Spooky Movie #6: Werewolf by Night

 

Marvel comics has a history stretching back the 60s. In those decades of world building and market chasing as part of their unified universe of heroes and villains the have explored every genre of storytelling including horror. With the Disney + release of Werewolf by Night they bring horror into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Werewolf by Night is helmed by first time director Michael Giacchino, though he is best known as a film score composer whose works include the fanfare that plays with the Marvel Studios logo. Written by Heather Quinn and Peter Cameron the Disney + special follows a group of ‘monster hunters’ gathered to compete to claim a powerful artifact, the Bloodstone. A monster ‘unlike any that they have face before’ has been released onto the grounds of a grand estate with the bloodstone imbedded into it. To win a hunter must not only best the beast and claim the stone but also survive the other hunters.

Presented in black-and-white to invoke the sensation of classic Universal horror, and to mitigate the blood splattered violence, the just under an hour special does a fine job of capturing a mood and atmosphere that plays well for fans of cinematic horror. The filmmakers carried their ‘old school’ presentation to entertaining ends with the inclusion of ‘cue marks.’ These are dark or white ovals that flash in the upper righthand corner of the frame to alert projectionist that a reel change was nearing and to prep the second projector. Even in the mid 1980s when I worked in a local movie theater the cue marks had passed out of relevance as the film projectors massive platters that contained the entire film on a single reel.

Aside from a title card with silhouettes of the Avengers there is no direct reference to other characters of the MCU though the production is officially a part of the franchise and introduces comic characters to this aspect of the Marvel universe.

Werewolf by Night is a fun, slightly scary, entry into the MCU and well worth the less than an hour it takes to view. An excellent episode to watch during this season.

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The Joys and Importance of Beta Reads

 

I will return to my season Spooky Movie series tomorrow.

For the last week I have been reading a novella by a fellow writer as a beta reader. For those not in the know a beta read is test read by someone other than the author of a piece. The purpose is to discover how it comes across to someone unfamiliar with the story. Writers often beg and go wanting for good beta readers, after all it is unpaid labor and a good beta read is labor as not only are you responding with ‘I like that character’ ‘I don’t like that one,’ and such. But if you are a writer, you are also trying to feel the pace, the mood, and why it works or doesn’t.

That is why if you are a writer doing beta reads is more important than getting them. Sharpening those analytical skills on prose you did not compose sharpened them for when you are composing as well. The trick is to also understand what the other writer’s voice is and not step on that. The point of your feedback isn’t to turn the piece into something like what you would have written but the improve what is there by coming closer to what the author intended.

I am luck that the piece I am currently reading is well-written and entertaining with few major issues. All writers should as much as possible, go forth and beta read for others.

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Spooky Movie 5: Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla (1974)

 

To lighten the mood following the masochistic demons from beyond in Hellraiser I watched, along with my sweetie-wife, 1974’s Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla.

Released near the end of the ‘Shōwa’ era, 1954-1975, Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla is the 14th film in the franchise and pits the now heroic kaiju monster against am alien robotic duplicate.

In apparent accordance with an ancient prophesy that a monster will come to destroy to world Godzilla reappears and unlike his more recent heroic turn, once again cuts a path of destruction across the Japanese islands. Simultaneously two teams of scientists, a hard-science specialist, and an archeologist, chase down clues to recent events while shadowed and threatened by mysterious agents, some of which turn out to be another vanguard of invading aliens and INTERPOL officers. With the arrival of the OG Godzilla, the imposter is revealed to be a cyborg Toho Studiosconstruction of the aliens. Mechagodzilla is more powerful than Godzilla that is until the correct interventions by priests, princesses, and the scientists. As with all the 70’s Godzilla movies the film’s resolution is never in any doubt and one does not watch kaiju movies from this period for suspense and dramatic turns, but instead for several men in outrageous costumes throwing down on a set filled with miniature mountains and buildings. Shōwa era Godzilla films, save the original masterpiece, are a fun guilty pleasure. I remember being quite disappointed when Godzilla vs The Smog Monster player at the local drive-in and no one in my family had the slightest interest in going. (I did eventually, only a few years ago, see the film and it is truly one of the weirdest Godzilla movies.) Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla will never listed as a great work of cinema nor is it every frightening, but it makes for a perfect light distraction during the more intense fare of the season.

Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla is currently streaming on HBO Max.

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Spooky Movie 4: Hellraiser (2022)

 

Full disclosure I saw the original Hellraiser when it was released in theaters, and I left the screening disappointed. So much so that I never watched any of the numerous sequels. This is no shade thrown at the fan base who have embraced this franchise, but it simply did not work for me.

Hellraiser 2022 centers of Riley McKendry a woman battling drug and alcohol addiction as she lives with her brother Matt, his boyfriend Collin, and roommate Nora. While on a burglary with his hook-up friend Trevor, Riley discovers a mystical puzzle box which can summon twisted and Spyglass Media Groupmutilated demons, the Cenobites, that offer twisted rewards and gifts often in the form of extreme physical torment. When her brother vanishes and with her own recollections fouled by her drugged mind Riley embarks on the quest to discover the truth of the puzzle box and find her brother.

I very much enjoyed Hellraiser 2022, much more than I did the original. The cast performs well, the atmosphere and mood of this version is quite well captured by director David Bruckner and cinematographer Eli Born. While the extensive Hellraiser franchise robs the cenobites of mystery and surprise this story, entirely distinct from the original film and novella, has enough mystery and twists within itself to satisfy. This set of characters are also more appealing and easier to enjoy with then the original ’87 movie. The production also benefits from a much higher budget, more than 30 years of advancement in special effect, and a more experienced director helming the feature, yielding a far superior product. No shade to Clive Barker and his production. Given the budget it must be viewed as a success since it inspired such a long-lasting fandom, but talent in one art, writing, does not necessarily translate to another.

From certain segments of fandom, a great deal of noise has been generated over the casting of a transactor, Jamie Clayton, as the iconic leader of the Cenobites, Pinhead. As with other sound and fury signifying nothing concerning the race of actors plays elves, dwarves, and Norse gods, in the end all that really matters is the performance and Clayton’s was perfectly adequate. That is not damning with faint praise. The script calls on Pinhead do to little more than appear and intone theatrically and this requirement Clayton fulfills quite well. To see more from the performance required more on the page than is present.

All in all, Hellraiser 2022 is an acceptable horror film for a late night’s viewing. It shan’t become one of my favorites but nor does it rank among those that wasted my time.

Hellraiser 2022 is currently streaming on HULU.

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A Flock of Black Swans

 

In just over three weeks here in the United States we will hold our ‘mid-term’ election voting for the entire House of representatives and a third of the Senate, along with numerous statewide and local elections.

Traditionally this election coming in the middle of a president’s first term is one where the party not currently holding the Presidential powers gains significantly in politician power. Apathy by the party in power and in supporters, energizing anger at being out of power by the opposition, dissatisfaction with the unrealized and usually impossible promises of the current administration all combine to push the traditional direction of these mid-term elections.

If forced to place a bet today I would bet that, in general, this trend will hold, and the GOP will gain control of the House. But that bet would be at considerably lowers odds that in past mid-term elections.

Every election is unique but this one sees factors never before in play.

Usually, a president defeated at the box office quietly fades for a number of years from public life, leaving the electoral fight to a new wave of candidates. Not this time. The Former Guy has held nearly continuous rallies and has forced candidate after candidate to effectively swear their undying fealty to him and his lies that the last election was ‘stolen.’ Instead of allowing the public to focus on the new administration and its inevitable failings the Former Guy is reminding everyone what was so unpleasant about the last election. The one he lost.

After the last election a coordinated and violent attempt to overturn its results marred our perfect record of a peaceful transferer of power. Even when Lincoln won the 1860 election without a single elector from the Enslaving States, they attempted to separate themselves from the Union and not overthrow the election. The horrific images of the assault on the Capitol have not faded in part because the Former Guy insists on remaining in the public eye, continually reminding the public of his attempted coup.

In the intervening years since the last election the highest court of the land has also taken utterly unprecedented action, stripping, for the first time, recognized individual rights from the American people. This has possibly energized a base that would normally be complacent or even resentful of an administration that has failed to deliver everything the base desires.

Are these factors enough, are there are black swans, to change the course and upset the historical expectation?

I don’t know. I hope so, but I simply cannot know.

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Spooky Movie #3: Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde

 

It is a time of great change, the hated production code has been slain, replaced with the MPAA ratings system and movies have gotten more daring and explicit which for Hammer Studios, facing falling enthusiasm for their gothic horror, means more salacious content, more bare flesh, and Playboy models leading their horror films. In this tumult they produce and release Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde.

Confession, this move never climbed high in my desire to see it because I fully expected it to be in the same vein as The Vampire Lovers where not only is lesbianism used to titillate the audience, but the vampire have moved their feeding from the neck to the ladies’ naked breasts. That is, I thought of this movie as purely exploitive.

Recently on the Pure Cinema podcast, filmmaker Edgar Wright recounts many of his favorite underrated British horror movies and this one was among them. S quick search located the movie on a commercial-support streaming service, Shout Factory!

Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde is a grand goulash of well-worn setting and themes. Of course, it’s principal ingredient is the adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic story The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, not content with one tale of Victorian madness and murder the Hammer Studiosfilm also folds into its plot the notorious murders in Whit Chapple, yes Jack the Ripper is part of this film.  Because unscrupulous doctors have to obtain corpses for their experimentations the historic case of Burke and Hare, though displace about 70 years from the 1820s to the 1890s, complete this dish adding in additional murder because old jack simply wasn’t enough for a film this colorful movie.

In this version Henry Jekyll, frustrated that his life span will be far too short to eradicate all disease from humanity, turns his research to find an elixir of life and naturally the source of such agelessness must be found in the hormones of women. However, testing the concoction on himself doesn’t produce youth but rather transforms Henry Jekyll into a woman whom he explains away to his neighbors as his sister Mrs. Hyde.

Mrs. Hyde has her own desires and will, complete with a powerful sexual attraction to one of the handsome neighbors. An attraction is blurs between the two identities, while Jekyll remains attracted to the neighbor’s comely sister. (There are a lot of sisters in this film.)

 The film is well cast, all of the actors credible and entertaining in their role but the outstanding achievement in the casting is Ralph Bates as Jekyll and Martine Beswick as Mrs. Hyde. Not only did both perform quite well but the similarity of their faces added an extra level of credibility to the transformation.

Digital ‘morphing’ lay decades off in the future from this film and rather than utilizing lapse-dissolves for the transformation the filmmakers used mirrors, cuts, and ingenious framing with distorting colored glass, creating an impression of in-camera changing.

Unlike many other versions of the classic story, Jekyll isn’t presented as purely noble and good. Neither is Hyde the epitome of evil. Both characters have blood, literally, on their hands, and both invoke a sense of sympathy.

Aside from some gratuitous nudity this film holds up rather well with more interesting characters and questions about identity than shock or scares.

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Another Novel Completed

 

Yesterday marked the final corrections and updated to my latest Seth Jackson military SF novel. Seth’s an American serving in the European starforces in a future where the United States took a wrong turn in the early 21st century and became a third-rate power.

In some form or another the character of Seth Jackson and the setting has been with me for 25 years, originally taking up residence in my brain about 1988. I have written him and characters around him in short stories and in novel, none of which have yet been published, but hope springs eternal.

The previous Seth Jackson novel got very nicely complimentary rejections from publishers, with no two editors agreeing on precisely what it was about that novel that didn’t work for them. That was encouraging for me. If they all or even most agreed on the fault then it was likely an actual failing in the text but with each having their own reaction it becomes much more about personal preferences.

One editor commented that she really liked the central character and when I started this novel I had hopes of submitting it her first. Sadly, for me not for her, she has now retired from the industry enjoying a well-earned rest.

The novel clocks in at 100,000 words which was the target length I had aimed for. it also represents the first time in this setting where I have written points of view from the ship’s chiefs, which I found to be much more fun to write than the officers.

Now comes the part of the process that I, along with many other authors, despise. The shopping it around. Creating query letters, trying to change my hat from creator to hype man, a role for which I have never been well-suited. I could not sell water in the Sahara.

Whinging about it will not help. Time to do the work that is not fun.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempt to live by the social standard of 1950s America and the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and he desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.

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Spooky Movie 2: Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist

 

After watching The Keep a film with a troubled production I followed up the next feature film with a movie that possessed and even more troubled history Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist.

1973 saw the release of The Exorcist adapted by William Peter Blatty from his own novel, directed by William Friedkin, and a massive box-office smash, launching a troubled franchise of horror movies. Four years after the original Exorcist II: The Heretic failed to reproduce the first film’s success and the franchise lay fallow for 13 years until Blatty, ignoring the sequel, write and directed one of his own, The Exorcist III. (While Blatty pretended the second one didn’t exist the studio pointedly did not.) This film also failed to find the level of success desired by the studio.

More than a decade passed before Paul Schrader was brought aboard to help a prequel for the backstory on the original films exorcist Father Lankester Merrin. Schrader’s film so disappointed the studio that he was fired from the production, twelve weeks of additional shooting and with an almost entirely new cast and a new director, Renny Harlin, a new film with more violence, gore, and jump scares was crafter and released as The Exorcist: The BWB Studioseginning, which failed with both audiences and critics. Seeking to salvage something from the plane crash of a production, the studio brought Schrader back to the film and provided funds to allow him to complete his vision which was released and also failed as Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist.

Father Merrin, (Stellan Skarsgard) after witnessing and being forced to participate in Nazi atrocities in his native Holland in his post-war and devoid of faith, now focusing on archelogy, is excavating a buried 5th century church in Kenya, an important find as the first evidence that the early Christian Church had reached this part of the world so early. The Turkana locals, predominantly non-Christian, view the church as a source of evil. A British garrison is posted to protect the site from looters escalating tension with the locals. Merrin discovers the church, which anomalous architecture was built atop an older non-Christian site of worship where human sacrifices were performed. After unsealing the hidden site, the hostility between the British occupiers and the locals intensifies carrying echoes of the war crimes in Merrin’s past. The local missionary, Father Francis, believes an evil spirit has been released but Merrin’s lack faith forces him to find ‘rational’ explanations for the strange events. With war brewing and people torments by their haunted terrible pasts, Merrin is forced to confront the facts of his belief and find his faith again if the unearthed evil is to be vanquished.

What Works For Me:

There’s a lot in this film that is aimed at my particular tastes in horror movies. I am more partial to atmosphere and mood with a slow burn in horror than I am to a killer slashing their way through a bevy for generic and forgettable teens.

Dominion is a slow burn psychological horror film where for most of the movie’s run time the spreading evil is subtle and ambiguous. It is left to the audience to determine for themselves just how much of the cruelty and violence is a result of a demonic presence and how much is simply human nature.

Threats in the movie are more suggested than explicit with only occasional burst of shocking violence, including the slaughter of children at school. The acting is on point and credible and wisely, in my opinion, Skarsgard made no attempt to mimic Max Von Sydow’s distinctive voice and cadence but rather made his own interpretation of Merrin.

What Didn’t Work For Me:

Once the possession is fully revealed and though this is meant to be the same demonic force that nearly thirty years later will possess Reagan, that is no continuity in the possession, its manner, or effects. While there is a strong suggestion that the demon is using various characters’ guilt and shame against them, this is played for more subtly than when it taunted characters in the original film and having a strong continuity in the demon would have tied to two films together.

The digital effects are weak and often ejected me out of my willing suspension of disbelief. The threatening hyenas rarely were credible and instead of increasing tension the effect undercut the threat, lowering the emotional sense of the stake.

Overall while a flawed film and one that never fully recovered from its production woes Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist is an attempt at a thoughtful introspective horror film that dares to ask is evil a force from without or something within all of us.

Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist is currently streaming on Peacock.

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Spooky Short Films

 

So, for the edition of Spooky Films I’m going to discuss three short film that I really enjoyed. Two of these I had the pleasure of seeing on the big screen at a horror film festival and the final one on-line.

Short films can be a great medium for horror. Get in, get to your central concept, and get back out again.

 

The Call Of Charlie

A married. couple about to host an intimate dinner/blind date for another couple are surprised by the wife’s old college roommate sudden arrival with her spouse. When the final guest arrives his usual appearance and nature sparks fear and unease in the uninvited guests.

This is a horror comedy and hits both notes dead-on. If there is a lesson to be learned here it is do not ‘just drop in’ unexpectedly one people

 

My Dinner With Werner

A fictionalized story of iconoclast and filmmaker Werner Herzog on a blind date while his former star and now enemy Klaus Kinski attempts to murder him. The impersonations of Herzog and Kinski are pitch-perfect. The more you know the history of these unique men the funnier the short becomes.

 

AM 1200

An embezzler, wrecked with guilt, on a lonely and deserted highway hears a call for help from a fading AM radio station but the cosmic horror he discovers there is far deep and far more terrible than his own petty crimes.

The longest of these short films Am 1200 was director David Prior, director of the feature The Empty Man.

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I am Participating on Panels For LosCon

 

LosCon is the Los Angeles area science-fiction convention held over Thanksgiving weekend. (This year November 25th thru the 27th.) Finally, after two years of COVID I am returning to Loscon one of my beloved conventions and this year I will be participating on 4 panel discussions.

I will be moderating Everything You Need to Know About Editing Saturday at 10:00 am.

I will be a panelist on Finding Your Own Voice in Writing. Also Saturday at 5:30 PM

Sunday at 11:30 am I will moderate How to Write for a Specific Genre

And I will conclude my panel discussions moderating What the Publishing Landscape Looks Like Today 2:30 on Sunday.

If you are in the L.A. area, I urge you to attend. LosCon is fun and I have missed it terribly.

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