Random Picture #5: Variations on a Theme.

Random Picture #2: The kiss.

Stuff: "A buffet of flimsily contained id."

Sloane Crosley, the publishing marketer turned essayist shown above eating who knows what, is so totally over the Halloween thing.

Scare quote, as it were: "Perhaps it’s because this city has such a buffet of flimsily contained id to begin with. There are a whole lot of people living here who don’t need to let loose on Halloween — their psyches are pretty unstructured on an average Tuesday."

Movies: If paying for their monocle polish happens to be your idea of fun, then it's all win for you.

Remember when the flood of remakes reached what we'd hoped was it's peak, remakes of My Bloody Valentine and Friday the 13th were coming out in the same season, and people declared it "return of fun horror"?

Well bend over again, the fun's not over.

According to the Screen Rant site, the Bros. Weinstein are about to launch a one-company horror deluge of crap in a bid to save their crumbling film empire.

Among the turds being polished by Harvey and Bob are a head-scratchingly unneeded fourth film for the Scream franchise, another installment in the post-Zombie Halloween franchise, and remakes of Hellraiser, Children of the Corn, and, unbelievably, An American Werewolf in London.

Ever committed to quality, the BW look like they're going to hire the cat who penned the Jim Carrey/Joel Schumacher dud The Number 23 to handle the script of the new American Werewolf and give it "a modern spin."

Sigh.

Remember when the Weinstein's involvement in a project was, in and of itself, a reason to get interested in a flick? What the heck, guys?

That said, I can see working the Scream thing from this angle. After the first couple of kills, we get the obligatory "here's the rules" scene. You have somebody explain to Sidney that, if after the the third incident, the killer comes back, then she's in a franchise and the killer is motivated by the fact that two very lazy film executives need more monocle polish. Then the expositor could explain that, unless the film's a dud, she can expect the killer to return in any slow quarter. So Sidney goes around adding lame comedic bits; intentionally fumbles a passionless romantic subplot; brings in a previously unmentioned younger African American sibling to appeal to teen audiences with his hip, street-smart sensibility and zany, irreverent humor; discovers a never before discussed superpower ("I can speak to dead cats!"); commits acts of stupid kill-me-please-ism that will infuriate even the least discriminating slasher fan; and maybe gets a sparkling vampire involved; all in the hopes of bombing the movie and saving herself from further franchise installments.

Movies: Turning tricks.

Often, it's unclear what's a trick and what's a treat.

When Warner Bros. and Legendary backlisted the Bryan Singer produced, Michael Dougherty helmed antho spookshow film Trick 'r Treat in 2007, the filmmakers must have felt like they were on the business end of one hell of a trick. Not only did the film languish on festival circuit for two years, but planned comic tie-ins were put on hold. Synergy fail.

Though, in retrospect, it may have been the best thing that could have happened to the movie.

With supply restricted, demand grew. Unintentionally, the film added another nostalgic feather to its war bonnet of nostalgic tropes: It became a cult film you actually had to seek out in order to see. Furthermore, it became a genre rally point; its creation of of a rapid critical consensus that the film was a love letter to the genre quickly lead to the widespread perception that the film's backlisting was another us-versus-them sign that the suits just "didn't get horror."

All of this somewhat obscured that fact that Trick 'r Treat is really a middling film. But it is mediocre in an odd way: TrT is an odd experiment in testing whether a film's saving graces will allow the viewer the forgive its weakest bits. Or do the highs and lows cancel each other out, leaving you with a fairly unimpressive flatline?

Depending on how you count, TrT intertwines four to six slender plots into a single movie that clocks in at about 70 minutes. Comic book "animated" segments and the occasional narration boxes serve to orient the view and connect the film to is genre ancestors. (In a happy accident, the film's delay squelched the planned media blitz that was to accompany the flick, so the other obvious function of these segments - to make a little extra cash by pushing the comic tie-in - barely registers on the viewer.)

The script cleverly manipulates the film's timeline to prevent the feeling that we're just watching a handful of cobbled together plots, but ultimately the antho format is the film's greatest limitation. The focus on short narrative segments keeps things pleasingly taut, but also prevents the film from doing anything other than becoming an efficient plot engine. And, to that end, most of the plot's are fairly mundane: two of the main plots are victim reversal stories and one is an extended fight sequence. Only the first extended story line, a nicely Coen Brotherish darkly sly take on the efforts of a suburban serial killer to dispose of a body contains a richer emotional plate, genuine laughs, and some real suspense. Though even that story line suffers greatly from the narrative demands of the anthology format. In a Hitchcock movie or a Coen Brother's film, that scene would have been a real nerve rattling set piece. But without the time to develop the characters or the plot, the scene feels devoid of consequence. It never really matters to the viewer what happens.

The acting suffers the same fate. TrT contains one fine performance (Dylan Baker), one fair one (Brian Cox), one unfortunate one (Anna "Oscared Too Soon" Paquin), and a slew of passable ones. But all of them, even the best, feel vaguely phoned in. The puzzle piece script gives them little to do but hit their marks and say their lines. Occasionally their sole function is to walk through a scene and remind us of how cleverly the film is put together. Ironically, this might have actually been better if the performances were uniformly crappy. In a lesser film, this self-conscious plotting would be a welcome distraction. Here, however, it feels invasive and overtly contrived.

This isn't to say that film is a disaster. The production values are slick and the film's visual inspirations extend to include sources such as Diane Arbus. For the thinness of the plot, the film is never dull. Easily accessible pleasures are found in abundance. Still, the overall result reminds one of a dog on leash: whenever the film threatens to stray or get into something interesting, there's a quick tug and the film is yanked back to a more familiar, regular direction.

Music: We is all monsters.

I don't know anything about the Plimptons other than:

1. They're from Glasgow.

2. Collectively, they claim to have 24 limbs.

3. They made this song: "I Hate Halloween."

Stuff: "Viva la femme" or "Rob Zombie hates you right back; but, unlike you, he gets to talk his smack in the Times."

For the first time ever, more women buy tickets to horror flicks than men. This interesting detail is somewhat buried in an otherwise unremarkable piece in the NY Times.

The Grey Dame of Journalism has posted a piece on the state of the fright flick. The article checks in with Jennifer's Body writer Diablo Cody, her co-conspirator Karyn Kusama (that somebody would think following up Girlfight with a scare pic starring Megan Fox is a positive career move says something about the mainstreaming of horror, but I don't know what), and Halloween exhumer Rob Zombie.

It starts off with the popular "why should chicks dig horror question" which is really only interesting in light of new data that suggests women are now buying more horror tickets than men.

Long before the first big-screen vivisection of a female breast, the novelist H. P. Lovecraft wrote that horror was "supposed to be against the world, against life, against civilization." But the delight that the genre’s filmmakers, especially those behind the Saw franchise and its torture porn kin, take in depicting a steady stream of starlets being strung up, nailed down or splayed open, makes it clear that modern horror is against some more than others.

And yet recent box office receipts show that women have an even bigger appetite for these films than men. Theories straining to address this particular head scratcher have their work cut out for them: Are female fans of "Saw" ironists? Masochists? Or just dying to get closer to their dates?

The article evokes the perennially popular Clover theory of the "final girl," supported by a Cody anecdote:

"When I watched movies like 'The Goonies' and 'E.T.,' it was boys having adventures," she said. "When I watched 'Nightmare on Elm Street,' it was Nancy beating" up Freddy. "It was that simple."

By far the best quote comes from Rob Zombie, who has decided to give a great and glorious middle finger to the hordes of bloggers who felt his reimginamakethingy of Halloween II didn't measure up to the original (a charge that is somewhat like accusing somebody of not being developmental challenged enough to be in the special Olympics).

"The '80s are the decade that ruined everything for everybody," he said. "The soul went away, and it became gore for the sake of gore, and kids were cheering at killings and yelling and screaming. It became a roller coaster ride. And of course once something becomes a roller coaster, all you can do is build a bigger, more extreme roller coaster. That’s where I think horror movies really got perverted."

I'm actually sympathetic to the views expressed by C, K, and Z in the piece, though I find this particular line a bit off-putting:

For Ms. Cody this was great news, an opportunity to re-educate a jaded audience about what a horror film is.

The incessant impulse of horror fandom to school the ignorant masses around them is, I think, perhaps the worst aspect of being a horror fan. The ceaseless rants of some fans are not only monotonous, but inevitably tinged with a sort of nostalgic myopia. It's a shame to see to such a statement in an otherwise inoffensive article.

That line aside, I think the article points to a interesting, if unasked, question about the changing nature of horror and its fandom. If women are, for the first time, eclipsing men in horror fandom, is there something new and distinctly "feminine" about modern horror? And if so, does the backlash against modern horror reflect some sort of old boys versus new girls conflict?

[UPDATE: Reader Madelon wisely points out that the claim that women are buying more tickets than men should, given the article's lack of hard data, be looked at with some skepticism. Even if it is true, what would it mean? Are women buying more tickets or are men buying fewer? Are the audience numbers the same, but the cost of tickets being distributed differently?

We do have some anecdotal evidence of the shift. The LA Times reports that Final Destination's performance edge over Halloween II had a gender angle:

Fifty-three percent of theaters played "Final Destination" in 3-D, helping its overall take since 3-D theaters typically charge $2 to $3 more for tickets. That can't explain its entire $10.9-million advantage over "Halloween," however. Tracking had indicated young women were more interested in "Destination," while young guys preferred "Halloween," and it seemed girls came out in bigger numbers and were able to persuade their male friends to join them.

EW gives us a slew of data going back to 2002's remake of The Ring:

Today, however, the genre's biggest constituency of die-hard fans is women. Name any recent horror hit and odds are that female moviegoers bought more tickets than men. And we're not just talking about psychological spookfests like 2002's The Ring (60 percent female), 2004's The Grudge (65 percent female), and 2005's The Exorcism of Emily Rose (51 percent female). We're also talking about all the slice-and-dice remakes and sequels that Hollywood churns out.

''I don't think there was anyone who expected that women would gravitate toward a movie called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,'' says Chainsawproducer Brad Fuller of the 2003 remake, which became a female-driven $81 million hit. ''For us, the issue now is that it's harder for us to get young men into the theater than women.'' And female audiences stay loyal. ''I've seen married women who are, like, 35 years old at horror movies and they're like, 'Oh, our husbands are with the kids and we all came out together,''' says Clint Culpepper, the president of Screen Gems, which is releasing a remake of the 1987 slasher film The Stepfather in October. ''Men stop seeing horror at a certain age, but women continue to go.''

Even the movies popularly known as torture porn, in which hot babes in hot pants are often subjected to medieval torture devices, apparently hold an appeal for young women. Executives preparing to unveil the video-on-demand channel FEARnet didn't expect women to have the stomach for a subgenre often considered exploitative. ''When we launched the network, we went out and did focus groups and it was the women in the room who really wanted a horror channel more than the guys did,'' says FEARnet president Diane Robina. ''I actually thought that the women would be less into the Saw films, but they were much more into them.'']
I can't help but think on the vast and bizarrely infantile reactions the horror blog-o-shpere has had towards the Twilight franchise. Not only is there a weirdly playgroundish "ewww girls" thing at play, but anti-Twilight critics seem pretty quick to appeal to gender coded insults: I'm thinking specifically here of references to "Twatlight" (which makes the woman/franchise connection about as explicit as it gets) and the constant refrain that the male leads of the franchise are homosexual (which seems to assume that all gaze is male and to show hardbodied young male flesh couldn't possibly a reflection of female desire, but must be some perversion of the correct straight male way to look at things).

The fanbase of Twilight clearly skews female. (I once asked a neighbor's kid which he'd be more embarrassed to be seen carrying through the school halls: the Bible or a copy of Twilight. He said he'd get teased less carrying the Bible.) But, data shows, so does the audience for Saw - a fact that considerably less is made of. Still, criticism of Saw occasionally follows a weirdly similar pattern. Both are criticized for their "soap opera" aspects. The tangled love stories of former and the endlessly recursive backstory of latter are both consider failings rather than strengths. People propose that interest in either franchise is symptomatic, or a byproduct of some intellectual deficiency, rather than the wholesome "fun" interest fans have in other horror franchises. Twilight fans, we're given to believe, are simply stupid young women who will "grow up" and learn to like real entertainments. Saw fans, we're told by critics who assume to be in the know, are perverse gore hounds who get sick kicks from suffering. Nothing, we can be sure, like pleasure of fans that enjoy watching the mass murder perpetrated by Freddy, Michael, Jason, and company.

Perhaps this is all coincidence. Maybe there an essential form to the Interweb rant that makes attacks on Twilight and Saw seem weirdly similar. Further, are we really in a notably period of fandom backlash? One could easily make the case that fan communities usually tend towards the artistically conservative and dismiss the new. All that's different is the ability of such fans to spread their message. The idea that we're in an unusually important period of retrenchment would then be simply an illusion of the Interweb.

Still, somebody smarter than I (and that's most of y'all out there) should look into the rise of a female-dominated horror fandom, its impact on the product, and the reaction of older fans and self-styled old school protectors of the faith. The results might come to nothing; or they might just cast an interesting on the future of the genre.

Comics: Halloween panel discussion.

Chicago Tribune has a list up of the ten best graphic novels for Halloween.

Sans covers and editorial blurbs, here's their list:
1. Batman: The Long Hallow
2. Sandman: Master of Dreams
3. From Hell
4. The Books of Magic
5. Swamp Thing Vol. 1: Saga of the Swamp Thing
6. Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth
7. Hellblazer
8. Marvel Zombies
9. 30 Days of Night
10. Hellboy: Seed of Destruction

It's not a bad list. I like that it is geared towards easy-to-find, mainstream stuff as it means that curious Tribune reader who isn't already into comics should have no trouble finding copies. A list of popular and widely known titles may better serve the role of introducing newer readers to the medium than a more esoteric list.

That said, if one didn't have the goal of bringing in new converts, but of preaching to the choir, what would you recommend?

Here's some October-friendly comics that I think horror fans might find interesting. It isn't a "best of" so much as a "check these mammer-jammers out of." In no particular order:

1. The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye (Kirkman/Moore)
2. House (Simmons)
3. Recess Pieces (Fingerman)
4. Essentials: Tomb of Dracula, Vol. 1 (Conway, Goodwin, Fox, Wolfman, Colan, Palmer, Kane)
5. The Wicked West (Livingston, Tinnell)
6. Cat-Eyed Boy, Vol. 1 (Umezu)
7. Monster Zoo (TenNapel)
8. Billy the Kid's Old Timey Oddities (Powell, Holtz)
9. Pigeons from Hell (Hampton)
10. The Marquis: Danse Macabre (Davis)

Anybody else got any good Halloweeny titles to recommend?

Opinion: A modest proposal or "Godzilla versus Jason."

So the horror blog-o-sphere waits with bated breath (but not baited breath – it's short for abated and it means you're holding your breath – the source of the phrase, "Don't hold your breath" – but I'm suddenly on a tangent and we haven't even gotten a whole sentence out – the shame) to see if Robert Englund is going to reprise the Freddy role in the new remake, re-launch, re-imagining, re-re-re of Nightmare on Elm Street. The general consensus seems to be that the whole of horror fandom pities whoever the hell picks up the Freddie mantle as Englund pretty much made it all his for so long.

The subtext of this conversation is that the venerable franchises of the '80s are between a rock and a hard place.

Basically, nobody wants just keep grinding out sequels. The sequel game has been one of diminishing returns: generally less money goes into each flick in the effort to ensure a profit, these increasingly crappy flicks rightly draw fewer viewers, the studios see profit and invest even less in a sequel, which draws fewer people, and so on and so on. It becomes a race to the bottom. The ultimate end of it would be that the studio makes a flick that costs less than the cost of a single ticket to try to make a profit off of the last poor schmuck that cares.

In an effort to break this cycle, franchise owners have decided that the way to save their valuable properties is to hit the reset button. The idea wasn't totally without merit. One of the unfortunate products of the long death-spiral these franchises had entered was the introduction of meta-nonsense, wackiness, and other non-scary elements meant to rejuvenate the flicks. Sadly, it did the opposite. If you could just start over, as if you hadn't turned your characters in parodies of themselves, you could strip that crap out and get back to basics. This was one of the stated aims of the recent Halloween re-launch. Again and again in interviews director Rob Zombie claimed that he wanted to make the franchise "scary again." Get some hip talent, market it as the second coming of a classic. Good times, good times.

It's a great idea. There's only one problem. It doesn't seem to work. Zombie's Halloween was one of the most trashed horror flicks of last year. Not to be outdone, studios are rushing to throw Friday the 13th and Nightmare down the same hole. There's no reason to believe these will be any better. The problem with Zombie's Halloween will be faced by these flicks too. Revisiting a film automatically puts overwhelming restrictions on what you can or cannot do with a flick. At best, you can add some details to the backstory, modernize the filmmaking techniques, and push the gore up to modern standards. That's pretty much it. And that's everything Zombie did and the result was poor. I'm predicting now that the Friday and Nightmare flicks will suck in the same way.

So we're stuck. We can't make sequels and we can just magically restart the series and recapture the magic. What do we do?

The solution comes from an unlikely horror franchise: Godzilla.

Compared to Godzilla, the horror franchises of the '80s are small beer. The Godzilla franchise has reached an astounding 28 flicks. Like the '80s horror franchises, it had been diluted with heavy-handed humor, tweaked with premise undermining elements (like Minizilla), and generally abused in the name of getting asses in theater seats. However, unlike the '80s franchises, the last series of Godzilla flicks was widely praised as being among the best of the series, second only to the original in terms of entertainment value. This is no small feat. Godzilla is not exactly a multifaceted character and one can be forgiven for assuming that, after nearly 50 years, there's not much more to say about him. And yet, the filmmakers behind Godzilla managed to revitalize a property that had sunk so low as to feature its leading lizard doing a little jig after defeating an adversary. The tricks the Godzilla directors used could be used, I think, to get the '80s franchises out of the trap they find themselves in.

In 1999, Toho studios brought back their big reptilian star after a four-year lull. There were two huge factors working against a successful comeback. First, the last batch of Japanese-made Godzilla flicks had been roundly criticized as lacking. Ticket sales were mediocre, their target audiences – Japanese youth – had decided they were unhip relics, and talented filmmakers avoided the projects to avoid getting tarred as a hack. Second, the lackluster American version had been a one-two punch to Japanese Godzilla fans: it was at once upsetting that Godzilla failed to penetrate the American movie biz and upsetting that the American version was such a universally reviled mess. Toho revitalized the Godzilla series by 1) getting rid of continuity, 2) making it a showcase for new and promising talent, and 3) creating artificial scarcity.

Let's talk about getting rid of continuity. The new flicks exist in a sort of "Godzilla universe," but the details of the universe are reinvented with each flick. For example, in the last series some of the films assumed that Godzilla had attacked Japan only once before, others assumed that Godzilla had attacked several times, and one of them assumed that monster attacks were so common that a special UN military force existed solely for the purpose of fighting giant monsters. Some of the films take place in the here-and-now while others take place in the near or distant future. Basically, each film is a stand-alone product. The ground rules for the particular flick are explained in the film through exposition.

The second element: new talent. I'm going to be honest. The use of new talent has been a bit of a mixed bag in the context of Godzilla. On one hand, because we've got hungry directors, actors, and key crew, you get these sort of balls-out spectaculars that are meant to blow the audience away. This is everybody's big chance and they mean to take it. The downside is a tendency towards allusiveness, pandering to the audience, and an over reliance on currently "hip" techniques. For example, the makers of The Matrix should be able to sue the makers of Godzilla: Final Wars for stealing scenes and techniques. Still, it should be said that, unlike many a previous Godzilla flick, Final Wars never lags. It is an insane rush of set pieces and action sequences. And this is typical of all five of the last set of films: they are all made as if the future of the filmmakers' careers depended on it. Nobody phones it in.

Finally, another important lesson we can learn from the Godzilla franchise has to do with "clustering" the releases. Toho has learned that it is really easy to just keep cranking out flicks. But then you end up in the death-spiral that '80s slasher franchises are stuck in. Better to release a string of flicks and then dry up for a few years. Toho regularly produces as string of flicks, then retires Godzilla for four or five years, then releases a batch of new flicks. This requires some self-discipline. For example, Toho intended for the last series to extend for three films. It lasted five. Still, they could have gone on and on, dropping costs and accepting small and small returns. Instead, they left while the party was good. Don't drown your viewer in inferior product and they'll come back when you're ready to release more product.

I propose that the owners of the horror franchises of the '80s learn from the Godzilla franchise. First, adopt a looser approach to creating sequels. Let's take Friday the 13th as an example. Instead of adding more an more flicks to the current story, just set some ground rules involving Jason, Crystal Lake, and so on. After you've done that, let each film take a different approach. Does nobody know that people who go to Crystal Lake are asking for it or is it something everybody knows? Is Jason just some guy or is he some magical and unkillable zombie? Set this up with each flick and don't require each and every film to toe the same line. This opens up the stories that can be told and would encourage creativity. I would even drop the numbering system. Just give the films unnumbered titles like the Godzilla franchise or even the James Bond franchise.

Second, use real talent. "But wait," you might well say. "Rob Zombie came fresh off The Devil's Rejects and he went on to make the subpar Halloween." Of course he did. Zombie's best film was his most creative. House of 1,000 Clichés and Halloween are just too beholden to other flicks. Imagine if he'd been told, "Hey, Zombie, here's the keys to the Halloween franchise. Do whatever you want." There's no point in getting good directors and good screenwriters, and then putting them in the straightjacket of a remake. Find talent and let them do what they do best.

Finally, do the math on the value of your franchise. You can kill the goose that laid the golden egg by driving your franchise into the ground or you can keep it evergreen by avoiding overproduction. Pick one?

There's actually an interesting test of these theories already going on. Over at DC/Wildstorm comics, they've got the rights to the New Line horror franchises: Texas Chainsaw, Nightmare, and Friday. The comics follow the basic rules described above. They don't just retell the film stories and, where it helps the story, they break with the continuity established in the flicks. They've put real talent on the titles. Finally, they haven't made the title monthly. Instead, each title exists as a collection of loosely connected mini-series, each with its own narrative arc. The results are mixed. Nightmare has been so-so, but Friday and TCM has been to notch. Still, I'm willing to bet that 2 out of 3 is a better ratio than we'll see out of these remakes.

No strategy can ensure that every flick in a franchise will be a success. But I think going this route would make each flick an event. Each film in the franchise would worth checking out because you'd now you were going to get something new.

Anyway, that's this horror blogger's opinion.

Stuff: Bloody good beer.

The Shmaltz Brewing Company - the folks who bring you He-Brew, the Chosen Beer - have expanded their small Coney Island line with the Coney Island Freaktoberfest. This tasty Halloween brew is a nice little IPA with a twist: it has "zombie blood," a tasteless red color dye used in stage blood, that turns the beer a thick red color. In your average pint glass, the beer is an opaque red with a light red-to-pink foam on top.

It is available on tap, so you've got a reason to go out on Halloween. Yeah, I'm talking to you, you couch potato.

For folks in New York, you can find the beer at the following bars. If you're one of those lonely solo drunks, it is also available in a growler at Bierkraft in Brooklyn.

Happy Halloween!

Stuff: Yum yum.

Halloween is about ghost and goblins. It is a time when we get make faces at the devils of our worse nature and play at evil. Its roots date back to ancient folk rituals of . . . blah blah blah.

Halloween is, first and foremost, about candy. You knew this as a child. And, admit it, you know it now as an adult.

Epicurious, the cooking web site, has laid out a spread of tasty articles on Halloween grub, decorations, and entertaining – and they've got a fantastic slideshow of some of this Halloween's neatest treats.

Above is a coffin featuring the bones of a white chocolate skeleton that you can assemble before devouring. Other notable sweets include chocolate cockroaches (crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside) and chocolate Day of the Dead skulls "available in Venezuelan white chocolate, milk chocolate with gray sea salt and hickory-smoked almonds, and spicy dark chocolate with Mexican ancho and chipotle chiles and cinnamon."

Dig in, Screamers and Screamettes.

Comics: Hex sign.

Lest we forget that Halloween is rollin' around, the fine folks at DC Comics have produced a special Halloween issue of Jonah Hex everybody's favorite horribly mutilated Wild West bounty hunter. (Shown above dispatching the Man of Steel - clickee to see more big.)

Jonah Hex - a former Confederate cavalry officer who, after the war, became a notorious bounty hunter – is one of the most recognizable characters in funny books. See, Hex had an unfortunate run-in with some irate Native Americans and the result is a mug that could scare vultures off a gut wagon. The left side of Hex's face is completely normal. He's a blond and he's normally got a few days worth of stubble on him. The right side, though, that's a different matter. His right eye is large and saucer-like, as if the lids of his eye have been cut away. The skin of his right cheek was also stripped away, forming a sort of wedge shaped area where, even when his mouth is closed, his teeth and gums are visible. Finally, in what is perhaps the neatest bit of character design in the DC Comics universe, this weird strip of skin comes from an attached point under his right eye, hangs lose over his mouth, and re-attaches just above his chin. How in hell did that happen? Did some hack sawbones have this extra strip of skin and decided that he'd better save it somehow? I don't know. But it does add this surreal, gross touch to the character.

Despite his zombie-like appearance, Hex's earliest adventures were never really all that supernatural. He started his career in pages of All-Star Western, later to be renamed Weird Western Tales, the sister title to Weird War Stories. Both titles were showcases for genre bending tales that mixed horror elements with Western stories and combat tales. Oddly, as if it were an expression of his sour and contrary personality, Hex's stories remained firmly and solely in the Western idiom. And he stayed that way for more than a decade, branching off into this own book in '77.

In 1985, Jonah Hex was cancelled, but the character was retooled into sci-fi hero. With the help of some time-travelers Hex ended up in a post-nuclear war Mad Max type scenario. This played poorly in the US, but was well received in Europe, where the appetite for stories of America after the fall knows no bounds. This bizarre Hex Beyond the Thunderdome detour lasted all of 18 issues before it too was cancelled.

Hex lie fallow for several years until, in 1993, noted novelist and short story author Joe R. Lansdale created the first of three mini-series that placed Hex in a true Western/horror context. Lansdale's first series, Two Gun Mojo pitted the West's ugliest hero against a evil gang of sideshow freaks and the zombie of Wild Bill Hickcock. This was followed by Riders of the Worm and Such, which featured Hex going up against what's essentially Cthulhu, and Shadows West, in which the bounty hunter faced off against ghosts.

(As an aside, Hex got his day in court when the albino Texan music legends the Winter brothers sued DC for defamation over the appearance of the Autumn brothers, two albino mutant Cthulhu worshippers that appear in Riders of the Worm and Such. The Winters lost the case.)

In 2005, Jonah was back in a regular series. It was back to basics for the new creative team. Hex was stripped of all time-travel gimmicks and hoodoo trappings and returned to his role as a thoroughly unpleasant bounty hunter of dubious moral standing in a dark, but somewhat realistic West.

At least, until Halloween.

The Halloween issue re-unites Hex with two of DC's other Western heroes: Bat Lash and El Diablo. Bat Lash is a dandified gambler of the "Maverick" variety. El Diablo's a weirder sort – think of fusion between Zorro and Ghost Rider and you'll have an idea of what we're talking about. El Diablo is a lawyer by day, but at night a hell-spawned demon takes him over and, wearing Zorro-style mask and cape, he takes to the dusty streets of the West to punish the evil with his flaming bullwhip. I kid not.

The plot of the Halloween issue involves Hex becoming possessed by El Diablo's demon and taking on a witch and he zombie horde. It ain't Shakespeare, but in the words of Jonah Hex: "Lead, not words." All hell breaks loose, so to speak, and the carnage equals Halloween fun.

Movies: I'm ready for my close up.

It would be easy to bury what is great about Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon in over analysis. I think hyperventilating fans of the film might be doing it a disservice when they praise it too highly. The film is clever, but no more clever than the first Scream flick was. The film gets some great mileage out of the faux-documentary feel, but doesn't use it to explore the viewer-media relationship the way the considerably grimmer Man Bites Dog did. It scores some zingers off the eminently ludic slasher genre; but isn't making fun of slasher flicks somewhat like making fun of the slow kid? Even the core franchises of the genre have long since lapsed into self-parody.

Behind the Mask is not particularly scary, is passably funny, is smart without being brilliant, and deconstructs a genre that, for all the quick wit of the film, has long since been subverted, dissected, and reinvented.

There. Now that we've got that out of the way, let me tell you why BtM is absolutely fantastic: BtM is a pitch perfect pop culture mediation on fandom. Specifically, it is a love letter to the pleasures of that curious sort of fandom that turns fictional sinister mass-murdering psychos into sub-cultural mascots, rates cinematic bloodbaths on the criteria of the creativity of its carnage, and can earnest discuss who might beat who in a fight: Leatherface or Michael Meyers?

For those who haven't seen it - BtM involves a charismatic and energetic young would-be slasher, the titular hero of the pic, and the film crew who follows him around the small Maryland town of Glen Echo as he prepares for his debut mass-murder. The film crew watches him select his victims, build a tantalizing "back story," run through a rigorous physical fitness routine, and generally do what an aggressively proactive movie maniac must do to make sure his opening slaughter is worthy of the name "atrocity."

Along the way we meet Leslie's "Ahab," an obsessive shrink played by Robert Englund, doing his best Donald Pleasence circa Halloween impersonation, and a truly wonderful Scott Wilson (who has been playing fascinating heavies since 1967) as Leslie's murderous mentor, a retired slasher who wants to give young bucks like Leslie the wisdom of his years spilling the blood of sorority sisters and the like.

It all builds up to a suitably tense final showdown in an abandoned house next to a beautifully atmospheric orchard.

One of the first things genre fans might notice is that, as far as slashers go, BtM isn't interested in going for the jugular. The body count is, by contemporary standards, modest and the film's approach to blood-letting is downright timid, even by the now tame standards of the classic slashers of the '70s and '80s. Instead, BtM trades in horrorific gore for that curious hallmark of the slasher flick: the predicable scare. That's really where the catharsis of slasher flicks is. We know exactly what we're getting into and we want that old familiar dance. And, when it comes to the old familiar dance, director Scott Glosserman and Nathan Baesel, who is perfect as the awkwardly cute then extremely creepy Vernon, are a regular Astaire and Rodgers. The joy of the film is not in the details of the kills or in the endless Pollock-ish splatter. The film shines in the way it fulfils the now classic formula of the slasher film: it begins with us rooting for the killer, then switchs our allegiances to the final girl. There's nothing surprising in this. It is a staple of every slasher flick. But there is a pleasure in seeing it done so knowingly and so well. It is like getting a perfect cheeseburger. Sure, we're not talking avocat et oeufs à la mousse de crabe; but isn't a really great burger something noteworthy in its own right.

A special mention should Jason Presant, the cinematographer. Despite a deliberately low-fi vibe, as suits the mockumentary conceit of the flick, Presant's expressive camera work manages to capture some genuinely beautiful moments, and, surprisingly for the lenser of a slasher flick, he has a real feel for the composition of pastoral charm. His work is better than it needs to be and his low-gloss but careful touch helps the movie avoid the bloated Hollywood slickness of Scream and the jagged, muddy awkwardness of most low budget productions.

BtM is a great movie in the way a song like the Beach Boy's I Get Around is a classic tune. By taking a perfectionist's approach to something meant to be a disposable pop confection, it elevates the final result. For such a special film, I think we need to break out the ol' German Cities Whose Names Begin with the Letter "O" Film Rating System. I'm giving Behind the Mask a strong Oberhausen. No he didn't! Yes, he did! I said it, and I stand by it: Oberhausen.