Orrin Grey's Blog: Shovel Murders & Monologues, page 39

And Other Warnings

Some of you may already have noticed, but Never Bet the Devil, my first collection which was published in 2012 by Evileye Books, has gone out of print as of December 31, 2015. It’s still available from some online sellers, but its sudden scarcity has triggered bizarre online algorithms which have driven the price up ridiculously. In short, please, nobody pay close to $100 for my book? If you really want a copy that badly, contact me privately and we’ll work something out, though I don’t even have any author copies left to speak of.

The rights have reverted back to me, and I’m hoping to have it back into print–or at least into ebook–in some new edition as soon as possible. I’ll keep you apprised as things go along. For those of you who do already have a copy, congrats! I don’t know what its print run ended up being, but I doubt there are too terribly many out there in the world, and that’s all there will ever be, at least of this edition.

In the meantime, you can still snag a copy of my second collection, Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts, and I’ll have some more publishing announcements coming in the next week or so.

2015: The Year in Creatures

Well, 2015 may have been the big year of high-number sequels in long-running franchises, but it bucked recent tradition in one major way: For the first time in a long time, the majority of movie monsters on screen this year were not in multi-million-dollar blockbuster tentpoles (Star Wars notwithstanding), but in modestly-budgeted, honest-to-Godzilla monster movies. So regardless, really, of the ultimate quality of any of those movies, that’s something to be thankful for. When you also factor in that a majority of the monsters on screen this year were also primarily practical effects, it really is downright jaw-dropping.

While most people are probably expecting the titular creature from It Follows to take the crown for 2015–and while there are, admittedly, few more intriguing loglines in recent memory than that movie’s central conceit–ultimately I found the execution of said monster, while frequently chilling, to be too uneven and, yes, maybe too metaphorical for it to take the top spot among movie monsters in a year that’s actually crowded with contenders.

Up until literally the month of December, I really thought The Hallow would walk away with the prize. While the film itself is of mixed quality, its woody/fungal monsters, brought to unsettling life principally via practical effects, would have dominated most any normal Year in Creatures. What I didn’t expect was to find a contender in an unlikely Hollywood epic in November. While the C.H.U.D.-alikes in Mockingjay Part 2 may not have been the most inventive monsters ever to hit cinema screens, their deployment was one of the most effective I have ever seen, full stop. It helps that they’re in easily one of the best movies that I saw in a theatre this year.

Ultimately, though, for all the best intentions and incredible critters in such a ridiculous quantity of movies, there was no real competition for the top honor, not after Krampus hit theatres in early December. While my feelings about the film itself may not have been as unanimous as I had hoped, there’s no denying the sheer quantity and bravura of its creatures. Krampus is a film that could easily have gotten away with having only the titular Christmas demon, along with maybe an evil toy or two. Instead, it crams the screen with monsters, from Demonic Toys-like demonic toys (though director Michael Dougherty claims never to have seen that dubious classic) to dark elves to “Yule goats” to Krampus himself, almost all of them brought to life primarily through puppetry and suit effects. Even the movie’s snowmen–which, spoilers, don’t actually do anything besides appear creepily in the front yard–are almost enough to count as additional monsters.

Even if there weren’t any other monsters in the mix, though, Krampus himself would probably be enough to steal the show. With enormous, heavy hooves, a hunched back, and more sheer scale than you might imagine, it’s actually the little touches the make Krampus work, from the bells that jingle on the chains he wears to the slipping mask of an old man face that he ultimately displays. While the character may lack the personality of Sam from Trick ‘R Treat–Dougherty’s previous contribution to the horror canon–as a monster he’s hard to resist.

When you get right down to it, though, whatever you think of any of my picks here, the real winner in 2015 is us. We haven’t had a year this crammed full of movie monsters in actual monster movies in a long time, so whatever your particular poison, make sure you enjoy it while it lasts!

The Howling II (1986)

As of recently watching The Howling 2: … Your Sister is a Werewolf (also known as The Howling 2: Stirba – Werewolf Bitch, according to IMDb) I am pretty sure I have now seen all six (!) of the original Howling movies, for better or (more likely) worse. Prior to finishing out the set, I would have been fairly confident that none of them could out-batshit Howling 3: The Marsupials, but I’m pretty sure Your Sister is a Werewolf just proved me wrong. Given the fact that it’s helmed by Philippe Mora, who was also responsible for Howling 3, it should come as no surprise that we’re in Best Worst Movie territory here.

The cast features a paycheck-collecting Sir Christopher Lee versus Sybil Danning as the queen of werewolves, with an attempted leading man turn by Reb Brown, better known to all of us as Big McLargehuge from Space Mutiny, displaying emotions that are constantly inappropriate for every scene that he’s in. Anytime your film’s subtitle is Your Sister is a Werewolf and the movie feels the need to repeat said subtitle half-a-dozen times in the first fifteen minutes, you know that you’re in good hands, and this is definitely the werewolf equivalent of Return to Salem’s Lot. Which is to say that it bears virtually no resemblance to its predecessor, is completely bonkers, and has a little bit of everything. Highlights include:

Christopher Lee in New Wave sunglasses.
A full-on, mid-transformation werewolf threesome.
A werewolf-themed puppet show that the movie constantly cuts back to.
A shirtless guy in a ridiculous helmet salvaged from the set of some low-budget Conan the Barbarian knock-off being killed by a dwarf with a flail.
Lots of statues, carvings, ossuaries, etc.
The one time the movie feels the need to let you know when something is happening…
A massive BDSM werewolf orgy.
Sybil Danning in action figure-ready dominatrix getup, complete with cape, sunglasses, and a ridiculous floppy demon staff that comes to life in the film’s climactic scenes!
Loads of werewolves that more closely resemble Sasquatches.
The obligatory nightclub scene that the movie also constantly cuts back to, featuring maybe a couple of songs that are recycled over and over again on the soundtrack.
And a ridiculous montage of Sybil Danning ripping her top off (NSFW) that plays under the closing credits.

2015: The Year in Movies

I started 2015 with a modest goal: I wanted to watch more movies that I had never seen before than ones that I had. I think I accomplished that pretty handily. In 2015, I watch 255 movies, 156 of them for the first time. Of those 156, 25 of them were released in 2015. (Yeah, I don’t make it out to the theatres as much as I used to…)

For me, 2015 was a year full of movies that I liked but didn’t love. Since there’s no one twisting my arm to make a ranked Top Ten list this year, I’ll simply say that, of the movies that I saw that were released in 2015, a few of my favorites include: Mockingjay Part 2, Insidious Chapter 3, Crimson Peak, Krampus, and Mad Max: Fury Road. And before you ask, no, I still haven’t seen The Force Awakens, so you’ll have to wait to hear what I think of it. I did catch Hateful Eight just under the wire, watching it on New Year’s Eve in 70mm, but, while the experience was pretty amazing, I’m not yet sure how I felt about the movie. I also saw Bone Tomahawk over the weekend, and it was every bit as good as everyone’s been saying, though it definitely did drama better than it did horror.

There are lots of other likely contenders for a best of the year list that I just haven’t gotten the chance to sit down with yet. In spite of the best efforts of movies like Hellions and Run All Night, the worst movie that I saw that came out in 2015 remains Tremors 5, and I saw that as a fan of the franchise, even its later entries.

When you only see 25 movies that came out in a year, you’re bound to miss a lot of good ones. So it probably comes as no surprise that I saw more older movies for the first time that left a big impression on me than I did movies that actually came out this year. A few highlights include: The Guest, The Canal, Nightcrawler, April Fool’s Day, The Taking of Deborah Logan, Resolution, The Warriors, Hide and Seek (2013), Kill, Baby… Kill!, Black Mountain Side, Blood and Black Lace, Night of the Demons, Phantom of the Paradise, Santo y Blue Demon Contra Los Monstruos, Kiss Me Deadly, and Mockingjay Part 1.

While I didn’t make it out to the theatre very often this year, I did have several superlative theatre-going experiences. Back at the tail-end of January, I attended Panic Fest, where I got to catch a midnight double-feature of WolfCop and The Editor. I’ll be there again this year, on the weekend of February 5. In October, I was a guest at the HP Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, where I caught a bunch of movies, the best of which was probably Black Mountain Side.

On my birthday I attended a mystery horror triple-feature at the Tapcade, where I got to see both Demons and Night of the Demons for the first time, and then in November I saw the Mockingjay double-feature at the Alamo. Finally, just a few nights ago, I watched The Hateful Eight in 70mm, as I already mentioned.

In 2016, I hope to continue the trend of watching more movies that are new-to-me, and fewer re-watches, although going back to classics (or not-so-classics) that I haven’t revisited in a long time is also high on my list. I’m also hoping, though it seems that I say this every year now that I’m a freelancer, to read more books in 2016, so that may cut into my movie watching time. We’ll see…

Happy Whatever

Well, so far this December I’ve posted all of one time, though, y’know, that was a write-up of Krampus, so at least I’ve got my priorities on straight. (Speaking of Krampus, the latest episode of the great Werewolf Ambulance podcast not only covers that very film, but also gives a great shout out to my own review!)

December has been pretty busy, with a variety of deadlines crowding around me like cats at feeding time, so I’ve been at least kind of keeping my head down and working on those, while also, y’know, distracting myself by getting vaguely addicted to buying those Funko blind box horror mystery figures again. This means that I haven’t done much else, including that I haven’t yet seen Star Wars Episode 37: Chewbacca’s Delight, though everyone’s enthusiasm for it has finally been infectious enough to convince me to try seeing it in theatres sometime after Christmas. (And after I see Hateful Eight in 70mm. Because priorities.)

I do have several year-end write-ups in the works, including my annual Year in Creatures report, but those are going to have to wait until a little closer to the actual end of the year. I’ll be out of town for Christmas, so I may be a bit scarce online for a few days, though you’ll probably still see me on social media posting random observations or pictures of weird things I see along the side of the road.

In the meantime, I figured I should drop by here and mention that Painted Monsters continues to receive very kind reviews, including probably its most glowing review to date (and, honestly, if that is the most glowing review it ever receives, I couldn’t complain). And I got a pretty amazing Christmas present in the form of a Painted Monsters ornament, courtesy of my fantastic publisher Ross Lockhart at Word Horde.

That’s it from me until after the holiday. In the meantime, stay warm, enjoy the lights, and have a pleasant time, whatever you may celebrate, if anything.

Krampus (2015)

I want this to be a post where I do nothing but gush about how great Krampus is, but it isn’t going to be. I liked Krampus a lot, but don’t think I quite loved it. That said, I felt similarly about Trick ‘R Treat the first time I watched it, and it has done nothing but grow on me with time and repeated viewings, so there’s a good chance that Krampus may well do the same.

There’s a lot to love in Krampus. It starts out strong with a slow-motion-to-the-point-of-wax-museum sequence of Christmas shoppers laying waste to a department store that goes a long way toward establishing the tone of the movie before a line of dialogue has been spoken. If the satire managed to remain as on-point as in that sequence, we’d probably be looking at an instant classic a la Gremlins.

Michael Dougherty and company also dump more monsters into Krampus‘ relatively brief 98 minutes than any dozen normal films, a feat that’s particularly welcome in a relatively low-budget flick that could have easily rested on its titular Christmas demon without anyone complaining too much. Even the snowmen, which, somewhat sadly, never do more than appear mysteriously in the yard and look creepy, almost feel like additional, if entirely inanimate, monsters. The fact that the majority of the film’s creatures are practical effects rather than CGI only adds to their appeal.

While the cast doesn’t boast a lot of star power, the film’s human moments succeed at least as well as its creature ones do, thanks in part to taking the time to give the characters small beats of warmth and humanity in the midst of the film’s anarchy of monster attacks and seasonal magic of the less warm fuzzy kind.

Most of all, Krampus is simply a special kind of movie, a kind that is near-and-dear to my heart, and that we don’t get too often anymore. A monster movie made without cynicism, with affection for itself and for the genre, one that revels in what it is and loves its setting and its characters and its conceits.

What is perhaps most frustrating about Krampus is that it feels, at every turn, like a movie that is just a few short steps away from being great. The human moments breathe life into the characters, but never feel like they’re completely paid off. The monsters look great, with the possible exception of the unfortunately CGed gingerbread men, and are occasionally ingenious–such as the legitimately terrifying jack-in-the-box worm–but all feel like they need just a little bit more personality than they ever get. Even Krampus himself, who is a stunning piece of design with his heavy hooves and his massive, hunched frame and his twisted old man face, is every bit as intimidating as he needs to be, but feels just one nudge shy of truly coming to life in the way that, say, Sam does in Trick ‘R Treat.

For all its good qualities, Krampus seems bound to suffer in proximity to Trick ‘R Treat and Gremlins due to these many near-misses. This may be partly because, for all its gore and hard R rating, Trick ‘R Treat feels more playful in its mayhem than Krampus ever does. Trick ‘R Treat drew apt comparisons to an Amblin Entertainment movie gone to the dark side, and Krampus seemed like an opportunity for Michael Dougherty to fully embrace his inner Joe Dante. For all of Krampus‘ jokiness, though, Dougherty’s dark side feels considerably rougher than Dante’s.

Upon first viewing, Krampus seems like a really good movie with a great movie lying just beside it, or beneath it. What time will tell is if that great movie is forever out of reach, or if it has, in fact, been inside Krampus all along, just waiting for successive viewings to bring it out…

 

Roundup

Well, Painted Monsters has been out in the world for a little over a month now, give or take, and a lot has been going on. It’s gotten a few reviews at Goodreads and Amazon, and so far the word of mouth has been almost universally positive and humbling. And while Publisher’s Weekly thought I maybe went a little heavy on the movie references, they still felt that Painted Monsters “would be a good fit for anyone who wants a modern take on venerable horror fiction and film.”

Add to that some other very kind reviews, including one at TeleRead and one that includes the first-ever piece of Painted Monsters fan art, and I’m pretty happy with the reception that my little book has been getting so far.

(It’s the first piece, but apparently not the last.)

I recently got to share some column space with the great Adam Cesare over at Cemetery Dance Online, where we discussed and debated the greatest movie monsters of each decade. It was probably the most fun I ever had being “interviewed.” And I was honored to be a guest on Scott Nicolay‘s The Outer Dark podcast, where we talked for a really, really long time about… lord, all sorts of stuff. (Look at all those tags!)

There’s more big news to come, and I’ve been keeping very busy. If you’ve picked up a copy of Painted Monsters, then I thank you from the bottom of whatever it is that skeletons have in place of a heart. (Bats?) And if you enjoyed it (or didn’t) and would like to leave a review–on Amazon, on Goodreads, or on your own blog–then I would appreciate that even more!

Mockingjay (2014-2015)

Way back on Wednesday night I watched the Mockingjay double-feature at the Alamo; it was my first time seeing either movie, and it was, hands down, the best theatre-going experience of the year for me, at least until tonight when I go watch Santo and the Blue Demon Against the Monsters projected from a VHS tape.

I’ve never read the books, but Grace did, around the time the first Hunger Games movie was coming out, so I watched it with her. It was better than I expected, but the series didn’t really start picking up steam for me until the under-appreciated—I Am Legend notwithstanding—Francis Lawrence got into the director’s seat with Catching Fire.

I liked Catching Fire and I was excited to see Mockingjay, but I was not prepared. This is a tough review to write, if review it even really is, because it’s hard to separate Mockingjay the movie(s) from the experience I had in that theatre. I watched the films in what are almost certainly the optimal conditions: in a huge room filled with other people who were every bit as excited as I was.

Anyone who watches a lot of movies can tell you that each individual viewing is its own thing, especially in a theatre. The experience can be invested with the energy of the crowd, changing it for the better or the worse, and that definitely happened here, for the better. It’s tough to say how much different the movies would have been if I’d seen them some other way.

First off, though split into two and released roughly a year apart, Mockingjay is in fact and emphatically just one movie, with a gut punch of a cliffhanger intermission right in the center. I can’t imagine how the poor souls who watched the first half a year ago and had to wait ’til now to proceed managed all that time. To a greater extent even than other movies that have been split into two or more parts, the two halves of Mockingjay rely on each other to work. So if you’re planning to head out to see Part 2, I recommend refreshing Part 1 as immediately beforehand as possible.

And if you’re not going out to see Part 2, I recommend that you reconsider. Mockingjay is a triumph, full stop. Not that The Hunger Games franchise needs any help from me. The books sold all the copies, and the movies have consistently made all the money. But I don’t see people talking about them the same way they do franchises like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings or the latest Marvel movie, and they should be.

There’s a lot to praise in Mockingjay, but I’ll focus on what maybe surprised me the most, and that’s the movie’s intensity. There are moments of peril—moments, plural—when I was literally on the edge of my seat, when I held my breath. I practically watch horror movies for a living, and yet that almost never happens. The sewer sequence is the standout, of course, and seems to at once go on forever and yet never feel interminable, just beat after beat of heart-in-your-throat tension until you’re pretty sure you’re going to need a defibrillator when it finally stops. But there’s also the tar trap, and a rescue sequence in the first movie. Would these scenes have had quite as much impact if the rest of the theatre hadn’t been holding its collective breath with me? Maybe not. Would they still have been a hell of an accomplishment? Absolutely.

Back to the sewer sequence, for a moment. I don’t think this counts as spoilers, since they’re in the trailer, but that sequence involves CHUDs. They’re not called CHUDs, but that’s what they are, for all intents and purposes. And while there are almost certainly better monsters in other movies that have been released this year—The Hallow, I am looking meaningfully in your direction—I have rarely seen any monsters anywhere deployed to such staggering effect as these. It’s a sequence reminiscent of Aliens but—and I say this as a huge fan of Aliens—dialed way, way up.

The fact that all of these moments are contained in a PG-13 movie ostensibly aimed primarily at a YA audience shows a couple of important things. One, that rating doesn’t have much to do with what a movie is capable of accomplishing. And two, that horror directors need to up their freaking game.

Painted Monsters: “Painted Monsters”

For the month of October, as part of the Countdown to Halloween, I’ll be revisiting each of the thirteen stories in  Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts and suggesting movies that pair well with them, for your viewing pleasure!

Of all the stories in Painted Monsters, the title novella was the most difficult to pair with an appropriate movie. Not because there weren’t plenty of options to choose from, but rather because there were too many! While the other stories in the collection may touch upon or are inspired by particular movies or periods in horror cinema, “Painted Monsters” is itself the collection in microcosm, a whirlwind tour of horror’s cinematic landscape, drawing inspiration from–and making overt reference to–dozens of movies from different eras.

For any number of reasons, any of the great Roger Corman/Vincent Price Poe pictures would fit the tone and aesthetic of “Painted Monsters” perfectly. I’m personally fond of Pit and the Pendulum and The Haunted Palace (actually the first Lovecraft adaptation, with a Poe title tacked on to help it sell). Those hit the story’s Gothic flavor, certainly, but for its self-referential qualities, we may need to go to more modern fare. In the book’s afterword, I mention the 1988 Anthony Hickox film Waxwork, which not only has the “crash course of horror history” aspect down, but also brings in the wax museum setting.

To find the perfect cinematic pairing for “Painted Monsters,” though, I had to look to an unlikely source. Produced by Roger Corman himself–who has more than a little of his DNA in Kirby Marsh III’s grandfather–and directed by Jim Wynorski (Chopping Mall), the 1989 horror spoof Transylvania Twist is my oddball pick to pair with the heart and soul of my collection. Just hear me out.

While Transylvania Twist is, at first glance, just another horror parody, with jokes at the expense of everything from Hellraiser and A Nightmare on Elm Street to Hammer’s Gothic horrors, a closer examination finds some much weirder stuff going on here. Around Fourth Wall-breaking gags, music videos, and faux commercials, the movie makes direct references to Lovecraft through everything from its protagonist Dexter Ward to the ancient, evil tome that he’s trying to collect (The Book of Ulthar) to, ultimately, the apperance of a giant Lovecraftian monster (“The Evil One”), as played by the creature from previous Corman cheapie It Conquered the World. Not only that, but Transylvania Twist takes its title from the same song that provides “Painted Monsters” with its epigraph, while also paying homage to Targets with a character named for Boris Karloff’s Byron Orlok.

From its knowing tone to its “scavenger hunt through the old castle” plot to its references to movie monsters past and (at the time) present, Transylvania Twist is the perfect–albeit unorthodox–movie to close out our countdown, and the best double-feature I can think of for “Painted Monsters.”

Painted Monsters: “Strange Beast”

For the month of October, as part of the Countdown to Halloween, I’ll be revisiting each of the thirteen stories in  Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts and suggesting movies that pair well with them, for your viewing pleasure!

While “The Murders on Morgue Street” was original to this collection, I had already written it before I started putting Painted Monsters together, it just hadn’t been published anywhere. “Strange Beast” is the first of a pair of stories I wrote explicitly to finish out this book. Its title is a reference to the actual definition of the word kaiju, a term that for most of us has long been synonymous with giant monsters.

The most obvious movie to pair with “Strange Beast” would be Pulgasari, the Korean giant monster flick whose real-life making of backstory inspired my tale. But I’ve never actually seen Pulgasari–somehow it seems like watching it could never live up to that behind the scenes drama–so I guess we’ll have to cast our nets further afield. The next most obvious place to look seems to be someplace like Cloverfield. After all, my “notes toward a book about a documentary crew making a movie about the tragic events behind the making of a movie” approach to “Strange Beast” obviously owes a lot to the found footage format that’s become popular in recent years, and there aren’t a lot of found footage kaiju movies. (This is probably a good thing.) But I also don’t much like Cloverfield, so instead I’d be more likely to suggest Troll Hunter, a movie whose monsters are somewhat more modestly-sized, but whose documentary conceit is much more credible. And just a much better movie, all around.

The biggest cinematic influence on “Strange Beast,” though, has nothing to do with found footage and nothing to do with kaiju. It’s an episode of the 1976 Nigel Kneale-scripted British horror anthology series Beasts called “The Dummy.” In it, a suit actor who plays a monster in a series of successful movies has a nervous breakdown in which he begins to identify with the monster that he’s playing. Take that episode, put it in a blender with the strange true events that led to the creation of Pulgasari, and you’ve got the genesis of “Strange Beast.”