Personal - Flinching with Delight

Favorite Posts from the first 5 years

Posted on August 26, 2026 by Glen — No Comments ↓

We’re coming in on a bit of a milestone here – in a couple of weeks, this blog will be 5 years old. I mean, that’s not so mature – it can’t buy cigarettes or vote or anything, but regardless, I’m proud to still be at it, five years in (and if it were a cheddar, it would be extra sharp with a bold, sharp bite). Who knows what it will grow up to be, but I feel we can at least breathe a sigh of relief that at this point, crib death is unlikely. And in that spirit of solace and joy, I thought it a good time to reflect back on some of what I consider to be my best work.

In these last five years, I think the character of the blog has stayed fairly constant, even if the publication schedule slowed considerably after the first year (to be fair, I started with a big folder of texts I’d already written, so it was easy to post twice a week – you might even call it cheating), and I have covered a wide range of films, books, and themes. I recently added a new page in the main menu – Themes, including groups of posts on the same topic or director (I just can’t stop writing about Lesbian Vampires or Fulci). If you’re new here, have a look. It could be a good starting point (besides this post, of course).

So, today, to celebrate this anniversary, I’m going to highlight a few of the texts of which I’m most proud (aiming for 10, might be 11 – Sophie only had to choose between two kids). Some of these have found a readership over the years (according to Google Analytics). Some haven’t really, but all have something that I love – an occasional turn of phrase that I take pride in, perhaps an observation I feel is significant, or in some cases, a vague feeling I managed to satisfyingly put a finger on. So, without further ado…

The Imp of the Perverse from October 5, 2021

Edgar Allen Poe was one of my earliest entry points to the genre. Long before I ever considered myself a horror fan, I had my “Collected Works” and loved, primarily, his prose (though a couple of poems stuck – like many, my introduction in primary school was certainly “The Raven”). As long as I can remember, I’ve loved his story, “The Imp of the Perverse.” In it Poe evocatively describes a significant human psychological tendency that often goes unnoted. Here, I discuss Poe’s tale, but also get into this idea of the drive to “do wrong for wrong’s sake” and its implications for the horror genre. This is a topic that had been on my mind for years since first reading the story in high school and it felt freeing to put it down on the page.

CRAFTing Class Systems from October 15, 2021

I was totally into The Craft when it came out in 1996 and it still has a nostalgic place in my heart, but I also always felt somehow uncomfortable with it, like there was some messaging that left a bad taste in my mouth. In this post, I do praise what I think is lovable about the film, but also, I think I manage to offer a reading of its class politics that kinda turned me off. It was satisfying to think that out and put it into words. And I must say, it’s a reading I haven’t seen elsewhere of the film.

A Christmas Treat from December 24, 2021

Bob Clark’s Black Christmas is just one of my absolute all-time favorites. Full of character, and characters, it is gorgeous, funny, dramatically rich, and at the end of the day, it is simply damn scary. I will always remember how the first time I saw it, when it was over, I had to go around my apartment, making sure all the lights were turned on and the doors and windows were locked. It really got under my skin. This is simply a celebratory post, trying to detail just what it is about this Christmas proto-slasher that works so well. I think occasionally, I’m successful.

An Early Self-Aware Slasher Classic: Slumber Party Massacre from September 6, 2022

Another beloved film, and in my opinion, so ahead of its time. It isn’t quite “meta” on the order of Scream, but coming at the tail end of the golden era of slashers, it really exists in dialogue with what had come before it. All while being so funny and playful and ironic, as well as occasionally actually disturbing and unsettling. It’s a perfect balance of cleverly and critically commenting on its own genre tropes, while at the same time, successfully enacting those tropes. It isn’t textual like Scream is – no one is talking about horror movies, but its perspective reads so strongly in the camera and the characters and the writing. It’s a surprisingly great movie and I rather like my description of it.

The Shining Compared – Book and Film from May 27, 2023

I’ve always had a deep affection both for King’s novel and Kubrick’s film, but they are so, so, so different. This isn’t about judging which is better (I know a certain Maine author has strong opinions on that point), but rather, I look at each on their own terms to see how, if anything, they complement each other. A few years back, I had the pleasure of catching Kubrick’s Shining at a midnight screening, and I came away from it with a new read on how the film works. For me, so much of their difference is rooted in the chosen main character. For King, it is clearly Jack, and it is a tragic story of an alcoholic father, who loves his family, giving in to his worst impulses, and becoming one who would do them grave harm. For Kubrick, I think the main character is really Danny, a young boy who loves his father, but is scared of him, who can’t really understand him, or what sometimes makes him and the rest of the horrifying world he inhabits so threatening. And that difference of perspective really changes everything – one is a terrifying tragedy and the other is cosmic horror. I go into it in much more detail in the post.

Monstrous Teenagers in the Fifties from May 31, 2023

This one is a little different – rather than writing specifically about one film, or even five films, in this case, I dug into a sub-genre (and one that many would not term “horror”). One week, I watched perhaps 12 “youth runs wild” pictures, all about juvenile delinquents and ne’er do wells, generally from the 50s. They may not feature werewolves or vampires (though, actually, a couple do), but they still express a deep fear society was dealing with at that time of the young, of the still new concept of “the teenager.” These untamed beasts were seen as a threat to society, to the country, to themselves, and the fear of them was surfacing in popular culture in much the same way that aliens and giant insects were representing a terror of the “red threat,” This post was in preparation for writing a script for an homage/sendup of these flicks for my cabaret group, La Folie Retro Cabaret Show.

Three Universal Draculas from January 2, 2024

I really enjoyed putting this one together. The Bela Lugosi Dracula is of course iconic, but many have never seen the Spanish language version that was filmed on the same sets concurrently. Tod Browning shot his film during the day and George Melford got access to the sets at night. They are of course similar in many ways – essentially the same script (though there are points of divergence), many of the same shots even, but they are ultimately very different films, each with its own significant strengths (which are interestingly often weak points for the other film). I dig through both in some detail, often with comparative screenshots. (Also, I briefly touch on the Frank Langella 1977 Dracula, but the meat and potatoes of the post are the 1931 films.) I feel the comparison yields insight and feel good about the work done here.

Accidentally Backing into Positive Messaging: Sleepaway Camp from July 5, 2024

Sleepaway Camp is one of those “guilty pleasures” for a lot of people. Campy and trashy and sleazy and fun. But I have no guilt – I think it’s actually quite a good movie, and in spite of falling into a trope which is often quite harmful (I won’t name it here because it is a big spoiler), I feel it is effectively very progressive and positive. Was it meant to be? Doubtful. I can only assume it was trying to be shocking and transgressive, but even if accidentally, I feel like this mean little slasher that features children being murdered at summer camp rather has its heart in a good place. And the fact that it isn’t “trying” to promote something “good” means that it is ironically better able to do so than something that is and which therefore, only comes across as strident and hectoring. And it is just truly a blast. I’m glad I was able to dig into these ideas.

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls and “Good for Her” Horror from February 3, 2025

I am quite the fan of Grady Hendrix and was really struck by his most recent novel – seriously, I remember staying up way too late, reading perhaps the last hundred pages – the whole time trying to stop the bed from shaking cause I couldn’t stop weeping, but I didn’t want to wake up my wife who was sleeping beside me. Great book – dealing with both a very real, historical harm that was done to groups of young women, and also supernatural horrors and things that cannot be fully understood. But reading it also put me in mind of a strong current in at least contemporary horror – what can be termed “good for her” flicks and I wanted to explore that theme more broadly. I think there are many interesting discussions to be had around the topic, and I really enjoyed getting into it a little bit – some writing about books and movies, some theorizing, some personal response. This is one of my favorite posts.

Consuming Culture in Sinners from July 17, 2025

I came out of seeing Sinners in the cinema just all abuzz with excitement. I’d found it thrilling and moving and cool, rich with feeling and history. But the more I thought about it, I also found the movie challenging on a personal level. There were ideas being communicated that I clashed with emotionally, if not intellectually – issues of culture and cultural appropriation and cultural siloing. It really stayed with me on both levels – for the next week I found myself listening to the soundtrack and vibing with it, but I also found myself really thinking about its argument. Writing about the film was an interesting process, trying to engage honestly and emotionally with the perspective of the film, one that I didn’t share, but which I could appreciate.

Pride and Other Feelings: Cruising from July 2, 2026

The most recent inclusion on this list – one could argue that William Friedkin’s Cruising isn’t even a horror movie, but in my humble opinion, one would be wrong. Honestly, on first viewing, it simply blew me away – so rich and weird and hard to get a clean read on. I had a great time dwelling on this picture and trying to put my thoughts into some kind of order. And I think that I did. Ambiguous and sleazy and exploitative and artful – it really does hit my sweet spots.

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And there we are – five years down. Now, let’s see what the future holds. Will I keep writing about Lesbian Vampires? Probably, but I’ve covered all the classics and contemporaries don’t quite scratch the same itch. Will I keep digging into Fulci? I’ll always love him, but I may have exhausted most of his canon that I’m likely to write about. Will I carry on down the rabbit hole of Italian genre work? Indubitably. Shakespeare wrote that “past is prologue,” so I imagine in many ways my pet themes will continue to occupy me. But I think there may be some new paths ahead as well – I feel way too uneducated on a lot of international horror. Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Japan – I’ve barely scratched the surface and I know there is so much great stuff out there. There’s still a lot of exploitation fare that I find fascinating, but I haven’t seen enough of – like I’ve only seen one Herschell Gordon Lewis flick. I’ve covered a lot of Italian stuff, but that road goes on forever, and I think I’ve only written about three Bavas, and he deserves so much more. I think in the process of thinking and writing about this stuff for the last five years, one thing I’ve identified is that I really appreciate when value is found in the underappreciated. It’s something I’ve always enjoyed in thinking about horror, but finding the art, the meaning, the beauty, the passion in something discounted as merely prurient trash is deeply satisfying. And I’m sure there is no end to the amount of works out there worthy of consideration. Miles to go before I sleep and all.

Thank you for being here with me. Whatever brought you to my page, I’m happy to have you and I hope you have a look around. Check out the menu above to see different categories of posts on offer. And if something catches your interest, I’d love to hear from you – please feel free to comment on anything. I love writing here, but blogging can be lonely work, and it would be so nice to know how you found me and try to take the conversation forward.

Until then, I wish you well out there in the digital darkness…

Dark Ride

Posted on July 7, 2025 by Glen — No Comments ↓

I had the absolute best experience recently. I spent the end of May and most of June in Ocean City, MD, where I come every summer to help my family mount their pirate show at Jolly Roger Amusement Park (magic, songs, pirates, treasure, etc). I build and paint sets and make props and costumes and prepare technical elements. It’s always a huge job and I always use it as an excuse for why I haven’t posted for a while. This year was no exception, but towards the end of my visit, I finally took an afternoon for myself – went to the beach and saw the ocean for the first time since I’d arrived, got a slice of pizza, and most importantly, went to check out something I’ve been wanting to revisit for years.

We moved to OC full time when I was in the 4^th grade, quite a while ago. And down on the boardwalk, there is this old ride-through haunted house, what I’ve come to learn is called a “Dark Ride.” I remember going on it last time when I was a little kid – it could have been 35 years ago. And I was totally in love with it then. I don’t remember much from that time, but I remember that, inspired by it, I had a short lived ambition to design my own ride-through haunted attraction – for some time I even had recurring dreams about it and just knew that if I could actualize what I’d seen behind my eyes, it would be life-changingly extraordinary.

Well, I never did that. But over the years, I’ve thrown plenty of good Halloween parties, and as I’ve written about a few times, come late October, my cabaret group always does something spookily thematic and I get to come up with new horror effects to do live with an audience (I’m already planning some exciting new tricks for this year – people will gasp I tell you, gasp!), so part of the dream survives…

Anyway, sometime this last year, the OC Boardwalk Haunted House popped up on my social media feed and I learned that it had been designed by a famous ride designer back in the 60s (Bill Tracy) and that it was really worth seeing. For years and years, I’ve been walking by it (I visit my parents every summer – they’ve been doing their shows in OC for the last 25 years!) and loving the exterior, but always assumed that it would be lame inside, just another artifact of childhood that regrettably diminishes when looking out of adult eyes. But then, I got my free afternoon and I went and dropped I think $8.75 for a ticket and had the best damn time! It’s only a 5 minute ride, but I came out just grinning ear to ear – I bought a t-shirt – the owner was there and I got to chat with him for a while (apparently, he’s usually around – it’s been family owned and operated since the very beginning, back in 1964 – and he’s always happy to talk about the ride’s history – still a family business, his son (who took my ticket) comes up with new ideas, and he builds them), and then, with his permission, I bought another ticket and went through a second time to film it so that I could upload it here.

My rockin’ new shirt! Also, yes, it is laid out on a backdrop of my Garfield and Odie blanket, cause I’m a real cool guy.

Now, of course, my cell phone’s camera surely can’t do justice to something so necessarily experiential (and especially something so dark), but this can give some small taste of what it’s like and I really don’t think watching it could spoil the experience, so behold…(and I strongly recommend you turn your sound on)…

Ocean City Haunted House

Watch this video on YouTube

Once you take your place in the cart, fashioned after a casket, you’re thrust through doors that slam open, into a dark, dayglow world of all manner of ghosts and goblins, skeletons and torture victims. Of the, I believe 11 features designed by famed Dark Ride builder, Bill Tracy, back in ’64, I think 9 remain, but it is amazing that they do as they are largely made of papier-mâché and plaster, and they all move and shake, thus undergoing real material stress over the years. While I’m not certain of the origin of each gag in the ride, a couple that I know to be original are genuinely impressive, both as feats of engineering, and in terms of what they got away with more than 60 years ago and have never abandoned, such as a delightfully disturbing moving tableaux in which a woman is being vertically bisected by a spinning blade in a saw mill. Other gimmicks are clearly more recent additions, such as elements referencing Pennywise or Sadako from Ringu. There’s a fence, holding back hungry zombies, that starts to collapse as you ride by. There’s a tunnel with a train coming straight at you. There’s a giant possum that suddenly lunges for your head (Why a possum? Apparently, because it’s awesome!) and a rather concerning water effect at the end (I was sure I was gonna get soaked). There are constant disorienting optical illusions, startling sounds, and myriad gleeful terrors as you’re shaken along the track. And I loved every single second of it. How can something designed to scare (and which sometimes does) overwhelmingly leave me with an impression of ‘loveliness?’

Opened in 1964 at the behest of Granville Trimper (the Trimper Family having developed much of the Amusement industry on the southern boardwalk), and built by then famed designer, Bill Tracy, the OC Haunted House has been in operation for over 60 years. Tracy was one of the most renowned Dark Ride designers in the 60s and 70s, but today, only a handful of his rides remain around the nation (perhaps 5 or 6). In the late 80s, a second level was added (utilizing, among other things, tricks taken from a different nearby Tracy ride which had been closed), and there are always new elements being introduced (just as some older pieces inevitably have to be retired). But however much things change, I feel the ride retains its classic style and identity. And I’m so glad it does cause it is genuinely, heart-warmingly, giant-smile-plastered-across-my-face charming – a glorious artifact of a bygone age. But, it must be said, it also got a couple of solid jumps out of me. However joyfully old-timey it may be, it still delivers what it promises.

I don’t know if I have the words to express just how much warmth I felt for this thing. I had gone in expecting something old and janky and cheesy, and to some extent, it may even be some of those things, but it is so clearly loved and lovingly maintained. Every bloody torture, every giant rat, every hooded victim, hanging upside down over a fiery pit as he writhes and screams in desperate agony is infused with endless love and care. And that love is contagious – or at least it was for me.

I loved this ride in very much the same way that I love the horror genre, in the same way that anyone who is a fan of some “cult” item can treasure that beloved object of their obsession. It makes no claim on being “high art,” it is entirely unpretentious, it revolves around “bad” things that you’re not supposed to enjoy – violence, titillation, gore, disgust, cheap jump scares, and simple gags. But it clearly loves all those things and people have obviously poured their hearts and souls into bringing it all to life and keeping it in good working order. Endless labor, ingenuity, and creativity has fueled this ride and just as a medieval cathedral carries the emotional frisson of the fact that generations devoted themselves to its construction, filling each stone with their belief, with their hope for a future life less bleak than that they were living, so too did this ride give me a charge, in its commitment to its scares, to its history, to the way it made me jump and laugh and ultimately walk away beaming with joy.

Pretty sure that bat’s been on the facade from the beginning.

Some artists will never win any awards, will never be recognized by any academy. Some simply go to work each day, pouring all they have into something small and overlooked and unconsidered: a haunted house, a comic strip, a children’s pirate show, a cheap horror flick. But their work is no less valuable than some highfalutin, well-funded, culturally respected piece of capital A “Art” that people shell out big bucks for. And in my opinion, in some cases, it can be worth more. This is the art that is actually in people’s lives, that gives them an experience of the new that makes existence feel slightly more fresh, if only for a fleeting moment. I’ve seen plenty of great works of art: in a museum, in the theatre, in a book, in a cinema; I have been moved and challenged and entertained. But somehow it’s hard to imagine being able to summon the same kind of loving affection for any highly valued work of “high culture” that I so easily can for a bunch of 60 year old papier-mâché and blacklight responsive paint, orchestrated simply to startle me, to disturb me, to gross me out, to take me on a ride for 5 minutes and leave me glowing.

If you every happen to be in Ocean City, MD, I can’t recommend this ride enough. And if you never are (more likely as you could be reading this in Iceland or Japan right now), my takeaway is this: Give these things a chance – when you find yourself somewhere and there is some old thing that’s been around forever and it seems touristy and hokey – a bit of kitsch, give it a try anyway (we don’t need to go through life being so “cool,” do we? We are allowed to like things – to let ourselves be surprised.). There may be a reason it’s still there. It may be just as lovingly cared for as this ride was. And it may not. Who knows? But this cost me less than ten bucks for a ticket, so what is there to lose?

Horror Diary Recap

Posted on April 23, 2025 by Glen — No Comments ↓

I had a good run for a few weeks there, on a roll and banging out blog posts. And then, as it often does, life happened (travel, work, art, Covid, etc.), and now more than a month has slipped through my fingers when they clearly should have been typing away about horror. So, not to overthink it, I just want to very briefly run through some horror stuff I’ve been digging into during that time – nothing particularly deep, but just sharing a few things I’ve enjoyed. Perhaps some of these will warrant more attention in the future, but for now, I just want to jot down some first impressions.

So, here we go…

His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood

Ok – I’ve found a new author to get into. This is a very small collection of short stories published under the name Poppy Z. Bright (who, since transitioning, now goes by William Joseph Martin). I mean no disrespect by using the old name, but I believe their horror fiction was all published under the Bright name, and it’s one that I’ve long heard bandied about, but had yet to read. Wow! Their work kinda gave me Clive Barker vibes, an author whom I hold in great esteem. In this tiny volume, I only had four short stories, but I loved them all – a bit of splatterpunk, a bit of southern gothic, oodles of sex and belief and need and obsession and bodies and art.

Two young lovers on a boundary pushing death trip rob from the wrong grave with fatally seductive results. A possessive ghost pulls the only young woman who can see him to join him in death, a tale both romantic and abusive. A zombie outbreak in Calcutta does little to change the flow of life in the city, but brings the story’s protagonist into an encounter with the holy. Two young musicians travel to New York City for a gig and find more than they can handle, but have solace in music and each other, and this new, overwhelming city. I can’t underline how driving and captivating the prose was and how much the thematics spoke to me. I’ve got to check out more of Martin’s work, published under the Bright name. I’m open to suggestions.

The Black Cat (1981)

I’m not quite sure what box to put this film into, ostensibly based on the Edgar Allan Poe story (but only sharing a title). This has long been on my watchlist – I love Lucio Fulci and it’s been ages since I saw something of his for the first time. I’ve seen this one listed either as top-of-middle tier Fulci or as a disappointingly perfunctory exercise that he did as a favor to the producer, but his heart wasn’t in it. Maybe both are true. The first third of the film, maybe more, I kind of loved. It doesn’t feel so much like a product of the man behind The Beyond or City of the Living Dead, but it does feel a bit like it was made by the mind behind The Psychic, a significant movie in its own right. Early on, I was really into the atmosphere and the absolute confidence of the largely visual storytelling. The music by Pino Donoggio is great – at turns pastoral, like something off of a b-side of The Wicker Man soundtrack, and playful or eerie and tense – really gorgeous work. Patrick Magee (whom I mainly know from A Clockwork Orange) really pops as the sweaty psychic in an unhealthy, abusive relationship with the titular black feline. There is solid atmosphere – all foggy and spooky, and enjoyable sequences of a cat killing (or more precisely, causing the deaths of) a whole bunch of people – and it’s all in the edit – cutting between close ups of the cat or its chosen victim, back to the cat’s eyes (ever watching, waiting, hunting) – I expect the actors were rarely actually in the room with the murderous kitty, but the kill scenes really track.

But somehow, after the midway point, I just had trouble staying focused. Was that the film’s fault, or was that a me problem? I don’t know, but for all that I appreciated so much of what was going on, I just found myself less and less into it.

Anyway, if you dig Fulci, I think it is at least worth checking out: there are endless, foggy abandoned streets; cat scratches draw pints of blood; Magee exerts his psychic domination on others as the sweat pours down his face and his eyes bug out of his head; the practical effects are obvious (there is at least one unmistakable mannequin), but the obviousness really doesn’t matter – the total effect is striking and effective; the dead talk, and scream; and there are more close ups of eyes than you can shake a stick at (Fulci gonna Fulci…). Also, it is just so well crafted. I think people often associate Fulci with extreme gore, and in his goriest work, he threw logic out the window, making pure nightmare flicks, but that doesn’t describe his whole oeuvre. He could be a real craftsman, and I think this film is an example of him in a high craft, though possibly low inspiration, mode.

But one content warning – everything may well have been on the up and up, but watching an Italian production from this era, I’m just always nervous about how the cat or cats were treated during the filming. If that’s the sort of thing you’re going to be distractingly worried about throughout the film, maybe give this one a miss.

So in the end, I’m quite glad to have finally seen this, but I don’t know that I’m going to make a habit of it.

The Metamodern Slasher Film (2025)

So, one of my very first posts here was about this exciting online conference I’d had the pleasure of attending (a lovely side effect of the pandemic was how many things opened up and became accessible when they went online), the “Slasher Studies Summer Camp,” back in 2021, and one of the stand out presentations at that conference was the keynote speech by Dr. Steve Jones on what he’d termed “the metamodern slasher film.” What he was describing felt immediately familiar and it has stayed with me as I’ve watched many recent slasher flicks that do, indeed, seem to share a similar ethos, if not approach. Since then, I’ve followed Jones on social media, so when he announced a pre-order discount for the softcover edition of his full book building on those same ideas, I was eager to snatch it up quick as can be (and happy to get the discount – academic books can be bank breaking).

I must admit, I’m not quite finished with it yet – but it is a consistently enjoyable and intriguing read. I must also admit that I still have difficulty putting my finger on exactly what the “metamodern” entails, but it is basically one interpretation of our current post-postmodern moment, and insofar as we all never fully agreed on one set meaning of “postmodern,” I think it’s fair that I have some difficulty wrapping my head around this proposed sentiment that both grows out of and reacts to what had come before.

Throughout, Jones presents case studies of contemporary slashers (the highest profile example would be Happy Death Day, but his cited filmography is deep), many of which I’ve seen and many of which I haven’t, identifying certain shared elements and/or underlying philosophies. In short, they frequently feature a knowing sub-genre self-awareness, allowing for a great deal of meta-play, but without the ironic distance/genre criticism that postmodernism frequently presented. Jones further identifies a new emotional earnestness in the work, as well as a surprisingly optimistic note – whereas postmodernism may critically suggest that it had all been done before and there was nothing new under the sun – just the same tired old tropes at which to wink, these films show a creative commitment to innovation, aware of tropes, but open to twisting them into something that feels new and fresh and fun. The optimism he reads here, particularly as identified in a bunch of what have been described as cynical “dead teenager” movies, intrigues me, given the extent to which I feel like we live in a scary, pessimistic age, where it is hard to believe that we could possible walk back the harm being done.

Honestly, I’m not always sure about the implied criticism of the postmodern set, Scream (1996) being the dominant example, but I’m curious to follow his ideas to their endpoint. I’m sure it will continue to challenge and enlighten. Also, I am certainly collecting a list of lesser known, very interesting sounding films that I’m now very eager to track down.

Race With the Devil (1975)

First of all – this movie, celebrating its 50^th anniversary this year, is a blast! I feel like we don’t get a lot of horror-action flicks, or when we do, it’s more in the domain of an unseen war between denizens of the night (Nightwatch, Underworld, etc.), featuring horror monsters (vampires, werewolves, demons, etc., but not so much a horror movie of some “normal” person encountering a horrific threat that then takes on action beats (I wonder if it’s about action characters having a certain kind of agency and horror characters more having things happen to them). I think action movies with horror characters are much more common than horror movies with action characters. But this really walks the line – it might not be the scariest movie ever made, but I think it is frequently unsettling and creepy in a way I like horror to be, and then about the last third of the movie is basically a big car chase with assailants attacking our protagonists, trying to climb into their RV or drive them off the road. Cars flip or blow up driving off a bridge or get shot out. It’s exciting the way I like an action movie to be. The cast is great – I really buy the friendship between Peter Fonda and Warren Oats, two buddies who have set off on a long needed vacation in their brand new motorhome, and while the film can be faulted for giving their wives (Loretta Swit and Lara Parker) too little to do, I think they’re both great, really selling the terror and the stress they are buckling under while on the run from Texas backwater cultists. Now, I think it’s an entirely fair criticism to point out that the women disproportionately have to communicate fear and weakness while the menfolk get to heroically fight back, but as a viewer, I think the wives’ reactions are far more likely to resemble my own, and having characters carry that fear is essential to the flick. Also, while they could have had more, they did get small moments to shine, like their great scene doing research on Satanism in the local library, where they end up stealing reference books and running away all giddy. There is a real friendship dynamic there as well, and it was a treat.

In short, these two couples go off on a vacation together, setting off from San Antonio and driving through rural Texas in the direction of Aspen, where they plan to go skiing. Their first night out, having struck camp in a wild spot not far from the road, they witness a group of Satanists across the river as they first dance naked around a fire (oooh, titillating) and then stab a girl with a ceremonial dagger (uh, concerning). Then the black cloaked cultists notice they have an audience and chase the couples as they drive away. Much of the rest of the film features the couples trying to either get the authorities to do something about the murder they witnessed, or just trying to escape to the nearest big city (Amarillo – not even that big) as it seems that every rural resident of the Texas panhandle is somehow in on it. Wherever they go, people watch them strangely, phones mysteriously don’t work, or road accidents seem to have been orchestrated to force them into a trap. Every gas station attendant, every overfriendly, personal space invading neighbor at the campground, every police officer they encounter seems equally likely to be a secret Satanist out to silence them, sabotage their beautiful new motorhome, or kill their dog and fill their camper with rattlesnakes. Travelling around these rural regions, it all takes on a kind of folk horror vibe. Everyone out here in the sticks is part of one big, weird, religious conspiracy – the whole world seems like a slowly tightening noose around the necks of the two couples, until it all explodes (literally even) in the big car chase/fight at the end, not to mention a solid horror downer of a final twist.

This is one of my favorite kinds of horror in that I don’t feel like the filmmakers were trying to “say” anything particularly, so much as to just make a scary, exciting movie; but I feel like something is clearly expressed about the time and the place – the American south (perhaps extendable to non-urban America in general) in the mid 70s. This came only one year after Texas Chainsaw Massacre and while it is nowhere near as harsh or as artful, it has a lot of similarities – in both cases an urban group leaves the city, somewhere in Texas, and finds that everyone out there is a danger. Interestingly, with its focus on a group of young people, Texas Chainsaw shows them, easily identified with the counterculture moment, being hounded by a malevolent, embittered poor rural, group, all of an older generation – the heartland has poison in its heart and it’s not a safe place for anyone who could be part of the future.

In Race with the Devil the sheriff who seems in league with the cultists (or is just really bad at his job – but seriously, he worships the devil) keeps talking about those dang hippies, about the corruptive element of youth, but it’s all a cover for his own, for his group’s own corruption. And rather than attacking a bunch of hippies, he and all the other cultists are coming after four people who, from my modern, non-southern, non-Texan perspective, seem not all that unlike them. They are both working class/middle class/middle aged couples. The guys run an automotive garage and are into motorbike racing. Their big aspiration is to get out of the city, avoid crowds and basically be left alone in nature. But their seeming cultural similarities are no protection – they are no less targets. I feel like the film is just trying to be scary and paranoia filled, and the particular Satanist angle is just a convenient fill-in-the-blank horror threat, but there is a cultural impression in how all of these ‘normal people,’ people not that dissimilar to our protagonists (who are more urban, but hardly what I’d call “big city”), people who might otherwise come across on film as salt of the earth, good old-fashioned country folk, how they are all in an evil conspiracy, all dangerous. They’re not presented like the Sawyer clan in Texas Chainsaw (who are all clearly rather weird, to say the least) – nope – they’re the blood of the soil (if you want to get all 19^th century nationalistic about it) and they are everywhere; you apparently can’t throw a rock in rural Texas without hitting a Satanist. The real social danger is not counter culture kids with their long hair and loud music – it’s ‘normal’ folk who will hunt down, harass, and destroy anyone or anything they feel threatens their stasis. That could be the obvious outsider. But it will also be you if you get in their way. I’m sorry to say it has contemporary resonance.

But again, while this may serve as an interesting cultural document, the real reason to watch this is that it is simply fun. Come for the paranoid horror-action flick, but stay for a bit of sociology.

Suspiria (2018) and Stacie Ponder on Suspiria

I needed some comfort food the other week and found myself gravitating back to this recent favorite, which I’ve written about before. I watched it over the span of a few days, savoring it a section at a time, regularly pausing to rave to my indulgent wife about how much I adored a given moment or character or historical artistic reference.

It’s interesting. For all that I love this film dearly, I find that I have difficulty offering my own clear reading of it. It is dense with narrative and symbol and character and simply life. While I feel hard pressed to detail what I think it may all add up to, moment by moment, I am constantly enamored with it. Its politics, its subtextual sexiness, its awfulness. Its witches who are all both monstrous and cruel and cool and utterly aspirational. Its view of a collective art making process that is both inspiring and beautiful and abusive and exploitative. Its nexus of magic and dance and bodies and power and political conflict and sadness and pain and grace. Life is complex and so is this, and I love every single minute of it.

So, having taken such joy in this recent re-watch, and wanting to spend a little more time dwelling in its moods and imagery and ideas, I went to re-read a gorgeous bit of writing from a favorite horror blogger. Stacie Ponder of the Final Girl blog went on a deep dive back in October of 2019, writing a post a day on Suspiria for the whole month, doing what I think is really significant and valuable work in picking apart nuances of the film as well as researching its influences and references. I fear any analysis I might provide would be so indebted to her, that I should just link to her entries and say if you even kinda liked this movie, you owe it to yourself to explore her explications. They were a great pleasure to revisit. Also, it gave me a few mornings of something to read with breakfast instead of the news – I like my horror fictional, thank you very much…

The Coffee Table (2022)

I’d heard great things about this Spanish language feature last year and was so happy to have a couple of hours to sit down and devote myself to something new. Having watched it, I have mixed feelings. There is a lot to like, and many elements linger in my mind, but ultimately I was unsatisfied. Still, I’m glad to have experienced it and to be considering it now.

This will be short, but I need some caveats. First, many horror fans may come away from this feeling that it isn’t really a horror movie, and I get it – there’s no monster, no slasher killer, no supernatural element. Also, it is arguably a comedy, though of the blackest vein. But, I will posit that it is all to do with “horror,” writ large, its protagonist being thrust into an encounter with a terrible truth that is beyond all that he can bear. Also, for all that this could be accurately described as a family drama (or possibly an absurdist tragedy), it features imagery, events, and pervasive discomfort that will be hard for anyone but horror fans to stomach.

Secondly, it is nigh impossible to discuss the movie in any meaningful way without significant spoilers, so if you think you might want to check out this intriguing, frequently intense, doom laden, blackly comic, tight little bottle movie about a man reckoning with the worst mistake of his life (namely, that he bought the wrong coffee table), go do so, even if I found the ending oddly unaffecting. I’d say it’s probably still worth your time.

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Ok, so here are some thoughts:

-I appreciate that when ‘the terrible thing’ happens, we don’t see how, and we never really learn how. It remains shocking, unimaginable. Jesús was there, he saw it, and he still doesn’t understand. But really, the ‘how’ is not important. It was an accident. It is terrible. It can never be reversed. If he could actually explain it to his wife, would it make it any less mind shattering?

-I wonder how critical we are meant to be of Jesús. When he first starts to clean, I was puzzled – how could he think he could actually clean this up – does he think Maria somehow isn’t going to notice? But I get it – he just can’t deal – he can’t face the difficult thing. To be fair, I can sympathize in this case – what could be worse? I think many of us would freeze up and do something stupid, undergoing such a horror. But the more I think about it, the more I feel his failure to deal is symptomatic of his whole character. Maria has to force everything in life because he refuses to make his own decisions (building to the point that he lashes out and buys the stupid table out of spite). Now, few of us are heroes, and most coast through life as he does, trying to avoid difficulties, but there is a cowardice at the center of his character that’s hard to like, though it can certainly be sympathized with (and if we’re to be honest, we all probably share). Furthermore, I’d assumed Ruth was lying/imagining things, but now I wonder – did he do something and his response was then just to shut down and deny and avoid? Who knows? I don’t exactly think he did, but the response would match his life pattern.

-How are we meant to receive the ending? The tension that runs through the lion share of the film is so engaging, and yet when revelations finally come, I feel the film pulls back. The soundtrack covers the screams. The camera looks left, looks right, and Maria has already taken decisive action, and Jesús follows. But I didn’t feel much. I didn’t cry. I didn’t laugh (it is frequently a pretty funny movie). It just felt like a bit of a relief that it had finally happened and we were no longer waiting in suspense for something to predictably go from horrible to even worse. I wonder what the filmmaker’s were hoping for. About that ending, I think perhaps the film suffers from predicating its narrative tension on waiting for something to happen that it’s hard to imagine going much of any other way. Sure, it piles on with its timing, and the actual actions taken by its characters, but sooner or later, Maria was bound to learn the truth. And then, well, it would be bad; and then she does; and it is. Ok.

-Finally, coming from theatre, I did enjoy how much this felt like a play – intense action in generally one location in a contained period of time, with a small set of players. Aristotelian unities all over the damn place. Past that, there is an absurdist approach to over the top tragedy that just feels like it often lives in the theatre more than on screen. I wonder how this would be, staged in a small space, intimate, the audience really trapped in the apartment with him, waiting for the inevitable.

So yeah, glad I watched it, kinda wished I loved the ending, but certainly food for thought.

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

I have got to spend more time with silent cinema. Every time I do, I always come away so rewarded. Sure, there are elements of performance that can feel dated, eliciting laughter at moments I expect hadn’t been intentional, but it is a joyous laughter. It is great how much we can understand, connect with, feel without words – how little we sometimes need them. And I love how, only reading a few words from time to time, I’m given additional space in my head to think, to consider, react, and process what I’m viewing. And I feel that happens without at all taking me out of it, but there’s just that extra bit of space left to me when everyone shuts up.

I’d seen Phantom before, but was excited to rewatch it as presented by Joe Bob Briggs on the Last Drive In on Shudder. I knew it was the sort of work that he’d be able to share deep history about, and I wasn’t disappointed. If you’re interested, I recommend the episode and I won’t repeat his research here.

But I will say I enjoyed this, celebrating its 100^th anniversary this year, even more the second time around. It is a huge picture, executed at such a massive scale. The sets, the cast of hundreds, the early use of color. And it is just fun and exciting from start to finish. It is a crowd pleaser, with tons of successful comedy, atmosphere up the wazoo, and indelible images and sequences that have become icons of the medium (I mean, the unmasking scene alone). It is thrilling and intriguing and beautiful.

And Lon Cheney’s praises could not be sung enough. I’m sorry to say that I’ve seen so little of his work. Basically, I think I’ve only seen this and The Unknown (1927). In this, he brings such flair to the part. Everyone of course talks about his self-administered makeup, but the performance itself is such an absolute delight. The film does everything it can to turn you against him, making him not only physically repellant, but actually a monstrous person. But Cheney’s performance overpowers any efforts of the script. I can’t imagine how anyone today could watch this and not cheer him at every turn – for his charisma, his vivacity, his playful whimsy, his cleverness. I don’t support his actions (he is rather a controlling, entitled proto-incel), but Cheney embodies him as impish and light and brilliant. And the cognitive dissonance of how I receive him makes the film all the more interesting.

He and, by extension, the film are really something to treasure. This was a treat to re-watch.

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And that catches me up on the last few weeks. I’ve honestly watched much less horror than usual, but almost all of it has been really worthwhile – there wasn’t anything that wasn’t worthy of at least a mention on this here blog. Thanks for following along with me. I hope you stick around.

La Folie Halloween Show 2024 and a Recent Film Roundup

Posted on November 6, 2024 by Glen — No Comments ↓

As a horror blogger, I have long read other horror blogs and I think one of the most common sentences has to be “sorry I haven’t posted in a while,” or at least I like to think it’s that common cause, boy oh boy, does it apply to me! And to make matters worse, I missed all of October – “spooky season,” the lead up to the high holiday of the horror calendar, Halloween. All over social media, I saw people posting their movie-a-day watchlists, with fans around the world marathoning through the month, and as I check my Letterboxd, I find that I only managed 8 movies, horror or otherwise, for the whole of October.

But I like to think I have an excuse. As I’ve posted about previously, outside of blogging, one of my main pursuits is working with a retro cabaret group here in Kraków, Poland where I live, and every year we do a Halloween show – it’s always one of our biggest and most popular, as the holiday really brings out new, fun, creative ideas. And this year was no exception – so, sure, I didn’t write about any movies last month, but it’s because I was busy making my own Halloween, and even, to some extent, horror content. And if you will all indulge me, kindly strangers of the internet, I’d like to share a bit of what I’ve been working on.

La Folie Retro Cabaret Show – Halloween

This was a big show, with a wide range of Halloween-y variety acts, and the vast majority of it was brand new. Ghosts and vampires, mad scientists and mummies, black widows and boogie men – singing, dancing, aerial arts, burlesque, and comedy – funny, sexy, thrilling, and hopefully, once or twice, even a bit scary. We had ballet, swing, and Irish dance, we had big Broadway style show stoppers, we had loads of comedy sketches, and games with the audience – we even had a fair amount of special effects for the stage – tricks with powerful magnets, specially prepared candles, and blood pumps – neat stuff, if I do say so myself. And I do.

Honestly, there were too many numbers to detail each here (and I worked on them to varying degrees – e.g., if something is mostly dance, I’m no choreographer and I don’t play a big part in giving it shape), so I think I’ll just focus on a couple that I was particularly involved in, which were more ‘horror’ focused, and which I feel presented something new for our stage.

Haunted Theatre / Séance

Ours is a variety show made up of a series of discrete acts and we don’t tend to force much in the way of larger narrative onto the proceedings, but this time, we did add a bit of framing and in that, we had opportunities for some real Halloween-y fun, spooky atmosphere, and at least one solid jump scare. Before starting, the MC came out to explain that in the days leading up to performance, odd things had been happening and that we thought the theatre could be haunted. Of course, then the lights went out on him and, as technicians struggled to get them working again, while a ‘spooky’ version of our theme song played, he turned on a flashlight and was subjected to a series of creepy sights – a jump scare with a werewolf (that I think landed), a creepy little girl on a rocking horse, a Blair Witch-esque woman standing in a corner, tentacles grabbing at his face and a skeleton clutching at his legs, and finally, a bag headed figure approaching him with a knife as his flashlight flickered on and off before he was lost to the darkness and a scream rang out though the theatre.

This was such a simple little introduction – besides a considerable amount of time taken engineering the ‘creepy theme,’ the action was simply conceived and it did not take long to stage and rehearse it a few times (all told, it was only about a minute long), but I honestly think it worked great, setting up the night with a totally different vibe than we usually offer. More things this effective should be this easy to do.

This then led into our first number, which also functioned as a kind of secondary frame. Choreographed to the tune, “Swinging at the Séance,” this was set in an old abandoned house where we see two ghosts in Victorian wedding costume moving slowly and forlornly through the space, unable to connect with each other. Then a crowd of young people burst in with their loud music – laughing and drinking and carrying on, and finally, starting to dance. Through the tumult and boisterousness, the two spirits glide, each focusing more and more on a pair of dancers at the front of the stage until after a small lift, each dancer, unaware of the lurking ghostly presence, momentarily stands in front of one of the apparitions, who subsequently grab them from behind. Blackout.

The lights rise on the two dancers moving slowly and romantically, possessed by the spirits who can no longer be seen, able to hold each other once more in their borrowed bodies. The lights go cool and the other dancers slowly freeze as we watch the dead lovers embrace until the bodies seize up and fall to the floor, the party roaring back to life behind them. Eventually the others notice the forms twitching on the stage and react with a comic terror, finally running away.

While the dancing was in our typical wheelhouse (but no less fun), I think we managed something different with the mix of tones – light and comic, but also melancholic and lovely – underlined with a difference of movement styles, focus brought to the ghosts (as themselves or in possessed bodies) by virtue of their slow, steady glide through a churning sea of quick, bouncing bodies.

Then, at the end of the night, seventeen numbers later, we closed both frames by returning to the abandoned house in a straight horror scene. In the five years of giving cabaret performances, this is the first time that we included something that didn’t feature a song or dance or comedy or acrobatics or magic or burlesque, but was simply a dramatic bit of stage action.

All of the dancers from the first act return with a medium to communicate with and hopefully pacify the spirits. They gather round a table with candles and a Ouija board (hand painted by me) and invite the ghosts to speak. The phantasms return, once again taking control of the same bodies as earlier, borrowing text from Adam Mickiewicz (a significant Polish poet of the Romantic era) to share a heartfelt love scene before something seems to scare them away. The lights flicker, the Ouija planchet moves on its own (a special effect of which I’m proud), the candles go out one by one (another effect I’m proud of, and one that I’d first imagined doing more than 20 years ago and finally, for this, puzzled out how to accomplish), and the medium is taken over by a different, angrier, more dangerous spirit.

At first it seems that she is speaking to those in the scene – of their disrespect and inability to heed a warning, but it eventually becomes clear that she is actually addressing the audience, that this hateful spirit is present in the theatre itself, raging at all in attendance and promising to enact a bloody vengeance. It warns the spectators that it will choose one of them to follow, to haunt, to take as payment for their collective transgressions, and then the actress playing the medium screams and collapses, and in the dark (the lights can’t be turned on), it is clear that the performers are freaked out, that this wasn’t in the script, that something scary has actually happened.

Then we do a big finale song and dance to The Monster Mash (for which I sang).

Photo: Jarek Popczyk (that’s me without a pumpkin on my head)

I haven’t surveyed viewers, but I hope this worked for them. I’m really happy with both my self-engineered special effects for the stage and with making a little scene that I think got reasonably creepy and even, hopefully, a bit scary. We’ve done past Halloween shows, but never actually attempted a real scare, so I hope it landed well for people. But hell, even if it didn’t, I was thoroughly happy to try, and I think we stretched creatively in making it.

Night of the Vampires

And this brings me to another piece which was at least a bit out of character for us. Since the very beginning, we’ve had burlesque in the show, and over time, its presence has expanded in the work that we offer – sexy stuff to be sure, but also glamourous or absurd or otherwise creative: classic fan dance or silhouette numbers, a half-and-half Dance with the Devil, a “Sexy Salad,” a three girl strip poker with death scene, a super cute number with two competing 50s housewives accidentally losing their clothes until they finally stop feuding long enough to discover that they’re into each other and who then leave together before their confused husbands come home.

But this was something different. This piece, loosely inspired by Le Fanu’s Carmilla (and thus in quite good company) was easily the most directly ‘erotic’ piece we’ve yet done – with a much more sexual tone and vibe than we generally adopt. Even if a performer is getting down to pasties and a g-string, all in a mood of ‘fun with sexiness,’ that doesn’t always mean that it is exactly “erotic,” but I like to think this time it was. Now, I don’t know how this increased eroticism was received by the whole audience. At least one friend was really excited by it and gave great feedback, and I’ve heard tell of one person for whom it was too much, but as with the last piece discussed, I was so very happy to make it, and I feel so good about what it was that I’m genuinely less concerned with its reception. Maybe that’s greedy and short sighted of me, but if you can’t make what you, yourself, want to see, how do you do anything at all?

Carmilla – the first literary lesbian vampire, predating Dracula by 25 years.

Any regular reader of this blog knows that I am a fan of the ‘Lesbian Vampire’ subgenre of horror and have written extensively about it here, here, here, here, and here. And in this case, that’s just what I got to make – a short scene for the stage, only 5 minutes and 40 seconds long, that is its own little Lesbian Vampire piece – with nods to Hammer Horror, Jean Rollin, and Jess Franco – with saturated color and flowing gowns and nakedness and doubling and desire and seduction and blood (with DIY blood pumps and hidden tubes to make the red stuff flow, masked in the bedsheets and under a corset – which I wish I could say worked perfectly, but at least worked reasonably well and next time, we’ll nail it) – what a joy! My horror fan heart was all the more warmed to score it with bits of the soundtrack to Hellraiser and Daughters of Darkness, as well as an awesome Roky Erickson song that I’ve written about here before called ‘Night of the Vampire.’

I wish I could say it had originally been my idea, but if it had, I might not have proposed it. Instead, I must give credit to Madeline Le Blanche, with whom my wife and I produce the cabaret, who thought up a three girl vampire burlesque act featuring Carmilla, Mina from Dracula, and an S&M Lady Van Helsing and asked me to flesh it out. So I went off and wrote a script which, though I felt it was a different direction for us, and could be too explicit for some, I was nonetheless thrilled to craft and was grateful that she’d commissioned it.

We start with a proper young Victorian lady sitting on the edge of her bed and reading a book. The music is the romantically dark and dramatic main theme to Hellraiser. Behind her, a shadow appears in the window and a hand touches the glass. The young lady looks up, feeling that something is strange, when the hand in the window extends and the damsel’s hand does the same. The silhouetted figure controls her and we see them mirror each other. The young woman’s hand caresses her own face and slides down her bodice before she pushes it away, then her other hand is controlled to do the same – and again she shoves it from her, mystified by what is happening. Both of her hands are made to reach behind and unclasp the ribbon from which a small cross hangs, allowing it to fall to the floor. Finally, the shadow causes one hand, after a final caress, to sharply turn her head to look back and see the darkened figure standing on the veranda. She recoils, but is pulled closer and closer to the door. When finally she reaches it, she pulls open the curtains to reveal the glamourous woman outside, looking in at her with red, hungry eyes. She opens the door.

Fog and moonlight pour in as Carmilla glides downstage, before turning to the young woman who is fearfully backing away and, with a wave of her hand, mesmerizing her and summoning her closer. The music shifts (to a bit from Daughters of Darkness) and a mirrored striptease begins. Their bodies copy each other perfectly – Carmilla enjoying her control over her prey, and, let’s call her Mina, or possibly Laura (more fitting for Carmilla), at first shocked to witness her own actions, but clearly enjoying them more and more. All in mirror, gloves come off, and then dresses (this mirror motif, in my mind at least, referencing the cabaret performance in Jess Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos – it is a rather different action, but there is a thematic resonance). The mirror is dropped and Carmilla comes behind the younger woman to remove her corset, leaving her in the requisite diaphanous gown, before presenting her own corset for Mina/Laura to undo. Finally, down to pasties, a g-string, red contacts, and fangs, Carmilla guides her to the bed and lays her down, head towards the audience.

Initially, the ingénue is shy and covers herself somewhat with a bedsheet (which hides a tube connected to a blood pump, allowing her to position it for the blood effect), causing Carmilla to pause in her climb over the supine body as if to ask if she actually wants this. Mina/Laura acquiesces, lowering her shift to reveal her pastie adorned breast as Carmilla lowers her head to bite (and the performer compresses a large syringe, causing the blood to flow). It is sensual and bloody and Mina/Laura’s body seems to seize in tortured ecstacy before finally giving out and collapsing as her life’s blood drips down her neck and hair, pooling on the carpet (which we laid down to aid in rapid cleanup).

Then suddenly, with another change in the music, shifting to a driving rock sound, Carmilla looks up, hissing, and we see Lady Van Helsing enter on a higher level and descend the stairs to do battle. Carmilla greedily clutches her victim’s body, pulling it back to drop on the floor as she rises to face her crossbow wielding adversary. Again, she employs the mirroring power, leading Van Helsing to give up her weapon, knock off her own hat and undo her flowing cape. Lady Van Helsing draws a golden dagger to hold up as a cross, and after, lashing out, Carmilla claws at her, ripping off her skirt in the process, Van Helsing holds the cross to her head, eliciting a hiss as Carmilla loses consciousness.

Lady Van Helsing moves Carmilla on to the bed and, securing her in place by laying the cross on her bared breast, chains her hands and begins to remove her own gloves as a surgeon might don them. After a walk round the bed undoing her corset (among other things, making the blood syringe strapped to her back accessible, though still hidden from the audience), Lady Van Helsing draws from her bag a bottle of Holy Water and proceeds to lash Carmilla with it. Carmilla writhes in a mix of pain and pleasure as if in play with hot wax. Van Helsing then draws a stake and trails it up and down Carmilla’s body, teasingly, before raising it high to drive it home, when she realizes that Mina/Laura has risen behind her.

Gently taking her wrist, Van Helsing is made to drop the stake, as Mina/Laura moves her hair aside and comes in to bite (with her other hand, beginning to squeeze the pump). After a moment, she pulls back and looks to Carmilla, bound on the bed below, and then bites again, lowering the vampire hunter down so that her blood falls onto Carmilla’s body and into her waiting mouth. They both feed as the lights begin to fade. All three look out to the audience, lost to sensation as darkness engulfs all.

Hot, huh?

Again, I don’t really know how it was taken in by most of the audience, but I was so gratified to have this opportunity to make a bit of vampy erotic horror. I think the intersection of those two elements can be really fruitful – both absolutely to do with, and eliciting reactions from, the body and the mind – the hunger and the desire for the other being both mental and physical – sexual and violent, of the flesh and of blood. There is attraction and need and complication – all essential human experiences. This is a big part of what I really appreciate in Lesbian Vampire movies, wherein there is often a focus on desire and pleasure and it’s not simply about, as can often be the case in sexually explicit content, unveiling “boobs” for a presumed male viewership (though it can’t be denied that’s often present as well), and I think we offer that in this number. I’m immensely proud of this piece and I hope someday to be able to share it here (there’s been discussion of filming it for posterity, so who knows – it could happen).

So yeah, that was my Halloween (and of course, there were loads of other cool acts that I’m not even scratching the surface of here: 2 masked “boogie men” competing over who can best frighten a little girl, a Black Swan/White Swan ballet number complete with heart ripping, an Irish burlesque – dancing widdershins on the barrows by moonlight to gain gold, finding it hidden in the layers of clothes until an inner fey is unveiled, a skeleton doing aerial silk work, an audience interactive dating game show where all the contestants are monsters, and much, much, much more). I didn’t write about any movies last month, but my horror fan brain was still appropriately occupied I think.

But Also, Some Recent Watches

Finally, I just wanted to share some thoughts on a couple of movies from this year that, with the show in the rear view mirror, I recently had the chance to catch up on. It’s really rare that I manage to watch anything new, and so it’s always exciting when it happens. First, the other day, I got to check out a double feature of Immaculate and The First Omen. So-called “Twin Films” (such as Dante’s Peak and Volcano from 1997) are nothing new, but it’s a while since I’ve been so aware of two coming out so close to each other with such parallel plots. Of the two, I definitely preferred Immaculate – the atmosphere and performances just pulled me in and it even had some fun jumps and gross out moments – and a climactic sequence before cutting to the credits that was so satisfying, and so nice to see that it got to “go there.”

But while I think The First Omen suffered somewhat both from being a prequel, and thus in service to a pre-existing story while also setting up a new series that can grow out of it, as well as having a very predictable turn that I felt was intended to be a ‘big twist,’ but which was obvious from the very beginning, it did do something really interesting. My understanding of the conventional wisdom surrounding the Satanic threat books and films of the 60s and 70s, such as The Omen and the Exorcist, is that they represented a pushback against a secularizing counterculture moment in which society was turning against all authority, including that of faith, and especially a hierarchal institution like “The Church.” These works are all predicated on discovering the truth of radical evil – there is a devil, he is real and dangerous in our lives, and the only possible solace and protection comes from faith, from God, from the Church. Whether their creators directly intended this or not (for example, I read that Ira Levin, an atheist Jew, regretted that his excellent, feminist, cultural paranoia novel, Rosemary’s Baby had inadvertently participated in this reactionary moment), many of these works served to scare a reading/viewing population back to the pews. It’s the main reason that I’ve often found myself turned off by such content, especially exorcism films – they so often feel like proselytization.

But in this little, modern prequel – a really fun scary movie that takes great pleasure in delivering some reasonably shocking imagery of its own (with one much discussed moment that I had not seen on film before) – there is such an interesting angle taken. This brings me to a big spoiler that wasn’t obvious, so be forewarned. In this case, the sinister cabal within the church that is pulling all the strings to trap our protagonist into birthing the antichrist isn’t actually “Satanist.” Rather, they are an ultraorthodox wing of the Catholic Church, worried about the secularizing counterculture moment of the 60s/70s, who decide that they need to scare the population back into the pews by birthing the Antichrist (sound familiar?). The villain of the prequel is effectively the personification of the actual cultural soil out of which the original book and film grew. In this way, the film makers have their cake and eat it too – able to make a spooky antichrist movie with all the fixins, and still not turn off a loyal horror viewer such as myself who is otherwise loath to engage with such content. Neat.

And then last night, I finally got myself out to The Substance. I’d intended to do so more than a month ago, but with the Halloween show underway, it was just impossible to take an evening to go watch something for my own pleasure (I remember a good friend having the saying that “you can see the show or you can be the show”). But what a pleasure! Easily the most fun I’ve had at the cinema in a good long while – and I even got a few people walking out in the final act, which made it all even better (I’d heard it likened to Brian Yuzna’s Society, and I think it delivered). The intense style, the driving energy, the performances, the campy streak of black comedy and social satire, and the goopy, bloody, bizarre practical effects – everything about this movie was a blast and I love that this weird flick is getting so much mainstream attention (also, I cackled at the Act III title card). But what I think was most interesting about it of course requires spoilers, so beware.

Obviously so much of the thematic is all tied up in gender and youth and beauty – that’s clear from the outset, it is so present in the satirical, ironic gaze of the camera, and it narratively explodes in the final reel in a fashion at once emotionally cathartic, hilariously absurd, and honestly sad. But it is also quite on the nose and I can see someone taking issue with its bluntness (kind of like the big speech in the Barbie movie, but with considerably more body horror). But I feel there was so much to the movie. Ultimately, I think there was a larger exploration of people’s inability to share, to love the other as oneself (which includes the edict to love oneself) which surfaces in self-hating, self-destructive tendencies on both personal levels and for society as a whole. The Devil’s bargain that Elisabeth makes is one for which most of us would fail to follow the rules, and there is a satisfying horror in seeing it destroy her and feeling it cut close to home. One need not specifically “be an older woman in Hollywood, subjected to cruel double standards that serve to shape girls into objects for male pleasure when they’re young and then forget them when they age” to identify with the toxic impulse to wish oneself away (and then make it happen with compulsive, self-erasing behavior) in favor of some ideal, some wished for version of oneself, the “better” person who would garner the approval of not just others, but more importantly, yourself. This theme (we greedily neglect to take care of each other just as we fail to take care of, or love, or even just not hate ourselves), I found particularly effective and well handled – and it was served up with wicked humor, cinematic verve, and bubbling, fleshy, gory glee, presenting a harsh, bleak notion in a manner that is simply fun. I thought it was rather something special.

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And that brings us up to date. I hope you’ve all had a good spooky season. I have a plan for November, but it is ambitious, so we’ll see how that goes. It might come early December. Wish me luck!