Let's scare Jennifer to Death!!

A few thoughts about "Jessica." #1: She has the coolest hobby: Gravestone rubbing! I have to take this up. Then I can hang my gravestone rubbings all around the house! I am sure my husband would love that. #2: She drives around in a Hearse. With a peace sign on the door. Cool. #3: Her husband is an asshole, as evidenced by the fact that he wears a turtleneck through half the film. #4: She is completely out of her mind! In a nutshell you have 1971's Let's Scare Jessica to Death. Great title, great film. I have heard about this film here and there, most notably in "The Book of Lists: Horror" collection in an entry entitled "Richard Harland Smith's Ten Horror Movies that suggest life is unlivable." Considering the fact that I must like this particular genre, as two of my favorite films are on the list (Night of the Living Dead and Carnival of Souls,) I decided to check Jessica out.

Jessica is a messed up hippie girl with a jerk of a hippie husband. She just got out of a sanitarium, having been put there because of a nervous breakdown. The film never really goes into detail about what her trip was, but it suggests that she "saw" things. Jerky-hippie husband with the turtleneck spends their savings to buy a farm in upstate New York, hoping the change of scenery will help Jessica recover. Word of advice: Haunted farmhouses never help people recover. They move into the house with their porn-star looking hippie friend (who apparently knows something about farming because the other two don't.) Wouldn't you know there is some hot hippie chick squatting in the house and they ask her to stay (porn star has the hots for her.) Anyway, it is not long before Jessica starts "seeing" things again. A young girl in white with a bandage around her neck. A lady in the lake. Voices in her head telling her to "stay, stay with me Jessica..." No one believes her of course, because she just had a breakdown and isn't fully recovered.

Let's Scare Jessica to Death is a strange ghost/vampire/losing one's mind hybrid that works on every level. The lead actress, Zohra Lampet, is fantastic as the put-upon Jessica. We feel for her as she struggles with the "visions" she is seeing. She is not sure whether or not to tell anyone, knowing they won't believe her. To top it off as she is losing her mind she fears that she is also losing her husband (to another woman.) She is experiencing extreme psychological and emotional terror, and neither she nor the audience know if any of it is real or not.

The film is a little dated (hippies,) but it is worth seeing. There is no nude dancing (but there is a jam session) and Les Baxter does not do the score (that would have been awesome though.)

Tales of the Black Freighter..

Whether you saw/read-hated/loved Watchmen or not, you owe it to yourself to see Tales of the Black Freighter, the animated companion piece that was just released on DVD.

The comic within the comic was actually my favorite part of the Watchmen series, for obvious reasons. It is Scary as Shit!! This short animated film does not disapoint. It is only about 15 minutes long (if that) and I wanted to watch it again right away! Gerard Butler does the voice of the Captain, and he is perfect! And it is old-school animation (aided by computers but still hand-drawn) which is really cool. It is like Edgar Allen Poe wrote a pirate story. See it!

This is the song that inspired The Black Freighter. I couldn't find the Nina Simone version, but that is also worth checking out.

Watch at your own risk...

Much like the Korean film "Thirst," everyone is in a tizzy about this new French film "Martyrs." Both Fangoria and Rue Morgue ran cover stories about it. People have fainted and thrown up at screenings (always a good sign.) I don't know if I will see it. The film has been called "Torture Porn" taken to the extreme. Not a huge fan of gore, not a huge fan of torture. WARNING: The trailer is gory, and very French.

Spoiler Ahead

For those of you who have never bored your way through "Robinson Crusoe" and think that you one day might, don't read the next post because it is a spoiler. If you have already read it and know how it ends, feel free to spoil it for me. Really, go ahead so I can move on with my life.

He is already off the Island!

I am exactly half way through "Robinson Crusoe" (believe me, I know. I am counting pages) and that cat-killing bastard is already off the island! What the hell is he going to do for the rest of the 199 pages? Is this going to become some kind of weird "Lost" time travel thing? Is he going to go on a speaking tour while his Man Friday carries his luggage? Will there be Zombies? (One can only hope.) I tell you if it wasn't for all the cannibalism in this book I'd be right bored.

So now I am really hauling ass to finish this because the most anticipated book of the year comes out in 2 weeks:

It actually got a "A" from Entertainment Weekly, the final word in all things literary. As some of you may know, I am reading Robbie Crusoe as an atonement for reading all of those crappy vampire novels. Once this is over I can go back to my steady diet of zombies, ghosts, and other nasties.

Creepy KOFY Movie Time

The Bay Area finally has it's own Hosted Horror Show again! It's called "CREEPY KOFY MOVIE TIME" and it's hosted by this dude and some other guy.

It is on Saturdays at Midnight. Although I don't think much of the hosts (yet, I've only seen one episode) you bet I am going to be watching! You gotta support your local Horror Hosts, no matter what. The first film was "Night of the Living Dead" (a very good start) and some of the people they interviewed about the film were very interesting. The only part I laughed during was when a "Surfer" band was playing and the host, "Balrok," started dancing around. That was funny. By the way, the logo above is from November Fire, a really cool local t-shirt company that I got my HP Lovecraft tombstone baby doll T from. http://www.novemberfire.com/mainhub.html

They also sell DVD's of the best Horror Host EVER: Bob Wilkins. Check it out.

That's just awful

Word is that the subtitles for "Let the Right One In" are a travesty. Check out the article: http://iconsoffright.com/news/2009/03/let_the_wrong_subtitles_in_to.html
I just wish I knew someone who spoke Swedish. That person, who would probably be a girl who lives somewhere cold like Wisconsin, could then "Netflix" the film and watch it and then let me know what I am missing. If I knew someone like that...