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21 Nights of Giallo: Week Three

THIS MONTH I’VE BEEN reviewing a classic Italian giallo film every night, as a fun lead-up to the March 22nd release of my 13th novel Five Deaths For Seven Songbirds. I love giallo films, and my novel pays tribute to them… so I hope everyone who loves these movies like I do will check out the book.

Over the last 14 nights, I’ve covered movies from Dario Argento, Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, Luciano Ercoli, Sergio Martino and more. You can read the last two weeks of film reviews in the blog entries 21 Nights of Giallo: Week One and Week Two. So… let’s begin the final week! I started the first week of these 21 Nights with the giallo master Dario Argento… so I thought we should start the final week with him as well:

NIGHT #15:
Trauma

Directed by Dario Argento
Story by Argento, Franco Ferrini and Gianni Romoli
Screenplay by T.E.D. Klein
Music by Pino Donaggio
(1993)

Trauma was Dario Argento’s “coming to America” movie. It was his first solo film since 1987’s Opera, after his anthology film with George Romero, 1990’s Two Evil Eyes. He enlisted Phenomena and Demons screenwriter Franco Ferrini to devise the story, but since the film was to be set in America (Minneapolis), he brought in horror novelist T.E.D. Klein to script. He also cast his teen daughter Asia Argento in her first starring role.

The film follows Asia’s character Aura, an anorexic escaped from a psychiatric hospital, and David Parsons (Christopher Rydell from For The Boys), who works at the local paper, in trying to find the Headhunter killer, who murders Aura’s parents as part of a string of beheadings.

The film opens with a woman being visited by a medical patient on a rainy night, only to be decapitated by a strange contraption that is basically a small motor that constricts a loop of wire. (The device was fashioned by American effects guru and occasional actor Tom Savini). It’s a good creepy opening that of course begs the question we’ll spend the next hour and a half trying to answer – who’s the killer and… why?

David then meets Aura, who he saves from jumping off the Hennepin Ave. bridge with the backdrop of Minneapolis behind them. We quickly learn that she is a teen junkie and anorexic on the run, but when she ducks away from David, she’s quickly picked up by the authorities and delivered back to her parents, who plan to recommit her to the asylum where she is being cured of her condition.

But first… a séance!

Aura’s mother, Adriana, is a medium and has several people over that night for a séance. In the midst of a dark, rainy, thundering night… the lights all go out and Adriana disappears.  When Aura and her father go out to search for her amid the trees and rain, he is killed and Aura finds his headless body and sees the killer on a small hill, holding the head (very Headless Horseman here!)

Aura ends up taking refuge with David, but when she stumbles on him making love to his girlfriend, she gets jealous and runs away again. Once he catches her, we know that this is no longer a platonic affection; despite the age difference, these two are a couple. And they are a couple determined to find the killer.

Meanwhile, there are some fun scenes with a young bespeckled boy who chases a gecko into the window of the house next door. This is a setup that seems far more suited to a Mediterranean locale than Minneapolis, but… whatever! The dialogue-less scene with him discovering the garrote of the Headhunter and barely making it back out the window is one of the best, most suspenseful parts of the film.

I won’t give away any more of the plot since it’s worth discovering fresh, but suffice it to say that Aura and David go on quite the emotional rollercoaster as the head count stacks up.

Critics have railed at the film calling Asia’s performance amateur and Chris Rydell and Piper Laurie’s over-the top. I actually enjoyed all of them; the places where I think the film has issues have more to do with ridiculous effects (heads’ lips still moving after being severed) and the general blah-ness of the location. Argento was trying, clearly, to make a more modern, Americanized thriller. But setting – the gorgeous old buildings and parks of Europe – has always imbued his work with a richness that grungy suburban America can’t fulfill.

Add to that the fact that Argento had learned of a new “hot thing” way of creating atmosphere in film – a smoke machine. Rather than using lens filters, by pumping a light smoke across all of the sets, all of the camera work looks soft. It’s a touch of noir style, but the greyness it imbues is a far cry from his usual extreme mixes of color. And in one scene, where David’s girlfriend is lying posed on the bed, the impact of the smoky air behind her makes the film look like a late night ‘90s “Skinimax” feature for a minute.

The fad ultimately hurt him – Argento became sick from the smoke and lost his sense of smell for months.

There are still some evocative cinematography here; there’s a hospital scene where the psychiatric inmates behave almost like zombies, there’s a “heads in the trunk” reveal that is delightfully grue-ish, and there are some (not enough) beautifully framed settings. In one scene, as a car pulls up to the woodsy cabin David lives in, the sky and trees and oval drive are an absolutely gorgeous frame. And in one shot, the red light in the cabin shifts to an almost electric blue moon with clouds running over it. So the suburban setting didn’t force the film to be all grey.

The old mansion where Aura used to live also has some nice classic wood appointments and some nice sweeping camera work dives through the halls. Late in the film, there’s a scene where David has to walk through sheets all emblazoned with the words Nicholas on them as a creepy voice repeats the name; it’s evocative of Suspiria moments, if not quite as effective.

Pino Donaggio, of Brian DePalma fame, provides the orchestral soundtrack, which definitely makes this feel like a more Hollywood production… but that’s also a negative; an orchestral score doesn’t offer the same level of tension and creepiness that Goblin’s electronic scores gave so many other Argento productions. There is, however, a gorgeous theme song in the ethereal female vocalized “Ruby Rain” which is worth adding to your playlist.

In the end, I enjoy Trauma for what it is – a ‘90s thriller. It’s easy to complain about what it’s not – it’s not Argento’s work of the ‘70s. But… to be fair… it couldn’t be. Those days were gone. The world had moved on.

Sometimes the Italian-American cross pollination works here, and sometimes it feels a little mismatched. This isn’t really a spooky Italian thriller but it’s not really an American thriller either. But I enjoyed the “love story” angle (Argento’s first!) and the identity and motive of the killer is a strange, disturbing reveal that harks back to his mid-‘70s work. The role of the young boy in the conclusion will also make you squirm for a minute.

I wouldn’t watch this first or even fifth in the Argento catalog… but I would recommend seeing it. You can get a nice new 4k scan of it on Blu-Ray from Vinegar Syndrome.

7 out of 10 black-gloved fingers!
➤ Read 21 Nights of Giallo: Week One➤ Read 21 Nights of Giallo: Week Two

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21 Nights of Giallo: Week Two

THIS MONTH I AM reviewing a classic Italian giallo film every night, as a fun lead-up to the March 22nd release of my 13th novel Five Deaths For Seven Songbirds. I love giallo films, and my novel pays tribute to them… so I hope everyone who loves these movies like I do will check out the book. You can read last week’s film reviews in the blog entry 21 Nights of Giallo: Week 1. And now… on with Week 2:

NIGHT #8:
The Girl Who Knew Too Much

Directed by Mario Bava
Story by Ennio de Concini
Music by Roberto Nicolosi
B/W
(1963)

It’s time to go back to where it all began… 

Mario Bava’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much is credited as being the first giallo film (an alternate edited version was released originally in the U.S. as Evil Eye). That “first” designation makes it a little hard to watch because of the expectations that latter day giallo set; when I hear the word giallo, I think razor-wielding psychopaths and gruesome technicolor slashing murders. The Girl Who Knew Too Much is going to feel very Rated G tame compared to what you’d be expecting after an Argento or Fulci giallo from a decade later. That said… all the trappings are definitely here. We get:

a short (ABC) series of “alphabet murders” where the killer appears to be selecting victims based on their last name.a woman on her own traveling to Rome who turns amateur sleuth trying to solve the murders before she becomes the next letter in the alphabet burial ground.our heroine stalked by the killer when she gets a little too close to unraveling the mysteryseveral potential suspects to choose from, anda surprise twist at the end.

So you see that of the now-familiar giallo trappings are undeniably here; it just looks more like a film noir mystery than what we usually expect from what the giallo ultimately became known for. So what’s it actually about?

Nora (Letícia Román) is on her way to visit her sick aunt, and accepts a cigarette on the plane from her seatmate. When he is arrested for drug smuggling as soon as they hit the ground, the viewer (and Nora) are put instantly off-kilter. And Nora’s run of unfortunate situations begins. That night, she meets an attractive doctor who warns her about her aunt’s condition but assures her everything will be fine. Well… it’s not, and later, when her aunt dies and the phone line goes out, Nora runs through unfamiliar dark streets to try to find the doctor at the nearby hospital. But… instead of reaching him, she is mugged and left unconscious on the cobblestone of the beautiful Piazza di Spagna.

Later,  she wakes up just in time to witness a knifing murder happen across the courtyard… but then she falls right back unconscious from the mugging trauma so that even the subsequent rain doesn’t wake her. The following morning, a drifter tries to jolt her awake with a shot of booze, but he disappears when a policeman turns up. She describes the murder to the cop, but with booze on her breath, a knock on the head and no body to be found anywhere… she’s dismissed as delusional.

It’s not exactly a good first day in Rome.

Soon she is carrying on with the doctor, Marcello (John Saxon) and connects with a friend of her aunt at the funeral, who invites her to stay at her house while she goes off to meet her husband out of town. Things seem to be looking up…. Until Nora meets a reporter who clues her in that there WERE murders in the area as she describes. Soon after, she finds a newspaper clipping that describes the ABC murders, and when she answers the phone as Nora Davis, someone on the other end asks, D as in Death?

Uh oh!

There is some great cinematography in this one, from the spooky rain-wet reflections on the street during the initial murder to a scene where Nora jerry-rigs the house that she is staying in with string and talcum powder to foil any break-in attempts. And one scene finds Nora walking down a long, disturbingly empty white corridor with hanging lights swinging lazily overhead as a disembodied voice threatens her from an unseen room. That one, in particular, hints at some of the elaborate, stylish “tension-setting” scenes of future gialli.

There are some humorous bits too; Nora is responsible for breaking Marcello’s finger, and every time he tries to help her, she manages to whack his hand somehow. And when she wakes after her initial mugging in a hospital with nuns leaning over her, she asks woozily, “Am I in heaven?”

If you like classic films, noir and giallo, this is definitely one to watch. It’s certainly dated, but still entertaining. Just don’t look for the gratuitous nudity and gallons of blood that would come to define the genre it helped spawn in the ‘70s, and which would begin to surface in Bava’s next film, the color giallo Blood and Black Lace which centers around the sex maniac killings of fashion models.

7 out of 10 black-gloved fingers!
➤ Read 21 Nights of Giallo: Week One

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21 Nights of Giallo: Week One

I AM A HUGE FAN of Italian giallo films and own over 100 of them on DVD and Blu-Ray. Thanks to that affinity, my 13th novel, due out on 3-22-22, is called Five Deaths For Seven Songbirds. Giallo fans will no doubt recognize just from the structure of the title (not to mention the look of the cover) that this is a giallo homage, so I hope those who love these movies will check out the book… it’s truly my love letter to the form! To lead up to the release of the book, over the first 21 days of March, I’m going to review a classic giallo film each night. And on the 22nd day… Five Deaths is released!

If you’re not familiar, giallo films were Italian murder-mystery-thrillers whose popularity peaked in the ’70s. There’s a good Wikipedia entry that offers background on their history. Mario Bava, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Sergio Martino and Umberto Lenzi are some of the best known directors of the giallo form, while composers Ennio Morricone, Bruno Nicolai, and the band Goblin all did numerous giallo film scores. Gialli typically involve a mysterious killer stalking women for some revenge motive, and there were several actresses who became known for appearing in the genre, including Edwige Fenech, Carroll Baker, Nieves Navarro (as Susan Scott), Rosalba Neri and Anita Strindberg. You’ll hear about all of them in the reviews to come! So… let’s get started:

NIGHT #1:
Deep Red

Directed by Dario Argento
Written by Argento and Bernardino Zapponi
Music by Goblin

Deep Red is hailed with good reason as one of the best giallo films ever made, so it’s a perfect place to start a survey of gialli! Dario Argento had previously helped popularize the genre with his debut The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, The Cat O’ Nine Tails and Four Flies on Red Velvet. After a short break from gialli, this was his triumphant return, starring David Hemmings and Argento’s romantic partner at the time, Daria Nicolodi.

Deep Red opens with a scream and the silhouette of someone being stabbed to death near a Christmas tree, and then a child’s feet standing next to a blood-covered knife on the floor. We know that somehow, this prologue murder sets the stage for some horrible chain of events to follow.

The film proper starts after the end credits in a gorgeous red-curtained and gold gilt theater, where a famous psychic performing parlor tricks suddenly intercepts the thoughts of a killer in the audience. Her head reels back and she points to the crowd, accusing someone of “perverted murderous thoughts” and then she cries “You have killed and you will kill again. There is a child singing in that house. Death. Blood.” We see what is presumably the killer vacate a seat and head to the restroom and then later overhear the psychic telling someone that she knows who the killer is. That night, when the psychic is alone in her room and hears a singsong children’s tune playing somewhere nearby, we know that the first murder is soon to follow. It does… thanks to a large meat cleaver.

It’s a great dramatic kick-off for what will be a bloody mystery to follow.

Cut to an empty city square where pianist Marcus (David Hemmings) helps his drunken musician friend Carlo up from the street when they hear a horrible scream from a building nearby. Marcus sends Carlo back to his gig at the bar and then sees the psychic being killed in the window above. He races up to try to help and sees a clue while in the apartment that will haunt him through the rest of the film. When reporter Gianna (Daria Nicolodi) shows up, the two begin a fun flirtatious relationship that gives the film a few great moments of humor (she drives a car that is something like a human mousetrap!) as they spar over women’s lib and trying to one-up each other.

Marcus soon gets a near-miss visit from the killer and begins playing amateur sleuth. However, one by one, the people he visits to try to track down the identity of the killer… end up dead, each death preceded by the eerie theme of the children’s song.

Gruesome kills, a murderous mechanical doll, a sadistic child who enjoys skewering lizards, some clever clues and deceptions (including a great disappearing message from a dying woman written in steam on a bathroom wall)… Deep Red offers a deep mystery that you’re not likely to unravel before Marcus.

There are some truly creepy, memorable scenes in Deep Red, and the excellent cinematography is made doubly effective by the Goblin-produced score. It was the first time Argento worked with the band on film music and it began a partnership that would continue for decades.

If you have never seen Deep Red and you love a great mystery with likeable characters and a good twist, do yourself a favor and watch this one! Arrow has just released a gorgeous 4K scan of it, but their regular blu-ray looks great as well and you can stream it on Amazon Prime. This is a classic worth watching again and again. And I have!

10 out of 10 black-gloved fingers!

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Goodbye 2021. Or really, Goodbye 2020 Part 2.

NOBODY IMAGINED TWO YEARS AGO that we’d spend the past 21 months wearing masks and closeting ourselves in our homes whenever possible to avoid a frequently deadly virus. Or that temporary telecommuting would turn into a permanent situation. It has for me… and I’m loving it (not a lot of upsides to a pandemic, but that’s been one for me!)

Certainly when we began 2021, we all hoped to be “back to normal” with the release of vaccines, rather than enduring a new spike of record hospitalizations from COVID-19 variants at the end of the year. Nevertheless, here we are, with no end in sight. But some things are the same as ever. My ritual on New Year’s Eve is to open a bottle of something good (this year – Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout) and ruminate on the events of the past 12 months. So… the following were some of my personal  highlights and lowlights of the year we are leaving behind, written just before the ball drops.

The good thing about 2021 was that we did finally get vaccines in the spring for the coronavirus and life for most did get somewhat back to normal. Restaurants and entertainment centers have been more or less open all year. For me, I got to celebrate Father’s Day at Revolution Brewing again, which had been an annual tradition for us until 2020.

For those hailing the end of 2021 and “bring on 2022,” all I’ve got to say is that things may very likely not be that different next year than they were this year. We’re going to be fighting COVID and trying to reestablish our “old” lives for a long time to come. Some things may never go back to the way they were in 2019.

For me, 2021 was not a bad year overall. It didn’t START great. We were still in the throes of lockdown, and in February, my longtime friend and publisher David G. Barnett was killed in a car crash by a reckless driver.  That eventually led to me republishing Needles & Sins, my one active book still on Dave’s Necro Publications imprint on my own Dark Arts Books. It was a sad moment late this fall when I hit “publish” on the new edition and put the original Necro edition to bed. I was proud of being on Necro and will forever miss Dave.

I got the J&J vaccine in the spring, and thought I was going to die from the vaccine the night I got it. But things have looked up from there!

In the following months, I returned to horror conventions like Flashback Weekend and HorrorHound, was in the front row to see the Psychedelic Furs in Chicago  once again, and saw a few movies in the theater, including the latest Godzilla movie and the new James Bond film that Shaun and I had waited for a year to see. We watched all of the Bond movies a year and a half ago to get ready for it… and then No Time to Die was delayed twice. So… that was a long awaited highlight of 2021.

 

Tonight, we celebrated New Year’s Eve by driving 45 minutes to have dinner at the original Aurelios Pizza in Homewood, IL. Geri and I have made that an annual tradition for decades since it used to be our high school hangout, and last year… couldn’t do it, because restaurants in Illinois were all locked down. So… a lot of things got more back to normal this year.

 

The Year of Twitch.

For me, 2021 was The Year of Twitch. It all started on NYE 2020, when a Detroit DJ that I’ve followed for the past 20 years decided to hold a New Year’s Eve party on Twitch.TV.  I was vaguely aware of the platform because I’d seen pinball hobbyists use it to show live gameplay while chatting (Twitch works similarly to Zoom and Teams with a main video screen and sidebar “chatroom”).  After having a great time listening to classic alternative rock and Britpop tunes and chatting with some old online friends from DJ Mikey’s old online Strangeways Radio days last NYE, I quickly discovered that when COVID closed all the clubs, the most enterprising DJs had flocked online to continue to hold their spinning sessions and entertain their audiences… while earning subscription fees and tips to replace their lost club income.

There are a ton of DJs with weekly shows on Twitch.TV. It wasn’t long before I had found a handful of favorites who always spin the kind of music I like, and are entertaining themselves to boot.  In 2020, I used to play pinball in my basement  three or four nights a week while listening to my favorite LPs and CDs. Early in 2021, I started instead putting on Twitch DJs whenever I played pinball. That candle-heavy photo is from DJMelting Girl’s show, who I usually listen to twice a week. I bought an Amazon Firestick so I could play Twitch easier on my gameroom TV (instead of screensharing from my phone) and dropped a subwoofer under my pinball tables. Pretty soon, our basement started to sound like a dance club every weekend, with the floors upstairs rattling while I played pinball and blasted goth rock, industrial, 80s dance pop and modern dark club music.

This did not always excite my family upstairs, but it was awesome for me. I used to love going to goth-y, industrial clubs in my 20s and 30s but never got to go to them often since we live a pretty good hike from Chicago. Suddenly, it was like having Chicago’s Berlin and Metro Smart Bar in my basement.

I thought maybe it would just be a “phase” but over the past 12 months, I’ve settled into a very consistent comfortable schedule. On Wednesday nights (and sometimes Sunday afternoons), I listen to the very gothy (and funny) Sean Templar on his RedPartyNYC channel. On Thursday nights, it’s all about DJMeltingGirl from San Francisco, who spins modern and classic industrial and darkwave. Friday nights are for Vancouver’s DJ Evilyn13, who spins a wide mix of 80s alternative, rock, and modern stuff on the Restricted Entertainment channel.

Saturdays are tough because Melting Girl and Evilyn are both on again, but I usually end the night listening to Denver’s DJSlave1 whose Mixtape show plays all my favorite 80s/early 90s fare from New Order, Depeche Mode, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, OMD, Siouxsie, The Cure, etc.  Sunday nights have flipped around a bit, but lately DJSlave1 has been broadcasting live from her club instead of her house, so I’ve been tuning into that. And there are others who I enjoy and catch now and then, from JoeVirus in Dallas to DJJakeRudh in Minneapolis and DJGregHaus, Philly Peroxide, and Gil Burns who are all Chicago DJs.

Obviously, COVID has encouraged my life to revolve more than ever around music and pinball.  And I’m OK with that! I don’t watch TV… I watch Twitch. I’m watching/listening to DJMeltingGirl now as I write this.

A New HAUNTER and the Return of Travel!

A few years ago, I used to travel for my dayjob at least once a month. I saw a lot of cities! And frequently posted pictures of greasy burgers and beer while in Irish Pubs all around the world. (It was kind of cool today – I saw the New Year rung in on a video posted at the Aldgate Pub, a British pub in Tokyo that I did some writing at a few nights when I was there for work almost six years ago. Was nice to see that place “live” again, albeit via Instagram.)

It was hard to fathom, but when I went to O’Hare Airport in October to spend a week in Atlanta for business, it was the first time I had flown in almost exactly two years. After years of constant travel, it was really weird to have had that much time go by. I definitely do not miss the “airport experience”.

My “return to travel” began in August, when I finally bought HAUNTER 2.0, my first (almost) new car in 16 years. I had been saving all of the money I made from book royalties for the past two and a half years so that I could get a big downpayment for a new Mustang Convertible.

My 2004 Mustang was getting a bit creaky after more than 200,000 miles on the road, but Mustangs are a LOT more expensive now than they were back then. I bought the original HAUNTER, a grey Mustang convertible, for $18,000 on New Year’s Eve 2004. I got it for an awesome price because they wanted it off the lot in winter on that last day of the year. Mustangs are almost three times that $$ now.

The old HAUNTER drove me to Toronto and Nashville and Atlanta and St. Louis and Indianapolis and all sorts of other places during its life, but it was time to let it rest. The radio only half-worked, the automatic convertible top had become painfully manual, the wheelwells and trunk were rusting out, and I had to jump it most days to get it out of the garage (there was some kind of constant electrical drain going on that sapped the battery).

The onset of COVID gave me an extra year of life out of the car while I saved, because while it wasn’t working dependably, it mainly just sat in the garage. When I did finally trade it in in August for a slightly used 2020 black Mustang convertible, the old HAUNTER had 215,000 miles on it.

Almost as soon as I had the new car, I took a road trip to Kalamazoo to go to a two-night “pinball party” at a friends. And when we weren’t playing the silver ball, I made excursions to Bells Brewery and Founders Brewing, two of my favorite breweries.

A week later, having tested my new pony on a short roadtrip, I drove it to Cincinnati to go to HorrorHound Weekend. I’ve always gone to the Indianapolis edition of the con, but this year, they were only holding it in Cincy. It was great to connect again with so many horror fans and it turned out to be my most successful convention ever… so… 2021 was looking pretty good to me in September!

I also did a small Krampus Market Curiosities & Oddities event in Lombard, Illinois to kick off December which was a good time. So… with three different horror conventions and a library event (I did a talk at the Lemont, IL library in October), this year felt a lot closer to normal for me than 2020.

It was a super busy fall overall, because high school marching band was back this year, so Shaun had events and competitions going on every weekend, including a state championship event at Illinois State University in Normal (where they made finals and finished in the top 15 bands in the state!). Between his schedule and my travel to Atlanta and Cincinnati, the Fall disappeared in a blink.

Books I Read

One of my resolutions for 2021 was to get back to a regular reading schedule. Prior to COVID I had gotten to the point where I was lucky to finish a handful of books a year. For 2021, I started reading a chapter or two before going to sleep again (used to do that all the time but had fallen out of the habit). I ended up reading a dozen books this year, which beats probably every year for the past decade. I don’t understand the lives of people who say they read 100 or 200 books a year. I’m glad they’re out there… but…damn, I’m just glad I got through a dozen! And the best part is, they were all good!

I started the year reading Anne Rice’s Wolves of Midwinter (was so sad when she died this month. There will be no more vampire, werewolf or angel books to look forward to!) Then I read Brian Pinkerton’s fun SF-horror thriller The Gemini Experiment and P.D. Cacek’s Second Lives.

After having them sit on my to-be-read shelf for more than 15 years, I then read JA Konrath’s Whiskey Sour, Christa Faust’s Money Shot, Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code and Richard Laymon’s Friday Night in Beast House. I loved them all, and ended up buying and reading Konrath’s sequels Bloody Mary and Rusty Nail later in the year, after reading a couple Edward Lee books I’d had sitting around for just about as long – The Chosen and The Backwoods. And I ended the year reading Laymon’s amazing closer to the Beast House saga, The Midnight Tour.

 

On my own book front, I turned in the final edits of my giallo homage novel, Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds, which will be out in February, and had a couple cool foreign short story collections released — Dark Erotic, a huge collection of my short erotic horror stories came out in Germany, and Secrety, a half & half collection of stories with Tomasz Czarny, who actually collaborated with me on writing a new Covenant tie-in tale.  The Polish edition of Violet Eyes was also released! Plus, a new story appeared in the anthology Beyond the Veil.

 

Movies I Watched

This year, I watched 140 films (I keep a spreadsheet!) which is just a couple more than 2019, but down a couple dozen from 2020 (when we were “locked in” more). Half of those were Horror or Giallo films, followed by a good batch of Exploitation/Grindhouse fare and a scattering of dramas, comedies and, for the first time in a while, a couple documentaries. Highlights included all the movies we went to the theater for —  No Time to Die,  Godzilla Vs. Kong,  Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Dune as well as my home theater discoveries: the awesome Italian film-centric coming of age film Cinema Paradiso (1988),  the Czech fantasy Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) and the Dutch art film My Nights with Susan, Olga and Julie (1975). I also enjoyed seeing the bizarre dialogue-free Human Animals (1983), Jose Ramon Larraz’s Whirlpool (1978) Flesh for Frankenstein 3D (I had only previously seen the 2D version) and I rewatched some 5-star classics like Malabimba, Trauma, Living Dead Girl and What Have They Done to Solange?, the perfect precursor to my Christmas gift Camille Keaton in Italy box set of three films that she made after Solange and prior to I Spit On Your Grave.

It was a good year in film for me!

Music I Bought

I did listen to more than Twitch DJs streaming 80s club hits this year. While 2021 did not bring us the long-promised new Cure album, it did bring a mind-blowing duet with Robert Smith on the new Chvrches CD, Screen Violence. One of my favorite new artists collaborating with my absolute favorite old artist? Yes, please!

Other highlights of the year in music included a phenomenal new disc from one of the premier songwriters of this generation, Brandi Carlile with  In These Silent Days, a new Duran Duran album called Future Past,  and a  surprisingly good new Styx album in Crash of the Crown.

So that’s my wrap on 2021. The first half was pretty quiet, given continuing lockdowns, but by the fall, we were back to a fairly frenetic schedule of life. Hopefully 2022 will continue in that vein as “herd immunity” slowly grows; while I enjoyed the “quiet” time and got a lot of pinball, music and movies in, nobody wants to be “forced” to stay home.

Cheers!

 

 

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NEEDLES & SINS back in print!

Happy to announce that my 3rd short fiction collection, Needles & Sins, is back in print in ebook and paperback! Originally published by Necro Publications back in 2007, this collection contains “Letting Go,” a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Short Fiction, as well as five stories that appeared on the Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror anthology series’ Honorable Mention List: “Spirits Having Flown,” “The Beginning Was The End,” “The Strong Will Survive,” “Something Inside” and “You Never Got Used to the Needle.”

The book went out of print briefly due to the death of Necro publisher Dave Barnett earlier this year. I wrote a blog about that tragedy here.

I’ve added a new Afterword at the end of the book talking about my history with Dave and Necro, as well as reinstated the interior art from the original Necro first edition that was removed when Necro moved the book to CreateSpace a few years ago. Otherwise, I’ve kept the book the same as Necro had it… even down to the fonts and headline sizes… it just now sports the Dark Arts Books logo on the spine. Check out the ebook or paperback on Amazon.

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Psychedelic Furs: A View 38 Years On, From The Front Row

BACK AROUND 1983, my friend Erica, went away to college at University of Illinois and sent me back some tapes of cool bands she discovered there. One of them was labeled Psychedelic Furs Talk Talk Talk with the flipside being, what I thought for a long time was, US October. I fell in love with The Psychedelic Furs thanks to that tape, and quickly discovered their first self-titled disc and Todd Rundgren-produced personal favorite, Forever Now shortly thereafter. They became one of my top five favorite bands of all time. Eventually, I realized that I misread Erica’s writing on the tape and US October was actually the second album by another new band called U2. But … I never got into that side of the tape or U2 that much.  A year later, I followed Erica to U of I myself, and saw the Furs play Huff Gym on campus. Since then, I have seen them on most of their U.S. tours. When the Furs come to town… I’m there. I’ve seen them multiple times at Chicago’s Riviera and Vic Theaters and at least once at House of Blues where our balcony seats were actually behind the stage curtain! And it was super cool when a few years ago they actually played Naperville’s Ribfest, right here in my home town! So… I don’t know how many times I’ve seen them, but it’s a lot. When they played The Vic on Thursday night in Chicago this week though, I think I had the “best seat” in my entire life of seeing them. I got there early and was literally first row center, right in front of the microphone. You couldn’t get closer without being on stage with the band! And icing on the cake — the opening band turned out to be Josh Caterer of Chicago’s Smoking Popes. I loved that band’s first couple albums and only saw them play once (ironically, when I was in Boston, not Chicago) so it was cool to hear what Josh has been up to for the past decade.
 When the Furs took the stage, it was an instant celebration. Singer Richard Butler was relaxed and having a good time running through the old classics, but the band also played a good dose of their first album in almost 30 years, Made of Rain. It’s a slower album, the work of a seasoned, reflective band, not the punky upstarts who wrote “Into You Like A Train”. But it’s a solid disc, and it was cool to hear songs like “The Boy Who Invented Rock n Roll,” “Don’t Believe” and “You’ll Be Mine” in a live setting. And it was great to see Mars Williams on saxophone with the band again. There was a long period in the ’90s and early 2000s where he didn’t tour with them. For my first “big name” concert after a year and a half of quarantine, it was perfect!Here are some pictures from the front row of that night!

 

And here are some videos of the night, a full take of “Ghost In You” and snippets of “Love My Way,” “Heartbreak Beat” and “Pretty in Pink.” Plus, Josh Caterer singing a stripped down, slowed down version of The Smoking Popes’ big hit, “I Need You Around.”

 

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Goodbye HAUNTER. Hello HAUNTER 2.0! And a Brewery-Pinball Roadtrip!

ON AUGUST 23, 2021, I traded in my 40th anniversary gray 2004 Mustang Convertible – HAUNTER – for a 2020 55th anniversary black Mustang Convertible. This was a difficult goodbye; the original HAUNTER has been with me 16.5 years — since before my son Shaun was born! Almost 1/3 of my life. I put 215,000 miles on that car and drove it to virtually every author event I’ve ever attended. It’s also in the background of the full crop of my author photo that I’ve used for over 15 years. Here’s a picture of the two side by side, just before I drove off the dealer’s lot:

I’m going to miss that car, and it was hard to let go. But… it was time. There were many things wrong with it and I was never sure anymore if I was going to make it home when I took it out of the garage. There was a short somewhere in the electrical system that kept draining the battery, and the convertible top and radio both “half” worked. The windows no longer sealed with the convertible top properly so water dripped on me when it rained. And it’s been leaking oil for over five years. Nevermind the rust growing around the wheelwells and the holes in the trunk floor and the driver seat. Sixteen years in Illinois is hard on a car, even with proper maintenance. And 215,000 miles is… a lotta road to cover!

So… here’s to HAUNTER… RIP old girl! And here’s to HAUNTER 2.0. May we have a long life together!

This weekend, I finally got to take the new HAUNTER on a road trip and got more used to all of the gadgets and upgrades. A lot has changed in cars over 16 years. I never had cameras or phone syncs or heated seats or any of that jazz. Learning the new dashboard has been like sitting down in an airplane cockpit for the first time!

A friend of mine in Michigan was hosting a two-night pinball playing party at his house (he has built his own pinball arcade with upwards of 40 machines!) so I decided to road trip up there to see him and play, as well as do some writing and visit a couple of my favorite breweries.

On Friday, I had dinner at Bell’s Brewery’s Eccentric Cafe in Kalamazoo, and finished a longish short story I’ve been working on while sampling some great stuff. Their pork nachos made for perfect writing finger food and I tried their Roundhouse and 1st Friday IPAs as well as their Mango Habanero Oberon (that was super warm!) and their Uberon (warm in a different way, thanks to bourbon barrel aging). I also tasted their lighter Rind Over Matter and Tart Wheat Ale and brought back cans and bottles of the Uberon, Roundhouse and Mango Habanero.

Then I headed over to my friend Mike’s, where I played pinball for four hours and set a couple new personal best high scores on two of my favorite games that I don’t own – Star Gazer (1.5 million) and Bride of Pinbot (10 million). Probably weak scores for people who play those machines a lot, but I rarely get the chance and thanks to COVID, it’s been two years since I have played either of them.

On Saturday, I had coffee and breakfast in downtown Kalamazoo at Fourth Coast / The Crow’s Nest and wrote there for three hours before stopping briefly at Bronson Park in the heart of the city.

Then I headed 45 minutes away up to Grand Rapids to visit one of my favorite taprooms in the country, Founders Brewing.

I worked on a couple chapters of a new NightWhere book, and tried their Hello Jane IPA which was good, but not as solid as their classic Mosaic Promise. Also tried Green Zebra, a really sweet gose that almost tasted like apple cider. I got samples of their session red, Scarlet Dawn and their KBS Cinnamon Vanilla Cocoa (12%!!!) and 4 Giants IPA (9%). I brought back bottles of both of the latter, as well as lots of Mosaic Promise, since this year they only released it for distribution in Michigan and it’s one of my favorite summer beers.

Then I drove back down to Kalamazoo and spent another three hours battling the silver ball before heading home. It was a fun and productive trip — a total “high score” of a weekend! (And my beer fridge now has a lot of new selections!)

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Flashback Weekend 2021: The Weekend We Came Home.

IT WAS THE BEST! That’s really true of Flashback Weekend 2021 in so many ways.   It was a whirlwind of a weekend, and hands-down the best horror con I’ve had an author booth at over the past 10 years on multiple levels. After a two-year hiatus thanks to COVID, the fans and the dealers were all incredibly thankful and happy to be back, and that attitude permeated everything about the weekend.

This was also the first time I’ve stayed at the hotel for Flashback (usually I would commute) which made it a more relaxing and enjoyable time (could have drinks with friends at the bar after midnight) and it was the first time my son Shaun stayed with me there the whole weekend, since we had a room.

It was so good, and so needed, to see so many of my friends again that I haven’t been able to see for almost two years! From catching up with Brian Pinkerton, Chrissy Papnick, John Wroblewski, Mickey Thompson, Chad Savage, Michael West and so many more, to trying out the upcoming Halloween themed pinball table from Spooky Pinball LLC to wildly entertaining dinners with my friends from Synapse – Jerry and Noa Chandler, Ryan Olson, Dave Kosanke, Jennifer Roe, Tim O’Saben and Angie Long O’Saben and Ghoulish Mortals/Black Martin – Lon Czarnecki and Amy Martin and Ghoulish Mortals, I haven’t had this much fun in years.

You can hear the “insiders view” of Flashback on Episode #3 of the Synapse Films podcast. Tim O’Saben interviewed Jerry Chandler and several friends of Synapse at the convention — and I’m included in a segment at the end!

Since I was running my own table, I didn’t get a chance to meet the stars, but I did at least catch a glimpse of Svengoolie and Meatloaf while darting through the con halls.

Shaun and I did get to pose with the original car that was used in the original Halloween film from 1978. Somebody traced it and reconditioned it to look new… so that was my one photo with a “guest” over the weekend:

Shaun and I were also some of the first people to get to play the upcoming HALLOWEEN pinball machine from Spooky Pinball  at Flashback (it’s still in beta phase but they brought a machine to demo since the original Michael Myers — Nick Castle — was at the convention)… Shaun instantly set a high score I couldn’t break (he got on the gameboard with a couple in the Top 3 scores… I set the #4 high…)

 As a huge pinball fan (I own five machines myself), it was really special to be able to play the beta version of this machine while I was in the “horror space”.   My pinball and horror hobbies don’t usually intersect that way!

Over the weekend, I met a lot of new horror fans and had some great conversations about books and movies. And… I know I made at least one new fan! Judy, one of the people who wasn’t familiar with my work but took a chance and bought some books from me, read NightWhere the week after the show and posted this a few days later:

Omg and wow. This erotic horror was definitely a page turner with plenty of verbal “what the f@#$” outbursts from me while I was reading. I must admit I am a reader and have read many books, this is the first erotic horror book I have ever read, but won’t be my last I must say now The ending left me questioning which way I should take it. So since I am a romantic I have tried to leave on the positive side but yet am also a sucker for a tear jerker ending. So I was left speechless and mind boggled on how I should envision the ending in mind. Which I haven’t decided just yet. Definitely well worth reading And I am so pleased and honored to have met you John now more than ever. I can’t wait to start the The House by the Cemetery … looking forward to what journey it will unfold in my imagination and mind. Hopefully we will meet again at another #flashbackweekend will look for your booth for sure. 

Connections like that are why shows like Flashback are so important. Thanks so much to Mike and Mia Kerz for putting on such an amazing show.

Here’s a visual journal of the show from my eyes:

   

 

 

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FIVE DEATHS, DARK EROTIC covers revealed… and… how I spent my summer vacation not getting hit by a tornado.

THE BIG NEWS FOR THIS MONTH is that my 13th novel Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds has been put up for pre-sale on Amazon, B&N, Kobo etc. and the cover revealed. Click on the cover image to see a larger version!

The release date for the book is the numerically perfect 2-22-22, so it’s still a ways off, but I can’t wait until it is finally available and people can read it. This book is my homage to Italian giallo films; these are horror-crime-whodunnit thrillers that were first introduced in the ’60s by Mario Bava and really popularized in the early ’70s by Dario Argento. They more or less faded out in the ’80s, but there are scores and scores of them that were made from 1965-1985, and I think I own 75% of them on DVD or Blu-Ray.

Probably the coolest thing that has happened to me all year is that I actually received a note of support for the novel from Sergio Martino, the director of some of my favorite giallo films, including All the Colors of the Dark and The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh. I sent him the manuscript last month, and he sent me the following to use to promote the book:

I’ve read this novel with growing interest. It made me think, in terms of development and suspense, of some of my ’70s and ’80s thriller movies appreciated by many American directors, including Quentin Tarantino. I’m sure it will be adapted into a movie, that will satisfy the fans of the genre. Great plot John! Good reading everyone!
–Sergio Martino, director of All the Colors of the Dark and Torso

On top of that, Troy Howarth, who has literally “written the book” on the giallo film genre, sent me a quote as well:

“Intricately plotted in the classic giallo style, with plot twists and murders galore. John Everson has written a thriller that is sure to appeal to devotees of lurid Italian mystery thrillers.”
–Troy Howarth, author of So Deadly, So Perverse: 50 Years of Italian Giallo Films

You can read a longer description on the Amazon or Flame Tree pages for it, but here’s a quick summary of the novel:

Somebody is murdering the Songbirds…
When Eve Springer arrives in Belgium to study with the world famous Prof. Ernest Von Klein at The Eyrie, an exclusive music conservatory, it’s the fulfillment of her lifelong dream. But that dream is soon to become a nightmare. When the star of the school’s piano program is strangled with a piano wire, Eve takes her place in the school’s famed jazz combo, the Songbirds. But one by one the other Songbirds start turning up dead, each murdered with a musical instrument and Eve finds herself in deadly danger.
Who wants the Song to end … and who will be next to play their last note?

One more cover reveal!

ON JULY 28, FESTA VERLAG in Germany is releasing a collection of my short fiction called Dark Erotic. This is all material that has been previously published in English – a lot of the stories are from Cage of Bones, Needles & Sins and Sacrificing Virgins – but this is the first time those stories have appeared in German.

“Field of Flesh” leads the book off and the collection also includes “Bloodroses,” “Pumpkin Head,” Sacrificing Virgins,” and “Letting Go,” among others. The book is only available to Festa’s book club subscribers, and is limited to 999 autographed copies (I signed signature sheets to insert in it a few weeks ago). Can’t wait to hear what German horror fans think!

This is my first release in Germany in five years, Festa previously released The 13th, Siren (as Ligeia) and NightWhere. Here is a picture of those books and the signature pages I signed for Dark Erotic:

Back to Flashback at Last!

I HAVE REALLY MISSED connecting with friends and fans at horror conventions for the past two years, and in just six days, I will FINALLY be back at my favorite Chicago event – Flashback Weekend Chicago Horror Con. I’ve had a table at Flashback every year for about a decade now, and having it cancelled last year was like cancelling summer!  I am so looking forward to being back, and this year they are having reunions of the Halloween and Saw casts, as well as a couple of the supporting actors from Aliens, Svengoolie, Meatloaf (!) and a bunch of other cool stars and events. If you’re anywhere near Chicago, I hope to see you there next weekend!

Summer Is Slipping Away…

IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE that the summer of 2021 is more than half over. It seems like the days fly by ever faster… even though I still don’t leave the house that much! Although, just a month ago, the house nearly left me: just after 11 p.m. on Father’s Day, a level 3 tornado ripped through my neighborhood, ripping up trees, roofs and houses just a few blocks away from my house. We went to the basement when the tornado sirens went off, but I learned later, by the time we took cover, if we’d been three blocks north, we probably already would have had a tree through our roof… like the neighborhood fire station did!

Luckily, while there was a long path of devastation very nearby, we escaped with just one snapped tree branch in the backyard.

Aside from avoiding tornados this summer, I’ve spent a couple dozen hours over the past few weeks literally… digging a ditch. The back fence line of our yard has a gravel bed that runs the full length of the lot, which is supposed to facilitate drainage from heavy rains and neighbors’ sump pumps, but over the past 20-30 years, it has become clogged with mud. Useless. So… foot by foot, I’ve been digging it out, rinsing the rock in a wheelbarrow until all the mud and roots and twigs are removed, and replacing it on a new plastic barrier. It’s been great fun… not.

I’m about 2/3 done with the project and don’t know if I’ll finish the whole thing this year. But… over the past few days while on my summer “staycation,” I got it to the point that it looks good from the vantage of the house (you can’t really see the section that I haven’t done because of bushes and trees).

For the next few weeks, I’m going to take a break from gravel washing and get back to focusing on writing. I’ve started work on a new novel, and I want to see how it goes. I’ll write more about that when… I’ve written more of it!

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THE DEVIL’S EQUINOX on sale for 99 cents!

MY 11TH NOVEL, the erotic horror tale The Devil’s Equinox, is on sale this week for just 99 cents on all ebook stores! Plus, it will be featured in Bookbub’s horror newsletters in the US, UK, Canada and Australia on May 1st.

This is not your “ordinary sexy scary 99 cent sale.” This is the first time since its release in 2019 that Flame Tree Press has put the e-book on sale and normally it lists for $6.99… so it’s a huge price break! I’m really excited about this promotion, as I’m hoping it brings lots of new readers to this novel.

If you don’t have a copy, I hope you’ll download one and check it out over the next few days! And if you do have a copy… please spread the word to other horror fans!

You can find copies on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Chapters-Indigo/Kobo, Books-A-Million and more.

Here’s the back cover description:

What dark magic lives in the stroke of midnight?

Austin secretly wishes his wife would drop dead. He even says so one boozy midnight at the bar to a sultry stranger with a mysterious tattoo. When his wife later introduces that stranger as Regina, their new neighbor, Austin hopes she will be a good influence on his wife. Instead, one night he comes home to find his wife dead. Soon he’s entranced with Regina, who introduces him to a strange world of bloodletting, rituals and magic. A world that puts everything he loves in peril. Can Austin save his daughter, and himself, before the planets align for the Devil’s Equinox?

But Wait, There’s More…

In addition to The Devil’s Equinox, two of my other erotic horror novels are also on sale this week on Amazon in the US and UK. If you haven’t downloaded a copy of NightWhere (a Bram Stoker Award finalist!) or The Family Tree… grab ’em now!

View NightWhere on Amazon.comView The Family Tree on Amazon.com

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