Rob Zombie's Halloween - 2007

Confession time

Confession 1 – I hate The Devil’s Rejects and always have.  I’ve always felt like an outcast for not adoring this movie when my friends, relatives, and even other cult film reviewers have.  I just found the movie needlessly cruel and sadistic.

Confession 2 – This seems an almost more controversial opinion because I liked House of 1,000 Corpses.  Most people who absolutely love Devil’s Rejects tend to agree that they didn’t really get House of 1,000 Corpses.

Confession 3 - I am not entirely against horror remakes.  There have been a few I actually liked.  The Hills Have Eyes, Last House on the Left, and Dawn of the Dead are just some examples of horror remakes I love, which brings me to:

Confession 3.1 – However unpopular it is to say this I did not entirely hate The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Confession 3.2 – Or Friday the 13^th

Confession 3.3 – I am not looking forward to Diablo fucking Cody’s Evil Dead

Confession 4 – I’ve never been a fan of the “Halloween” franchise.  The first one is really good but I’ve never seen the second one and have only seen a few of the sequels.  I was always a bigger fan of the “Friday the 13^th” and “Hellraiser” movies.

Confession 5 - I have now seen a movie I dislike 3 times.

Evil Unmasked

     A lot of times when a horror movie is remade it’s directed by an amateur trying to make a name for himself or a studio puppet the production company picked out because he or she somehow managed to impress them.  Whatever the reason may be I can’t tell you why these movies failed to impress their target audiences.  I can tell you that there is a younger audience who may never see the originals because the remakes are so lousy or don’t see the need to see the same movie twice or may not be interested in them because they are old.  What is lacking is competent writing, relatable characters, and faithfulness to the original films.  Seems like these remakes suffer from one thing above all else and that’s that they’re trying to make something new and original from previously established characters and situations.  They are short sighted and delusional enough to believe that they can make an original film from an unoriginal concept.  And I really don’t know what we the movie goer are expecting either.  We’ve seen the originals, do we expect them to make the same exact movie and then get pissed when they give us something else?

     I remember the hype built up for Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween to be mostly positive among fans and I was no different.  As excited as I was to see what Rob Zombie was going to do with “Halloween” I didn’t get to see it until long after it had gone to dvd.  For that reason I’ll be reviewing the unrated version.

     After seeing this movie I was more disillusioned and disgusted than angry.  The weekend I watched this movie I also watched the remake of “Last House on the Left” and the remake of “I Spit on Your Grave”.  If you’ve seen one or all of these movies it should come as no surprise to you that they all have one thing in common, RAPE!  In “Last House” and “I Spit on Your Grave” you’d expect it because these movies are about rape but when I started watching “Halloween” I was sure I was going to get a respite from this.  What’s worse is unlike the aforementioned films the rape has no relevance to the plot.  The rape is treated as a means for Michael Myers to escape his padded cell.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen rape used a plot device in a movie before and it really bothers me that Rob Zombie takes rape so lightly.  Alas this is just another example of Zombie’s warped psyche.  It must be Rob Zombie’s view that we are all hiding monsters and his characters are unafraid to reveal these inner demons.  Regardless of whether they are good or bad all his characters have reckless abandon and lack of restraint.  The way they interact with one another feels alien.  Rob Zombie has reduced his characters to the world’s worst trailer park populated by nothing but angry violent sexaholics.

     The movie begins with the world’s most dysfunctional family so it’s should come as to no surprise that one of them would turn into a violent psychotic criminal.  The family consists of five people, a lazy abusive perverted alcoholic alpha male step father or boyfriend, the stressed and concerned stripper mother, the sarcastic lippy promiscuous teenage daughter, the baby who “cries and shits”, and of course Michael Myers who kills his pets and wears clown masks to the breakfast table.  In the first four minutes the step dad taunts a baby, tells his wife her daughter “has a nice dumper”, flings the entire breakfast arrangement to the floor, and threatens to break his arm against his step son’s head.  I’m sure we can all relate to this since this is the average American family having the average American breakfast.  This is pretty typical for a Rob Zombie movie.  All the families in all his movies have been crazy or dysfunctional which just leads me to wonder what Rob Zombie’s upbringing was like.

     After that scene we join Michael at school where of course he is bullied by bigger kids.  He is cornered in the bathroom when rather than just beat him like most real life bullies would have done they accuse his mother and sister of being whores until they provoke him into a fight.  The principal overhears this bathroom skirmish and breaks it up.  What happens next is hilarious.  One of the bullies accuses Michael of starting the fight.  Uhhh yeah right the two of you had him on the ground when this was broken up, not to mention there are two of you to his one.  The principal just saved Michael from an ass whuppin and rather than thank him he yells FUCK YOU out of the blue.  In my schools the two bullies would have been punished and Michael would have gotten a lecture about trying to avoid fights in the future.

     The next scene is a laugh riot too.  Michael’s mother joins him at the principal’s office where she cusses belligerently at him.  The principal has called in a child psychologist and the look on Mrs. Myers face is priceless as she asks, “psychologist?”  Somehow she’s shocked that Michael’s angry abusive home life may be affecting him.  They show her the body of a dead cat in a ziplock bag that they found in Michael’s backpack and she says, “big deal so he found a dead cat”.  I think Mrs. Myers has just won the in denial Mother of the Year award.  

Psychologist?

     While his mother argues with Dr. Loomis(the child psychologist) Michael runs off and stalks one of the bullies he was just fighting with.  As soon as he gets him alone in the woods Michael starts beating him to a bloody pulp with a tree branch.  Before Michael finishes him off the bully sobbingly pleads for his life.  I have no sympathy for this one dimensional archetype as Michael continues to bludgeon him.

     I really didn’t want to go scene by scene with this movie but it’s like each scene is worse than the last.  Later that night Michael is sitting watching tv with his stepfather when he starts to taunt him about killing small animals.  I just can’t help but wonder why the hell Michael’s mom confided in her husband about this when it was previously established that this man loves tormenting his stepson. 

     The next few scenes are pretty bizarre.  We’re shown a montage of Michael trick or treating by himself while his mother strips.  The montage is pretty unnecessary because we already know that his mother is a stripper and likewise that Michael is a sad loner.  Michael goes home where he chows down on candy while his sister gets laid.  I haven’t mentioned this before but Michael’s stepdad has a broken leg, broken arm, and broken fingers.  The reason I mention this is because all of a sudden Michael just snaps.  He duct tapes his stepfather to his recliner and slits his throat.  I’m sure even if you didn’t restrain him he’d have no way of fighting back or running away.  After giving his sister the business her boyfriend goes downstairs to make himself a snack.  What a class act.  Before this character is given a chance of bullying or teasing Michael he is beaten to death with an aluminum bat. 

     The next time we see Michael he’s in an asylum.  When asked he has no idea why he is there or what he’s done.  There’s also a scene where he asks his mother how everyone back home is doing.  I think it’s pretty damn convenient that he doesn’t remember a thing.  When you think about it Michael’s entire backstory is convenient.  He has all the earmarks of a stereotypical serial killer, he’s a loner, has a troubled home life, is bullied, and tortures small animals.  I think it would have been better if there was no method for Michael’s madness and he just simply was a monster.  That’s how Dr. Loomis explains it in the original movie.

     Michael fails to adjust to life in the asylum and becomes more withdrawn and stops talking entirely.  After a failed session with Dr. Loomis Michael is left alone with a nurse who is stupid enough to tease and turn her back on him giving him the perfect opportunity to kill.  After this episode his mother realizes that Michael is never going to get any better and commits suicide leaving him all alone.

     Flash forward fifteen years and Michael is now almost 7 feet tall and built like a pro wrestler.  A lot of faithful elitists took issue with the character changes in this and The Friday the 13^th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes.  It doesn’t bother me that Jason is now a master trapper and is faster than an Olympic sprinter, or that Leatherface is now a sympathetic freak of nature, and it doesn’t bother me that Rob Zombie made average sized Michael Myers to a giant hulking behemoth.  I actually like Michael this way.  His added size and bulk make him more threatening even though it really doesn’t make sense.  In his childhood scenes he shuts down completely and is almost catatonic.  So how and when did Michael find the time and energy to work out regularly in his depressed state?

     This is the last scene I’m going to be doing a scene by scene for.  We’re introduced by the single most repellant character in this movie and with a movie that has so many repellant characters that’s saying something.  The angriest and most insecure orderly in the world greets Michael for his last session with Dr. Loomis by saying, “Let’s go fucknut” and “I’ll be a shitstorm in your worst nightmare mother fucker”.  I feel like I’m starting to sound like a broken record here but why is he taunting Myers?  If this is how he talks to all these mental patients why haven’t his superiors fired him yet?  If that wasn’t bad enough his buddy calls him in after work to rape a woman.  Instead of just raping her they drag her into Michael’s room to rape her while they yell and call him names.  Understandably Michael gets pissed and kills them both while they have their pants around their ankles and escapes.

Raping a mental patient in front of a giant violent psychopath, it’s the perfect crime!

     Thus ends Michael Myers backstory and we can move on to the Halloween we all know and love… uhhhh sort of.  With the spotlight off Michael Myers we now follow Laurie Strode and her friends.  The characters are now more likable but not by a whole bunch.  I remember feeling the first time how unnatural the dialogue between these teenage girls felt.  Another thing that disturbed me was the lengths they went to make these girls look like teenagers.  After the unnecessary rape the sex scene the later sex scenes with Laurie Strode’s friends made me uncomfortable all over again.

     After the Michael Myers subplot there’s nothing special about the rest of this movie.  It’s almost like two different short movies.  The tone changes so drastically.  With the Michael Myers backstory it goes from a boring predictable melodrama(or soap opera) to a straight horror movie.  The latter half of this movie is just a bland remake.  It changes some things and adds others but it doesn’t set itself apart from any other remake.

So to recap here’s what’s wrong with the Halloween remake

An unnecessary backstory that makes this movie feel more like a prequel.

Unlikable characters everywhere… except for Michael who is being pushed around both at home, school, and later at the asylum by bullies.

Dumb characters who do dumb things like taunt giant insane serial killers.

Really bad dialogue

Too much excess; too long, too padded, too boring, too stylish, too violent, too much nudity and sex(can’t even believe I’m saying that)

Sheri Moon.  I know she’s your wife and you love her but does she have to be in everything you’re involved in?

     I can’t remember the last time I felt so divided about a movie.  There are parts of this movie are interesting and original but on the whole is a dull retread of things we’ve already seen.  The cinematography is really good but I can’t say I’m at all interested in what the camera is pointing at.  Previously established characters take a 180 shift in personality making them obnoxious to the point where I really don’t care what happens to them.  I’m not one of those people that believes you can’t remake classic horror movies.  It can be done and it can be done well.  Rob Zombie’s Halloween does not do it well.  It attempts to make something new and original but at the same time is restricted to the boundaries of the original film and its characters and events. 18/100

I read two disturbing things on the Halloween IMDB page

Before reinventing the legendary Halloween, Rob Zombie made the wise choice to inform John Carpenter about it. In response, Carpenter encouraged Zombie to "make it [his] own".

I guess this is what happens when you give Rob Zombie artistic license.

In the work print of the film, an alternate escape scene was used. In it Michael begins his escape from the institution by killing 2 young orderlies while they are molesting a catatonic female inmate.

REALLY?!  They’re both disgusting acts but how is forcibly raping a struggling woman better than molesting one that’s barely cognizant?!  Why did anybody have to get raped or molested?  Are you serious fucking telling me you couldn’t have Michael Myers escape without a sex crime?!

P.S.  I meant to mention this but I couldn’t find a way to wedge it in anywhere.  The first time I saw “House of 1,000 Corpses” I thought it was a little too influenced by “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”.  This movie ends exactly like “Texas Chainsaw” with a victorious heroine covered in blood screaming.

Halloween 2 - 2009

 

Family is Forever

     My views of this movie can be explained in one simple sentence.  This is the worst horror movie I have ever seen.  I’ve seen “Plan 9”, “Birdemic”, “Creature”, “Manos: The Hands of Fate”, “Halloween 3: Season of the Witch”, “Cold Creek Manor”, “The Messengers 2”, “The Devil Inside”, “Drag Me To Hell”, “Troll 2”, “House of Wax”, “Hellraiser: Bloodline”, “Beyond the Walls of Sleep”, “Return of the Living Dead 3”, “Sometimes They Come Back For More”, “Creepshow 3”,  and “Halloween 2” is still the worst.  I doubt I’ll ever see a worse horror movie as long as I live.  Unless we count Lars Von Trier’s “Antichrist” or “Gummo” as horror movies and those were so godawful I’d sooner watch Halloween 2 twice back to back rather than watch either again.

     I can go on and on about why this movie is bad but I can’t think of a single good thing about it.  After seeing Rob Zombie’s first “Halloween” I didn’t have high expectations for this one but all the things wrong with the first one come back tenfold in the sequel.  The characters are even more obnoxious and in some cases take a complete 180 shift.  After surviving the events of the first movie Laurie Strode is now a traumatized wreck.  Every scene she’s in she’s either screaming or crying, she was annoying in the last film in this one she’s shrill and annoying.  Dr. Loomis who has always been the self-sacrificing voice of reason throughout this series is now a demanding, hostile, prima donna.  Michael Myers acts as a fifth wheel in his own movie and has little motivation to do any of the things he does.  And to top it all off it has a ridiculous pseudo psychological plot that makes no sense(I’ll have to get to that later).

     After a short opening with young Michael getting a visit from his mother in the asylum(like we didn’t get enough of that in the first movie) giving him a literal white horse that acts a symbolic white horse(Rob Zombie is not a master of subtlety), we see the aftermath of his rampage as we see Loomis, Laurie, and Annie being wheeled into ambulances while Michael himself is being loaded into a hearse.  I was surprised to see this because I always figured Dr. Loomis was dead at the end of the first “Halloween”.  In Loomis’ last scene Michael is caving his skull in with his bare hands.  How the hell do you survive that?!  Laurie’s friend Annie is still alive somehow too.  After he flees the asylum half his victims survive in the next movie making Rob Zombie’s Michael Myers the least effective serial killer in slasher movie history.

Rob Zombie master of subtlety

      Before I rewatched it to do this review I did a little research and found out Rob Zombie hadn’t planned on doing a sequel but with the money they made with the first one the studio wanted a sequel.  When Zombie heard about this he jumped at the opportunity presumably because he didn’t want someone altering his vision.  His idea for the sequel was to do it without Michael Myers and have Laurie Strode as the killer imagining herself as Michael.  The powers that be wanted Myers in their movie so he was written in.  I mention this because even the casual viewer will feel as if Michael Myers doesn’t belong in this movie and like I said before he has no motivation.

     The next few scenes are a labor to get through.  The van carrying Michael crashes but not before the deplorable coroners have a disgusting conversation about necrophilia.  Michael despite being stabbed and shot several times(once in the head) gets up and walks off.  Meanwhile Laurie wakes up in the hospital and is chased by Michael.  Just as she is about to be killed she wakes up screaming in her bedroom 2 years later.  At no point was I convinced that that was anything but a dream sequence and is probably one of the scenes they wrote Myers in so we didn’t forget this was a “Halloween” movie.

     As the movie progresses we find that Dr. Loomis has capitalized on his attack by writing a new book about Michael’s latest rampage.  In the book he reveals that Laurie Strode is Angel Myers, Michael Myers’ sister.  I always wondered why he does this.  There have been many changes to this character but revealing Laurie Strode’s identity is downright irresponsible and dangerous.  Predictably Laurie walks by a bookstore and reads the book.  She finds out she’s Michael Myers sister which only leads to more crying, screaming, and whining from her.

      I’m not sure exactly where Michael Myers is but he’s being led back to Haddonfield by an apparition of his mother and younger self.  Meanwhile we’re supposed to believe that there’s some kind of psychic link before Michael and Laurie.  From this point forward I feel I could describe the rest of the movie in as little words as possible because it just tends to repeat itself making it boring, predictable, and superfluous.  Michael walks around killing people and then we switch to Dr. Loomis trying to justify his behavior or Laurie freaking out.

     After Laurie finds out that Michael’s her brother she cracks up.  One of her friends tries to comfort her while the other only cares about going to a Halloween party.  Seems to me if I were traumatized during a holiday all I’d do when that holiday approached would be to lock myself in my room with a shotgun.  Instead Laurie decides it would be a great idea to go to a nightclub and get drunk.  After her annoying unsupportive friend gets killed she goes home with her other friend only to find Annie has been murdered by Michael.  The movie climaxes with a standoff between her, the police, Michael, Dr. Loomis, and the police.  Michael kills Loomis again and is then gunned down.  Laurie investigates the corpses, grabs Michael’s knife, and is herself gunned down.  The movie ends with these two images

It began with lazy forced symbolism and it ends the same way.

     Even if Rob Zombie got to make the movie he wanted to it would still be bad because there’s enough of that movie in this one.  However uneven it is it’s still not ambiguous enough to make you believe that it was Laurie running around killing people even though the ending of the movie leads you believe that.   It’s clear that Michael Myers exists because he’s off killing people when Laurie is nowhere near the places these crimes take place.  Above all else the problems that plagued the first movie are back in this one.  The characters are still obnoxious but in Laurie’s case you can add whiny and annoying.  The movie still lacks restraint.  None of Laurie’s friends have sex so instead Zombie added a scene where Michael kills three people in a strip club for no other reason than to add some nudity.  02/100

Horror Anthologies

As evidenced by my small bookcase I’m a fan of short fiction horror(and horror in general) there’s nothing I love more than a good horror story.  On the flipside there is nothing I despise more than a bad horror story(except for maybe bad sci fi see: Mission Earth).   Because of this I have amassed a sizable collection of short story anthologies.  One of my favorite things about these collections is being exposed to authors I wouldn’t be likely to find anywhere else or had no prior knowledge or interest in.  I’m a big Joe R. Lansdale and Karl Edward Wagner(see: Complete Drive-In  and Karl Edward Wagner) fan and it’s all because I read their stories in one horror anthology or another.  Sometimes it’s not the author but the story I find more compelling.  Many authors will step outside their comfort zones to write a really good horror story.  Other times a short story will influence a movie or series, which is the case with Clive Barker’s "Forbidden"(The Candyman), "Hellbound Heart"(the novella that influenced the Hellraiser series), and "Haekel’s Tale"(Masters of Horror episode of the same title).

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz

It’s about time someone made a collection of stories for fucked up little kids like me.  The weird thing is I remember this being a very popular book amongst my other classmates in elementary and it was even featured in the monthly book ordering pamphlet our teachers would give us.  The stories in this book are macabre and downright terrifying.  I think that’s why we liked it so much.  It took the kid gloves off and wasn’t afraid to give us nightmares.  It was my first exposure to urban legend classics like the escaped maniac with a hook for a hand, the babysitter being taunted by phone calls from within the house, the ominous vehicular stalker who keeps turning on his high beams, and of course Bloody Mary(this one was particularly frightening to me because the myth got passed around a lot among my friends when I was young and we even tried it a few times.  To this day I don’t like to be in dark bathrooms for very long).  There’s a section in the back that informs the reader where all these stories originated from.  I must confess as a child I didn’t bother with this part but as an adult I find it interesting.  When I was 13 I was able to afford a casket shaped box set that contained the first Scary Stories with some fake blood and an audiotape of the stories being enacted.  I wish I still had that tape.  I’d pop it in the nearest tape player right now.  Accompanying the stories are macabre and quite frightening illustrations by Stephen Gammell.  Every time I read these stories the nostalgia makes me feel like a kid again and I’m reading them for the first time.  I own the omnibus that collects all 3 books in one and I highly recommend “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” both to children and adults alike.

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From the Borderlands: Stories of Terror and Madness – Edited by Elizabeth Monteleone and Thomas Monteleone

The stories in this collection aren’t so much scary but just plain odd.  Most of the stories I’ve read from this one are more about inner turmoil rather than visceral physical threats.  There’s a story about a guy who has that certain special look that people just warm to and the man who claims he has the face of god and offers to make a deal for it, there’s a story where a man wakes up with different hands every morning, a man who is slowly disappearing, and my personal favorite about a man who steals a pair of panties from a woman he lusts after, plants them in the ground, and a woman grows out of them.  I originally bought this collection solely for the Stephen King story which is also good and fits with the theme of the book but not nearly as creative as the other entries.  It’s a good book and it gives me an impression of what the stories might have been like in early issues of Weird Tales.   Check it out but be forewarned due to the quirky nature of the stories they can be hit or miss and just like any good anthology when they miss they miss bad.

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Dark Forces – Edited by Kirby McCauley

I briefly went over this in my Who Is Karl Edward Wagner article which you can view here:  Karl Edward Wagner

I got this book as a gift from mother in 1995 making it one of the oldest books I own.  If you’ve been paying attention to this blog you’re probably shocked to find as much as I read my oldest book is only 17 years old(if you want to get technical it’s one of the oldest books I’ve had in my possession not my oldest book).  When I was in sixth grade most of the books I was interested in were R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike.  Both authors released several books a year and usually when I was done reading them I would loan them out and wouldn’t really care if my friends lost or kept them.  To Stine’s credit there was a series called Goodnight Kiss about teen vampires that I treasured and if I still had it I might be tempted to reread and review it here.  And Christopher Pike’s Wicked Heart is a pretty good one too but I’m getting a little off topic.  Because I was more interested in reading young adult novels I wasn’t too interested in reading the more adult themed stories in this book.  There are several things that set this collection apart from the others I own.  It was first appearance of Stephen King’s “The Mist”, Karl Edward Wagner’s “Where the Summer Ends”, Dennis Etchison’s “The Late Shift”, and the Silver John story “Owls Hoot in the Daytime” by Manly Wade Wellman(see Who Fears the Devil?).  All these stories are amazing and make this collection worth buying.  But if that isn’t enough to convince you it also has stories by Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson and Richard Christian Matheson, and a grisly Christmas story by Robert Bloch.  If this book suffers from anything it’s the presence of both Ramsey Campbell and Lisa Tuttle.  As stated before I own a lot of short story collections and these two authors show up in quite a few of them.  I’ve read a few stories by them and time and time again have been sorely disappointed.  I can’t honestly call either of them horror writers because their stories are always watered down and have ambiguous endings that are left to the reader’s speculation.  They go for cerebral and emotional scares but they just end up flaccid and boring.  You can skip those stories but the rest of the book is pretty good and I definitely suggest it.  As a side note I’d like to go into the introduction because it is one of the better ones I’ve read.  It goes into the history of Weird Tales, August Derleth, Arkham House, and was responsible for my interest in H.P. Lovecraft.

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The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre by H.P. Lovecraft

How many times have you read or listened to a “best of” collection and thought the title was fraudulent?  I don’t know about you but I’ve found a lot of things with Best in the title anything but.  Omitting a story here and there for length(“Cool Air” and “Herbert West Reanimator”), “The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre” is not one of them.  The stories collected here, “The Call of Cthulhu”, “The Rats in the Walls”(influenced the Stephen King story and movie “The Graveyard Shift”), “The Outsider”(adapted as Stuart Gordon’s “Castle Freak”), “The Colour Out of Space”(adapted as “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” in “Creepshow”), and my personal favorite “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”(adapted as “Dagon” by Stuart Gordon) are among Lovecraft's best.  The stories in this volume are so influential they’ve gone on to be adapted into countless movies and TV episodes(uhhhh for better or worse, most often worse) not to mention influencing spin-off stories of their own.  The Cthulhu Mythos itself has been expanded with its own fan fiction(once again for better or worse).  This volume is a great introduction for readers unfamiliar with Lovecraft’s works.  I’ve read every story in this book and some twice.  It also features an introduction by Robert Bloch who credits Lovecraft with influencing him to become a writer.  “The Best of H.P. Lovecraft” is an amazing book and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

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Blood Lite: An Anthology of Humorous Horror Stories - Edited by Kevin J. Anderson

You’d think horror and comedy are two genres that don’t mix well and for the most part you’re right.  I was almost broke and stood around the book department of Wal-Mart debating with myself whether I should get this book or not.  My biggest argument was whether I wanted to waste $5.97 on this book just for the Jim Butcher “Dresden Files” story.  I’m glad I figured what the hell and bought it anyway because this has some really good and unique stories in it.  I feel the need to point out two of the worst stories in this anthology simply because I can never quite make my mind up which I hate more.  D.L. Snell’s “Love Seat Solitaire” is clearly the most poorly written in this or any of the anthologies I’ve mentioned.  You know how people complain about how the protagonists in modern horror movies are assholes so we don’t care if horrible things happen to them?  D.L. Snell has created the same thing only in short story form.  The story opens with 3 of the most reprehensible and stupid characters I’ve ever read playing “Street Fighter 2” in their dirty, disgusting, dilapidated house.  The house is haunted by the previous occupant and true to form they taunt and mock the ghost.  It should be obvious that the ghost gets pissed and kills one of them and for added gross out “humor” attacks the other while he’s on the can and he shits all over himself.  Due to the idiotic and immature fratboy dialogue in this story and the dated video game references this story was a chore from the very beginning and just got worse as it went on.  Charlaine Harris(whom we can blame for “True Blood” on showtime) gets top billing on the cover and her story, “An Evening With Al Gore” is almost as painful as Snell’s.  As you can imagine from the title this story has a heavy handed environmental message.  That normally wouldn’t bother me but it’s like reading the novelization of “Birdemic”.  Like “Birdemic” the environmental message is so obvious it’s like someone hitting you over the head with a heavy wooden mallet.  In it a couple invites the world’s worst corporate polluters to a benefit dinner showing “An Inconvenient Truth”.  At the end they ask for donations and accuse their guests of destroying the world.  Some agree to give money to the cause and halt their polluting but others refuse and then the couple turn into werewolves and kill everybody.  There’s many reasons why this story doesn’t fit here, it’s not funny, it’s way too preachy, and it’s downright boring.  The horror element only comes out in the last two pages of the story and the payoff and punch line is really lame.  It’s like watching a chronically unfunny stand-up comedian continually bomb onstage.  As bad as those stories are 2 out of 21 isn’t bad.  The “Dresden Files” story here is good, there’s a really weird story by Joe R. Lansdale about a werebear, a story about a cute newborn baby changing things for the better in hell, a story about a couple of thrill seekers who can only get in the mood when in mortal danger, and a ghost begging a medium to excise his friend who is stuck in a dead body.  My two favorite stories deal with Lovecraftian elements.  “The Sound of Blunder” by J.A. Konrath and F. Paul Wilson where two bumbling thieves steal the necronomicon and accidently start using it.  In “The Eldritch Pastiche from Beyond the Shadow of Horror” by Christopher Welch a troubled Cthulhu fan fiction writer goes to Fan Fiction Anonymous meetings.  He is later told by a representative of the real Cthulhu the only reason the dark god doesn’t destroy earth is because he enjoys their bad fan fiction so much and since he is the worst one he must continue writing.  Just like “From the Borderlands” some of the stories can fall flat but out of the 3 Blood Lites this one is my favorite.

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The Mammoth Book of Terror – Edited by Stephen Jones

When I said “Dark Forces” was one of the oldest books I own this one is no doubt the oldest since I acquired it before I got “Dark Forces”.  This is a pretty solid anthology.  Omitting the Lisa Tuttle and Ramsey Campbell stories every story in this collection is good.  The stories range from 1932 to 1991 making this a very diverse collection.  Clive Barker’s “The Last Illusion” features his recurring characters Harry d’Amour and Philip Swan.  Barker would go on to write and direct “The Lord of Illusion” featuring these characters.  David J. Schow’s “Bunny Didn’t Tell Us” is a dark comedy about grave robbers unearthing an undead pimp.  Just like “Dark Forces” this one has Dennis Etchison’s “Late Shift”(as stated before its first appearance was in “Dark Forces”), a story about zombie slave labor in Los Angeles.  “The Mammoth Book of Terror” was also where I was first exposed to Karl Edward Wagner’s “The River of Night’s Dreaming”.  Also featured is an F. Paul Wilson favorite of mine called “Buckets” and a gruesome story by Graham Masterton called “Pig’s Dinner” that was made to order especially for this collection.  “The Mammoth Book of Terror” is another collection I highly recommend if you can get your hands on a copy.

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Best New Horror Vol. 15 – Edited by Stephen Jones

While I’m on the subject of Stephen Jones I might as well add another of his collections.  I own a few of Stephen Jones’ “Best New Horror” series and this is the absolute best.  I recently bought “The Best of Best New Horror” which features stories from the first 20 volumes of the series.  I was shocked to find that not only was what I considered the best story of this volume omitted in place for a far weaker one but both Lisa Tuttle and Ramsey Campbell were in it.  Well maybe that last part isn’t so shocking since Ramsey Campbell and Stephen Jones are BFFs and he’s appeared in every single year of the series.  But I maintain that Lisa Tuttle and Ramsey Campbell should never appear in anything with “Best” in the title, unless of course it’s Best of Mediocre Horror.  My favorite of the stories in this volume is Mike O’ Driscoll’s haunting “The Silence of the Falling Stars”.  For some reason this story just really struck a chord with me.  I empathize with the main character’s loneliness and the story’s sense of solitude.  Even if this was the only good story in this volume “Best New Horror 15” would still be my favorite for exposing me to this story.  As it turns out “The Silence of the Falling Stars” is not the only good story in this book but it left the most lasting impression.

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The Best Horror From Fantasy Tales – Edited by Stephen Jones and David Sutton

Well why not add another Stephen Jones collection while I’m at it.  With the exception of Tuttle and Campbell this man really knows his horror and that’s why I own so many of his collections.  This is a collection of stories from a pulp magazine I had never heard of.  I picked it up brand new(I think it may have been an overstock) from a secondhand bookstore because it had Jones’ name on it.  Surprisingly Ramsey Campbell is in this collection and for once(and only once) his story doesn’t suck.  I couldn’t tell you why I read his story in the first place after so many disappointments but I think I may have been enjoying this book so much I didn’t want it to end.  Anyway his story is a pretty effective Cthulhu mythos.  Joining Campbell is Robert Bloch with another great Lovecraftian story.  Hugh B. Cave, Manly Wade Wellman, Karl Edward Wagner, and Clive Barker are among the other big names.  It’s not hard to believe that these stories appeared in a pulp mag.  I’d say compared to some of the other anthologies I’ve listed here this only is merely okay.

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The Night Shift by Stephen King

Just to get an idea of how good this collection of short stories is 9 of the 20 stories have been adapted for movies and television and in some cases adapted more than once.  Stephen King’s “Maximum Overdrive” was considered so bad that they remade it as “Trucks”.  Personally it’s one of my favorite b-movies and the Ac/Dc soundtrack features some of their most recognizable hits.  Even Stephen King admits he didn’t like it and he was “coked out of his mind” during production.  Despite its faults just like Plan 9 and The Room it is very enjoyable and includes some moments from the short story that were filmed exactly how I saw them in my mind.  “Children of the Corn”, a story about a small town populated by children who have killed all the adults, was adapted to the 1984 film starring Linda Hamilton.  “Sometime They Come Back” was very loosely adapted to the 1991 movie.  “The Lawnmower Man” however has absolutely nothing to do the 1992 movie of the same name.  “The Ledge”, “Quitters INC.”, and “The Boogeyman” were adapted for the 1985 movie “Cat’s Eye”.  This is one of my favorite King adaptations and aside from the butchered version of “Boogeyman” none of the stories are horror.  Some of my favorites in this collection to the best of my knowledge have never been adapted to movies.  “The Last Rung on the Ladder” is a melodrama about a man mourning the death of his sister.  “Strawberry Spring” is a story about a rash of murders culminating with the protagonist’s realization that he is the killer.  The reason why I am including this collection rather than any of King’s other collections is the stories in this collection have a different tone than any of the others.  There’s a prevailing dread and gloom throughout most of the stories that seems missing from his later work.  

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