Month: November 2012

Categories
This Just In

The After Lives of Everest Climbers

We all know about tombstones used as markers as to the location of dead bodies, but the Smithsonian tells the tale of bodies themselves used as location markers. Several stories in fact. How does this make sense? In the rarefied conditions of Mt Everest, many climbers have died. Over 200 during the twentieth century, come to find out. The same conditions that made life difficult make decomposition difficult so some of these corpses have endured to become landmarks for further climbers. “Green Boots” is the name of one of these human way-markers. More interesting and poignant tales of the after life of frozen adventurers over here at the Smithsonian blog.

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2012/11/there-are-over-200-bodies-on-mount-everest-and-theyre-used-as-landmarks

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #324 – Midnight Snack


(Male, 40’s) A seriously twisted night of dreams.

I was inside some kind of a cabin or rustic building. There were floor to ceiling picture windows that looked out on trees and a leaf- strewn lawn. I watched a good sized baby raccoon playing in the leaves. Then I noticed that it wasn’t playing so much as clawing at them desperately.

And that’s when I noticed the spider. The spider was immense. Its body alone was at least three feet across. I saw its eyes first. Round black orbs the size of softballs surrounded by thick gray bristles. I started counting them but stopped at six. That’s when I realized it was a spider and that it was really large. The raccoon must have been playing over the spider’s nest or perhaps it camouflaged itself beneath a pile of leaves.

The baby raccoon was squealing, trying to claw its way free. The spider was so large it didn’t need to wrap the raccoon up in webs. The spider simply skewered the raccoon with its long fangs and popped it in its mouth whole. Though this spectacle was horrifying it wasn’t actually terrifying.

I wasn’t terrified until later in the dream. Many other strange and silly things had happened and I found myself outside of the cabin. I was staring at a display case that had been set inside of a tree trunk. There was marvelous but weird Christmas display of vintage toys. Then I realized that I wa standing extremely close to that very same spider’s nest. Its wasn’t large enough to swallow me at one bite but there was still be no contest whatsoever if it decided to kill me.

I began to scream, utterly terrified. I wasn’t calling for help. I wasn’t even thinking to escape. I completely fell apart and collapsed into a terrified panic. It was the most disturbing sensation, one i don’t believe I’ve ever felt. I was utterly powerless.

Categories
Movies

Movies: “Daycare for Special Children”

I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: I think humor mixed with horror should be in the same proportion as vermouth to vodka in a perfect martini, that is, just the barest hint. HOWEVER, this adorable profile of a daycare for supernaturally afflicted children left me with the perfect wry grin.

CollegeHumor’s Favorite Funny Videos

Categories
Movies

Movies: British Horror Short Maker “Bloody Cuts”

Thanks to io9 for tipping me off to Bloody Cuts, a producer of high quality, short horror films. They’ve got a good handful of films created and posted so far and thematically they run the gamut from urban folk-horror to zombie apocalypse to, well, my personal favorite is the supernatural child-terror of “Suckablood.” The camera work is sharp and the special effects are for the most part effective. In perusing the credits, there seems an oddly large number of folks with the last name “Franklin” involved — maybe they’re like the Ramones…

Bloody Cuts have run an Indie-Go-Go fundraiser but if you enjoy quality short horror as much as I do, feel free to use the “Donate” button to slip ’em a bit of cash.

Categories
Movies

Movie – “Hominid” – Humanoid Skeletons in Creepy Crawlers

Double plus good, eh? Classy AND creepy.

The character design is great even on its own as it whimiscally re-imagines the inner structures of various creatures as if they all possessed human-like skeletal structures. Then there’s the effective choice to depict these designs in monochrome to give an old-timey x-ray feel. Then there is the clever narrative about a day in the life of this bizarre little world, one that is portrayed through very effective shots and pacing. But my absolute FAVORITE part of this lovely little clip is the fact that it features all the credits at the very end! By the time I’ve been wowed by the animation, I WANT to keep watching just to see who was responsible.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #323 – Kill the Cop-Baby

policeman-35999_1280(Female, 30’s) My friend Mike was in trouble with the cops. I didn’t know what he’d done, but Mike told me they were going to arrest him and kill him.

The cops came to get him, but they had a problem: somehow the chief had been turned into a baby. There were hints that it was done by magic. The cops weren’t sure yet how to reverse the situation, but as soon as they did, they would be taking Mike away.

Meanwhile, another cop handed me the baby cop– who looked just like a regular baby of about 9 months old– too young to walk, but sturdy enough to sit up. He was dressed like a baby, not a cop, in case you are wondering. He asked me to look after the chief for a few minutes, so I held him on my hip with my arm around him, like you do with a baby that size.

As soon as he was out of ear-shot, Mike whispered to me to kill the baby.

“What? Are you serious?” I asked him.

“Dead serious,” he replied. “It’s my life we’re talking about.”

I looked at the baby cop. He really looked like a baby– harmless and not murderous. Still, Mike is a really good friend.

So when the cops weren’t looking, I tried to smother the baby I was holding. I felt just terrible. It wasn’t easy to do however. His face was kind of like a doll’s face, that hard plastic that doesn’t move. I was trying to pinch his nose closed and hold his mouth shut, but the baby was resisting, trying to twist his head away from me and turning bright pink. It was awful. I had to stop. The baby was gasping and wheezing, but Mike wasn’t ready to give up.

“Come on,” he said. “Just kill him. It’s a cop, not a baby.” Mike was watching me and looking really desperate.

Maybe I could feed it something that it would choke on. I looked around. I saw a rubber clown mask sitting on the table that I guess hadn’t been put away from Halloween yet. I handed it to the baby, who started putting it in its mouth and chewing on it, the way babies do. It kinda bit off a piece, so I waited for him to choke. No luck. I glanced over at Mike. I looked back at the baby, and the mask was gone. He’d swallowed the whole thing, coughing a little, but he was fine.

Darn.

On the table was a bowl of peanuts. I grabbed a handful and held them out to the baby, who took one and put it in its mouth, then another, then another. The baby cop was just downing the peanuts, dozens of them, one right after the other.

The other cop came back and held out his hands to take the baby, just as the baby cop started to cough. “I’ll take the chief now,” he said. Mike was standing behind the cop, shaking his head no.

“It’s okay. I don’t mind watching him,” I said. “Leave him here with me.”

Then the baby started to shake, and then threw up on the ground, enormous puddle of vomit including a bunch of peanuts and a clown mask.

“I guess he’s not feeling so good,” said the cop, shaking his head.

I tried to nudge the clown mask out of the way, hoping that the cop didn’t notice it because it seemed pretty obvious that I was trying to hurt the baby cop, but the other cop seemed pretty distracted by the baby cop and the chaos going on.

“Come on,” he said. “Give me the chief. We gotta go.”

Mike looked at me accusingly. I could have saved his life, but I’d failed.

Categories
Movies

Movies: “Stake Land (2010)” – Gorgeous Vampire Apocalypse

“Stake Land” hit me like a hammer of wonderful. I was not expecting to love it. Any hopes I had for the end of the world soured months ago and I officially declared the apocalypse so “yesterday” However, this indie horror flick makes me add an exception. What first struck me were the visuals. The film felt like film both due to image quality and the thoughtful establishing shots that plumped out the locations. The milieu felt really familiar, really rust belt and post industrial. It wasn’t shot in the Midwest technically but except for a few mountains, it felt like home.

The main characters were all strongly conceived and portrayed. Obviously the heroic “Mister” is the defining core — yeah, yeah, structurally speaking the kid he saves is the protagonist– and yeah, the overall thrust of the movie is a bildungsroman for this youngun, complete with separation from natal household, learned independence, sexual awakening and (spoiler) re-establishment of a new household. The kid character is good, central even but damn, Mister is da MAN. Supporting characters are excellent. There’s a rescued nun, a pregnant singer, an ex-marine… and what compelling narrative would be complete without an ape-shit bad guy?

Religion and its bizarre perversions formed an essential thematic strata of Stake Land a detail that made it particularly vivid. America is daft already when it comes to the variety and ingenuity of our faith-based practices. The end of normal society could only make those oddities accelerate outward. I particularly enjoyed the suggestion of a suicide cult during one scene since it was nicely understated, not to mention that it goes in a completely different direction than I’d expected.

“Stake Land” compares favorably to the film version of “The Road.” Both are beautiful to look at. Both chronicle the decay of American civilisation and the desperate attempts to retain a sense of family in the face of such devastation. Both films end on at least a whisper of optimism. But I’ll take “Stake Land” over “The Road.” It comes down to something that I believe Nick Mamatas noted when explaining the difference between genre and literary fiction: in genre stories, something happens. Too often “literary” writing and “auteurist” cinema specifically repress story and plot as they focus on the elements of mood, character, theme. A film like “Stake Land,” modest though it may be, is a strong reminder that movies can be both poetic AND entertaining.

And if all that weren’t enough already, there were no zombies. Aren’t we over zombies yet? The vampires in “Stake Land” provided different levels of threat. They weren’t quite the über-beasts of “30 Days of Night” but they were happily far from the urbane and decadent artistocrats of “Interview with a Vampire.” I loved the sense that there was a taxonomy of vampire types known to the hunters; “scamps” were young ones, “berserkers” were older, more dangerous. Perhaps my favorite touch was how Mister collected the fangs from his kills and better, how those fangs functioned as currency.

I have no idea what angel of dark cinema spirited “Stake Land” to me but I am deeply grateful. I had been wallowing in a morass of joke-ridden, childish home movies masquerading as horror. “Stake Land” reminded me that mature and reflective grown ups make scary movies too.

Categories
Movies

“Rot” – Stop Motion Decomposition Short

This little video gem popped up around the web (io9.com, boingboing.net, etc) but I loved it so much I just had to share it here too. Double plus good, eh? It’s the proper length, not too long, not too short. The animation effect is smooth enough. The frame composition is nice to have the face AND an item in the background. And it goes beyond being a simple makeup test. About the only thing I can say of a critical nature is that there aren’t anywhere near enough maggots and that there would have been a great “bloom” of them long before our hero turned to bones. But quibbles. Enjoy!