Octoberfest Five: Sunday Bloody Sunday

DELIVER US FROM EVIL

THE GALLOWS

COOTIES

THE DAMNED

STUNG

Octoberfest Five: 5 Favorite Couples In Horror

While cute isn't a word one hears very often in horror, caring and affectionate couples do abound in the genre, because what is more horrific than a loving couple being torn apart or facing unthinkable strife?  It makes us more connected to the characters and certainly makes us emote more sympathy.  Here...five of my favorite couples in horror.

Martin and Ellen Brody.  Jaws. One of my favorite couples because of their carefree banter and obvious genuine affection for one another, evident in simple scenes when the two (Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary) are on the beach together, waking up in morning, Ellen looking on lovingly as her husband and son have a moment at the dining table, and when the two are trying to relax after a long and arduous day with a bit of scotch and Ellen suggests "Wanna get drunk and fool around?" To which Brody answers quickly "Ohhh yeah'.  But their love is never more palpable than in the scene when they are together at the dock before Martin is about to "go fishing" with Quint and Hooper.  It's obvious they are both terribly worried about the fate of what's to come, and both seem to be rambling - her about him taking Dramamine and having extra socks and zinc oxide for his nose, he about not using the fireplace in the den because the flue isn't fixed.  They hug and Ellen runs off, unable to think about it any further as Quint rambles in the background.  Just a perfect, perfect scene.

Burt and Vicky. Children of the Corn.  Traveling together can sometimes be a couple's worst nightmare. And back in 1984 there were no GPS's to speak of, so maybe Burt and Vicky (Peter Horton, Linda Hamilton) wouldn't have gotten so damn lost in Gatlin if they'd be traveling in this day and age.  A new job as a Seattle physician brings the couple through Nebraska only to get caught up in a bizarre child-cult that follows "He Who Walks Behind The Rows".  After hitting a(n already dead) child who wanders onto the road, they are forced to stop in Gatlin to try and find help. The split up and look for the nearest phone.  Instead they find Issac, the young leader of the cult, and his lackey Malachai- the muscle with the sharp scythe. Intending to sacrifice Vicky to the mysterious supernatural force sends Burt into super-hero mode as he tries to rescue his love.  Best outward expression of their affection is at the very beginning of the film, when Vicky serenades Burt in bed with her best American Idol audition...in her underwear.

John and Laura Baxter. Don't Look Now.  This highly influential thriller is famous for the "did they or didn't they?" love scene between stars Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. Perhaps because every scene they are in together just reeks sexuality and love, it was easy to assume the duo had something going on behind the scenes, and whether they actually did or not remains to be seen.  But within the confines of this movie, the characters of John and Laura seem every bit the loving married couple. It's a beautifully shot film and besides the over-analyzed sex scene, there are little moments of affection everywhere....when they are having dinner together, dressing for a night out, walking the streets of Venice...even though the couple has come to Venice to try and overcome the death of their daughter in an accidental drowning, they are able to push through their grief together and still be the number one priority in each others lives.  Whereas some relationships buckle under the weight of such a tragedy, John and Laura's only seems to be stronger.

Oskar and Eli.  Let the Right One In.  Sure, they haven't been a couple all that long, but they are in it for the (very) long haul.  When they first meet, Eli (Lina Leandersson) warns Oskar ( Kåre Hedebrant) that they cannot be friends. But sometimes these things just have to run the course they are meant to, and the two become very close.  When Eli finds out Oskar is being bullied at school, she encourages him to stand up for himself and in turn inspires him to fend for himself.  Even after finding out that Eli is not your average girl, Oskar is still not put off and has every intention of helping Eli with her strange nocturnal activities and inhuman predilections. Eli returns his loyalty tenfold when the bullying becomes unbearable, inevitably making it impossible to stay in town.  The film closes with Oskar traveling by train with a large chest and finds him tapping morse code words to Eli, hiding inside from the darkness.  True love knows no boundaries.

Steven and Diane Freehling.  Poltergeist.  While this film really isn't one of my favorites, there's no denying that Steven (Craig T. Nelson) and Diane (JoBeth Williams) are a match made in heaven, or hell for that matter.  After all, nothing says I love you like pulling you out of the dark side. They think they are living in the perfect suburban paradise when things start to happen....crazy things...and soon the next thing you know this perfect couple is in perfect hell, fighting to get their daughter out of a paranormal portal to hell.  The lengths they go to to save their kids and each other is pretty legendary as far as marriages go. And just when they think it's safe to get back in the water (bath water, in Diane's case) - the two discover they have awakened something even more horrifying, and it will take all their strength as a couple to make it through alive.  This certainly makes them the most hard-luck duo on this list, but whether they're smoking weed in bed or fighting off the titular spirits, they are in it together.

Octoberfest Five: 5 Favorite Horror Cackles

Usually when people are laughing in a horror film, it's not a good thing.  Here are five prime examples.

My Bloody Valentine (1981) is a favorite of mine from waaaay back, and the cackling laugh at the end right before the credits roll is a sublime and truly special one. The example below contains the credits song as well, The Ballad of Harry Warden - which in itself is one of the best end credits tunes I may have ever heard.



While The Wizard of Oz isn't exactly horror, that damn Wicked Witch of the West sure knows how to evoke fear into the hearts of man. She is one nasty customer, and as a child I could hear that cackle in my dreams for days after the movies yearly presentation (yes, it used to be on just once a year!). "I'll get you my pretty...and your little dog too!!" Gah!!



Thriller is probably the best video of all time. And what horror fan would argue with that, with it having one of the kings of the genre making a guest voiceover at the end! Vincent Price's laugh at the very end of the Thriller video is priceless (sorry, had to!) and gave the video extra street cred with genre fans! If it's been a while since you've heard it, have a listen! (This is just the laugh - you can watch the whole video pretty much anywhere!)



Amusement is a little-seen film that while not a superior horror flick, does have a few moments of genuine creepiness (that clown!!!) - and one raving mad serial killer with a crazy-ass laugh. Take a listen:



But my favorite loony laugh comes from the hilariously over-the-top fan-favorite Evil Dead II. As Ash fights the deadites, suddenly everything becomes uproarious. As Ash watches, the deer hanging on the wall starts laughing....the the lamp....the books on the shelf.....the curtains on the window....until finally Ash busts a gut too. If you're not laughing by the end of that scene, there is something wrong with you.

Octoberfest Five: 5 Favorite Dark Roles From Kevin Bacon

Kevin Bacon has a prolific film catalog, and for a horror fan he seems to show up in typically dark films more often than most actors of his generation.  I've loved him since Friday the 13th (1980), and thought it prudent to include him in my list party this October.  So I present, my five favorite Kevin Bacon films.

Since I'm only talking horror and its offshoots, I won't be listing Diner, A Few Good Men, Footloose, Mystic River and My Dog Skip - all of which he was great in.  And it was really hard to choose just five in the genre, let me tell you.  He's done a ton of "bad guy" roles and with his most recent film, Cop Car, it seems he has no desire to stop. 

Friday the 13th, while notably one of my favorite horror films, did not land on this list simply because there really wasn't much for Kevin to do except run around in a Speedo and get lucky with Marcie. Likewise with Tremors.  I know it is a fan-favorite but I have an aversion to any type of worm, making movies like it, Slither, Shivers, Squirm and any other slimy scum impossible for me to watch!

I've also not added The Following simply because it is television and not film. But yeah, he was great in that, too!

These roles have a little more meat on the bone.  Again please remember this is not meant to be a "best of" list - it's an opinion list!!

Stir of Echoes

My favorite of all of Kevin Bacon's films, Stir of Echoes came out around the same time as the mega-hit The Sixth Sense and was largely ignored at the box office, which is a damn shame because I actually think it is the better of the two.  It's certainly the more atmospheric film. Based on a story by Richard Matheson, it tells the tale of Tom Witzky, a blue-collar man who agrees to be hypnotized at a block party in a Chicago neighborhood.  His somewhat wacky sister-in-law easily puts him under and later, Tom begins to experience confusing, violent visions of an assault on a local mentally challenged teenager.  The visions become more terrifying and as Tom searches for answers to the mystery of what happened to the girl, thus he makes it an obsessive mission to uncover the truth -  turning an average joe into an unhinged mess.

Flatliners

One of Bacon's earlier films also features a young Julia Roberts and several other stars of the day.  While Billy Baldwin is pretty difficult to watch because he is so annoying, the film doesn't lose much because of it.  Five medical students are trying to find out what happens after you die, so they conduct experiments on each other by stopping their hearts to attempt to induce a near-death experience.  Which they do.  Except each one of them has visions of disturbing early childhood experiences that linger well into their waking lives. Bacon plays Dave, the student that seems to have the most conscience and ultimately the one who decides that to stop the terrifying visions, the group needs to remedy the wrongs that each committed in their childhood to end the medically induced after-life terrors.
Flatliners is a creepy little film, and one that needs re-visited if it's been a while since you've seen it.

Wild Things

While not entirely horror, the seedy - almost ranuchy- feel of this thriller makes it a perfect addition here. Bacon plays Detective Ray Duquette, assigned to investigate the assault/rape of two high school girls - rich bitch Kelly Van Ryan (Denise Richards) and a girl from the other side of the tracks: Suzie Toller (Neve Campbell) - by a local high school teacher, Sam Lombardo (Matt Dillon).  Duquette has suspicions that all is not as cut and dry as it seems, and ends up getting tangled up in a salacious web of deceit.
Lewd, crude, and altogether screwed, Wild Things is a pure guilty pleasure.  As is Bacon's full-frontal shower scene.

Hollow Man

This film lends a lot to the mad scientist feel as Bacon plays Sebastian Caine, a man hell bent on developing an invisibility serum.  The film has Academy Award nominated special effects, perhaps overshadowing Kevin's work as an obsessed maniac - a brilliant scientist devolving into utter madness. The movie didn't get the best ratings but it's fun for horror fans as Caine pushes the envelope further and further until there is no coming back to reality.  When the serum works, it's great.  But when it continues to work and cannot be reversed, Sebastian takes that as permission to walk around unseen - which, while it sound like a whole lot of fun, he takes it to a much darker place and begins a crime spree unmatched only by perhaps the original The Invisible Man.  It's fun, it's morbid, and it's completely over the top.

Death Sentence

In what may be Bacon's darkest role, he turns from a loving father into a vengeance-driven, cold-hearted killer. But as an audience we can completely sympathize with his sorrowful anger because the gang violence that started this eruption of anger is something that we all are aware of by just watching the nightly news. Nick Hume (Bacon) and his son Brendan are on their way home from a hockey game when they stop at a convenience store. Unfortunately a gang member initiation is also taking place and Brendan's throat is slit, killing him. Bacon's grief and eventual retribution are palpable, and his anti-hero is painful yet exhilarating. One of his most underrated roles, in my opinion.

Honorable Mentions:  Murder in the First, The River Wild, Trapped, The Woodsman

Octoberfest Five: Wordless Wednesday

Octoberfest Five: 5 Favorite Ghost Video Countdowns On YouTube

YouTube is a veritable cesspool of uploaded videos of supposed ghosts.  Anyone even remotely interested in the subject has probably run across hundreds of these alleged apparitions posted by every Tom, Dick and Harry from here to Timbuktu.  Whether or not you believe in ghosts is your opinion. But regardless, there are a lot of unnerving uploads out there and we've picked out five of our favorite "ghost video countdowns".  Is it proof? Probably not.  But it's a good time nonetheless. 

Octoberfest Five: 5 Cheating Spouses

Let's be frank:  horror films are chock-full of sex, there's no doubting that.  And more often than not, someone is cheating on someone.  And we all know what happens to people who cheat. Something horrible happens to them.  Karma is a bitch.  Here are five favorite examples.

THE HOWLING

Top of my list is this werewolf film in which Bill Neill (Christopher Stone) skankily cheats on his traumatized wife Karen (Dee Wallace) at The Colony - a bizarre retreat in the wooded countryside. Pursued by a serial killer and then having to deal with her scoundrel of a hubby sleeping with the local dog-faced bitch?
Hardly fair.  Well, Bill gets his in the end.  Karma, baby!

WHAT LIES BENEATH

Who would have ever thought Harrison Ford would be the bad guy?  Not only sleeping around on Michelle Pfeiffer, but taking it over the edge and beyond once he almost gets caught.  But things don't work out in his favor after all.  And you deserve it, Indiana Jones...who the hell cheats on Michelle Pfeiffer anyway?

SECRET WINDOW

As if it wasn't bad enough to cheat on Michelle Pfeiffer....this one just hurts.  Seriously...Johnny Depp?  I realize Maria Bello is a catch too, but Timothy Hutton?  Unfortunately for Maria, you can't mess with Mort. He goes bat-shit crazy, literally. 

SPLICE

This one's just weird.  Lots of people fall in love and/or have sex with someone different than them. Different race, different religion, different ages...etc.  But generally people tend to stay within their own SPECIES.  But Adrien Brody broke that taboo and a few others along the way. Though living with his girlfriend/work partner Elsa (Sarah Polley), Clive (Brody) ends up doing the horizontal mambo with their creepy sexually maturing hybrid.  Not your average coming of age story. 

THE DESCENT

The ultimate betrayal is when you find out your best friend has been sleeping with your husband.  It's happened in many a movie, but perhaps with consequences no more brutal than here. When Sarah discovers that Juno has been having an affair with her hubby, it just gets nasty.  The cave-dwelling mutants have got nothing on Sarah's vengeance.


Honorable mentions: My Bloody Valentine 3D, AHS: Murder House, Fatal Attraction

Octoberfest Five: Sunday Bloody Sunday

WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS

BACKCOUNTRY

WYRMWOOD

BURYING THE EX

BLOODSUCKING BASTARDS

Octoberfest Five: 5 Favorite Dark Poems

~by Marie Robinson

“Love isn’t soft, like those poets say. Love has teeth that bite and wounds that never close.”
-Stephen King


While all of us love a good flick or short story, poetry is more of an acquired taste. A movie can lay it all out for you, visually and orally, but poetry is more complex. A good poem will make you think think and feel, and a good horror poem will make you afraid to turn out the lights. Here are a few of my favorites.

Der Erlkönig

“Der Erlkönig”, or, “The Erl-King” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was written in 1782. Goethe (pronounced “gir-tah”) was a German poet most famous for his tragic play Faust, which has become the archetype for countless horror stories since its production.

“The Erl-King” is about a father riding through the forest at night with his young son in his arms when they are unexpectedly attacked by the Erl-King, a supernatural being from German folklore. The Erl-King is a forest spirit; a literal translation of his name means “Elf King”, and he is believed to be the king of the fairies. The Erl-King is an evil creature who preys on children, and has a famously evil daughter, as well.

Pay close attention to who is speaking in the poem, for it switches from dialogue between father and son and the son and the Erl-King, who is invisible to the father.

Here is the adapted English translation:

Who rides there so late through the night dark and drear? 
The father it is, with his infant so dear; 
He holdeth the boy tightly clasp'd in his arm, 
He holdeth him safely, he keepeth him warm. 

"My son, wherefore seek'st thou thy face thus to hide?" 
"Look, father, the Erl-King is close by our side! 
Dost see not the Erl-King, with crown and with train?" 
"My son, 'tis the mist rising over the plain." 

"Oh, come, thou dear infant! oh come thou with me! 
For many a game I will play there with thee; 
On my strand, lovely flowers their blossoms unfold, 
My mother shall grace thee with garments of gold." 

"My father, my father, and dost thou not hear 
The words that the Erl-King now breathes in mine ear?" 
"Be calm, dearest child, 'tis thy fancy deceives; 
'Tis the sad wind that sighs through the withering leaves." 

"Wilt go, then, dear infant, wilt go with me there? 
My daughters shall tend thee with sisterly care; 
My daughters by night their glad festival keep, 
They'll dance thee, and rock thee, and sing thee to sleep." 

"My father, my father, and dost thou not see, 
How the Erl-King his daughters has brought here for me?" 
"My darling, my darling, I see it aright,
 'Tis the aged grey willows deceiving thy sight." 

"I love thee, I'm charm'd by thy beauty, dear boy! 
And if thou'rt unwilling, then force I'll employ." 
"My father, my father, he seizes me fast, 
For sorely the Erl-King has hurt me at last."

 The father now gallops, with terror half wild, 
He grasps in his arms the poor shuddering child; 
He reaches his courtyard with toil and with dread, – 
The child in his arms finds he motionless, dead. 

Annabel Lee

Written by Gothic master, Edgar Allan Poe, if you haven’t heard this one, you’ve been living under a rock. Written in 1849, it was Poe’s last completed poem and was not published until shortly after he had died. “Annabel Lee” creeps me the hell out, and I chose it for several reasons.

This poem explores Poe’s favorite topic, which is the death of a beautiful woman. While “Annabel Lee” made read as a powerful love-poem, but assured it is not. Look behind our “passionate” narrator’s words and you will find a disturbed, delusional, and immature man.

The narrator marries a young woman—with whom he claims he fell in love with while they were children, suggesting they were related, perhaps?—who quickly becomes ill and dies. He believes the disease to be caused by the angels, themselves, who were so jealous of the couples love that they took to “chilling and killing” Annabel Lee. But he’s not just in love with his departed bride, he’s obsessed with her; so much so that he takes to spending the night in her tomb and cuddling up with her corpse. Not so romantic anymore, is it?

It is thought that the inspiration behind “Annabel Lee” could be Poe’s wife, Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe. The two were cousins and married when Virginia was 13 and Poe was 26. She contracted tuberculosis and died at 24, drawing a few similarities to the poem.
Creepy fun fact about Virginia: the only portrait of her was painted several hours after her death.


It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love— 

I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre 


In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Lenore

This isn’t to be confused with Poe’s Lenore, which came 70 years later. This “Lenore”, published in 1774, was written by Gottfried August Bürger, and is considered more of a Gothic ballad than a poem.
It concerns a young bride named Lenore, who has been patiently waiting for her fiancé, William, to return from the Seven Years’ War. She is convinced that he has died, since all the other soldiers have returned, and her mother thinks that he has found himself a new bride.

However, a knock comes on Lenore’s door at midnight, and it appears to be William, asking Lenore to accompany him on horseback to ride a hundred miles to their marriage bed. Although she thinks it strange, she goes with him, where they ride off at a breakneck pace through strange and spooky lands; and what Lenore finds at the end of the journey is not her marriage bed at all, but her final resting place.

There is a refrain in the German version that reads, “die Todten reiten schnell” which as been popularly translated as, “the dead travel fast”. This phrase was familiarized by Bram Stoker, who used in Dracula; you may recall the scene where Jonathan Harker is awaiting a carriage through the Carpathian Mountains to Castle Dracula. When it finally arrives, driven by an ominous cloaked coachmen and travels at a remarkable speed, one of Harker’s foreign fellow travelers fearfully whispers, “die Todten reiten schnell”, for they know who truly drives the carriage.

There have been many English translations of “Lenore”, but the most beautiful was done by that of an 11-year-old Dante Gabriel Rossetti. However, in this version, the refrain does not appear as it’s popularized, “the dead travel fast”, but rather, “bravely the dead men ride through the night”.
The ballad is rather long, so I’ve included a link for you to read it, here (http://genius.com/Gottfried-august-burger-lenore-annotated).




All Souls

Edith Wharton, a Pulitzer-Prize winning American writer, is famous to some for her humor, and others for her horror. While she isn’t remembered strictly as a horror writer, she did produce quite a few ghost stories, and one deliciously spooky poem that captures the spirit of Halloween. This poem was written in 1903.


I 
A thin moon faints in the sky o’erhead, 
And dumb in the churchyard lie the dead. 
Walk we not, Sweet, by garden ways, 
Where the late rose hangs and the phlox delays, 
But forth of the gate and down the road, 
Past the church and the yews, to their dim abode. 
For it’s turn of the year and All Souls’ night, 
When the dead can hear and the dead have sight. 

II 
Fear not that sound like wind in the trees: 
It is only their call that comes on the breeze; 
Fear not the shudder that seems to pass: 
It is only the tread of their feet on the grass; 
Fear not the drip of the bough as you stoop: 
It is only the touch of their hands that grope — 
For the year’s on the turn, and it’s All Souls’ night, 
When the dead can yearn and the dead can smite. 

III 
And where should a man bring his sweet to woo 
But here, where such hundreds were lovers too? 
Where lie the dead lips that thirst to kiss, 
The empty hands that their fellows miss, 
Where the maid and her lover, from sere to green, 
Sleep bed by bed, with the worm between? 
For it’s turn of the year and All Souls’ night, 
When the dead can hear and the dead have sight. 

IV 
And now that they rise and walk in the cold, 
Let us warm their blood and give youth to the old. 
Let them see us and hear us, and say: 
“Ah, thus In the prime of the year it went with us!” 
Till their lips drawn close, and so long unkist, 
Forget they are mist that mingles with mist! 
For the year’s on the turn, and it’s All Souls’ night, 
When the dead can burn and the dead can smite. 

V
Till they say, as they hear us — poor dead, poor dead! — 
“Just an hour of this, and our age-long bed — 
Just a thrill of the old remembered pains 
To kindle a flame in our frozen veins, J
ust a touch, and a sight, and a floating apart, 
As the chill of dawn strikes each phantom heart — 
For it’s turn of the year and All Souls’ night, 
When the dead can hear, and the dead have sight.” 

 VI 
And where should the living feel alive 
But here in this wan white humming hive, 
As the moon wastes down, and the dawn turns cold, 
And one by one they creep back to the fold? 
And where should a man hold his mate and say: 
“One more, one more, ere we go their way”? 
For the year’s on the turn, and it’s All Souls’ night, 
When the living can learn by the churchyard light. 

VII 
And how should we break faith who have seen 
Those dead lips plight with the mist between, 
And how forget, who have seen how soon 
They lie thus chambered and cold to the moon? 
How scorn, how hate, how strive, we too, 
Who must do so soon as those others do? 
For it’s All Souls’ night, and break of the day, 
And behold, with the light the dead are away. 

The House

Howard Phillips Lovecraft is a man who needs no introduction (though, if you aren’t familiar it is seriously time to get wise!). His poem “The House” was published in 1919, which depicts the same house that is the subject of his novellete “The Shunned House”. It is inspired by a real place, the address now famously known by Lovecraft fans as 135 Benefit Street in Providence, Rhode Island.


'Tis a grove-circled dwelling 
Set close to a hill,
Where the branches are telling 
Strange legends of ill; 
Over timbers so old 
That they breathe of the dead, 
Crawl the vines, green and cold, 
By strange nourishment fed; 
And no man knows the juices they suck 
from the depths of their dank slimy bed. 

In the gardens are growing 
Tall blossoms and fair, 
Each pallid bloom throwing 
Perfume on the air; 
But the afternoon sun 
with its shining red rays 
Makes the picture loom dun 
On the curious gaze, 
And above the sweet scent of the the blossoms 
rise odors of numberless days. 

The rank grasses are waving 
On terrace and lawn,
 Dim memories savoring 
Of things that have gone; 
The stones of the walks 
Are encrusted and wet, 
And a strange spirit stalks 
When the red sun has set. 
And the soul of the watcher is fill'd 
with faint pictures he fain would forget.

 It was in the hot Junetime 
I stood by that scene, 
When the gold rays of noontime 
Beat bright on the green. 
But I shiver'd with cold, 
Groping feebly for light, 
As a picture unroll'd— 
And my age-spanning sight 
Saw the time I had been there before 
flash like fulgury out of the night.

Octoberfest Five: 5 Doomed Romances In Horror

  Bram Stoker's Dracula

 It would be hard to consider a list of unfortunate couples without including the ultimate love story, so let's just get this one out of the way first. In Francis Ford Coppola's opulent retelling of the classic novel, destiny brings two lovers together again in another lifetime only to be torn apart by hatred. Though Mina Murray is already betrothed to the (horribly cast) Jonathan Harker, when she meets Prince Vlad she is inexplicably drawn to him and is soon meeting him in secret and allows herself to be courted by the mysterious Count. Things take a tragic turn for the worst when the Prince's true identity is discovered and he is determined to steal away with his long lost love.
Love never dies, people.

An American Werewolf in London

Werewolf movies are always a kick in the pants to romance.  And perhaps none more so than ill-fated love affair of David and Alex.  After losing his best friend to a gruesome "animal" attack and suffering injuries himself, David's charms score him a place to stay with sexy nurse Alex. However, as we all know, that wasn't just some animal that worked David over, it was a werewolf.  And we all know once the moon is full and the CCR starts playing on the radio, the carnage begins.  Alex has only one task as the sweetheart of a hairy beast....slay him after professing her love.  Beware of the moon....

Christine

Yep, I'm putting Arnie and his babe of a car on this list because love breaks down all stereotypes.
Nerdy Arnie and his popular jock best friend Dennis happen upon a junkyard in which sits the the most beautiful girl in the world, a 1958 cherry-red Plymouth Fury.  Though she's in shambles when Arnie hastily purchases her, Christine quickly comes alive and takes hold of Arnie with an unmatched love. And Christine will stop at nothing to possess Arnie's heart and soul.....but mostly his soul. She's bad to the bone.

The Evil Dead

Ash and Linda were just a couple of crazy kids headed to the obligatory cabin in the woods with some friends for a weekend of fun.  As we all know, that didn't exactly work out too well when the deadites showed up.  When Linda is possessed by one of the demons, Ash is forced to stab her when she attempts to kill him. Dragging her out into the shed, he tries to dismember her but is too broken-hearted to do it, so he just buries her in the yard.  Naturally, in this world, the dead don't stay dead and Linda raises from her shallow grave and once again tries to attack Ash.  This time he takes off her head with a shovel.   Love....sometimes you just can't get ahead.  Sometimes you can.

Cannibal Holocaust

Well, it served them right, didn't it?  When documentary filmmaker Alan and his girlfriend Faye trek into the Amazon rainforest with their two cameramen,  they should have known what they were getting themselves into.  Trying to film a documentary about previously undiscovered indigenous tribes was always a bad idea - but they agitated the living hell out of the Yacumo tribe by gang-raping one of their virgins and shooting another in the leg in order to locate their village.  The couple and their friends had already murdered various creatures in the forest, which for me is a death sentence anyway - and they certainly got their due, in particular Faye who is violently gang-raped and beheaded while Alan watches from behind some trees. But don't worry, he doesn't last long after that.  The other other white meat....it's what's for dinner.....


Honorable mentions:  Creepshow (Something to tide you over), Eden Lake, Thirst

Octoberfest Five: 5 Favorite Horror Heads

There are so many decapitations in horror that it's really hard to narrow it down to a small list of five, so I decided to go with my favorites.  All of these films are fairly popular, but they are famous for a reason. And a good beheading, for whatever reason, always stands out in a horror film.  Behold, my favorite horror heads!

FRIDAY THE 13TH, PART 2
Certainly one of the most famous heads in horror, Mrs. Voorhees lost her noggin back in the very first Friday the 13th, but it was this lovely scene in Part 2 that made all our heads spin. To what did Ginny's wandering eyes appear but Pamela Voorhees, her head cut clear......off.

JAWS
Seeing as how Jaws is my favorite film, I couldn't let this famous head go without a mention either!  Poor Ben Gardner.  He wanted to make a name for himself by catching the biggest fish in the waters off Amity Island.  Instead, he loses his head.  Bobbing up and down in the wreckage of his fishing boat, he gives Hooper a terrifying fright and causes one of the only jump scares in this brilliant blockbuster.

APRIL FOOL'S DAY
April Fool's Day is an unfairly disregarded film.  It's witty and fun and the ending, though constantly bitched about, is in my opinion perfect. And no one had a rougher time in AFD than Buffy St. John.  But she may be the only head on this list to party down to some Three Dog Night.  Not everyone can say that! 

THE THING
By far the best special effects on our list, the head of Norris in The Thing is one nasty noggin.  When he transforms into one of the alien "things", his head slides over the end of a table, falling onto the floor and bizarrely changes into a spider-like creature with legs and antennas. It is a disturbing scene that is unchallenged in its beautiful creepiness.

RE-ANIMATOR
Winning the prize for 'best use of a decapitated head', this films takes it one notch higher by also being the most literal use of "head" as well.  When Dr. Hill finds his cranium unattached to the rest of his body, he uses this to his advantage and sexually abuses a young woman, creating one of the most memorable moments in all of horror, hands (or heads!) down!

Tomorrow! Octoberfest Five Begins!

Just a quick post to let our readers know that tomorrow starts a special, month-long feature on the blog called OCTOBERFEST FIVE, which brings what everyone is always clamoring for:  LISTS!  Each day will be a new subject and the content will be a list of five items.  We will range from film to television to music to art to the written word and a few other things in between. 
Here are a few of the subjects, just to tease....

Five Doomed Couples In Horror
Five Wonderfully Creepy Music Videos
Five Fab Men Of Current Horror TV
Five Dark Poems

We'll also bring back two of our popular features, Sunday Bloody Sunday and Wordless Wednesday.

So stay tuned and be sure to let us know if you like what you see. As always, comments are like catnip to bloggers!

Post-Mortem: Bizarre Graves, Part II

~by Marie Robinson

In death we become faceless. We are a reduced to a slab of stone with a humble engraving to sum up our lives. Walking through cemeteries (a beloved hobby of Christine and myself), you see a lot of the same stuff: “Loving father and son”, or similar stones listing a person’s roles and accomplishments.

There is, every once in a while, a headstone that stands out, either by bizarre shape or mysterious inscription. Take a moment to look at the stranger side of death in these four unique graves.

The Girl in Blue (?-December 24th 1933) 

 

In 1933 on Christmas Eve, a young girl was struck and killed by a train in Willoughby, Ohio. She had no identification in her purse and no one was able to recognize the poor girl, even in the two weeks she was laid out in a funeral home, where thousands of residents stopped by to see her; she was defined only by the blue woolen dress and blue shoes she wore. A grave was made for her, the funds raised by the town residents, and was given the moniker, “the Girl in Blue” since no one knew her name. At the bottom of the headstone reads the eerie tagline, “unknown but never forgotten”. An additional fund was raised that flowers (geraniums, to be specific) would be placed on her grave once a year.

Her identity was finally confirmed in 1993, by a real estate agent who had recently been looking through the history of what happened to be the girl in blue’s family home. While her original headstone still stands, she now has an additional one with her true name, Josephine Klimczak.

Grancer the Dancer (1789-1860) 

Near Kinston, Alabama in Harrison Cemetery, there is a very large, unusual, and infamous grave. A large, white stone tomb, belonging to a William “Grancer” Harrison does not fit the traditional form for a headstone, but is instead constructed in the crude shape of a bed.

The man buried in this bizarre grave is somewhat of a legend in his part of Alabama, and the story goes that he owned a large and successful plantation. His nickname “Grancer”, is a shortened, slurred version of “Grand Sir” (kind of like Grandpa back in the 1800’s), and it just so happened that he loved to dance, so his moniker eventually became “Grancer the Dancer”. He loved to host parties and balls so much he had his own dancehall built where he would wear his clogs and stamp out the dance floor.

When Grancer eventually passed, he made demands to be buried in his bed, donning his famous dancing shoes, and within earshot of his dancehall. After his death, rumors began to spring up about his grave. Many claimed it was haunted, and people said they could hear a fiddle being played at night, or the tap of heavy clogs (earning him yet another nickname, “the dancing ghost”), or a loud voice calling out line dances.

There was also talk that Harrison had buried a large sum of gold along with him, or scattered in the land near his grave. His tomb was exploded with dynamite in 1964, which turned up no gold but all but destroyed his corpse. The cemetery was vandalized again in 2010; 50 headstones were overturned in search of the buried gold, but none was found.

Margorie McCall (?-1705)

If you are visiting Shankill Cemetery in Lurgan, Ireland, local legend will lead you to a very strange stone. Erected into the bottom of an old, almost unreadable headstone is the inscription, “Margorie McCall, Lived Once, Buried Twice”. There are no dates on the grave, but local folklore claims that Margorie McCall fell victim to a fever in 1705 and was quickly buried to avoid an outbreak.

 It apparently was common knowledge that she was buried wearing a valuable ring, and the same night she was laid in the earth grave robbers exhumed her. Her body had swollen from the fever and the ring would not come off of her finger, so one of the robbers made to sever it.

However, when he began to saw at her finger, the “corpse” of Margorie McCall shot up, screaming in agony. The grave robbers fled—or, in some stories, died of fright. It seems that Margorie had not died but simply fallen into a coma and was buried prematurely. She got up out of her grave, walked home, and knocked on the door. When her husband answered and saw his wife standing in the doorway with her burial dress covered in dirt and blood he fell dead on the spot. He was then buried in the same grave that Margorie had abandoned.

This story is actually a popular European urban legend called “The Lady with the Ring”. Versions exist all over the British Isles as well as in Germany, Italy, and France. It is most likely that Margorie McCall never even existed; and someone had the stone made and erected under the grave of a random “John McCall” to feed into the legend.

For a more in-depth look at this fascination story, please take the time to read this article penned by our good friend James Gracey, who has a unique tie to the Shankill Cemetery!

Katherine Cross (1899-1917) 

18-year-old Katherine Cross is buried in Violet Cemetery in Konowa, Oklahoma. While the death of someone so young is always a tragedy, the epitaph on her headstone has left a bizarre mystery surrounding her; it reads, “Murdered by human wolves”.

Surprisingly, few stories have sprung up about Katherine, but her grave has become notorious simply for its troubling etching. Dozens of grisly images come to mind with the strange words, and it’s only obvious that some locals believe she killed by werewolves, and that her remains were found in gory shreds at the edge of the woods.

Other stories say that she was killed by the Ku Klux Klan. There is a plausible explanation that has been established by researching the end of Katherine’s life. Records show that she died while under the care of a Dr. A.H. Yates, and his schoolteacher assistant, Frederick O’Neal. Cross’ cause of death is listed as “criminal operation” on her certificate, and many have come to the conclusion that she died during a botched abortion. This was apparently not the first time the two “doctors” were charged with a criminal operation, which led to the death of a young woman.

We probably will never know exactly what happened to Katherine Cross, but you can’t deny that the epitaph was definitely a strange choice of words. Next time you’re in Oklahoma, keep an eye out for the human wolves.

If you missed Part I of this series, check it out HERE!!