Tomorrow will be the last day to submit limericks (the poetic form so hot, they gave it its own magazine - see above) for the ANTSS Tricentpostiary contest. Already, regular commentators, first-time readers, and members of League of Tana Tea Drinkers have submitted. It's like there's a party in my email inbox and you – yes, mang, you! – are invited.
I know, I know. You've got work and families and crap and you just can't find the time. I respect that. But I'm telling you: Quit work, go home, kill the spouse, and sell the children into slavery, because you freakin' need to work on something to submit for this contest. It is that important.
You with me now? Good.
Here's the dealie, yo. Write a limerick summarizing the plot of any horror film. That's right: any film that floats your boat is okay with me. Then submit it with your name and address to my email at crwm44[insert "at" symbol here]yahoo[and here goeth the dot]com. I'll take no submissions after Wednesday and the winner will be announced Thursday. You can submit as many limericks as you please.
Now let's tackle some common questions people have about the ANTSS Tricentpostiary contest.
What do I get if I win?
Why, my good man (or woman), haven't you heard? You will be the proud recipient of The Mammoth Book of Best Horror Comics. Inside you'll find several hundred pages of horror comic goodness. Plus, the several hundred pages are carefully numbered and presented in order – so you'll never be lost while reading. The book is also presented in Mammoth's patented Rectagnlo-vision – suitable for use with most shelves and other name brand books storage systems.
Is this some kind of cult thing?
Good question. Unfortunately, we’ve been asked by our legal council to avoid directly addressing this issue. Let's just say that were not saying it might not completely be some kind of not cult thing.
What do I get if I don't win?
The solemn pride that is the possession only of those noble souls who, hearing the call of duty, answered it honorably. Even if their limericks weren't so hot.
Is it still authentic jerk if I use standard charcoal and not allspice wood?
Sure. Heck yeah. Why not? Don't let the purists give you a hard time. It's all good.
What do I get if I don't enter the limerick contest?
Naught but the bitter gall of shame. And infamy shall gnaw at the guts of your descendents even on to the seventh generation of the seventh generation. For reals. Best to simply enter and avoid such a dire fate.
So enter already!
ANTSS FUN FACT: There's an "Irish Town" section of Limerick, Ireland, which is sort of like having a Little China in Beijing.
In the following video, the Russian metal group ANJ (actually, their initials are Cyrillic letters I can't reproduce here, but that seems to be the commonly excepted English translation), a Conan-like Mikhail Gorbachev takes on hordes of Stalinist zombies who threaten the proles, here played by three top-heavy babes. Gorby dispatches these undead hardliners with his bare hands, his axe, a submachine gun, and laser beams that he can shoot from his freakin' eyes.
I don't know what's weirder about this video: the fact that it exists or the fact that is actually a clever and somewhat grim satire. The idea of the Commie hardliners being zombies is not particularly novel, but the band also takes a shot at the bandit capitalism that followed the Soviet collapse and the trashy materialism it has promoted. The "happy ending" is as absurd and strangely unfulfilling, if funny as heck. Like the best satires, there's plenty of folly to go around.
Perhaps I'm just a sentimental old fool, but I'm a sucker for charming obsessives. I read some story about a man who spends his life collecting, say, grains of rice shaped like the faces of famous politicians from the 19th century ("You're right, that does James Blaine, the Plumed Knight of Maine.") and I can't help but feel like all is right with the world.
This is why I'm tickled pink to announce that Fred, the mad genius behind the skull-obsessed Sweet Skulls blog, is now a card carrying member of the League of Tana Tea Drinkers. Fred covers the skull beat: any skulls, any wheres, any times. Skull-themed board games, EC-Era comic covers featuring skulls, jewelry, bizarre art objects, and, of course, ukulele-playing burlesque girls who wear singing skull bras (I kid you not); it's all grist for the Sweet Skulls mill. I've been sporting Fred's link on my sidebar for awhile now, 'cause I'm ahead of the curve that way. If you haven't already, go check it out.
Fred joins the League as member of what might be the most accomplished class of inductees ever. Along with Fred, the League welcomes John Muir.
"Holy shit!" you say. "John Muir - famed naturalist, father of the modern preservation movement, and one of the prime sources of American environmentalism - joined the League?"
No, John Kenneth Muir.
"Holy shit!" you say. "John Kenneth Muir, the man responsible for John Kenneth Muir's Reflections on TV/Film and author of several celebrated books on contemporary popular culture, including Best in Show: The Films of Christopher Guest & Company, The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi, and Horror Films of the 1970s."
Yep. That's the one.
"Wow. The League is really powering up."
I know.
"You're going to be completely outclassed."
I know. Don't rub it in. Wait 'till you get a load of the next guy: August Ragone, the brain behind the monster-tastic The Good, the Bad, and Godzilla. He's one of the best English-language writers on Japanese pop culture and penned the authoritative Eiji Tsububraya: Master of Monsters.
With John and August adding their respective greatness levels to the collective outstandingness of the LoTT-D ranks, I think I can safely say, without risk of overstatement, the League is without a doubt the very reason the Internet was invented. Welcome aboard, gents.
Perhaps, if we're nice to them, they'll join in our limerick contest. You can read the rules and submit a limerick at any time. Deadline is next Wednesday. The winner will be announced the following day. I've received several entries at this point, but it is still anybody's game. Don't let this become another one of those missed opportunities that haunts your troubled and sleepless nights. Submit today and take the first step in becoming the you that you always knew you could be.
Fellow LoTT-D member and Lawng Islinder Vince Liaguno, of Slasher Speak fame, has posted a link to a neato article by long-time ANTSS fave: the lovely and talented Sarah Langan (shown above). Langan is the author of The Keeper and The Missing. The title of her essay, though less darkly evocative than her novel titles, has the advantage of being extremely straightforward: "Why I Write Horror".
Here's some highlights.
Langan on her adoring public:
Since I began publishing fiction, a pattern has emerged. I'm asked one question above all others, and it happens at readings, at NYU where I go to school for Environmental Science, and when I visit my boyfriend's family in Maryland. Friends and strangers alike narrow their eyes when they learn what my book is about. They wonder if I'm playing a practical joke. Then they ask: Why do you write horror? What they really mean is: Are you mental or something?
Some find my subject matter titillating, but not for the reasons I'd like. I once dated a man who was disappointed to discover that my apartment wasn't filled with candles and S&M sex toys. I was a horror writer, after all; wasn't I supposed to be kinky? And if I wasn't kinky, then why was I slumming in a genre scaffolded by the appetites of freaks?
My first novel was recently published. For a long time I wasn't able to sell it. During those years that I was papering my walls with rejection slips, I was young, single, a graduate of Columbia University's M.F.A. program, and living in New York. Back then, everybody wanted to be the next Candace Bushnell or Melissa Bank. Agents I queried, when they were kind enough to reply, asked: Why are you writing this stuff? Do you have anything satiric or quirky, about dating?
Langan on the use of monsters:
When it works, horror gets as close to the veins of our emotions as any piece of literature is able. The monsters do not exist to frighten us, but to soothe us. Their existence reassures us that we are reading fiction. We've got a lifeline, in case the characters with which we are identifying drag us too far into uncomfortable emotional terrain. Our characters' screams are our own screams, but when we are done, we can relax, because none of it was real, right? Except, we can't stop thinking about the friends we met in those books. We hope that long after the stories ended, they lived happy lives. We hope they are okay. We hope we're okay, too.
As can be expected from Langan, it is good and thoughtful stuff.
But, wait! There's more!
Langan isn't the only person 'round here with the literary skills that pay the bills. Nosiree Bob! ANTSS is in the near-epileptic throws of a literary contest of titanic, nay, cataclysmic, nay, really big proportions! For those not in the know, get with the program by reading yesterday's post.
Now we've already got a couple of posts in, including one from lovely and talented Absinthe, the blogger extraordinaire behind Gloomy Sunday (see sidebar), that is too good to keep to myself (even though it technically isn't a limerick).
Screamers and Screamettes, I present Absinthe's positively Horacean "Ode to Dawn of the Dead."
I once knew a girl named Fran She got knocked up one day and then ran Then the dead came to life Oh the horror and the strife And away they went to the shopping center where they set up house and were much better Killing zombies with ease by the twos and the threes Just as cool as you please Then Roger who had tagged on for the ride - oh my he forgot his bag Got stuck in the truck with a zombie bad luck Bitten in the leg He then had to beg Please don't resist if I should happen to persist Just shoot me and be done Then go and have some fun Peter agreed And then did the deed Then the bikers appeared And did exactly what they all feared They ran amok and had very good luck Stephen got shot right on the spot Then forgot about the masses of rot And quickly became zombie chow Right there in the elevator - wow! Fran and Peter alone, now on their own, knew that they were prone So away did they fly so they would not die, waving bye in the sky so high Onwards they go - where we don't know Hopefully to some place better Where they will not fetter And maybe one day will get a red setter
Two words, my friends: Awe. Some.
Don't be left out of this literary revolution! The contest ends next Wednesday, folks. Chop chop! These limericks ain't going to write themselves!
This is the 300th post on And Now the Screaming Starts. To celebrate, I'm going to give away a free copy of the Mammoth Book of Best Horror Comics as reviewed in this very blog.
"Holy Sister Carmen Lupita Herrera Villanueva de la Vega Campuzano and her 1,000 yapping zombie Pomeranians! A free book! How can I ensure that I am the person who receives said book?"
Well, dearest reader, I'm glad you asked. There will be a contest!
"A contest!"
Yes, a contest.
"That's great. I love contests."
I know. We all do. Now please stop interrupting.
Here's how you enter: 1) Write a limerick describing the plot of a horror movie. Any horror film that inspires you is fair game. 2) Email said limerick along with your name and mailing address to me at crwm44(at)yahoo(dot)com. Just type your limerick(s) in the body of the email.
You can send as many limericks as you please. The deadline for limericks will be one week from today: Wednesday the 16th. I'll announce the winner the day after the deadline.
Millions will enter, millions minus one will lose! And one will win!
Before we all rush to our quills and writing desks, I'd like to take the chance to thank everybody who has indulged me in this blog-habit of mine. I'd like to give a special shout out to the original group of readers who were early adopters of this thing: Dave, Spacejack, Sassy, Cattleworks, and Mermaid Heather. I'd like to thank all the members of the League of Tana Tea Drinkers for adding me to their ever-growing roll of awesomeness. And I'd like to thank my wife, who absolutely hates horror movies, but puts up with me anyway – thanks babe.
Beyond the Re-Animator, the third film in series, trailing Bride of the Re-Animator by more than a decade, seems to split fans of the series into two camps. Migliore and Strysik, in their comprehensive Lurker in the Lobby: a Guide to the Cinema of H. P. Lovecraft, are dismissive of the flick. They call it "a shadow of the gonzo wit of the original" and suggesting that the flick is little more than an exercise in sfx bloodletting that uses the existing series as its excuse. However, if the averaged ratings on IMDB reveal anything, the third film in the series is the fan favorite of the two sequels. Both viewpoints are reasonable. For fans familiar with the original literary source of the series, Beyond Re-Animator is the least Lovecraftian of the series. However, in its over-the-top approach to characterization, plotting, and gore, Beyond is clearly a product of the aforementioned gonzo aesthetic (always the least Lovecraftian element of the previous installments). Put schematically: Beyond is the first film to put extending the franchise before returning to the literary source. The result is the first Re-Animator film that owes more to the Gordon/Yuzna flicks that preceded it than to the Lovecraft story that inspired the franchise.
Yuzna's second film featuring mad scientist Herbert West picks up shortly after the end of Bride. During the carnage at chez West/Cain, one of West's re-animated corpses invades the home of the young Howard Phillips. The corpse overpowers Howie and dispatches his sister before being put down by the Arkham PD. Traumatized, Howard follows the police outside just in time to catch an irate Herbert West being stuffed into a police car. Nearby, Howie finds a glowing syringe full of reagent, apparently left behind by the absurdly sloppy APD.
Flash forward fourteen years.
Young Howie is now Dr. Phillips. Phillips takes his residency at the Arkham prison that now houses West. Obsessed with West's role in the death of his sister, Phillips thinks he can help West complete his research while, in the face of West's amoral indifference, turn West's discoveries towards good. Unfortunately, West's own casually sadistic attitude towards the living isn't the only problem facing Phillips. The prison's warden is tyrannical bully and West has run afoul of one of the prisons gang leaders. Of course, it wouldn't be a Re-Animator film without the doomed love interest: Laura, the attractive young local reporter who is in the prison fishing for the story.
After establishing our primaries, the film spends a short time on the familiar franchise plot. West and Phillips attempt various re-animations while trying to hide their experiments from the prison staff and Laura. But things disintegrate quickly and, before you can say "time off for god behavior," re-animated corpses and rioting inmates are running amuck in the prison. Surrealistic carnage ensues.
Filmed partially on Barcelona film sets and partially on location in the cavernous Prision Modelo in Valencia, the film has a grim and claustrophobic feel, a sort of dark reflection of the well-lit but no less institutional hospital setting of the first film.
The actors turn in functional performances, though it sometimes feels as if not everybody is acting in the same film: some going for the over-the-top vibe of the earlier franchise pieces while others try to hit something more like a conventional drama or horror. This feeling of disconnectedness is compounded by the use of dubbing throughout. Like many Euro films, the dialog in BtR is added post-production. Even when an actor is speaking English, you can tell that his or her dialog has been dubbed. Jeffery Coombs, the franchise's cornerstone, dials down his performance to give us a more controlled, quieter West. Instead of the pompous West of the first flick or the West of the Bride, who seems almost addicted to his power to create life, this West seems to have accepted that his work will always be done in secret and will never, in fact, produce results. He's no longer driven by the need to dominate his colleagues or to feel the rush of defeating death. Instead, he does what he does because that is all he is. He's sly, inventive, and tougher. He less pompous and instead has the wounded hauteur of deposed royalty – he's the elite who refuses to sink to the level of the scum he's now forced to deal with. It might be my favorite version of West. The only thing not to like about this take on West is that he feels underused as Yuzna spends plenty of time on the new characters, a few of which get much more screen time than they really need.
The effects, by deranged surrealistic effects man Screaming Mad George, are noteworthy. Gore hounds will certainly find plenty to keep them amused, but what makes the effects in BtR pop is how far out Screaming Mad George is willing to go on almost any gimmick. In on scene, a still-living junkie shoots several syringes full of reagents. Apparently, it produces a crazy high. It also causes the outer layers of the junkie's body to explode off. But, since the junkie is full of reagent, he doesn't die. Instead, the bloodied corpse, strips of flesh still hanging off him, asks for more hits of reagent, or at least some prescription grade pain-killers to take the edge off. The gory but goofy details of flick put it in the splatter-slapstick tradition of the earlier films, though SMG has a meaner streak in him and there's a bit of an edge here. One imagines that SMG feels his gory set pieces present people as they are, and it is people who don't look as monstrous as they should that are, somehow, the special effect. The gore satirist's misanthropic bent gives this film its less wacky tone, even when it is most trying to be humorous.
How does the parole board find? I'm going to have to side with those who feel Beyond is a worthy addition to franchise. It is interesting that the same director is behind both the "loyalist" Bride and the more revisionist Beyond. Both films pick up threads of the franchise, while managing to focus on two fairly different aspects of the original. The film is a bit darker and meaner, but the core concept is still solid. In fact, in a way, Beyond was the necessary next step. It proves that the franchise can adapt, expand, and carry more than a single creative vision. Plus, you know, there's some T & A, so that's nice.
Over a Bizarre magazine's web site you can read an interview with "Rick," pictured above. Rick has dropped more than four grand and spent more than 24 hours under the needle to develop an elaborate zombie tattoo that covers most of the upper half of his body.
A couple of interview highlights:
How about your mum? Well, I don’t think this is what my mother had in mind for me. When I got my hands done it broke her heart. She said, “You’ve got your hands tattooed like a skeleton! You’re never going to get a decent job!” But once she saw I was determined about it she was like, “If that’s what you want to do, make sure you go all the way. Don’t just start it and then change your mind. If you’re going to be sure enough to tattoo your fucking face like that, then you’ve got to be sure enough to do the whole fucking thing.”
Have you ever thought about having the tip of your nose removed? Yes, and I’ve seen it before on TV. This guy had a flesh-eating disease and he was able to get his nose cut off because they gave him a prosthetic replacement. I was so jealous. I wanted it so bad. If I get my eyes blacked in I’ll get my nose removed.
At the risk of becoming the "all torture, all the time" blog, I humbly submit a visual comparison: what fake torture looks like versus what real torture looks like.
In my previous series on so-called torture porn films, I made the case that the spectacular scenes of suffering that are the hallmark of franchises such as Saw and Hostel are not realistic. Rather they're a sort of over-the-top representation of our worst dark fantasies of what torture is. Now, through the miracle of the Interwebs, you don't have to take my word for it. You can see for yourself.
Representing the world of spectacularly fake torture will be represented by the "Angel Trap," the absurd Rube Goldbergian device that dispatches Detective Kerry (played screamingly by Dina Meyer) in Saw III. Needless to say, it is not safe for work and you may have to log-in to youtube and confirm your age before viewing.
Notice the sickly green and yellow lighting scheme, the steampunk-meets-butcher-shop complexity of the device, the dank dungeon like surroundings.
For what torture really looks like, we check into, of all places, Vanity Fair. VF columnist, contrarian gadfly, neo-con apologist, public intellectual, and crusading atheist Christopher Hitchens agreed to be waterboarded. Waterboarding is one of the approved "aggressive interrogation techniques," or, more colloquially, tortures currently being used by the United States government. VF cameramen recorded the short and unpleasant affair. By way of your first major contrast, this clip is work safe, at least in terms of gore and whatnot. However, if you do get asked about it, you'll have to explain what the heck you're watching and I doubt that will sound good to your employer. I should also explain that very loud music is blasted throughout a considerable portion of the clip. I have no idea if that's in the film or post-production.
Normal lighting, no maniacal ventriloquist's dummies handing out life lessons, no bloodshed. In fact, compared to the hyper-real violence of torture porn, it is almost mundane. Actually, it is mundane insomuch as it is not a fantasy of suffering, but the real thing.
In posting this, I don't wish to make a political statement (though I do have extremely strong feelings on the issue), just an aesthetic one. I hope this puts paid to the notion that so-called torture porn films are characterized by their lack of stylization and their narrow visual pursuit of realism.
I have no pets. I own several ties, but rarely have a reason to wear any of them. I sing in the shower but can never remember the words, so I make them up as I go along, and they always end up being songs about showering. I collect slang dictionaries.
Tomorrow will be the last day to submit limericks (the poetic form so hot, they gave it its own magazine - see above) for the ANTSS Tricentpostiary contest. Already, regular commentators, first-time readers, and members of League of Tana Tea Drinkers have submitted. It's like there's a party in my email inbox and you – yes, mang, you! – are invited.
