If you read this blog and you’re near mid-Michigan next weekend, stop in to the Second Annual Flint Horror Convention, right down town at the creepy Masonic Temple kitty corner from the original Halo Burger. Vendors, Movies, Panels and all so close to the center of this mitten-shaped wonderland. TV horror celebrity Wolfman Mac is playing host and, among many other guests, my friends from the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers will be on a panel. Last year’s inaugural convention was a blast and this year promises to be bigger and better.
Author: Doktor Leech
Guess what arrived in the mail? Yes, oh yes, passes for this year’s version of Theatre Bizarre, titled “The Summoning.” The lurid festivities will be held at the Detroit Masonic Temple and please note, costumes are MANDATORY. I am taking time off from stitching mine to type out this posting.
If you aren’t hip to Theatre Bizarre — and there’s no shame really — check out the video I made of some of their side show props at the 2011 Detroit Maker Faire. Remember: you have been SUMMONED.
It’s October and officially the time for Haunted House attractions and their evangelical knock-offs known as Hell Houses. A Hell House takes the thrills and chills of a traditional haunted house but dresses them up with a heavily moralistic and pietistic spin. A common feature, I gather, is a lurid depiction of Hell and all the tortures awaiting immoral, impious folks. This phenomenon is nothing new, heck some of the best medieval plays are thinly veiled cautionary tales. But I was charmed to find a post about a midway attraction from the early decades of the 20th C named “Darkness and Dawn” that featured a peek into Hell, presumably for pure amusement not instruction.
The first reference I found came from the blog Anonymous Works that featured a ticket for this attraction plus a snippet of information. They noted the attraction was located in Coney Island, that is burned down in 1903 and was later re-built in Luna Park. The style of the attraction was a cyclorama, a circular panorama intended to give a sense of all encompassing vista.
The blog Gaping Media Hole had several postcards from the attraction’s appearance in different locations, including the promotional card shown above and the shot of the midway that shows the front of the attraction. The locations noted are Revere Beach and Venice Beach.
The best description about the attraction came at a site devoted to the Pan-American Exhibition of 1901 held in Buffalo, NY. If I read the information correctly, “Darkness and Dawn” grossed the highest amount of any of the Midway attractions, scoring 17th overall behind restaurants and concession stands. The attraction started with a “Cabaret du Mort” where patrons drank from skulls and sat at coffin-shaped tables. Likely these beverages were alcoholic since at this time, amusement parks were aimed at young couples and were not particularly family friendly. I found little description of the Hell portion other than the note that while the creator of the attraction was puzzling out a way to get patrons over a lake of fire he came up with the idea for another attraction, “Visit to the Moon.”
These were the details I was able to piece together with a few minutes of research. I’m sharing them here mostly to remind myself to look into it further when I get a chance. Suffice to say, our interest in fear as thrill is sometimes served with a candy coating of instruction, and sometimes that candy coating is quite thin.
Elsa got me fairly ADDICTED to this cute, quirky on-line game called Glitch. You do all sorts of weird stuff like milk butterflies to make butter and later, cheese or squeeze chickens to get grain. Even the pigs will let you nibble on them if you pet them first. It’s certainly WEIRD but perhaps not exactly DailyNightmare material…
…with the exception of, well, Hell. If you let your energy levels slip to zero, you go to Hell. But Hell is not all that bad. You can earn your way out by squishing Hell grapes and if you find your way to the end of Hell, there’s even a bar! He’re a shot of my Glitch character astride a floating island in the depths of Hell. Both weird and creepy.
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Zombie Walk Ann Arbor 2012
Hordes of undead shambled through downtown Ann Arbor last weekend and they did it for charity…and presumably for brains. The 2012 Zombie Walk Ann Arbor was held last Saturday, Sept 27. The undead were requested to bring canned goods to benefit Foodgatherers, a charity that feeds the hungry in Washtenaw County. I do not know if Foodgatherers has an official policy on feeding hungry zombies, however. I caught up with the zombies as they dragged their partially rotted corpses through picturesque Nickels Arcade.
The macabre parade was kept in line by “armed” representatives from the local chapter of Zombie Squad, a national organization that seeks civilian preparedness for zombie outbreaks and other types of disasters. The decomposing crowd ended it festering stroll at the Michigan Theatre, just in time for Three Corpse Circus, the annual festival of short horror films, where the undead were given a discounted admission.
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Video – “Ask a Mortician”
A few years ago I was researching a piece about funeral parlors that I finally abandoned because, I am embarrassed to admit, I was too afraid to actually ask a mortician about specific details of the embalming process. File under “Thank you, Internet:” this running video blog of perky mortician Caitlin Doughty who gleefully responds to viewer questions about death, dying and funeral customs. She runs a website too called Order of the Good Death . com
The videos are quirky and light hearted with plenty of illustrations edited in to satisfy the tachistoscopic tastes of the MTV generation. But Caitlin’s warm personality and gentle wisdom are the real attractions of this vblog.
Check out the first episdoe at least, will ya?
This year the Three Corpse Circus really hit its stride with polish and panache and easily the best crop of short horror films they’ve screened yet. The whole evening was enjoyable… for those, of course, who enjoy an evening of gore and terror. A few touches were tasteful, like the costumed vampires who handed out programs while others were simple but greatly appreciated, like projected list of films shown between each movie that reminded viewers of the title and country of origin. The evening was preceded by a zombie walk and the lobby was filled with tables for the local chapter of Zombie Squad, The Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers and the Flint Horror Convention which rounded out the sense of an actual horror community in Michigan.
The films were the stars as it should be at a film festival. I was struck by the “freshness” of the offerings since all but one were made within the last year. Those who have read my reviews of the previous festivals (year one and year two) will remember my embarrassment that so few exceptional films came from the US. I am pleased to note with a quiver of patriotism that this year the domestic product was clearly dominant. U-S-A! U-S-A!! Overall, the movies themselves were of such a generally high quality, a loud disagreement broke out among myself, Elsa and Igor when it came time to choose our favorites.
Igor particularly enjoyed the taut Spanish short “Refuge 115,” a beautifully shot tale of mysterious disappearances in a bomb shelter. The location was spot on perfect and was exceptionally well lit, a necessity since darkness in the tale seethed with malevolence.
Elsa agreed that Refuge 115 was the most consistently scary piece, but she also quite enjoyed “Saw Misgivings” a British farce that depicted the dark hilarity resulting when a housewife discovers a torture-porn head vice and gets it stuck on her head… just as company is expected for dinner. The acting was spot on and its comic timing was immaculate. It was the kind of droll comedy we expect from the British Isles.
I, however, don’t like to laugh.
I am a purist and a snob when it comes to horror and I tolerate only the lightest touch of comedy and only when it’s used to heighten the overall tension of the piece. Otherwise, I’d be extolling the obvious virtues of “Zombie Factor,” a locally produced piece about reality TV after the zombie apocalypse. Its tone perfectly captured the feel of survivor-type television with a healthy dose of the undead. The director was on-hand and answered questions during intermission and he should be justly proud of his work. It really felt like a professionally produced product. Honestly, the only thing I can say against this film is that is was funny, quite effectively so… and with horror at least I am not amused by humor.
With that prejudice in mind, let me highlight the three films that rocked my world.
“Tarnished Gluttony” (2012), a music video, told an eerie Lovecraftian tale of sacrifice. Gorgeous visuals and convincingly bloody with good, yet tasteful gore, this short piece left just enough mystery and wonder unexplained to whet my taste for more. Igor, that grouch, couldn’t get past the soundtrack.
“Familiar” (Fatal Pictures, Canada 2012), the final piece of the night, was a well-shot and perfectly acted tale of middle-aged quiet horror that spirals downward into more Cronenbergian body terror. The effects were nicely achieved and the whole tone of domestic desperation was masterfully portrayed. Damn those Canucks and their National Film Board!
But my favorite piece, the one that I would like to watch again, was the brief gem titled “Green Glass Door,” which depicted a grisly parlor game directed by a serial killer. (It can be watched in its entirety here.) Elsa, Egor and I were talking about it as we left the theatre, puzzling it out. Pay attention to the closing credits if you’re still in the dark. It was for my money the most consistently brutal piece cramming a fist full of convincing executions into its scant seven minutes. The horrific deaths were unsettling, immaculately shot but framed so as not to show too much. And if all that wasn’t enough, I discovered that “Green Glass Door” was entirely shot and edited in 48 hours as part of a Lousiville, Kentucky project. I expect great things from Antonio Pantoja.
I could keep going since there was something interesting about each of the films this year. I left eager for more but quite satisfied. I felt that last night, Three Corpse Circus really started to its promise as a rallying point for the Michigan horror community. I can hardly wait for next year.
The historic Michigan Theatre in downtown Ann Arbor MI, keeps one Halloween tradition I heartily endorse: their yearly showing of Murnau’s “Nosferatu” complete with a LIVE ORGAN accompaniment. This year it happens on Thursday, October 25. If you’ve never seen a silent movie with music performed on an honest to goodness theatre organ then treat yourself to this special showing. A theatre organ has the complete range of an orchestra and I should note, they are actual instruments, not digital copies. And take a look around the place too. The Michigan theatre was restored to its ancient glory a decade or so ago and its lobby is worth a gander as well. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the butter on their popcorn is actual, REAL butter.
Nosferatu remains an enduring classic, if for no other reason than how it resolves the central problem of all vampire movies, that is, how can an undead creature of the night do something as ungainly as crawl out of a coffin without looking like an awkward scramble. Lugosi’s Dracula, as I recall, resolves the problem in a different, far less cinematic way with a demure cut-away, but Nosferatu’s full-figure, effortless rise is worth the price of admission. Sure, you’ve seen it in a hundred other movies, but this is the original and for my money the best.
http://www.michtheater.org/shows/nosferatu/
If you just want to watch the movie, however, it’s up on the You-Toob:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcyzubFvBsA
What better way to start off a month of Halloween celebrations than with the third annual festival of short horror films known as Three Corpse Circus? It’s earlier than past years which I consider a plus. October gets so cramped with horror events.
This year there will be two blocks of programming which seems like a good idea. Gluttons like myself reveled in the four hour marathon but I bet more casual viewers will appreciate the segments. The list of films is already posted: http://www.threecorpsecircus.com/line-up/ and as usual there looks like there will be something for everyone.
Wanna an idea of what to expect? Check our my reviews of the First Year and of the Second Year.
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Troma Movies now on YouTube
Those purveyors of premium schlock, Troma, have released a whole slew of their full length movies on YouTube. Great fun. They might not be exactly fitting with our “snob” reputation here at the DailyNightmare, but Troma has a full four decade legacy of producing authentically independant films… or at least movies. Love ’em or hate ’em, that’s an impressive track record. And they’ve released films that they distribute too like “White Zombie” with Bela Lugosi, considered the first zombie movie.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Tromamovies?feature=watch
If ever there was a vampire whose death we should mourn, it is The Count from Sesame Street. Jerry Nelson, the talented muppeteer who portrayed numerous characters over the years, including the Count, is dead at age 78. For many, this character was the introduction to numeracy as well as to word play (The Count, get it? Get it?) I can’t help but think that this link between vampires and a near obsession with numeration is the subtext for the vampire on that episode of the X-Files that Mulder distracts by spilling a box of matches which the OCD blood-sucker must stop to count before attacking. A stretch? Perhaps. But ponder for a moment the poetic fittingness of numbers which go ever on and on with the notion of immortal life represented by the undead. The Count was a cuddly monster, a near contradiction in terms. Though Jerry Nelson be dead, let the Count live on.
One. One heart-felt tribute. Two…
http://www.sesameworkshop.org/our-blog/2012/08/24/in-memoriam-jerry-nelson/
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The Blood on the Sidewalk
As Elsa L was relaxing on the porch this weekend, she watched a police officer amble down the sidewalk while chatting on a phone. This was a real police officer, gun and all, not a rent-a-cop. We don’t have beat cops in our neighborhood so this was an unusual sight. A few minutes later the same police office walked by again. Elsa greeted him.
He asked “You didn’t happen to see someone run past here last night who was bleeding profusely, did you?”
Elsa answered “No.”
The officer mentioned that a window had been broken and whoever had done it didn’t get away unscathed. He thanked Elsa for her time and departed.
Ever curious, Elsa got up and followed the blood trail herself.
“Quite impressive, really” She told me. “It goes two blocks up this street and a half a block down past the corner. The person lost a bit of blood.”
By the time I made it by to to take photographs, the blood was dark brown. Oxidized I suppose. The spatter pattern looked like drops of very thin paint and there were quite a generous number of them. Some places looked like the person had stopped, perhaps to catch his or her breath. I walked the trail up to the broken window — now patched with a piece of plywood — and tracked it back past Elsa’s place where frankly I lost interest.
I did get a couple dramatic pics… well, dramatic only if you know the back story.
Bog bodies are cool as hell, in a morbid kind of way. Human remains sometimes ritually slain that become subject to nearly spontaneous preservation to become leathery “mummies” rate pretty high on the spooky-o-meter. But this one example appears to be a corpse not of one poor unfortunate someone but rather of several folks, meticulously assembled to a complete body.
The evidence makes it rather hard to assert that the guy died peacefully in his sleep.
For more on bog bodies, check out this article too.
And if you’re especially interested in ancient hair care check out this article here, too
The idea of pompadours stiffened with pine resin makes me think “Bog Bodies” would be a great name for a psychobilly band, wouldn’t it?
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Review: The Corn Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates
The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares by Joyce Carol Oates
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I picked up this volume on a whim and fell in love. It’s been years, well to be honest, decades since I first read Joyce Carol Oates’ stories. They were assigned in college, as I recall, and perhaps for that reason, I didn’t click with them. I was aware that her interests had become more gothic, more horrific over the years. Similarly, I realized in my middle age that it was OK to read beyond the prim and proper confines of literary fiction, that my soul was not in danger if I strayed toward more lurid tales of genre literature, that is stories where something actually happens. So I was prepped but not prepared to encounter these “nightmares.” Her language is acute, her perspective unflinching. These are stories where bad stuff happens and the narrative does not fade to black or turn away when it does. Yet not only bad things happen. I hesitate to use the belabored term “redemption” but dammit a kind of redemption occurs, for instance, after the bleak horrors of the title novella. There are touches of grace in the other tales too, sometimes very light. And let me also praise the fact that these are stories, not the easier to sell commercial novels so prevalent. The selection let me live a half dozen lives in the course of this volume, perhaps not lives I would choose for myself but then, do we always get to choose our lives? Tonight, I stopped at the library and discovered two and a half full shelves devoted to the works of Joyce Carol Oates, many of which are story collections. My new found love affair need not end soon.
Remains — apparently human — were recently discovered with a metal stake through the chest suggesting a burial ritual to prevent vampires. Evidently, the practice wasn’t uncommon in Bulgaria some 700 years ago.
What makes this news? Soon these remains will be on display in a Bulgarian museum.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/11/us-bulgaria-odd-vampires-idUSBRE85A12Y20120611
Micro-funding of niche projects like creepy video games just warms my heart. Amp up that warmth when the project is Creative Commons licensed and even available for linux. So dig “Haunts” a turn-based haunted house game currently soliciting funds for finishing on Kickstarter. Every $5 gets a download code for the game; larger donations get more codes plus the typical silly perks. The game itself looks fun with a style reminiscent of Gorey. Readers of The DailyNightmare might note that players can select portraying the human adventurers who discover the house OR the creepy denizens who would rather just be left alone.
The company, Mob Rules Games, operates with a radically transparent business model and is documenting the development of the game rather publically with lots of behind the scenes bits and pieces. To be brutally frank, it’s good to know that they have a business model since some of the projects on micro-funding sites seem devised without a speck of realistic financial savvy. Since Haunts has been in development for several months already, they appear to be on track to ship an actual product. Donations for these kind of projects work out to be more pre-orders than risky venture capital investments.
So send ’em a few bucks. $5 is barely what a double-mocha-cappu-frappa coffee costs these days.
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“Zombies, Run” iPhone app – UPDATE
It’s official: this game still rocks. When I first dl’ed it a few weeks ago, I half expected “Zombies, Run” to be a clever idea that didn’t quite deliver more than a one hit spin on exercise motivation. And that was going to be fine with me. I already knew I needed to get more exercise and if “Zombies, Run” just gave me the initial kick to get started, it would have done enough.
It’s done more. The little app has maintained my interest and actually spurred me to exercise longer and more frequently than I’d originally planned. I planned to be doing a “mission” that is 30:00 or so three times a week. Last week for instance, I exerecised six times. I’m also exercising for longer than my original plan. Today, I’m recovering from 46:00 minutes.
In particular the app helps in two key areas. The first problem area for me is that first 5 minutes. The drudgery is in full effect while none of the endorphins have kicked in. Pre-Zombies, this was a time when I frequently would stop. Now there is a thread of narrative interest that keeps me htting the pedals. (OK, so I “cheat” — I’m using an indoor stationary bike instead of actual running.) The other problem area occurs at the end of the workout. There’s an option in the app to select workouts of about 30 minutes or about an hour. 30 minutes are getting a bit too easy for me and though there’s a clear sense of closure when the “mission” in complete, the app switches seamlessly into “radio mode” where I can continue running while listening to DJs from my beloved zombie-ridden town. And most important, I can continue to gather supplies for this beleaguered encampment. That supply-gathering aspect is the game part of the app. Every tin of food or discarded mobile phone that I retrieve helps contribute to my town’s vitality.
And there continues to be some nice serendipitous corelations between the songs in my playlist and the zombie menace. A few that come to mind are:
• “Those are People who Died” by Jim Carroll
• “Be My Frankenstein” by Otis Taylor (the refrain is “Just wanna live another day”)
• “Can’t Get You Out of my Head” by Kylie Minogue (a guilty pleasure — don’t judge me! — but given the zombie context I imagine the undead trying to crack into ones skull to feast on the goo inside.)
• “Crawling from the Wreckage” by Dave Edmunds (especially for the beginning where “Runner 5” emerges from a crashed helicopter)
• “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” by Johnny Cash (the zombie tie-in is that it was used in the remake of “Dawn of the Dead” as the opening credit sequence, as I recall.)
• “It’s the End of the World as We Know it” by R.E.M.
• “Nemesis” by Shreikback
• “Run to the Hills” by Iron Maiden
• “Survivalism” by Nine Inch Nails
etc.
If I keep this up, I’ll be ready for 5K season in no time. And I’ll have honed a survival skill for the zombie apocalypse.
Word dropped into my InBox about “The Selling” a film making the festival circuit about the difficulties of trying to sell a haunted house. The trailer at least makes the film look like an enjoyable and amusing tale.
Watching the spritely actors cavort in this quite enjoyable trailer made me realize what stinks about most straight horror movies: wooden acting. Perhaps it comes from a reliance on special effects, that is, the external aspects of gore and spectacle, the kinds of things that can be “fixed in the mix” that is added in during post-production. Real acting — even the exagerated cariacatured comedic acting in the trailer — obviously takes place during production but the groundwork has to be laid firmly in pre-production, dare I say it, even before the script writing occurs. We so often hear — and are supposed to be amazed by — reports of films that were written in one booze-drenched weekend. Yawn. I want the story that is deep and mature like a well cellared wine. Creep me out during the movie, sure but keep me scared long after I’ve gone home. I know grown men who were afraid to take showers after seeing “Psycho.” I digress, of course. Critics will note that it’s far easier to get a laugh than to inspire genuine fear. Maybe. There are cheap laughs and cheap scares. The richer experience in both genres, I believe, depends upon deep characterization (not necessarily deep characters) and actors capable of depicting them.
“The Selling” looks to be a blast, like a well-done comedy-horror film that wasn’t afraid to do a little work.
Though I have no enduring love for the undead, I basically adore the iOS App “Zombies, Run” a fitness game that fuel-injects a bit of narrative into the brain-eating monotony that aerobic exercise so easily becomes. The premise is simple: you are the sole survivor of a helicopter crash after the zombipocalypse and your objective is to run — literally, run — around picking up supplies that are needed at your home base. Game play is a series of audio tracks that are interspersed among the tracks of your standard workout mix but once back at the base, you can assign the assets you’ve picked up.
TIP: Make a workout mix rich in creepy, high energy tracks. The first time I was warned of an imminent zombie attack and counseled to sprint, serendipitously the track “Be My Frankenstein” by Otis Taylor came on. It’s refrain is “Just wann live another day” and the icy guitar work was a perfect motivator to avoid the imaginary menace. My existing workout mix is fine but a good playlist would really augment this game. I’m going to have to listen to those good ol’ Rue Morgue Radio broadcasts to come up with more tunes for future “missions.”
The app struck me as a bit pricey, $7.99 but then again, I’m a cheapskate. However, I bought it without a second thought because I have the body of a middle-aged geek and I needed something to ressurect my fitness regimine after a long winter nap. “Zombies, Run” is very likely going to do that. I wasn’t ready to strap on running shoes today — my excuse was the spring rain plus my fear that I’d injure myself early in process and have to sit out while I healed — so I played the game while on my stationary bike. Some features weren’t accessible like the ones that are based on the accelerometer — presumably when the radio operator exhorts a boost of speed to escape an unexpected pocket of undead, the iPhone actually senses that effort. Cool beans, eh? Even without the machine keeping watch, I still cranked it during those close scrapes. I was just going to kick the tires with an easy spin but I found myself completing the whole first mission, a good half hour of workout. I’m dripping in sweat… and ready to play another round.
My suspicion is that if you are reading The Daily Nightmare, you need this app.
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My Xmas Haul
My Christmas gifts are a suitable self-portrait: a crystal skull of vodka, an obscure horror novel, imported moustache combs and a drinking vessel from University of Toronto – Slitherin College where my beloved daughter attends. All of us at the DailyNightmare hope your holidays passed with minimal bloodshed and maximal blessing.