Author Archives: Bob Evans

Appeasement Only Begats Destruction

There was a time, and not that long ago for it was within my political lifetime, when the Republican Party was the party that warned of appeasement, that at every instance, and often when it was far from justified, invoked the specter of the terrible policy of appeasing Hitler and the Nazis. It is both ironic and fitting that they are destroyed by the same mechanism that they so vocally insisted others be wary of.

As I have written before it was the ‘Southern Strategy’ that invited in the segregationists following that passage of landmark civil rights laws that first began the process of infecting the GOP with its current disease. Once invited in racism is painfully difficult to excise, particularly if that action cost you power.

Rather than face that pain, the GOP has for decades appeased it. Throwing scraps of legislation to this faction while feeding it lies and outrage in an attempt to satisfy its hunger and hatred. Of course, like the patrons of The Menu they could never be satisfied. Fed lies and outrage their appetite did not reach fulfillment but only grew. So, the GOP fed its racist hateful base more lies, more outrage in an ever-growing movement of appeasement.

With the coming of Trump, a sadly predictable event, the faction now having grown strong and large on its near endless diet, now longer needed to beg for scrap from the legislative table but rather determined the entire menu. The masters of the party found that instead of appeasement that they now paid blackmail, begging for their money and their lives with subservience to the monster of their creation.

No person better epitomizes this than Kevin McCarthy. An experience feeder of lies and sower of hatred, in his vain, egotistical quest to be Speaker of the House, paid and paid and paid the blackmailers, giving them every lie and every hatred that they demanded foolish in his delusion that he could pay off the blackmailers enough to save himself.

He had as little chance of satisfying the MAGA as the Europeans did of buying off Hitler. I weep no tears for McCarthy, he paved the road to his own destruction, delineated lanes, and posted signs to hell before he drove it to his doom. He hasn’t suffered a portion of what he has earned, but I do weep for my nation, my imperfect, flawed, but beautiful country, ravaged and on the brink of ruin by these little men and their foolish appeasement.

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I Need A New Name

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As I have previously mentioned I am currently writing a horror novel about werewolves in the far north of Idaho. The process is going surprisingly well considering that is also an experiment in writing a long form piece of fiction without my traditional outline to guide me. In the five-act structure I have adopted as my preferred story framework the first draft of The Wolves of Wallace Point, I have reached act 4 and haven’t yet struck the shoals that might sink this enterprise.

I have reached out to an editor that I am on fairly decent terms with and expressed that the novel could be finished soon and if they were interested heading out in their direction early in 2024. The reaction was favorable but with the caveat that given my previous novel was seriously science-fiction and a commercial train wreak it was likely that this book and subsequent horror novels would require to be published under a pen name.

In my traditional fashion of being overly concern way ahead of the need I find my thoughts returning again and again to the idea of a pen name.

What sort of name should it be?

Something wild and obviously crafted for the cover? Something to honor family members who helped me along the way? Something that places it near the front of an alphabetical list, so the book is near the front of any horror section in a bookstore? Something unique as to stick in a shoppers memory?

So many considerations and I have no guidance in how to proceed.

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Spooky Season Starts: Thirteen Women (1932)

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I decided to kick off Spooky Season 2023 with a bit of classic horror that I had not seen from the pre-code era, 1932’s Thirteen Women.

Warner Brothers Studios

In what could be considered a proto-slasher Thirteen Women, adapted from a novel of the same name by Tiffany Thayer, is the story of a collection of old-school mates, each of whom has gotten a foreboding lettering advising that their personal horoscopes predict doom and death for each of them. The predictions come to pass with terrifying accuracy including the suicide of the mystic casting the horoscopes. The film doesn’t dwell long on the mystery of the person behind these forecasts but does, in fashion of slashers to come, hold back the person’s motivations until the film’s final scenes.

 

 

At just over an hour long the movie is really too short for the subject. Not all thirteen women are represented on the screen, and often the manipulations that bring each prediction into reality is presented too quickly and glibly for any real suspense or impact.

That said this movie has a number of rather surprising and well-executed sequences for 1932, including a stunt sequence where our heroic detective must climb from one car to a driverless and out of control limousine.

The cast includes Myrna Loy before her fame in the Thin Man series of mystery movies, as the villainous Ursula Georgi. In this period of her career Myrna Loy often played ‘exotic’, that is to say non-white, characters that were evil and manipulative while performing in the ghastly practice of ‘yellow face.’ While the film both in the employment of ‘yellow face’ and presenting Asian characters inscrutable traffics in the accepted racism of its time it also presents an argument against that racism detailing in part the harm it creates.

Far too short for it material and marred by casual racism Thirteen Women is not without merit and the film’s final 25 minutes or so were thoroughly compelling. This is perhaps something that could be remade into a project of real interest.

Thirteen Women is currently streaming on Criterion Channel as part of their ‘Pre-Code Horror’ series.

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RINO Hunting Destroyed the Conservative Ecology

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Biological ecologies are a complex web of interdependencies between their constituent elements and the same is true for political ecologies.

There was a time, not that very long ago, when the two political parties in the United States each contained divergent factions of liberals, moderate, conservatives and assorted minor ideologies. The Civil Rights movement and legislation fractured the Democratic Party as a considerable number of their ‘conservatives’ were more invested in segregation than anything else politically. After a brief turn as ‘Dixiecrats’ this faction was wooed and welcome into the Republican Party as the wedge that allow the GOP to begin winning elections in the deep South.

This additional faction swelled the GOP and ushered in the Reagan Regime that dominated American politics from 1980 until well into 1990s. However, like HYDRA with SHIELD this racist driven conservatism grew like a parasite with the Republican Party. With the power to win or cost elections it soon, welded to its fast-growing cousin the Social Conservative faction, determined the shape and course of American Conservatism, and thus began the period of ‘RINO hunting.’

RINO is a slur for member of the Republican Party not sufficiently subservient to the conservatism imported from the deep south and it stands for Republican In Name Only. The very nomenclature reveals the transformed nature of the GOP. It became a party that tolerated no dissention, no variation, and no other factions. There had become just one way to be a Republican and those who did not conform, who were not of the body, were cast out, chased out, and hounded out of the party. What had once been a collection of factions became a movement and a movement can only proceed in one direction.

Throughout the late 90s there was a giddiness every time a ‘RINO’ was defeated, resigned, and switched parties. Like a boiling solution what remained concentrated in its purity. Led and goaded by non-politicians such as Rush Limbaugh and bomb-throwing politicians such as Newt Gingrich the GOP moved more and more in lockstep to a beat that had been determine decades earlier by fleeing segregationists.

Racism has always been an American problem and both parties have a long history if welcoming it within their domains. However, once the Democratic party began moving in a direction of racial justice, awareness, and correction the racist had but one party that welcomed them. At first tacitly, then subtly, and eventually openly, the GOP.

With the RINOs, primarily the Northeastern liberal Republicans, driven out of the party, and the communists threat collapsed with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the GOP turned it unified and obedient movement on American itself. It abandoned all pretense at governing or morality. A political movement that embraces torture is capable of anything.

Is it any surprise at all that such a movement, such a political ecology now deprived of any contrary thought, proved such fertile ground for a con man and a demagogue? That after decades of beating obedience into its base that it would lash itself with the fanaticism of a cult to that new leader?

No, not at all.

The GOP hunted the RINOs into extinction and without that balance dove into neo-fascism endangering us all.

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Why Day of The Dead (1985) Doesn’t Work for Me

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I first watched Day of the Dead, the conclusion to George A Romero’s ‘Dead’ trilogy, in a fun and

Laurel Entertainment

 

 

 

hopeful mood. At the time I worked at the US Glasshouse theater in the Sport Arena area of San Diego and my friend Brad, who was the assistant manager there, had just finished assembling the print on the platter for the project. So, late at night, after everyone else had left, we ran the print and watched it just the pair of us Zombie fans.

We were disappointed.

Now, nearly 40 years later, I have watched the movie again this time as part of the 6-film marathon hosted by Film Geeks SD.

It is still disappointing.

The Night of the Living Dead introduced the zombie plague where the recently deceased are animated and then attack and eat the living. A small, contained film it boasted a diverse set of characters trapped in microcosm of American society fighting, and failing, to save their lives.

Dawn of the Dead, produced a decade later, presented a world in the process of being overrun by the living dead with society collapsing into anarchy. The central characters, with sharply drawn natures, flee their responsibilities for a life of isolated decadence with a shopping mall. This film is a satire on consumerism, holding a mirror to humanity’s obsession with possessions even after death.

After a pair of sharp, interesting film populated with interesting characters I had high hopes for Day of the Dead, but Romero’s script presents none of the flourish or insight this time around that he had displayed in the previous two movies.

The movie follows a set of characters in a hastily assembled research facility that is tasked with understanding and defeating the zombie outbreak. The world has been overrun and for months these survivors have been unable to contact anyone on the radio as their number dwindle. Tensions run high between scientists tasked with the research, the army troops assigned to the facility, and the civilian support staff as the hopelessness of their condition becomes more and more evident.

That is an excellent premise. It is a crime that Romero’s populated it with flat, stereotypical cardboard cutouts instead of characters. Each division of characters, scientist, military men, and civilian are presented exactly the same way, without any meaningful differences. Heroic characters are presented not only as heroic but as correct and moral. Villainous characters, which include all the military men save for one romantic interest, are presented as crude, cruel, and bigoted.

The cast, struggling with the flawed screenplay, is fairly forgettable, except for two, Sherman Howard as the zombie ‘Bub’ and Richard Liberty as the chief scientist Dr. Logan. Howard performs excellent mime-work, giving ‘Bub’ a depth that is lacking from most of the human character while Liberty is mischievous in his choices as an actor imbuing Logan with a life that stands out in sharp relief to all the other performances.

This pair of actors however is not enough to salvage the film which wanders zombie-like from cliche to cliche with Romero cribbing from himself like so many low budget zombie movies did in the wake of Dawn of the Dead.

Now, I was prepared to suspend my disbelief that the dead could reanimate as it is central to the story’s conceit. That said I simply cannot accept as any form of reality that the base is constructed in the vast stone caverns beneath South Florida.

Between the absurdity of its setting, the flatness of the characters, and the lack of any coherent theme Day of the Dead is a movie that I shan’t watch again for another 40 years.

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Another Friend is Gone

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Last night I learned that a friend I had known for nearly 40 years died. Brian’s passing was a not a shock or a surprise but hurts just the same. Last year he was tragically struck with a degenerative neurological disease that robbed him of motor control and the ability to speak. Such diseases rarely allow for people live very long.

Brian was a good and close friend. We had played many a board and card game together, attended several science-fiction conventions, including the one where I met my sweetie-wife, and we even wrote together. Two feature film scripts, a thriller and a period adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. Of course, the script went nowhere but I learned from them, and I learned from Brian. A piece of advice that he passed on I carry still in writing characters stricken with grief. People don’t cry, they try to not cry. That is so true so often and trying to capture that struggled of someone trying so hard to not cry and failing makes such moments more powerful.

He was a historian by education and without a doubt I learned so much from knowing him. Before he moved away and before the damned disease, we often went to movies together, though there was a run where every film he picked for us to go to turned out to be a stinker.  When I was laid up for two weeks in the 90s recovering from surgery, he came over every day with a fresh VHS tape and we watched them together,

He was not a perfect friend, no one is, and I learned all too early in life that in the end death comes for us all, but he will be missed.

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2023’s Secret Morgue

 

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A quick note to recognize and celebrate that the WGA and AMPTP have reached an agreement and the strike is coming to an end.

This year Film Geeks San Diego threw a Secret Morgue themed around Zombies. That means six films the titles unreleased to the festival attendees, with snack, lunch, and a dinner provided. Starting at 9:00am at the Comic-Con Museum in San Diego’s Balboa Park and going until nearly midnight. As with the other Secret Morgues I have attended this was a blast.

I arrived early enough to score a parking spot right in front of the venue which made it easy for me at breaks to head out and grab a cold soda from the cooler I had stashed in my Kia Soul. Sadly, a friend I hadn’t seen in years came down sick and wasn’t able to attend as planned but I was more social than usual and managed a few conversations.

And I should note that my predictions for the schedule turned out to be utterly wrong.

The First was The Zombies of Mora Tau. Produced in 1957, a dozen years before George A Romero reinvented the entire zombie genre with Night of the Living Dead, Mora Tau centers on a group of treasure hunters intent on recovering lost, cursed, diamonds from the bottom of a bay. The diamonds however are guarded by the zombies of the men who stole them, enactors of the curse. Neither Voodoo nor Romero styled zombies, the living dead her are closer akin to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, though vastly less intelligent. Hardly a great film it was still a fun one.

The Second movie was Pontypool from 2008. Set in a radio station experiencing Canada’s harsh winter, this film follows the experiences of a tiny news crew as they attempt to make sense of the reports filtering in and the eventual threat that invades their AM Radio station. Inventive, character driven, and well-designed this film shows a lot can be done with very little.

Next up was Deadstream, released in 2022. This movie I had heard about but actually avoided because it was of a style I find usually distasteful, the ‘found footage’ made so popular by The Blair Witch Project, a movie that earned praise all out of measure with its quality. Deadstream that takes as its central conceit that we are watching a liver stream of a YouTube-like influencer attempting to reclaim his followers after a social media disaster, was fun, funny, and at time surprisingly horrific.

The next pair of movies were ones I had seen before. The Return of the Living Dead (1985) a black comedy written and directed from the screenwriter of Alien, and truly one of my favorite zombie films, and Day of the Dead the disappointing conclusion to Romero’s original trilogy, filled with one-note, cardboard characters and most fantastic element ever seen in a zombie movie, vast subterrain caverns in South Florida.

We concluded the evening with a Mexican animated movie El Santos vs La Tetona Mendez. Over-the-top with far more crude humor than suits my sensibilities it was not without it comic moments but far from the sort of film I would seek out and watch more than once.

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Exorcist Movies and Faith

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Exorcist 3: Believer yet another film in a franchise that should have never existed, is about to hit the screens and it had me thinking on why only the first film has any quality for me.

The Exorcist, novel and screenplay, was written by William Peter Blatty, until that book best known as a comedic writer in Hollywood. While hitting trouble spiritual waters Blatty, a Catholic, write The Exorcist in part exploring his own faith and what it meant to him. Neither Blatty nor direct Friedken consider the film a horror movie even though it was marketed and widely seen as part of that long genre. It does not follow the usual cause and effect trajectory of a horror movie. Father Merrin’s archeological dig in Iraq does not release the demon from its containment, nor does Regan’s playing with a Ouija board cause her possession. In fact, the friendship between Friedkin and Blatty was severely damaged by Friedkin removing from the theatrical cut a scene Blatty considered absolutely essential to the theme and understanding of the story. It was later restored in the edition titled ‘the version you’ve never seen’ and it is the scene where karris questions why? Why this girl and Merrin provides the answer so that by the possession we will view humanity as mere animal, disgusting and unworthy of God’s love. The entire story rests on questions of doubt about God and his eternal love.

Now I am not, despite what the Monkeys might sing, a believer. That said Blatty was, and it is crucial to his novel and screenplay. At the very least within the setting of The Exorcist Catholicism is real and is an accurate depiction of the universe and its spiritual nature. Regan’s possession only makes sense in the context of a monotheistic god of love and a struggle for the souls of humanity.

Exorcist II: The Heretic jettisoned Blatty’s examination of faith for a typical horror plot of the 1970s where there is no mention of god or the tenets of Christianity replacing them with the sudden appearance of ‘superior’ humans with the psychic ability to heal others and the possession of the first film is retconned into a bid by demons to stop the evolution. The resulting movie is an incomprehensible miss-mash of pop psychology and ESP devoid of faith.

Exorcist III written and directed by Blatty, ignores the second film and attempts to get back to matters of faith, but intervening apparently blunted Blatty’s questions and the script and film lack essential core theme and sincerity of the groundbreaking first film.

After another lengthy break the studio returned to the franchise commissioning a film by noted writer and direct Paul Schrader, but when the final product dissatisfied the studio bosses, and the entire project was reshot by Renny Harlan as a more action/horror film. Eventually both movies were released as Exorcist: The Beginning and Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist. Despite framing the story around Father Merrin and his crisis of faith following World War II neither movie found the heart of the original and neither found success with audiences.

Following another fallow period, the studio tried again this time with a sequel television series and now have once again returned to the big screen with yet another sequel. I have littler faith that the newest film will seriously examine faith from an honest Christian or Catholic perspective. I suspect such an approach would simply be too frightening too skittish about offending some element of the audience. As such we will be treated to another movie built around set pieces, extreme visual effects, and utterly devoid of meaning.

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Secret Morgue 2023 Pre-View

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Local cinephile organization Film Geeks SD is hosting this Saturday September 23 the annual Secret Morgue a six-movie marathon. The titles of the films are secret with only the theme acknowledged. Previous marathons have had the themes of SF/Aliens, Witches, Animal Attacks, and 70s/80s horror. This year’s theme is zombies and that covers a lot of ground. Each year I have attended I have enjoyed, and I expect 2023 to be no different.

I am going to take some guesses as to which movie might screen. While I know some of the organizers, they have not nor would they ever give me any hints to the titles, so these are all just guesses of varying quality.

Night of the Living Dead: There are two reason I think this is a likely contender. First, it is the ur-text for modern zombie movies. Before Night zombie movies were Caribbean mystical zombies and afterwards that variety became to exception rather than the rule. the second reason is that the movie is in the public domain and therefore there are no rights holders with their palms out demanding cash for a public screening.

 

 

 

 City of the Living Dead I suspect at least one Italian zombie flick is going to make an appearance and it’s either this one or Zombie. I’ll put my money on the lesser-known film with the Lovecraft references.

 

 

 

 

 

One Cut of the Dead: A more recent film that has garnered praise within the horror community but not widely known outside of that social structure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sugar Hill A 70s blaxploitation zombie movie will be almost irresistible to the people of Film Geeks SD. It also has the charm of being a post-Night zombie movie that didn’t just crib from Romero’s cult classic.

 

 

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue An English/Spanish co-production from the 70s, it clearly has inspiration from Romero’s Night but was produced before the zombie apocalypse became a cultural touchstone.

 

 

 

White Zombie A pre-code Bela Lugosi movie about classic Voodoo zombies, enslavement, and sexual perversion that also is in the public domain.  It is the original Zombie movie and for that fact alone I think there is a strong chance that it screens in the marathon.

 

 

 

 

I shall report from the Morgue and let all of you know how terrible my guesses turned out to be.

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The Appeal of Incompetent Art

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Recently on a bonus episode of the podcast The Evolution of Horror the host asked his guests which film was worse, Exorcist II: The Heretic or the often proclaimed ‘worst film of all time’ Plan 9 from Outer Space. Both on the show and on the Facebook page where the discussion has widened to listeners of the podcast the opinion runs pretty one sided in favor of Plan 9 being the ‘better’ movie.

Plan 9, while universally recognized as a film assembled by people with incompetent craft skills, has following and holds a special place in the hearts of numerous people who, while admitting all of the movie’s flaws, still enjoy watching the cinematic trainwreck. hardly anyone feels that way about Exorcist II a studio commanded sequel that while technically competent is often forgotten when conversation turns to its legendary predecessor.

Plan 9 is far from the only incompetent film to develop some sort of following; the whole concept of the ‘cult’ movie is usually predicated on a film that not only failed at the box office but usually displays the poor craftsmanship of its creatives. And yet these movies find their ways into people’s hearts. Why?

I think it is because while not skilled enough to execute the visions in their hearts, the creatives of the incompetent films loved them, believed in them, and their passion for the projects is sometimes captured on that film and it is that uncynical faith that calls out to others.

Earnestness applied too heavily becomes cynicism which in many cases is repellant but originating from love begats more love. That is the heart of the cult movie and why studio attempts to craft a cult film fail. A studio cannot love only creatives and the people who hear them can.

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