LITERAL REMAINS

Today I have to recommend one of the best movies ever, The Innocents.

A governess, Miss Giddens, is hired by a socialite to care for his orphaned niece and nephew at Bly House, his country mansion.  They will be her sole responsibility while he will continue to reside in the city.  When Miss Giddens arrives, she finds the children in need of love and attention from other than just the wait staff.  There uncle has no interest in providing it, but Miss Giddens is more than pleased to fill the role.

As her time passes at the Gothic Bly House, Miss Giddens’ days are filled with looking after the children and providing them with an education.  It isn’t long until the secrets of Bly House begin to manifest themselves, and Miss Giddens begins to see apparitions.  She believes them to be the spirits of the previous governess, Miss Jessel, and Miss Jessel’s lover, the valet Quint.  As the ghostly sights and sounds continue, Miss Giddens comes to believe that the tragic souls of her predecessor and the valet, who both died under questionable circumstances, are trying to possess the children.

The Innocents brims with a certain eeriness.  Every time I watch it, the scene in which Miss Giddens believes she sees the apparition of Miss Jessel at the pond always gives me chills.  I say ”believes”, because it is left for us, the audience, to decide whether it’s a true haunting, or just a case of the governess going mad.

Released in 1961, the film is shot in beautiful black and white, and it creates its suspense from sounds and imagery.  This is the definitive psychological horror movie.  It is based on Henry James’  The Turn of the Screw, and its screenplay, co-written by Truman Capote, won an Edgar Award.  The Nicole Kidman chiller, The Others, gained inspiration from this movie, but Kidman can’t hold a candle to the late Deborah Kerr.

The Innocents is one of the great ones.

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Is Grace weird?  Yeah.  Is Grace unsettling?  Yeah, in places, but it may be more so from the male perspective.  If you’re tired of some of the dumb horror offerings of late, then you need to see this movie.  Graceis the kind of movie you just have to watch, and it will mean different things to different people.  What I took away from it will, most likely, be different than what a lot of others will perceive.  Whatever it is, despite it’s few shortcomings, it’s good.

Michael and Madeline Matheson are in an automobile accident.  Madeline is pregnant and not far from her due date.  The accident kills Michael, and their unborn child.  Madeline decides to carry the baby to full term, utilizing a midwife and rejecting modern hospital birthing.  When Madeline gives birth to her stillborn daughter, a miracle happens:  after holding her child, the baby begins to breathe and cry.  Madeline names her Grace.

It’s not long before Madeline discovers some peculiarities to her new baby.  Grace has a smell about her.  Grace attracts flies.  Oh, one other thing, Grace can only tolerate blood.  Human blood.  It’s poor Madeline left alone to suffer, literally bleeding for her child.

Luckily, there’s Vivian, Madeline’s nosy, bossy, mother-in-law.  Vivian has some issues all her own; one can fairly say they are serious issues.  The idea of her only grandchild living alone with Madeline (to whom she never gave the stamp of approval anyway) doesn’t gel with her.  Vivian sets into motion a plan to have Madeline deemed unfit, thanks to Vivian’s doctor friend, and thus delivering Grace into her caring, motherly, arms.

Grace has a clinical atmosphere that nearly alienates the audience from the characters.  It’s a hindrance at times, such as when Michael dies (you really don’t miss him, but after seeing his mother, you see where he gets it from).  But as Madeline bonds with Grace, so do we with the movie.  It’s not perfect, writer/director Paul Solet has a tendency to show off a little too much, creatively, with the camera.  But overall, this is a rare, smart, find in a genre teeming with lousy remakes and endless, idiotic, sequels.

4 out of 5
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It is October the First.  We are well on our way to Halloween folks, and in case you don’t know:  all of us here at Literal Remains LOVE Halloween.  I’m not sure at what point Halloween switched from honoring the souls of the departed in our society and became synonymous with horror, but there you have it.  It has really and truly traveled far from its roots.

But the reason I’m here today talking with you, is that I thought it would be fun to have this countdown to Halloween.  I got the idea a while back from this blog Horror Movie A Day; this fan watches a horror movie every day and reviews it.  My hats off to that blogger.  So, I thought it being October, I would recommend a horror movie (or film in like vein) each day of the month.  It would, of course be a movie I adore (or at least like enough to recommend), and I thought, just to make me think a little, it would have to be one I’ve not reviewed or recommended under the Buried Treasures and Guilty Pleasures category.  I also, just probably, will include a story or book or two also on this countdown.

So lets begin shall we….

For the inaugural October Countdown to Halloween, I have to recommend Dog Soldiers.  Simply put, Dog Soldiers kicks ass.

A squad of British soldiers are in the Scottish Highlands in war games against a Special Forces unit.  They find the Special Forces unit slaughtered, all dead but their commander.  The squad rescue him, learning there is something else out and about, and they have to haul out of there right then because it’s coming for them.

The things coming for them, naturally, are werewolves.  The squad find themselves temporarily saved by a local woman and then trapped in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere with the vicious werewolves circling them, trying to make the soldiers their evening meal.

Dog Soldiers was written and directed by Neil Marshall, who would go on to make the practically perfect The Descent and the silly, yet fun, Doomsday.  What Marshall and his team created with Dog Soldiers is a classic movie, timeless, fun, and thrilling.  It doesn’t get any better than this; if you’re looking for a good movie, be it action or horror, you have got to watch it.  Every horror fan should have this in their DVD library.

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While babysitting the neighbor’s kids, Casey finds the young son holding a mirror to the infant’s face.  Casey tells the little boy to stop; he tells her “Jumby wants to be born now,” and then hits Casey with the mirror.  The next day, on her jog, Casey discovers an ambulance at the neighbor’s house.  The baby has died.  As Casey’s friend, Romy, informed her:  it’s bad luck for infants to see their reflections before turning a year old.

The hit the little boy gave Casey has injured her eye, discoloring it.  She is also having hallucinations.  She sees a doctor who informs her it is quite normal (the discoloration; she keeps the hallucinations quiet), it happens with twins, or the surviving twins.  It’s all news to her.  Casey learns from her father (her mother committed suicide in a hospital when Casey was a baby) that Casey had a twin brother who died in the womb.  It makes sense:  Casey has been seeing a little boy, and she believes it’s Jumby.

While searching through her mother’s things, Casey is lead to a woman named Sofi.  Turns out, Sofi, a Holocaust survivor, is actually Casey’s grandmother and the little boy haunting Casey is Sofi’s brother whom she killed in the concentration camp when they were children.  They were twins, and Nazis experimented on twins, which led to Sofi’s brother’s death.  But a dybbuk possessed her brother.  Sofi then proceeded to kill him.  A dybbuk, according to Jewish folklore, is an evil soul trying to enter into the living world, again, by any means necessary, mainly through possession of human vessels.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit I waited so long about seeing this movie because I thought it would be a load of crap.  It’s not so bad.  It has an interesting story going on, and a strong visual sense, but little else.  The Unborn feels kind of thrown together and half planned; it kind of short changes you in the story development.  But it’s entertaining, if rushed to get to the jumps.

The shining star of this little vehicle, other than the dog with the upside-down head, is Gary Oldman as Rabbi Sendak.  Oldman is good in every scene (no matter how ridiculous the scene), as if he stopped by from a different, better, movie.

The Unborn is a mishmash of The Exorcist and just about every other possession movie out there, but the Jewish angle was nice touch.  It’s not the best movie, but it’s better than some of the other crap that crowds the shelves.

3 out of 5
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Okay, so the other day I happened upon this article about this video game called The World Ends With You, and I thought “Wow! that’s a great title!”  It sounds like a U2 song, or something by The Cure.  I guess if it were a U2 song, though, it would be Your World Ends With Me.  I’m just kidding, relax, Frankie.

Anyway, I thought that was a great title.  So I wrote this really short, uh, short story and I called it, you guessed it, “The World Ends With You”.  It’s rather quite a lovely piece.  Or it could be just plain crap, but I don’t think it’s as bad as all that.

Enjoy.

J.
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Emerald O’Brien is a single mother of two, has a good relationship going with a younger guy, and owns her own business, the Chintz ‘n China Tea Room, in Chiqetaw, Washington.  Emerald also happens to be considered the town witch.  She sees ghosts, communes with her dead grandmother, and has a penchant for finding trouble, most times in the form of “astral beasties” and dead bodies.

When Emerald’s boyfriend, Joe, buys the plot of land next to her own, they discover what used to be a basement underneath all the woodland growth.  A house used to stand there, they learn later, that burned down fifty years ago under mysterious circumstances.  They find a sealed bedroom, and a journal belonging to a young woman named Brigit.  It isn’t long that Brigit’s ghost begins appearing to Emerald and her kids, Will o’ the Wisps float over the ruins of the basement, and ,somehow, Emerald’s cat and Brigit’s ghost cat trade places.

I may not be the best person to review this book.  I’ve never really read what would be considered “chick lit”.  I don’t think I have anyways.  A Harvest of Bones is okay, but it has a lot of…I don’t know if I would call it earnestness to it, or just plain, flat out, melodrama.

In my review of Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein, I said it felt like a Lifetime movie with Gothic window dressing.  My apologies.  That book was more USA Original Movie material.  This Harvest book here, it has Lifetime written all over it.  And a movie of it might be enjoyable; it has some enjoyable moments within its pages.  But it would be the kind of movie that’s filmed mainly in close-ups, to get that emotional impact.  Of course, it lacks any emotional impact, but I don’t think it was written for that, it was written for entertainment purposes only.  It half succeeds.

A Harvest of Bones isn’t anything heavy, it’s cheesy and hammy and I’m sure there is a lot worse out there on the shelves.  The mystery is ho-hum, and the characters are interesting enough whenever they’re not grating on the nerves.  It’s in the realm of the supernatural where the book is most charming and intriguing; it’s when it wallows in the real world that it falls flat.

2.5 out of 5
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So Joel Schumacher’s latest film Blood Creek has been dumped into a handful second-run and two-dollar theatres by Lionsgate without so much as a peep of notice. It’s a wonder then how it got itself such a badass poster art.

Blood Creek (as it is now known) stars Dominic Purcell, Henry Cavill, and Michael Fassbender. The movie opens in 1936 during the height of the Nazis’ power, then brings us into modern times with the ghosts of the past coming back to haunt today’s world.

Mabon / Autumnal Equinox, our next sabbat on the 22nd of September, is the second of three harvest holidays. A traditional practice is to walk wild places and forests, gathering seed pods and dried plants. Some of these can be used to decorate the home, others saved for future herbal magick. The making of corn dollies which represent the harvest mother goddess is common. These traveled with the last loads of grain harvested. It is said the spirit of the mother goddess resides in the last sheaf of grain left uncut and was treated with respect or fear. As the nights grow crisp, autumn arrives..

The Autumnal Equinox, or 2nd Harvest, is celebrated.
A time when darkness overtakes light, the days become shorter.  The Druidic Alban Elued, the light of the water is celebrated.  This is also the Weavers festival, where magickal knots are tied in ritual.  Pagans see this as a time when the God loses his strength while the Goddess watches her dying mate in both sorrow and joy.  (from The Inner Sanctum of Wicca and Witchcraft)

The holiday of Autumn Equinox, Harvest Home, Mabon, the Feast of the Ingathering, Meán Fómhair or Alban Elfed (in Neo-Druidic traditions), is a ritual of thanksgiving for the fruits of the earth and a recognition of the need to share them to secure the blessings of the Goddess and God during the winter months. The name Mabon was coined by Aidan Kelly around 1970 as a reference to Mabon ap Modron, a character from Welsh mythology.  In the northern hemisphere this equinox occurs anywhere from September 21 to 24. In the southern hemisphere, the autumn equinox occurs anywhere from March 19 to 22. Among the sabbats, it is the second of the three harvest festivals, preceded byLammas/Lughnasadh and followed by Samhain.  (from Wikipedia)

Stir together Dr. Frankenstein, his most famous monster, a serial killer, a sideshow freak, two homicide detectives, and the mad doctor’s new race of creatures that he hopes will replace us regular humans and what do you get?  Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein Book One:  Prodigal Son.  Whew.  That’s a helluva title right there, Sonny Jim.  Too bad it’s not a helluva a book.

There’s pulp, there’s good pulp, there’s bad pulp, and then there’s Dean Koontz.  And Kevin J. Anderson assisting with this one.  It’s proper there are two authors, I guess, because there’s enough plot for them both, and then some.

Deucalion, the original monster, is called from the Tibetan monastery he’s been living in to go to New Orleans.  The good doctor, now a creature of his own design, has set up shop there under a new name and has started a biological research company and has infiltrated New Orleans high society.  Deucalion arrives to stop him.

There is also a serial killer on the loose in New Orleans.  This demented guy has been collecting parts from women to make the perfect mate.  He has collected a few internal organs from men, as well, for some unknown reason.  Trying to stop this fun guy are detectives Carson O’Connor and her partner Michael Maddison, her sometime lover.  Carson has a little brother who is autistic, which figures into the plot because Dr. Frankenstein has a kid named Randall Six (if I remember correctly) who believes himself to autistic.

There are also some renegade creations revolting against their programming, thus enraging Dr. Frankenstein.

Told ya, there’s a lot here.  And it might be best to judge this series, like a lot of others, on the entirety of the work.  But from this first book, by golly, I don’t want to read the succeeding three.

Prodigal Son has its interesting moments, but they are all too brief.  When I wanted to know more, the authors abandoned the threads.  It breezes right along, but never delves deep enough to matter; for such complex characters, the story is rather simple.  And the buddy cop portion of the story is filled with too many bad jokes.  Hammy and unfunny.

And I’m not screaming blasphemy for what Koontz has done to Mary Shelley’s baby.  I was looking forward to the new take on the timeless tale.  There are some fascinating ideas going on, but Prodigal Son doesn’t stand-out and never quite shakes the feeling of being a trussed up Lifetime Television movie with cheap Gothic window dressing.

2.5 out of 5
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It’s true, Summer is fast drawing to a close.  But, it’s almost Fall.  Who doesn’t love Fall?  The wheel of the year goes round and round, round and round, round and round.

This poem I just posted, “A Mystery”, is pretty much about Fall as it is about…nunya.

It’s a post, so, it should please the boss lady.

Peace.

J.
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A Mystery

I’ve been watching the light fade,
watching as Summer slowly ebbs away;
the katydids are singing, thirty days ’til frost.
We better bring in the harvest, or what
these hearts planted will surely be lost.

So, are we right, or are we so very wrong?
Some hearts take time to cultivate, and
some, like mine, take so long to thaw,
but once set aflame are as alive as
the nerves of Nature in the raw.

Day becomes less while the night grows stronger,
the wheel of the year still continues.
The world is full of miracles and wonders,
like the Autumn sky painted in its hues,
but my favorite mystery of all remains you.

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In the summer of 1958, two young counselors, identified only as Barry and Claudette, were murdered at Camp Crystal Lake, a summer camp in New York State.  Their murderer was one Pamela Voorhees, camp cook and grieving mother who blamed her son’s death the previous year on the two amorous young adults.  The camp closed after the double homicide, and various attempts in the ensuing years to reopen it were thwarted by Pamela Voorhees until it was partially revived in 1979 with disastrous results.

Pamela’s son, Jason, born physically deformed, and most likely mentally handicapped, in 1946, died in the tragic accident at Crystal Lake.  A lonely child, with little to no contact outside the family unit (practically nothing is known of his father and siblings), Jason was teased and tormented by the other children at the camp.  The derision from the other campers led to Jason falling into the lake and, apparently, drowning (his body was never recovered).

Mrs. Voorhees soon learned that the counselors who were supervising the children at the time, Barry and Claudette, had secreted away to satisfy their teenage lusts.  Pamela later returned and slaughter the two counselors.

Having been closed for several years, and failing to open anew, Camp Crystal Lake was given the moniker “Camp Blood” by locals.  In 1979, Steve Christy intended to open the camp once more for area youths; his parents had owned the camp at one time in years passed.  Pamela Voorhees infiltrated Camp Crystal Lake one last time in retribution, murdering Steve Christy and six of the young adults he had hired as counsellors for the summer.  One counsellor, Alice Hardy, managed to not only survive Mrs. Voorhees’ rampage, but Alice killed Pamela in a defiant act of self-defense.  Alice decapitated the charging Pamela.

When the authorities were finally alerted and arrived, Alice was found unconscious in a canoe floating in the middle of the lake.  Once aroused in the hospital, Alice told authorities that a boy rose out of the lake to attack her, at which point she lost consciousness.  Upon a preliminary search, the police reported no boy being found.  It was speculated that Alice had hallucinated the surfacing boy, or had dreamed it.  If it had been Jason Voorhees, he would have been a grown man, but for the child to have survived in the wild to adulthood was believed impossible.

Two months after surviving the latest, and all hoped last, Camp Blood massacre, Alice Hardy was found murdered in her apartment.  She had been killed with an ice pick.  Jason Voorhees is believed to be the culprit.  After the murder of Pamela Voorhees, Jason sightings began.  It is believed that he witnessed the murder of his mother, and that that incident has triggered an unprecedented homicidal rampage.

The people of Crystal Lake avoid the former campgrounds, which now stands in ruins.  Subsequent attempts to open the camp since the murder of Steve Christy and his employees have ultimately met with failure.  Jason Voorhees is the reason.  Time after time, Jason resurfaces long enough to stop campers and trespassers from what has become his home.  The residents of Crystal Lake know to avoid the old camp, and the surrounding woods, and advise tourists and sightseers to do likewise.  Over the years Jason has been stopped, but death seems to be a mild hindrance, a small inconvenience, to Jason Voorhees.

The people of Crystal Lake do not know if Jason is really dead.  They pray he is, but live as if he still stalks the night.

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thanks to Wikipedia and Horror Film Wiki

Fount Royal, a small, newly formed, town in the Carolinas of 1699 has a few problems:  two murders, disastrous crops, fleeing citizens, and random arson.  Luckily, especially for Robert Bidwell, the founder, who hopes to make it a port city, the cause of all the problems is in the jail awaiting trial.  The problem is Rachel Howarth.  A witch.  A beautiful woman of Portuguese stock, which is hated in Fount Royal almost as much as the Indians and the Spaniards down south in Florida.  Rachel is accused of witchcraft, of having unholy relations with the devil which has been witnessed by very reliable citizens (one of whom is a child).  One of the murdered was Rachel’s husband, so it’s just one big mess.

Enter magistrate Isaac Woodard and his young clerk, Matthew Corbett.  They are sent to hold court and judge if Rachel is truly a witch, and, if found guilty, the nature of her sentence, e.g., execution.  The entire town has already decided that Rachel is a witch, and they are itching to burn her at the stake.  Investigating the case isn’t easy with all the animosity, and with the judgement already passed in the citizens’ minds.  It doesn’t help that Rachel is not cooperative with Woodard and Corbett, or that she refuses to recite the Lord’s Prayer.  Inability to say the Lord’s Prayer is one sign of a witch.  (I’m doing my best to remember it myself; does anyone else’s tongue burn?).

Speaks the Nightbird, which first hit book stores back in 2002, was Robert McCammon’s return to publishing after a ten year respite.  It’s the first in his Matthew Corbett series, with the third due late this year.  It’s an exhaustive book, but one worth reading.  It was my first McCammon experience, and I wish I had discovered him sooner.

McCammon brings colonial life to, uh, life.  It’s a meticulous book, sharp in detail, right down to the very last chamberpot and tricorn.  There are times I wished the story would move forward a little quicker, but even the diversions have a purpose in Speaks the Nightbird.  It’s a hefty, twisting, mutha, easy to get lost in its world, and once it was over, I wanted to go back.  It was just so darn interesting.  Finely wrought, expertly conceived and executed.

I will definitely be reading the rest of the series.

4 out of 5
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