shotgun séance

Texarkana Moonlight Murders

2011-10-24T21:11:00.005-05:00

Texarkana, 1946: the Phantom Killer strikes. He hunts the lovers' lanes. He may visit your farm late at night. Before his reign of terror ends, this hooded ghost will kill five victims. The good people of Texarkana will live in fear. Law enforcement will come up empty-handed time after time. And, in 1976, the pseudo-documentary The Town That Dreaded Sundown tells their story. First off, great title. I rented this movie years ago on VHS. The sound quality was horrible. But the scratchy yellow print only added to the grittiness of the story. There are lots of reasons to seek it out. Ben Johnson as a Texas Ranger, for one. See Gilligan's Island's Mary Ann (Dawn Wells) get attacked. The killer is scary and raw. It's more Dragnet than Halloween. The vibe of the pic is lurid, tabloid, and rural at its core. A few comic sequences don't work at all. But the trashy, drive-in, fun-o-meter dives into the red most of the time. Chilling. That mask! That breathing! That trombone! By the way, the Phantom Killer was never caught.

The Andromeda Strain

2011-10-03T13:01:00.006-05:00

Early Michael Crichton is the best, and none come better than 1969's The Andromeda Strain. Taut, chilling, and totally believable -- Crichton's breakout science fiction/techno/medical thriller holds up over forty years after it was written. Crichton presents the story as a false document, which is one reason it doesn't feel dated despite revolutions in biology and medicine. It reads like a bio-nightmare from another time, yet its horrors are just as scary and relevant today. Robert Wise's excellent film adaptation holds up equally well (forget about the TV remake, trust me). I once watched the Wise film in a bar in Grinnell, IA with a couple of townies after I had finished my final exams early. A great way to unwind. I haven't seen Soderbergh's Contagion yet. But, as far as bio-terror fiction goes, it will be hard to top the Crichton/Wise efforts for style, tension, and pure entertainment.

All Aboard! the Horror Express

2011-07-17T14:18:00.002-05:00

Horror Express (1972) is one crazy-ass movie that scared the pee out of me when I was a kid. I remember staying up late, eating Polish sausage, onion, and Open Pit sandwiches, while sucking Schweppes ginger ale from a can and watching this bad boy between burps. Now I can't really explain the plot, but it's unlike anything you've seen before. It's horror/sci-fi on a train with a Spaghetti Western vibe. Packed inside you'll find missing links, mad monks, aliens, Satan, spies, trepanning, evil eyes, the trans-Siberian railroad, pseudoscience, secret formulas, zombies, and did I mention Telly Savalas as a hotheaded Cossack? Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing anchor the picture as a pair of British scientists defending the train from Eee-vil. The music is great, creepy, and wonderfully overdone. It all goes down like a Polish sausage, onion, and Open Pit sandwich. Make mine a double. And don't forget the Schweppes!

Used & Abused: Our Lady Of Darkness

2011-05-05T08:30:00.005-05:00

Fritz Leiber wrote two of my favorite horror stories ("Smoke Ghost" and "The Terror from the Depths") and one of my favorite Lovecraftian novels (Our Lady of Darkness). I first read him when I was in grade school, and I bought a used paperback of Swords and Ice Magic, a late entry in his famous Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser swords-and-sorcery series. Leiber was a disciple of Lovecraft, and he's at his best when working the Lovecraftian terrain. He mines the connection between modern architecture and the occult like no other, whether he's talking about Simon Rodia's bizarre and beautiful Watts Towers in "The Terror from the Depths" or the haunting cityscape of San Francisco in Our Lady of Darkness.

Leiber is a writer's writer, with a supple and subtle prose style, an eye for spooky detail, and a pervasive sense of humanity amid the strangeness. The semi-autobiographical hero of Our Lady of Darkness is a horror writer, an alcoholic widower coming off a three-year bender, who starts seeing an otherworldly entity ("the Noseless One") through his binoculars while looking out his window one day. Leiber studs the novel with arcane ciphered texts, pseudoscientific concepts like "paramentals" and "megapolisomancy," and real-life literary adventurers including Clark Ashton Smith, Jack London, Ambrose Bierce, and George Sterling. Leiber is able to take the mundane and imbue it with weirdness, making us reevaluate what we accept daily as "reality." I have never looked at San Francisco the same after reading this book. You won't either.

PITCH DARK NOW ON SALE!

2011-04-26T08:23:00.002-05:00

What if you stole something from the most dangerous cult in the world? Where would you go? How could you hide? And what would happen if they found you? My new supernatural thriller, PITCH DARK, is now on sale! Buy it from your favorite bookstore, or download it on Kindle. Get ready to be afraid of the dark.

The Amityville Horror: Why It Works

2011-04-05T10:34:00.006-05:00

Is Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House the most famous tale of a haunted house in fiction? Perhaps. Richard Matheson's Hell House, clearly inspired by Jackson, is more visceral and, in my opinion, scarier. I would also recommend Edward Lee's Flesh Gothic, an excellent updating of the Jackson psychic-haunting-investigation template. But the haunted house that scared me the most as a kid is the Dutch Colonial located at 112 Ocean Ave. in Amityville, NY. I nominate it as the most famous haunted house in fiction. But wasn't The Amityville Horror non-fiction? Sorta. Was it debunked as a hoax? Kinda. But I honestly don't care about the truth of it. I care about the story. And the story is good. It has legs. It has endured and grown, as all good legends do.

Let's start with the ghastly origins. In the early hours of November 13th, 1974, a heroin abusing 23 year-old, Ronnie DeFeo, murdered six members of his family. He shot them with a Marlin rifle while they lay on their stomachs in bed. He killed his parents and four younger siblings. Later, he went to a local bar and talked about the killings. He was arrested, convicted, and he rots in prison to this day. Some have disputed that Ronnie acted alone. How exactly do you shoot six people with a rifle and no neighbors hear the shots? Why were the victims still in their beds after the attack began and ALL sleeping on their stomachs? I don't know. But let's say Ronnie did it. The cops got the right guy. Justice was served. Okay, good.

In December 1975, newlyweds George and Kathy Lutz moved their family (Kathy had three kids from a previous marriage) into the former DeFeo home, which they purchased at a bargain price because of its notoriety. They even bought some of the old furniture, including two bedroom sets. Creepy or cheap, I can't decide.

Now stop.

Everything after this point makes my bullshit detector go haywire. But it doesn't matter unless you want to believe that what the Lutz family reported is true.

Isn't that how every good campfire ghost story begins?

"This really happened . . ."

Well, I don't think it did. Or not the way we've been told. See, a lot of different people contributed to the Amityville legend, and they all had motives, and telling the truth wasn't high on their list. First off, the Lutzes met with DeFeo's defense attorney who was mounting an insanity defense. Over bottles of wine, they discussed weird occurrences in the house. They brainstormed. The lawyer got the idea of writing a book. Then he was surprised to discover later that the Lutzes had connected with a writer on their own in an attempt to sell their story. Cut out of the deal, he's been debunking their "hoax" even since. Jay Anson, who wrote the bestselling book, NEVER met the Lutzes, and the Lutzes admitted he exaggerated, changed events around, and even made up stuff. Anson defended himself by saying he was a writer and he wanted to make money. He lifted his title from Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror. Anson's book is reportorial, spare, and frightening -- I can see why it made big bucks. A media circus followed. Less-than-credible demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren got involved. Ghost investigator Hans Holzer brought in a trance medium who channeled a Shinnecock Indian chief angered because the house was built on burial grounds. Great stuff. But true? Mmm . . . I don't think so. The movie poster gave us the spooky, iconic, round quarter windows glaring out like jack o' lantern eyes. Cinematics turned up the volume and explosive evil forces, capturing the momentum of a previous demonic big hit, The Exorcist. Now we've had sequels and remakes and books about the book . . . see why it's hard to swallow? But the story works. Why? Details. How many do I remember after years?

-the secret "red room" in the basement
-Jodie the Pig with the red eyes who left footprints in the snow
-Father Mancuso/Pecoraro getting slapped and told, "Get out!"
-the Lutzes moving out after 28 days
-flies on the wall
-blisters on the priest's hands
-blackened toilet bowls
-oozing slime on the walls
-waking up every night at the time of the DeFeo murders
-George chopping wood because he can't get warm
-Kathy levitating in bed
-the crucifix on the wall turning upside-down

Whew! I've got a good memory, but I'm sure you recall some of those same details. That's how we remember stories -- we string together strong details. I think this particular cloud of details is so potent it has lasted, and will last for years to come. You see, the devil is in the details. No residents of 112 Ocean Ave. have reported anything unusual since the Lutzes left. But they have changed the windows into rectangles. And the address has been altered to keep away curious tourists.

A CHUNK OF HELL

2011-03-22T10:26:00.003-05:00

Here's the cover we're using for the bonus prequel to my upcoming novel, PITCH DARK. The story is a pulp weird tale written by one of the characters. It triggers all the events in the book. I had a great time writing it. Makes me wish I lived in the old Pulp Era. But, hey, maybe I'm living in the new one? Soon I'll have links where people can download "A Chunk of Hell" for free. Free! Free!

Used & Abused: The Color Out of Time

2011-03-21T08:27:00.003-05:00

Michael Shea wrote one of my all-time favorite short stories, "The Autopsy." It's a smart, beautifully constructed, and frightening portrayal of alien invasion on an individual scale. He is also the author of perhaps my favorite Lovecraftian sequel, The Color Out of Time. This short novel, first published in 1984, is a continuation of Lovecraft's famous tale, "The Color Out of Space," which described the horrific effects of a meteor crash on a farm and the unleashing of a strange pervading alien intelligence. Shea's story brings the "creature down the well" into modern times. Set at a campground on the shores of a lake, above the flooded remains of the farm, the story's heroes are two retired professors and the artist sister of one of the camp's rangers. Shea brings the creeping terror with both hands. His prose is exquisite, conveying awestruck horror and gruesome violence equally well. I love this book and have reread it many times. I find an odd comfort in Lovecraft's universe of elder gods and mind-bending creatures from other dimensions. In many ways, Shea exceeds Lovecraft at his own game. Fans of horror/science fiction/fantasy will find plenty to enjoy here. "Vacationers in peril from monsters" is a horror genre cliche, but you've never read one like this. Pour yourself a whiskey, throw a log in the fireplace, and open this book. I highly recommend it.

Men's Adventure Novels: Edge #1, The Loner

2011-03-10T21:01:00.003-06:00

When I was a kid, my father knew a retired railroad detective who was dying slowly of cancer. This detective spent his time in his basement with a huge collection of guns and knives, some of which were highly illegal. He even had a grenade launcher. Well, Dad and I would occasionally visit to shoot the bull (I didn't really say anything, I just listened). And after each trip to the basement the detective would hand me a box of paperbacks. He spent a lot of the time he had left reading. And through him I discovered my first Lawrence Block, Ed McBain, and Charles Willeford novels. But early on the books of his I loved most were the Men's Adventure Novels. The Executioner, The Destroyer, and Max Allan Collins' Nolan series were favorites. I could read one or more in a day. I felt such excitement picking a new paperback out of the box. They were, in hindsight, totally inappropriate for a kid who just hit his teens. But in another way, the timing couldn't have been more perfect. My parents wouldn't let me see an "R" rated movie, but I could read anything I got my hands on. I read my first Westerns from those boxes. And none came badder than George G. Gilman's Edge series. They were spaghetti westerns in print form. Gilman was a pseudonym for Terry Harknett, one of the Piccadilly Cowboys (a group of UK pulp western writers). The Edge books were hyperviolent and hypersexual -- just what a hyper kid needed. What I remember most was Edge's complete outsider status. Book #1 was titled The Loner. Edge was an anti-hero, a half-breed sociopath, and an existentialist man apart. Like his cinematic counterparts, he stood the genre on its head and added a layer of grit, grease, and gore. I read dozens of books from each of those series, but every time I got a new box from the detective, I'd always dig for an Edge.

Altered States

2011-03-03T15:36:00.003-06:00

I'm a big fan of Body Horror. David Cronenberg is undoubtedly the king of the genre. He pretty much created it, and he certainly popularized it (Shivers, The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, eXistenZ, etc.). I love 'em all. But director Ken Russell did a fine job in 1980 with William Hurt's film debut, Altered States. Let's start with the opening shot of Hurt floating in a steampunk-ish tank, followed by the sliding title sequence. Really cool. But I'm a sucker for a good title sequence. The sound in this movie is excellent, and quality sound really does make a horror movie. Sound builds tension. Images release the tension. Another thing I like about this movie: it's a genre blender. It's science fiction. It's horror. But it's also a love story wrapped in an adventure story. Only the adventure is inward bound. Hurt plays a brilliant scientist who drinks a hallucinogenic mushroom soup down in Mexico and experiences a mind-altering trip back to the origins of human consciousness. Peachy keen! So he takes the soup back to his Harvard lab and experiments with it in his isolation tank. Every time I see this flick, I want one of those tanks. The score of this movie is creepy. And there's a great ensemble cast including Blair Brown, Bob Balaban, and Charles Haid. The film has a gritty realistic look, which always helps when you're going to introduce a lot of weirdness. That's exactly what Altered States does. Now the movie isn't perfect. The dialogue sounds pretentious -- but hey, they're Harvard professors! And the overly serious mumbo jumbo about finding the Truth comes across as silly. But there's a really infectious energy going on here, too. I want to be a part of this pseudo-scientific research project. Luckily, the movie doesn't spend too much time explaining the science part, because that's the weak link. The atmosphere and effects are genuinely frightening. Hurt's mad scientist, determined to explore humankind's ancestral self despite the risks to his transmogrifying body, provides the thrills. It's more intriguing than a bunch of high school hotties running from a madman with an ax (not that I'm knocking madmen with axes). Altered States overreaches, but it does so with gusto and visual zest. If psychedelic fringe science run amok is your thing, revisit this classic. Get naked and devolve!

Bookclubbing, we're bookclubbing

2011-03-01T09:03:00.002-06:00

Great news! Pitch Dark has been picked up by the Book of the Month Club, Mystery Guild, Science Fiction Book Club, and Quality Paperback Book Club.

This is the Zodiac speaking . . .

2011-02-28T08:01:00.003-06:00

During his reign of terror in the late '60s and early '70s, the Zodiac killer attacked three couples in Northern California, killing one man, severely wounding two, and murdering all three women. He also shot and killed a San Francisco cabbie. In total, five people dead. He may have killed more, though the facts aren't clear. But the fascination of the Zodiac killer is not based on body count. It's based on terror. Like Jack the Ripper and the Son of Sam, the Zodiac sent letters and taunted the police. He captured the public's imagination. He made threats about bombs and killing children on a school bus. He also falsely claimed murders he did not commit, perhaps in an effort to confuse authorities or to build up his image and gather more attention. He liked being a media star. He mailed cryptograms peppered with cultural references and purposeful misspellings (only one of the ciphers, the first, was broken). He designed a costume. He changed murder weapons and patterns. He was a thrill killer. A sexual sadist. A keen manipulator. He had intelligence. He was a planner. A game player. And he was never caught. Other infamous serial killers (BTK and the Green River Killer come to mind) lost their horrific auras when the sad, twisted, bland men behind those monikers came into the light. They'd gotten lucky in pursuing their compulsive dark blood fantasies, they evaded the cops, then their luck changed and some combination of DNA and egotism betrayed them and they were caught. Not so with Zodiac. Robert Graysmith makes a compelling argument that Arthur Leigh Allen was Zodiac. The circumstantial evidence against Allen is staggering. But DNA, fingerprints, and handwriting excluded Allen, though the validity of the DNA, fingerprints, and handwriting analysis used to exclude is also debatable. Graysmith's first book, Zodiac, is an excellent study of the case. This Is the Zodiac Speaking: Into the Mind of A Serial Killer by Michael D. Kelleher and David Van Nuys is worth reading as well. Zodiac inspired the movie villain Scorpio in Dirty Harry. David Fincher's beautiful and entertaining film, Zodiac, follows Graysmith's growing obsession with the case and the toll it took on those whose lives were entwined with the crimes. Tom Voigt's website Zodiackiller.com is a treasure trove of information, though Voigt's strong opinions and personality may rub some people the wrong way. Like his predecessor, Jack the Ripper, Zodiac has become a cultural icon. We know the shadow and not the man, the crimes but not the identity of the criminal. He killed and he vanished. He scares us because he is an enigma, an avatar of evil. He was smart, cruel, and powerful. He did what he wanted to do and he got away with it. No closure. We don't have him, so he has us. I suspect he always will.

UFO: Kecksburg '65

2011-02-25T18:01:00.006-06:00

A fireball streaks across the sky and over Lake Erie. Hundreds of witnesses in multiple Great Lakes states and Canada report the sighting. Traveling southeastward, the object crashes in the woods near the small town of Kecksburg, about thirty miles from Pittsburgh. Local citizens, reporters, and emergency responders, thinking a plane has crashed, instead encounter a large and almost immediate US military presence in the area of the crash. A few witnesses get close enough to see broken trees, smoke, and flashing blue lights. Local news director, John Murphy, photographs the downed object and tape-records eyewitness statements. The area is cordoned off. Later that night, a military truck leaves the woods, carrying an acorn- or cone-shaped object about the size of a Volkswagen on its flatbed. Several people notice strange symbolic writing around the edge of the object. The military insists nothing crashed in the woods; later they say a meteor landed. In 2005 NASA will claim the object was a Russian satellite. John Murphy puts together a radio documentary about the incident. Before the show can air, he's visited by two men. He turns over some of his tapes and he edits his documentary to reveal no new information to the public. Afterward, he refuses to discuss the incident. He's killed by a hit-and-run driver while vacationing in California.

Used & Abused: Don't Call Me Shirley

2011-02-23T09:12:00.005-06:00

Most of my favorite horror short story writers have connections to the state of California. Fritz Leiber, Richard Matheson, Richard Laymon, Michael Shea, Dennis Etchison, Clive Barker, David J. Schow, John Shirley . . . I don't know what it is exactly, but there's an energy, a friction that really throws off sparks. And for all the variety in their voices, each of these writers transmits a vibe that cuts to the bone and scares me. I read a ton of horror stories, and I forget most of them. One of the truest tests of quality is how long a story burns in your memory. In my case, the record for memory-burns in one collection is a tie between Dennis Etchison's Dark Country and John Shirley's Black Butterflies. Shirley's voice is his and his alone. He possesses a rawness, an edge, and the ability to shock a reader into and out of reality with a sentence or two. He's crude, gross, funny, and erotic. He mines the kinky druggy outcast fringes. His work is both surreal and hyper-real. The best thing about him? I believe everything he writes. I'm there in the bedroom or on the street, side-by-side with his characters, and when the pain, horror, weirdness, and violence hits -- I feel it in my gut. Don't mistake pure power for a lack of skills. Shirley is a stark craftsman who packs more punch into less space than most poets, and because his characters often use the language of the streets it's easy to forget who's feeding them their lines. Black Butterflies contains between its covers my favorite crime story, a tale of two dirty cops, called "War and Peace." You'll also find the most visceral, claustrophobic tale of a natural disaster, "Cram," and trippy shapeshifting gems like "Pearldoll" and "Aftertaste." John Shirley gets inside your head and messes you up. Try him and see if you don't get hooked.

The Day The Music Died

2011-02-18T11:55:00.004-06:00

Bon Scott (7/9/46 - 2/19/80). His voice cut through everything. Nobody did it better. See Exhibit A. Remember him this weekend.

In Search Of . . . 'Squatch

2011-02-17T08:57:00.004-06:00

The most famous image of a Sasquatch comes from the Patterson-Gimlin film shot in 1967. Many people today think that film has been debunked as a hoax. Not true. For a thorough explanation of the authenticity question, and a debunking of the debunkers, see the excellent Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) website. As she told NPR, Dr. Jane Goodall believes the creatures exist. If they do, what exactly are we talking about? We're NOT talking about a single creature who roams the globe. We're talking about a population of thousands. And in the case of the creature known as Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Skunk Ape, Swamp Ape, or Skookum here in North America -- we're talking about a large, hairy, bipedal primate, who's likely nocturnal and who roams the North American wilderness. On the surface, the claim appears absurd. Why haven't we killed or captured one? Why haven't we found remains? Good questions. But the next time you're up in a plane, look down at all the land unpopulated by humans. There's a lot. There's even more up in Canada. Bigfoot sightings concentrate in areas where human populations rub against the wild. Evidence of a creature resembling the Bigfoot is abundant in Native American histories. The "hairy man of the woods" is a recurring character in folklore worldwide. His iconic figure strikes a chord in our collective memory. False sightings (of bears, wolves, moose, even backpackers) outnumber the unexplained. But many credible encounters happen. The ultimate answer will only come with DNA and video evidence, or the discovery of a body, living or dead. Here's a recent thermal video shot in North Carolina. It's not definitive by any stretch, but it is intriguing. Best thing about it: the creature was reaching for a Zagnut bar.

Not the bees! My eyes! My eyes!

2011-02-13T18:51:00.009-06:00

In the summertime, I like to grill outside. I'm not a gas griller. I use charcoal and an old Weber, so it takes me a few minutes to get things going, and I have time to sit on the deck and contemplate while my briquettes are burning. A couple summers ago while engaging in wistful contemplation, I noticed what I would call an unusual number of bees flying around my head and neck area -- all around the deck, actually. So I did some keen observation and saw, much to my alarm, that bees were coming and going from a small hole in the ground next to my well window. I didn't appreciate that. I have kids and didn't want them running into a stream of bees while they were minding their own business, rolling in the grass, or jumping up and down and yelling for no good reason (my son does this). So I went into the garage and got my can of Raid and sprayed the bee tunnel. Problem solved. Not so fast there, Steve. The next night I noticed what I would characterize as more bees. I got my can of Raid and emptied it into the hole. I'm not proud to admit I might have uttered "Die, bees! Die!" while I spritzed their honey hotel. The bees did not die. In fact, they seemed to flourish on vaporized poison. Fast forward two days. A very bee-y evening. Most of the little worker bees were out gathering nectar, or what have you, and Hurricane Steve decided to destroy their beetropolis. I stuck a garden hose into Bee Hollow and let her rip. I cooked some cheeseburgers and felt very satisfied with my twilight sneak attack. Then the bees came home from work. They were not happy. They saw a guy in a tank top with a spatula in his hand (me) and decided he was a big jerk. Now I can't say if it was a "swarm" that attacked me, but it was close. Yet I would not be deterred. I ran into my garage, put on my jean jacket, and grabbed a broomstick. I went back into the yard and in the "fog of war" I jammed my broomstick repeatedly and furiously into the beehole. Now all you Little Leaguers at home listen up. Never, never, never jam your broomstick into a beehole. During the course of my crazed butter-churning frenzy of mud, blood, and bees, I lost my sweaty grip on the broomstick and it vanished into the beehole. The ENTIRE broomstick. I got on my knees and peered into the darkness and saw nothing. But I heard them -- the angry angry bees. I was in over my head, I realized. And I ran screaming like a little girl with skinned knees back into the house. Later, I went to my computer and did some research. Turns out my bees weren't bees at all. They were yellowjackets, which are actually wasps. Huh. The science goes like this: yellowjackets don't build their underground nest in the same place two years in a row. You can kill them with powdered poison. If they were going to leave, I decided I wouldn't go to war with them. Which brings me to my point: The Swarm. It was a 1978 Irwin Allen disaster film about killer bees, starring Michael Caine and a cavalcade of stars (Richard Widmark! Fred MacMurray! Patty Duke!). Well, the film was a bomb. Michael Caine regards it as the worst movie he's ever been in. But I'm here to tell you different. The Swarm is a B-movie lover's delight (Richard Chamberlain! Olivia de Havilland! Henry Fonda! And, yes, Slim Pickens!). I remember this movie well because my parents wouldn't let me see it in the theater, so instead I read the novel it was based on, which was written by Arthur Herzog (he also wrote the best killer whale revenge movie of all time, Orca). Later I caught the TV-edited version. Now I hear rumors The Swarm might be remade. I say go for it. But might I suggest a title change? What about: The Yellowjackets in the Hole in the Ground?

Cartomancy

2011-02-10T08:27:00.007-06:00

When I was writing The Mirror's Edge, I did a bit of research on tarot cards, including famous (or infamous) decks such as the Rider-Waite or Aleister Crowley's Thoth deck. Boy, there's a ton of reading out there if you want to get into the iconography and symbolism of tarot, a subject that's been plumbed by everyone from Carl Jung to Timothy Leary. My personal experience with tarot is limited (never had a reading, never wanted one), but the symbology fascinates me. My favorite card is probably the Fool. Typically the Fool is seen on a precipice, dancing on the edge, unafraid. He's the Jester, the "wild card." He's Heath Ledger's Joker. Reckless, creative, living in the moment, but also hedonistic, Dionysian, and unpredictable. He's the party animal. His number is zero. He's an idiot, a dunce, or he just may be the wisest man in the room. HR Giger's amazing and disturbing (would it be anything else?) tarot deck is now sadly out-of-print. He depicts the Fool getting a lap dance, wearing headphones, with a shotgun in his mouth. Beyond him lies the precipice. If you're looking for tarot-influenced fiction, Tim Powers' brilliant, genre-blending novel, Last Call, uses intricate tarot imagery to decode a world of crime, violence, occult magic, and high-stakes poker. As Cuba Gooding Jr's dad tried to tell us, "Everybody plays the fool sometimes . . ."

Used & Abused: Some Of Your Blood

2011-02-09T08:30:00.005-06:00

In my Used & Abused posts I shine a light on older books that made a difference in my reading/writing life, or books that have come out more recently but might've slipped under your radar. Now in a perfect world, I wouldn't have to introduce anyone to Theodore Sturgeon because his name would be as well known as JD Salinger or John Steinbeck. But we don't live in a perfect world. It might be better if more people read Sturgeon. He writes cleanly, economically. His prose is something to be admired -- like a well-built piece of furniture. He's a true craftsman, and it shows (mostly by not showing at all). This guy can squeeze your heart like no other. He has a keen eye for describing human cruelty and the inner workings of the outsider. But the best thing about Sturgeon is his uncanny ability to get the reader to empathize. We could use more empathy (and less reality TV). If you don't know Sturgeon, fear not. His works are brisk and, on the surface, quite simple. He's probably better known for his short stories and his science fiction novels (More Than Human, The Dreaming Jewels, Venus Plus X). But I'd like to recommend his sort-of-horror novel, Some Of Your Blood, which is an examination of psychopathology and, perhaps, vampirism. The form of the novel is a case study, a group of letters from the file of a soldier in a military psychiatric hospital. By reading the file, you become yet another forensic investigator perusing the shocking evidence of AKA George Smith's actions. This book sneaks up on you, and it lingers in the mind. I like that. Hell, you can't miss with Sturgeon. After all, he wrote the story "Killdozer!".

Those Weren't Indians

2011-02-08T08:50:00.003-06:00

In my last post I mentioned JT Petty. He wrote and directed one of the best Weird Westerns I've seen: The Burrowers. It's a Lovecraftian mix of downright nasty, underground-dwelling, killer creatures and a good old-fashioned "find the girl" Western plot. The film looks authentic and takes its task seriously (which I admire, and which is sorely lacking in most of today's horror films). If you don't take your movie seriously, how am I supposed to? Call me crazy, but I go to a horror movie hoping to get scared, shocked, or disgusted. And The Burrowers does all three. The acting is solid all around. The story actually has structure and isn't a strung together series of prepackaged one-liners, dizzying camera shots, and overblown special effects (Jonah Hex, you hear me?). The ending lacks a little oomph. But I enjoyed the ride getting there. Tell your Ma to fire up some Jiffy Pop, because it's a good'un.

Beyond The Pale

2011-02-07T15:47:00.002-06:00

Not too long ago I was driving in the middle of the night through the back highways of Wisconsin, when I caught an old-time radio drama called Escape. William Conrad of Nero Wolfe and Jake and the Fat Man fame (he'll always be Cannon to me), did a great performance of Leiningen Versus the Ants. Well, one of my favorite movie directors, Larry Fessenden, has a great new collection of "Radio Plays for the Digital Age" over at Tales From Beyond the Pale. Fessenden is the man behind such indie horror flicks as Habit, Wendigo, and The Last Winter. These original macabre stories come from the talented pens of Sarah Langan, JT Petty, Paul Solet, and Fessenden himself, among others. The recordings are high quality and tons of fun, and the actors are no slouches either (Ron Perlman, Vincent D'Onofrio, Doug Jones . . .). At $1.99 an episode, how can you wrong? Get the creeps right in your ears!

People Are Strange

2011-02-07T09:22:00.003-06:00

You and I both know how weird things are. So let's calm down and sort through the weirdness together, okay? Do you like books and movies? Hey, me too! What I really dig are stories in all formats that make me reassess my view of reality, or just plain scare me till I go sideways and crab-walk out of the room. Words are important. So are images. Life is a great big plate of huevos rancheros after a night of too much whiskey and beer. So loosen your belt, put your mirror shades on, and let's take a trip to the darkside, flipside, dirty underside, and see what we shall see.