Contest: Crush crush sweet Charlotte.

The loser of ANTSS "Killer Kaiju" give away is Charlotte, NC. Why? Because it is the stomping grounds of choice for our winner: Aaron White! To claim your prize, shoot me an email at crwm44[the at symbol]yahoo[the dot]com.

A building-sized thanks to everybody who played along.

Contest: Leave nothing but smoking rubble in your wake!

Last day to get in on the action! I'm giving away one brand new copy of Killer Kaiju Monsters, a richly illustrated homage to all things big, Asian, and stompy by Ivan Vartanian. To enter the contest, just click through to the original contest post and leave a comment telling me what city you would stomp if you were a giant monster and why. There's plenty of unstomped real estate left. A winner will be selected at random tomorrow.

Kaiju-Fink art by McNail.

Contest: Because other blog fandoms are Tokyo and you, dear ANTSS readers, are Godzilla.

It's been too long since I've thrown a contest here, and it's about time I thank all y'all for following along with my ramblings. So here goes . . .

Hot off the presses, from the kind folks at Collins Design, comes Killer Kaiju Monsters: Strange Beasts of Japanese Film. Part light-hearted reference book, part art book, all city-stomping hotness, this handsome hardcover, curated by Ivan Vartanian, contains production stills, photos of kaiju collectables, poster repros, papercraft build-your-own kaiju, and original kaiju themed-art from artist (including the wonderful kaiju cross-section art Shoji Ohtomo). It's a pop kaiju smorgasbord!

And ANTSS is giving away one copy a deserving reader. Retail value: about 28 Washingtons. Number of dead presidents it's going to cost the winner: zero. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Free-city, daddy-o.

Could you be the lucky winner? Sure. Why the hell not? You're as awesome as anybody! It's your time, dammit! Hell yeah!

What do you have to do to win? Easy. Just leave a comment connected to this post saying what city you would stomp if you were a giant monster and why. Tired of Montreal's smug politeness? Think you might be doing Detroit a favor by utterly destroying it? Think an attack on Bakersfield is called for just because nobody would see it coming? You're the giant monster; you make the call. Just tell me what city and why, and you're in the running. One winner will be selected randomly on June 4th. Only one stomp per player.

Because I'm a cheap bastard, I've got to limit this to players in the United States. Not that I don't want to hear what towns my foreign readers would lay waste to, but shipping costs prohibit me from rewarding you for your destructive impulses. Imaginary chaos and devastation will simply have to be their own reward in this case.

Let the stomping begin!

Contest: Booty call.

Thank you everybody who entered the ANTSS Every Damn Comic of Solomon Kane Ever Contest. The fickle finger of fate has pointed out our winner: Pauline the Pirate Queen!

Avast Pauline, email me a mailing address at [my blogging pen name]44[that "at" symbol]yahoo[the dot]com. I'll get the books packaged up and on their way.

Contest: I Kane, I saw, I conquered.

Just a reminder: Throw your hat in the ring for not one, but two big prozes in ANTSS Kane Komics Giveaway! Winners will be selected at random tomorrow morning.

Link Proliferation: In which you meet the Iranian Little Red Riding Hood.

You Gotta Be In It, to Win It

Why haven't you entered the Every Damn Comic of Solomon Kane Ever Contest (EDCSKEC)? Do so, right now. I randomly select a winner on Monday.

Ghostly History

A now and then tour of Manhattan sense through the lens of the Ghostbusters flick.

Fairy-Tale History

The Telegraph has an interesting story on the historical age of fairy tales.

The common take on fairy tales is that they were relatively recent when Romantic nationalists started recording them in 1600s. Using "Little Red Riding Hood" and taxonomy techniques borrowed from the biological sciences, one team of anthropologists has teased out a memetic history that traces back more than 2,600 years.

A study by anthropologists has explored the origins of folk tales and traced the relationship between varients of the stories recounted by cultures around the world.

The researchers adopted techniques used by biologists to create the taxonomic tree of life, which shows how every species comes from a common ancestor.

Dr Jamie Tehrani, a cultural anthropologist at Durham University, studied 35 versions of Little Red Riding Hood from around the world.

Whilst the European version tells the story of a little girl who is tricked by a wolf masquerading as her grandmother, in the Chinese version a tiger replaces the wolf.

In Iran, where it would be considered odd for a young girl to roam alone, the story features a little boy.

Contrary to the view that the tale originated in France shortly before Charles Perrault produced the first written version in the 17th century, Dr Tehrani found that the varients shared a common ancestor dating back more than 2,600 years.

He said: “Over time these folk tales have been subtly changed and have evolved just like an biological organism. Because many of them were not written down until much later, they have been misremembered or reinvented through hundreds of generations.

Personally, I find the concept of the meme dubious at best. The application of genetics to abstract concepts like a story's themes and tropes seems to confuse phenotypes with genotypes, leading to lots of false positive "links" between things that are not really related. Still, the variants they've discovered and the range they've recorded is interesting.

Tortured History

Over at Pop Matters's, Marco Lanzagorta turns in another LP-worthy post. This time he ponders the evolution of the "torture porn" flick and traces its roots from Ulmer's The Black Catthrough 70's 'sploiters and up to now.

He contributes some original stages to the common historical narrative, most notably the "Inquisition flicks" of the 1960s and 1970s.

The first clear trend of torture films that emerged during these years can be termed as the inquisition flick. As with The Black Cat, Poe’s work served as inspiration for a film about madness, corruption, and obsession. Roger Corman’s The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) takes place in 16th century Spain and the climax involves a young man trapped in the titular torture device. The torturer, played by the inimitable Vincent Price, is revealed to be the demented son of an inquisitor.

While the violence was kept to a reasonable level, the commercial and critical success of The Pit and the Pendulum is likely to have influenced a series of films that depicted a demented inquisitor torturing, mutilating, and humiliating innocent bystanders. Most of the time, their victim was a young virginal girl who refused the sexual advances of the inquisitor. Not surprisingly, the amount of violence and sexual situations increased with each new entry in this subgenre. The most notorious flicks in this trend include The Witchfinder General (1968), The Bloody Judge (1970), Mark of the Devil (1970), and Mark of the Devil 2 (1973). Evidence of the cruelty and brutality of these films is the fact that most of them have been banned or censored at some point in time.

However, like everybody who has tried to define torture porn as a subgenre, he gets tangled up in his own definition.

Therefore, because of our complex cultural intertextuality, it may be difficult to define the exact generic conventions of the torture porn subgenre. Nevertheless, it is possible to avoid sophisticated intertextual conundrums and identify a torture flick as one where acts of torture are the main visual and narrative drivers of the storyline.

That sounds good until you start looking at examples. For example, the violence in the French Chainsaw-manqué Frontier(s), which is the columnist says can be "considered the pinnacle of the torture porn subgenre," is extreme; but whether it is torture or not (beyond the most basic assertion that any violent captivity would be torture) is dubious and, even if we decided it were, you'd need to defend the claim that torture was the driving narrative force behind that film.

Contest: House of Kane.

Perhaps I'm still loopy from how well the whole anniversary Silent Scream series went. Maybe it's because October is here and that means we're that much closer to the fright freak's high holy day. It could be the cold medicine.

Whatever the reason, I feel like giving away stuff.

Specifically, I'm giving away two - count 'em - two big ol' comic books featuring everybody's favorite dour monster hunting Puritan: Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane.

First, I'm giving away one copy of The Saga of Solomon Kane, an omnibus style doorstop that collects hundreds of black and white pages of Kane action from his adventures in Marvel's Conan comics to his more recent shenanigans at Dark Horse.

What it doesn't include, however, is Dark Horse's recent Castle of the Devil series. So I'm going to throw that in too!

That's right!

Win this mammerjammer and you're basically awash in pulpy he-hero action!

So what do you have to do? Just leave me message below. The winner will be randomly chosen Monday morning.

Employees of Dark Horse are eligible to enter, but seriously, dude, just take it from the office. It's no biggy. Contestants should know that both books are "lightly used," though I can't discern any defects or abuse. I'm also going to have to limit this contest to folks from the US - blame shipping costs or my own rampaging jingoism, either way that's how we're doing this one.

Link Proliferation: And tell her that her lonely nights are over.

We have a winner!

Here's the winner board for the "Tales from the Captcha" contest:

Troy Z wins the big ol' first season of Tales from the Crypt.
OCKerouac wins Billy the Kid's Old Time Oddities.
Sasquatchan has himself a slightly new copy of The Cobbler's Monster.

If you guys could shoot me an email at the following address: [my nom de blog]44@yahoo.com. Let me know where I can send these bad boys and you get them promptly.

Winners were selected at random from the entry pool. If you didn't win this time, I want you to meditate on what you might have done to earn such bad karma that the mysterious forces of randomness at work in the universe have it out for you.


Mutually interred destruction

I'm not a big Metallica fan. In fact, my level of fandom is somewhere between "active avoidance" and "vast indifference." However, their latest video – brought to my attention by the mad genius behind the delightful The Horror!? blog – used animation, "found footage," CGI, and first person camera work to reconstruct a Soviet plan to close the nuclear missile gap with zombie-making spores. It's pretty boss and you can listen to it on mute if Metallica ain't your bag.




Col' lampin'

I have nothing to add other than this very concept makes me all giggly.


And operator, please reverse the charges

From Screamin' Dave over at Forbes' Digital Download blog, the new Ghostbusters videogame trailer.

Regardless of what the trailer does or does not do for you, can we all admit that the bit of concept art below is some of the craziest crap we've ever seen connected to the 'Buster franchise?

Bring me a dream

Over at Horror's Not Dead, Mr. Hall suffers J. T. Petty's faux snuff mockumentary S&Man. His description of the movie is amazing, but what will get your noodle turning about is the following claim:

It matters not whether the Sandman tapes are real, whether Eric Rost is a real person or just a character. He is a parable for a reality we all know exists. There are people who have made real snuff films. There are people who have sought out real snuff films. More frightening than that, no past tense is needed in those sentences. People still make them. There exists today a market for videotapes of real rape, of real torture and of real murder. Or, failing that availability, as close as possible as anyone is willing to simulate.

I can’t think of anything that disturbs me more.

Excluding the claim that there's a snuff market out there – which remains the snuff of urban legend, as it were – is there a moral equivalence between watching simulated snuff and the real thing? If something is simulated so well that it is indistinguishable from the real thing, is the moral cost of consuming it indistinguishable from the real thing?

Victim-dar

New Scientist reports a weird correlation between psychopathic tendencies and the ability to recall biographical details of "vulnerable victims." Or, more simply, psychos have victim radar.

From the article:

Contrary to popular belief, most psychopaths are not Jack the Ripper types - often they have never committed a violent crime. But as many as one in 100 people display antisocial behaviours deemed psychopathic. Chief among these is a callous ability to manipulate other people to fulfill their own desires.

To investigate this behaviour, Kevin Wilson of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, and colleagues put 44 male college students into two groups according to their scores on a test that measures psychopathic traits. "None of these students qualified as psychopaths, but some did have behaviours associated with psychopaths," says Wilson.

The students were shown a series of faces, each accompanied by a name, a job and details about interests and hobbies. When later asked to recall the details, those with more psychopathic-like behaviours were better at describing sad-looking and unsuccessful females than the normal group, especially details about the women's lives.

So ladies, do try not to be sad-looking and unsuccessful.


The dead travel fast

Over at the made-of-awesome Human Marvels site, there's the tale of Elmer McCurdy, former bank robber and wandering corpse.

In life Elmer McCurdy wasn’t anything special. Elmer wasn’t really unique or extraordinary. It was only following his demise that Elmer amounted to much of anything, when his corpse became famous and the stuff of urban legends.


Maybe this is why Euro-horror seems so lame to me

Over at the Neurophilosophy blog, there's a nice write up a recent study that suggests that expression of the biological fear response may be culture-specific, a case of nature being nurtured.

From the article:

The new study was led by Joan Chiao of the Social and Cultural Neuroscience Lab at Northwestern University. 22 volunteers were recruited for the study; 10 were Caucasians living in the United States, and the remaining 12 were native Japanese living in Japan. All the participants were presented with a series of pictures of 80 faces, each for 1.5 seconds, and each depicting an American or a Japanese person expressing either a fearful, happy, angry or neutral facial expression. Their neural responses to the facial expressions in the pictures were measured using functional neuroimaging.

The results:

Both groups of participants could recognize the emotions depicted in the pictures very accurately. Interestingly though, the Japanese participants were significantly quicker in recognizing fear in all the pictures, while the Americans were significantly more accurate at recognizing fear in pictures of people from their own culture. More importantly, the response of the amygdala was increased when the participants recognized fear in pictures of members of their own cultural group relative to others. Hemispheric differences were also observed: the increase in amygdala activity in response to fear recognition in own-culture faces was significantly greater in the right amygdala than in the left. By contrast, no significant differences in amygdala activity was observed when the participants viewed pictures of happy, angry or neutral expressions.

Earlier neuroimaging studies have shown that white Americans show an increased response in the amygdala when presented, either consciously or unconsciously, with pictures of black Americans with neutral expressions. By contrast, no differences in the response to neutral faces of either cultural group were observed in this study, even though Americans often hold positive sterotypes of Asians. Thus, the earlier observations may have been due to cultural knowledge of the negative sterotypes about African-Americans, rather than negative stereotypes of members of other ethnic groups per se. This is supported by the finding in the earlier studies that black Americans also exhibit increased activity in the amygdala in response to pictures of black people with neutral expressions.

Sir Larry's "Hard Day's Night"

This has nothing to do with horror. But it's pretty funny.

Here's Peter Seller's doing the Beatles' "Hard Day's Night" in the manner of Olivier's take on Shakespeare's Richard III. Don't try to wrap your head around that description, just watch.



Have a great weekend, my little Screamers and Screamettes.

Books: Glister in the sun.

Before we get on to the review proper, don't forget to enter the ANTSS Tales from the Captcha contest! A winner is picked on Friday, so get to enterin'.

It's easy and, if you win, your prize should arrive in plenty of time to re-gift it for your office secret Santa.

Won't Sandra in Accounts Payable just wet herself with joy when she receives the DVD of the entire first season of HBO's Tales from the Crypt? Won't Tony in the mailroom squeal with girlish delight when he sees that you given him Billy the Kid's Old Timey Oddities or The Cobbler's Monster? You bet they will.

But you got it be in it to win it, so do it! It's what Forrest J. Ackerman would have wanted.

Okay. On to today's review . . .

Here's a completely earnest theory about cultural evolution in the West.

Let's take it as given that prostitution is, in fact, the oldest profession in the world. That means that, in the primordial swamps of prehistory, anybody gainfully employed was a prostitute. Humans swapped sex for some small stash of non-perishable goods whose chief function was to buy more sex. It was an endless loop and all humans did was hump and starve and pray that somebody soon invented the career of farmer or hunter.

I'm going to posit that the second oldest profession is storyteller. First, the need to create narratives is a product of ancient hardwired routines in our grey matter and it's not a stretch to hypothesize that we were telling stories almost as soon as we were functionally human. Second, it's the only way to explain the "blurb": an artifact that could only have been produced by a culture that consisted almost entirely of storytellers and prostitutes.

Blurbs are essentially systematized favors: chits passed between writers, agents, and publishers in an endlessly rotating system of infinitely fungible loyalty and friendship that resembles the political intrigue surrounding a grade school BFF list update, only more petty and less rational. This is why every blurb pretty much sounds the same: like any currency in a free market, they tend towards efficient standardization.

This means, however, that their function as a medium of communication to the average consumer is pretty much negligible. In theory, I guess, the faith of the reading public props up this fiat money the way, in theory, our faith in the greenback keeps our folding money worth more than the cotton rag it's made out of. Though, in both cases, the system has really evolved beyond that. Its endurance is its own justification and I suspect that even if readers stopped paying attention to them, blurbs would continue until such time as we out-evolve our need for literature.

That said, I think there is a useful way to read blurbs. Call it the Oz Theory of Blurb Reading.

Blurbs are the prison currency of the mainstream publishing world. If blurbs indicate a swapped favor, then a collection of blurbs is record of debt transfers that reveals a social network. Russian gangsters have a term for this: "roof." Roof is an all-purpose power term meaning, at once, pull, juice, favor, protection, political alignment, responsibility, the shotgun marriage expediency of gangster capitalist loyalties, and moxie. You don't get a commercially published book without roof: the magic combo of chutzpah, access to a network of friendly agents, other authors who vouch for your performance in MFA programs, and editors ready to bank your stake. Authors are their roof. Blurbs are a snapshot of that roof.

Here's what you do. Don't read the copy; instead, make a mental web of the blurbbers names. You'll have a pretty good sense of where in the quality lit game an author exists.

If everybody dropping blurbs is some marquee name in a particular genre ghetto, then you know who you're dealing with. This cat stays in his corner of the lit biz exercise yard, surrounded by familiar faces. He never strays too far, never alienates his posse, and is probably going to come and go without ever making waves outside that corner. Maybe, by sheer dint of financial success and the will to survive, he'll develop King-grade roof and score some measure of mainstream success. But probably not. He doesn't have the roof to make the leap from the undercard to main event.

You pick up his book and you know what you're going to get: some clever, but essentially minor variation on the genre collective's central tenants, perhaps some new growth on one of the genre's various sub-branches. And that's fine. That's part of the reason people read genre lit, to watch the familiar patterns shift slightly and participate in the esoteric taxonomies that only the devoted can parse.

But if the roof is all over the place? Then you're dealing with some guy who pops up everywhere. He's all over the exercise yard, hangs in the infirmary scoring script off of trustees, and openly talks to the bulls. You've got to respect a guy like that. It takes a special kind of author to operate under such an idiosyncratic roof. But it also means that you're dealing with somebody who is unpredictable, who has dubious genre loyalties, who might not deliver on promises because he's had his own inscrutable agenda all along.

John Burnside, author of the upcoming genre mutant mystery/horror novel The Glister, has got wacky roof. His roof, as mapped on the cover of his latest, features horror stalwart Peter Straub, thinking man's airport lit writer Scott Smith, aging icon of freak-out transgressive lit Irvine Welsh, quality lit star and accidental atheist guru to the Jesus-freak set Jim Crace, fantasist Keith Donohue, and a slew of minor poets, social realists, and other strange bedfellows.

And, true to the Oz Theory of Blurb Reading, the book's a curious thing.

Featuring a cast of not so beautiful losers trying to make sense of a set of incomprehensible crimes in a post-industrial toxic wasteland of a declining company town, The Glister reaches towards being a murder mystery, a pulp thriller, a character study of small town angst, a social realist screed against the brutal costs of predatory big business, a serial killer thriller, or a neo-Lovecraftian tale of cosmic horror. But it isn't any of them, as Burnside undermines the genre conventions of each and every one of these familiar genres. It is something weirder.

On a namely stretch of U.K. coastline, stands a dying town split into three distinct regions. First, there's Outertown: a posh suburban community of isolate elites still fat of store built up in happier times. Further down the peninsula stands Innertown, a decaying and poisoned working-class ghetto ailing under financial woes and a Pandora's box-load of undiagnosable co-morbities that are the pension plan of the town's former industry: agricultural chemicals. Finally, at the town's dead core stands the sprawling wreck of factories and processing plants that were the town's livelihood: a ghost town of toxic spills and dangerously unstable industrial architectures. The setting isn't unfamiliar. We've seen these same cancerous and cash-strapped burgs in Langan's The Seeker and Harvey's The Town the Forgot How to Breath. Though it has a long way to go before they overtake semi-rural small towns as ground zero for our literary nightmares, these busted rustbelt Superfund sites are rapidly gaining.

We open on John Morrison, the local constable. Morrison is one of those sad sacks who, despite having every reason to self-shuffle from this mortal coil, keeps plugging along, more out of lack of imagination than will. His marriage is a wreck: His wife went from low-grade alcoholic to full-blown mental case on him. Her lucid moments are worse because that's when she can clearly see what a schlub Morrison is. As a cop, he's a bust. He mainly got there because Brian Smith, the corrupt financial and political center of this town, detected the right mix of incurious malleability in him. Because the biggest crime in the town – it's slow murder by industrial poisoning and subsequent malign neglect – is above Morrison's pay grade, he mostly gets by harassing the occasion kid and writing up the accidents and "natural" deaths. But there was one time when Morrison needed to stand up and play police – and he folded.

On Halloween night, a young boy named Mark wandered off into the woods around the abandoned factory complexes as part of a folk children's game meant to summon the Devil. He never returned. When Morrison found him, he was brutally murdered and hung up in a ritualistic satire of the crucifixion. Out of his league, Morrison called his boss. Smith, eager to avoid outside attention that might cast light on he's misused environmental clean-up and community aid funds, has Morrison cover it up. The boy's butchered body is disposed of. The disappearance is written up as a runaway. Officially, Mark left town looking for a better life.

But the other kids aren't satisfied with the official story, especially the wonderfully drawn character of Leonard, a bitter autodidact underachiever who mixes snark and Proust references with profound ignorance and unaware egomania in a way that only a small town boy who has read more than he's done can pull off. Reading Leonard's first person narration – with its unearned and lightly worn nihilism – is almost painful to me because I know I was exactly that sort of little jerkwad.

As the "missing" count mounts and claims Leonard's only true friend, the narrator joins up with a quasi-feral group of teenage grotesques whose idea of a good time is conducting semi-ritualized pack hunts for mutated fauna in a contaminated landfill near the old factories. Determined to stem these disappearances, Leonard and the gang decide to forcibly interrogate a local man – a isolated, possibly mentally retarded shut-in. Focusing their aimless hate and hopeless frustrations into a single brutal act of retribution, the gang's interrogation turns into a murder. In a rage, Leonard kicks the innocent man to death.

While this bloody miscarriage of justice plays out, the real murderer returns. A relentless presence with links to the town's poisoned past, and driven by a messianic vision of purifying Innertown that could have come out of the pages of Lovecraft, the real murderer wants Leonard next.

Mysteries without answers, supernatural links that may or may not exists, a town so tainted by its past that it might as well be haunted, Burnside evokes genre trappings just to leaves them tauntingly and tantalizing unfulfilled. Glister is a cruel joke, beautifully played. Burnside, a poet with some 11 collections to his credit, knows how to manipulate language to get the most out an image, but he knows the difference between a poetic turn of phrase and a poem. Glister often advances its plot through overlapping character portraits, but the reader never gets the sense that Burnside has lost sight of where his novel is headed or chased his own style down a rabbit hole. For all its genre sabotage, the author is determined to deliver the genre goods. And Glister does deliver the goods.

For readers on this side of the pond, Doubleday's American edition of The Glister has a March 10, '09 street date. Compared to juggernauts like Drood, The Glister is a slender little number: only 240 pages. It'll run you about 23 Washingtons, Canadians add $3 more.

Contest: Tales from the Captcha.

Lately, I've been noticing a change in the captcha puzzles blogger throws up to try to weed you, my dear and sweet human readers – the very cream of the species – from the hordes of soulless auto-posting robo-spammers who would, if they had their druthers, turn my comments section into a wasteland of ads for knock-off watches, miracle weight loss teas, and promises of penile enlargement. It seems to me that the captcha puzzles have been, for lack of a better term, have been "approaching wordness."

A minor qualitative change in the randomized results of an automated spam blocker – what better reason to throw a ANTSS contest!

So here's the contest:

Leave a comment in this story. In the comment, leave the captcha "word" that blogger gives you, give us directions on how to pronounce this new word, and give us a definition. Finally, use it in a sentence.

Here's an example:

"Lects" – pronounced like "flecks" without the "F" – the verb for what a lector does. "When Pastor Bob is lector, he really lects the crap out of that Gospel."

First place winner will get the season 1 DVD collection of HBO's long-gone, but not forgotten, horror series Tales of the Crypt. Original case, all 6 original episodes, all yours. Free, for nuffin', I'll even swing postage for you.

Second place winner gets Eric Powell and Kyle Hotz's horror/actioner comic Billy the Kid's Old Timey Oddities. I reviewed it here in this very Web log you are currently reading. And I even liked it.

Third place winner gets The Cobbler's Monster - a graphic novel that fuses Frankenstein with Pinocchio. It's an Image title from the legal-firm-sounding team of Amano, Rousseau, Faucher, and Brusco. A nifty little prize for any Frankophile or anybody who digs seeing their innocent childhood memories turned all psycho and bloody.

Fourth place winners and and other also-rans get the solemn pride that comes only from taking part in a mighty contest of wits and knowing, even though you strove boldly into battle, the entire Internet is laughing at you.

'Cause I got to ship this stuff, I'm afraid I've got to limit this thing to readers in the U. S. of A. It ain't a jingoistic thing; it's a money thing. My apologies to any international readers.

Enter as often as you like. I'll pick winners on Friday.

Contest: And now the winning starts . . .

Before I get to announcing the winner of the stupendous, gargantuan, world-shattering ANTSS Tricentpostiary Limerick Spectacular*, I'd like to thank everybody who took the time to enter. We had more than twenty entries with contestants from three different countries: two Canadians submitted as did a citizen of the United Kingdom. We also had the first bilingual entry to any ANTSS poem contest: ANTSS regular Screamin' Cattleworks dropped some ciencia en español for his dual synopsis of the English and Spanish versions of 1931's Dracula.

So, who emerged triumphant from this multinational literary throwdown?

I handed off all the entries – with bylines removed – to an impartial panel of critics. The critics were told to judge the limericks by whatever criteria they saw fit. The critics carefully considered each entry and cast ballots for the winner.

Then I made all the critics get in a steel cage and fight to the death. After the dust settled and the bodies were carted away, the last critic standing chose the following limerick synopsis of the classic Bride of Frankenstein:

There was an old doc named Praetorious,
whose work with the dead was laborious,
with sutures and knife,
he gives old corpses life,
but his matchmaking skills aren't too glorious!

The author – limerick master Barry W. of West Virginia – has one copy of The Mammoth Book of Best Horror Comics headed his way.

For all the other poets who submitted, I think you've won something much much more valuable: a lesson about life. Actually content of lesson may vary; lesson is not legal tender; lesson not valid in Tennessee, the US Virgin Islands, or Puerto Rico.

Thank you all - we will now return to ANTSS regularly scheduled horror-centric programming.

* "ANTSS Tricentpostiary Limerick Spectacular" is a registered trademark of ANTSS Corporation – ANTSS Co.: "For a Better Today, Tomorrow, with People, for Your Family, and a Bright Future."

UPDATE

By popular demand, by which I mean Screamin' Spacey asked for it, here are the entries into the limerick contest.

Kit P. covers two of my favorite horror flicks - The Re-Animator and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - and waxes poetic about the Evil Dead franchise.

There once was a Doctor named West
Who brought the dead back from their rest
He decided to kill
His dear friend Dr. Hill
And a girl got Hill's head with protest

There once was a dude named Raimi
Who made a most grueling movie
With fake shemps and no cash,
a hero named Ash,
it all added up to Groovy.

Living outside of the law
Some Texas boys and their Pa
Made them some friends
Who soon met their ends
With a hammer, a hook and chainsaw

Unkle Lancifer, of Kindertrauma fame (see the sidebar), gives us a limerickal tour of filmic adaptations of Stephen King novels in a 6 poem cycle.

1. Care-take not the Overlook hotel
Although the scenery may look swell
Just like Danny's dad
You're sure to go mad
And you're liable to end up in hell

2. Stop making fun of poor Carrie White!
I know she looks quite a fright
But with a twitch of her eye
She can cause you to fry
Even Sue Snell knows it just isn't right!

3. Holy crap it's that dog they call Cujo!
He follows you wherever that you go!
It's not cause he likes you
He just wants to bite you
He's got rabies or didn't you know?

4. Let's say we move out of Salem's Lot
Seems vampires is all that they got
I'm sick of this dreck
What a pain in the neck!
On my map it's only a dot!

5. Don't get in that car named Christine!
Rumor has it that bitch is real mean
She'll drive over your head
Until you are dead
That auto is simply a fiend!

6. Our kid is buried in pet sematary
You'd think that we'd be sorta weary
With the help of a Gwynn that's named Fred
He's sure to rise up from the dead
I sure hope that won't be too scary!

Screamin' Cattleworks goes bilingual to cover two versions of Dracula

When thirsty, that old bat named Dra-cu-la,
Shunned wine, preferring hearty ventri-“coolers”.
Fans can watch Bela,
Or that Spanish fella,
If you gusto the sexy peli-CU-la.

ANTSS regular Screamin' Sassy covers the The Ring, The Mummy (two versions), all original Friday the 13th, and every zombie film ever made.

There once was a man from Crystal Lake
who took all the lives he could take
"Wasn't me", said he
"was my mum, you see.
But let's see how many sequels we can make."

An Egyptian priest in a tomb
Brought to life from the book of doom
Vasloo or Karloff,
I know who gets my doff:
The man who makes all the ladies swoon.

A cursed tape of a dead girl
put it in the VCR and give a whirl
Wet and horrid is she
A wailing banshee
Watch the horror unfurl

Here comes the zombie horde
George Romero is their lord
Duking it out in a mall
Raiding labs for a haul
Poor Shaun is no longer bored.

ANTSS regular Screamin' Spacey goes absolutely nuts and covers everything from Hostel 1 and 2 to The Thing remake.

Two Americans in Europe were on tour
With a European, their motives impure.
Seeking every vice
They took some bad advice
And instead, learned all about torture.

There once was a Thing from the stars
That landed on Earth, not Mars.
First it got the dog
Then it went whole hog
And infected every human like SARS.

There once were some plants from outer space
That wanted to copy the human race.
Matt, Liz, Nancy and Jack
Tried to hold the plants back.
Alas, Liz was fooled when they stole Matt's face.

Three girls touring Europe weren't sure
Where to go next, so easy they were to lure.
They came for the spas
But stayed for the saws
And one bought a company that sells torture.

Estranged siblings reunite in New Orleans
Where Paul explains to Irena what it means
To find out that
You become a cat
By having sex with human beings.

A futuristic life this woman did lead,
In a house that catered to her every need.
But the house had AI
And it wanted to try
Impregnating her with its Demon Seed.

A scientist once did a terrible thing:
Mixed human/alien DNA into a female being.
She wanted to mate
And procreate
But everyone was afraid of the resulting offspring.

Sue H. covers The Vanishing

There once was a guy stopped for gas
While a traveller grabbed his girl’s ass.
Psycho put out her lights
And ruined his nights
But the remake was dire alas….

And, last but not least, the lovely and talented Absinthe, of Gloomy Sunday fame, was overwhelmed by the muse and created an ode instead of a limerick, reprised here:

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

Once again, thanks to everybody who entered.

Contest: The end is really nigh.

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.

LoTT-D: The League digs up three new members.

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.

Books: We've got belle lettres comin' out the wazoo.

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!

Contest: 300 or "Madness? This is ANTSS Tricentpostiary."

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.

Meta: Contest winners and an up-coming series.

We have our winners for the Nightmare Factory giveaway.

Free comics are on their way to three Screamin' regulars: Screamin' Cattleworks, Screamin' Spacejack, and Screamin' Sasquatchan. You three cats have been solid supporters of the blog from the beginning and I thank you.

We also have two brand new faces in the winner's circle. Greetings and congratulations to Doug and Lady Tanya. Thanks for swinging by and I hope you enjoy your new books.

Thanks to all the readers who wrote in and thanks to Fox Atomic for the freebies.

Now that we've taken care of that, let's take A Moment for Us ™.

On September 25th, 2006, I started with this blog with a review of with a review of the z-grade Italian horror flick Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory. We are rapidly approaching And Now the Screaming Starts's one year anniversary. This is puts me into a nostalgic mood, so, as we lead up to the big day, I'll be launching a series on the beginnings of cinematic horror. Here at ANTSS, I'll be rolling out my first ever posting series: a collection of reviews of several silent horror flicks from the very early days of film. We'll hit the classics, such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu, as well as some of the less well-known proto-fright films. Ghosts, ghouls, and gremlins from the days when the only screaming you heard in the theaters came from the audiences.

Be there, Screamers and Screamettes, or be L7.

In the meantime, here's a bit of navel-gazing. I present the trailer for the flick that gives this little ol' blog its name:

Comics: Last call!

Alright, Screamers and Screamettes, I've got one – count it:one – hot little copy of The Nightmare Factory left to give away. And this one, dear reader, belongs to you! Yes, you!

You: "But CRwM, how do I claim this absolutely free copy of The Nightmare Factory, the excellent new horror anthology by Fox Atomic, adapting the weird tales of Thomas Ligotti and featuring the fine work of Ashley Wood, Ben Templesmith, and a host of other great writers and artists?"

CRwM: "Fear not. All you need to do is shoot me an email at crwm44@yahoo[dot]com. Next person to email me wins."

You: "That sounds easy."

CRwM: "It is."

You: "Why am I still reading this? I need to get a electronic mailing."

CRwM: "That you do, dear reader. That you do."

You: "Please quit writing dialog for me. I need to go."

CRwM: "Of course, sorry."

Comics: Give you nightmares. Free nightmares.

Maybe anthologies are the new zombies. Though we're hardly wanting for ghoul-oriented fare - Walking Dead from Image shambles on, Marvel's Zombies are coming back for their third mini-series, and so on and so on – it seems like the explosive growth of the trend is over, we're headed into the long-awaited retrenchment, and it is high time for something new.

Let me propose, dear Screamers and Screamettes, that the next BIG thing in horror comics is the antho. Hear me out. Several one shots and mini-series have already come out from Marvel: the mostly campy Marvel Monster Group comics and more serious Legion of Monsters one shots. Viper put out Sasquatch. The daddy of all antho comics, Tales from the Crypt, can be found back on the comic rack. Doomed, a sort of neo-Tales, has made it to its first collection. DC hasn't yet re-launched House of Mystery, but give it time – they've got the Showcase editions of the original up to the second volume and that's got to be tripping off some sort of alarm in accounts receivable.

Into this crowded and competitive marketplace steps the young, polymath upstart of the Fox empire, Fox Atomic, with their recently released The Nightmare Factory.

I'll be honest, I did not have high expectations for this book. Fox Atomic has already dipped its toes into the comics field: it released prequel tie-ins to 28 Weeks Later and The Hills Have Eyes 2, the former filling the space between the two zombie flicks and the latter providing some insight into the origins of the miner-turned-mutant franchise villains. I thought both efforts were middling outings that seemed too much like the marketing pieces they were intended to be. It was promising that this book had no clear flick tie-in; but you can't fault a twice-bitten dude for being a little gunshy.

To my pleasant surprise, The Nightmare Factory is freakin' fabulous. Fox Atomic has picked up some hints from the excellent Doomed and, like the student that has become the master, taken all they've learned a step further.

First, they swiped Doomed's line-up. The weirdly old-timey cover is the work of Doomed cover regular Ashley Wood and you can find the art of Doomed alum Ted McKeever within. After skimming some of the cream from Doomed they pulled marquee-name Ben Templesmith and Sandman vet Colleen Doran to art duties. That's a serious collection of fantasy/horror artists.

Next, they found primo source material and built the collection around it. Much the way Doomed maintains a coherent feel, despite the varied artist, by tapping the same authors again and again, The Nightmare Factory gives you the feel of a complete and unified work by concentrating on a single author: Thomas Ligotti. And, in choosing Ligotti, a cult figure who deserves greater recognition, NF actually outdoes its predecessor. Ligotti is a masterful practitioner of the "weird tale," part of the line of surreally existential horror writers who trace back through Bradbury (at his darkest), Lovecraft, and Poe. His works are darkly fantastic tales delivered with flawless precision of detail and control of tone. Wisely, instead of just handing Ligotti's work over to the artists, adaptation duties were handed over to Eisner winner Stuart Moore and vet horror screenwriter Joe Harris.

But don't take my word for it. See for yourself.

As you may or may not know, my wife is a bit of notable blogger in the world of book reviews, book retail, and the like. She was in communication with Fox Atomic about doing a Nightmare Factory-related Halloween event at the bookstore in which she works. The cats at Atomic asked if she'd be interested in doing a book giveaway on her blog. Horror's not her bag, so she sent them ANTSS-ward. Well, Screamers and Screamettes, her loss is our gain. First five fans to email your fave Screamin' blogger at CRwM44@yahoo[dot]com will receive a free copy of The Nightmare Factory. Is CRwM the most right-on reviewer ever? Is he utterly full of horse putucky? You make the call. Just shoot me an email with a mailing address and the book will be on its wicked little way. Free; gratis; like freesville, man. Can't beat that with a stick. Don't say your ol' pal CRwM never did nothin' for ya.

Contest: We have a wiener.

It was a close race that ultimately came down to a choice between a touching and heart-felt ode to notable actor and a haiku that mentioned carrot rape. And carrot rape won out in the end. Because, I think, that's how Basho would have wanted it.

The books go to Screamin' Dave!

Thank you Screamin' Sasquatchan and Screamin' Cattleworks (especially for your innovative Alien life-cycle series) for sounding off. And Scared of the Television – who is actually my old lady and was therefore disqualified – thanks for the poem anyway.

Contest: Horror haiku.

On this blog, I've reviewed three novels from Dark Horse Press' Universal Monster tie-in series. The first was Paul Di Filippo's Time's Black Lagoon featuring everybody's favorite man-fish. Next up was Stephan Petrucha's monster versus madman showdown, Shadow of Frankenstein. Finally, today, I reviewed Witcover's excellent Dracula: Asylum. I going to give you all three of these books, slightly used but free of charge!

What do you have to do? Nothing.

Well, almost nothing.

And Now the Screaming Starts is holding its first ever contest and entering is as easy as counting to five, then seven, then five again.

Write a haiku featuring your favorite horror figure. It could be an 80s slasher or one of the Universal stable or one of those creepy ghost chicks that J-horror can't get enough of. I can't tell you who to pick. How the hell do I know who your favorites are? Get your head in the game, man. Think.

Here's the rules:
1. Write in English.
2. Submit your haiku as a comment to this entry. Haikus that show up elsewhere can't win.
3. The title of your haiku should be the character's name.
4. Submit as many as you like. Go to town.
5. Contest limited to residents of the continent of North America.
6. I'm choosing a winner on the afternoon (NYC-time) of the 22nd, so get your best efforts in before then.

Here's a sample:

Freddy
Nightmare teen stalker.
Can do anything he wants,
Except pick his nose.

Like that, only not sucky.

The winner will be the one I like best. If I pick your haiku, I'll send you my copies of all three books (they've been read – if you're anal about that, don't enter) and I'll pay the postage.

Have fun, dear readers.