Category Archives: Monsters

Malignant Is The Long Island Iced Tea Of Horror Films

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I spent some time as a bartender about 20 years ago. It was something I trained for, and I even got a certification in Mixology. During the two-week course I learned many different formulas for many different cocktails, some more exacting than the others. One of the least exacting, if not THE least, was the Long Island Iced Tea.

The general rule was to pour a big glass of sweetened iced tea, and then just dump a bunch of whiskey, vodka, rum, gin, tequila, or whatever else you happened to have lying around into it. As long as the tea was sweet enough to dominate the flavor palate, it really didn’t matter what sort of brain-melting, toxic brew you added to the glass.

Every time I prepared this drink for a customer, or ordered it for myself, the goal was never anything more or less than to get super f’n drunk. By and large, the Long Island Iced Tea accomplished this goal even if the flavor sensors had no real idea what to make of the elixir that had just been inflicted upon them. The sensation I felt while watching Malignant on HBO Max was very similar.

I’m going to get into big time spoilers below, so consider this your warning.

Director James Wan is most well known for his part in creating the “Conjuring Universe” and played no small part in the wave of small-budget-but-legitimately-good horror films beginning when he directed the first Saw movie. Yes, he also direct a Fast And Furious film and Aquaman, but his calling card remains these smaller films. When one hears that Wan was making a move called Malignant, one can’t help but group them in with his other films The Conjuring and – more specifically – Insidious. But, much like the first 30 minutes of this film, that is merely a smokescreen. Malignant is the Long Island Iced Tea of horror films, because it is a mash-up of at least three different types of horror movies.

The first act of the film plays like a ghost story, which is well-tread ground for Wan and his creative team. There is a prologue at a spooky asylum not dissimilar to a haunted castle. There is our main character, Madison, whose abusive husband is murdered by a shadowy figure that moves in seemingly impossible ways. The lights in her house begin flickering once she returns from the hospital after her own injuries are healed. And she begins seeing specters out of the corner of her eye. All traditional ghost movie tropes.

But the second act changes things. As more people are murdered, and these people have a common link to the asylum in the prologue, we can clearly see a physical entity is brutally killing them. Madison begins receiving threatening phone calls from a mysterious person who calls himself “Gabriel” at which time you, as a viewer, may begin to understand that this was not a ghost story. My interpretation at the time was that Gabriel was a psychic projection that Madison was unwillingly harboring. And, so I begin watching the movie more as a Jekyll & Hyde story than a ghost story. At this point, my interest was piqued, as there had been far fewer Jekyll & Hyde adaptations than ghost movies in the past decade or two. But that also only lasts for another 30 or 40 minutes before Malignant takes on its Final Form.

Act Three begins with Madison being arrested for the murders when a mysterious woman falls through her ceiling while she’s being interviewed by police detectives. This surprises her as much as any them or her sister, Sydney, who has been doing her best to help Madison cope with all the craziness. Madison is taken into custody, and locked inside a holding cell with fifteen or twenty other people. While a few of them being to smack her around, Sydney makes her way to the creepy asylum to grab Madison’s old medical files. Turns out, Madison was born “Emily” and committed to the asylum by her teenaged mother – the mysterious woman who Gabriel/Emily took captive and fell through the ceiling. And this is where the viewer hits the bottom of his first Long Island Iced Tea, and orders up another.

Turns out that Gabriel is real, he was a tumor/conjoined twin attached to Madison/Emily’s back who shared a brain with her and made her do bad things. Gabriel/Emily also has some sort of psychic power that explains how he can speak through phones and radios, and blow up the lightbulbs in the house. But wait, there’s more!

As revealed from old VHS tapes that Sydney finds, the doctors from the prologue – who Gabriel was murdering – performed a surgery where they removed Gabriel’s underdeveloped arms, legs, torso, and most of his head from Emily’s body. This is shown in an extremely gruesome montage. The problem was that, due to them sharing a brain, there was just a little bit of Gabriel’s face remaining on the back of Emily’s head. So, naturally, the doctors pushed that little bit into Emily’s skull, and somehow that left Gabriel in a dormant state until Emily/Madison’s husband cracked a wall with her head at the beginning of the film.

“That’s pretty nuts,” you might be thinking. And you’d be right, but you’d be wrong to assume that it couldn’t possibly get even more nuts when they finally show us the full transformation – werewolf movie style! While taking a beating in the holding cell, Gabriel (or what little is physically left of him) physically emerges out of the back of Emily/Madison’s skull. Gabriel, now in-control of the body, then snaps all of his (their?) limbs backwards to fall in-line with his face (more or less). So, now everything he does is contorted and in-reverse, which makes for quite the discombobulated viewing experience. After that brief foray into Cronenbergian body horror, Malignant becomes a Terminator or Predator movie in the home stretch.

Gabriel somehow has super-strong-backward-murder-ninja skills. How, or why, is not discussed or frankly relevant once you’ve gone this far into this batsh*t insane movie. Much like after chugging that Long Island Iced Tea, you’re now fully along for the ride, and there’s not much you can do about it. Gabriel slaughters the twenty people in the holding cell, breaks out, and then murders the twenty cops left in the police station with fairly minimal effort. Now, when I say “slaughter” and “murder” I want to be clear that these killings are both balletic and bloody. Much of the stunt work was done by a contortionist, and that honestly makes me appreciate the film more than if it had all be CGI. But Gabriel is a whirling dervish of a murder machine, and the fight scenes in the holding cell and police station are amongst the most original and visceral that have come along in quite some time.

Gabriel is eventually stopped when he tries to kill Sydney and Emily/Madison’s mother and Emily/Madison re-takes control of her body. She then locks Gabriel away in her mind, presumably until he’s needed for the eventual sequel where he’ll probably be used as more of an anti-hero. Which, by the way, is a movie I would definitely sign up for. Although, in another never-explained revelation, Gabriel was apparently feeding on the life energy of Madison’s unborn children, causing her to have several miscarriages, so maybe “anti-hero” is not really in his future.

Like the morning after a Long Island Iced Tea bender, you may not know what the hell happened in Malignant, but you’ll somehow know that you had a fun time. The benefit that the film has over the bender, though, is that it will surely return you home, safe and sound. You’ll also probably have less of a hangover.

Taking A Nostalgic Stroll Down Fear Street

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SPOILER WARNING – This blog post contains massive spoilers for Netflix’s Fear Street Trilogy (1994, 1978, 1666)

I was fifteen-years-old in 1994, and I loved horror movies. I still do, but back then I was still in the process of discovering the classics and mainstays. I believe I had already seen most of the Friday The 13th, Nightmare On Elm Street, and Halloween films. While I was still a year or two away from going back further to things like Universal Horror classics, and Hammer Horror franchises. It was around this time (1996) that the first Scream movie took it upon itself to deconstruct elements from a very specific type of horror movie: The slasher flick.

It was actually Scream that made me go back and find the deeper catalogue of slasher flicks like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Prom Night, The Burning, Sleepaway Camp, Terror Train, The Funhouse, Madman, and the like. Scream then begat a era of similar movies that featured teenagers in some half-winking, slashery situations such as I Know What You Did Last Summer, Disturbing Behavior, Urban Legends and, of course, numerous Scream sequels. But it was only a few years after Scream when I lost interest in slasher flicks, and that was due in large part to the fact that I was no longer a teenager myself. As such, I wasn’t really finding the lives (or deaths) of the characters especially relatable. So, I went off and expanded my horror movie palate in different directions.

But Netflix was very clever in their approach to casting out the widest possible net for their Fear Street Trilogy. Yes, the core characters are teenagers in-peril. But they are teenagers in the year 1994, and then in the year 1978, and then way back in 1666. Much like Netflix’s other retro hit Stranger Things before it, Fear Street ropes in viewers from my generation with nostalgia, while also appealing to the current crop of teenage viewers with teenage character who aren’t so very different than they are – even with 20+ years of history between them. However, unlike Stranger Things, Fear Street is very much R-Rated horror. Fortunately, for teenagers of today, no one is carding them on the way into the theater (give or take a Parental Lock Password). Personally, having been a teenager in the 90’s, while also watching slasher films of the 80’s and 70’s, Fear Street managed to double-hook me in.

But here’s where things get more interesting – The first entry, Fear Street: 1994, opens with a famous young actress being murdered in a mall by a masked killer. Which was very Scream of them. But, rather than playing the long game of “who is the killer and when will they strike next” the killer is immediately unmasked and shot by the local sheriff. So, Scream basically plays out in the first ten minutes of the movie.

Through the rest of FS: 1994, more killer are revealed. And these killers are very much supernatural in-nature. This first film lays out some details about a supposed curse over the town of Shadyside placed on it by a witch named Sarah Fier, wherein a person is possessed every decade or so, and goes on a killing spree. We are introduced some previous killers with effectively creepy character designs who were possessed in prior decades, as they rise from their graves. More specifically – they rise from a giant, gooey, black heart that resides in a cave beneath the town to kill anyone who sees a vision of Sarah Fier. In this case, the unfortunate target is Sam, who had the lousy luck to bleed in the wrong place, which triggered a connection to Sarah Fier.

The evil is seemingly defeated by the end of FS: 1994, at the very gory cost of the primary heroines’ friends’ lives. But then there’s a hook at the end: Sam becomes possessed in much the same way as the killer from the beginning of the movie, leaving her girlfriend Deena, and Deena’s brother Henry, to try and save her soul. It’s a cliffhanger much like you’d have seen in almost every Friday The 13th, Nightmare On Elm Street, Halloween, or any other slasher franchise. Happily, I only had to wait for a week – rather than a year or two – to see the next installment.

This was another part of the brilliance of Netflix’s release strategy. The same sort of near-instant gratification they offer by dropping entire seasons of TV shows at one time is emulated, only with movies. The story arc of Deena, the possessed Sam, and Henry actually forms a framing device around the next two movies. Yet another clever trick used by Writer/Director Leigh Janiak, and her creative team, to ensure viewers stay invested through all three movies.

Fear Street: 1978 begins in 1994, with our protagonists tracking down Ziggy, who was the lone survivor of the previous Shadyside massacre at Camp Nightwing back in 1978. This then launches us back to the year 1978, where we see how that all played out. Ziggy, the local “weird girl” formed a very sweet bond on the last day of camp with popular boy (and future sheriff) Nick Goode just before all hell broke loose, ending with Ziggy’s sister (and many other campers and counselors) being slaughtered by another counselor after he is possessed.

FS: 1978 might be my favorite of the three films, since it doesn’t really need to do the heavy expositional lifting of FS: 1994 or handle the job of wrapping everything up like FS: 1666. It’s honestly the most straightforward installment, and it has the emotional advantage of offering a tragic ending of Ziggy watching her sister being murdered, while her sister watches Ziggy being stabbed and believing that she failed to save her. But Ziggy does survive. Well, technically, she’s brought back to life by Nick Goode performing CPR.

But that brings us back to 1994, where Deena and Henry ask a grown-up Ziggy where to find Sarah Fier’s severed hand. They had found Fier’s body back in FS: 1994 but, according to the legend, they needed to bury the hand with the body to end the curse. So, they retrieve the hand, and Deena goes to bury it with the body. But, much like Sam before her, Deena gets a nosebleed from being too close to Fier’s remains. Unlike Sam, Deena’s mind is actually swept all the way back to 1666, when the curse is said to have begun.

Fear Street: 1666 actually only spends about half of its runtime in 1666, where Deena sees the town as it was when it was still just a colonial village. The kicker is that she’s seeing it all through Sarah Fier’s eyes. The time spent is 1666 moves quickly to the point where horrors are unleashed upon the village due to someone’s deal with the devil. The films uses the cast from the previous two installments to fill out the roles of the villagers. In an ironic twist, the actors who play characters that survived the previous films are killed, while the actors who play characters killed in the previous films survive. It caps of with the first possessed killer slaughtering a chapel full of children, and cutting out their eyes (as well as his own) before he is killed by Sheriff Goode’s ancestor Solomon.

This being 1666, a witch hunt is promptly launched. Sarah and her secret beloved Hannah are accused by the town asshole after he was spurned by Hannah. Hannah is captured, but Sarah makes a run for it. She hides out at Solomon Goode’s home, as he’s always been kind to her, only to discover that Solomon is the one who cast a curse on the village in order to attain power. Sarah is recaptured by the lynch mob, and hanged from a tree after she promises Solomon that she will expose his evils one day. That day, as it turns out happens in 1994.

When we get back to 1994, Deena shares her new knowledge with Ziggy and Henry, that the Goode family has continued this deal with the devil for more than 300 years. Every decade or so, the eldest son of the family allows a townsperson to become possessed, and go on a killing spree. This casts every interaction between Ziggy and Nick from FS: 1978 into a very interesting new light. If there’s one complaint that I have about the Fear Street Trilogy, it’s that the emotional payoff between the adult version of Ziggy and Nick is never really explored. At any rate, the key to ending the curse is to kill Sheriff Goode. Now, Nick’s brother is the mayor of neighboring Sunnyvale, so killing Nick doesn’t really end the bloodline. But, considering Nick is the one who cast the curse in both 1978 and 1994, I guess that offers as much explanation as we’re going to get.

In the end, we’re brought back to the mall, where the undead previous killers attack again. But our heroes manage to survive using some interesting tricks they picked up in FS: 1994. Deena chases Sheriff Goode into the tunnels beneath the mall, which are the same tunnels that were formed way back when Solomon first made the deal, and cast the curse. A chase ensues that ends with Deena stabbing Sheriff Good through the eye, thus killing him and ending the curse. The giant, gooey, black heart in the caves shrinks down to nothing. The killers in the mall disintegrate. And Sam is freed from the possession.

If we hadn’t been given a proper conclusion at the end of this trilogy, I’m sure my opinion would have soured on it. Happily, that was not the case. I’ve never read any Fear Street books, or frankly any R.L. Stine at all. By the time those came along, I was already reading the likes of Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, and Dean Koontz. I’m sure this means that I missed some Easter Eggs throughout. But it also means that I can recommend the Netflix Fear Street Trilogy to anyone, even if they are also unfamiliar with the source material.

All the installments are highly entertaining, with barely an ounce of fat on them. So check them out now or, perhaps even better, add them to your list for Halloween season viewing. It’s been a long time since I enjoyed a new teen slasher flick, and I’m very happy to have now found three of them. Fifteen-year-old me would absolutely approve.

Godzilla vs Kong, Or Why Can’t Everyone Just Chill And Let Kong Do Kong?

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This will be my review of Godzilla vs Kong, so be warned that there will be spoilers-a-plenty below.

One thing that is not really a spoiler is that the movie is told primarily thought Kong’s perspective and he is, in every measurable way, the main protagonist of the film. The movie follows him around, and gives him the biggest story arc. While Godzilla shows up throughout the movie to do Godzilla things, it’s clear that Kong is the audience surrogate, which somewhat miraculously works really well. As such, I’ll be writing this review mainly through Kong’s perspective.

When we last saw Kong, it was was 1970’s, and he was left to his own devices on Skull Island. But thing have changed a lot since then, and we get some details about those changes through expository dialogue. As you may recall from Kong: Skull Island, there was a massive superstorm that surrounded the island, while never really making landfall. Apparently, that changed, and the storm began tearing up the island itself. In order to keep Kong safe for observation, Monarch (the Kaiju experts from previous Monsterverse films) built a giant dome around a section of Skull Island.

This makes sense in that Kong can remain, more or less, in his natural habitat while the scientists observe him. It would also be extremely dangerous to move Kong anywhere else where he might encounter humans, other potential collateral damage, or even threats. The biggest such threat would be the reigning, and defending, King of the Monsters World Heavyweight Champion: Godzilla. Old Zilla claimed the title by defeating King Ghidorah a few years prior, leading to many surviving Titans literally bowing to him at the end of Godzilla: King Of The Monsters. As the opening credits inform us via bits and pieces of news reports, Godzilla has been putting a whooping on any dissident Titans between the end of that movie and the beginning of this one.

Anyway, we see Kong’s morning routine of waking up, yawning, scratching his butt, taking a shower in a waterfall, and chatting with his best friend. His best friend happens to be a little girl with whom Kong communicates via sign language. But he’s no dope, he knows that he’s domed in, and makes his displeasure known by uprooting trees, twisting them into giant spears, and hurling those giant spears through the top of the dome. Clearly, he’s not happy about being kept in an enclosure like some zoo animal. All this aside, the little girl and her scientist mother do have Kong’s best interests at-heart.

Apex Industries, a mutli-billion-dollar tech company, have something else in-mind for Kong. To cut to the chase: Apex wants to be able to stand against Godzilla, and other Titans, by building one of their own: Mecha-Godzilla. Their creation is a technological marvel and nightmare, that is piloted using the psychic connection between two of Ghidora’s heads – which were conveniently available after his last tango with Godzilla. Essentially. Mecha-Godzilla requires a shit-ton of power to run, and Apex has located a source of seemingly limitless energy in the Hollow Earth.

Most people believe Hollow Earth is just a myth, as no one has successfully ventured there. But Apex enlists a disgraced expert on the subject, who’s brother died during the last attempt to reach Hollow Earth, to guide them to their destination. As it happens, the core of the Hollow Earth theory is that it is the origin point for all Titans, so they are able to sell the Monarch team on Skull Island on the idea that bringing Kong there is what’s best for the big fella himself. Allowing him to finally go back to his true home which, as it turns out, is pretty much Kong’s entire motivation through the film.

Next thing we know, Kong is heavily-sedated, and chained to a cargo freighter en route across the sea to Antarctica, where they believe the entrance to Hollow Earth can be found by following Kong following his genetic memory. They chart a course away from Godzilla’s usual territorial beat in hopes to avoid an incident. Naturally, said incident is not avoided at all. Godzilla attacks the boats, destroying most of them, before attempting to drown a drugged and chained Kong by capsizing the freighter. The scientists manage to free Kong, and allow him to fight back. But the ocean is Godzilla’s home field, so the already-groggy Kong can’t do much other than survive the fight before the remaining ships “play dead” in order to get Godzilla to leave them be.

Things are not going great for Kong, as he was dragged off his island, and across the ocean on a trip he does not want to take, and then jumped by Godzilla. This is the first of their three-round fight, but hardly counts since the playing field was far from even. It was more like the pro-wrestling angle where one guy cracks another guy from behind with a steel chair the week before their big pay per view match.

Team Kong arrives in Antarctica, where the big guy wakes up in the freezing cold, looking as miserable as can be. This is a sentiment that any reasonable person (or gargantuan ape) can equally relate to. The team gets Kong’s little girl buddy to tell him to go down the largest, darkest hole ever with the promise that he might find some family down there. Kong happily obliged as, if nothing else, it’s got to be warmer down there than is was outside. And, again, the poor guy really just wants to find a nice home to settle into. The scientists follow him, and end up in Hollow Earth.

Hollow Earth looks a lot like a much, much bigger Skull Island, and Kong looks to be happy for the first time in the movie. There are a few giant-bat-snake-monsters that attack the humans, but Kong easily takes them out. Therein lies, perhaps, the biggest different between Godzilla and Kong: Kong has people he actually cares for, and wants to protect, while Godzilla just wants to defeat every other Titan in order to remain the apex predator. Aside from Godzilla’s atomic blast breath, this mindset is probably Zilla’s biggest competitive advantage.

While in Hollow Earth, we also get glimpses of some other – less openly hostile – kaiju as Kong makes his way to his ancestral Kongston Abbey. He finds some ginormous doors to go through, a really cool glowing axe, and even a throne fit for a King (Kong). His ancestors seem to have been the rulers of Hollow Earth, and Kong makes himself at home. Finally, it seems that everyone will let Kong do Kong.

No sooner does he settle in, though, than Godzilla invades Hong Kong, where they are keeping Mecha-Godzilla. Kong, again, has no interest in fighting. But Godzilla is a real asshole through most of this movie, looking to pick fights with whomever might challenge his reign. Apex fits this description, but Kong just wants to kick back, and do his thing. Godzilla, however, pulls a major dick move and uses his atomic blast breath to blow a hole deep into the ground, and through the roof of Kongston Abbey. Leaving Kong no choice but to lay a smackdown of his own on the legendary lizard. With axe in-hand, Kong is able to put Zilla on his ass for a while, winning round two. Or, round one of their first legitimate fight, if you’re not counting Godzilla’s previous heel sneak attack.

Godzilla manages to get back to his feet again, but Kong is waiting to get the drop on him. It’s a pretty brutal fight, during which Kong looses his equalizing axe and, subsequently, the fight. Godzilla roars in his face to demand Kong surrender, but Kong bows to no one, and roars a big “Eff You!” right back at his opponent. But, the damage is already done, and Kong cannot continue the fight. So, Godzilla gives him a nod of begrudging respect, and takes his leave.

Unfortunately for everyone, Apex was sent a chunk of the Hollow Earth power source, and used it to send Mecha-Godzilla into overdrive. The influx of limitless energy kills the pilot, and seems to reawaken Ghidorah’s consciousness in Mecha-Godzilla. The Rumbling Robot takes to the streets of Hong Kong, and begins absolutely wiping the floor with Godzilla. Team Kong has noticed during all this, that Kong is dying. So, they use an energy burst from one of the high-tech ships they flew to Hollow Earth in to kickstart his heart.

So, the big fella wakes up, grabs his big axe, and is like “Cool, I’m alive. Let’s get back to that awesome new home you found me.” But then his little buddy is like “Hey, I know you just almost died from your fight with Godzilla, but we kinda need you to interject here, and save him from that gargantuan killing machine, who is currently dragging Zilla’s ass across the entire city. Okay?” At which point Kong is like “Are you friggin’ serious?” And his little buddy is like “Afraid so, big guy. You up for it?” And Kong sighs heavily before agreeing “Fine. Eff it. I’ll be right back.”

Kong fairs a bit better than Godzilla did, and they briefly turn the contest into a two-on-one match before Mecha-Godzilla reclaims the advantage. Remembering that his nuclear fire breath charged up Kong’s battle axe during their fight, Godzilla blasts the axe blade again. The blade glows with energy, and Kong then uses it to fully dismember Mecha-Godzilla. Kong manages to win the final boss battle of the movie, shaking up the rankings (rock-paper-scissors style) as Godzilla defeated Kong, Mecha-Godzilla defeated Godzilla, and then Kong defeated Mecha-Godzilla.

Even after all that, Godzilla gets back up, and roars with a “We gonna throw down again, brah?” Kong, deciding to be the bigger Titan, responds “Nah, we’re cool.” and drops his axe. At which point Godzilla turns around to swim back out to sea, and Kong returns to Hollow Earth where he can finally chill out in his throne room, and do things his way. His little buddy, her scientist mom, and the disgraced scientist are also shown hanging with Kong in his true natural habitat. So, in the end, everyone got what they wanted….aside from the several thousand people unlucky enough to have their city turned into a kaiju battlefield, and whomever ends up having to pay for the several trillion dollars in property damage.

In all seriousness, though, I really enjoyed this film. If what you want to see is Godzilla vs Kong, you’re gonna get your money’s worth. If you’re looking for something more than that, you may want to look somewhere else. I did watch this both on HBO Max, when it premiered, and a second time in a movie theater. If you’re feeling brave enough, and have a nice, comfy mask, I recommend seeing it on the big screen.

In fact, I liked all four Monsterverse movies. Godzilla (2014) was the most deliberately-paced, and most “real-world.” Kong: Skull Island was the most fun. Godzilla: King Of The Monsters was the biggest spectacle. And Godzilla vs Kong felt like the most personal. You may have a hard time believing that a film can put you in the giant shoes of a titanic ape but, if you’re curious about trying, you should absolutely see this movie.

Showdown In Screamtown: Frightful Four & Chilling Championship

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This is it, boys and ghouls!

Only four competitors, and two matches, remain for our semi-finals round.

The monsters who survive those matches will need to step back into the ring tonight so that our champion can be crowned.

Godzilla may be known as King of the Monster, but tonight we’re going to crown the World Heavyweight Champion of Monsters!

SEMI-FINALS MATCH ONE: DRACULA (1) vs PREDATOR (7)

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Predator has had some time to lick his wounds or, more accurately, pours that really unpleasant burning powder on them to expedite healing. But Drac, sensing weakness, wastes little time in transforming into Bat-Beast mode, and going right for the jugular (figuratively and literally).

He gets his fangs sunk in, but glowing green blood tastes a bit like the stuff inside of glow sticks to Dracula. This throws the vampire king off his game, allowing the hunter to become an intergalactic Van Helsing.

Predator thrusts his metal wrist-blades into Drac’s chest. Then with two big slashes, he uses the same weapon to take off Dracula’s head, and take his spot in our Main Event,

WINNER: PREDATOR (7)

 

SEMI-FINALS MATCH TWO: THE WOLFMAN (2) vs THE TERMINATOR (6)

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Even with just one useful leg and one arm (period) our resident Killing Machine is able to pound the taste out of the Wolfman’s mouth. However, unlike Leatherface, Wolfie heals up almost immediately and goes on the offensive.

The Howling Horror gets right to ripping and tearing wires and hydraulics out of every joint he can find. The cybernetic super punches eventually begin losing the power behind them, and the metal endo-skeleton is soon immobilized and rendered little more than a shiny lawn sculpture.

For the coup de gras, the Wolfman digs into the brain chip slot that has already been scratched and softened up in the previous rounds. Once that little piece of silicon is pulled free, it’s light out for the glowing red eyes of the Terminator. With a mighty howl at the moon, Wolfie charges into the championship match.

WINNER: THE WOLFMAN (2)

 

CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH: THE WOLFMAN (2) vs PREDATOR (7)

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And now we come to our Main Event! The final clash of terrifying titans that we’ve all been waiting for.

This one gets bloody quickly, soon turning into a true war of attrition. Both beasts scour, stab, and tear with claws, teeth, and blades as the ring becomes a lake of gore. After a ferocious battle, both combatants fall to their knees and drag themselves off to separate corners.

But there’s one thing that Predator didn’t consider. A twist that he should have seen coming: Only silver can kill a werewolf. So the Wolfman heals up, and rises back to his feet.

He doesn’t move in for the kill right away, as even the most bestial of creatures can recognize a worthy adversary. Predator returns the respect, knowing this has been his last hunt. He rises back to his feet, stands on shaky legs, and nods at his opponent. Wolfman dashes across the ring in the blink of an eye, and makes the kill quickly.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE WINNER AND NEWWWWWWWWW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF MONSTERS: THE WOOOOOOOOOLFMAAAAAAAAAAN!!!

I hope you enjoyed reading about this tournament as much as I enjoyed writing it. Maybe I’ll try to come up with something similar in the near-future.

In the meantime, Happy Halloween!

And don’t forget to pick-up my latest novel: What Lies At Baelwood Manor

 

Showdown In Screamtown Round Two: The Evil Eight

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It’s time for our mighty monsters to get back in the ring and square off once again to decide who is the baddest of them all!

This group of eight have survived and advanced through one brutal round, now let’s see if they have enough left to move onto the Frightful Four semi-final round.

MATCH ONE: DRACULA (1) vs THE THING (12)

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Top-seeded Dracula hasn’t had easy matchups in this tournament, first having to deal with the interdimensional horror of Pennywise, and now facing off with the cosmic terror of The Thing.

Thingie goes right to trick that helped him upset Jason V in Round One, this time taking on the shape of Drac’s long-dead love Elisabeta (for those who forget, in Bram Stoker’s Dracula the titular bloodsucker is super into Mina Harker because she is the reincarnation of he aforementioned Elisabeta). It’s all for nought, though, as Drac immediately sees through the charade, and he’s pretty pissed at his opponent for taking such a low blow.

The grandaddy of all vampires goes all-out, and starts tearing pieces off The Thing. This, of course, only creates more problems for Drac, as every piece he tears off now attacks him. He ends up reaching deep into his bag of tricks and calls upon the creature of the night in the neighborhood. After all the rats and wolves and owls tote every piece of Thingie out of the arena, Dracula is the one left standing in the ring.

WINNER: DRACULA (1)

 

MATCH TWO: THE WOLFMAN (2) vs PINHEAD (9)

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Our resident Cenobite is feeling irrationally confident, considering he defeated a little girl in Round One, but Wolfie doesn’t care about that. Pinhead tried to S&M his opponent to death, but every inflicted wound heals almost instantly.

The Wolfman start pulling every nail out of Pinny’s head with his claws and, suddenly, the match changes from a fight to something far sexier (at least as far as Pinhead is concerned). After turning Pinhead into Plain Old Head, Wolfie starts tearing chunks out of the senior hellraiser’s pale body.

Pinhead is loving every second of it. He’s long ago ceased fighting back and, by the time he’s lying on the ground moaning loudly, covered in blood and….other fluids…the ref stops the match. The ring crew are used to mopping up gore, but they didn’t really sign up for this. So Pinhead is politely, but firmly, asked to leave the arena immediately.

WINNER: THE WOLFMAN (2)

 

MATCH THREE: FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER (3) vs PREDATOR (7)

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This match is a completely different affair for both these guys. Predator faces off against the exact opposite of an inquiring scientific mind in The Creature, while Frank himself stands across from an enemy who – being unsure whether The Creature is a worthwhile hunt – doesn’t make the first move.

Eventually, Frankenstein’s Monster snarls and moves in for the attack, leading to Predator going invisible and stabbing away from all angles with his wrist-blades. Frank takes a lot of damage, but he’s able to take it in-stride until he gets his hands on P-Diddy. His tech takes the brunt of the attack, so the invisibility strategy doesn’t last much longer.

Frankie comes at the Big Game Space Hunter like a freight train, making the latter starts wishing that the nuke on his forearm wasn’t banned from the tournament (along with all firearms). Instead, he relies on his superior speed and agility to cut Frank down piece-by-piece. The Creature wants to continue but, seeing that his limbs are no longer functioning, the match is stopped.

WINNER: PREDATOR (7)

 

MATCH FOUR: LEATHERFACE (4) vs THE TERMINATOR (6)

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This would have been a quick win for the literal Killing Machine in round one, since a chainsaw isn’t much use against a cyborg. But the acid bath and claw massage that the Alien Queen gave him in Round One has left the T-800 in really rough shape.

Leatherface goes to work on the parts that are already damaged, and saws through the exposed gears and wires on every body part he can get at. With the Terminator on the ground, Leatherface really leans his chainsaw into the slot that hold’s his opponent’s brain chip. This ends up being a mistake for the Texas BBQ Master.

The inexplicably Austrian-accented robot manages to grab Leatherface by the throat with his lone functional hand, and snaps his neck with one good twist. He struggles to his feet, dragging one useless leg behind him, and gets that one remaining hand raised in victory.

WINNER: THE TERMINATOR (6)

 

That leaves our Frightful Four semi-finals bouts looking like this:

Dracula (1) vs Predator (7)

The Wolfman (2) vs The Terminator (6)

Since there’s only a grand total of three matches left, we’ll also cover our Chilling Championship match in the next post.

So tune in then to see who is left standing when the dust settles on the Showdown In Screamtown!

 

 

Showdown In Screamtown Round One: The Satanic Sixteen

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The competitors are in the arena.

The matches have been booked.

The introductions have been made.

The crowd is amped up and ramped up.

So, without further delay, let’s get ready to rumble!

MATCH ONE: DRACULA (1) vs PENNYWISE (16)

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A classic match-up of Old School Ghoul versus New School Ghoul. They would appear to be pretty evenly paired as far as physical strength goes, but it doesn’t take long for an old veteran to spot the upstart’s weakness.

The fact is that Pennywise’s power is predicated on fear, which is why he primarily hunts children. So, unless Pennywise can transform into a crucifix or a sunrise, Drac isn’t going to fear him very much.

Without being able to charge up on fear juice, the killer clown is just as doomed against one nosferatu as he was against seven preteens.

WINNER: DRACULA (1)

 

MATCH TWO: THE WOLFMAN (2) vs FRED KRUEGER (15)

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If this fight takes place purely in the real world, the Wolfman tears through Kruger as quickly as if the latter were nothing more than the slice of pizza that he resembles. But Fred is canny enough to find a way to take their battle into dreamland, where he’ll have home field advantage.

At this point, though, Fred runs into a similar problem as Pennywise did. He killed children in life and teens in post-life, and he was damn good at it. But Wolfie is a grown-ass man and his subconscious, where Krueger has found much success against insecure pubescents, has a grown-ass monster wolf prowling about in it. Old Freddy Knife-Fingers looses in both realms.

WINNER: THE WOLFMAN (2)

 

MATCH THREE: FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER (3) vs MICHAEL MYERS (14)

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Michael is far more aggressive, and has racked up a far greater body count that the Creature over the years. I mean, Frank would rather babysit a little girl than stalk and kill her babysitter and said-babysitter’s school chums.

So the murderous Shatner fanboy would come out swinging…or stabbing, I suppose. He’ll put a bunch of holes in the Creature, but Dr. Frankenstein knows how to construct a damn durable dude. It took a flaming collapsing windmill to put the Creature down once, and they had to explode a whole castle laboratory around him to stop him the second time.

Eventually, Capt. Boltneck will get fed up and toss Michael into the river like he was a little girl picking flowers.

WINNER: FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER (3)

 

MATCH FOUR: LEATHERFACE (4) vs ZOMBIE (13)

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In our shortest, and most lopsided, match of the night the zombie hungrily inquires “Brains?” to which Leatherface – thinking the undead a snob for only wanting to eat the caviar of the human body – fires up his chainsaw and promptly turns his opponent into rotten cold cuts.

WINNER: LEATHERFACE (4) 

 

MATCH FIVE: JASON VOORHEES (5) vs THE THING (12)

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Neigh-invulnerable and strong as hell, Jason would jump out on The Thing fast early on. He’ll be hacking and slashing his way to an early victory before Thingie figure our how to use his greatest strength to his advantage. In a stunning twist, it’s revealed that The Thing located Pamela Voorhees and absorbed her corpse prior to the match!

Since Jason is not one to chop up mama, he stops his attack. This allows all the pieces that JayJay already hacked off to attack him from all sides, leaving the primary mass of alien ass-kickery to finish the job. And, just like that, we have our first upset of the night!

WINNER: THE THING (12)

 

MATCH SIX: THE TERMINATOR (6) vs ALIEN QUEEN (11)

VS

With guns, the Terminator makes short work of our royal xenomorph. But, as laid out in our previous entry, no guns are allowed here, so the Austrian Android has to get down and dirty in this fight.

Queenie would scrape off much of Schwarzenator’s synthetic flesh with her claws but, as designed, the murder machine will keep coming after her. This one gets nasty, as Queen Xeno gets torn apart limb-from-limb. But she does nearly as much damage to the Terminator as her acid blood burns through flesh and metal alike.

In the end, the Bionic Bludgeoner finishes the job, but he’ll be in really rough shape for Round Two.

WINNER: THE TERMINATOR (6)

 

MATCH SEVEN: PREDATOR (7) vs BRUNDLEFLY (10)

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We’re rolling with the half-transformed Brundlefly here, so he’s still got much of his genius intellect intact. While one might think that’s an advantage here, it’s actually quite the opposite. Brundlefly has a very inquisitive mind, hence his ill-fated teleportation experiment, so he wouldn’t be able to resist asking Predator a million questions about his physiology, his homeworld, his likes and hobbies, and so forth.

The only reason Big P waits so long to tear out his opponent’s spine is because he’s not sure whether to actually consider him a threat. Ultimately, he decided that he may die of boredom if this continues, and so he adds a human/fly hybrid to his trophy collection.

WINNER: PREDATOR

 

MATCH EIGHT: REAGAN MACNEIL (8) vs PINHEAD (9)

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This is a tricky one because it’s entirely possible that Pazuzu – the demon possessing Reagan – is actually Pinhead’s boss. That aside, both take a keen interest in torturing poor Reagan and, as a result, Pinhead ends up victorious.

WINNER: PINHEAD (9)

And with that, our Round Two match-ups look like this:

Dracula (1) vs The Thing (12)

The Wolfman (2) vs Pinhead (9)

Frankenstein’s Monster (3) vs Predator (7)

Leatherface (4) vs The Terminator (6)

Tune in next time to see the results of Round Two: The Evil Eight!

Showdown In Screamtown: The Challengers

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With Halloween just around the corner, I’ve decided to dedicate a couple of blog posts to two of my favorite things: Horror Movies and Single Elimination Tournaments.

So, I’ve rounded up 16 of the greatest movie monsters of all-time, and decided to stick them in a series of one-on-one matches to determine who is the baddest of them all!

I’m calling this pay per view spectacular The Showdown In Screamtown.

In the instance of challengers with numerous incarnations throughout film history (Dracula, Wolfman, Frankenstein’s Monster, Zombie) I chose the versions who would be the most proficient in a straight-up fight.

I’m not that big of rules and regulations, so I’ll be playing pretty fast and loose with the matches themselves.

There were, however, some qualifying rules for entering the tournament. The most useful of these rules was placing   and weight limit on the combatants. Basically, if you can’t fit into a WWE-style wrestling ring, then you can’t compete. This rules out monsters like Cloverfield, Godzilla, King Kong, the Kraken, and any other kaiju. Sorry, big guys.

One other rule is that, since I want this to primarily be a hand-to-hand combat tourney, signature weapons are allowed except for firearms. In other words, Leatherface gets his chainsaw and Jason get a machete, but Terminator’s guns and Predator’s shoulder-mounted laser blaster are outlawed

The seeding was based on the first fights I’d be interested in seeing. I haven’t planned beyond Round One yet, so things will get pretty interesting pretty quickly.

From Round Two onward, the tournament will run according to Round Robin rules, with the highest remaining seeds taking on the lowest remaining seeds (1st seed vs 16th seed, 2nd seed vs 15th seed, etc).

With that in-mind, let’s meet our tremendously terrifying tournament titans:

1: Dracula (Bram Stoker’s Dracula – 1992)

Dracula is a no-brainer for the #1 seed here, as he’s been the inspiration for so many other monsters. I went with this version of Dracula because he showed a full arsenal of creeptastic powers, including control over night beasts like wolves and rats, mind control over people, de-aging himself, and the ability to transform himself into a big wolf-like thing and a big bat-like thing. Bonus points for the fact that he was still able to seduce Lucy while in wolf-like thing form, which takes mad skills.

2: The Wolfman (The Wolfman – 2010)

There are so many werewolves to choose from, but this one might be my favorite. He looks like a big bad wold ought to look, while still serving homage to the classic Lon Chaney Jr. wolfman. He can run on two legs or all fours, is strong as hell, fast as hell, and nasty as hell. You also have to give props for them getting Sir Anthony Hopkins and Benecio Del Toro to star in this film.

3: Frankenstein’s Monster (Classic Universal Film Series)

There were shockingly few semi-decent film incarnations of Frankenstein’s Monster (not to be confused the Frankenstein, the mad scientist who created him). But since this character probably inspired even more monsters than Dracula (a few even show up in this very tournament) he needed to be represented here. Several of the classic Universal monster films feature the Creature are great, though, so we’re rolling with old flat top here.

4: Leatherface (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Film Series)

The only fully human competitor who made the cut (so to speak) Leatherface deserves a lot of credit as he’ll be repping the whole human race essentially (I’d still take him over Trump). He’s a whirling dervish of a killing machine who can chop you to bits, then slow cook those bits into some mean BBQ.

5: Jason Voorhees (Friday The 13th Film Series)

To paraphrase DJ Khaled  “All he does is kill kill kill no matter what!” JayJay here is an early favorite for this type of challenge as he puts his SuperZombie skills on display in hopes of winning that championship belt! (Did I not mention there’s a championship belt? Cuz there is. There always is. And it’ll be pretty damn sweet).

6: The T-800 Model Terminator (The Terminator – 1984)

As mentioned earlier, the T-800 won’t have access to the plethora of guns he’s used through the course of five films (of varying quality), but don’t feel too sorry for him – he sure as shit won’t feel sorry for you when he tears your limbs off one at a time. He’s built from a highly durable steel alloy and was built exclusively to do what he’ll be doing here.

7: Predator (Predator Film Series)

The Big P was built for killing like the T-800, but he’s spent his entire life mastering the art of it. This guy might be looking forward to these fights more than any other combatant, as he loves nothing more than to test his skills against the most formidable of opponents. His shoulder-mounted laser blaster may be off-limits, but he’ll still be able to use his retractable wrist-blades and extendable spear.

8: Reagan Macneil (The Exorcist – 1973)

The little demon girl (literally, not figuratively) is less of a physical threat than most of the other challengers, but she’s spooky and running on devil diesel fuel. Her best gameplan might be to talk crazy smack until she gets into her opponent’s head and psyches then out into a making a mistake.

9: Pinhead (Hellraiser Film Series)

He’s iconic, so he had to make the list, but he’s really more into pleasure than pain – even if the specific pleasure is meant to be elicited from extreme, agonizing pain. But he’s all black leather and nails-in-the-face, so I expect he can hold his own in the ring.

10: Brundlefly (The Fly – 1986)

Mad scientist and monster all-in-one, so he’s got brains and brawn, Seth Brundle’s may have transformed himself into a horrifying and nauseating human-fly hybrid, but can he transform himself into a champion?

11: Alien Queen (Aliens – 1986)

Queenie just barely made our weight/size cut off, but she trimmed a few pounds and here she is! She royalty and the mother of horde of neigh-unstoppable apex predators, so she’s going to be a tough out for anyone,

12: The Thing (John Carpenter’s The Thing – 1982)

Thingie pushed right up against our size limit, as his final form is pretty massive, but we let him in. A master of deception who, when found out, can also bite your arms right off. This thing from another world has a chance to go deep in our tourney, but it all depends on what sort of shape he shows up in (cardio and otherwise).

13: Zombie (Return Of The Living Dead – 1985)

So many zombies to choose from, but we’re going with the ROTLD variety as they are the hardest to kill. Brain shots won’t stop them from munching on your brains. Hell, they had to nuke a whole town to stop them at the end of the movie. So he can take a beating for sure, the only question is whether he can deliver one.

14: Michael Myers (Halloween Film Series)

Michael could be interpreted as every bit as human as Leatherface, but he’s really running on some dark and unknowable evil drive. Six shots and a two-story fall didn’t finish him, so he’s a player. John Carpenter’s Halloween kicked off an entire sub-genre of slasher films – not unlike Romero’s zombies – but will that be enough to get his arm raised in victory?

15: Fred Krueger (Nightmare On Elm Street Film Series)

I’m going with “Fred” instead of “Freddy” because the character was a child murderer in life, and that disqualifies you from being on more familiar terms with me (JayJay only every killed teens, so I’m a little cooler with him). But Fred McMeltyFace has been haunting nightmares both on-screen and off for more than 30 years, so he’s primed and ready to get down and dirty.

16: Pennywise The Dancing Clown (IT – 2017)

A very recent addition to the pantheon of famous filmland monster, but a worthy one nonetheless. He does eat children, so he occupies the same pure heel position as Krueger, but the crowd always needs someone to boo! Still, he made one hell of an impression in one hell of a short period of time, so he’s coming in to Round One hot.

Round One Matches:

Dracula (1) vs Pennywise (16)

The Wolfman (2) vs Fred Krueger (15)

Frankenstein’s Monster (3) vs Michael Myers (14)

Leatherface (4) vs Zombie (13)

Jason Voorhees (5) vs The Thing (12)

The Terminator (6) vs Alien Queen (11)

Predator (7) vs Brundlefly (10)

Reagan MacNeil (8) vs Pinhead (9)

Check back next time to see the who managed to survive and advance the Round Two!

Stranger, Better Things

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A lot has already been written about the new Netflix show Stranger Things, so I’m not really going to take too deep a general dive into it here. Though I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention the overall strong writing, directing, musical score, set design and performances.

 

This show features a number of teen, and pre-teen, actors and not one of them annoyed me. In fact, I’d say each of their performances holds up nicely against some of the better actors of any age you’ll find out there. Millie Bobby Brown – who plays the enigmatically gifted Eleven – and Finn Wolfhard – playing classically geeky and goodhearted kid Mike – deserve special mention for carrying much of the burden for bringing the viewer back to that age where the world really started changing for them en route to young adulthood.

Stranger Things

Stranger Things

On the grown-up side of things, Winona Ryder gives a very nice performance as grieving mother Joyce, who spends much of the season bordering on insanity until she’s proven right. While David Harbour – who plays Chief Hopper – imbues the character with the sort of 1970’s-1980’s era of wry but steady masculinity defined by roles like Roy Scheider as Sheriff Martin Brody, or Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones.

strangerthings-hopper

What I’m more interested in here is taking a personalized look at the influences that inspired creators/show runners The Duffer Brothers, as they are many of the same things that influenced my tastes and own creative endeavors.

But let me first take a quick moment to applaud Netflix for taking a chance on show for such a specific audience, even though it has rather surprisingly found its way to much larger audience. But it reminds you of why Netflix exists, and was so successful, in the first place: taking chances on shows like this one.

ET-Extra-Terrestrial_758_426_81_s_c1

Here’s the basic plot, as told from a child of the 80’s like myself (be warned, there will be some spoilers below):

Imagine E.T. but, instead of an alien, the kids find and bond with the girl from Firestarter or Carrie. Together, they’re searching for their missing friend in a similar end-of-the-innocence quest to the one in Stand By Me (of course the kid they’re looking for in Stand By Me is already known to be dead, while the kid in Stranger Things may not be).  Either way, the boy’s been taken by a monster not unlike Pennywise The Demonic Dancing Clown from Stephen King’s IT.

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Honestly, there is a lot more Stephen King spin present in this show than has been explored in some other reviews. Hell, even the main titles font from the opening credits looks like the vintage cover to a Stephen King novel.

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Meanwhile, the teens are dealing with a sort of A Nightmare On Elm Street situation as this same monster presents itself as something that seems to be able to defy the laws of nature and bend reality to its will. This is not far from the truth, as there is some heavy extra-dimensional action happening a la H.P. Lovecraft stories like From Beyond or Dreams In The Witch House.

Nightmare01

Lastly, there’s the adult characters’ story arc. This one gets a bit of the short shrift, though that’s clearly by design as The Duffer Brothers know where their bread is buttered here. Still, Winona Ryder gets to lose her mind over a lost loved one like Karen Allen in John Carpenter’s uncharacteristically sensitive Starman. And the other primary adult character, David Harbour’s police chief, ends up having to deal with your classic secret government cover-up prior to he and Ryder confronting the facehuggers from Alien and the shark from Jaws.

 

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That all may make it sound very derivative but, seriously, everything is derivative. It’s just a matter of where you derive from, and how well you adapt it to your purposes. In the case of Stranger Things, they’re pulling from some of my old favorite things and shaping them into one of my new favorite things.

Now, my enjoyment of this show is actually due to more than just it hitting my nostalgic sweet spot. Stranger Things hits the emotional punching bag pretty hard too. It took me across the spectrum from the first tugging of love on my youthful heartstrings in the Mike & Eleven relationship, all the way to spending half of the season finale choked up for reasons I would not have understood until more recent years thanks to revelatory scenes from Chief Hopper’s past. And you better believe it takes a lot to get me choked up.

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I do want to make one last mention of the fantastically retro, atmospheric synth-heavy musical score comes right out of John Carpenter’s best work. This is not a surprise, as it was composed by the same people who did a similarly awesome score for The Guest. The songs they licensed and used at key points in the show are amazingly on-point as well.

Speaking of The Guest – that film, as well as films like It Follows, Super 8, and Midnight Special, are kindred spirits in tone and theme to Stranger Things even though none were actually set in the 1980’s. Regardless, I can only hope this means we’re on the cusp of a whole new cinematic movement, as long as it gives us more gems like the ones mentioned above.

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Oh and, by the way, in case I didn’t make it clear you should DEFINITELY watch Stranger Things. Believe me, you can burn through those 8 episodes this weekend. In fact, you’ll have a hard time not doing so once you start.

 

Fighting The Horror

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It’s been a little while since my last blog post, and I wanted to make sure that my favorite time of the year – Halloween Season – didn’t pass without putting something out there. So, what I’m going with is my taste in horror movies and where that taste may come from.

I grew up in the ’80’s, so the focus here will be on the first horror flicks I can remember seeing and the effect they had on my scary movie proclivities. Let’s do this chronologically to give it some form of order.

I was only 2 years old in 1981, so Halloween II had been out for a few years before I ever managed to see it. It still left an impression on me, as the location of a dark and mostly empty hospital still strikes me as one of the best locations for a scary story. And it was a simple enough story, Michael Myers was seeking to finish the job by killing his sister Laurie Strode (that she was his sister was only revealed in Part II and never mentioned in the first Halloween). At the same time, Dr. Loomis was hunting for his own answers about what made Michael Myers into what he had become. Admittedly, Halloween was a better movie that Halloween Part II, but I rather liked how Loomis’ and Laurie’s arcs finally tied together better in the sequel.

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1985’s Fright Night was the first vampire movie that I remember watching. Living in the suburbs myself, I really dug how they turned all the things that make people who live in the ‘burbs feel safe dangerous. Because, if you can see a vampire taking a victim and he can see you watching him then there really is no safe haven. But it ultimately had to be high schooler Charlie Brewster who dragged actor-turned-vampire hunter Peter Vincent in the battle against the bloodthirsty Jerry Dandridge. That Fright Night managed to inject a good bit of dark humor into the proceedings only made me connect with it more. As everyone knows by now, laughing and screaming are really just a short breath away from one another. The 2011 remake wasn’t too bad either.

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Silver Bullet, based on Stephen King’s novelette Cycle of the Werewolf, also came out in 1985. There would be several werewolf movies from around this era that would blow away this one in my mind eventually (An American Werewolf In London & The Howling), but I didn’t see them until I was into my teens. This one was similar to Fright Night in that it set the horror in a quiet little town that couldn’t possibly be equipped to deal with it, while one kid knew the truth but nobody believed him. Swap in a werewolf for a vampire and I’m good to go!

Silver-Bullet

Looking at the common bond between these first three  movies – “Watch out suburbs, here come the monsters!” I probably was just really hoping for a creature to sweep into my hometown so I could get my hero on. Of course, that would be after said creature took out some of the folks I was less fond of in my school. I, of course, would be ready to deal with the beast because…well, because I’d seen these movies after all.

Moving away from the suburbs and into the summer camp, Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) was the first of the franchise that I’d seen. Honestly, it still may be my favorite of the series. That it was the third film in the Tommy Jarvis Trilogy of Friday The 13th films helps to earn it that top spot. After confronting Jason Voorhees in the previous two Friday films (okay, technically it was only actually Jason in Part IV) he was finally a bit better prepared to fight back. I mean he was no Dr. Loomis, didn’t even have a Medical Degree, but he was the best protagonist that the Friday series ever rolled out. That Tommy and co-lead character Megan made up a poor man’s Kyle Reese & Sarah Conner combo only further endeared this film to me.

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The next pair of films are more action/sci-fi than horror, but they hit my sweet spot early on in life just the same. Aliens (1986) and Predator (1987) are two of the greatest genre films of all time, and there’s nothing I can say about them that you haven’t already read five times over. Other than, perhaps, the reason I was drawn to them. I liked how Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley and Arnold Scwarzenegger’s Dutch ended their respective films as equals to the monsters hunting them, and went into a final battle against them as such. In my opinion, nothing beats a good smackdown to end a movie on a high note.

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1990 saw the release of the mini-series adaptation of Stephen King’s IT, part one of which is still one of the greatest episodes of genre television of all time. I was about the same age as the protagonists trying to survive the terrors of Lovecraftian College of Clowning graduate Pennywise (Tim Curry adding another iconic character to his resume), and so when this one rolled around I was dragged along in its wake.

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At around that point, the flood gates opened and 11 or 12 year old me was about to discover a whole lot more horror in a very short period of time. Which makes this a good place to wrap things up.

The one common strand of DNA that runs through every one of these stories is a theme that I look for in any other genre as well: the ability to fight back against the enemy. If I’m being honest, ghost stories creep me out more that monster mashes, because in many ghost stories there’s not much you can really do to battle the forces of darkness.

I suppose I’m just not really drawn to tales of helplessness, and that’s something that applies to things I watch, things I read, and things that I write. which is also why I get very flustered about stories of how the little people cannot possibly win against the sinister and corrupt power elite of society. I may not be a super optimistic person, but I certainly respond more to optimism than to fatalism. There’s more than enough of the bad guys winning in real life, I don’t need to see it in my fiction.

I believe that everyone has free will, and can fight as long as they have the strength to. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes you win but don’t survive to enjoy the victory. But, as long as you’ve saved the people you care about, then it’s a worthwhile sacrifice. If you can deliver something fantastical, and stick the landing on the message above, then take my money because I’m there!

 

DarkLight Redemption – Chapter Four

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Celebrate Friday with chapter four of DarkLight Redemption!

And don’t miss out on getting The Alpha for $0.99 – only two days left on this KDP Countdown Deal.

FOUR

 

 

I try to have dinner with the family at least once a week.

Sure, I catch plenty of grief for my questionable life choices, but I know I’m lucky to have them. I’ve run into too many super-powered nutjobs who have a traumatic upbringing to blame for their issues to bemoan my own situation.

My folks still live out in the ‘burbs, and I’ve got an apartment in the city, so it’s a bit of a trek to see them. I don’t have a car, so I usually just fly over there. Since they don’t know about my abilities, I naturally have to lie to them, and I touch down at the train station nearest the house.

It’s only about a mile away, and I always tell them that I’d be happy to walk over and get some air, but they insist on picking me up at the station. Truth is, it’d be quicker to just land closer by, but I’ve got appearances to keep up.

So I fly to the wooded area just behind the train station and walk out to the tracks. Pretty sure everyone who sees me thinks I’ve just finished taking a leak in the woods. The crooked looks and head-shakes confirm as much. From there, I walk to the parking lot just in time for Dad to pull up.

We make typical small talk on the short jaunt to the house. How have you been? Anything new? Did you catch the games on Sunday? The usual. We pull up to the house, and I can smell the pot roast in the oven as soon as I walk in.

My mom always makes pot roast when I come by. Or prime rib. I suppose she feels like she wants to make something nice, but I’d just as soon sit down and have some meatloaf or mac and cheese.

Maggie’s not here. My mom tells me that she’s out with her girlfriends. She’s rarely around when I come over — at least that’s how it’s been the last few years. At first, I figured it was the standard pouty teenage girl thing. But she’s out of her teens now, so maybe there’s something more to it.

I’ve already decided that this would be the night I finally come clean with my parents. Since I’m leaving the whole superhero/supervillain game to people less jaded and more interested, I might as well let the people closest to me in on my secret.

Some Posties claim that they keep their secret identities hidden from their loved ones to protect them. I guess I sort of understand that, but my reasons were a bit different. My parents have always been the worrying sort, so I mainly kept my work as LightBlast and DarkLight to myself to keep them from having a monthly nervous breakdown.

At least that’s why I kept my life as LightBlast secret. I really kept the whole DarkLight thing to myself out of shame. It would also raise questions about why I switched allegiances that I didn’t want to answer.

We stick to small talk through dinner, but once the coffee comes out, I decide that it’s now or never.

“So there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you guys about for a while now,” I begin.

“What’s on your mind, son?” asks Dad. “The bar’s not in trouble, is it?”

“No, I’m doing fine with the bar,”

“Is there a special lady that you want to tell us about?” asks Mom. “It’s been too long since you brought someone over for us to meet.”

“No, it’s not that either,” I reply.

“Have you finally given more thought to going back to school?” Dad jumps in, and I ignore what I recognize as a light jab.

“What I want to tell you is that…” I pause for one last second to make sure I want to go through with this. “I’m a Post-Human.”

They look to each other curiously for a moment before turning back to me.

“Oh, honey, we know that,” my mom says with a shrug.

“You do?” I ask as the shock I was expecting backfires on me.

“Of course,” Dad adds. “Have for quite a while now.”

“How?”

“If you can’t recognize your eldest child when he’s flying around shooting lasers out of his hands, then you’re not a very attentive parent,” Mom explains.

“You know, they’re not exactly lasers, per se,” I start.

“But that’s still no excuse to not get a college education,” Dad says, ignoring my last comment.

“People go to college to get better career opportunities,” I say. I end up going on the defensive about a completely different matter than I’d expected.

“I’m already a successful small business owner. What would be the point?”

“Because knowledge gives you real power,” Dad says. This is a line that I’m sure he’s rehearsed numerous times before.

“The alien warlord Grytlepletarch The Indomitable has real power,” I counter. “And I’ve used my powers to help stop him from conquering the Earth on more than one occasion.”

“Don’t be so literal, sweetheart,” my mom gently insults me. “Your father and I just want you to understand more about the world.”

“I’ve been all over the world,” I insist.

“Having super-powered fistfights in the Roman Colosseum or over Tokyo don’t count as knowledge-gathering trips,” Dad states.

“I read!” I exclaim. “I watch plenty of History and Discovery Channel. Hell, I’m probably more prepared to win on Jeopardy! than any college graduate.”

“That sounds more like an excuse than a reason,” Dad says in a very Dad-ish fashion.

“So you’ve known about me for a while.” I scurry to get the conversation back on point. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“We respected your privacy,” Mom says. “And we figured that if you wanted us to know, then you’d tell us yourself.”

“Wait, you said you’ve known for a while.” I dread the answer to the question I’m about to ask. “Does Maggie know?”

“Of course she does,” Mom replied. “She’s a very bright girl.”

“College graduate,” Dad adds as an aside.

“Does she know why I…” I search for the proper phrasing. “Went bad?”

“No,” Dad says flatly.

“But we do,” Mom preemptively answers my next question. “We’re well aware of how difficult it would have been to get her into one of those treatment studies. God knows we tried our best.”

“And we wish to hell that you weren’t the one who had to make that compromise,” Dad adds with a mixture of anger and embarrassment.

“I know you do,” I say. “So why does she think I started committing crimes?”

Mom looks over at Dad again before replying.

“For the money.”

“Then let’s leave it that way,” I say. “I don’t want her feeling guilty or somehow responsible for my actions.”

“We agree with you on that,” Dad mutters, still with some shame.

It breaks my heart to see my dad — who was always such a strong, proud and noble man — wrestle with a horrible time in our lives that he simply had no control over.

“I suppose that explains why she’s not usually here when I come by,” I say with a sad smirk.

My parents both struggle with how to reply to that. Dad finally decides to get the discussion moving forward again.

“Why have you decided to tell us about your secret identity now?”

“Because I’m finished with it,” I say with some pride of my own.

“All of it. I repaid my debt, and I’m walking away.”

“I’ll be honest with you, son.” Dad looks to Mom again, this time with a smile. “We’re very relieved to hear that.”

“Well, I’m relieved to say it,” I reply, even as the whisper of a doubt creeps into my thoughts.

“You know,” Dad begins, sitting up straight and taking a satisfied sip of coffee. “Since your full attention will now be on your business, perhaps you should consider getting an MBA?”