Will you have a howling good time with this 8-movie werewolf franchise?

Posted on June 10, 2019 by Daniel

I’m not going to go into depth about The Howling from 1981, because it’s a classic, and shame on you if you haven’t seen it. Yes, I’m totally horror shaming!

It is director Joe Dante’s horror masterpiece, stars Dee Wallace, has her hunky hubby Chris Stone as her man, and gives us a brief glimpse of part of his ass—just enough to make my adolescent hormones rage back then. Being a gay teen in the 80s called on desperate measures.

The terrifying werewolf moments broke new ground in werewolf transformation scenes, also delivering a blueprint for werewolf design that is still used today in the most effective lycanthrope films. Could any sequels ever live up to the legacy of such perfection? Let’s find out.

HOWLING II: YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF (1985)

Look, I have nothing against a travesty of a Howling movie (that’s why I have all of them in my collection), but this abomination should never have been green-lighted as a direct sequel to the original game changer.

It comes to us from the director of The Beast Within and Communion…so it really should have been better. Meanwhile, Gary Brandner, author of the original The Howling novel trilogy, apparently started working on the screenplay, but things didn’t work out so he was relieved of his duty.

The film begins at the funeral of the Dee Wallace character—with the body in the coffin played by a different actress, where her brother—the hottie from Sssssss—and a reporter Dee worked with are approached by Christopher Lee.

Maybe if I close my eyes they won’t be able to tell that I’m not Dee Wallace…

He tells them she was a werewolf and therefore the werewolf pack will be coming for her body since she can’t be buried in hallowed ground.

There are actually some promising werewolf moments in the first half of the film, but once the trio heads to Transylvania to hunt werewolves, the film gets trashy, with Sybil Danning bringing in the 80s sexual sleaze as the queen of the werewolves.

Let the hairy orgies begin. Ugh. Maybe acceptable if this had just been a movie called Orgy of the Werewolves or something, but not in a sequel to The Howling.

The characters seem to meander through the scenery with little in the way of plot beyond humans hunting goofy looking werewolves.

It’s said that the director was accidentally sent ape costumes and was forced to alter them as much as possible to make them look like werewolves. It can’t be stressed enough that this obscene downgrade in costume design is a slap in the face of the official’s reputation.

At least the final battle between men and wolves is filled with cheesy practical gore effects. There’s even a brief moment set on Halloween in the final scene.

 

Steve Parsons & Babel, who performs the new wave theme song (the reason I own the soundtrack) appears as a band in a club scene, which gives us something you thought you might never see…Christopher Lee wearing 80s new wave glasses.

And to add to the silliness (in a good way), Sybil unleashes some deformed bat creature on a priest’s face. Classic shlocky 80s gore.

HOWLING III: THE MARSUPIALS (1987)

From the same director as the second film, the third installment is perhaps one of my favorite pieces of trash in the series because it’s a bit of an 80s mess that feels as wickedly absurd and disjointed as the best Euro horror of the decade.

A dude working on a horror movie called Shape Shifters Part 8 hires a young woman he meets on the street to star in it. She’s never seen a horror movie, so he takes her to a werewolf film, which gives us a perfectly campy transformation scene. After the film, she tells him the transformation was all wrong, and that she should know…

Meanwhile, a scientist is on the hunt for a rumored werewolf.

There’s also a female dancer who suddenly turns werewolf in the middle of a performance, in an artsy, stylized segment that turns out to be entertainingly laughable. Awesome.

There’s also another guy who the scientist experiments on to get him to transform.

And since it’s Australia and these are “the marsupials,” a baby crawls from a hairy werewolf pussy into mommy’s…kangaroo pocket???

What an awesome disaster, complete with plenty of cheesy werewolf scenes, generic 80s pop music, and even a masquerade party.

Unfortunately the director rehashes the last act of the previous film, with werewolves and humans roaming through the wilderness hunting each other (in the Australian outback this time). The horrible, happy ending wrap-up goes on forever, but we do get a throwback to the original with an on air television transformation. Unfortunately, that transphobic bitch Dame Edna is the host of the show on which it happens.

HOWLING IV: THE ORIGINAL NIGHTMARE (1988)

John Hough (The Legend of Hell House, Escape to Witch Mountain, Return from Witch Mountain, The Incubus, American Gothic) is credited as directing the fourth film, but apparently it was heavily recut after he was done. It is also referred to as “the original nightmare” because it sticks closer to the original novel than the first film. Ironic considering this film feels like a low budget remake of the original movie because the plots are so similar.

The leading lady this time is an author who goes to stay in a cabin with her hot husband (Michael T. Weiss of the gay film Jeffrey) after she has a bit of a breakdown. They meet an exotic shop owner who eventually seduces the husband.

The leading lady befriends both the town’s doctor and a young woman who is doing some investigating into the town. And eventually it becomes clear it’s an entire community of werewolves.

Yeah, same movie as the original. Difference is, until the very end, we get actual wolves instead of werewolves, attacks in which we don’t see beyond the wolf POV stalking the victim, and another studly male friend who serves as secondary support whenever the leading lady’s husband doesn’t come through.

The last few scenes finally bring the horror with a disgusting werewolf transformation scene that also doesn’t really make sense.

The human completely melts into a puddle of goo, out of which the werewolf forms. As absurd as it is, it is some nasty horror goodness that saves the whole movie, along with the appearance of the big bad lead wolf, which is an 80s monstrosity to the max.

And why not one more shot of Michael T.’s hair pies?

HOWLING V: THE REBIRTH (1989)

While the fifth film goes for the “it’s what you don’t see that’s scariest” approach, it’s such a throwback to the Peter Cushing/Christopher Lee era of gothic Hammer films that I have a soft spot for it.

Accented with dramatic, Omen-esque choral cult music, the film takes place in an old castle, where a bunch of strangers has assembled.

Tales of historical werewolf attacks get told, and the group soon figures out something very strange is going on in the cold and creepy castle.

Much of the film takes place in a maze of torch-lit catacombs, where victims are chased by werewolf POV. Seriously, the entire movie consists of only two flashes of werewolf face in the dark, a werewolf paw reaching in from off-screen, and one full werewolf body silhouette flash. Everything else is left up to your imagination.

Most of the unexpected gore comes when the guests determine one of them is a werewolf and begin offing each other with sharp weapons as distrust grows. There’s something very House on Haunted Hill about the situation.

Despite the disappointing lack of werewolf, there’s plenty of atmosphere. The only thing missing is Christopher Lee, who should have been in this installment instead of the second.

HOWLING VI: THE FREAKS (1991)

To get to the good stuff, I just had to get past the bad twanging country western vibe in the first few scenes of this one—including a country music montage when our main man, a drifter, comes to a small town and takes a job helping to renovate an old church.

I was feeling it once it shifted into Something Wicked This Way Comes territory. A traveling carnival comes to town, and the evil carnival leader keeps a bunch of sideshow freaks captive and exploits them, convincing them that he’s saving them and giving them a life because they’d be rejected in society.

The main man and his love interest get a first-hand look at the freaks after they go through the carnival’s creepy fun house.

I definitely appreciate the style of this installment, and it only gets better when our main guy turns into a werewolf and has to prove that it is not him but another monster that is killing people in town.

Aside from the transformation scene, which is a cool rip-off of An American Werewolf in London that unfortunately cuts away for the best part, the other bullish monster is the highlight. To me, the werewolf looks like a gothic death metal singer.

Finally, I didn’t particularly like the way a cat was handled in one scene.

HOWLING VII: NEW MOON RISING (1995)

While I appreciate what director/star Clive Turner is attempting to do with this final original sequel in terms of tying parts 4, 5, and 6 into an actual cohesive plot, what he mostly does is make this an absolutely self-indulgent ode to himself.

If all the trivia about these films is true, it’s no surprise that Clive wanted to take someone else’s creation and make it all his own. Apparently Clive, who produced a bunch of the sequels, made the lives of each director a living hell, and in the end, changed everything they did, rewrote scripts, did reshoots, and sometimes even took directing credits for himself. The man literally hijacked more than half of the franchise and made it all about him.

This disaster has him playing a drifter who comes to a small town just before locals begin getting slaughtered.

Legend has it that Clive filmed the movie in a real small town and cast all the locals…as themselves. A good chunk of the movie features him just hanging out in a local bar with everyone as they chat, square dance, sing country songs, piss, fart…. Seriously, dude? This is the fucking Howling legacy you’re shooting in its heart with a silver bullet.

When we’re not living the small town dream with these non-actors, a couple of guys are investigating the characters from the previous films in a series of flashback footage from parts 4, 5, and 6.

The leading lady from part 4 returns to relate her story, and the final girl from part 5 is also on hand. Thanks to very specific footage used from part 6 accompanied by an explanation, you get to see that the final girl from part 5 made a cameo in it, something most (including me) wouldn’t have noticed when watching 6.

Clive’s character also plays a major role in tying the movies together (because the franchise is all about him, of course). He has a cameo in part 4, then plays a different major role in part 5, so those two factors are brought together here by explaining that he was both of those characters…event though he now has a different name with no explanation.

What else to say? Kills consist simply of oversaturated red wolf POV.

Clive’s hair looks absurd, so when a local calls him a red-headed faggot, I hate to side with a homophobe, but Clive kind of deserves it.

Also of note, although it’s never mentioned, apparently part 7 was filmed at Halloween time, because there are Halloween decorations and Jack o’ lanterns at the bar.

When we finally find out who the werewolf is in the last scene, there’s a terrible, thankfully brief CGI transformation, and then we just see the werewolf face.

THE HOWLING REBORN (2011)

I guess the Teen Wolf brand had already been acquired for the MTV series before Reborn went into production. There is no reason to have brought The Howling name back to life with an awful teen werewolf melodrama that completely fails to define its characters or their motivations as it drags along.

Landon Liboiron from the TV show Hemlock Grove gets to warm-up as a werewolf, yet not really, because despite being the teen who finds out he’s descended from a bunch of werewolves, he never bothers to turn into one, even during the final battle.

Instead his “girlfriend” comes to his rescue, a character he flirts with just a few times before she decides she’s in love enough with him to let him turn her into a werewolf…even though he never does so himself. What a fucking mess.

As in Teen Wolf, he has a goofy best friend who helps him cope with his new puberty problem, but they also get only a few scenes together that barely establish their closeness.

And his mother, who he thought died, comes back on the scene, but somehow his father doesn’t recognize her.

With about 15 minutes to go, the main characters finally discover on graduation day (night actually) that the werewolf clan is conveniently living in the basement of their high school. The brief werewolf action is a blend of practical makeup and CGI, most of it cloaked in shadow either way.

As the credits role, the film finally echoes the original movie, with him live streaming a transformation to show the world that werewolves really do exist.

Not even a soundtrack that includes “The Killing Moon” by Echo and the Bunnymen, Alison Moyet performing a solo version of her Yazoo song “Ode to Boy”, and an acoustic version of “Don’t Fear the Reaper” can make Reborn any better. Just binge the entire Teen Wolf series—great soundtrack, lots of shirtless hotties, and gay stuff.

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Another Halloween BOO! Movie

Posted on June 7, 2019 by Daniel

That is some seriously festive Halloween horror movie poster art. I couldn’t ask for anything better (especially anything that reminds me more of It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown). Of course, I could ask for something better in terms of the movie that accompanies that art.

Damn me all the way to hell for doing something I rarely do these days—blind buy. Look for Boo! 2019 on ebay in a day or two if you must own it. I thought I had taught myself a while back never to trust that horror filmmakers are guaranteed to take me for a thrill ride. I guess I slipped this time.

Not to be confused with the 2005 Boo, which takes place on Halloween in an old hospital, this Boo! takes place in a home on Halloween.

Let’s get the Halloween atmosphere issue out of the way immediately. The opener promises plenty of it, with the streets loaded with trick or treaters at night on Halloween 1980.

That’s about the extent of the Halloween spirit you’re going to get.

We meet a family in the modern day on Halloween night. It’s a mixed race family consisting of a white dad and daughter and a black mom and son, so I’m not sure what the deal is here. Is this a new millennium Brady Bunch situation or did the couple magically give birth to one white and one black kid? Does that happen?

The drab house definitely sets the tone of just how drab this movie is. As if we don’t have enough of it going around right now, the dad is a religious wing nut. Ugh. Yet somehow everyone else in the family isn’t. The daughter shows off her new tattoo. The son believes in the supernatural. And the mom comes across as the only realistic character, because she’s a depressed mess. Why did she even marry this dude in the first place? It just seems totally unfathomable that a father of a household could believe in an imaginary spirit in the sky so deeply, yet everyone else basically dances circles around him mocking his beliefs just by being normal. Either this entire family would be a bunch of submissive religious freaks, or the dad would have killed them by now for not living by the Bible.

It’s Halloween, the doorbell rings, and dad finds a “boo bag” on the front steps. It’s like a chain letter; do what it says or suffer the consequences. The son spirals into a state of paranoia when dad decides to burn the bag of tomfoolery instead of heeding the warning.

Of course dad hates Halloween, so…he goes to an absurdly dark library, the daughter basically flips mom the finger and says she’s going out to have fun (she sits in a car with her boyfriend the whole night—they have sex to make at least something interesting happen), mom goes out to walk the streets, and the terrified son is left alone in his bedroom to panic while waiting for the boo bag curse to get him.

For a good stretch of the film, NOTHING HAPPENS. I wish I could call it a slow burn, but it’s just a depiction of a bunch of unhappy people that aren’t well drawn enough for us to feel anything for them.

Eventually they each start experiencing some weird shit, all of which turns out to be just hallucinations—but to satiate horror fans, there’s a good dose of gore—you know, hallucinatory gore. Seriously, almost everything that happens in the film is a hallucination, so bye bye fear factor.

The family at last reunites in the home for the final act, dad and son have a brief discussion about the “urban legend” from which the boo bag stems, which clears up nothing, and then everyone begins hallucinating more. The only thing that isn’t a hallucination is the completely unnecessary thing that happens to the dog. Why can I suddenly not get away from harmed dog situations in horror since I lost my little Miss Fine a month ago?

Boo! feels like a typical modern day haunting movie without any of the haunting actually being real. This mainstream trend of cliché haunting movies is painfully unscary when the hauntings are real, so why go the nothing is real route for a majority of the film?

There’s a much praised creepy scene involving a View-Master (what current day family still has a View-Master laying around? I’m the queen of having all my old toys around me all the time, yet I don’t even have my View-Master anymore), then something genuinely supernatural apparently happens in the very last moment. Nothing that comes before it explains it, and I simply can’t be frightened by it because it had 90 minutes to scare me but didn’t even try. That shit might work in a 5-minute short you find on YouTube, but it’s simply not enough pay off after giving a film 5×18 minutes of my life.

Basically, this is a movie about an miserable family that finally gets put out of that misery by a demon we never see at the end. I think.

 

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Scared stiff: give it the old fist pump if horror makes you hot….

Posted on June 5, 2019 by Daniel

A second revised post about my life in gay horror that originally appeared on my former publisher’s website, which I am reposting on Boys, Bears & Scares so it will have a permanent home. This time I’m scared stiff and possessed by my own demons.

If you’re like me, you know there’s nothing like a good bump in the night to get the heart racing and the nerves tingling. The thrill of it causes your pulse to pound, starts the adrenalin flowing, leaves you saturated in sweat, and has you looking over your shoulder to get a good glimpse of the seductive devil who’s back there, about to slip inside your soul….

Isn’t it amazing how one paragraph could be describing either an incredible sexual encounter or a horrifying experience with the supernatural? While the psychological ramifications of exposure to one or the other are totally different, the physical responses are virtually the same. So is it any surprise that the horror genre has always crossed the line between titillating and terrorizing?

For starters, the monster is most likely to desire the innocent and virginal—while preying on the promiscuous and sexually active. Hey, it’s rare for me to focus on the innocent and virginal, but I stepped out of my comfort zone and did so when evil St.Ick targeted the boys of Comfort Cove in Scaring Up St.Ick & Arousing QPD, the Christmas and Valentine’s Day installment of my gay horror series.

Also, horror imagery often takes the sensual and perverts it with disgusting twists: demons with slimy, pus-squirting tongues they insert between supple human lips in order to possess the unwilling; creatures with grotesque, phallic appendages they use to savagely penetrate and poison beautiful human bodies; alien species with gaping, oozing, teeth-lined orifices resembling pulsating vaginas and anuses, which need to fill their void by sucking on flawless human flesh.

And possibly the most important reason sex is almost obligatory in horror? We are most vulnerable when we’re naked: in the shower as the knife-wielding masked killer stands just on the other side of the curtain; skinny-dipping in the middle of the night, unaware of the man-eater swimming just beneath the dark surface; making love in the backseat of a car at Lover’s Lane as the hook hand latches on to the door handle. Well, all that, and because of, you know, the obvious: sex and the satanic are often linked and are both considered taboo. So how better to draw in an audience than by serving up a whole lot of bare boobs to the beast?

Ironically, when I was an impressionable teen in the 1980s, there was a disconnect as I was bombarded by visions of curvaceous, scantily clad women being sacrificed to vicious specters on the covers of the plethora of horror paperback books and VHS boxes that lined my local bookstore and video store shelves. Upon digesting the media, I was never particularly upset when the lusty busty babe got the axe—I was too busy hoping her boyfriend would be the last man standing.

The horror genre is marketed to the straight man—particularly straight male adolescents. But this isn’t simply sports or cars we’re talking about. There’s something incredibly metaphorical about horror. It’s the big bad monster trying to punish those who partake in the natural acts of lust and love. And who better to relate to a relentless outside force trying to stop their desire for instinctive, impulsive passion than gay men?

In my time as a writer of gay erotic horror fiction, I’ve discovered something the heterosexual male horror community doesn’t fully comprehend: many gay males are voracious devourers of horror books and films. We’re not merely the prissy, disposable first victim or the psychosexual-woman-hating-cross-dressing killer they’ve always presented us as (hint hint: toss in a little hairy man buns now and then!).

Thanks to the niche communities the internet creates, I’ve connected with readers who are just like me. They love men, they love sex, and they love horror—but are generally required to subject themselves to woman parts in order to get to the scary parts (I know, there’s a gay joke in there about how the woman parts are the scary parts). As if the feedback to my gay erotic horror stories isn’t sign enough that there is an audience for it, I’ve found another very interesting gauge—the stud stalking page on my site. It’s a detailed list of every horror movie I come across that features even the slightest glimpse of scrumptious man epidermis. The response to the section has been overwhelming from gay horror fans, from requests for more recommendations to other titles I need to add to the list.

I love writing erotica. I love writing horror. My first published strictly erotic stories appeared in jerk-off magazines, and I told myself it was just a way to get my foot in the door and that eventually I’d be able to get mainstream horror stories published. Then I began to realize that every time I went to write a horror story, it was with a gay man’s perspective. I didn’t want to write about women in peril (the market is flooded with that approach), and it didn’t make sense to try to put on the straight man beard. Sure, those options would sell more books to more people, but I really wanted to write horror I would like to read myself. I’d simply enjoy writing it more, which would most likely mean better, more genuine storytelling. For that reason, I’ve been astonished at how many aspiring gay male horror filmmakers have an extreme aversion to making gay horror, instead opting for completely heterosexual casts of characters and the usual final girl formula.

Not me. I don’t fear never reaching mainstream success, which so few do anyway, so I’m not going to waste my creative energy on it—there are plenty of straight horror filmmakers to make straight horror. I strictly pen horror stories “starring” gay men. I say starring because when I write, I try to make the story feel and flow like a horror movie. I want the read to be fun and fluid, not bogged down by excessive “smart” prose and philosophical thought. That’s just not the kind of horror that grabs me by the throat and squeezes until I can’t breathe. And so I incorporate whacky and sexually charged situations into my Comfort Cove gay horror series, like the creepy-crawly electrical sparks that possess the men of the city in the fifth installment Don’t Megalick the Power Cord in the Dark…by entering their bodies through their bung holes.

Because horror has always gone hand-in-hand with sexual content, and because the only thing that truly distinguishes gay characters from straight characters is that they—to put it bluntly—love and lay others of the same gender, it felt so natural for me to go balls-to-the-wall with the sexual situations (often literally). But to be clear, in the world of my characters, I don’t want all my men to be raped and ripped apart by heinous monstrosities, although it does happen occasionally. What can I say? It’s a classic horror convention. I want them to be happy, horny men who find love, score some ass, and get themselves into ungodly situations—like their excursion into a satanic death metal club in Don’t Megalick the Power Cord in the Dark.

My stories and novels are not intended to be torture porn, where the implication is that the consumer is getting sexually aroused and stimulated by gore and extreme violence. I’ve simply combined two of my favorite things—scares and sex—with each having its own place in my stories. The horror is there to give readers the willies, with the erotica as the tension relief—a chance to get off. Basically, an emission intermission. I guess you could even call it the horror-gasm.

And that’s the way the fun and fear unfold in my novels. Or, at least, I think they’re my novels…

Have I been possessed by my own inner demons?

 

I’ve created a monster, and it might be in me. And I’m scared (stiff). It feels like the right time to exorcise my Dan demons; the way my fingers have been dancing across the keyboard to spell out stories is like the involuntary movement of a planchette across a Ouija board.

I don’t think of myself as an author. I don’t even think what I’m doing is writing. I consider it relating a story; I’m a storyteller. I’m not saying I’m a liar, but I do make shit up. I’m cursed with an overactive imagination. For instance, in second grade, I drew a detailed picture of a ghost in chains rising from a grave then told my classmates this was a nightly occurrence in the cemetery next to my house. Granted, my house wasn’t next to a cemetery, but it was haunted. It’s just that, back then, Mom told us not to talk about it to anyone. So I fudged the truth. But now Mom’s gone, so I’ve recounted the happenings in detail on my horror house page. It’s not like Mom can reprimand me from the beyond. Or can she…?

Since I was a kid, I’ve had stories scratching and clawing at the inside of my skull to get out. Yet when someone says to me, “Oh, you’re an author,” I can’t bring myself to respond in the affirmative. I always reply with, “I have some books published.” I just can’t see myself teaching workshops on the creative process, giving lectures on being an author, penning essays on the art of writing, running in literary circles, or winning any prestigious award. I think I’m too beneath it all.

I have simple tastes. I like what I like—correction. I love what I like—regardless of its worldwide recognition or disdain. I appreciate that erotic photography celebrates the beauty of sexuality, but I’d rather see perverted porn loaded with funky fluids and sloppy sounds. I get the brilliance of Edgar Allan Poe, but I’m more freaked out by a fatalistic urban legend whispered around a campfire. I think The Exorcist is a timeless masterpiece of tension, terror, directing, special effects, and thespianism, but I’d rather watch Night of the Demons over and over again for its 80s cheese, excessive cheap jump scares, low-budget demon gore, awful acting, and the unforgettable moment when b-queen Linnea Quigley sticks a tube of lipstick into her luscious silicone…I mean…prosthetic breast.

My tastes are reflected in the types of stories I get off on telling. Friends advise me to stop with the gay horror and write a mainstream novel. “You have such a limited audience,” they argue. An audience that likes the same kind of raunchy, gruesome, campy crap I do! What more could I ask for? I’m thrilled when I hear from a reader who appreciates one of my stories, particularly because I didn’t write it to win his acceptance. I wrote it because it was the story I wanted to tell and the story I would want to read. I’m not aiming to be brilliant, poetic, or a master of prose. If occasionally I am, it’s totally accidental and I apologize (to myself).

I have no fear of aiming low. Poking around the internet, one thing becomes apparent quickly; no matter what the general public thinks, there is an audience for EVERYTHING. Those who contact me aren’t just readers of my books…they’re me. We live in the same twilight zone. We are obsessed with the same shlock. First thing I learned in Creative Writing 101 was “write what you know.” I write what I know (sex and horror), and certain readers know what I write.

But do I really write it?

I truly can’t explain where the stories come from. The ideas take on a life of their own as soon as they are conceived. For instance, Combustion, the first novel in my Comfort Cove gay horror series, turned into something I never expected when I began typing it. Take the city of Kremfort Cove. I made it up for one of my previous stories, yet before I could start location hunting, there was no question in my mind that it needed to be the setting for Combustion. It also became so obvious that for many of the characters from my other stories, their final destination would be Kremfort Cove. As Combustion began to unfold, I realized that Kremfort Cove is where most of the stories still clogging my brain were meant to take place. In the year that Combustion was moving toward its release date, the next four installments of the series were already finished in their first drafts.

And this is where the possession rears its ugly head…in my head. Sometimes I wake up with a start at night and just lay there for about an hour, my mind filling with specific plot points, scenes, and word-for-word dialogue for “upcoming” novels. I learn how each novel will begin, how each is going to end. I am informed of what happens in the middle; I might not know the exact path, but I don’t worry. I sit at the keyboard during the day, my fingers begin tapping away, and the stories unfold as if I’m watching a movie. I don’t have to stop and think about what’s supposed to happen next. It’s almost like it is being told to me and I’m just repeating it on paper. It’s supernatural, I tell you! I’m nothing more than a portal (which my husband has been saying for years).

This method (of my madness) is haunting me. During the waking hours, thoughts pop into my brain out of nowhere, distracting me from what I’m doing (such as listening to my husband tell me about his day). These probing thoughts explain how certain scenarios are going to play out, why point A is going to lead to point C, and the reason I introduced a seemingly irrelevant character in a book. I’ll find myself in need of a particular type of character for the novel I’m currently transcribing and immediately realize something along the lines of, “Oh, he already exists. A main character two books back had a minor exchange with him!”

This is why I’m convinced I couldn’t possibly be an author. I’ve seen writers say they have an idea for a book but can’t find the motivation to sit down and start it, don’t know how it begins, and aren’t sure how it ends. Huh? I would think that if you are compelled to write something, starting would not be a stumbling block! I’ve had friends enthusiastically say, “We should write a book together!” Tried that once, ended up writing the whole thing myself, and then got this feedback: “this is cool but it’s not what I imagined.” So, friend, what exactly did you imagine, and why didn’t you write it? Needless to say, my standard answer to such suggestions ever since is that, unfortunately, I’m not a writer, merely a guy who tells naughty, gnarly stories.

And I will continue channeling these sexy spooky stories until the overarching plot connecting them all is ready to be laid to rest. I’ve already been clued in to how the series is going to end. Right now, I don’t know how many tales need to be and are going to be told before that end comes. I don’t actually have the time to stop and think about it because the Dan demons are running the show (they’re kind of pissed I stopped as long as I did to write this). I don’t question them. I don’t doubt them. They’ll tell me what’s ahead when the time is right. I just continue to follow my spirit guides on this journey toward the unknown.

Those who have been reading my stuff for a while are familiar with my monster muse’s playful approach to sexy scary horror. If Combustion, the premiere Comfort Cove book, is the first of mine you pick up, you’ll soon be getting very cozy with the boys, beasts, men, and monsters—and hopefully staying up all night to reach the graphic climax….

 

 

Posted in Everyday I Read the Book: Literary Thoughts, In My Write Mind: News About My Writings, Johnny You ARE Queer - Gay Thoughts | Tagged , | Comments Off on Scared stiff: give it the old fist pump if horror makes you hot….

Calling all gay horror whores

Posted on June 5, 2019 by Daniel

To celebrate horror pride, I’ve revised several of my posts about my life in gay horror, which originally appeared on my former publisher’s website, and I am reposting them on Boys, Bears & Scares so they’ll have a permanent home. No better way to start things off than with my “Calling all gay horror whores” post…

As a gay guy who has been obsessed with horror since I was a little kid, I never searched for any correlation between the genre and the orientation. I just thought horror fans were horror fans. But because horror over the decades has been so heterosexual male-oriented, when I began writing my own horror fiction, I decided it made sense to do it from the all-male perspective while modeling it after the tried and true traits of the genre: scares and sex.

My first erotic horror collection Closet Monsters included five erotic horror stories and the novella Zombied Out, which had some sexual situations but was not erotica. I used the same formula with my second collection, Horny Devils. This time the novella, entitled Scream, Queen!, was a gay slasher—which has been reprinted as part of a Halloween double feature in Wet Screams, the fourth installment of my Comfort Cove gay horror series. It was easy to sex up Scream, Queen!, because the slasher genre lends itself to “gratuitous” sex. That was when I realized I would never write a sex-less horror novel. For me, just like humor, injections of sex into horror help to awaken the senses and totally screw with your mental state. It’s part of the ride: I’m scared. Now I’m horny. I just peed a little from laughing. I almost shit my pants from fear.

Sex in my writing is not necessarily always an “integral part of the plot.” Just like in real life (and straight horror), when the opportunity seems right, in it goes. If a given moment guarantees the characters would be having sex, I’ll be damned if I’m not going to go into explicit detail rather than cut away! But I don’t consider my writing erotica. It’s not written solely to get readers off, so it’s not like you’re reading a sex story labeled “erotic horror” simply because the guys are having sex on Halloween night. These are actual horror stories, albeit loaded with naughty sex.

Unfortunately, gay horror often targets the “erotica” market rather than the horror market, which does it a great disservice. There’s a good chance when an erotica reader sees a sexy guy on the cover of a gay horror book, he’s in for something he didn’t bargain for: gratuitous horror along with the sex. When the cover also captures the horror elements (something I strive for on the covers of my own novels when I come up with the concepts myself–see the Closet Monsters cover above), the erotica reader may be repelled by the horror. However, the horror fan—the true market for the genre—will be intrigued. And unless he’s a horror reader who finds that sex gets in the way of the story and wasn’t tipped off about its inclusion in the book by the half-naked guy on the cover, he’ll be right at home with every gory gay, horny homo detail.

Two great tastes…but do they really go great together?

Hey! You got sex in my horror! No! You got horror in my sex!

What’s all the bickering about? Isn’t that a delicious combo? Does the inclusion of sex in horror fiction automatically make it “erotic” horror? It seems in the world of publishing, heavy sexual content scores you an “erotica” label, just like we expect a penis in a movie to get slapped…with an NC-17 rating, that is. But isn’t there a distinct difference between sex and erotica depending on its purpose within the context of a story and its effect on the reader?

Either way, you would think that in the world of LGBTQ fiction, expressing our sexuality openly in our stories would be embraced. Hell, it should be encouraged! Instead, we need the prudish “erotic” warning label to protect our virgin minds from unsavory adult content!

It often seems that the inclusion of sex in a book has readers holding crossed fingers up to it as if they’re warding off a vampire with a crucifix or stamping an X rating on the book. And so fiction that features sexual situations gets the old “erotic” subgenre attached to the true genre: erotic horror; erotic romance; erotic mystery; erotic fantasy (that last one sounds the dirtiest of all).

I don’t know how it works with the other genres, but I personally cringe every time I see the word “erotic” attached to the “horror” classification on my fiction. Just the fact that “erotic” leads the classification creates an assumption about a book; before even getting to the “horror” part, the mind has already sent the wrong signal of terror loud and clear: “EEK! This is a sex book!”

I would prefer to call my fiction grindhouse horror comedy or exploitation horror. As in those types of movies, the sex in my books is most often presented as over-the-top, absurd, and funny. For instance, a man’s expulsions taste just like dairy when he’s “milked” in my first Comfort Cove gay horror novel Combustion, and a young man who practices the black arts pleasures a big red bear with a dildo using only his mind in the second installment, No Place for Little Ones.

Occasionally, there’s a “romantic” sex scene (because my characters do have hearts!), but generally, the sex is there as a prelude to the horror, to place characters at their most vulnerable when the horror shows itself, or even to just go for the good old gross out.

These are all purposes that go hand-in-hand with horror. Sex isn’t meant to arouse; it is intended as foreplay to awaken the senses and emotions and to enhance the intensity of the climactic moment of fear. And, hey. If sex in horror does turn some readers on, that’s a result of their warped ids. Some people are that sick and twisted—my readers, for instance. I’m fine with them calling my stuff erotic horror. For the rest of you, it’s simply horror. Just have an adult cover your eyes during the dirty parts.

When I started my writing journey, I just assumed horror and eroticism a logical fusion for gay horror fans. Imagine my surprise when some reviews expressed appreciation for the…um…meat of my stories but then made comments about the sex being a distraction. As someone who grew up at a time when sex was mandatory in horror, I’m going to guess these readers weren’t properly raised on sex and violence.

I’ve even seen the equating of the sex in my horror fiction to “sexual assault.” That’s far from the same thing as doing something sexual with a man because you want to be forced into doing it with him, as is usually the case in my stories. Sexual situations involving an unwilling participant are a complete turn off for me—I’ve read that kind of erotic fiction with no enjoyment and watched it go on to win literary awards. Which means I won’t be winning any awards any time soon, because you won’t often find a Deliverance moment in my writing. When you do, the point is absolutely not to arouse; it is to horrify—as when a bunch of crazed dockworkers shove a little man up the ass of a 15-foot man in The Rise of the Thing Down Below, the third novel in my Comfort Cove gay horror series. I can’t be responsible for where the mind wants to go, but isn’t it possible that what might be making readers uncomfortable is that they are left questioning whether or not a scene is supposed to be turning them on?

Perhaps it’s easier for a gay reader to assume such scenes in my books are intended to be sexual because, unlike a heterosexual male, who is most likely repulsed by the idea of butt fucking (as depicted in Deliverance), gay men generally expect it to be a positive experience. Look at it from the reverse perspective. A gay man watching I Spit on Your Grave is not likely to see the rape scene as sexual at all, but the protective anonymity of internet message boards shows time and again that there are heterosexual men who do find it stimulating. Does that mean they are sick individuals, or does it mean that horror is succeeding in making them uncomfortable about the darkness within themselves? Maybe that’s why the sex in my books unnerves gay readers; it makes them contemplate what they never had to when female T&A was being splashed needlessly across the screen through twelve Jason movies.

Either way, whether sex is in place to arouse or to disturb, of all people to express distaste in its presence I never imagined it would be gay men. Could it be true? Straight male horror fans are more in touch with their sexual selves than gay horror fans? Was I going about writing gay horror all wrong?

Thankfully, for every comment about the supposed unnecessary sex in my writing, there is appreciation of it. It was nice to have someone tell me that my story “Woof!” proved to be the first time werewolves made him hot. I often get nods for writing horror stories that feature piggish, hairy, burly bears instead of vanilla, smooth, pretty boys. Not all gay men want sex in their horror, but there are definitely those who aren’t complaining. Still, it’s hard to find the community of gay sex and horror lovers. General horror message boards aren’t bringing them out of the closet. I began to wonder just how niche the market was for my writing.

Then a friend turned me on to a Greenwich Village bear establishment called Rockbar NYC, where a couple of horror-loving gay guys hold a horror trivia night a few times a year. Before I know it, I’m co-hosting the trivia night and doing a reading/signing of my books. I had a blast. Here was a bar full of gay men who could answer the question: How many people did Cujo kill? That night, my erotic horror anthologies were bought and given away as prizes. But did that mean gay horror lovers would actually like them? I didn’t know.

With the release of Combustion the first in my Comfort Cove gay horror series, I returned to Rockbar NYC and something wonderful happened. What was clearly a regular crowd at horror trivia night remembered me as much as I remembered them. And they had actually delved into my books. I witnessed one friend tell a couple that when he read my novella Zombied Out, he pictured them as the bear couple in the book. Another reader told me that whenever anyone peruses his bookshelves, their eyes are drawn immediately to my books. Yet another horror fan told me that he won my book in the trivia contest the first time I was there, loved it, and read it out loud to his adora-bear hubby. He specifically referenced my story “Monstrosity” about a man suffering from a case of “gargantuanism.” He said the ending was horrific—but readily admitted that he also thought it was so hot he took care of business to it more than once. Good news for him. That huge man becomes a main character in the novels in my Comfort Cove series.

And there it was. Evidence that my kind of gay erotic horror fan is out there. I’d been in contact with one occasionally over the internet, but to be in a bar full of them was not only an honor…it was hot as hell. And so I created Boys, Bears & Scares, dedicated to everything gay horror, from movies and books to art and graphic novels. Doing so has connected me to lovers of gay horror, from the men who create it to fans who devour it. It’s a place where gay horror fans can find an exhaustive and ever-growing list of what’s out there. And in the years since I launched the site, it’s a thrill to see how many other sites, social media accounts, and podcasts have popped up focusing on horror from an LGBTQ perspective.

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I don’t know why I swallowed all this fly

Posted on June 4, 2019 by Daniel

Actually, I do know why. The Fly legacy rules and has haunted me since my childhood. So let’s get into all five films.

THE FLY (1958)

The pure simplicity of The Fly makes it such a classic of the 1950s. While it freaked me out as a kid, the truth is, this isn’t a monster movie in which the fly is a creature to be terrified of beyond how he looks. Instead it’s a tragic tale of nature gone wrong–the fly is, in a sense, the victim of the horror here, sort of making this a play on Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” concept. But alas, the man seals his own fate here by messing with science.

In essence this is a tale of a scientist who creates a “Beam me up, Scotty!” machine. He figures out how to teleport physical matter from one chamber to another in his lab by pulling the molecules apart then reforming them. You would think after the sick bastard sends his pet cat into thin air, never to return, he wouldn’t fuck around anymore.

Instead, he gets in the machine himself…not knowing a fly buzzed into the chamber. The results of the teleporting is a mashup of the two life forms. So, while the scientist keeps his face hidden from his wife, he instructs her and her son to try desperately to hunt down and capture a fly with a white head. Eek.

I only have dozens of eyes for you, honey. Now find that fly!

The suspense of the entire film is based around a) seeing what he looks like under the towel, and b) seeing what the white-headed fly looks like. And it’s worth the wait.

The classic final scene with Vincent Price discovering the fly in a horrific predicament in the garden still gives me the willies when I see and hear it and remains one of horror’s most disturbingly effective moments for me.

RETURN OF THE FLY (1959)

It’s always fascinating to look back at just how long horror has been pulling the cash-in stunt of rushing out sequels, not to mention doing the old rinse and repeat while just making sure to add more horror.

Released only a year after the original classic, Return of the Fly gives us a jolting surprise; it’s black and white! I love me some black and white horror, but I prefer continuity, so this regression to a then dying film format is disappointing. But seeing as to how much more cartoonishly monstrous the fly head is this time, it’s probably better it’s camouflaged by the gloom of the colorless format.

Vincent Price is back, and the son from the first film is an adult he warns away from continuing his dad’s scientific work. Lucky for us he doesn’t heed the warning.

There are more animal/human crossovers this time to horrify us, and when the scientist finally ends up getting accidentally mixed up with a fly that gets in the machine (what are the odds?), wouldn’t you know he coincidentally switches the same exact body parts with the insect that his dad did?

The fly with a human head looks ridiculous this time, but at least the big man fly is much more of a monster than a tragic figure, and goes around killing people. There’s even a good jump scare. Awesome.

CURSE OF THE FLY (1965)

It seems virtually pointless to continue the franchise name six years later in a movie that has no fly monster at all. Hell, this could have cashed in as a sequel to Freaks instead.

Very loosely tied to the previous films, the family experimenting with teleportation is poorly linked by a family tree that isn’t really possible based on the first two films, so you just have to go with it. Also, the detective has the same character name, but is played by a different actor.

You’re really best off watching this as a pretty creepy standalone film. A woman escapes from a mental institution, meets a man, marries him, and goes to live at his home, unaware that his failed experiments with teleportation are leaving behind a collection of deformed humans he keeps locked away and under the watchful eye of a woman who is freaky herself.

There really isn’t much more to it than that. The ignorant woman who is destined to discover and be terrorized by her husband’s dirty secret, all the while being told by him and his family that she’s imaging things.

Atmospheric and eerie, this one does benefit from black and white film. Unfortunately, it falls apart at the end with a very sloppy denouement.

THE FLY (1986)

If you’re going to remake and reimagine a horror classic for a modern audience (30 years ago), you need to do it the way David Cronenberg did The Fly. A virtual rewrite beyond the core premise, the 1986 film deconstructs the deconstruction of man and fly, making a gradual transformation the factor that carries the plot.

Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis are both at the top of their game, and their performances as virtually the only characters in the film add to its strength.

Jeff is a scientist, Geena is a reporter. They hit it off then he shows her his experiment. You would think once he tries his teleportation on a monkey and the machine turns the poor thing inside out, he would never even consider getting in the machine himself. Idiot.

Gone is the swapped body parts, so there’s no man with a fly’s head and no hunting for a white-headed fly. Instead, the two completely fuse structurally into one, so Jeff slowly begins to change.

He becomes more agile, he becomes virile, he becomes angry, and he becomes strong. I didn’t know flies were virile, angry, or strong. I also didn’t know that if you go to a bar with bad skin, then snap a guy’s bone out of his skin during an arm wrestle, you could just walk out with no repercussions and some bimbo will still go home with you.

Jeff’s slow metamorphosis delivers the gruesome, disgusting horror. I mean, I love a hairy guy, but if coarse bug hairs started growing out of his back, I’d start having second thoughts. And once my guy began puking on his food before devouring it, I’d be out of there. Brings a whole new meaning to having your ass eaten out.

The acid puke is definitely the kicker in this remake, with Jeff eventually taking out his jealousy on one character in one of the most heinous ways. Plus, we finally do get to see a fly version of Jeff, and it’s a nightmare.

And let’s just say it’s a good thing Geena doesn’t live in one of those states that would make her carry a fly larva to full term.

THE FLY II (1989)

Cronenberg doesn’t return to make the sequel, which is a pointless rehash that sticks to the formula of the original sequel–more monster, more murder. As ridiculous as it is as a sequel, it’s definitely a good, gory creature feature.

The son of the fly is born to a pretty good Geena Davis lookalike. As he grows to become Eric Stoltz…in a lab…a scientist who acts as his father figure continues to experiment with teleportation and urges him to continue his father’s work.

It’s a struggle for Stoltz, who secretly sneaked into the lab as a child and saw the scientist experiment with his beloved dog with tragic results.

Having just lost my own Miss Fine, the little puppy love of my life, only a month ago, the segment about the dog was excruciatingly long and heartbreaking during the revisit of the film, and I ended up fricking sobbing non-stop for like fifteen minutes. Since the movie runs fifteen minutes longer than the first one and begins to drag, I vote that much of the dog part should have been cut.

The film really does drag as it goes into recycled territory. Stoltz begins a relationship with Daphne Zuniga (who I still think is the same person as Justine Bateman) in a montage set to a KD Lang song. Then he begins to change, realizes he is his father’s son, gets angry, and unlike his dad, goes on a massive killing spree through the lab.

Although the “fly” looks nothing like a bug, it makes excessive use of its acid puke as it takes down lab workers left and right. It’s not the fly, but it is definitely a creature feature good time. It also end with a mean-spirited revenge twist.

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Is Knife + Heart the gay slasher gays have been thirsting for?

Posted on June 2, 2019 by Daniel

I’ve been excited to see gay French horror film Knife + Heart ever since it started getting loads of promotion and then loads of raves from gay horror fans. As a result, I was also wary of being hugely disappointed by over hype—the death toll for many horror movies these days.

Now, after scoring a copy of the Blu-ray to add to my collection of homo horror movies, I can safely say…it’s a mixed bag for me.

Much of what I’ve heard about the film is that it’s both a slasher and homage to giallos of the Argento era. I’d say it’s a bit of a mashup of both, but not quite a full-fledged delivery of either. What it reminded me most of is the once controversial 1980 film Cruising, which I discuss as almost being a gay slasher here. In fact, I would guess the Pacino film is one of the main influences for Knife + Heart. The first death scene alone is a virtual copycat kill lifted directly from Cruising.

Much like Al Pacino, who played a detective undercover in the seedy underground gay scene of the late 1970s, which begins taking a toll on his relationship with a woman and sends his sexual identity into turmoil, our main woman here is a lesbian who makes gay male porn in the late 1970s—and she’s really not a nice person. Her being unpleasantly predatory is just part of it. As her relationship with her girlfriend falls apart and her actors begin getting viciously murdered, she incorporates the crimes into the plot of her new film and internalizes the idea of being a gay male serial killer. Once gender identity issues were flirted with, I began to get hints of Dressed to Kill as well.

I love the general plot, but while I know the film is being LGBTQ inclusive, I personally would have preferred the protagonist be male not female. In a sea of men getting all homo with each other, the placement of a female feels way to much like a David DeCoteau heteronormative safety net to me. Hell, I couldn’t even watch that porn clip that went viral a while back with a woman eating a salad while two guys fucked in front of her. I just cannot get sexually charged when there’s a woman in the scene. Maybe it’s internal heterophobia…or maybe I’m just really that gay. Hey, judge all you want, but in this day and age of everyone insisting we all need to be pansexual, I know I’m not the only one who thinks it…I’m just one of the few who is willing to say it and not pander to societal pressures!

My ADHD tells me the investigative aspects of the film slow it down drastically. Just when the murders and homoeroticism amp up, the main girl goes into detecting mode. She meets various random characters that in no way clear up the mystery, instead adding more confusing extraneous elements. But I guess that’s what you have to do when you are attempting to replicate the disjointed weirdness of giallos.

There’s a black bird, a deformed monster hand moment, some hypnotizing club scenes, and trippy dream sequences, including a moment reminiscent of the movie theater scene in Messiah of Evil.

Horror dream sequences should be a red flag for filmmakers. If you feel the need to add one to keep the horror momentum going, your pacing is off. And just to be clear, this lull in thrills (which could have been adjusted by editing the film down from 102 minutes to 90) wasn’t only felt by me. My hubba bubba was watching the film with me, and at this point began asking me how much longer before the film was over.

As for the slasher elements, there are some nicely executed kill scenes from a visual standpoint. The killer, wearing a black mask that almost looks painted on, is super creepy, and makes freaky expressions and noises (which could have been exploited more because they’re that effective).

For me, what’s missing is any suspense or tension in these moments. I never got that sense of dread that the best slashers deliver. It lacked the kind of sustained terror that gets my heart racing, except one scene that flirts with the bizarre vibe of a giallo—it comes late in the film and is presented with unnerving flickering light, and is the closest thing to a chase scene that we get here. Yes, even though we have a main girl, there isn’t a chase or battle scene with the killer, and don’t expect any traditional body reveal moments. The climax is more giallo than slasher (in a good way if you’re a fan of giallos). And just to be clear, gay male horror fans shouldn’t expect a final boy, although there are a bunch of final guys who totally steal the final girl’s thunder.

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2 horror anthologies from 4 decades apart

Posted on June 1, 2019 by Daniel

Talk about an extremely contrasting double feature. And I don’t mean because one comes from 1977 and the other from 40 years later. The Uncanny and An Hour to Kill are totally different animals—one a cat, the other a pig.

THE UNCANNY (1977)

Before Cat’s Eye there was…The Uncanny! While the cat passes through the stories in the Stephen King anthology then gets his own tale with Drew Barrymore, this one is entirely about cats.

Peter Cushing is an author convinced that cats are trying to take over the world. To prove it, he comes to a prospective publisher’s house to tell him three tales of killer cats…

 

1st story – A devious young woman wants her relative’s inheritance, but the old bag has left all her money to her horde of cats! So the woman cooks up a scheme to change that, but the cats have other plans. This one has a horribly long sequence of the woman hiding out in a kitchen to stay away from the cats, but when she fully comes out, it feels like The Birds…with cats.

2nd story – This tale takes an awesomely mean and somewhat campy turn by today’s standards. After her parents die, a young girl comes to live with her aunt, uncle, and evil cousin, who terrorizes her and her cat. What idiot would mess with a black cat and a little girl with a bunch of books on the occult…?.

3rd story – This is a weird and often farcical tale starring Donald Pleasence as an actor who doesn’t treat his dead wife’s cat kindly, so the cat creates “accidents” on the set of Donald’s movie!

The odd thing about Cushing’s argument when it comes to the wraparound—none of the stories suggest cats are trying to take over mankind, just that they’re weeding out the assholes and getting revenge.

AN HOUR TO KILL (2018)

The wraparound of this indie does it a disservice until the final payoff at the end. Two assassins waiting to execute an assignment sit in their car to tell horror tales. The setup takes too long and the segments between stories are too long, especially considering this is a horror movie and the wraparound is not horror at all, so it in no way sets the tone. Anyway, on to the stories.

1st story – Girls go looking for a marijuana stash in a hidden Nazi bunker. It’s only implied that a few of them are killed by a guy in Nazi uniform, and then the story just ends. No blood, no final girl, no conclusion. I’m not quite sure why there was no effort made to deliver on the promise of a slasher.

2nd story – Murder after a food eating contest. This one is going for a trashy horror comedy vibe. In that it succeeds, but again the story feels incomplete!

3rd story – Okay, this exploitative trash makes sitting through the disappointment beforehand worth it. Be warned, it is totally offensive to rednecks and hillbillies. A group of white trash bowlers wants to take their new black teammate to screw some pigs. Let’s just say a backwoods family turns the tables on them. This sleazy tale made me laugh out loud, and the black dude is hilarious. I would have taken this one as a full-length movie.

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Fresh Meat at the Carnival of Fear in Jurassic City

Posted on May 31, 2019 by Daniel

These three may not have anything in common, but I watched them one after the other on Prime, so I’m cramming them into one blog!

CARNIVAL OF FEAR (2010)

As soon as I began twitching while watching this one, I checked the run time. Nearly two fricking hours! Why? Just…why??? How do filmmakers not watch their films back before release and realize, holy fuck this shit is going nowhere slow!!!

What kept me watching is the fact that I’m a fan of both leads. I adored Aimee Brooks in Monster Man, one of my faves, and the same goes for cutie Damian Maffei with the luscious lips from Christmas with the Dead.

The pair gets trapped in a creepy, closed amusement park at night and begins experiencing terrifying situations…that are never actually happening. And that’s where things get repetitive and unscary. You know they’re never really in trouble despite taking on an alligator, a swamp creature, clowns, rapists…it’s like passing through what is inevitably a controlled carnival fun house environment.

The disjointed plot heads in the most obvious direction. Both characters have a past connection to the park, and unless you’re new to the genre, you’re sure to know what’s happening before it’s spelled out.

The most obvious problem here is an unbearably long segment in the middle of the film in which the pair plays carnival games with a booth vendor. I can’t fathom who thought this never-ending sequence was a good idea. Without it, the film could have been 90 minutes long and delivered a much better paced, cheesy horror experience. Sure, there’s some bad CGI (especially a roller coaster scene), but it’s mostly a fun midnight movie vibe that would have worked better if it were faster.

FRESH MEAT (2012)

Playing off a Tarantino/Guy Ritchie vibe, Fresh Meat is a dark comedy about a home invasion gone wrong when the criminals discover the hard way that the family is a bunch of cannibals.

Yes, once again it’s that twist on the home invasion plot, but making it fresh is that the daughter has just arrived home to discover her family has gone cannibal right before the baddies break in.

It’s her split moral dilemma that makes this one unique…along with the added burden of a budding romance.

There’s plenty of action as well as campy gore to entertain, and you’ll get some laughs out of it even if it isn’t as funny as it could be. The big guy in bra and panties steals the show for a while, but once the tide turns on the plot, Jango Fett, who’s still as sexy as he was 20 years ago, gets the spotlight, ending this one on a high note.

JURASSIC CITY (2015)

The director of Silent Night Zombie Night brings us SyFy quality CGI raptors and head biting…in a prison…with a bunch of sorority bimbos as the survivors trying to escape.

That sentence tells you everything you need to know about Jurassic City, so either take it for the craptastic entertainment it is or avoid it.

The prison has an aggressive lesbian inmate, a tough daddy inmate the girls have to team up with to survive, Ray Wise earning a paycheck to put food on the table by playing the warden, and one jump scare that actually got me.

And just when you think the only CGI dinosaurs you’re going to get are raptors, a big T-Rex and Pterodactyl are randomly thrown in at the end.

Not going to lie. The hubba hubba and I got a few good laughs watching this one.

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Going back to before trolls discovered the Internet

Posted on May 30, 2019 by Daniel

When 1986 film Troll hit cable, I wasn’t a huge fan because it was essentially horror-lite, bordering on fantasy. 4 years later when Troll 2 hit video, I was breaking into my 20s and working at the video store, which is probably where I vaguely watched it on the TV in the background as I helped customers. Because honestly, despite it somehow garnering a huge cult following and its own documentary over the years for being the best worst movie ever made, I couldn’t remember a thing about it. Now, 30 years later, I re-visit both of them.

TROLL (1986)

It’s not shocking that Charles Band was behind the scenes executive producing this film; it very much foreshadows the template he would use on his Full Moon films throughout the 1990s. At the same time, it has that PG-13 kiddie movie feel, right down to the Spielberg-esque storybook opening. Even director John Carl Buechner (Friday the 13th VII, Ghoulies Go To College, Cellar Dweller, Watchers 4, Miner’s Massacre) is notably restrained with the horror moments here.

For me, this should be as much the cult classic the sequel has become. In fact, I’d say this is more a candidate for best worst movie ever made than the sequel.

For starters, there’s the cast: Charlies’ Angel Shelley Hack and 80s horror king Michael Moriarity are the parents. The boy from The Never Ending Story is the son. The little girl who played rapidly growing alien-human hybrid Elizabeth on V is the daughter. The neighbors include Sonny Bono, Gary Sandy of WKRP in Cincinnati (I was so hot for his tight jeans as a kid), Julia Louise-Dreyfus, and Lassie’s mom June Lockhart. Plus, Charles Band’s Full Moon staple Phil Fondacaro plays a neighbor and the Troll.

The plot is ridiculously 80s awesome at first.

The daughter runs into the troll in the basement of their apartment building, and he drags her to another dimension while he takes her form and starts acting like a brat…and using his magic ring to turn victims into little mythological critters that hang out in an apartment he transforms into a fuzzy green garden.

The adults are secondary characters, as it is the boy who knows his sister is no longer herself and turns to the only person who will believe him—Lassie’s mom, who is a witch.

It’s up to her to use her magic staff to help him defeat the troll and get his sister back…in the other dimension…where there’s a big monster.

Despite becoming more fantasy than horror, which usually isn’t my thing, Troll is a perfect slice of eighties crap, so I can’t help but love it.

But the most notable movie magic factor of this film? Both father and son are named…Harry Potter. Mind blown.

TROLL 2 (1990)

Now that I’ve sat down and actually paid attention to Troll 2, it astounds me that it has been postured as a so-bad-it’s-good movie. In my opinion, aside from a few cheesy details I’ll get into, this is a better movie than the original and as darkly weird and fucked up as most 80s Euro horror of the era. It’s the horror movie the first Troll isn’t.

That’s because Italian director Claudio Fragasso is no stranger to the subgenre. His films include Hell of the Living Dead, Rats: Night of Terror, Monster Dog, Scalps, Zombie 3, Zombie 4, Beyond Darkness, and Night Killer. And this is the moment when I should have had a V8, because I just realized that I am a huge fan of his films and have every single one of them in my collection. Therefore, it’s no surprise I adore Troll 2 and in no way think it deserves a negative-positive cult following.

The truth is, Troll 2 was not meant to be a sequel to the original, despite there being so many parallels between the two films. The creatures this time are “goblins”, but the monster designs are so similar to the creatures in the original that you would swear it’s intentional. Personally, I’m shocked that once the studio decided to push this as a Troll sequel, they didn’t just have the actors come and dub in the word “troll” each of the few times they say “goblin” in the film. Hell, a few bad dubs would have made this feel even more like the Euro horror it is.

As for the plot, it’s essentially The Howling or Salem’s Lot with goblins. A family comes to a vacation home in a small town, and the son begins to realize that all the locals are actually a secret community of goblins in disguise, and their goal is to turn any humans into plants that they can then eat (what’s wrong with all the great plants we already have on the planet?).

Now, while in the first film the troll—who also disguised himself as human—didn’t eat people, he did in fact turn one victim into an entire garden that all the other mythological creatures inhabited.

This film also begins with a storybook opening. They boy’s grandfather reads him a tale of the goblins. However, grandpa isn’t actually there. He died a few months before, and his ghost comes to visit the boy regularly.

Honestly, if I were 12 and not 21 when I saw this film, I would have been scared witless. The little boy has horrific dreams and visions of turning into an oozing plant.

The locals have a mark on their skin and are eerily Let’s Scare Jessica to Death in their cold, emotionless staring. The goblins relentlessly terrorize the boy. And they really do transform humans into ooey-gooey greenery to devour. Plus, the ending is surprisingly dark for a movie focusing on a little terrified boy.

Even so, there are plenty of campy oddball comic moments between all the sinister stuff. I couldn’t get enough of the 80s montage of the sister’s bedroom—a Smurf on a shelf, posters of Johnny Depp and Tom Cruise, the sister dressed in her best Jane Fonda workout outfit…

There’s the moment when grandpa suggests the boy pee on food the goblins offered to the family…

And just as in the first film, there’s a witch. Her performance is horribly cartoonish and over the top for a majority of the film, and she plays right to the camera at times, totally breaking the fourth wall.

But when she gets to transform into a darker version of herself at the end, she’s deliciously creepy. Yet that’s when we get another bizarre Euro horror scene. She seduces a young man with corn on the cob…which begins to turn into popcorn once they start getting it on. Where’s the melted butter when you need it?

The popping corn is definitely a jarring slice of absurdity just when the film reaches its climax, which has the family doing a séance to summon grandpa for more help as the goblins fricking infiltrate the house to get them! Yeah, this one definitely would have freaked 12-year old me out, while the first film might as well have been another Never Ending Story sequel.

Posted in Living in the 80s - forever, Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

STREAM QUEEN: I’m getting afterimages of blood clots

Posted on May 28, 2019 by Daniel

When I see a theme for a blog forming in my streaming watchlist, I never anticipate being satisfied by all the selections, so I’m happy to say that horror anthologies Afterimages and Blood Clots were quite fun. Here’s a tastes of the tales you’ll get.

AFTERIMAGES (2014)

This is essentially an English language Asian horror anthology, with every story centered around the now classic Asian ghost girl theme. As a sucker for Ringu/Grudge era horror, I was totally satisfied with this one, because the stories are effective and creepy, and each one has a unique setting and plot. I even liked the look and feel of the visual presentation of the tales.

The wraparound alone is engrossing, as a group of college friends does an Asian occult ritual that involves burning cameras. But doing so results in films being left behind—films they load onto a projector and start watching…

1st story – This is my favorite of the bunch. A dude spying on a pretty girl with his telescope in an apartment complex goes down to the pool when he sees her taking a night swim by herself. Eek! This one is a goody.

2nd story – A young woman becomes obsessed with the spot on the ground where a suicide victim landed when jumping out of her apartment building.

3rd story – This is the most cliché of the stories, I’d say. Reminiscent of Devil, it sees a group of people stuck on an elevator with a girl who is behaving very oddly…

4th story – Combine Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” with the Leslie Nielsen story from Creepshow and blend it with an Asian ghost girl tale, and you have this creepy good story.

5 – The final tale concludes the wraparound, with a fun and cheesy teen horror vibe.

BLOOD CLOTS (2018)

Unlike traditional horror anthologies, Blood Clots doesn’t have a wraparound. It’s simply a series of short films gathered together to create a full-length feature. Actually, the film is only about 70 minutes long, which is okay in my book! As a result, most of these tales get right to the point, with a setup and a zinger twist conclusion. They’re also well-produced, so it doesn’t feel like you’re watching a bunch of indie shorts shot on a camcorder.

1st story – During a zombie outbreak, a woman hides out in the basement of a diner. It has a classic zombie vibe and great atmosphere, and the ending is delicious.

2nd story – This is a brief backwoods cannibal family short that’s fun…but I already saw it on the anthology Minutes Past Midnight!

3rd story – No complaints here. This one has nudity and perversion in the woods…and then a hellish monster attacking.

4th story – This is a fiendish little twist on the classic concept of a boy being afraid of the monster under the stairs in the basement.

5th story – Now this is clever. A guy working as one of those human statues at a carnival has to put his talent of being an inanimate object to the test when there’s a zombie outbreak.

6th story – This is a fun giant jellyfish creature feature on the beach…but it’s another one I’ve seen before, because it was included in the anthology Monsterland.

7th story – This is an odd dark humor story I guess, about a dinner party that includes a family’s squid-headed relative. I kind of wish it hadn’t been the final story, because it doesn’t deliver as much of a punch as some of the others.

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