Sandman

This pseudo-doc had me so confused that I needed help from Wikipedia to sort it out and I'm still not sure what parts of this are real.

I really enjoyed Carol Clover's update of the "final girl" theory and other horror tropes.

But (I think) the movie is really about underground horror. Independent films that feature torture, rape, mutilation, and murder without any pretense of storytelling. The people who make and act in these things were curiously engaging, much like the people in the porn industry.

These films are sold directly to people with very specific tastes. Some are actually made to order.

I didn't know this existed and I don't want to go there.

This all made me realize that my enthusiasm for slashers and zombies is about as edgy and rebellious as looking at internet pictures of cute baby animals.

Yes, it is a mess. More like "Dark Shadows" than a 21st century horror story. But it has energy and daring, and real emotion among the baroque plot. Helplessly in love with this stupid show.

FEWDIO

I am now hooked on these short horror videos. In less than 3 minutes they have plot, scares, and style. All the horror of the average movie compressed into minutes - very intense.

10 best low budget horror movies

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/2011/08/05/friday_night_seitz_horror_movies

Salon.con has some of the best writing on the horror genre. This is a fine top ten list and of course I know all of them well. I even agree with the ranking - almost. I would put "Carnival of Souls" first instead of second. And I would move "Eraserhead" from first to eighth. Still, a very fine list. The lowest budget, most innovative films are Outsider Art.

new favorite book - Jason Zinoman "Shocked Value"

He also wrote a great series for Slate last week on "How to fix horror". Now I had not noticed horror was broken, but I love his new rules.

1. stop trying to be so respectable

2. kill the backstory

3. embrace the remake

4. gore is good

Dear old horror hosts

This tribute, free on YouTube, is a little too long and reverent for my tastes. Still, it brings back some of my happiest television experiences ever.

Some of the hosts were very touching as they talked about how their framing stories and interruptions made it possible for children to watch horror without being overwhelmed or terrified.

repulsive or scary?

I watched "Black

Swan" on DVD last night - too enthralled to turn it off and too horrified to react.

Not a horror movie - but a repulsive one with a curious resemblance to "Human Centipede".

Then there was Barbara Hershey as the scariest mother in any movie ever.

I find myself comparing this to "Insidious". A haunted house movie with no sex, no gore, no modern special effects, only one death - and lots of fear.

I wasn't the only one screaming screaming out loud at the showing of "Insidious". The feeling afterwards was mostly pleasure, having worked out the sympathetic nervous system and flooded ourselves with catecholamines - all for a minor but well crafted, honest scary movie.

Evan is ready

http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/article1160186.ece

high class zombie essay

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/04/our-zombies-ourselves/8401/

Jody said I should see The Collector

And it is pretty good. Something of a "Saw" imitation, but with a few elegant touches that won me over.

The best of the traps, literally a trap, a room full of bear traps. Reminded me of a routine Penn and Teller do with animal traps.

And (unless I was out admiring the super moon), we never see more of the monster than this. Few horror movies can manage such restraint.

not a good idea

I fell asleep watching a DVD of Inception. Dreaming...

Netflix understands me

Today Netflix told me that, based on my movie ratings, they had created a special category for recomendations for me.

GORY VIRAL PLAGUE HORROR MOVIES

That's right.

when college professors write horror

I remember reading Stephen King's"The Stand" when it first came out and thinking, "This is a great plot. If only there were some characters this would be a great book."

Now Justin Cronin has written that great book. And its the first of a trilogy! With characters, dialogue, a vibrant imagined society, very scary monsters - everything you could want in a good novel. An entire vividly imagined world. This is wonderful.

It doesn't look like Kim Paffenroth is going to make millions of dollars with "Valley of the Dead" but it is a strange and lovely zombie tail. He re-imagines Dante as a survivor of a zombie apocalypse, journeying through circles of zombie hells. The result is moving and elegant.

Now that I think of it, real writers and academics have everything they need to produce superior horror. Anyone versed in the Bible, Herman Melville, The Illiad and the Odyssey, and Shakespeare already has all the horror tropes. And the skills to make them come alive.

This is a wonderful trend and I hope to see a lot more of it.

Incubus

I lost track of TCM underground for a while. In Alaska it appeared at a reasonable hour, while here in the good old eastern time zone it really is the middle of the night. But I have mastered the DVR and just watched this really strange movie.

Leslie Stevens directed this in 1965 right after Twilight Zone was cancelled. A very young William Shatner has the same trouble with evil young blonds that Captain Kirk would have later.

And this is the only movie ever made in Esperanto. Now that is a strange idea. It does give the whole muddled mess an other-worldly quality.

A great genre book - but which genre?

Sleepless straddles hard-boiled, noir, sci fi, and horror effortlessly. A prion disease that resembles fatal familial insomnia has spread around the world. There are parallel stories of a Hank Reacher like character and an all-too-human young cop trying to make some progress against the inevitable.

A great book, and once again the epidemiology is flawless.

I already know Huston as a great novelist with an amazing range - all of it dark. I was least impressed with his vampire novels, although "Half the Blood in Brooklyn" is a great title. This book was thrilling and I can't wait to read what comes next.

REC 2 is coming!

http://www.rec2themovie.com/

Can't wait. I saw "Quarantine" first. (I see all movies with "quarantine" in the title. ) I loved the pacing. The movie starts so slowly and accelerates almost unnoticed at first, then hysterically until the viewer can hardly breathe. I immediately rented the original Spanish REC and it was even better. The subtitles disappeared halfway through the film - they were totally superfluous as the story pounded along.

Like most contemporary movies, the technical details were perfect. Were filmmakers sitting in on all those bioterrorism and emergency management classes I took?

VOD June 4th.

100% medically accurate

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this elegant and repulsive movie is that there will be a sequel!

And it is elegant, even beautiful. The most disturbing images are lurid paintings of conjoined twins, a snapshot of dogs, simple diagrams on an overhead projector, and surgical markers on human skin. And Dieter Laser's extraordinary face, his tailored lab coat, his beautiful house with its clean lines, white walls, and gleaming tile floors.

The mid portion of the film is genuinely scary. What is more frightening than being restrained in a hospital bed while people do inexplicable things to you? I've seen it done!

The centipede leaves only the male with a voice (which he uses to great effect) and a will. He and the doctor play out dominance/submission scripts while the women are reduced to moans and sobs. If this had occurred earlier in the film I would have turned it off and gone back to bed.

I wondered, until the last scenes, whether this really was a horror film. "Its only a European art film", I told myself. We have a mad scientist, pretty and boring female victims, a spectacular setting that is the inverse of the traditional haunted house. And, at the end, the most horrific version of the "final girl" imaginable.

Not for children, not even suitable for 14 year old boys.

And we'll have to see a sequel before the end of the year!

Do I want to see this movie?

Normally, the thought of a Dutch indie horror film alone would be enough to get me to push the pay per view button. And its a "demented surgeon" movie, too. (The only more attractive possibility is a partially devoured demented surgeon).

Daniel Engber in Slate gives "Human Centipede" a remarkably luke warm endorsement, "This film has less nauseous gore than you'd find in many mainstream American horror movies".http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/browbeat/archive/2010/04/30/the-human-centipede-s-delicate-touch.asp

And there is a guide to watching the movie without vomiting

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/04/vultures_guide_to_watching_the.html

All this was appealing, but then I watched the trailer and it scared me.

Now it is not really true that I will watch anything. I couldn't get through "Hostel", although I loved the "Saw" movies. And if there is such a thing as torture porn I am not sure I know it when I see it.

But there is good gore and bad gore. Bad gore is a scene in "Zombies of Mass Destruction" where the bad guy nails a young woman's foot to the floor. I saw the wretched movie about a month ago and can't remember who the bad guy was. I never cared enough to know who the semi-naked victim was or how she got there. Eventually the nail was pulled out - another wince - and nothing that advanced the stupid plot. Maybe not torture porn, but certainly crap. Boring, yeechy crap.

In the "Crazies", the hero's hand is impaled on the floor with a knife as he is fighting for his life.

He pulls the knife from the floor and uses the point that protrudes from his hand to kill one of the infected women who is about to kill someone. Blood all over and a gasp - does this blood in his wound infect him and doom him? Pause for a beat, then he (and we) remember that the infectious agent is transmitted by the airborne route. A small detail that makes this modest movie brilliant. Same gore, different effect.

So I'll think about "Centipede" for another day. I think the appeal of the Dutch indie will win out. Besides, I'm a grownup. Even if I have paid for the movie I know how to turn it off if necessary.

And the trailer is always the scariest part anyway.

a long story about why my car is covered with bird poop

On Easter morning we did the traditional zombie-movie-with-the nephews thing to see the remake of Crazies.

For years now brother Daniel has been telling me that Crazies (1973) was Romero's finest non Living Dead movie. I told him he was, well, crazy, because the best non Living Dead movie was Martin (1977).

I was not only wrong, I was confused. I must have fallen asleep in front of the TV or something, because I had confused Crazies with an an Italian movie of about the same time and the same plot.

The new Crazies was so intelligently and carefully made, so scrupulous about little details and so genuinely scary that I had to go back to the original. It was pretty good and maybe Daniel was right. Of course in '73, the threat of our own government was more pointed and plausible than it is right now. I was surprised and touched to see a horror movie drift into a re-enactment of Kent State in the lovely Ohio spring.

The 2010 version is remarkably accurate about epidemiology as well as bioterrorism and emergency management principles (in real life I know about these things). There was one scene where the hero killed one of the zombies/infecteds in a way that exposed him to her blood and gave me shudders. Then I realized (and our hero remembered) that we had established that transmission was airborne. So the very bloody scene was disturbing but not lethal - a nice touch of realistic detail.

Oh, the poop on the car. Well, first it is parked under a massive oak tree inhabited by mockingbirds, doves, and at least one parrot. But I can't go to the carwash by myself since Crazies had a novel and frightening attack that took place in a car wash. Faces appearing in the soapy windows and hands reaching through the spongy strips...