100 Ghosts: A Gallery of Harmless Haunts, or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the ghost of the old woman who haunts my bedroom.

 

I have not written in a long time, and for once I have an excuse! (An excuse better than laziness or severe depression because I have don't have time to see The Conjuring yet I made time to see World War Z.  What the fuck is wrong with me??).  You see, I am a new mother!



 

 

 

Not of an actual human baby, don't worry.  Another kind of demon spawn: a puppy!! Roscoe is his name-o, and he is 4 months old.  He likes to eat cat shit and then kiss you on the face.  He is pretty awesome, if a little barky.  I mean, this son-of-a-bitch (that would be me) barks at EVERYTHING.  And he especially loves to bark at night when we put him in his puppy crate.  I would bark too if I was confined to a crate every night.  Of course, I don't eat cat shit and hump everything in sight, so it is not really my problem.  I usually don't write such personal stuff on this blog, as a good friend once pointed out (your blog is so "detached"), but I have a reason to share this stuff.  See, Roscoe, through his barking and humping, has summoned the old lady ghost that haunts my bedroom.  Little back story: we only got our kick-ass cheap Palo Alto apartment because the old lady that lived in it died, and my husband works for the owner of the apartment building.  Unfortunately, she did not die IN THE APARTMENT (that would have been killer), but I believe she haunts it.  Joanna (was her name-o) was, as far as I can tell and the mail we still get for her tells me, a very Liberal woman who donated to a bunch of charities and loved Opera.  Nothing wrong with that, except I always feel a disapproving gaze on me when I come home with 6 Target bags filled with junk and crank up Nine Inch Nails.  She is there, and she thinks I am disgusting.  It's OK, I can live with that: my cat thinks I am disgusting as well. 

 

So shortly after we got Roscoe, and he was particularly barky, Joanna made herself known.  We had just turned out the light, and my husband, as is his way, had fallen immediately asleep.  I laid there pondering the deep questions of the universe, such as: What is going to happen to Honey Boo Boo when she grows up? and What happened to that guy that was on Little House on the Prairie and then in that shitty Wes Craven movie with the original Buffy?.  Roscoe was barking up a shit storm.  That is when I heard it: a soft, old lady voice saying: Be Quiet.  Yappy dog shut the hell right up and I said "Thank you Joanna.  Thank you.  I promise I will donate to the Sierra Club."

 

Which brings me to my review of 100 Ghosts: A gallery of Harmless Haunts by Doogie Horner.  That can't be a real name, can it?  This itty bitty coffee table book is an adorable collection of different kinds of ghosts that can haunt your home.   

 



 

None are like Joanna, but they are just as charming.  Doogie Horner is a stand up comedian and, I assume, amateur ghost hunter.  He is very skilled in identifying ghosts such as this one:

After reading 100 Ghosts I left it on my bed and Roscoe promptly ate it.  We both found it delicious.  If you need help identifying the ghost in your life, I recommend you pick up this tome.

Rare Book Review: Gone Girl

Yes, I was supposed to write my next post about Mama, but I just don't feel like it.  Although I liked Mama (and annoyed my husband for a week walking around saying "MAMA") I just don't feel impassioned to write about it.  It's good, not great.  I love Jessica Chastain: she was awesome in Zero Dark Thirty and should have won the Oscar (no disrespect to Jennifer Lawrence, her performance was amazing and I have a serious girl crush on her after the Oscars, but COME ON!!  Chastain killed it in Zero Dark Thirty!).  I write this blog for fun, and I am getting cranky and old: If I don't love it or hate it I don't want to write about it. 

What I love, right now (besides Girls, I am obsessed), is Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  Gone Girl isn't a horror novel, its a thriller.  But it does have some horror elements in it: a total psychopath, a murder, some gore.  The best I can describe it is that if Hitchcock were around today he would TOTALLY make this movie.  It would be more in the Psycho/Vertigo vein rather than something like Rear Window.  I realize Psycho and Vertigo are very different films, but trust: read this book and you understand what I am getting at. 

Darkly funny, Gone Girl tells the story of Nick and Amy Dunne, a married couple who have fallen on hard times.  Nick lost his job as a journalist, and Amy lost hers writing quizzes for a Cosmo type magazine.  Amy is the daughter of famous writers, who used her as inspiration for a series of YA books ala Judy Blume.  Nick and Amy have been married 5 years, and after losing their incomes they decide to move to Missouri to take care of Nick's ailing Mom.  Their marriage goes from bad to worse in the middle of nowhere, and one day Nick comes home and finds that Amy is gone, and gone in a bad way.  As police investigate we get two narratives from our lead characters:  Nick, under suspicion for murder, and the possibly dead Amy. With each chapter author Gillian Flynn reveals a bit more of the truth.  But, if you think you know where the story is going, you are dead wrong.

This book was so good I couldn't put it down.  If you like a little mystery with your macabre, I highly recommend Gone Girl.

ZAM Book Review: The Shining

Now in Day Glow: The Shining!!  Welcome to the Eighties!!!

I am really not going to talk about the movie.  You, know, the 1980 film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Jack Nicholson in one of his most iconic roles ever.  Nor am I going to talk about the 1997 mini-series (do they still do those?) directed by Mick Garris, written by King himself, and starring the guy from Wings in on of his most iconic roles ever.  Nor am I going to talk about this...



Nor this...



And finally, nor this..



OK, that last one was pretty bad, but who doesn't love the Three's Company song?  I love The Shining, both versions.  Of course, Wings guy is no Jack Nicholson, but he does a decent job.  I am ashamed, downright ashamed, that I have never read The Shining.  Published in 1977, The Shining was Stephen King's third published novel and first hardcover bestseller.  Inspired in part by Stephen and Tabitha King's stay at the Stanley Hotel, The Shining tells the story of the Torrance family, caretakers for the "Overlook" Hotel during the rough Colorado winter.  The Overlook, like all great hotels, has a bad case of the haunts.  This might not be a problem for most people, but for the Torrance family, it will prove fatal.  Jack Torrance (Dad) is a recovering alcoholic and a struggling writer.  Thank god he didn't try to give up cigarettes as well otherwise he would be a real asshole.  Wendy Torrance (Mom), seems alright, but she has trouble getting over a little incident a few years ago when Jack broke her child's arm.  Danny (Danny) is five and has "The Shining."  He can see things.  Things that have happened, and things people may do.  Danny's invisible friend, "Tony", is his guide, showing him the evil thoughts that sometimes lurk in Daddy's mind.  Also along for the fun is Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers, there is just no other way to picture him), the Overlook's cook and fellow "Shiner."  Hallorann knows that the Overlook may be dangerous for Danny and his family, but he has now idea how lost Jack Torrance will become. 

 

 My favorite Shining cover.  Jack looks like Charles Grodin, who actually could have played the hell out of the role.  Wendy looks like Donna Dixon.  Danny is all fucked up...

I don't want to talk about the differences between the novel and the film, but I am going to talk about the differences between the novel and the film.  Just a couple, I promise.  First, let's start with Wendy.  The novel's Wendy is no Shelley Duvall.  She is smart, strong, and she gets the ever loving shit beat of her near the end.  Jack, still a struggling writer, is easily seduced by the hotel.  He becomes obsessed with it's history, and convinced that it wants him for a senior management position (cookoo!)  He is also a serious alcoholic with the slightest of holds to the wagon.  He is racked with guilt over hurting Danny, fucking up his job, and nearly destroying his marriage.  Danny is pretty much the same except Tony doesn't live in his mouth.  Tony is a pretty scary dude that only reveals his true self at the end.   Finally, spoiler alert..............

Dick lives. 

Plus, there is some scary topiary (those who saw the 1997 version will be familiar). 

The spookiest Shining cover. 

I loved the novel.  It was still terrifying to me, familiar as I am with the story.  Where the novel beats both film versions (in my humble opinion) is the final confrontation between Wendy and Jack (much more violent in the novel), the relationship between Hallorann and Wendy and Danny Torrance, and the emphasis on Jack's alcoholism.  Reading the novel you realize how Jack became a prisoner of the hotel.  He was always a prisoner of some demon or another.

You are one crazy wicked bastard and I love you. 

Part of the reason I wanted to read The Shining now is the fact that King is working on a sequel.  Doctor Sleep will introduce us to the grown up Danny Torrance, and, apparently, some vampires.  King is crazy.  I am also a bit obsessed with Shining theory, and it relates to Kubrick's film.  I was almost late to work one day because I got caught up watching a documentary on how Kubrick's film is a call to return to the gold standard.  Really.  Look it up. 

IFC just purchased a documentary entitled Room 237, a film about the various theories involving The Shining.  Read about it here.

Believe it or not my next book is Psycho II by Robert Bloch.  So gory and horrible they decided NOT to base the film sequel on it.  I could be reading great works of literature, but instead I read Psycho II. 

Rare Book Review: Dead of Night

I am usually not one for Zombie novels.  Quite frankly, I can only handle Zombies for a short period of time.  Night after night after night is too much for me to handle (I am really, really scared of Zombies.)  As I suspected, I had nightmares EVERY night I was reading Dead of Night: A Zombie Novel by Bram Stoker Award winning author Jonathan Maberry.

Don't let the fact that I dreaded nightfall make you think I didn't love this book.  I love anything that gives me nightmares!  I will admit to only reading a few pages at a time. It was all I could handle.  The sense of dread in Dead of Night is overwhelming.

If you decided to read Dead of Night, and I think you should, familiarize yourself with T.S. Eliot's poem The Hollow Men.  A hollow man is how the first zombie we meet describes himself.  Yes, in this novel Zombies, well, at least two of them, have a consciousness.  In the case of Doc. Hartnup, our intro Zombie, he is aware of his actions, but completely unable to control them.  His body, so to speak, has a mind of it's own.  The only thing on it's mind is eating.  The only thing on Doc's mind is the hope that one of the few humans left will shoot him in the head and put him out of his misery.  I believe the Doc's journey is the most heart wrenching in the novel. 

But how did Doc get to this sorry state?  Maberry has an explanation: Ex-Nazi CIA Stooge Doctor hell bent on revenge!  This Doctor decided to inject condemned killer Homer Gibbon with a bit of biological warfare: a virus that keeps the mind alive while the body rots.  When Gibbon gets out in the open, all hell breaks loose.  Fighting the onslaught are good cops J.T. and Dez Fox.  Dez is one of the best female characters I have encountered in a long time.  She is a total mess but dedicated to her job and trying to do the right thing (like me!).  It doesn't help that Dez's ex, a reporter named Trout, is also on the scene, trying to break the story that the Government will go to any lengths to keep quiet. 

Dead of Night shifts POV from Dez to Trout on one end, to Homer and Doc Hartnup on the other. It is an effective tool that lets us sympathize with every character, even the detestable Homer.  There is plenty of gore and action in Dead of Night, and the fresher the Zombie, the faster.  I am all about the siege in Zombie stories, but in Dead of Night I found the quest to stay alive out in the open the most harrowing.  The action takes place in a small town, and around every corner our heroes face friends and family who have turned.  Around every corner our hollow man, Doc, faces another friend he will destroy. 

Maberry leaves the ending open for a sequel, although this works really well as a stand alone.  I will revisit this world if I must, but this time I might try to get the book over in a night.  I don't know if my Husband will stand for another two weeks of me getting up in the middle of the night to check the locks and board the windows.

Rare Book Review: Who Goes There?

October turned out to be all things Thing for me.  I saw the shitty prequel, re-watched the amazing original and the even more amazing Carpenter re-make, survived The Thing haunted attraction at Universal Studios, and finally, read the original short story all of this is based on: Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr. 

First appearing in Astounding Stories in 1938, Who Goes There? is a classic tale of fear and paranoia set in Antarctica.  Those familiar with Carpenter's film will be familiar with this story: The Thing follows the novella pretty closely.  A group of 37 men are doing scientific research in Antarctica when they discover a ship frozen in ice (The Thing prequel released this year actually follows this part of the story.)   They also discover the alien pilot, frozen in ice.  They take the specimen back to their base and attempt to thaw if out for further research.  Bad idea.....

It soon becomes clear to the men that this "thing" is still alive, and able to "imitate" both man and beast.  It also is telepathic, an element that is missing from the film.  Second in Command McReady (upgraded from pilot) takes over when it becomes clear Commander Garry may be compromised.  McReady develops a "test" similar to the one in Carpenter's film.  Only during this test, 14 men a proven to be "thing" and they are immediately killed.  There is no messing around in this story...

I loved Who Goes There?  It is fast paced, scary, and funny as hell.  The humor in this story is something I found missing in every filmed version.  I don't want to give anything away, but lets just say the ending is a bit more upbeat here than in Carpenter's film.  My only complaint is that there are too many characters: it gets a bit hard to keep track.  One complaint about Carpenter's film is that there are no women, something the prequel tried to remedy.  Well, there are no women in this story either.  Just a whole lot of dogs, a lot of hairy stinky men, and one nasty "thing." 

So now I would like to introduce my first Thing ranking.  Most loved to least loved..

1.The Thing 1982

2.Who Goes There? 1938

3.The Thing from Another World 1951

4.Any Thing rip off film every made

5.The Thing: The Musical

6.The Thing 2011

I hope this helps you with all of your "Thing" needs...

"Because they came from another sun, a star beyond the stars.  They came from a world with a bluer sun."

 

Rare Book Review: The Passage

Post Apocalyptic horror is one of my favorite genres.  I can trace this back to reading The Stand when I was about 13.  The Passage by Justin Cronin reminds me of The Stand in more ways than one.  Not only is it about a group of post apocalyptic survivors trying to survive while understanding the meaning of their lives, but it also has a subtle (well, more subtle than The Stand) religious undercurrent.  Not that Cronin or King are trying to push religion on anyone.  It just that when things seem the worst, when there seems to be no reason to go on living, we all need something, some kind of magic or faith, to get us through. 

The Apocalypse in The Passage begins as most apocalypses do, with the U.S. Government.  A plant found in South America seems to possess magical healing powers: powers that could really help the U.S. Army.  The Government begins experiments on Death Row inmates.  When these experiments don't go so well, they decide to try the drug on a child.  The child they choose, Amy, will go on to become "the girl who saves the world."  But you won't see it in this book.  The Passage is the first book in a planned trilogy.  We jump 90 years into the future when most of mankind has been wiped out by the "virals", vampire like creatures that were produced as a result of these experiments.  The virals need to feed on humans.  They are sensitive to light and seem to live forever.  They don't show much intelligence but they seem to hunt in packs.  They are essentially zombie/vampire hybrids.  A group of survivors find Amy, still alive 90 years later and hardly aged.  Amy seems to possess special powers.  It is as if she can "control" the virals.  Driven by some unknown force, Peter Jaxon, one of the survivors, decides he must take Amy to Colorado where the outbreak began.  So begins our journey.

I liked The Passage very much.  It is a real page turner and you really get to know and care for the characters.  Having said that, be aware that it is a trilogy.  The book just kind of ends: it's not even a very good cliffhanger.  I want to know what happens, I just wish the ending of THIS book could have been more satisfying.  Scary in parts, weepy in parts, I highly recommend The Passage.  Just be sure you know that it is going to be a MAJOR time commitment. 

Psycho (a Rare Book Review)

Hey I am back! Sorry it has been a while.  See, I watched The Last Exorcism and I was so disappointed and disgusted that I could not bring myself to think or write about horror for a whole week.  I kid.  I didn't HATE the movie, I just found it to be such a rip-off of other, better films that it left a bad taste in my mouth.  But, this post is not about that film.  Maybe I will write about it later, after I have had a drink or two and can think of something interesting to say about this Blair Witch/Exorcist/Commune/Wicker Man/Paranormal Activity/Cannibal Holocaust/King's Speech knock off.   I am being silly: The Last Exorcism doesn't resemble one of those films.  Can you guess which one?
While I was on vacation I finally read Robert Bloch's Psycho.  Love the film.  It is amazing.  No question.  But I had never read the source material. Last year was the 50th anniversary of the film and quite a lot got written about it.  Almost every article listed Bloch's book as a must-read.  I usually don't care for reading a book AFTER seeing the film: I prefer to do it the other way around.  But in this case I was glad I did.  Hitchcock followed Bloch's book very closely.  All the basics are the same.  The one big difference is Norman.  Anthony Perkin's Norman is a tall, skinny, bird like man who is socially awkward, young, and inexperienced.  Bloch's Norman could have been played by James Gandolfini.  He is older, in his forties, overweight, a heavy drinker, and quite the perv.  He is totally unlikable in every way, whereas you sort of feel sorry for Perkin's Norman.  I find it very interesting that Hitchcock made this change.  It was the right one.  First, it cemented Anthony Perkins as a horror icon and gave him the role of his career.  Two, it upped the ante: by making Norman more sympathetic and relate able Hitchcock really pulled the audience into his world, and famously made us identify with a killer.  Remember how you felt when you were with Norman, waiting for the car to sink?  That is what I am talking about. 

The book is very a very quick read- one or two days tops.  Yes, you know what is going to happen, but it is a very interesting journey to go on nonetheless.  Plus, Robert Bloch was the man and a FOL (Friend of Lovecraft.) 

Final thought: remember Gus Van Sant's ill advised shot by shot remake a few years back?  Wouldn't that have been interesting had he cast it to Bloch's book.  Just a thought.  Yes, it still would suck.  Why remake perfection?