Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
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.
Monday, October 5, 2015
Octoberfest Five: 5 Cheating Spouses
 |
| THE HOWLING |
Hardly fair. Well, Bill gets his in the end. Karma, baby!
 |
| WHAT LIES BENEATH |
 |
| SECRET WINDOW |
 |
| SPLICE |
 |
| THE DESCENT |
Honorable mentions: My Bloody Valentine 3D, AHS: Murder House, Fatal Attraction
Sunday, October 4, 2015
Octoberfest Five: Sunday Bloody Sunday
 |
| WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS |
 |
| BACKCOUNTRY |
 |
| WYRMWOOD |
 |
| BURYING THE EX |
 |
| BLOODSUCKING BASTARDS |
Saturday, October 3, 2015
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.
“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”, 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.
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.
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.
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.
Friday, October 2, 2015
Octoberfest Five: 5 Doomed Romances In Horror
 |
| Bram Stoker's Dracula |
Love never dies, people.
 |
| An American Werewolf in London |
 |
| Christine |
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 |
 |
| Cannibal Holocaust |
Honorable mentions: Creepshow (Something to tide you over), Eden Lake, Thirst
Thursday, October 1, 2015
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! |
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
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!
Saturday, August 15, 2015
Post-Mortem: Bizarre Graves, Part II
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!!
Thursday, July 2, 2015
The Jurassic World Rant: In Defense Of Dinos & Popcorn Films
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| The New Yorker, May 1997 |
Well folks, JURASSIC WORLD has taken the....well, world by storm, and did we really think it wouldn't? Its world-wide box office (as of 6-30-15) is a staggering $1,259,873,609!!!! Which just goes to prove that dammit....people LOVE dinosaurs. Surprise!
Now this rant I am closing in on here is just a little bitch session combined with some true depth of feeling (well...as much as I can muster) regarding the creatures I have loved since I was a little girl.
Part 1: The Rant
What makes people want to curse a film before it even comes out? What makes that same person then go to the movies to actually SEE said film? So they can bitch about it? And why then, when a film is topping the box office for many consecutive weeks and beating all comers, would someone ramble on about the movie being awful and that "everyone thinks it's shit". Ah, I'm thinking the world populous feels a mite different, as a whole.
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| The ode to the original 'summer blockbuster' JAWS (Jurassic World) |
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| Jurassic Park (1993) |
"popcorn movie (plural popcorn movies):
(film, idiomatic) A motion picture without serious dramatic content, a weighty message, or intellectual depth, which serves simply as enjoyable entertainment."
People, JURASSIC WORLD was not meant to be the next CITIZEN KANE. Nor were the three previous dinosaur sagas that came before it. These movies are not Thomas Hardy adaptations nor are they going to get a Criterion release. They are popcorn films - stereotypical SUMMER BLOCKBUSTERS created for the masses about dinosaurs on the loose looking to wreak havoc and eat people. Take it for what it is. Expecting it to have a mind-blowing plot with depth, multiple story arcs, thought-provoking narratives and Meryl Streep in the lead is just stupid. This really irks the living shit out of me. Bitching about the acting...come on! The dinos are the real stars. Who gives a shit if the character's actions are ridiculous! What did you expect them to do when being chased by an Indominous Rex? Kill it in the first act?
Here's my thought: If you are so sure the film is going to suck, here's a thought: don't go see the fucking movie. Let the people have their fun.
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| The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) |
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| Jurassic World's Indominus Rex |
And it's not just summer
blockbusters or big releases that have it. Tell me, did you not notice
FORREST GUMP's box of chocolates? Russell Stover, people. His Nike tennis shoes? His fascination with Dr Pepper? In 1982's THE THING - Kurt Russell was swigging from a bottle of J & B scotch whiskey....several times! What about James Bond and his ever-present Aston Martin? All the labels on all the food in the pantry in the movie THE SHINING? Reese's Pieces in E.T.? FED-EX in CASTAWAY? The vast array of brand-name toys in the TOY STORY films. Let's not even discuss TRANSFORMERS, ok?
The thing is...why does this bother people so much?
The thing is...why does this bother people so much?
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| Hope there's enough head room in that Benz. |
Stop being a snob. You know you're enjoying an ice cold Pepsi while reading this on your Droid in your Jeep Wrangler. Just stop. If it bothered you that the film showed someone driving a Mercedes then you really need to get on some anxiety meds. All cars are some kind of brand. Should they have strategically shot the scenes without showing the front or back of the car, making sure there were no distinctive tell-tale signs of being a German automobile? Should productions put black tape on the side of a Harley in a scene so you can't tell what kind of motorcycle someone is on? Should we not have people reading Entertainment Weekly or The New York Times because we don't want to play favorites? Wow.
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| Have a Coke and a smile! |
Part 2: Love Those Dinos
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| Jurassic Park "You bred raptors??" |
There seems to be an age-old fascination with dinosaurs that people just can't get over. Me included. One of the very first books I remember reading as a youngster was a book I'd bought at a school book fair- quite possibly the first book I'd ever bought on my own. And the subject matter: yep, dinosaurs. It was pretty hard as a kid to imagine a world in which creatures like the Brachiosaurus and the T-Rex walked the planet. I'm not sure I believed in them at first. But I was utterly struck with a life-long fascination. From watching Godzilla flicks on Saturday afternoons or Land of the Lost on TV to all my various books, stuffed animals and toys, to trying to memorize all the various difficult names, I was obsessed.
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| Pteranodon from Jurassic Park III |
Eventually my parents and my guidance counselor steered me away from that of course..."where would you live with that kind of degree?" Being from western Pennsylvania, they did have a valid point. So I took up psychology and moved on.
And of course, the rest is history. The original JURASSIC PARK went on to make millions and millions of dollars and please just about everyone on the planet. And while THE LOST WORLD and JP3 weren't quite up to the same caliber as the first film, people still flocked to the theater to enjoy the latest offering. Which is what they are doing now, in vast numbers, for JURASSIC WORLD. Why? Because people like fucking dinosaurs, that's why!
There is something truly, truly terrifying about dinosaurs. The scene from the first JP movie in which the T-Rex attacks the Ford Explorer (product placement alert!) that Tim and Lex are in - that is one goddamned tense and frightening sequence! I would put it right up there against any of the scariest moments from any horror film. The T-Rex was going to fucking EAT them! How is that not horrifying and nightmare-inducing? In JAWS, when Quint slides down the deck of the Orca and (spoiler alert for anyone assholish enough not to have seen JAWS) into the mouth of the 25 foot Great White - that is hands down the scariest thing imaginable - to be shredded to pieces by hundreds of teeth and eaten alive! So thinking about a giant creature with a roar greater than the crowd's last moments of this year's Belmont Stakes - well that's just petrifying!
The interest in dinosaurs will likely never wane. The fascination with these obsolete creatures that lived over 65 million years ago is something that most likely every third person in the world has at least a passing interest in. Their awe-inspiring size and formidable power has thrilled man for almost as long as they have been extinct. Still gracing the cover of the National Geographic and other scientific mags, the masses will forever want to read about the latest discoveries.
The countless array of adventure books and films that have been written and produced (even just since the first JP book/movie) is proof positive that the magnetism of these prehistoric monstrosities continues to enchant! Kids still want to be paleontologists just like I did - even if they live in inner-city Detroit, the wilds of Siberia, or the sandy beaches of Guam. They are still buying toys and lunchboxes and folders and posters and bedspreads and anything they can get their mitts on that is related to the giant lugs. Tell me who wouldn't want a chance to dig up the bones of a Velociraptor if given the chance? Children flock to cartoon movies about the land before time and adults get their kicks watching a T-Rex eat a man while he's on the john. They're scary. They're somehow magical. And for heaven's sake THEY'RE FUN!!
So when people feign disinterest or act as though those of us enjoying these Jurassic films are simpletons or don't know a good movie when we see one, well - to them I say 1.2 BILLION DOLLARS.....and counting. Don't let the theater door hit you in the ass on the way out the door.
In closing... I guess what I am trying to say - oh so UN-eloquently - is that as long as people are alive, dinosaurs are going to continue to amaze, intrigue, terrify, and most of all THRILL audiences. So if you can't handle it - stay out of the park.
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| Jurassic Park. Dinner is served! |
The countless array of adventure books and films that have been written and produced (even just since the first JP book/movie) is proof positive that the magnetism of these prehistoric monstrosities continues to enchant! Kids still want to be paleontologists just like I did - even if they live in inner-city Detroit, the wilds of Siberia, or the sandy beaches of Guam. They are still buying toys and lunchboxes and folders and posters and bedspreads and anything they can get their mitts on that is related to the giant lugs. Tell me who wouldn't want a chance to dig up the bones of a Velociraptor if given the chance? Children flock to cartoon movies about the land before time and adults get their kicks watching a T-Rex eat a man while he's on the john. They're scary. They're somehow magical. And for heaven's sake THEY'RE FUN!!So when people feign disinterest or act as though those of us enjoying these Jurassic films are simpletons or don't know a good movie when we see one, well - to them I say 1.2 BILLION DOLLARS.....and counting. Don't let the theater door hit you in the ass on the way out the door.
In closing... I guess what I am trying to say - oh so UN-eloquently - is that as long as people are alive, dinosaurs are going to continue to amaze, intrigue, terrify, and most of all THRILL audiences. So if you can't handle it - stay out of the park.
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