Animation for Grown Folks

One of my personal bugaboos is people who think all animation is for children, and judge adults for watching it. These people make the classic mistake of thinking that any genre is a monolith and that if you sample a bit of it then that’s all you need to know about it. Just like with different groups of human beings, there is no genre of anything, from movies, to music, to art, that is all the same. Just becasue you were exposed to some Rap songs 20 years ago, or watched a couple of Slasher films back in the 80s, does not mean you know all there is to know about Rap music or Horror movies.

Well, some animation is definitely not for kids, and quite frankly, if you sat your five year old, (or even your ten year old) down in front of any of the “cartoons” that I’m about to mention, I would question your parenting skills. These look cute and harmless but they are not Disney and Pixar films. They contain mature adult themes and subject matter that kids simply won’t get, or maybe they will get it on a certain level, but aren’t mature enough to understand it, and in at least a couple of cases some of these are actually traumatizing nightmare fuel!

Chainsaw Man

Chainsaw man is AWESOME!!! This is the wildest, coolest, craziest, most pathos shit I’ve ever seen (and trust me I have seen some crazy shit on a screen)! I have not read the Manga on which this series is based and have no plans to since I don’t have time for that. (I’m already collecting a ton of books I’m supposed to be reading and I’m not reading them.) One of the reasons I don’t watch a whole lot of series anime is because its hard keeping track of all the characters and another reason is that is an investment of time I’m getting too old to indulge. I’m much more apt to fall asleep than finish a series, but I finished this one. It’s easier keeping track of characters in live-action two hour chunks. I have also heard that the Manga has more sexual content, something which is mostly just strongly hinted at in the series.

Chainsaw Man exists in a world where all kinds of human concepts can also exist as physical demons, often based on human fears. The more humans fear the object, or concept, the more likely it is to manifest a demon form. There are plant, marine life, and vegetable demons (and who outchere getting scared of tomatoes? I don’t care for raw tomatoes too much but I don’t think that amounts to an actual fear.), apparently there is a chainsaw demon, an eternity demon (fear of time), and zombie demons, and the Big Bad is the elusive Gun Demon. The size and the power of the demon depends on how scared people are of that particular concept, so you can get cute puppy-sized, chainsaw demons like Pochito, and demons of massive size and power like the Gun Demon (apparently there are enough people who are afraid of tomatoes that that particular demon can reach a massive size, although it seems completely powerless, and enough people are afraid of bats that that demon is pretty damn huge and powerful).

Random human beings can be possessed by these demons or form alliances with demons for power. They usually have to pay the demon in the form of some kind of body part, an eye, an arm, a kidney. Sometimes human can fuse with demon bodies (although that’s more rare) and that’s the case for the lead character, Denji.

Denji is a typical teenage boy, but he formed a friendship with a cute, tiny, chainsaw demon, named Pochito, when he was a little kid. He grew up trying to pay off his late father’s thousands of dollars of debt to the local mob boss by killing small-time, minor demons like the Tomato Monster. He’s so poor from his debts, that he has sold off various body parts to survive, and can only dream about having fruit condiments on his toast. Like a lot of teenage boys he also dreams about having a girlfriend, touching boobs, and just having friends, but we’ll get to that in a moment. Anyway, the mob boss betrays him and kills him, but Pochito saves his life by bonding with his body, giving Denji the ability to form working chainsaws of his arms and face.

In this society, demons can show up anytime, anywhere, so naturally a bureaucracy has sprung up around professional demon hunting. After he is revived, Denji gets recruited by the very sexy and manipulative Makima, the head of the demon hunting Ministry of Public Safety, and Denji starts killing larger, more important, demons, and living some of his best life. He gets to live in a house instead of a shack, and is so happy to be able to put jam, jelly, and marmalade on his toast, that he can’t contain himself. Along the way, he gets partnered with various co-workers, some of whom are demons, or like himself, demon adjacent. The strength of the series though lies in the relationships between the characters.

There’s his mentor, Aki, who is suffering from the trauma of watching all of his family, friends, and colleagues get killed by the demons they fight, but most especially the Gun Devil which killed his entire family. And then there is the demon possessed Power, (that is her name), who is my automatic favorite. She seems to be everyone’s favorite character since she appears to be pure Id, who never speaks in anything less than a commands or declarations. And then of course, there are the various demons which are horrifying enough as concepts, but in demon form are sort of like looking at biblically accurate angels.

The reason why I say this isn’t a show for kids is because it doesn’t have much resemblance to anything Disney has ever made. There is an incredible amount of violence in this series and occasionally some disturbing sexual elements. There’s not really any sexual activity in the show, but characters talk about it a lot, and sometimes it’s …weird, like when Power allows Denji to feel up her boobs as repayment for saving her cat from a demon. Yeah, I know.

Just keep in mind that this is a very graphic Horror series.

Bird Boy

This is not a movie for small children. I very much doubt its the kind of thing big children should be watching, also probably most adults. I don’t have a whole lot to say about this one other than it looks very pretty and is unrelentingly melancholy. It’s not a feel-good type of movie really. It has a really strong focus on ecological issues, so there’s that, but while it was engaging, I cannot say I loved or enjoyed this. I liked looking at it.

The reason I found it so compelling to watch is because it is deeply surreal and you need to be ready for that. More than likely kids could probably watch this and think its cute, but it does have a lot of mature themes and even some gun violence in it. The lead character, named Birdboy, is always getting shot by the police because he is suspected of dealing drugs. After the destruction of an island where he used to live, he creates a safe place for himself with lots of other animals, singing birds, and a large tree. There is also a female involved named Dinky who, along with some animal friends, are trying to escape their dying island but can’t until they steal some more money. While doing that, she falls afoul of some rat-like creatures that require her to be saved by Birdboy. There’s a toy duck boat involved in these shenanigans.

This all sounds really cute but I wouldn’t call this movie fun.

The movie is so surreal I was unsure if some of it was imaginary or real, since a lot of the concepts (just like in Chainsaw Man) take the form of demons, (like a demon of drug addiction that takes the form of a giant spider.) Yes, there are adult themes like theft, and murder, and police brutality in this, but its hard to watch it because there’s cutesy animals in it.

This movie has kids in it but it’s not for kids!

Paprika

One of the reasons I say none of these cartoons are for little kids (mostly anybody under age twelve) is not because of the levels of sexuality or violence, but because many of them, while being very pretty, present concepts and ideas that are beyond the understanding of children. They can watch them but they won’t understand it beyond the action scenes. Paprika is a perfect example of this. There isnt anything overtly sexual or particularly violent about it, but the plot is distinctly philosophical in intent. I had to watch it twice to get an understanding, and although I’ve watched it a few more times since then, I still have the impression that there’s a lot of stuff I’m just missing because I keep getting new insights every time the visuals pull me back in.

Paprika is a surrealist fever dream. It wasn’t until I watched it a third time that I wasn’t so distracted by the imagery that I could understand the plot. Paprika is the name of a dream therapist, and the alter ego of a woman who works for the company that invented the machine (called the DC Mini), which allows her to tap into the dreams of her psychiatric patients. Someone steals the device and begins using it to tap into the dreams of different scientists all over Tokyo, dreams which start to manifest in the real world, and drive people, Paprika, her alter ego, and other scientists, to insanity.

A lot of the movie is about unconscious desires and repressed and unrequited love, as certain characters fall in love or are obsessed with other characters, but feel they can’t express it. It is only through reconciling their real selves with their dream alter egos, that some of the characters are able to save the rest of Tokyo from the power obsessed madman, who thinks he’s protecting the creatures of the dream world from living humans.

See! It took me three watches of this movie just to get that plot, and I’m absolutely certain that, because I’m not from the culture in which this film was made, that I’m still missing a lot of subtext. For a kid, this movie isnt going to be anything but pretty images.

But you know, I could be wrong, and some kids will probably understand it better than me, since some mindsets are a product of adulthood. I’m reminded of when I watched Finding Nemo with my niece, who was about twelve at the time, and she understood details of the movie that totally escaped me, and that I must have been “too adult” to understand, so it’s possible that a kid could watch Paprika and understand it completely.

When the Wind Blows

I have never watched Grave of the Fireflies, the horribly depressing Ghibli film about two orphans trying to survive WW2 Japan, but if you liked (that’s a strong word) that movie than When the Wind Blows is just as emotionally devastating, and exists in a kind of dialogue with it. I knew a little bit about what was going to happen before watching it. I walked into it expecting it to be difficult to watch and I still was not ready. There have been quite a number of Disney cartoons that have brought me to tears over the past thirty years but I think this movie was the only one I’ve ever seen that moved me “beyond” tears. This was horrifying. It was a movie I had to sit with and contemplate for several days. It was a haunting experience and I’ve watched it exactly two times in my life.

Anyone who grew up during the Nuclear Determent Decade of the 80s will understand why I was so affected by this movie. We grew up under the constant heavy tension of nuclear annihilation happening any day, and I was a teenager at the time, in the very middle of my first existential crisis. When the Wind Blows is another one of the British movies about a nuclear strike hitting its country and sits in dialogue with the 1984 Threads, also a pretty harrowing experience.

The movie is based on the graphic novel of the same name by Raymond Briggs, which I read sometime in 92, or 93. and follows an elderly couple who are attempting to survive a nuclear strike on Britain with little to no understanding of what just occurred or how to protect themselves. The two of them are a typical English couple from the 80s, and are so hapless and ignorant about what has just happened to them that they just wander around in their irradiated home, contemplating when the proper authorities will arrive, getting sicker and sicker, and totally not understanding why they’re sick. And since we, the viewers, know more about what has just happened than they do, we are horribly aware of the fate they were not even remotely prepared for. It’s a film that’s difficult to watch because you like them so much, they are so cute and bumbling, the animation style is completely disarming, the events are so awful, and the two remain hopeful to the end.

No. Like Grave of the Fireflies, this is not a movie for children at all. You could watch it with teenagers, as long as there is a trigger warning of some kind before they watch it, and you would definitely need to have some type of discussion afterward.

Gyo: Fish Attack

There is a contingent of people who cannot seem to let go of the idea that just because something is animated, it must be for children. Movies like these defy all those qualifications. Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack is a movie that is, most emphatically, not for children. I cannot stress that enough. I mean, you can let your kids watch it, (I’m not gonna tell you what to do) and they will certainly get it, because unlike Paprika, this movie is pretty easy to understand, more or less, but the movie is also very graphic, with a lot of body horror images, a plane crash, chase scenes, and at least one sex scene. A giant semi-mechanical shark chases people through the streets, a girl gets eaten by metal roaches, and people get turned into naked mechas powered by clouds of sentient gas, which all sounds as if it might be funny.

It’s not.

All of this imagery isnt just for titillation though. There is a deep ecological message underneath all of this along with messages about friendship and caring for others, and betrayal issues, and a smart teenager will probably get all of that, but most kids under fifteen or sixteen will probably just be traumatized. I was a reasonably bright fifteen year old, and I would’ve been bothered by this movie. Hell, I’m bothered by it as a grown woman!

This movie is the definition of nightmare fuel.

Unicorn Wars

One of the reasons that people might be confused about letting their kids watch movies like this (and Bird Boy) is because they look so cute and colorful. I haven’t had the chance to watch this movie yet, but as you can tell from the clip above, (and the synopsis I read), nothing about this movie is for children. Not the themes, not the imagery, and not the plot either. Unlike Gyo Fish Attack, which isn’t even trying to appeal to kids, this movie is like a grown-up that’s cosplaying as a kid. This is an adult war movie using teddy bears and unicorns.

This movie is like a cross between Full Metal Jacket and Watership Down, with Teddy Bears in a kind of boot camp, warring against their enemies, the Unicorns, in order to fulfill some kind of ancient prophecy. This and Bird Boy are movies where you watch some really cute little characters doing some fairly horrific shit to other cute little creatures and each other, so don’t say I didn’t warn you, when you watch this. If you find the sight of cutesy little creatures committing acts of extreme gore and violence against each other disturbing, then your kids should never be subjected to this either.

By the same director who brought you Birdboy, which should tell you all you need to know, really!

Most Anticipated Horror Movies of 2024!

Hey y’all, this is gonna be a great year for horror movies! I can feel it. First, there aren’t too many tentpole superhero movies being released this year, and I’ve been seeing some very interesting Horror trailers, not just for streaming, but in theaters as well. I think we might even see a few surprise hits, too.

Here’s my list of my most hotly anticipated Horror movies. The movies at the top of my list are streaming films on Amazon, Netflix, Shudder, and AMC. The second will be movies that I believe are being released in theaters. The last part of the list will be movies I’m not too hot to see but y’all might be interested in checking out. There’s also a small list of movies that sound interesting that I do not have trailers for.

Streaming

The Animal Kingdom

I don’t know if this is scary but the trailer makes it look really intriguing and that seems to be enough to capture my interest I guess. It is currently not streaming anywhere but I will keep an eye out for it and let you know who has it and when.

Parasyte: The Grey

I watched the entire anime series and loved it, so I’m willing to check this out. The flavor of this movie is a little different than the cartoon, because it seems a lot more serious. This is more of a straight up Alien Invasion Horror movie, whereas the anime had a lot more humor, and the protagonist is now a woman. I’m okay with that. They definitely kept all the gore, which I can appreciate. This seems more like a story set in the same universe than a remake of the anime series. I think this is streaming on Netflix on April 5th.

Infested

For some reason we are getting giant spider movies this year, and although I’m deeply arachnophobic, I’m on board with that. This also looks like fun and reminds me of a cross between Eight Legged Freaks and Tremors. I would never watch such a film in a dark theater though, because when I get creeped out at home, I can turn it off, and it won’t be a waste of my money to never look at it again! I like that more PoC are being seen in Horror movies these days, although it is impossible for me to tell if this movie is American or what. It sounds like everyone is speaking French though. Its streaming on AMC+ on April 26th.

Late Night With the Devil

I’m a huge David Dastmalchian fan, so I’m very eager to see him put his shit down in this movie, where he is the primary character, rather than a side character who gets knocked off. I’m not too keen on possession films, in general, but the premise of this sounds kind of interesting. It will be streaming on AMC/Shudder on March 26th, and April 19th.

Out of Darkness

I’m always up for some Historically based Horror movies, and the setting for this is rather unique. I’m going to check this out and get to y’all on it. This can be rented on Amazon Prime. AppleTV, and Vudu today!

From Black

I was not impressed by the trailer, but I did get to see a small clip of one little scene in this movie, and now I’m all in. That scene was genuinely scary so now I have to know what happened. This movie is not going to skimp on the gore either, I can tell you that. This is streaming on Amazon/Shudder today.

Handling the Undead

From time to time someone will make a more thoughtful and introspective Zombie movie and I like those. This movie was written by the same guy who wrote Let the Right One In, and I have read it. The book was rather melancholy and the movie seems to have captured some of that same flavor. I’m intrigued. So technically ,this is a 2023 movie that will see a US release this year, and is available on AppleTV, although that is not where I’ll be watching it.

In Theaters

Sting

This is the other giant spider movie released this year. Unlike the previous film, where I wasn’t entirely sure, this one is definitely supposed to be a comedy. I’m not sure this is a theatrical release or streaming but its coming on April 12th.

Lovely Dark and Deep

This movie looks good and creepy. I can probably take a guess at what it’s about but that’s not going to stop me from looking at it. This is one of those movies I’m not certain is playing in theaters, but I’ve heard it came out on VOD in February.

A Quiet Place: Day One

I love the Quiet Place movies, so I’m really excited to check this one out. This is coming to theaters on June 28th.

The Watchers

I don’t know much about this movie, even after watching the trailer a couple of times, but I like the lead actress and it looks pretty creepy. This is being released on June14th.

Alien Romulus

I have not been able to find a single trailer for this movie that I trust is a real trailer. There probably isnt one yet but I’m gonna leave this here even though I’m not as enthusiastic about this movie as some of the other films on this list.

I’m not excited to see this exactly, but it is a new film in the Alien franchise, so that arouses my curiosity even if the movie turns out to be waste of my time. I was under the impression this was streaming on Hulu but I’ve also heard its playing in theaters. I don’t know. The date I have for this is August 16th.

Nosferatu

This is another movie I’m very enthusiastic to see later this year. I’m a big Robert Eggers fan, and I liked the original, so I really want to see what he does with this remake of the 1922 version. The release date is December 25th and we don’t got no trailer for this one yet.

Of Note:

Mystery Film from M. Night Shyamalan – No one has anything on this one, not even a trailer.

Mystery Film by Jordan Peele – I’m always excited to hear that Jordan Peel is working on something. He is also the Producer behind Dev Patel’s new Action film, Monkey Man.

Winnie the Pooh 2 – I’m not into Slasher style movies really but the idea behind this is novel. Maybe some day in the future I may be in the mood to watch this, but not now.

Imaginary – This doesn’t look especially scary to me, but I’m sure its up someone’s alley, as its being heavily promoted on YouTube.

The First Omen – Nah. You cannot improve on the first movie, which was perfection.

The Strangers – I’m mostly not a fan of Home Invasion movies, but a lot of people really liked the first movie which is why we’re getting a sequel. I don’t hate these types of movies, they’re simply not to my taste.

Speak No Evil – I saw the original movie on which this was based and that movie frustrated me to no end! I mostly just felt like slapping the holy crap out of most of the characters, since I always have my mouth opne to say something, but the plot hinged very heavily on the idea of people not talking when they should have, in other words “speaking no evil”. I do wonder how the creators are going to change this remake to fit an American aesthetic, because most Americans have no problem speaking their minds.

Terrifier – I’m not that into killer clowns, and this movie seems to be more about spectacle than message, which I do not find attractive. But somebody out there likes it, so they made a second one. There’s a Horror movie to fit every kind of taste.

Smile 2 – I didn’t watch the first movie even though I heard from a lot of people that it’s pretty good. Someday I’ll get around to watching both of these.

Return to Silent Hill – I was not impressed by any of the Silent Hill movies that showed up after the first film. Shockingly, I have actually played the first iteration of the game, which made me reach the conclusion that Horror games are not for me!

Out Come the Wolves – I know nothing about this movie beyond the basic synopsis that its a about a group of people being attacked by a pack of wolves.

Dust Bunny – The basic plot is that a little girl teams up with some kind of hunter to kill the monster that lives under her bed, which she thinks ate her family. I have no trailer, but this sounds interesting. I hope its a comedy.

Later this month I’ll be posting stories about the different types of new Horror available to partake of online, and new Horror authors I’ve been reading the last few years! Stephen King has some real competition out there, or at least a new successor.

Most Anticipated Visuals of 2024

Deadpool and Wolverine

This is the movie my nephew and I are most looking forward to watching this Summer. We’re both big Deadpool fans, we both like Wolverine, so… Not sure how this movie is going to play out, but I’m hopeful that it will be as much fun as the first two Deadpool movies, and at least as much fun as the comic books.

The Quiet Place: Day One

This is going to be a great year for Horror movies, starting with one of my favorite franchises, The Quiet Place. I greatly enjoyed the first two films, which, while full of some pretty scary moments, and are definitely considered Creature Features, I still classify as being more alongside the Action genre. It also happens to star two of my favorite actors, Lupita Nyong’o and Djimon Hounsou. Despite loving the movie American Fiction, I actually do like watching movies with multiple Black actors where the subject doesn’t revolve around racial issues. It should be a perfectly normal thing to see Black actors in all kinds of different movies.

Interview With the Vampire Season 2

I greatly enjoyed season one of this series and I’m excited to immerse myself back in this world again. Even though the actress who played Claudia has left the show, (she was a lot of fun), I’m still ready to watch this. I loved the characters and their interactions with each other, and the season left off on something of a cliffhanger.

Dune (Pt. 2)

Again, I enjoyed the first part of this and I’m excited to enter this world of Dune again. Denis Villeneuve has done an excellent job with this franchise.

Fallout

I’ve never played these games and know almost nothing at all about the lore of this world, so I had to take a quick crash course to understand some of the images I saw in the trailer. I’m excited to visit this place based solely on the strength of the trailer! I hope it’s as interesting as the trailer suggests.

Shogun

I already mentioned my love for the original film, so I’m eagerly awaiting the premiere of this remake next week.

Avatar

I think we can all agree the movie was a disaster, but based on the trailer, this series looks pretty good, and faithful enough to the original to merit a look-see.

House of Ninja

I have not started this series yet, but it looks like fun.

IF

I think I will prefer this over the Horror movie about imaginary friends. Don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely going to check out the Horror movie, but the addition of Ryan Reynolds makes this one look more fun.

Furiosa

I am not sure we needed a movie about Furiosa’s backstory but this looks very exciting and she is such a beloved character that I guess the filmmakers simply couldn’t resist. I am becoming a huge fan of Anya Taylor-Joy, too. I don’t know that I will see this in the theater. I probably will if one of my nieces would like to join me.

Monkey Man

I am deeply in love with Dev Patel and it is very exhilarating to see him in an Action film ala John Wick style! It does not hurt at all that one of the Producers behind this gem is Jordan Peele, who, as far as I’m concerned, can yet do no wrong onscreen. I am definitely going to see this one in the theater.

Borderlands

I don’t know anything about the original source material (a videogame) on which this movie is based, I just love the idea of this cast (Cate Blanchett, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, and Jamie Lee Curtis) all starring in this silly, cheesy looking, Guardians of the Galaxy/Mad Max ripoff! Pure Popcorn!

The Ones Who Live

I have not watched any of the other Spinoffs from The Walking Dead, but I am invested in the romance of Michonne and Rick, and hope this offers all the feels I’m looking for in a TV series this Spring!

Honorable Mentions:

Axel F – This is one of those Netflix originals type of things. I’m a fan of the Beverly Hills Cop movies and it will be fun to visit with Axel Foley again!

Space Man – I’m not sure I like the idea of a giant talking space spider, but I’m going to watch this because I’ve enjoyed Adam Sandler’s previous non-comedic work.

Rebel Moon Pt. 2 – I hesitate to say this was a good movie because it had some story drawbacks. On the other hand, the story is not finished, so hopefully, the second half of this movie will flesh out the problems of the first half of this movie. The visuals were gorgeous, but that means nothing if the story behind those visuals is lacking.

Road House – I talked about being a fan of the original cheesy film, and this is streaming on Amazon Prime, so I don’t have to worry about spending money on a theater experience. It looks kinda cheesy and fun, like a Saturday afternoon “popcorn/on the couch” event.

Sting – I’ve heard this is a comedy. I will not be seeing this in the theater because again…giant spider!

Abigail – My niece has expressed some interest in watching this vampire ballerina movie. I get it. She loved that Megan film, and seems to have this thing about movies with little girls behaving badly. I’m not sure I want to see this movie but since she has trusted my judgement on choosing movies to watch, I’m trusting her judgement on this.

The Fall Guy – I have memories of having watched the TV show on which this movie is based, but I cannot for the life of me remember anything beyond that it starred Lee Majors, (from The Six Million Dollar Man), who was once married to Farah Fawcett. I like Ryan Gosling. That’s all I got.

Nosferatu – I do not have a trailers for this but its a remake of the original 1920s Silent film by one of my favorite directors, Robert Eggers! It looks as if this will be dropping in December/

War of the Rohirrim – I know nothing about this movie other than its based on Tolkien’s writings and it too is dropping in December. I dont even know who is starring in this yet. I don’t even have a trailer or even an announcement that this is happening. It just showed up on FirstShowing.net

New Trailers for 2024

Hi guys!

Woo! I need to make up for not posting for so long, I guess.

Here are some more trailers for movies that I’m excited to see this year (and maybe a couple I’m not too excited about but you might love). It looks like this year is going to be a mix of cheesy fun (Godzilla X Kong) and deeply serious films (Dune 2), and I’m here for both these things, although I am still very much in my lighthearted phase of television viewing.

Argyle

I am not especially excited to see this movie, but it does look like a fun ride for someone. I’m sure some people are gonna have a good time watching this, although I am a lot more interested in the cat.

The Tiger’s Apprentice

This is the type of movie I’d enjoy watching with my nephew who loves martial arts movies. This looks like a fun afternoon at my sister’s house.

Spaceman

I have deeply mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, Adam Sandler is bringing it in his more serious roles, so I’m looking forward to his acting here, but the other character is a giant talking spider, and I don’t know that I want to subject myself to that for an entire movie.

Furiosa

This is very obviously a cash-grab, but I don’t care. I loved the 2015 Fury Road movie so much that I’m willing to sit through this to find out more about the lead character of that film, Furiosa. I hope it lives up to the hype of this trailer.

The Monkey Man

This is a movie that’s produced by Jordan Peele but it doesn’t look like a Horror movie. It looks more like one of his more comedic entries. I’m a huge fan of Dev Patel, and I really enjoy seeing him branch out into all of these rather odd roles, as he navigates his path through the Hollywood typecasting machine. I’m willing to pay money to see this team-up at the theater.

Road House

I liked Patrick Swayze’s silly original and this seems to capture at least some of that vibe, so I’m willing to check this out if its on a streaming service but not if its in the theater.

Godzilla X Kong: New Empire

I got nothing!

I don’t know what to think about this one except I’m sure it looks like great cheesy fun to someone.

Enjoy!

Abigail

This kind of reminds me heavily of the movie Megan only with vampires. I will probably end up watching this with my niece (the little sister of The Potato) who loves to see movies about little girls behaving very badly. I have to admit I’m not immune to that topic myself. Once again, it looks more than a little cheesy but it also looks like great fun.

Nosferatu

Well, I think the original film is deliciously scary, I’m a big fan of Robert Eggers, and I really loved the Last Voyage of the Demeter with Monster Dracula, so I’m looking forward to yet another serious take on the Dracula Mythos. I have not seen the 70s remake of the is film but I’m going to watch both the 1927 version and that remake before I see this one at the end of this year.

Avatar: The Last Airbender

I’m looking forward to this in the hopes that it will correct the mistakes of the movie version. So far, it looks pretty accurate to the cartoon, and I really like the visuals. My only drawback is that it still has the Netflix look that all their films have which has the unintended side effect of making all their live action anime remakes blend together.

Despicable Me 4

This looks like something my niece would enjoy. I might enjoy this too, since she forced me to watch a couple of the other Minions movies with her. I’m starting to trust her judgement a little bit more about what kinds of films are okay to watch. She definitely has an eye for the kind of stuff she likes and is willing to sit through, and seems to want to return the favor of me recommending movies to her since she was very little. There have been three or four movies that she strongly suggested I watch with her and so far she’s been right each time. I did enjoy all of them, even though a couple of them were just a little bit out of my usual comfort zone.

More Horror Movies Directed By Women

Until about twenty years ago there was a real lack of women Horror film directors. What we got was Horror through a white male lens, and what that meant was we got the kind of stories that frightened them, or their ideas of what frightened us. Today however, women have fully entered the discussion and we’re just beginning to get some idea of what women think scares us, and its a lot more surreal than you thought. Not that these films are lacking spectacle or gore, but there is a little more of an emphasis on psychology, mood, and surrealist imagery. You would guess that a lot of the emphasis would be on motherhood, childbirth, and pregnancy, but there are a number of films about the horrors of consumption, complicated relationships, and feminist issues.

Yes, I have seen most of these, and while YOUR mileage may vary, I thought many of these films were very effective scares.

But note, that even though women have been more prominent as directors and writers, the genre is still overwhelmingly white, and we are only just starting to get stories written by and about Women of Color. That said, I tried to include at least couple of films from women of other cultures and communities.

As Joanne Russ argued, “A mode of understanding literature which can ignore the private lives of half the human race is not ‘incomplete’; it is distorted through and through.” Traditional means of understanding the history of the horror genre have not even given us an “incomplete” view by which we can extrapolate and hope to understand the real story. It is a history that is so false as to be completely unhelpful. This reimagined history doesn’t only neglect the perspective women. As bell hooks points out, “many feminist film critics continue to structure their discourse as though it speaks about ‘women’ when in actuality it speaks only about white women.” Even as we make gains in making films that represent more stories than just those that appeal to the white North American or European man, we are also becoming aware that simply including white women isn’t enough.

—- From: Horror Movies Directed by Women ⁠— Feminist Filmmaking

Goodnight Mommy

Directed by: Veronika Franz

Okay, this is one ofthe films I have yet to watch but I wanted to get it into the roster for this Halloween because the premise sounds especially scary. This woman shows up at their home claiming to be their mother but the twin boys can’t tell because her face is all covered in bandages. After a while they start to suspect that she isn’t who she claims to be and devise some schemes to find out or trick this woman into showing her true self.

Who are the bad guys here? Is it the woman who claims to be their mother or are the twins just delusional? Are there any bad guys at all? The children are very young so sometimes kids get an idea in their minds with no proof, but they can’t let it go, so it will be interesting and probably pretty frightening to find out.

Umma

Directed by: Iris Shim

This is another movie about relationships between mothers and daughters, and the fallout from generational trauma. Nobody does generational trauma films like Asian women, because that has been a core theme in every movie I’ve watched which had Asian women directors. It also stars one of my favorite actresses, Sandra Oh ,and I’m eager to see what she does in this role.

There is an entire genre of Horror films made by Asian directors (who are from different parts of Asia) but mostly there are no American made Horror movies which star Asian men or women. Hopefully in the future we will get more of these told from their uniquely USian point of view.

Saint Maud

Directed by: Rose Glass

I’m not normally attracted to religious films because far too many of them are derivative, but this film intrigued me because of the unconventional plot. The lead character is a home nurse aid obsessed with religious pain and martyrdom, and becomes convinced that the woman who is dying of cancer in her care needs to have her soul saved. I’m always a sucker for quiet films set in the English countryside, so it has that going for it. This movie turned out not to be at all what I thought it would be, and that’s a good thing.

XX

Directors:  Roxanne Benjamin, Jovanka Vuckovic, Karyn Kusama, St. Vincent

I enjoy anthology films and I really liked this one. Like the VHS series it starts with a framing sequence that I didnt care for too much because I thought it was simply ugly. Fortunately, you don’t have to spend too much time watching those sequences and the first story in the four stories that make up this movie is especially haunting. I remember reading the short story, The Box, on which this sequence was very loosely based some time ago. In it a man on a bus shows a little boy something he has in a box, after which the little boy stops eating. Whatever has happened to him he ends up spreading to the rest of the family (except for the mother), and they all starve themselves to death, leaving her puzzled and alone. Another favorite of mine was Her Only Son, about a woman who gives birth to the son of the devil and raises him to not know it.

There are so few women in Horror, as writers and directors, that its hard to get a good bead on the kinds of themes that women would create if they ran the genre, but this movie is an excellent glimpse into the types of stories women like to tell, and the kinds of themes they consider a priority (like consumption, loss, grief, and family relationships). I don’t object to the kinds of Horror stories told by men because a lot of excellent Horror films have resulted from it, but Horror is a very lopsided genre, and for the last hundred years we’ve only been seeing what men think is scar and following familiar tropes they created. So, it’s interesting to watch films like this because you can see how women subvert or uphold certain tropes, what women think is scary, and women’s filming techniques for producing fear.

Run Sweetheart Run

Director: Shana Feste

This is one of those movies where your mileage may vary. I enjoyed the movies premise and it has some great action scenes, and the heroine of the movie isn’t stupid. There were some things I was glad to see happen in the movie, like other women supporting and helping the protagonist, which isn’t something you get when men direct these types of films. Often the number of women in Horror movies is limited and they don’t always get along or try to help other women survive.

On its face the movie looks like a typical Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, slasher style film, where a woman is pursued by a killer for a night. Her purpose is to survive until daytime, and we are given the idea that that’s an impossible task, but she doesn’t just spend the entire night running and screaming. She makes some interesting choices, which has the effect of turning the movie into a battle of wits between her and her pursuer , and while the ending could have been better written, I was satisfied with it. The most annoying part of the movie is the word “RUN” gets splashed across the screen in huge type right before an action sequence. Outside of that really annoying detail, (which was not a deal-breaker for me), the movie was alright.

Titane

Directed by: Julia Decournau

This is another movie I’ve heard of by rough description and I cannot entirely understand the plot as I read it, but the trailer looks intriguing, so I have it on my list of films to watch this year. This is from the director of Raw, which turned out to be a favorite of mine. The theme of that movie was cannibalism as a stand in for sexual maturity. This one seems to involve machines, sexuality, and false identities. If you think that sounds interesting than definitely go for it. It’s available on Hulu.

The Babadook

Director: Jennifer Kent

This was touted as one of the scariest films of the year on its release and the Babadook itself gained a bit of notoriety as a gay internet meme. (I’m still not sure how or even why that happened. Nothing in this movie is remotely gay.) I’m not gonna lie, the movie does have some very effective jump scares and there is some amount of tension but this doesn’t make any of my favorites lists. It was alright and worth the watch but ultimately I was not greatly impressed. But as I said earlier, your mileage may vary. You should check it out if you love mother and child in danger type movies like Dark Water and The Ring.

Piggy

Director: Carlota Martinez-Pereda

I really, really liked this movie because it presents a very interesting dilemma that I’m still pondering several weeks later. I initially wanted to watch this because I identified with the protagonist of this movie. I was a big girl all through school, although unlike the lead character of this film I wasn’t bullied for it (or befriended by a serial killer) because I was simply one among many, and being a little plump wasn’t anything particularly abnormal where I grew up.

The lead character is a horribly bullied young lady, and normally I don’t like to watch such films, but if it’s surrounded by an interesting premise, I’m willing to sit through such scenes, and this movie was worth it. Sara, the daughter of the local butcher, gets bullied by a pack of girls in her small town who call her Piggy, but a serial killer starts killing the girls who bothered her, and Sara gets placed in a situation where she could save their lives if she speaks up, or she can become friends with the guy doing the killing, and to the film’s credit I could not tell what her decision would be until the very end of the movie, and that is a tight rope to walk, mostly because I was unsure of what decision I would have made in her place. This movie is based on the short film that’s is freely available on YouTube.

Candyman

Directed by: Nia DaCosta

I thought this film to be a worthy successor to the original which for me had some real problems, one of which was that the primary character was a white woman in a story that is set within Black American surroundings. I just feel like the director’s and creators did that thing where they put a white person in the middle of a story that should have been about Black people, and this film did a good job of not only correcting that issue, but expanding the original story in such a way that the original actually makes more sense. For those who are interested in the scares, this movie doesn’t stint on the gore, and the film’s message isn’t too much in your face.

This is one of the few Horror movies directed by a Black woman. There really isn’t enough of them to establish an overall theme or pattern of what Black women think is scary though, although the few movies I have sen by them echo many of the topics Black women tend to discuss among themselves in general.

Good Manners

Director: Julia Rojas

I haven’t watched this one yet, but the trailers lead me to believe it was a werewolf story involving a child, so now I’m intrigued. it was available on Amazon Prime for a hot minute but now I don’t have access to it so I need to find some other way to watch it.

(Okay, I just looked it up and it’s on Tubi! Yay!!)

Depending on how it goes, maybe I’ll get back to you about it.

Lucky

Director: Natasha Kermani

I saw the trailer for this movie several months ago and promptly forgot the title. I came across the title while researching today’s subject, and watched the trailer again, and now I’m reminded of how interested I was when I saw it the first time about a woman who keeps suffering the same house invasion every night as if she were on a time loop. I’m going to check this out and get back to y’all about it later.

I’m not about to let the fact that Halloween is over stop me from talking about Horror movies.

Master

Directed by: Mariama Diallo

This is one of the few films helmed by a Black woman director (I don’t think I will never not find that interesting because there are so few Black female Horror directors!), but, as I said earlier, your mileage on this movie may vary. I was largely unimpressed by this movie, although it attempted to have a satisfying amount of tension. It’s not because the movie is bad, but mostly because I’m not generally impressed by ghost stories that may or may not be entirely psychological in nature. In other words, this movie was probably too subtle for me, relying more on mood, lighting, facial expressions, and settings, but for those who prefer tension to Horror, this movie may work, although there simply wasn’t enough mystery in it for me.

Like other films helmed by Black directors in the last five or six years, there is a racial angle, but its not as well written as Get Out, so mostly it was just trauma inducing, with not enough catharsis to be worth the effort of sitting through it, and I wish the director had punched up the positive themes/angles just a little bit more. if you like dark, and somewhat depressing films, this might be the one for you, though.

Hatching

Director: Hanna Bergholm

I watched this, and yes, it is a movie.

All I could think of after watching it was that it could have been done better. But, once again, I have to say, this may be an interesting movie for some of you. Just because I was unimpressed with a movie doesn’t mean the movie was a bad one. Horror is so subjective and personal that what frightens one person barely makes a dent in another person’s sleep patterns and that was the case with me and this movie. Despite the body horror aspects and the mystery I feel like the movie was kinda bland. There wasn’t anything that stood out to me in terms of acting, or mood, or theme.

A young girl who has a contentious relationship with her overbearing mother finds a giant egg and hatches it. What comes out of the egg is pretty horrifying, but I spent my time feeling exasperated by the character’s decisions. Once again, this is another movie that is actually about mother/daughter relationships, but for me it was just an unsuccessful attempt at what the movie Umma was much better at.

The Invitation

Directed by: Jessica Thompson

I know a lot of people panned this movie but I thought it was fine. Its not a great film, but it was watchable and I didn’t feel like my time had been wasted. I liked the lead character well enough, and I was entertained by the film’s premise, although it is a very predictable film. At this point in my life, I’m pretty jaded about vampire movies, but this one was interesting enough to watch and had a satisfying ending. It’s okay. There’s no need to run out and see it right away or anything.

This is another movie that, while not directed by a Black woman, has a central character who is and this is a trend I’ve been noticing a lot of lately. There was a time when women of color were almost entirely excluded from this genre, not just as directors, but as characters, and I’ve seen a huge uptick in Black actors in these types of movies. I’m not quite sure what inspired all this, but I suspect it’s Jordan Peele’s success, and I hope its not just a passing fad. I am glad to see Black actors getting these somewhat unconventional (for them) roles, although I do wish their characters had a bit more development, because as they written by white writers and directors, they can sometimes be rather bland, and we don’t get any real sense of their interiority.

The Scariest Creepypastas On Youtube

For those of you who want to get your scare on (minus all the sex and gore) there’s nowhere better to get that fix than YouTube. YouTube ahs a wealth of creepy urban legends, creepypastas, chilling stories, and scary videos for all your needs for October. Most of these are about mood, atmosphere, and weird and creepy events and creatures that take place in out of the way places, suburban backyards, and some places that are just next to or out of this world. We’ll start with the most accessible of these (for the beginners, or those looking to ease into the scary stuff) but some of these are for the true Horror professionals.

The Backrooms

This, along with The SCP Archives, is one of the most famous YouTube Horror projects. The Backrooms were invented by the then 16 year old Kane Parsons aka Kane Pixels.

The very first video about The Backrooms shows a regular guy “no-clipping”, (a videogame term meaning to glitch out of one environment into another), out of this world into what looks like miles of office rooms, with no furniture or people, and then being hunted and chased by a fast, but indistinct, and hostile creature through the endless passageways.

Since then, the project has taken on a life of its own with entire channels devoted to the study of the Backrooms, videos on the philosophy behind its creation, hundreds of different levels, personal adventures, games, walkthroughs, creature descriptions, and photographs of liminal spaces that are said to be components of that setting. Recent contributors have added a greedy corporation wishing to exploit The Backrooms for profit to this lore, with hapless and unarmed employees exploring the setting and getting taken out by various monsters.

This online project is creepy and fun with very little gore, lots of great monsters, jump scares, and more than a little bit of tension, but it’s mostly mood and atmosphere, much of which involves feelings of claustrophobia, paranoia, and disquiet.

The Backrooms has become such a popular urban legend that there are rumors of a movie being made by A24 studios.

Mystery Flesh Pit National Park

The Mystery Flesh Pit National Park is hands down one of the weirdest places on YouTube. It’s a fictional universe (although that’s difficult to believe considering the excellent worldbuilding) where something touched down on Earth several hundred years ago and burrowed itself into the Earth. it looks like a cave but its really a giant sleeping organism, with parasites and a digestive system. humans discovered this organism, and decided (for money, I’m guessing), to turn it into a kind of theme park. They built a walkthrough system, with souvenir shops, motels, and tour guides.

The videos are based on a fictional book about the history of the Park and a 2007 disaster report that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people when the organism tried to wake up. The website itself is lots of fun with lots of drawings, maps of the organism’s systems, photos and information on its various parasites, posters and information about the Park and the people who work there, along with various cautions and warnings, like an actual National Park, but most of the videos I’ve seen focus on the horrifying disaster report chronicling the creatures brief waking. This is harrowing listening, as it talks about what happened to hundreds of visitors when something agitated the organism enough to make it partially wake up.

If you like horrifying fictional universes and alien body horror, then check out the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park website or YouTube channel.

The SCP

I’ve talked about the SCP here many times, and it seems to be a popular topic. SCP stands for Secure, Contain, and Protect, and consists of an entire ecosystem of stories, monsters, and events that are weird, anomalous, and sometimes just plain unexplainable. The SCP is an organization dedicated to the study and containment of the monsters, and any information about the events surrounding them, although sometimes the SCP just archives information about various alien and parallel worlds.

Some members of the SCP are themselves anomalous entities, like fan favorite Dr. Jack Bright, a scientist within the organization who is a seemingly immortal troublemaker, Dr. Pathos Crow, a humanoid dog, and the various members of the “05” Council, who have various superpowers themselves and seem to be running the show.

But the most popular SCP characters are, of course, the monsters and other anomalous creatures, like the unremittingly hostile Hard to Destroy Reptile (SCP 682), the unrelenting Shy Guy (SCP 096), the cannibalistic Gray Man (SCP 106), and the murderous Sculpture (SCP 173).

For those of you who have no taste for Horror there are plenty of anomalous events and creatures that are simply strange, funny, sad, or bizarre, like the happy blob named SCP 999, a tiny bird who thinks he’s a little boy, and the Reluctant Dimension Hopper.

Terrifying Tales For A Rainy Night

The Being Scared Channel involves deeply frightening stories told with a rainy ambience! Stories include Backwoods and Park Ranger encounters with the inexplicable, creature and folk horror, and a few urban legend horrors, all of which are spoken in the first person in the form of interviews or personal stories.

This is Horror for those who want to be deeply creeped out but don’t want any of the sex or gore. It’s all mood and atmosphere, aided and abetted by the sound of falling rain and perfect for a spooky party with friends. I found out it’s probably not a good idea to listen to these stories while alone in the house at night, though!

The Monsters of Trevor Henderson

Trevor Henderson himself doesn’t actually have a YouTube channel but there are dozens of channels devoted to his many creature manifestations. Most of the videos are bite-sized tidbits describing the various monsters and critters, and the horror mostly comes from atmosphere and mystery of the creatures themselves, which all look suitably terrifying, thanks to Trevor’s art style.

One of the most famous of Trevor’s creatures is Sirenhead, which has become something of a YouTube phenomenon and Urban Legend. There are lots of videos and short films about this hundred meter tall spindly creature with a giant fire siren for a head that chases and hunts human beings just to kill them. He doesn’t normally hang out in populated areas, but if you come across him in some out of the way spot, your best bet is to not let him see you, and if he does, hide someplace that’s small and inaccessible to him.

Trevor Henderson also has a new book out, titled Scarewaves, in which a group of small town kids encounter strange creatures while investigating their town’s frightening and mysterious past. It’s available on Amazon.

Bonus Round:

Scariest Internet Stories

The Not-Deer

Road Trip Stories – All about people experiencing scary events and people along America’s thousands of miles of highways, either by themselves or with friends. There’s also an entire series of stories scary campfire tales, home alone stories, late at night restaurant and gas station tales, and yeah, stories about haunted National Parks.

Slenderman – World’s most famous Creepyspasta. He even has his own movie and a real life murder done in his name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slender_Man

The Black Eyed Children – One of America’s creepier Urban Legends. I first encountered this legend in a couple of Horror novels written by R. S. Belcher, and its definitely worth looking into. This one sort of reminds me of the original Men in Black stories I read as a child.

The Not-Deer –

https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-6448

Not an Urban Legend, but like Sasquatch, this is one of the Appalachian cryptids. I first encountered this as an SCP (SCP 6448), and YouTube has plenty of stories about people’s encounters with these creepy little shits in the more out of the way places of the US, and trust me, these stories definitely deliver on the scares. Trust me when I say you do not ever want to encounter these creatures.

Some Favorite Short Horror Films

It’s that time of year where I show you some of my favorite videos I’ve been watching on Youtube for Halloween. It’s okay. These are perfectly safe to watch because none of these are especially frightening. I’m saving the really scary ones for later this month, and I’ll be providing plenty of trigger warnings to those who don’t care for certain levels of creepiness, but these short little gems are all Horror comedies.

Finley

Despite my creepiness about moving dolls and ventriloquist dummies I thought this particular film was absolutely hilarious. Hopefully, you will think so too. I found myself actually rooting for Finley to get his merc on and I can see why this won so many awards.

Still

This is quite possibly one of the dumbest zombie apocalypses I have ever watched because the zombies are however fast the director needs them to be to tell the story. Like most of these types of stories, I found myself asking what would I do in the same situation, and I concluded that whatever I’d be doing, it isnt what the people in this film are doing!

Brian, It’s Back

Whatever you do, never piss off a Teddy Bear who has access to cutlery!

Scottie

Once again we have a creepy moving doll in this great animated short film, but its okay because this sweet little “good pupper” has come to the rescue.

The Exortwist

This is one of my all-time favorite animated shorts, mostly because I love the original film on which its based, and I love candy. What an inspired parody!

Spider on the Ceiling

This is another favorite of mine. It sounds so self-descriptive that I thought I’d be too scared to watch it but it turned out to be kinda goofy and I liked the two main characters a lot.

Occupied

You see? This is exactly the proper response to any type of strange noise, funny smells, or possessed bathrooms! Good!

Next up:

More monsters, and Horror movies I’ve been watching lately!

The Ten Monsters That Scared The S@#* Out Of Me

Alright guys, I’m about to kick off my favorite month of the year – Spookytober – with a scary little list of the monsters that scared the bejeebus out of me. I’ve listed favorite monsters a couple of times on this blog, but this is really the first time I’ve listed monsters And as a consequence the movies) I don’t watch very often because they are genuinely terrifying to me. Your mileage may vary, of course, because Horror is subjective and depends almost entirely on the mindset of the individual involved.

Now there are a helluva lot of scary movies out there and there’s a few that didn’t make this list but are terrifying just because they’re terrifying. What you will notice that’s absent from this list are the more traditional monsters like vampires and werewolves, and it’s not that I don’t find some of them scary, but there really aren’t enough vampires that are scare me, for example, to make a ten item list. This list focuses on Creature Features, but there’s whole other list to be made for Supernatural and Slasher films, and I might list those later, but here goes: The Most Terrifying Monsters in Horror.

He Who Kills From Trilogy of Terror

Now the other monsters are not in any particular order but I had to bring this guy in at number one because this was truly the very first monster that actually scared the bricks out of me (and quite frankly he works pretty good at it today). There’s a reason I’ve only watched this movie about three or four times in the last thirty years. I read the short story its based on Prey by Richard Matheson about the same number of times because the movies is extremely faithful to the story. One of the more interesting aspects of this monster is that looked at under the correct light it is deeply funny. I mean, it is just a puppet and you might laugh at it for about five minutes, but by the end of the movie he is a lot less funny, because the movie is filled with some genuinely suspenseful moments.

I first saw this movie late at night when I was supposed to be asleep, and waaay too young to be looking at it, which may be the reason I now have “doll fear”. Now, I didn’t fear my own “plastic” dolls. I got along fine with them, so this wasn’t a hard and fast rule, but this movie definitely contributed to my general fear of wooden puppets, ventriloquist dummies, mannequins, and other humanoid shaped wooden objects that are not supposed to be moving, but are kinda doing that anyway. So yeah, Chucky, Pinocchio, a few of those Japanese puppets, the creature from the 2016 movie, The Boy, and that puppet from the 1978 Anthony Hopkins movie, Magic, they can all catch some of this smoke.

The Xenomorph from Alien

I remember seeing the first trailer for this movie when I was about nine or ten years old and being very excited about it. The trailer was immediately intriguing to me because it was dark and ominous and told you absolutely nothing at all about the movie. I loved it! And then, when that Summer passed, I kinda forgot about it, until I watched the movie for the first time on late night TV when I was about fourteen, and y’all, I was not ready! Since the trailer didn’t really tell you anything, I had no idea what to expect. Talk about sitting on the edge of your seat!

I was following along with this movie just fine and it was alright, until the last fifteen minutes. I will not spoil it for those of you too young to have watched it yet, but that last scene contains what is possibly one of the greatest jump scares in film history and cemented the Xenomorph as one of the most terrifying monsters in Horror for me.

The H-Man 1958

I won’t list the original Blob because while that movie was definitely disgusting, it was also kind of funny. The H-Man makes this list because I’ve been terrified of watching this movie ever since I first saw it. I’ve told you about my issues watching acidic, sentient snot devouring people alive and this movie is probably the reason why. I’m serious. Like quicksand, this is an actual problem! In japan this movie is called Beauty and the Liquid People, a very poetic name for what is probably one of the ickiest movies I’ve ever watched. The only other movie about acidic slime that maybe tops this one is the remake of The Blob made in 1987, and while that movie is certainly disgusting, its also kind of fun. This movie wasn’t fun. There’s nothing in this movie that’s played for laughs.

I think I’ve watched this movie about two and a half times over forty years. The last time I tried watching this was about three years ago, and I had to stop, because it was the middle of the night when it aired, and it totally creeped me the hell out so badly, I had to stop! I mean this movie literally makes my skin feel crawly! Yes, I had a hard time falling asleep with the lights on.

The Thing of The Thing

It’s not that the monster isn’t scary, but more the idea of the monster is what’s so terrifying. It’s this idea that the monster can look, act, and sound exactly like someone close to you, that you’ve been living in close quarters with, and that its mimicry is so good, that you literally cannot tell the difference between it and someone you think you’ve known for months, is what contributes so well to the movie’s feelings of dread and paranoia. For the first thirty minutes of the movie the monster is only ever referenced, and not shown, but once it does show up, its worth the wait, because Carpenter does a righteous job of its depiction.

The mood of this movie is incredible. In fact, the 1982 remake of The Thing is sometimes referred to as a perfect Horror movie, which despite its age, has not done badly. The monster, the practical effects, the environment, the cinematography, and characters, all still hold up very well over thirty years later.

The Medusa from Clash of the Titans

So, for comparison I watched the Clash of the Titans remake and let’s just say I was less than whelmed by the remake’s depiction of the Medusa. I mean she was alright, and she definitely had them bow and arrow skills but there’s just something about the original Harryhausen version that is both terrifying and wonderful. There’s something about the stop motion that lends itself well to her character that didn’t work well with the computer generated version in the remake. Also the remake decided to make the Medusa conventionally attractive, which is faithful to the original story, but is not scary.

Part of the reason this Medusa is frightening is the general mood and environment, and we can’t forget the novelty of having seen her for the first time. The low lighting and frozen bodies with their terrified expressions, and her disregard as she knocks them over during her pursuit, is simply disturbing. There’s also her facial expressions. She doesn’t just look angry or mean but a little melancholy. She is one of my favorite monsters and I keep imagining what it would be like to encounter such a being. Let’s face it, it would be terrifying!

Jean Jacket from Nope

One of the most terrifying things about the monster from Nope is that it appears more or less harmless ,and turns out to be anything but that. Part of the reason Jean Jacket so terrifying is its general demeanor. It’s really fast moving, and stealthy, and there are things about it that are just a complete mystery. We think its an alien because it resembles stories we’ve been telling ourselves about aliens, (and that attitude is what gets most of the people in the movie killed) but we don’t actually know what it is, where it came from, what its going to do next, how smart it is, or even its purpose.

There are somethings Jean Jacket does in the movie that are just puzzling and we can’t make any sense out of, like the rain of blood, or the final threat display that shows what it actually looks like. There’s a lot of conjecture among fans about this. So a large part of the terror of this monster is all the things we simply don’t know about it and I’m glad Peele didn’t bother to try to explain.

The Grey Widowers from The Mist

I think I mentioned before that along with “Doll Fear” I also have “Spider Fear”, its not as bad as when I was younger. I can at least look at them in movies, but these guys are simply horrifying because of their size, acidic webbing, and near human faces. These guys are inhabitants of one of the greatest monster movies ever made (simply because of the sheer number of horrors in it), Frank Darabont’s 2007 Stephen King adaptation of The Mist. I mean, I don’t like spiders because they’re bad enough at the size they are in the Amazon, but these guys spit acidic webbing! WHY?!!! Why would anyone think of that?!

If you are a fan of Creature Features than this is definitely the movie for you because it has all kinds of great, barely glimpsed, monsters strutting around in the Mist, devouring and chopping up various people who insist on running out into it. There’s the Giant Lobster creature that haunts a parking lot, and the giant mosquito creatures with poisonous venom, and the extra giant sized Kaiju… okay, lets face it, most of the monsters are of enormous size, but still I very much suspect that the Grey Widowers, as they are called by the film’s creators, are the top dogs in this monster ecosystem. I think one of the saddest scenes in the movie is when the lead characters drive past an overturned bus containing the desiccated bodies of school children. Darabont has no problem killing children in this movie, and this also makes The Mist one of the saddest and most shocking Horror movies of the 21st century.

The Entity from It Follows

I wrote two whole essays about the meaning of the invisible entity that stalks the lead character in this movie becasue there is a lot deeper stuff going on here than the surface plot of an STD monster that stalks and kills people. There are some very concrete reasons why the monster does what it does, and appears the way it appears in the movie. The entity here has some of the same issues that came up for The Thing. It can look like anyone, including people you know, and the victims wouldn’t know that it was dangerous to them unless they’d either been forewarned, or the person it was imitating was standing right next to them. In one instance in the film, a victim was warned, and still wasn’t ready when it attacked him.

My theory was that the monster shows up as personifications of the things its victims either fear the most (like rape, or growing old), or have the most anxiety about (their relationships with friends and family), and that the longer it tracks its victims it starts to attune itself to their very specific fears, which is why it will show up looking like their mother or their best friend, especially if they have any lowkey anxieties about them. What forms the monster takes can tell us a lot about the victim, and I thought that was kinda terrifying in an existential type of way.

Pennywise (from the It remake)

Okay, this entire movie (both parts) was simply deliciously terrifying and kind of awesome. I liked this movie far more than I enjoyed the original movie, which for me was simply meh! I am usually not impressed with remakes, and I was prepared not to like this, but after some thought and a couple of re-watches, I have to admit, this movie was very good, and part of the reason for that is the attention to detail of the monster and our care for the characters. Pennywise is actually very well done and very scary, and I like that his presence is often preceded by the appearance of a red balloon. I distinctly remember reading the original story by Stephen King, and being captivated by the opening scene of the clown in the sewer, and this terrifying scene was wonderfully depicted in this film, almost exactly the way I imagined it.

The monster is genuinely scary in all of its incarnations, but most especially in the second half of of the movie when it keeps showing up in various spider forms. It also doesn’t hurt that I actually cared about the characters and either rooted for them or condemned them based on their actions.

Normally, I would add a bonus round right here, but I think I’m going to start a new post. Next time my focus will be on the Scariest Traditional Monster films like werewolves and vampires and stuff. I think that’s with a look and allow me to expand this list of most terrifying monsters in Horror Cinema.

Spring and Summer Mini-Reviews (Pt. 1)

There Was A Lot of Good Stuff This Year

Zom 100 (Netflix)

This is the live action version of the anime that’s currently playing on Netflix. I watched the anime version of this too but I prefer this version. It has the same basic plot as the anime, with little extras added, and I thought, more likable characters.

Akira Tendo is a much put upon and bullied office worker who works too much overtime, never takes vacations, and almost never has any time for himself. He’s bullied by his boss, is in an unrequited love with his female coworker, and generally hates going to work, but then his good fortune comes in the form of a zombie apocalypse. He sees this as a grand opportunity to complete a bucket list of activities before he succumbs to being a zombie.

He makes a list of all the things he’s always wanted to do and wished he could once do, and sets about actually fulfilling the list. He starts off with relatively easy things like cleaning his apartment, rooftop camping with steaks and fries, lazing around the house drinking beer, and shooting off some fireworks.

While out re-upping on beer he meets a bad ass zombie fighting girl he attaches himself to, and the two of them go off to save an old friend of Akira’s with whom he had a falling out after college. Apologizing to his best friend was one of the items on his bucket list, and his friend is so touched by this that becomes one of Akira’s biggest cheerleaders.

I really liked the relationships between these three characters, which thankfully DOES NOT become a love triangle. They’re just friends who care about each other. I also liked how the other two characters decided to join Akira on his bucket list quest, cheer him on, and even add their own wishes to the list. I was surprised that the list wasn’t already finished though. Akira doesn’t have a hundred items, and he and his friends would think of something they hadn’t done yet, and just add it to the list. Sometimes they would get the activity done, like driving an RV to the ocean, or being a superhero for a day, but the list started with only about ten items and by the end of the 2 hour movie there are only about 18 items.

Now, this zombie apocalypse is mostly played for laughs. The zombies are fast when they need to be, or conveniently slow whenever the characters need to pause and say a few lines, like when Akira encounters his first zombie hoard, and they’re chasing him quite quickly, until he needs to stop and reflect for a moment while they make sure to pause or fall down in the background. Yes, the zombies are dangerous but only when the plot requires them to be. So while occasionally Akira seems as if he might be in danger of being bitten he’s mostly safe. The movie is a comedy after all.

Unlike in the anime, Akira’s character arc mostly involves standing up to his bullying boss, whom he encounters later in the film, (and he has seemingly bullied an entire crew of people to work for him during the apocalypse), and gaining the confidence to save his coworkers from him and a great white zombie landshark, which is terrifying, utterly disgusting, and still deeply funny!

I really liked this movie, and hope there’s a sequel, because Akira and his friends weren’t anywhere near a hundred items on the bucket list and were basically making it up as they went along. This is not even remotely a serious movie, and I had quite a lot of fun, cheering Akira and his friends in their ridiculous adventures.

Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse (In Theaters)

I saw this with my niece and nephew when it was released because we are both huge Spiderman fans. Now, I’m more of a classic Peter Parker fan because that’s the Spiderman I grew up with, but Miles Morales has really grown on me. I like him a lot and I enjoyed this movie, even though it’s only the first part of a duo or trilogy.

Since I’m an art nerd, I paid really close attention to the various artistic styles used in the animation and I LOVED IT! Every prominent Spiderman gets an artistic style that reflects their nature. The Indian Spiderman gets really bright red and gold sari-like colors and a smooth drawing style. SpiderGwen gets some soft pastel pinks and blues which are often reflected in her environment and shows her moods, which I thought was a neat subtle trick. There’s the primary villain (who is a result of decisions Miles made during the first movie), who gets a chaotic black and white, polka dot, drawing style, as befitting his character, and another minor villain reflects an old school Leonardo DaVinci style (in keeping with that character’s personal philosophies about what is and isn’t art), and all these different styles just had me sitting there with a big silly grin!

But the plot doesn’t slack either, as it’s not all style with no substance, and the story successfully juggles a couple of narrative messages. If the first movie was about Miles taking that leap of faith and owning up to being Spiderman, this second film is about his full acceptance of his Spider Identity, what kind of Spiderman he wants to become, and trying to escape the league of Spidermen who have decided he is not worthy since it turns out that this version of Miles was never meant to be Spiderman.

In deciding what type of Spiderman he wants to be, we get to meet a lot of great Spidermen, some of which I knew from the comic books, including some great cameos from Spidercat, Spiderhorse, and a holographic Spidergirl of the future. But my all-time favorite character was the English Spiderpunk, Hobie Brown, (I also read those comics a long time ago) with the Indian Spiderman (Pavitr) running behind him at a very, very, close pace! I loved these two characters even more than the ones from the first movie, and it’s hard as hell to top Nicholas Cage as Spiderman Noir (Yes, I still want a Spiderman Noir movie.) There’s also Miguel O’Hara as Spiderman 2099, who I distinctly remember from the comics, and a very pregnant, Black version of Jessica Drew, who is also from the comic books. Classic Peter Parker also shows up and we get to meet his babygirl, MayDay Parker, (who got them spiderskills just like her daddy!)

Okay, I better zip it up before I give the whole plot away, but heads up! the lowkey MVP of the entire movie, is Spiderpunk! Pay close attention to everything he says and does, which is easy because, even though he only gets about five minutes of screen time, and Billy Idol sneer aside, he’s easily the funniest, coolest, and realest Spiderman to ever grace a movie screen!

This movie was so much fun, and not just because of the cameos, but the plot had plenty of little twists and turns, and the film’s message echoed some of the messaging I saw in The Flash movie, (about saving everyone) and I cannot wait to see its conclusion next year.

Last Voyage of the Demeter (In Theaters)

I was really looking forward to this as I said in a post earlier this year and I think it was worth the wait. I cannot say it was an enjoyable film because that would imply that it didn’t scare the pants off me, which is, of course, exactly what I wanted it to do. I really got invested, and I considered it worth both my time and money.

Now, the clearest description I’ve heard of this movie is it’s basically Alien At Sea. This is a classic old school creature feature, with lots of practical effects and an incredible star turn by the Spanish actor Javier Botet, who I’d never heard of, but apparently I’ve been watching him in a lot of monster movies.

This is the OG Dracula in attendance here. If you walk into this expecting the Dracula from any number of romance-adjacent movies of the past thirty years, you’re gonna be disappointed. This Dracula barely speaks. He kills, slashes, stalks, flies, and skulks, but he doesn’t talk. He’s a monster and a disease. This is not the suave, well spoken, sophisticated gentleman that you’re used to seeing.

I’ve read Dracula multiple times over the years. It’s one of my favorite novels, and the Voyage of the Demeter is one of the early chapters of the book, chronicling Dracula’s journey from Transylvania to London, as told in the Captain’s log, and this version of Dracula is as described in the book. The director remained as faithful as possible to the chapter and the plot is fairly simple. Just like the movie Alien, there’s something on the ship, picking off the crew one by one, and discovering what the monster is and fighting it, is the bulk of the movie. This isn’t just a retread of the Alien movie, although there are some formulaic parallels in keeping with this type of film.

The mood of the film is exactly as it should be to induce maximum dread, even though you know more about what’s happening than the crew. I could’ve done without a few of the convenient thunderstorms that popped up whenever Dracula was on the move because it made things hard to see at times. I was rooting for the crew though, and the Black character, Clemson, who is the primary, is a made up character just for the movie.

That there is a setup for a possible sequel is mildly annoying, but to be honest, I wouldn’t mind seeing another more accurate version of the rest of the book. Coppola’s 1992 Bram Stoker’s Dracula is about as close as Hollywood has ever gotten to actually filming the book, and it still has never been topped. I don’t expect a sequel to do that, but I would watch a straight up Horror version of Dracula, that’s a mashup of 30 Days of Night and Aliens!

The Last Of Us (HBO/Max)

Let me confess, I’ve never played the videogame this series is based on. I’ve heard a lot about how good it is, and I’ve watched a few videos that explain the monsters in it, so I didn’t exactly walk into this series blind. I knew who the two primary characters were and what the goal was. I can say that you do not need to have played the videogame to understand or like this series. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Based on reviews of those who have played the game it is faithful enough to be worth watching but has enough depth and story explanation to be satisfying for those who haven’t.

The basic premise is that humanity has been overcome with zombie-like creatures that infect human beings through a fungal infection based on the real world Cordyceps infection. Like a lot of zombie adjacent movies and series, there is more than enough body horror to satisfy even the most jaded Horror movie fan, the special effects are excellent, and there is plenty of action and pathos. Once again though, what captured and kept me interested were the characters, and thankfully that’s where most of the focus is.

Joel is a burnt out survivor who finds it hard to get close to others after losing his daughter during the pandemic outbreak, and Ellie is a young girl who is seemingly immune to the virus, that he must escort to a medical facility to determine if there is a cure. In other words, this is your standard zombie road trip movie where people need to travel somewhere or accomplish some goal at the end of the world. Where it excels is in the writing and character. There are certain things expected to happen because we’ve seen this type of plot dozens of times, especially if you enjoy zombie (and zombie-adjacent) movies and shows, but there are also more than a few unexpected gems that make the series more than award-worthy.

For me and a lot of other critics, the outstanding episode was #3, Long Long Time, not least because the title is one of my favorite Linda Ronstadt songs. It isn’t often that a show about zombies makes me cry but as I said this is where this series excels. I got deeply invested in two characters who, while they were peripheral to the story in the game, are fully fleshed out here, and done in such a way that they didn’t feel like token or tragic characters, and their storyline added to the overall theme of the show. I consider this particular episode one of the finest hours of television I watched this year. It stars Nick Offerman as Bill, and Murray Bartlett as Frank, as the gay couple from the game, in an episode that is universally hailed as the series greatest.

But the show doesn’t stop there. There are many beautiful moments within the season that made me sit up and take notice. Another of my favorite episodes is the one where Ellie falls in love. Some of my favorite scenes simply show Ellie and Joel walking and talking to each other, including one where he and Ellie feed a pack of giraffes they encounter in Central Park!

I think there is definitely going to be a season two, since so many people seemed to enjoy this, and there is a part two to the game, although the focus there isnt Joel, but Ellie and her adventures. I always hesitate to say something is fun when it made me cry, or scared the bejeezus out of me, but this actually was fun to watch, since it did for me exactly what it promised.

Next Up: More Summer Movies I Loved

Ten Biggest Horror Movie Pet Peeves

I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this here! That’s incredible! I’ve talked about my favorite movies and monsters, examined various landscapes and talked about language, sound editing, and symbolic imagery, but I don’t think I’ve ever talked about the things about horror movies that make me angry, exasperated, or are a complete turnoff if I all I do is see it in the trailer.

Here, in no particular order are the tropes I’m tired of seeing, the most annoying types of characters, and the kinds of events that are a complete turnoff when watching any type of Horror movie.

1. The Unprepared Hiker

I absolutely cannot stand it when I see Hikers in Horror movies who are woefully unprepared for walking around in the middle of no and where. I’m not even talking about phones. I’m talking about basic shit like a compass and a map! We never see any of these future lost bodies consulting maps or using a compass, or hell, checking the weather on their phones which, even if you can’t get a signal to call someone, is at least good for that. These are supposedly experienced hikers with no talents whatsoever for woodcraft.

I’m a Black person and we don’t usually wander around in the woods as a general rule. I mean we could, as there’s nothing really stopping us from doing it, except most of us like the kinds of nature found in cities, and wandering about in the middle of the woods leaves us especially vulnerable to any white people we encounter who want to do us mischief, and I’m not talking about the events of Deliverance. If a serial killer/KKK wannabe wants to do something to me he’s gonna have to find me in my house. I’m not gonna make it easy for him (or her) by stranding myself in the middle of bumfuck Idaho, where my body could potentially never be found!

Personally, I don’t think anyone of any race should be wandering around in the woods with no destination in mind, when they could simply step out of doors for a few minutes and get all the -mosquitoes, err…I mean nature, they can handle.

2. Technology Is Unreliable

From now on, I will be forever reminded of that Geico ad where the teenagers are running from the deranged killer with a chainsaw, and they have the opportunity to get into the running car, or hide in the shed behind a wall of machetes, and they elect to hide in the shed, while the killer just shakes his head at their stupidity (and we’ll get to that in a moment.)

At first, I was kinda mad at them for not choosing the car, but then I gave it some thought. Hiding behind the machetes is a better choice because we all know that in a Horror movie, that car is completely unreliable. Its just a trap. Sure the car is running now, but as soon as they get behind the wheel, it will shut off, and no one will be able to turn it back on.

Cars never run in horror movies. Phones never work unless the killer is the one doing the calling. In fact, any piece of technology that could potentially help the victim will not work in a Horror movie. Any form of transportation will shut down, any form of communication beyond a smoke signal won’t get one, and of course, the killer has cut the phone lines! I have never understood the thing about cars, since the vehicle was working just fine while getting its victims to their “place of assignation”.

Those teenagers would be much better off attempting to defend themselves with the machetes rather than trusting the deceptively running vehicle.

3. The Unheeded Warning

I hate when characters in Horror movies receive multiple warnings of what not to do, where not to go, what not to read, or touch, or look at, and they do it anyway! The first time I saw this was in American Werewolf in London where the protagonist and his best friend commit the unpardonable sins of not just unprepared hiking (because adventure!) but not heeding the warnings from the locals to stay on the road.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel that them staying on the road would’ve at all saved them from the monster, but it was still annoying. YOU WERE WARNED! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!

In movie after movie, usually involving hikers and campers, people are given multiple warnings not to go near the Old Johnson Place, or not to cross that bridge, or whistle past the cemetery while juggling a pair of bowling pins, only for the characters to basically say, “Hold my beer!”

I just watched a short film where a character is given multiple warnings to not go near an old barn, and make sure the house lights are off at 11PM, so they could get a discount while staying at some off grid B&B. Well, what do you know? She promptly forgets both of these rules and is subsequently killed (and probably eaten) by the monster, and all I could do was roll my eyes at this because apparently this trope is still alive and well, and I saw it coming.

See, once I reach the point where I’m rooting for the monster, because the characters are hardheaded and/or stupid, I’m pretty much done with that movie.

4. Unlikable Characters

Speaking of rooting for the monster, this is something my mother and I used to engage in all the time. We’d watch monster movies and hope sometimes that the monster would win or discuss which unlikable characters would die first.

I think the movie Cabin in the Woods laid out exactly which character tropes are supposed to be included in every Horror movie, (The Final Girl, The Scholar, The Whore, The Jock), and I don’t normally have a problem with these particular tropes because such characters can still be given, well…character. They can be written in a sympathetic way, or at least made likable.

There’s always the obnoxious dudebro, usually a Jock who thinks he’s a Scholar (Hint: he knows nothing!) and just wants to be in charge because he has a penis. There’s always one, exactly one, Black guy. He’s got no family, and no other friends of color. Sometimes he’s dating one of the white women in the group. He is always angry for no apparent reason, because that is a Black man’s natural state , I guess! Now, normally I don’t USUALLY have a problem with a character being a sexpot, but I do object to bad timing. YOU WANNA KISS HIM NOW?!!!REALLY! THE MONSTER IS STANDING RIGHT THERE. IT’S LOOKING AT YOU!

In any movie where the monster is more likable and/or sympathetic that the characters, you better be Guillermo Del Toro, or at least it had better be on purpose.

5. The “Blink and You’ll Miss It” Monster

I didn’t post a photo for this trope which is entirely appropriate because you cannot see the monster. This is about movies that are so badly edited (or cheap) that the monster isnt given his due diligence and actually shown on the screen.

Now, its okay if there is a slow buildup to showing a monster that’s been haunting the edges of the story the entire time, like Jaws, or if the monster is invisible. I get it. But when its time to show us the monster and all I get are a bunch of quick edits and growling noises, Imma get a little pissed. What kind of monster is it? Don’t tease me that the characters are seeing something truly horrible and then don’t show it to me!

I do understand budget constraints but I’ve seen a few good movies where that worked out to the viewer’s satisfaction, in movies like It Follows, where the monster literally just looks just like everyone else in the movie and that’s the point. No, what I’m talking about are editors and directors who think they need to show the monster’s frenetic activity by wildly swinging the camera around or a bunch of half a second quick cuts of claws and screaming faces.

Guys, that’s just annoying. Stop it.

6. Cheap Cinematography

This is sooo annoying! I like a nice crisp picture with sharp outlines, nice contrasts, and some color wouldn’t be too bad, although I will watch black & white films with no issue, but I do not want to have to strain my eyeballs anymore than I have to to see what’s happening on the screen, and I hate a dull washed out image. It makes the movie feel cheap, like the creators couldn’t afford good film stock, or didn’t know how to use a digital camera. In more than a few cases it seems like they didn’t know how to use lights either, because there are quite a few movies where things are happening in the woods at night, or in dark rooms, but I’ll never know what any of those events were because I can’t see them.

Bad cinematography is a sign that a movie is just cheap. Sometimes the sound is dull, the dialogue is bad, and the acting is even worse. I’ve learned to look for the signs that the movie is going to be a waste of my time because Imma snob. Also, that first half of the photo up there is the reason why people need to wear makeup. You don’t want your actors looking like that.

If it looks as if more money was spent on the women’s hair and bikinis than on the sound editing, and/or images, I know I need to keep it moving cuz the monster (if there is one) is also gonna be no good either.

7. Party, Party, Party (The Drunk and the Stupid)

This goes along with unlikable characters because I just hate dumb characters. In fact, I will forgive a drunk character quicker than I will characters who do things because the plot requires them to be idiots. There are two kinds of Horror movie plots. The kind where the characters really don’t know any better and are responding the best way they know how to their circumstances, and the kind of plot where the characters do the stupidest things the writers can think of just to move the plot forward.

I won’t discuss the usual stupid choices that characters make in Horror movies like reading from the supernatural tome they just found in the basement, or splitting up to investigate a noise. But oddly, one of my biggest pet peeves are characters who are always looking for a party. They are obsessed with partying. I’ve met people at parties in real life, who seemed to be enjoying themselves a bit too much, but I have never met anyone who is obsessed with finding and attending any and every party. It is their absolute obsession with finding a party that has them making really stupid choices throughout the movie, like hiking, unprepared, into the middle of of the woods.

8. The Pointless Jump Scare (It’s Just the Cat!)

I am so done with this trope. Are people still doing this in Horror movies? I mean I wouldn’t know because I generally am sticking with a better class of Horror these days (like Midsommar, and Nope) but I’m curious. Is this still a thing? I do remember there was a short period during which people were claiming to have become fed up with cat jump scares, but I don’t hear anyone talking about this anymore, so maybe things have changed.

9. The Strolling Killer

I think this one is just personal to me but I hate the leisurely killer trope. They are in no hurry to kill anyone. They just calmly stroll through the environment, whether it’s on a woodland trail, or a suburban sidewalk, without a care in the world. They just know they’re gonna catch ya. No rush!

What’s even more annoying is the killer who just suddenly appears in front of the victim, when we just saw them strolling breezily along behind the victim a minute ago. So…lemme get this right. He can move Sonic Hedgehog fast when he wants to, but…chooses not to do that while we’re looking at him? are they taking in the scenery? Can only do this in short bursts? What?

10. Let’s All Die Separately

This is in line with stupid characters making dumb choices, I guess. Its a lot easier for the killer or revenant or zombies or whatever to kill individual people, so that’s why this decision gets made. I just wish that the writers came up with much better excuses for why everyone gets separated. In the movie Cabin in the Woods, the writers answered all of the stupidity by having the manipulators of the story pump drugs into the cabin so the participants would make foolish choices and get killed more easily, and I thought that was funny and inventive. Sometimes the writers seem aware of these tropes and take this into account when crafting the movie, and I appreciate that.

In the movie Cabin in the Woods, the writers answered all of the stupidity by having the manipulators of the story pump drugs into the cabin so the participants would make foolish choices and get killed more easily, and I thought that was funny and inventive. Sometimes the writers seem aware of these tropes and take this into account when crafting the movie, and I appreciate that.

Honorable Mention:

There’s one thing that I’m completely tired of in Horror movies and that is the sight of people being dragged into the dark by invisible assailants. This happens in every supernatural Horror movie made in the last twenty years and its a trope that needs to be retired. This is one of the primary reasons I remain unimpressed by the endless Insidious, Conjuring, Paranormal Activity, Grudge remakes. They just aren’t particularly scary to me and if I see that scene in a trailer I don’t even bother to watch the movie.

Note: Last week I caught a cold bug. I was down for the count and couldn’t post. But I’m all better this week and I’ll be back on track with more content.

Anticipated Fall Films

Here’s my Fall movie list. Now, this doesn’t mean that I’ll actually see these movies. That depends if I have the money to see them. I’m not a person who wants to see everything nor can I afford to. I work full time but I don’t have the kind of disposable income that will let me see everything whenever I feel like it, and I try to pick movies I know for an absolute certainty I’m going to like, which means movies I had a high anticipation for based on the trailer (or if my niece or nephew ask to see it). So, a couple of these they asked me to take them to see, a couple of them are streaming movies I’ll watch at home, and a couple of them (usually the more serious or dramatic ones) I’ll see alone.

Anyway, I may have talked about a few of these movies here before, but here are the full trailers for them rather than just the teasers.

One Piece

I talked about this movie here before. As I said last time, I don’t actually know anything about the Manga from which this movie comes, but the full trailer looks like a lot of fun, and more importantly, I can stay home and watch it, since its airing on Netflix. I’m not normally into pirates, although I do like films set at sea. This looks like a combination of superheroes and found family, which I’m always a sucker for.

Release Date: August 31

The Marvels

Here’s the full length trailer for this movie. I had every intention of going to see this with my niece and nephew. We made a vow to see every MCU film that gets released this year, but we failed for reasons beyond our control. We didn’t get to see Guardians of the Galaxy 3, but we have seen the other movies. My kiddos like this because they’ve become big Marvel fans, and I just want to see Kamala Khan. I’m a huge fan, I loved her series, and the plot seems like a fun use of the character’s superpowers.

Release Date: November 10

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon

Of all the characters I knew would never be killed off this series Daryl was definitely it. I’ve long abandoned the series itself but I want to see this because I genuinely like the character, it’s got those Last of Us/Found Family vibes, I love so much, and zombies.

Lately, I’ve been reluctant to invest in serious shows, sticking to more lightweight, comedic series and movies, since that’s all I’m capable of emotionally handling right now, but on occasion I do want to watch something with slightly more depth, but not too deep, and this kinda fits.

Release Date: September 10

The Creator

I’m starting to enjoy robot films again (not that I ever really stopped). I really like John David Washington and I’m a sucker for “the big gruff man who adopts a vulnerable child” plot, which this seems to resemble.

This movie, Dune, and Killers of the Flower Moon are the three deepest movies I’ll watch this Fall. There are a couple more that are mildly serious, like The Equalizer sequel and The Last Voyage of the Demeter, and a couple of fluffy/comedy movies, like Blue Beetle and The Marvels. I think that’s a good combination of films to spend my money on. And of course, the more serious movies I’ll be going to see on my own, sans niece and nephew.

Release Date: September 29

Killers of the Flower Moon

I’m really looking forward to this one and not just because its Scorcese’s latest. I read the book eons ago it seems and I don’t remember much of it beyond feeling outraged, but I like Scorcese, and hope he does Justice to the topic. This is one of the films I’ll be watching alone.

Release Date: October 20

Last Voyage of the Demeter

I talked about my enthusiasm for this movie which comes right at the start of what Halloween enthusiasts like me refer to as Spooky Season (the time period between September and October 31st) although frankly its Halloweenland all year long for me, and its also the first really good looking monster movie of the year! Unless they specifically ask, I won’t be taking the kiddos to see this one. My niece loves Horror movies, so she might ask to see it. We’ll see what her Mom says about that.

Release Date: August 11

Blue Beetle

This is one of the last couple of superhero movies we’ll be seeing in the coming weeks. I read the comic books this character is based on and there’s a few things I really like about this, and a few eye rolling things, but it otherwise looks like a fun time.

Release Date: August 18

Dune (Part 2)

We already know how I feel about the first part of the Dune trilogy. Here’s the full trailer for the second part, and it looks awesome! I hope it’s a good as the first part, since sometimes the middle section of trilogies can fall flat. As usual, I’m gonna have things to say about this, and how it relates to the first movie, so stay tuned. I do not expect the kids to express an interest in seeing this movie, so I’ll be watching this alone, just like I did the first.

Release Date: November 3

In December:

The Color Purple

I’m not sure I’m going to see this, but I look forward to its reception. I’ll see it if my niece asks me to take her. It’s a musical, and a re-imagining, but it’s possible it might be too mature for an 11 year old, and I also know its gonna make me cry, and I like to try to look like I’m holding my shit together in public. (I’m a pronounced failure at that. I will cry at anything! I cried during The Flash!)

Release Date: December 25

More Forgotten Films

Let’s be clear, just because these movies are forgotten, doesn’t mean you need to immediately go out and watch them. You also don’t need to go watch them just because I liked them, (although there are a couple of movies on this list I don’t actually like, but was just recently reminded I hadn’t seen since they last aired on TV). For some of these, there’s a clear reason why no one has spoken about them, or sometimes not been mentioned by the people who starred in them. On the other hand, at least a couple of these are real gems worth looking for, and relatively easy to find, that simply don’t get enough love.

The Possession of Joel Delaney (1972)

I don’t know what possessed the makers of this movie to make this movie. It’s racist as all hell, full of old 1970s Latino stereotypes, although I get that the writer of this film probably thought they were making something informative and helpful for the time period, when really they were just making a movie about those scary Spanish speaking people who lived in the city. This movie has aged like milk, which is the reason that Shirley MacLaine has never mentioned this as part of her film repertoire. This could have remained one of those movies that would have been lost to my own memories had I not been forcefully reminded of its existence in a recent news article.

MacLaine plays a Manhattan woman of means who starts to believe that her brother is possessed by the spirit of a serial killer from Spanish Harlem. I think this movie is supposed to be a cash-in on the exploits of the serial killer du jour at that time, Richard Ramirez, who was also known as The Valley Intruder, who was a rapist, serial killer, child molester, burglar…he specialized in everything really. Shockingly, it was released before The Exorcist, so it did kinda help kick off the spate of exorcism films following in that more famous film’s wake.

I remember watching this movie when I was a teenager, thinking that it would be an interesting movie like The Exorcist, and it was, up to a point, but I was still distinctly and uncomfortably aware of the film’s racism. You can watch this as an artifact of its time, but it’s not a great film, or at times, even a good one. I remember it being wildly over the top and the lead character was hysterically overdone which now that I consider it, is entirely in keeping with the 70’s Horror aesthetic.

This movie is available for free on Youtube.

The Gate (1987)

This is one of those movies that was actually pretty good, contained some genuinely scary moments, and yet still managed to be mostly forgotten, thanks to time, and movies that were simply louder, and had slightly better special effects, like Poltergeist, and Gremlins, both of which this film seems to reference.

A little boy, his best friend, sister, and her friends discover a strange hole in their backyard. They decide to read a book of incantations over the whole in an attempt to close it (because it’s the 80s and that was simply what one did back then), but instead end up releasing a horde of tiny demons that wreak havoc through their house for the rest of the night, which culminates in the release of a Boss demon (and some possible demon possession) by the end of the film.

I rather liked this film. I saw it on video a couple of years after its release, but I distinctly remember watching the trailer at my aunt’s house and feeling intrigued and a little scared. For some reason, those little white-skinned demons really bothered me, and the giant demon that shows up at the end is crude but effective. It’s not a bad film, but it is a very 80s film, with all the wardrobe, dialogue, and special effects of that time period. This is another movie that you don’t have to watch, but if you do, keep in mind that it’s simply an artifact representative of an era.

The Gate is available on Freevee via Amazon Prime, and Tubi.

Scanners (1981)

I kind of know why this movie was forgotten, but at the time it was released it was one of the hottest topics in America, mostly because of the very graphic special effects of people’s heads exploding. Outside of the general plot and special effects though the movie is sort of a bust. The one major drawback is the acting of the lead character. I have the distinct memory of grimacing every time he appeared on screen, and I definitely remember asking myself who cast this man in this role. He had all of the acting skills of a wooden plank. No, really!

Now, this is a David Cronenberg film, so I am a little bit more forgiving of him because he did eventually learn how to hire actual actors for his lead roles by the time he made The Fly five years later, but this movie contains all of the body horror subject matter that made a name for him in the industry. (If you want to know who I’m talking about David Cronenberg is now starring in the fourth season of Star Trek Discovery.)

The plot is a rather convoluted thing about different groups of telekinetics and mind readers at war with each other for control of humanity. This also involves some drugs given to certain mothers, which caused their babies to be psychic while in the womb. The plot isn’t really important because you won’t remember it. What you will remember are the exploding heads, popping veins, arterial spray, and exploding eyeballs. This movie was disgusting. I saw it when I was maybe 14, and I always wished I’d waited until I was a little bit older before I watched it, like maybe sixteen.

Scanners is available to watch on the Max app, and free on Amazon Prime.

The Fury (1978)

Okay, I watched this movie as a teenager, not because of the supernatural teen superpowers plot, but because it starred one of my favorite actors at the time, Andrew Stevens, who had a luxurious head of wavy brown hair. I mentioned before that men with luxurious bouffants were my teenage weakness and Andrew was a perfect example of a teen girl’s tastes going horribly wrong because while he was great to look at, he was not a great actor. On the other hand, Amy Irving was great and got to star in yet another Brian DePalma film about a girl with out-of-control psychic powers. I was not a fan of Kirk Douglas. He was just some old guy I saw in other older movies at the time (the 80s), but now that I’m an adult I can much better appreciate his role in this film.

The plot is loosely based on the novel by John Farris about a couple of twin psychics, one of whom is captured by the government, sexually groomed and experimented on in order to turn him into a more tractable Dr. Manhattan (his name is Robin), and the other, a young lady named Gillian, is captured by the government, manages to escape, and wreaks havoc before government agents try to use the first psychic to re-capture her.

The story has everything: father-son relationships, kidnapping, government assassins, psychic killings, evil conspirators, betrayals, psychic bonds between strangers, and whatnot. But what the movie is most famous for is Brian DePalma’s use of spectacle to end the story by having the bad guy get blown up like a firecracker. I remember the media paid a lot of attention to this particular special effect, which is how I learned about this movie’s existence because, before all that noise, I wasn’t paying any attention.

The movie isn’t bad, but it does have several ridiculous moments like when Robin racistly attacks a bunch of Middle Eastern tourists at a mall because he was told that people who look like them killed his father, and including a deeply icky one where the bad guy tries the same sexual grooming tactics on Gillian at the end of the film which, as I said, results in explosive retaliation. I haven’t seen this movie in at least a couple of decades and had largely forgotten about Andrew and his luxurious hair, until I stumbled across a book recommendation for people who like Stephen King.

The Fury is available on Hulu.

Nightbreed (1990)

By the time of this movie’s release, I had moved out of my “luxurious hair” phase and into my “I love monsters” phase. Not only that, but I had found my people, because I had a group of girlfriends who felt the same way about sexy monsters, and we went to all the latest movies that featured them and squeed about how handsome they were. Anyway, we were behaving embarrassingly young and I don’t regret a single moment of it.

I feel like people don’t give this movie enough love or credit, especially considering the story was from Clive Barker. Clive Barker is now famous for writing sympathetic monsters and the monsters featured in this film were some of his best, although the movie is largely senseless. The monster that I and one of my friends acted a fool over was named Peloquin, while my other friend was going gaga over a character named Narcisse because that was her type. I mostly remember this movie with great fondness because of the goofiness of me and my friends, and this was one of the few times that I saw a movie where the monsters were actually the persecuted good guys.

As you know, or should, Horror movies have always had a problem with using “ugliness” (or simply unconventional looks) as a shorthand for evil, something I briefly mentioned in my post about Horror movies set in the country where the rural poor are often cast as cannibals and serial killers. In this story, the monsters are set upon by townsfolk after being blamed for a series of murders committed by a creepy psychologist played by David Cronenberg. Boone, the protagonist of the film was framed for the murders by the creepy psychologist, which caused Boone to flee to a place of safety called Midian, “where the monsters live”.

Ive been just a little bit obsessed with the idea of Midian ever since. Apparently, I’m not alone in this, because there have been a series of graphic novels and an anthology based on the characters in the film, but this partial-franchise still manages to remain mostly below the radar.

Nightbreed is available on most of the free movie streaming apps, like Tubi, Plex, Amazon, and Roku.

Gargoyles (1972)

I have fond memories of watching this movie very late one night, and that’s because the movie was just too awful to air in Primetime. This was the type of film you were either going to see at noon, or 2AM. It’s been a very very long time since I saw this, so I hadn’t even remembered that Scott Glenn, one of my favorite actors, was even in this movie.

This was one of the earliest movies I’d ever seen (and remembered) where the monsters are actually sympathetic. I remember liking the lead gargoyle when he finally showed up and spoke in a cultured English accent. Or at least thats how I remember it.

An archeologist and his daughter come across some artifacts or something that leads the father to believe in the existence of gargoyles. Anyway, some misunderstandings ensue and a war breaks out between the gargoyles and the humans, which I guess the humans, more or less win, but the gargoyles are still alive at the end, so I’m not sure.

I was ten, so I was fascinated by the special effects involved in the gargoyle’s lizard skin tufted suits, and wings that were apparently made out of chickenwire or something. This was 1972, y’all! I think I maybe saw this movie a couple more times as a kid and then never again after that. It exists in my brain as a curiosity that was only brought back to mind because I stumbled across it on YouTube.

I am, and probably always will be, haunted by its ending, where the leader of the gargoyles picks up its injured mate and flies off into the night sky. For some reason it is one of thousands of movie images stuck in my brain, long after the movie itself was forgotten.

Gargoyles is available for free on Amazon Prime, Tubi, and Crackle.

The Car (1977)

Even though I was only two years older than my youngest sibling, we all had separate bedtimes. I got to stay up the latest, once my mom figured out I could handle it. So when this aired in Primetime a few times, I asked her if I could stay up to watch it with her (she’d already seen it and it was one of her favorites) she indulged me. I think she allowed it because she knew it wasn’t particularly graphic and she simply wanted to share the experience.

Now, I didn’t ask out of the blue. I had heard her raving to one of her girlfriends about it, and I was curious. To my ten year old mind though, she was right! There are at least a couple of unexpectedly badass moments in this movie that I retained the memory of for decades.

It’s basically about a small town and it’s surrounding roads being menaced by a large black car, and if you can get past the 70s wardrobe and the occasional odd plot point, the moments of terror are pretty effective, including one spectacular moment when the vehicle pursues someone right into their house! After a while you just accept the car as a creature of intent.

I cannot say this is a good film because there are a lot of movies I like for the nostalgia factor, and because as a child I lacked discernment, so I watched anything, and just about all movies were equal. I’m not a person who hates remakes, because I do think there are some movies that need to be remade in order to be updated, and the closest parallel to this is Christine, which came some ten years later. The Car is available for rent on Vudu, and Amazon Prime, although, even though it’s not a terrible film, I don’t know why anyone would pay to watch it.

Bugsey Malone (1976)

This movie is one of the primary reasons why I consider the 70s to be the Wild Wild West of filmmaking, because there was some human being in a position of authority in Britain (actually several people signed off on this) had the bright concept of making this movie about famous 1930s gangsters using a cast of children, I shit you NOT!!! This movie was also a MUSICAL! And for whatever reason, this film has been COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY FORGOTTEN!!

This film starred a who’s who of British child actors of the 70s, and also included Jodi Foster as Tallulah, a gun moll, and Scott Baio as Bugsey Malone. Don’t worry, the movie was a parody of the gangster film, where the guns used whipped cream instead of bullets. I saw this movie exactly one damn time when I was a kid (I don’t know how or where) and it completely escaped my memory until I stumbled across it while researching 1970s musicals on YouTube.

Anyway, this movie is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video. I watched the trailer and the production values are absolutely gorgeous for a children’s film. I’m looking forward to revisiting it after which I’ll get back to you.

Yes. I realize that this is the only movie on this list that’s not a Horror movie but I had nowhere else to put this because it truly is a forgotten film.

Wes Craven’s Chiller (1985)

This happens to be one of Wes Craven’s least remembered films, a made for television movie that aired on the CBS network in 1985. I remember being interested in this because I’d become a big fan of Michael Beck, after seeing him as Swan in The Warriors. I will unashamedly admit that once again my attraction to luxurious windblown hair played a role in my infatuation. In my little teenaged brain Swan was one of the most Epic characters ever (until he was replaced by the lead vampire, David, from The Lost Boys!) The movie also happens to star Paul Sorvino as a Priest. Sorvino made this movie just before he became famous in Goodfellas, so I’m glad that this film didn’t hold back his career.

The movie I have to admit is merely so-so. Its not awful. I mean, I did watch it all the way to the end and it does have its moments, but it didn’t age very well, and some of the dialogue and acting needs help. Basically, the movie could best be served by a remake, but that is not likely to ever happen since this film has been largely forgotten. Michael Beck stars as the titular Chiller, I guess, named Miles. His mother had him flash frozen when he died (from I don’t remember what), but when his cryogenic tube malfunctions, the doctors at the facility in which he was kept try a new technique to revive him, that didn’t exist at the time of his death.

Now Miles doesn’t immediately go on a killing spree. Since this is television the writers have to be a bit more subtle, so its not entirely clear at first that Miles was simply revived without a soul, which is an idea that genuinely scared me when I was 15. He pretty much just acts like your typically soul-less business man, which doesn’t help matters, because how do you tell the difference between that and a supernatural form of psychopathy? There’s also some added “girl in danger” plot with the teenage step-daughter of his mother (who refuses to believe that her son is a killer no matter how many clues drop in her lap) and Miles behaving in a sexually menacing manner. It’s not explicit but you definitely know what’s going on.

Anyway, there’s a reason why this movie was forgotten even though its not strictly speaking a “bad” film. Like I said, it would work if it were updated with a better budget. This movie is available for free on Youtube.

The Ten Strangest Books I Have Ever Read

Actually, this list isnt out of my wheelhouse or anything. I read weird books just as a matter of course. Most of the time nothing I enjoy ever gets seen on a best of list, unless it’s written by Stephen King, and while regular bookreaders might think his books are pretty strange, they’re not especially weird to me.

I know that some people might not consider them weird but I tried not to fill up this entire list with books on Jewish Horror and Fantasy. I don’t know why I consider those types of books weird. Probably because Jewish protagonists are kind of rare, although not rare in Jewish culture apparently. I had no idea there was a large enough market of Jewish people reading Horror novels for there to be books specifically dedicated to the subject. I just finished reading The Jewish Book of Horror by Josh Schlossberg a few months ago, and that was pretty good. And, as it turns out, Jeff Vandermeer’s wife, Ann Vandermeer, is Jewish and occasionally writes about the topic, but I tried not to fill up this list with their books either.

I don’t personally know any Jewish people, so I have no idea how they feel about these types of stories, so if you’re Jewish and got an opinion, hit me up in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

I love weird books though, and the weirder the better. I hope this list inspires some of you to check these out. Here, in no particular order are the ten weirdest books I’ve ever read.

Rosehead – Robert Jeschonek

This was the first time I’d ever read one of Jeschonek’s books. I stumbled across this by accident while browsing on Amazon. The reason why this book made the list and not any of Chuck Tingle’s books is because while I have seen Tingle’s books on Amazon, and he sort of writes books in the same humor/half serious Fantasy genre, I haven’t actually read any of Tingle’s books!

Its a hardboiled, Dashiell Hammett style novella where all the characters have flowers for heads. The lead character, a cop with a rose for a head, has to stop a serial killer named The Pruner who is cutting off people’s heads, and he gets involved in some “seedy” underworld shenanigans as a result.

There is a difference between the two, in that Tingle’s books are very specifically written as jokes (although he takes his craft very seriously) and I had the impression that Jeschonek isnt necessarily trying to be funny, and is just playing around with strange ideas. This book wasn’t written in an especially jokey manner, as far as I can tell. Only the premise is funny, while the characters and events are taken seriously and the world building is well thought out, like how some of the characters have flower heads with human bodies and some have human heads with flower bodies, and how these groups interact, communicate, and move around.

To date, while this isn’t the weirdest book I’ve ever read, it’s definitely up there, and I haven’t encountered anything quite like it since.

John Dies At the End – Series by David Wong

The picture above is from the movie based on this book, specifically the scene where John and his friends encounter a monster made out of various meats. In the story ,a couple of college dropouts have to try to save humanity from a bunch of Elder Gods that are being brought into this dimension through the use of a special recreational drug, called Soy Sauce, that allows people to travel across time and space, and see things that regular people cannot see, like various monsters.

This is a comedy, but also considered a weird book because the characters are a not too bright pair of self styled Paranormal investigators, it’s written in the first person by the self insert author, David Wong, who is not the most reliable narrator, as a result, any of the events in the book could just be him lying, delusional, or just high, and the events described in the book are, simply put, crazy, like the meat monster in the above photo.

I have not watched the movie, so I don’t know how closely it hews to the book, but there is now an entire series about the dimension hopping exploits of Dave and John, which are, if that is even possible, even crazier, titled in order, This Book Is Full Of Spiders, which is my personal favorite and also pretty damned weird, What The Hell Did I Just Read, and the latest one, If This Book Exists, You’re In The Wrong Universe, which I bought but haven’t finished reading yet.

Merkabah Rider – Edward Erdelac

This is one of those books where, since I encountered it for the first time, I just think it’s strange. It’s the genre called Weird Western, meaning it’s in a Western setting (the American West of the 18th and 19th century) with extra stuff added, like robots, zombies, or magic ,and sometimes all three. There are a lot of books that fall into this category and most of them have been written by Joe. R. Lansdale who is one of my favorite writers. I will probably have to do a post on Weird Westerns you should read, since that’s the wavelength I’m on this Summer.

This is another favorite writer of mine. I have no idea if he’s Jewish, but the hero of these books is a Hasidic Jewish Spellcaster who uses Kabbalah to destroy the many demons (and their worshipers) he encounters, and save any Jewish people, throughout the western territories in 1881. There are four books in the series, with each book containing about four or five novellas, with titles based on old Western films, High Plains Drifter, The Mensch With No Name, Have Glyphs Will Travel, and Once Upon A Time in the Weird West.

As you can see, the titles are a bit tongue in cheek, but the writer approaches his craft seriously, and the stories are mostly horror, and played straight.

HebrewPunk – Lavie Tidhar

See, if I wasn’t careful every book on this list would just be those written by Lavie Tidhar who has a knack for writing strange images into all of his stories, no matter how benign you think the subject may be, from WW2 historical pastiches, to superheroes, to SciFi, and this Fantasy anthology, which is a bit of a mashup of all of these. Lavie, as you can probably guess, is Jewish, and a very well respected author in SFF literature.

HebrewPunk is a collection of Fantasy stories featuring a Rabbi, a rat, and someone called a Tzaddick, which is, from what I understand about it, something like a Jewish paladin, a person of high moral character who is obligated to help right the wrongs of the world. It’s written in a hardboiled, 40s mystery style, and involves the three main characters having adventures in alternate worlds, London, and World War 2. You do not need to know anything about any of the various Jewish cultures or folklore to enjoy these books, since Tidhar explains just enough of that for Gentiles to be able to follow along.

I knew nothing about Jewish folklore when I started reading it, and since I love a well written Fantasy, this was a fun learning experience for me.

Anything Ever Written by China Mieville

I don’t even know how to talk about Mieville. Everything that Mielville has ever written is the weirdest thing I’ve ever read. The very first story of his that I encountered, waaaay back in the mid 90s, was King Rat, about a young man whose life falls apart after he discovers that he has rat powers, and he goes to war with his uncle, who apparently, is King of the Rats! The story was kind of disgusting but also a lot of fun. Then there are his books set in the bizarre fictional dystopia of New Crobuzon, called Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and the Iron Council, peopled with strange cults, insect headed lovers, aliens, mutants, magical entities. and any combination of those.

He has written a bunch of weird cities books among which are The City and The City, about two cities where all the citizens live parallel lives to one another but can’t see or interact with the others except under special circumstances, and a YA book titled Un Lun Dun, about a chosen girl who turns out not to be, having Alice in Wonderland style adventures in a bizarre mirror universe version of London.

But my two favorite books are Railsea, which takes place in a world overrun with train tracks and people hunting underground creatures as if the trains were sailing vessels, and another nautical book, Kraken, about a museum worker who gets caught up in a lot of elder Gods cultic nonsense, after the body of a giant squid gets stolen from his museum. Kraken feels faintly silly and tongue in cheek, and has a very Neil Gaiman-ish feel to it, sort of like Gaiman’s novel, Neverhwere, which also covers absurd circumstances happening to some hapless British fellow.

As you can see, I’m somewhat partial to stories about bizarre, alternate universe versions, of the city of London.

Punktown by Jeffrey Thomas

No, this isnt an alternate version of London, Its even stranger as it contains aliens, mutants, and multiverse gods and creatures all living in a semi-underground city, which is kind of like New York! One of Thomas’s favorite characters is a Detective named Jeremy Stake who fought in some kind of alien war, and came back changed. He can model his face to look like anyone except his old self. Jeremy Stake ahs a couple of standalone novels of his own, titled Blue War, and Deadstock, which I really enjoyed.

There is a lot going on in these Punktown books, of which there are several, and most of these things are unrelated to the things in the other books. Most of them are like slice-of-life-stories for aliens, and some are vaguely frightening, but easily followed. Although the names of the races and characters seem strange, Thomas doesn’t get too bogged down in made-up vocabulary, and all of these books have very Lovecraftian feel, without feeling like he was riffing off Lovecraft, which I like.

Fort Freak – Wild Cards Series by G. R. R Martin

I really liked this book because it reminded me of one of my favorite comic books, titled Top Ten, about a police precinct full of weird characters an superheroes.

This nearly twenty book series, (Wild Cards) which has been around since the late 80s, is set in a world where some type of global alien infection happened during WW2, and it has given most of humanity either superpowers (Aces), horrible mutations (Jokers) , minor powers that are not significant (Deuces), or death. There are several different iterations of the series, (usually in the form of a trilogy) set in different time periods and locales, like a gameshow for superheroes, modern day Russia, or time traveling to mid-20th century Mississippi.

This trilogy, beginning with Fort Freak, is set in a police precinct in New York, and it was a lot of fun reading about the different cops with super abilities (Aces) or just odd quirks (Deuces) patrolling the streets or trying to solve various supervillain crimes, alongside regular human beings, who just take it all in stride. The books take themselves pretty seriously, and since its a shared world series, the stories are written by various authors, each of which have their own style.

Finch by Jeffrey Vandermeer

Here is yet another book written about a bizarre city set in something called the Ambergris universe. This one involves mushroom people, called Graycaps, and their fungi technology, slowly taking over the city, and the Detective, named Finch, who has the thankless job of hunting a serial killer of Graycaps and humans through the city’s moist underground dwellings.

Clickers by J F Gonzalez

There is an entire series of these ridiculously over the top Marine Splatterpunk books written with one of my favorite Horror writers, Brian Keene. The books start out pulpy enough with giant crabs attacking America’s beaches because they’re being driven to land by one of the Old Gods of the deep, and over the course of 5 books things get even wilder and stranger, with the addition of more Old Gods, an insane President, the military, Lovecraftian fish people, and yes, zombies!

J F Gonzalez passed away in 2014 and wrote dozens of books, but Clickers is the series for which he is most famously known, culminating in the tribute book above, written by authors across the Horror genre. Unfortunately, I have not read it yet, as it is only in Paperback.

FantasticLand by Mike Brockover

Okay, when I picked up this book, or rather chose it on NetGally, I expected it to be funny. At least that’s sort of how it was described in the blurbs I read.

This book is not funny at all.

But what I got was still pretty damn good. It’s abut a bunch of college age people who get trapped in an amusement park when a hurricane hits. The countryside around them gets pretty trashed, and there’s no communication with the outside world, making it impossible for the authorities to rescue them, and over the course of several weeks the survivors descend into warring tribes and cannibalism, after one of the male survivors sexually assaults one of the women. It’s like a men vs. women Lord of the Flies at Disneyland, and a somewhat harrowing book to read, even though it’s written as a series of interviews, letters and various lawsuits from the investigators and survivors. I had just come off of reading World War Z, so that kind of book was right up my alley.

You should only read this one if you like gore and can stomach a great deal of recounted violence.

Honorable Mention:

Motherfucking Sharks by Brian Allen Carr – I have not yet read this book, but I had the impression it was like a prose version of Sharknado. I don’t particularly care for those movies, but I would be willing to read about that kind of plot, so go figure! 👀

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski – This book was mostly frustrating to me, although I can see its appeal for some people. I definitely learned about the types of Horror I find horrific while reading this book, and this isnt it. While scary for some people, (in an existential kind of way), this book was not particularly scary for me, and I also do not like to constantly juggle a book around in my hands in an attempt to read the chapters.

Doctor Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke – At the time this was released, I was not used to reading books where the footnotes were so long and numerous that made it seem like I was reading another book alongside the primary book, and its impossible to skip the footnotes because they provide a deeper understanding and backstory of the characters and plot as you go along, and for a nerd like me, they’re just as fascinating as the story.

Forthcoming Movies

(That I Didn’t Know Anything About!)

Okay, maybe I knew a little bit about them…mostly from looking at the trailers. I’m not saying I plan to watch these movies because at least a couple of them have already established themselves as annoying. I’m only truly enthusiastic about one of them, and the creator is being kinda secretive about it.

Fortunately, most of these are on Netflix, I guess? Either way, the announcement and dropping of these trailers were a surprise to me.

The Last Airbender

I know people are deeply excited for this live action remake. I know as much about it as other people told me. I haven’t read the books, or watched the animated show except in little snippets on YouTube. I refused to watch the live-action movie that came out a few years ago, for reasons. I have a general idea of character names and faces. Is that knowing a lot? I don’t know. Its knowing enough to be able to find my way around while watching it.

One Piece

Okay, for real, I don’t actually know anything about this other than it’s another live action version of a Manga I never read. It looks funny and weird, so I might watch it. I have no intention of reading the books before I watch this because I haven’t read any of the other books of the live action Mangas Netflix is forever making. Why start now?

This movie, and The Last Airbender, are both airing on Netflix.

Kraven: The Hunter

This is the movie trailer I’m finding the most annoying because it just looks annoying, and its also giving me some Morbius vibes. I don’t know anything about this character outside of his appearances in some of the Spiderman comic books, like The Sinister Six, and his new updated appearance in The Ultimate Avengers books. I wasn’t looking for this, or asking for this, but I guess since they made the Venom movies Sony is just gonna keep making these villain origin films.

I think I’m going to wait until this is on some streaming service next year because it’s getting released in October when I’m sure I’ll be watching something else. I still may not watch it then because some things I just skip.

Rebel Moon

This is one of the few Netflix movies or series or something, that I’m looking forward too, mostly on the strength of the actors, who I really like, and the visuals, which look geeky and awesome. It’s got a Halo/Firefly vibe to it. I’m one of the few women who doesn’t seem to hate Zack Snyder, so I’m looking forward to his latest work.

Bird Box: Barcelona

I didn’t watch the first Bird Box movie, or read the book. I know about this because I watched a review of the first movie , and the book kept being shoved in my face, at the time it was released, whenever I got online. It was something a lot of people were into, but I didn’t watch the movie, and have no particular feelings, good or bad about it. I will probably watch this though.

Cobweb

This is another trailer that surprised me. I didn’t know anything about this movie being released and it’s from the creator of the movie Barbarian, a movie I really enjoyed (it’s deep y’all!), so I might check this out when it finally streams.

Foundation

This is a series which airs on AppleTV, a network, I don’t have on my list of streaming services. I understand that this series is based on the books of Isaac Asimov, and while I have read some of his books, I skipped the Foundation series which, from what I understand, is critically acclaimed in Sci-fi fandom. This makes the list because I know absolutely nothing about this series other than what I just told you. I deliberately skipped the books, and I have not watched the first season, but this season looks intriguing enough for me to check it out.

Or maybe I’m just in the type of mindset where I’m in the mood for this type of show which heavily reminds me of Dune!

Poor Things

Okay, I am looking forward to this one since it just looks f*cking weird, and its from the creators of The Lobster and The Favorite, two movies I greatly enjoyed (although saying “I enjoyed” The Lobster is a stretch, it was still a good movie). This also stars some of my favorite actors, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Defoe, and Emma Stone, someone who has really grown on me in the last few years.

Is it just me or are most of today’s actresses just far more interesting and talented than in the past? There have always been talented actresses but there were usually only two or three per decade. Or is it that actresses are really getting a lot better opportunities to show their skills and therefore I end up liking them more?

10 Most Terrifying Ray Harryhausen Monsters

I’ve loved monster movies ever since I was a kid and even today, Creature Features are always my favorite type of Horror. I used to watch monster movies every Saturday afternoon on a TV show called Super Host, a daytime movie show with a host who had a superhero gimmick, who would talk about or mock the movie being presented, kinda like Elvira. The very first monsters I was introduced to though were Ray Harryhausen’s stop motion creatures.

For a lot of people my age, their first stop motion film was the 1933 King Kong, but I was disinterested in watching that and I wasn’t allowed to watch the 70s version of King Kong, since my mother objected to it for some reason. Consequently, I didn’t see either movie until I was almost an adult, and I preferred the 1933 version. My first monster movies were Harryhausen films though.

Ray Harryhausen was a British American special effects animator during the 50s and 60s. His first movie was Mighty Joe Young in 1949, and he retired after making Clash of the Titans in the 80s. He has had a profound affect on the use of stop motion in film. I would in fact call him the father of the technique. If you’ve ever watched any kind of stop motion animation, in children’s films like The Nightmare Before Xmas, Action movies like The Terminator, and Horror movies like The Thing, then chances are he had some influence on the creator. He is also probably the reason so much stop motion involves monsters and horror.

Now, not all of these were Horror movies. Some of them were Fantasy and Adventure films, but Harryhausen still managed to create some outstandingly terrifying (at least to a little ten year old girl) monsters. Here in exact order this time (rather than just throwing them up randomly as I usually do) are the ten creatures that most delighted and terrified me as a child.

10. Rhedosaurus – The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms

This was maybe the very first Harryhausen monster I ever watched. I was reminded of having seen this movie while watching Jurassic Park The Lost World. This movie, Godzilla, and other kaiju films set up my lifelong fascination with movies about giant (sometimes previously extinct) creatures visiting the modern world and tearing up cities. When I was a kid I used to imagine how incredible and horrible that would be, and this was one of the first movies I ever saw that seemed to capture that feeling of awe and terror.

9. Gwanji – The Valley of the Gwanji

This was the second movie to create that same feeling of awe and dread. I remember the first time I sat down to watch this movie as a child. I’d seen the trailer for it on that same afternoon movie show and I remember talking to my Mom about it, and I remember her saying I would enjoy it because cowboys and dinosaurs was a pretty novel concept. This movie was a lot more fun than frightening though.

I think you’re beginning to notice a bit more of a pattern in the types of creatures (and plots) that I found enjoyable, yes?

8. The Kraken – Clash of the Titans

I remember when this aired on TV for the first time because it was a really big deal. I kept seeing trailers for it for weeks and I remember being really excited to watch it because I was huge fan of Greek mythology (What? 👀What teen does not read Greek mythology?)

Anyway, I loved the movie, but the Kraken wasn’t the most frightening thing in it. I think by the time this monster showed up I was too exhausted to be scared and was just glad the hero accomplished his goal because I remember cheering at that moment.

7. The Cyclops – The 7th Voyage of Sinbad

I was inspired to write this post because for reasons known only to god, the devil, and Bob, YouTube recommended this particular movie to me. Of all the creatures featured in this movie, I think the Cyclops was the least frightening, nevertheless, he made quite an impression on me. He had feelings, and he reacted to things, and there was a lot of attitude.

I loved all of the various Sinbad movies and would watch any of them whenever they aired.

6. Ymir – 20 Million Miles to Earth

When I was really little I thought this monster was as scary as it was gonna get, and Ymir was pretty frightening. One of the reasons it works as scary is you’re following the monster from its birth, when it’s really tiny, until it grows too big for humans to manage, and it’s beating up other monsters in the town square. Again, Harryhausen managed to animate a lot of personality into this creature, which makes it fun to watch its little gestures and movements.

Okay, all these other monsters (6 -10) are all pretty scary, but these next top five are my absolute favorites, that still today, give me a delicious chill. I will watch these old movies just to revisit these delightfully terrifying fiends, and then go to bed with my lights on!

5. Talos – Jason and the Argonauts

These first five movie might have something to do with my long fascination and terror of inanimate objects that have a life of their own, and for reasons, don’t like people. For that reason, I’ve never liked (but have loved) a lot of killer doll films. I blame movies and monsters like this one.

I remember the first time I watched this movie too, and although I was expecting it, I still wasn’t expecting it, if you know what I mean. Talos turning his head that first time, scared the living bejeebus out of me!

4. Ship Figurehead – The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973)

Okay, this one was a monster that genuinely scared me spitless , and I think it was because the set up was so well done. Up to this point, we (and the crew) had been seeing this masthead of and on since the beginning of the film, so when it finally comes to life, it’s completely unexpected and utterly terrifying.

I also wondered what it would be like to have something you thought was familiar, and had pretty much disregarded as not being that important, turn out to be not just something different than you first thought, but actively malevolent.

3. Skeletons – Jason and the Argonauts

These guys are hands down some the scariest but most fun monstrosities that Harryhausen ever made. I used to imagine myself in this situation as a kid. I think I’d probably just run away, because really, how do you fight just bones?

The scary part is yeah, they’re just dead bodies, but the fun part is watching them act so human. They still manage to look mean spirited even though they don’t have facial expressions. Their body language is superbly animated because the way they react during the fight is deeply funny to me and it’s just a fun fight to watch!

2. Kali Statue – 7th Voyage of Sinbad

The Kali is one of my all-time favorite Harryhausen creatures and has been since I first saw her as a child some idle Saturday afternoon. I’d been reading about Indian gods and goddesses off and on for several years before I saw this movie (I was in my World mythology phase), so even though I didn’t care for the green worshippers (wtf?!!) when she started to dance! Wow! Once again this was both expected to happen but unexpected in its execution and I absolutely loved it!

One of the most frightening things about Harryhausen’s creatures is the lack of facial expressions. The attitude of most of them is very Terminator-like, implacable and relentless. I know most of them are activated by magic but that feeling of hostility in the body language is still overwhelming. These creatures do not care about what they’re doing. They are there to do one thing, and one thing only. Kill people!

1. Medusa – Clash of the Titans

There is absolutely no one who could’ve come in at number one on this list other than my girl The Medusa. Harryhausen had a knack for animating female monsters. They were monsters but he never forgot some essential femininity about them that came through in the animating style. There was a kind of grace and poise that his male characters lacked.

And it’s not just the monster that fills you with that overwhelming feeling of dread it’s the lighting, camerawork, and the background. You can see all the bodies of the men she’s frozen, all the ones who came before Perseus to try to defeat her and failed littering her home, all of displaying various states of terror. There’s the firelight, her expressive eyes, the way she turns her head as she hunts her prey. It’s impossible not to look at her even though you know it will kill you.

One of the primary reasons Medusa is number one on this list is she is one of the few monsters that has facial expressions. You can see everything she is thinking and feeling on her face. She is hate filled, determined, and relentless, but you still feel something for her when she dies.

Other Favorite Monsters:

These three didn’t end up on the top ten list but are still favorites of mine.

Giant Octopus (It Came From Beneath The Sea)

Giant Crab (Mysterious Island)

Giant Walrus (Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger)