She has a boyfriend named Clayton.  She tries to always to do the right thing, think on the positive side of life, but Christine is having a tough go at things.  Life seems to be one pile driver after another.

First off, she is in line for a promotion as assistant manager.  Her obstacle is Stu, also competing for the promotion.  Stu is an ass kisser, and does his best to make Christine look bad in front of the boss.  Secondly, Clayton’s mother doesn’t approve of her, and the woman hasn’t even met her.  Plus, in an effort to prove her mettle at work, Christine pissed off an old gypsy woman who put a curse on her, now an evil spirit called the Lamia is tormenting the poor girl.

Momma said there’d be days like this.  Momma said.

That damn Lamia is a persistent cuss, too.  As is the old gypsy woman, who dies after cursing Christine; her spirit haunts the amiable loan officer as well.  Luckily, Christine seeks the help of spiritual advisor Rham Jas.  Sadly, Rham Jas can only do so much; he enlists the help of a medium, Shaun San Dena, who fought the Lamia forty years ago and lost.  Mrs. San Dena is ready for a rematch.

Drag Me To Hell is The Evil Dead‘s little sister.  That’s the best I can say about the movie.  I felt director/writer Sam Raimi was trying to be Sam Raimi; in going back to his roots, so to speak, he had the formula but not the magic.  Drag is derivative, and it plays too long.  Leading lady Alison Lohman is bland, and the medium wasn’t even really needed.  Some of the jokes work, some don’t; by the end of the movie, though, it all was just a little too silly.

If you’re a fan of Raimi, as I am, you are going to watch this movie no matter what, and you know what to expect.  Maybe I expected more.  I definitely expected better.

2.5 out of 5
the_novacula

Werner Herzog’s 1979 Nosferatu the Vampyre is a remake of F. W. Murnau’s original silent masterpiece.  Remake.  Homage.  Classic.  It shares a lot with the original, Herzog even recreated some of Murnau’s shots.  But it’s Klaus Kinski who seems to be Max Schreck reincarnated as the Count.

Estate Agent Jonathan Harker travels to close a property deal with reclusive Transylvanian nobleman Count Dracula.  It takes him nearly month to travel the route, and along the way Harker traverses some rather rough and primitive countryside.  He is warned to turn back, to not continue because the castle and the Count are evil.

Harker continues, though, and upon seeing Count Dracula for the first time, he probably wishes he had heeded the advice of the nay-sayers.  Count Dracula is bald, rodent looking, with long fingernails and in serious need of some sun.  Harker’s host is so disturbing, he even haunts the estate agent’s dreams.  In fact, nearly everyone involved with the deal is losing their fragile little minds:  back home, Harker’s boss, Renfield goes crazy and is committed.  And Harker’s honey, Lucy, has nightmares of doom of her own.

When Harker discovers his host sleeping in a coffin, it pretty much confirms the local legend of vampires.  But he’s in no position to stop the Count who eventually arrives in Wismar, Germany (Harker’s hometown) with Harker hellbent to stop him.

At first the people of Wismar think the plague has descended upon them, but it’s just the good Count feeding.  Throw in 11,000 rats and you got a good movie.

Kinski steals the show in this thing, and ramps the eerie factor up to eleven.  As creep-inducing as he makes the Count, we still feel the loneliness and hopelessness that deteriorates him, gaining our sympathies as he repulses us.  It’s an accomplished performance in an often overlooked film.

the_novacula

I just posted a new story, Souling, over in the short fiction.

When I was a kid, I loved Trick or Treating.  Being in the masses, going door to door, it was great.  It was also neat whenever we would turn down a street that didn’t receive so much traffic, or ending up on a section of the lane in which it seemed like it was just us and no one else.

I hope you like “Souling”.  It comes from a love of Halloween; really, it’s the most wonderful time of the year.  Hopefully, some day, I will be able to put all my love for it into a story and sit back and say, “Yeah, I wrote that,” and be able to close the book on the subject, for me anyway.  It’s something to strive towards.  “Souling” isn’t that story, not by a long shot.  But I do admit I wrote it, and I hope you have fun reading it.  I had fun writing it.

Enjoy.

J.
the_novacula

It’s been quite rainy here in Middle Tennessee.  It seems to have quit, for now, this afternoon.  So, I thought it would be a good day to suggest The Mist.

The Mist has a certain power to divide people.  Most everyone I know who has seen it either loves it or hates it.  I love it.  I think it’s one of the best Stephen King adaptations, and one of the best horror movies of the decade.  A lot of dislike by detractors is about the ending; I think it fits.

The morning after a destructive storm wreaks havoc on the community, David Drayton goes to the local general store with his son and next door neighbor.  David says goodbye to his wife, not knowing it would be the last time he would see her alive.  As they say their, unknowing, final salutations, they notice a mist moving across the lake.

While shopping for supplies and necessities, the mist rolls in, creating a whiteout.  There’s something in the mist.  Something unnatural, monstrous.  And there is evidence, and victims, to prove it.

The Mist is two things:  a good, old fashioned monster movie, and a portrait of the extremes we humans will go to under duress.  The stakes steadily increase in the grocery store, the suspense winds tighter and tighter, people grow tired and desperate and begin to break.  It’s one big pressure cooker.  Throw in all the monsters outside that want inside, and this movie is the perfect example of Horror realizing its full potential.

The performances are superb all around, great turns beyond the genre norm form Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Andre Braugher, and Jeffrey DeMunn.  The rest of the cast is filled out with so much talent it will blow your mind.  If you have the two-disc DVD, there is a second version of the movie in black and white, the way screenwriter/director Frank Darabont originally intended the film to be seen.

the_novacula

It is a health and safety law that funeral homes cannot resell used coffins to the general public.

I’ll buy a used car.  But a used coffin?  I have a thing about wearing someone elses underwear (if I don’t know them), so someone elses coffin?  I’d have to think about it, at least, but luckily when it comes to buying used coffins it’s more display models and scratch and dent sales.  That changes things. 

Actually, coffins aren’t sold (legally) that have held human remains.  Dead human is considered bio-hazard material once in the coffin.  What Coffin Couches does is buy those display models and the scratch and dent victims and they turn them into couches.

Très à la mode, I know.  How killer would it be to have one of those muthas sittin’ in the parlor when you entertain company?  “Oh, I was dying to have one; I’d have even killed for it.”  The only thing better would be to have your very own custom made coffin.

YES!  I found this place on the net (don’t ask why I was looking up coffins and caskets, I’m weird that way–like you’ve not looked, for shame, for shame, judging me like that), Coffin It Up, and they make custom coffins.  I know, why haven’t we already thought of this!?  And imagine my relief when I realized I could stop making my own.  Check out the Halloween coffin they made.

the_novacula

Drag Me to Hell
Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is on her way to having it all: a devoted boyfriend (Justin Long), a hard-earned job promotion, and a bright future. But when she’s forced to make a tough decision that evicts an elderly woman from her house, Christine becomes the victim of an evil curse. Now she has only three days to dissuade a dark spirit from stealing her soul before she is dragged to hell for an eternity of unthinkable torment. Director Sam Raimi (Spider-Man and The Evil Dead Trilogy) returns to the horror genre with a vengeance in the film that critics rave is “the most crazy, fun and terrifying horror movie in years!” (Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly).

Gnaw
According to official statistics, more than 210,000 ‘missing persons’ reports are filed every year. Some cases are never solved.  Now six friends head off to a country estate for a weekend of bonding, bed hopping and home-cooked feasts. But their good times go very bad when they encounter a clan of slaughter-happy psychopaths with expert skills in butchery and a ravenous hunger for teen-meat pies. What follows is a brutal battle for survival, complete with shocking carnage, killer twists, and graphic reasons to avoid UK cuisine forever. It’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the English countryside in this grisly debut from director Gregory Mandry that walks a knife’s edge between tongue-in-cheek humor and teeth-in-flesh terror. Bring a strong stomach and a hearty appetite: British horror is back with a vengeance!

Zombie Dearest
Unemployed comedy writer Gus Lawton (David Kemker) pushes his wife Deborah (Shauna Black) too far and finds himself chasing her across the country to the run-down house of her childhood. Faced with the choice of losing her or living by her plan, he gets busy fixing up the old place…starting with the septic tank. Just when he reaches his limit, Gus digs up the one thing he needs, a zombie (David Sparrow) who will do anything he says. For now anyway.

The Stepfather
Jerry Blake (Terry O’Quinn, ABC’s Lost) is a man obsessed with having the perfect “American Dream” life – including the house with the white picket fence in the suburbs, complete with an adoring wife and loving children. He believes he’s found it when he marries Susan Maine and becomes the stepfather to Susan’s 16-year-old daughter, Stephanie. But Stephanie gets an uneasy feeling when she is around Jerry with his Father Knows Best attitude – she can see that there is a darker side behind his cheerful exterior… Could she just be going through the typical teenager rebellion against her new stepfather, or could he be the same man who brutally murdered his family just one year earlier?

Futurama: The Complete Collection
The series and the movies.  Comic Con Exclusive includes all four volumes of Futurama, as well as 4 feature-length adventures: Bender´s Big Score, The Beast With A Billion Backs, Bender´s Game, Into the Wild Green Yonder all contained in a limited edition collectible Bender Head with a numbered letter from Matt Groening and David X. Cohen.

Imagine my surprise last week when I opened my e-mail and discovered I had received an electronic parcel from Zombo’s Closet of Horrors.  They have this series called Meet the Bloggers, and inquired if I would like to contribute.  Well, is the Pope Polish?  No, he’s German, but I wanted to write the article anyway.

So I wrote a few paragraphs about how I got into this Horror stuff, and about how much I like it.  Me likey.  Me likey horror a lot.  So, as of today, October Fourteen, the article is posted.  Read it here.  It will also recieve listing with Horror Blips, which is pee your pants cool.

A big thanks to John Cozzoli, Zombo himself, for allowing me to contribute to Meet the Bloggers.  All of us here at Literal Remains are thankful to you, and honored.

And I want to take the space right here, on behalf of KatieBella and myself, your humble novacula, to thank all of you who stop by this here little site and browse.  We don’t know you (write some comments, it will help us get to know you), but thank you for letting us put some of ourselves out there in Cyber-Vegas, those busy highways and side roads of the web.

Thanks.

J.
the_novacula

Call me wrong, twisted, demented, disturbed, whatever you want, but as a  friend (who shall remain nameless here, but she knows who she is) once commented, I seem to have a fascination with Leatherface.  Of course she threw in the word “unhealthy”, but that is splitting hairs.  At least I think it is.

A lot of people, probably some of you reading this little piece right now, didn’t like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre:  The Beginning.  I actually thought it was a decent effort, if a person can say that any film titled The Texas Chainsaw Massacre can be decent, but you know what I’m getting at.  I like it better than any of the original sequels to the original film.  Yeah, including TCM Part 2.

Here’s the story:  Brothers Dean and Eric are taking those back roads through Texas with their girlfriends, Chrissie and Bailey, before the bros have to leave for Vietnam.  They hit a cow (yes, a cow; it’s not that an isolated incident, see Rob Zombie’s Halloween IIif you don’t believe me) and their jeep ends up topsy-turvy.  Sheriff Hoyt, crazy Sheriff Hoyt, arrives and kidnaps the roughed up Dean, Eric, and Bailey.  Chrissie is hiding because Hoyt is crazy the split second he gets on the scene.  He takes them back home, which would be the Hewitt house.

Chrissie eventually finds herself at the Hewitt house thanks to Old Monty, with legs in this prequel, the tow truck driver.  While trying to spring her friends from the clutches of Thomas Hewitt, better known as the beloved Leatherface, she sees more than she cares to; namely, her friends being used and abused by the family.

There’s not a lot that differentiates The Beginning from the other films in the Texas franchise, but I think it’s well done for what it is.  It gives us Leatherface fanatics a little something to chew on with his history before he met the saw, although screenwriter Sheldon Turner doesn’t do justice to the backstory that Zombie did with Michael Myers.  That said, I still think it warrants a second viewing, or even a first, by fans and horror lovers in general.  Especially those who like it rough.

the_novacula

“This is the road to Potter’s Bluff.  There is no road out…”

The cozy little town of Potter’s Bluff is having to endure a series of gruesome murders.  The sheriff, Dan Gillis, is at a dead end as to the “why” and “who”.  Assisting him is the town’s coroner and mortician, Dobbs.  Both men try to unravel the mystery of why strangers to Potter’s Bluff are being killed in the most horrendous fashions.

What about the man Gillis acidentally hits in his vehicle?  The man runs away…leaving his arm in the truck grill.  Test results on the arm tissue indicate the man had already been dead for a month.  What the sheriff and the coroner don’t know is that the townsfolk are behind it.  Mobs of them gather and kill.  Shockingly, they record the killings on video and in photographs.  But why are the people of Potter’s Bluff doing this?  And is the sheriff’s own wife in on all the hack and slash and stabby stab?

To know that, my dear friends, you’ll have to watch this, almost, forgotten fright flick.

Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shushett, both of the mega classic Alien, wrote the screenplay for this creepy mystery/horror, and young Robert Englund is one of the townspeople.  This was Jack Albertson’s last film (he plays the coroner, Dobbs); you may best remember Albertson as Grandpa Joe from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

I bought this DVD a couple of years ago on a lark, and I’m glad I did, I wasn’t disappointed.  It’s a mixture of styles, going from quiet terror one minute to all out eye-gouging gore the next.  Dead & Buried should please most mystery fans, and especially those horror buffs who like their movies to go from a whisper to a scream.

the_novacula

The Other is another of those films that I stumbled upon while channel surfing.  It’s one more of those films that if I land on a channel and it’s playing, I have to stop and watch it.  A great movie does that to a person.

Set in the countryside of 1935 Connecticut, the story centers on 10 year-old twins Niles and Holland Perry.  They pass their summer days playing on the family farm.  It is all normal, at least on the surface.  The closer we delve into life on the farm, the more we learn some peculiar, even disturbing facts.

Niles is the good twin; Holland is mischievous, and often gets them into trouble.  The twins themselves have secrets, especially pertaining to one Prince Albert tobacco can; inside it is are items that Niles wants to give back to someone, or to dispose of entirely.  Holland tells him that it’s his, “I gave them to you, they’re yours now.”

The twins’ mother is a recluse.  She is in grieving, having yet to overcome the loss of her husband, the twins’ father.  Their grandmother, Ada, favors Niles, even teaching him the mental ability to project his mind outside himself, sending him at one point on a flight with a bird, enabling him to see the countryside.

It’s during this particular summer that a series of accidents may be more than that, they may be purposeful harm.  See, Holland likes practical jokes…even if they are deadly.

The Other is based on the acclaimed novel by Tom Tryon, who also adapted the script for the movie.  It was expertly directed by the great Robert Mulligan, director of To Kill a Mockingbird and Same Time, Next Year.  It’s the perfect appearances that mask the unknown that draw us in, and once the appearances are ripped away, we are left with shock and horror.

The late John Ritter stars as the twins’ brother-in-law; this was one of his first films.  The twins are played by Chris and Martin Udvarnoky, and are suited to their roles, sweetly and devilishly.

the_novacula

How about we make it a Johnny Depp weekend?

I can still remember the first time I saw Sleepy Hollow.  Sitting in the movie theater, glued to the screen.  I had drug my girlfriend at the time to the theater; she was sick with bronchitis or pneumonia or something, so she really didn’t want to be there, but I tuned her out.  She may have slept during the movie, or passed out, that parts all a little fuzzy.  But I, I, was wide awake.  And loving every second of it.

Sleepy Hollow differs wildly from the original story by Washington Irving (which I recommend everyone read).  In this Tim Burton directed version of events, Ichabod Crane is a police constable working in 1799 New York City.  As he is studied in the latest scientific investigative techniques, he is sent to the little village of Sleepy Hollow to investigate a series of grisly murders.  Once there, he is confronted with a townspeople steeped in superstition, believing themselves cursed by the long dead hessian mercenary, killed during the Revolutionary War, who haunts the Western Woods.

Sleepy Hollow is a tour de force mystery.  It’s not scary, but it plays up its horror roots; it’s a Hammer film in overdrive.  And this is what it looks like in my head most times.  I love this movie.

Johnny Depp is, without a doubt, a great actor, there are numerous films to attest to that.  He is good as Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbeantrilogy, but watch him here.  He has subtle mannerism that flesh Ichabod out; he can be outlandish, but the little facial twitches, the slight looks, that really bring the character to life.

This is my favorite Burton film, so if you’ve yet to watch this movie, I ask you, I beg you, I plead with you…see it.  Just check out the supporting cast:  Christina Ricci, Jeffrey Jones, Miranda Richardson, Michael Gambon, Ian McDiarmid, Richard Griffiths, Michael Gough, and Christopher Walken.  That’s reason enough to see it right there.

the_novacula