Edward M. Erdelac's Blog, page 32

Happy Birthday, Mr. Stoker

Hey look what arrived in the mail today on Bram Stoker’s birthday….proof that he approves of the new book?

Preorder the paperback or get your e-books here – http://journal-store.com/fiction/terovolas/

I’m also willing to let these go, and will ship them to you signed, if you’re willing to go through Paypal. E-mail me at emerdelacATgmailDOTcom for that.

Hasta pronto.

Beyond The Borgo Pass: The Van Helsing Papers

I, like most of the world, always understood Bram Stoker’s Dracula to be a work of fiction. Seminal in the horror genre, surely, but entirely the product of Stoker’s imagination. I stopped believing this in or around the summer of 1997, when, between jobs and trying to make the rent on a two‐bedroom apartment on Carmen Avenue in Uptown Chicago, I answered a classified ad placed by the University of Chicago in The Chicago Reader for a seasonal position.

This wasn’t academic work, but a reorganizational project of the reference stacks at the university’s Regenstein Library. This still makes it sound overly important though. In effect, I and about ten other part‐timers were carrying boxes to and from the basement under the direction of a perennially bored student intern. It was backbreaking work, and tedious, but ultimately not without its reward.

The Joseph Regenstein Library

In the course of the job, in one of the Reg’s two basements, I happened across a dust‐covered box of unopened packets postmarked from Purfleet, dated 1936, and addressed to the head of the archaeology department.

The label on the box had it earmarked for the library’s Ravenwood Collection, but it had somehow been physically separated and omitted from the catalog. It had sat forgotten on the back of a shelf of totally unrelated material for at least half a century.

I have a curious nature when it comes to old things, and a knack for staying out of the way of supervisors, which was easy in the maze of the Reg with only a disinterested intern to answer to. Though I knew it could possibly cost me my job, I managed to pop one of the manila packets open with my apartment key and shimmy the old yellow papers out for a look on my lunch break, a ritual I would repeat without fail innumerable times on that job.

What I read shook me to my core. I say this without exaggeration.

Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, that stalwart vampire hunter I had seen depicted in countless films and comic books, portrayed by everybody from Peter Cushing to Mel Brooks, was real.

It was like finding the logbook of the Pequod written in Ahab’s hand, or reading Joseph of Bethlehem’s name on a Roman census roll from the Augustan Age.

But the figure that emerged while studying these papers (and from fact checking later among the Reg’s microfilm collections and via long years of independent research), was no two dimensional crossbow wielding, fanatical monster hunter, but a substantial man of letters, a serious academic, a contemporary and associate of Flinders Petrie, T. E. Lawrence, Dr. Martin Hesselius, Madame Blavatsky, Max Muller, and a host of other scholars I (as a woefully undereducated liberal arts student) would only come to know later as I studied the man himself. He pitted his learning against the supernatural not by choice, but by chance,

though his name has become inseparable from that pseudo‐scientific offshoot, that embarrassing cousin of natural science now thought of as ‘paranormal investigation.’

Not only was Van Helsing real, but so was Dr. John Seward, Jonathan and Mina Harker, Arthur Holmwood, and Quincey P. Morris (whose brother’s grave I once visited at the old Fairview Cemetery during a research trip to Bastrop, and whose Bowie knife, the very same one he sank into Count Dracula’s heart, was anonymously donated to, and is still innocuously displayed at, the Autry Museum here in Los Angeles).

It’s hard to prove this, of course, outside of the papers, as most of the major participants in the Dracula affair faded into intentional obscurity, with the exception of Quincey Morris (who died) and Van Helsing himself, whose total eradication from academic record is almost Egyptian in its totality.

But he did live. One of my prized possessions is a 1907 Dutch edition of Arminius Vembrey’s Western Cultures in Eastern Lands, one of Van Helsing’s rare translations, which I unfortunately can’t even read.

If I can confirm the existence of Van Helsing with a little research, then what about the things Van Helsing claimed to have encountered in his travels? Vampires. Werewolves. Ghosts. There are things Van Helsing says he tangled with which would make cryptozoologists and theologians alike faint dead away.

Now you see why I say I was shaken up.

But, you might say, the man spent time in a lunatic asylum. Who’s to say he didn’t write all his memoirs as some kind of therapy while convalescing?

Well, mainly because of the corroborative writings by outside parties. The papers collected with Van Helsing’s journal entries (newspaper clippings, personal diaries, correspondences), some provided by the professor, some by Seward, and some gleaned from my own personal research into primary source documents, bear him out every time. It’s unlikely that Van Helsing’s writings are entirely fictional when they are substantiated by so many people from so many diverse backgrounds and stations.

For me, the world became an exponentially bigger place in 1997, squinting in the dim light at old typeface with the musty smell of antiquity in my nostrils.

I knew I had to continue Dr. Seward’s work, see his ambition fulfilled, and tell the world about Van Helsing. As the forward to this book points out, Abraham Van Helsing’s longtime friend and colleague Seward first intended the initial volume of the late professor’s writing to see the light of day in 1935, seventy seven years ago.

For whatever reason (Seward suggests active resistance by the academic community, though by this time he was himself embittered toward the establishment), he failed to secure a publisher, possibly in the eleventh hour.

Seward continued to pursue the book’s publication for the next five years, soliciting literary agents on both sides of the pond and mailing facsimiles to many of Van Helsing’s former academic associates in the hopes of gaining professional support.

Battersea Park Railway Crash 1937

A succession of personal tragedies hindered his efforts, however. His wife of thirty‐five years was sadly killed in the Battersea Park railway crash of 1937. Then, in 1938, the asylum in Purfleet he had co-founded and administered for close to fifty years closed its

doors, forcing him into a retirement he had long resisted.

You have to admire the dedication of Dr. Seward, who from his writings and personal correspondences seemed to really feel he owed Van Helsing a debt. Seward was one of the parties who willingly provided personal records (in his case, phonographic recordings, mostly pertaining to his patient, R.M. Renfield) to Bram Stoker, which Stoker then used in the publication of his ‘novel’ Dracula in 1897.

Excerpts from Van Helsing’s personal journal were included in that book (translated from Dutch, as are the ones that appear in these papers, by Seward), but among the descendants of Lord Godalming, there is still some question as to whether these pages were obtained with the professor’s consent, or at least with his full understanding that they would be made public. Holmwood himself believed the account compiled by Stoker under the direction of the Harkers was solely intended for the edification of their young son Quincey.

 The Holmwood family, in point of fact, assert that the fragments from Van Helsing’s journal of the 1890 period are believed by them to have been copied by Seward himself during the professor’s stay at Purfleet Asylum, or else by one of Seward’s staff. The reason for this, the Holmwoods claim, was monetary. It is known that the asylum was in dire straits financially at the outset, and that it experienced a substantial economic turnaround in 1898, a year after the publication of Dracula.

As Seward wrote, Van Helsing had been ostracized by the academic world for appearing in Dracula. Even some colleagues who had previously shared in his adventures turned their backs on him publicly when their own reputations were endangered.

Everyone suffered a small degree of embarrassment at the hands of Stoker, of course. Lord Godalming was branded an eccentric, which was sort of inconsequential to an English lord. The Harkers were a private people, not well known in the first place. Being that publication was mainly their idea, and they shared in Stoker’s profits and raised their son comfortably on residuals (under a new surname, legally petitioned for by Jonathan), it was little to them. Dr. Seward, by his own admission, deflected any criticism from his peers by pointing out the fact that Dracula was labeled as fiction, and claimed in private circles at the time to have nominally participated in it as a favor to Stoker, or as a lark. He wasn’t known much outside the psychiatric community, and not well regarded outside of London, at that.

But Abraham Van Helsing, when confronted by his detractors, out of personal honor or perhaps naivety, denied nothing (note these events will be better understood and brought to light in a subsequent collection).

And that wasn’t the end of his exploits, nor even, as I found, the beginning.

Van Helsing, by his own assertion (records are scant), was born in 1834 in Natal, South Africa to Voortrekker Arjen Van Helsing and his German wife, Konstanze Gottschalk. He died in Holysloot, North Holland in 1934 (This can be confirmed. I’ve seen his death certificate.)

In between that time he was a seminarian, a husband and father, a Boer farmer, a scientist, a field scout and interpreter, a medical doctor, a philosopher, an amateur archaeologist, a mystic, a respected lecturer, instructor, and a world traveler.

It took me nearly thirteen years of fact checking and emailing, meeting and compiling (to say nothing of legal wrangling over the authenticity and ownership of the papers themselves) to release the first installment of the Van Helsing papers in accordance with the late professor’s initial wishes.

In the end I was reluctant to do so. My own career after all, has been in novels, and in doing this I risk consigning the professor’s true history to the realm of speculative fiction, just as Bram Stoker did (albeit unwittingly – Stoker believed the papers he transcribed and polished to be works of amateur fiction).

Yet I can only humbly submit the first collection of these documents and ask that the reader overlook the presenter and see the truth within. We are obliged to put out the stories that come to us.

Dr. John Seward’s own efforts at vindicating his friend were cut short on September 7, 1940, when the German Luftwaffe initiated operation Loge and he was killed in the first strike of the London Blitz.

It is my hope that I, in accidentally uncovering these documents and laboring to continue Seward’s work, have been passed his torch, and that in publishing them, I have at last done right by both men.

Terovolas, culled from The Van Helsing Papers (1891) will be out from JournalStone Publishing November 16th. You can get the ebook version right now. An excerpt can be read here.

The book can be purchased on Amazon or directly from the publisher here.

http://journal-store.com/fiction/terovolas/

A FINAL NOTE: I’d like to apologize to readers, but due to an unfortunate mishap on my part, paperback editions of Terovolas will be shipped without a footnote which explains a recurring reference Van Helsing makes to Lucy Westenra’s having wed Arthur Holmwood a day before her death. This in itself, is not a mistake. Yet to be published accounts among Van Helsing’s papers do in fact bear this out, though the event was deliberately excised from Bram Stoker’s novel, for reasons which will become clear when the relevant papers see the light of day.  The blame lies solely with myself, a fiction writer’s first foray into non-fiction.

Mea culpa,

EME

Last Danse: The Exclusive in Danse Macabre

Now available from EDGE Publishing is Danse Macabre: Close Encounters With The Reaper, featuring stores from Brian Lumley, Lisa Morton, William Meikle, Tom Piccirilli, Gabriel Boutros, Brad Carson, Suzanne Church, Dan Devine, Lorne Dixon, Tom Dullemond, Opal Edgar, Ian M. Emberson, Sabrina Furminger, Stanley S. Hampton, Sr., Brian Hodge, Nancy Holder & Erin Underwood, J. Y. T. Kennedy, Nancy Kilpatrick, Tanith Lee, Morgan Dempsey, Timothy Reynolds, Angela Roberts, Lawrence Salani, Lucy Taylor, Bev Vincent, Bill Zaget and yours truly.

The brainchild of editor Nancy Kilpatrick, Danse Macabre is inspired by the macabre art of 14th century plague-wracked Europe, those amazing woodcuts, sculptures, and paintings of the grinning, skeletal Grim Reaper whirling hapless mortals of every class and creed in prancing, strangely joyous dance of Death.  The central theme of the anthology is the various ways in which mortal men and women might encounter Death as a personification.

My own entry, The Exclusive, is set in the 1880′s. A crusading newspaper editor finds himself eating his own words when a group of violent gunmen hired by a corrupt rancher smash his office, drag him out of town, lash him to his printing press and toss him in the river. When a strange, naked man apparently saves him from a watery grave, realization soon dawns, and he finds himself with a unique opportunity for a one on one interview with the most infamous killer the world has ever known.

For my own depiction of Death, I chose to elaborate on the Jewish fable of Lilith the first woman portrayed in The Alphabet of Ben Sirach, and her apocryphal love affair with the angel Samael, with whom she conceived the first demons and who in some accounts, became the Angel of Death.

Readers of my Merkabah Rider series will recognize this take on the story of Lilith and Samael’s doomed love affair – it plays an important role in those books. I saw this as an opportunity to expand a little on their story through the eyes of a character not tied up in the epic cosmic events of Merkabah Rider.

Here’s a short excerpt – - -

“I remember the last time I saw her, before they sealed me in this prison. She was clothed in animal skins. I had never seen such a thing. She was a fierce, golden spirit twice-wrapped in death. So willful. She would have stared God in the face if that act wouldn’t have burned her to nothingness. But she didn’t even look at Michael as he passed sentence. She looked at me. And there were tears running from her eyes. The blood of the human soul.”

They were quiet for a long time, Death and Twiggs. Death’s thoughts were inscrutable, but Twiggs’ were of Junia and the last time he’d seen her. It was the last time he would ever see her.

“For the first thousand years,” Sam said, “I punished you mortals. I tore your souls from this earth and shook you like babes wakened in the night by enemy soldiers. I flung you into hell wailing. I laughed to see you scream. I concocted new perversities to inflict upon every soul I was called to claim, and each one I think plummeted into hell a little less sane than the last. I think I was insane myself. I have danced with the dying, swung them around and around to music only I could hear only to cast them into the inferno on the last go ’round. I emptied my heart in hatred of you until I became a great scar. Then my sadism bored me, and I spoke little at all. All the crimes I committed were useless. No soul came to me dreading what I had done before. Each feared only the change I represented. Once I sat silently on the soul of a man for eight years, just to watch him gibber beneath me like an animal.”

“Well,” said Twiggs, “I’m glad you’re past that period, anyway.”

—-

Danse Macabre features some amazing stories, and I’m not just saying that because I’m in it. Lisa Morton’s The Secret Engravings (about the plague artist Hans Holbein The Younger’s strange patron), Brian Hodge’s For I Must Be About My Father’s Work (a hitman who upon hearing a victim’s desperate prayers, decides to wait along with him to see if God intervenes), La Senora Blanca (an old Mexican woman’s confrontation with the goddess of criminals, Santa Muerte) by Lucy Taylor were particular standouts for me. I can’t recommend them enough.

You can pick up Danse Macabre here from the publisher  http://www.edgewebsite.com/books/dansemacabre/dansemacabre.html

Or on Amazon.

Hasta pronto!

 

Danse Macabre: Close Encounters With The Reaper

Bitten By Books is hosting a multi-author release party for EDGE Publishing’s Danse Macabre: Close Encounters With The Reaper anthology from editor Nancy Kilpatrick and featuring my story The Exclusive.  I’ll be there off and on fielding questions, so stop by. You can also enter for a chance to win a $50 Amazon gift card.

http://www.bittenbybooks.com/57920/editor-nancy-kilpatrick-multi-author-book-release-party-and-50-00-amazon-gift-card-contest-live-here/#comment-539024

Contributors – Brian Lumley, William Meikle, Lisa Morton, Tom Piccirilli, Gabriel Boutros, Brad Carson, Suzanne Church, Dan Devine, Lorne Dixon, Tom Dullemond, Opal Edgar, Ian M. Emberson, Sabrina Furminger, Stanley S. Hampton, Sr., Brian Hodge, Nancy Holder & Erin Underwood, J. Y. T. Kennedy, Tanith Lee,  Morgan Dempsey, Timothy Reynolds, Angela Roberts, Lawrence Salani, Lucy Taylor, Bev Vincent, and Bill Zaget.

From the publisher -

“People die from old age, illness, accident, violence, despair. They can die before they are born. The happy and the sad, the sane and insane, the rich and the poor, the law abiding and the criminal, the genius and the fool, the saint and the sinner. Some face death consciously, others die in their sleep. But we all die and Danse Macabre is a kind of universal melting pot for death. My goal is to create an anthology that is a literary version of the Danse Macabre artwork, showing the same range of humanity in a variety of situations and encounters with death.” — Nancy Kilpatrick

This anthology is the most unusual and original collection of stories you’ll ever read! It is a literary version of Danse Macabre “Plague art”. Twenty-six literary reflections that embody those themed, classical artworks devoted to the spectrum of humanity’s intriguing interactions with the Angel of Death.

My own story, The Exclusive, is about a crusading frontier newspaper editor who finds himself with a unique opportunity to interview the most accomplished killer the world has ever known, Samael, the Angel of Death. The story ties directly into Merkabah Rider, so for fans of the series, it ought to be worth checking out.

-Hope to see you there,

Hasta pronto.

Bell Book And Candle: Famous Monster Hunters Of Film (and Book) Land

Over at the HWA’s Halloween Blog, I’ve posted a list of scholarly monster hunters. Did I miss anybody? Did your favorite make the list? Check it out at http://www.horror.org/blog/?p=2609

We’re not talking Buffy and Blade, more Rupert and Van Helsing (the real one, not ‘Gabriel’).

You can also read an excerpt from my forthcoming novel Terovolas and enter to win a paperback copy.

Jeff On Jason: The Top Ten Friday The 13th Movies

Hey all, turning the blog over today to my friend and sometime collaborator Jeff Carter (his story of submersible terror, The Wager, appeared beside my own Tell Tom Tildrum in Tales From The Bell Club, and we’re working on an RPG together for Heroic Journey Publishing), whose blog, The Monster Compendium, can be found on my sidebar. Check it out – it’s a trove of obscure stuff from around the world, general geekery, and of course, all things Carterian.

Jeff, like me, is a horror movie fan, and he hosts our annual Black-O-Ween celebration, in which we view one or two African American themed horror movies from the golden age of blaxploitation (past showings include Blacula, Blackenstein, Sugar Hill, JD’s Revenge, The Thing With Two Heads, and most recently, Abby and The Beast Must Die).

For the past couple weeks he’s been viewing the Friday The 13th film series, which holds a dear place in my heart as the novelization of Part VI: Jason Lives by Simon Hawke is one of the first books I ever read that made me want to write.

As an end result, he’s put them in order of enjoyment.

Happy Friday the 12th.

————–

Howdy!

Ed’s posted a lot of movie reviews here, as well as his  annual Halloween list of must-see horror.  I thought I’d toss my hockey  mask into the ring with a list of the top ten Friday the 13th movies.

Not many movies get eleven and a half installments and a remake.  Few  characters can take that kind of punishment, but Friday the 13th has  Jason Voorhees, an unstoppable killing machine with an endless hatred of teenaged hijinks.  Having a lead character that wears a mask and  disposable casts of unknowns helps too.

So let’s take a look at the first ten, leaving out Freddy VS. Jason and the 2009 remake.

I reached these rankings through a complicated algorithm that tabulated  kills, scares, the ratio of serious to goofy, amount of Jason or other  core elements, cameos, and continuity.  And no, I will not show my work.

So here they are, from worst to best:

10) Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning

This movie has a lot of detractors, but the algorithm nearly spat this out for one fatal flaw:  Jason is not in the movie!

Just a guy

9) Friday the 13th Part 7: New Blood

This was a powerfully close tie for last place.  The story: A psychic  girl  accidentally uses one of her 9 million powers to resurrect Jason from the bottom of Camp Crystal Lake.  Most of the kills occur off screen, a  strange choice for a slasher flick.  In the movie’s defense, the MPAA  apparently cut it to ribbons before its theatrical release and then slashed it even more viciously for home video.  That being said, the end result is boring and inane.

8) Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan

This movie was almost hallucinatory with its surreal, incoherent jumbled plot. Psychic visions, drug addled gangs of rapists, nuclear waste.  The Crystal Lake High graduating class take a cruise ship to New  York…from Crystal Lake? Via Canada?  I don’t understand the geography, but distances clearly don’t matter in this film.  Jason teleports,  TELEPORTS, more than once.

Why take public transportation when you can teleport?

Perhaps this can all be explained by a certain shift: Marijuana has been  replaced with cocaine as the drug of choice.  Don’t miss the cameo by a young Kelly Hu, who is tempted to snort up with the line “the night  time is the right time”.

7) Jason X

Many would say that this half sci-fi/half farce cyborg flick is the worst of the series, but  clearly the rankings say otherwise.  Yes, the movie was goofy and cheesy and cheap, but unless you were kidnapped and brought to a sneak  preview, you must have known all that going in.

The movie was set  in the distant future to avoid any continuity conflict with Freddy VS.  Jason, which was being developed at the time.  So let’s talk about  continuity – in my algorithm, continuity not only addresses the  preservation of the established timeline, facts, and use of core  elements, but also the broader scope of the Friday the 13th events and  their impact on the wider world.

In this future world Jason is still infamous.  Scientists and soldiers both want his body for his  amazing regenerative properties and black market collectors will pay top dollar for such a gruesome piece of history.

The movie is campy  and self aware, and I really liked it.  I must confess that I had  thought it would be higher in the rankings than the extremely silly self parody of Part 6, but the algorithm does not lie.

Look for the cameo by Director David Cronenberg and a fun performance from genre veteran Peter Mensah.

The highlight is a clever gambit by the space students to distract Jason: a holodeck simulation of Camp Crystal Lake, complete with vapid,  indestructible teenagers.

Jason is going to work out some issues.

6)  Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives

This was a relaunch after the supposed ‘Final Chapter’ Part 4 and the  failure of Part 5.  This was also a parody, an inevitable stage in the  cycle of any genre.

The ‘kid who would be Jason’, Tommy Jarvis  from Pt. 4, digs up Jason’s grave to destroy his remains.  Jason is brought back to life by  lightning.

Jason has now transformed from tough, super strong mutant to indestructible  super zombie.  A magic ritual of sorts is also used to ‘bind’ and trap  Jason at the end, hinting at the mystical nature of Jason’s past.

I didn’t care for this one.  The forced attempts at humor undercut any  sense of horror.  I don’t need a movie to parody itself, I can mock it  just fine, thank you very much.

There is a nice nod to another long running series in the intro that I rather liked, however.

“The name’s Voorhees. Jason, Voorhees.”

5) Friday the 13th Part 4: The Final Chapter

Now we’re talking.  This movie had a lot of meat for the algorithm to chew  on: Cameos (Crispin Glover! Corey Haim!), Core elements (fighting Jason  with psychology!) and tons of kills and scares.  In the continuity  department, we see Pamela Voorhees’ tombstone and the character Rob, who is seeking revenge for his sister who got killed in Part 2.

“I’m YOU, Jason. And you are cool, so I popped my collar.”

4) Friday the 13th Part 9: Jason Goes To Hell

I know people hate this movie like O.G. Star Wars fans hate Return of the Jedi for its ewok shenanigans.  Fortunately, the algorithm is beyond  your petty emotions.  It’s all in the data.  Consider the cast: Erin  Gray (Buck Rogers!) as Mrs. Kimble nee Voorhees, Steven Williams (21  Jump Street! X-Files!) as the world’s most ruthless serial killer hunter and John D. Le May, who stars in this movie AND the Friday the 13th TV  series!

This movie has world building in spades.  It features the  Necronomicon Ex Mortis, the ACTUAL book of the dead from the Evil Dead  movies!  Jason is such a well-known terror that the FBI forms a special  task force to lure him out and destroy him with overwhelming firepower.

When they succeed (or did they?) the entire country watches TV news reports  about the incident with relief.  One local business celebrates with a  “Jason is Dead” sale and special hockey mask shaped burgers.

I could totally go for a Jason burger right now

This movie suffers from a lack of Jason – after the FBI blows up his body,  the evil energies that inhabit his body begin to leap from body to body, seeking a body with the cursed Voorhees bloodline that can either  resurrect or destroy him.  This is another stage in Jason’s life cycle,  from deformed child to hulking freak to super zombie to this, the dark  scion of a strange occult ritual.  Fortunately, Jason is in the  beginning and end of this movie, and does a lot of crazy killing in  between.

The final cameo opened the movie up, in a big way that  blew the minds of horror fans everywhere:  after Jason is destroyed by  his ancestor with a magic sword/knife/demon broadsword, Freddy Krueger’s glove bursts up from Hell to snatch the iconic hockey mask.

MIND…BLOWN.

3) Friday the 13th Part 2

Taking the bronze medal is part 2, a strong sequel to the original with an  almost perfect score on continuity and core elements.  Jason steps out  of the lake and onto the center stage, killing teenagers and preserving  his mother’s rotting head and grody sweater on an altar.

Some people put their mother on a pedestal. Some put them on an altar.

A savvy co-ed dons the crusty sweater at the end to mess with Jason’s  mind.  The only core elements missing are the machete and hockey mask – at this point Jason is rocking a sack with an eye hole in it.

The bag-heads soon switched to fat suits, but it was not until they adopted gangsta personas and renamed the group CB4 that they reached stardom.

This movie also has the original harbinger, crazy Ralph.  This colorful  local warned the teenagers in the first movie to stay away from Camp  Crystal Lake.  They didn’t listen, but crazy Ralph was so iconic that he became part of the slasher genre formula.

“It’s got a DEATH CURRRRSE!!!…and many scenic bike paths.”

2) Friday the 13th 3D

Ah, back when all movies with a part 3 were in 3D.  It was a simpler time.

This movie exploited the full potential of the third dimension more fully  than James Cameron’s AVATAR.  Seriously, if it could swing, float, jump, fly or pop out at the audience, it was comin’ atcha.  Not just spear  guns and pitchforks, either.  Yo-yos, popcorn, snakes, EVERYTHING.

Comin’ Atcha!

The tone was a little more silly, but only to pump up the cheap thrills.   There was plenty of scares and violent, creative death to go around.   Jason finally gets his hockey mask here, which is why part 3D gets the  silver medal.  The only thing missing is Jason’s mother…

1) Friday the 13th

The origin story of the most gifted, prolific and hardest working slasher  in history.  We learn who Jason was, meet his devoted mother, and learn  our way around Camp Crystal Lake.

Jason’s mother, Pamela Voorhees, is easily one of the most original and compelling characters of any  slasher film.  That wild eyed old lady in the christmas sweater with the blade?  She’s fueled by grief, maternal love and righteous fury.

“Kee Kee Kee Kee…Kah Kah Kah Kah can only truly be whispered through dentures.”

JAWS stopped night swimming. This stopped lake swimming.

This movie ends with the only image from the series as iconic as the hockey  mask: the slimy body of a freakish child erupting from depths of a  watery grave.

——

Jeff C. Carter’s most recent work in print appears in AVENIR ECLECTIA Volume 1, now available in paperback and Kindle from Amazon.  Get more Halloween stuff at his blog Compendium of Monsters and say hey on Facebookand Goodreads.

DT Moviehouse Review: Back To The Future Part II

Time once more for my blog feature, DT Moviehouse Reviews, in which I make my way alphabetically through my 200+ DVD/Blu-Ray collection (you can see the list right here) and decide if each one was worth the money. Today I take a look at Back To The Future Part II.

(1989) Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Screenplay by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale

Tagline: Getting back was only the beginning.

What it’s about:

Immediately following the events of Back To the Future, Doc Brown urges Marty and Jennifer (Elizabeth Shue, replacing Claudia Wells) to head to 2015 in the DeLorean to prevent their impressionable son from committing a crime at the behest of a gang of juvenile delinquents that will ruin his life. While in the Hill Valley of the future, Marty buys a Sports Almanac containing a comprehensive list of all the sports contests dating from 1955-2000, but is talked out of using it to make a fortune by Doc, who cites the dangers of altering the space-time continuum. Biff, now an old man, has no such compunctions. After recovering the discarded almanac (and being aware of the time machine having seen it depart in 1985) Biff jumps into the DeLorean and gives the book to his past 1955 self, warning him about Doc and Marty. 1955 Biff proceeds to make a fortune sports gambling and in the process alters HillValley into a dystopian Vegas-style neon-lit cesspool. When Marty and Doc return to this altered 1985 and realize what’s happened, they set out to put things back the way they were.

Why I bought it:

To be fair, I didn’t buy this. A friend got the Back To The Future Trilogy on Blu-Ray and was good enough to let me have his old DVD boxed set (thanks, Ryan!).

Would I have bought Back To The Future II?

As a lover of the series and a completist, probably, yeah, but it’s easily my least favorite of the series.

There are some cast changes, first off. Elizabeth Shue replaces Claudia Wells who played Jennifer, necessitating a total reshoot of the ending of the previous movie (which admirably, is hardly noticeable).

Where we’re going…we don’t need Claudia Wells.

Crispin Glover sadly doesn’t return as George McFly, and this is the biggest letdown of BTTF Part II for me. There are a lot of legal complications that stemmed from the replacement of his character (by Jeffrey Wiessman) and use of his likeness that I won’t get into here.

What bothers me most about BTTF Part II is its somewhat dated version of the future. I usually don’t have a problem with retro-futurism in older movies (like fighting on the outside of the rocket ships in Flash Gordon, etc), but there is a brand of it that hinders the enjoyment of some movies (like say, Logan’s Run), and for me, the pastel colors and general spazziness of BTTF Part II’s 2015 kind’ve turn me off. I don’t like the weird characterization of Griff Tannon (Biff’s grandson – is he partly cybernetic or just constantly ‘tranked’) and his gang, and the clunky pixelated three dimensional Bruce the shark doesn’t do it for me. Also, after future Marty is cajoled (it is established that Marty has a problem backing down when called chicken) into trying to scam his own company by his coworker Needles (Flea), his Japanese boss fires him with a series of faxes. It’s a kind of futurism that just barely tweaks what’s already ‘cool’ and winds up making everything look a bit silly.

There are some neat things, to be sure. The DeLorean flies, as promised. There’s the self-drying self-fitting coat, the hoverboards (of course), and the fact that the Cubs win the world series (imagine if they really did that in 2015? I think that were I manager of the team I would insist the boys hold off and make it happen in a couple years). Café 80’s is a neat little touch with its Max Headroom-esque Michael Jackson, Reagan and Khadaffi robot servers. I think it’s a neat nod to the premise of Part I, which was an 80′s movie capitalizing on the 1980′s love of and nostalgia for the 50′s (look at all the 50′s inspired movies and music that were out at that time – The Stray Cats, Diner, all the SE Hinton adaptations – admittedly the 60′s, but everybody thought they were in the 50′s).

Frodo At Cafe 80′s

One of the two kids playing the shootout arcade game in the corner is 8 year old Elijah Wood.

Part II is kind’ve an essential bridge between part I and part III. It was filmed in tandem with Part III, which I remember was a big deal in the news at the time. In that regard, it feels very expositional. We learn about Buford ‘Mad Dog’ Tannon, who will be the villain in III, we get Biff watching the Fistful of Dollars scene that foreshadows Marty and Mad Dog’s confrontation, and we find out Doc has a love for the old west (which explains why when the Libyans attack him in the Twin Pines parking lot in 1985, he pulls a Colt Peacemaker out of a case to fend them off).

But in the meantime, we have to deal with a lot of wibbley wobbley timey wimey stuff which, while cool, is also kind’ve unpleasant. Rich Biff murders George McFly to get at Lorraine, whom he then apparently surgically alters to his lecherous liking. Hill Valley is overrun with biker gangs and prostitutes, and is implied to be under martial law. Strickland’s house is peppered with gunfire, and he runs down the street with a shotgun yelling ‘Eat lead, slackers!’ (OK that’s not so bad, but not particularly funny either). Marty sneaks into his old house and surprises an irate black family (which is a little unseemly – because a black family now inhabits the McFly home, are we to automatically assume things are bad in this timeline?). It just isn’t very much fun, dangit.

But there is some fun in Part II. When Marty and Doc revisit 1955 we’re treated to most of the memorable end scenes of the first movie replayed from different angles, as Marty and Doc try to get the Sports Almanac back from Biff while avoiding running into their past selves. Cool to see Billy Zane return as one of Biff’s henchmen as well.  I particularly liked where 50′s Doc unknowingly has a brief conversation with his future self on the street while he’s setting up the ‘weather experiment’ that will send Marty back to 1985.

Ultimately, it’s cool to see (almost) everybody back in their roles, I just feel like there is some indefinable something missing from BTTF Part II. It’s just not as fun as the first one. I will say, Tom Wilson does a great job playing three different versions of Biff, the earlier 50′s buffoon, an older version of his bootlicking, slimy 80′s self, and the wild, excessive bad man Biff of the alternate 1985 – Biff at his absolute unchecked worst. With the theme being the dire consequences of selfish desire and reckless time travel, in a way this really is Biff’s movie.

This review is gonna feel a bit slight I guess, but I don’t really like to dwell on things I don’t particularly care for.

Best bit of dialogue:

I’m gonna say the best bit of dialogue is when Old Biff travels back to 1955 and gives his younger self the Alamanc. Young Biff repeats his weird metaphor/blow off from the first movie, “Why don’t you make a like a tree and get outta here?”

To which Old Biff thunders, “It’s LEAF, you idiot! Make like a tree and LEAF. You sound like a damn fool when you say it wrong!”

It’s no ‘Play it again, Sam (yes, I realize that’s wrong),’ no ‘I am your father,’ but it cleared up that joke for me as a kid, because I didn’t even get what he was trying to say the first time around.

Best scene:

It’s not dramatic, it’s not touching, it’s not exciting, but it never fails to crack me up, and has become an in-joke with some of my friends.

When Marty watches George punch out Biff as he did in the first movie, he waits till Lorraine and George depart for the dance, then pushes through the crowd of rubberneckers to get to Biff. He then kneels down and snags what he thinks is the Alamanc from Biff’s back pocket, then runs off into the night.

There is a gawky looking guy in a tux who declares “Hey! Did he just take his wallet?!”

A few moments later Biff wakes up and roars, “Where is he?”

“Who?” asks the gawky kid.

“Calvin Klein!”

“Who?”

“The guy with the hat! Where is he?”

“Oh he went that way.”

As Biff runs off the kid yells after him, “I think he took your wallet!”

He then turns to an unseen bystander off camera and nods, saying,

“I think he took his wallet.”

I don’t know why this makes me laugh, but it does.

NEXT IN THE QUEUE:  The Back To The Future Part III

My Halloween Movie Repertoire Walks Among Us!

Well the world’s in it’s sear and yellow leaf, the pumpkins are smiling, and tooth decay is on the rise! Must be Halloween, kiddies!

Some say print is dead, but this is the time when the dead walk. Shambling off the shelves come tentacular extraterrestrial monstrosities by HP Lovecraft. A little further from the north are slews of nameless unutterable nightmares courtesy of Stephen King. Maybe Clive Barker’s got his hooks in you. Maybe you’re a Twilight fan (and if you are, my condolences at the untimely passing of your taste – haha). Can I recommend some Richard Matheson, or some old fashioned terror tales by Poe or my personal favorite, Ambrose Bierce?

Yours truly has a couple scary books out. I’m the only ‘Erdelac’ on Amazon right now, so go and take a look.

But enough with the shameless plugging.

If you don’t have the time or inclination to curl up with a book (or have a book curl up with you), every year I update my holiday movie viewing lists, and it’s time once again to resurrect the old Halloween Repertoire, new and improved for 2012.

So what am I watching this year?

Every year my buddy and fellow author Jeff Carter hosts an evening of horror themed blaxploitation movies. We kicked off the inaugural year with the classic Blacula, and have moved through it’s sequel, Scream Blacula Scream, Blackenstein, Sugar Hill, The Thing With Two Heads, Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde, and JD’s Revenge.

Up this year its the ‘black Exorcist’ classic Abby –

and the Peter Cushing werewolf whodunnit The Beast Must Die -

We may also screen the classic Kolchak episode ‘The Zombie’ with Antonio ‘Huggy Bear’ Fargas, which features a voodoo queen resurrecting her murdered son to kill a bunch of numbers racket mobsters.

On with the list -

My favorite ghost stories – The Haunting (original), The Others, The Sixth Sense, Kwaidan, Poltergeist 1 and 2, The Shining, Stir Of Echoes, The Changeling, The Crow, The Screaming Skull, The Orphanage, The Entity, Dark Night Of The Scarecrow, The Ring, The Woman In Black.

Bubba din’t do it!

Devils/demons and diabolical witches can be found in – Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, The Exorcist III, The Sentinel, Angel Heart, Night Of The Demon, Inferno, The Devil Rides Out, Hellraiser, Black Sabbath, The Craft, Burn Witch Burn, The Believers, Cast A Deadly Spell, The Omen 1 and 2, Suspiria, The Skeleton Key, Masque Of The Red Death, Pumpkinhead, The Devil, Halloween 3: Season Of The Witch, The Evil Dead, Constantine, The Pit And The Pendulum, The Gate, Child’s Play.

Vampires get your blood racing?

Let me suggest – Near Dark, The Lost Boys, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Todd Browning’s Dracula, The Hunger, Blacula (yes Blacula – it’s awesome), Kolchak The Night Stalker, Vampire’s Kiss, The Brides Of Dracula.

If the homicidally deranged are your bag, you can’t top – The Original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Bad Seed, Audition (Odishon), Psycho (original), Misery, Deep Red, Halloween 1 and 2 (I also liked the remake of 1), Friday The 13th Part III, Silent Rage, Pin, Magic, Frailty, Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, House Of Wax (original), Se7en, Peeping Tom, Silence Of The Lambs, Deep Red.

Werewolves are a sadly under-represented pack of beasties. I like – Wolf, The Wolfman (both Lon Chaney Jr and the remake), Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman, An American Werewolf In London, Ginger Snaps, The Curse Of The Werewolf, I Was A Teenage Werewolf, Silver Bullet, Dog Soldiers and for a switch, Wolfen.

If you like your yucks with yuks, these horror/comedies are a good bet – Shaun Of The Dead, Zombieland, Fright Night Parts 1 and 2, Student Bodies, Saturday The 14th, Dead Alive, Tremors, Gremlins, Ghostbusters, Cabin In The Woods, Love At First Bite, Evil Dead 2, The Ghost And Mr. Chicken.

Zombies anyone? I likes ‘em slow, bitey, and numerous. – Dawn Of The Dead (original), Night Of The Living Dead, Land Of The Dead, Survival Of The Dead, Zombie, White Zombie, The Serpent And The Rainbow, Sugar Hill, The Dead.

If you like your terror from beyond the stars – Village Of The Damned (original), Body Snatchers, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (70′s), Alien, Aliens, Phantasm, Predator, Event Horizon, The Thing, The Call Of Cthulhu, Horror Express, Lifeforce, Attack The Block.

If, like Chunk, you hate nature, these will get your fur up – The Killer Shrews, Alligator, Pirahna, Night Of The Lepus, Arachnophobia, Kingdom of the Spiders, Food Of The Gods.

Halloween For The Kids – It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!, Monster House, Hotel Transylvania, The Halloween Tree, Monster Squad, Mad Monster Party, The Garfield Halloween Special, Disney’s Ichabod And Mr. Toad, Eloise’s Rawther Unusual Halloween, any of the recent Scooby Doo Movies.

Some gems that just don’t fit anywhere else – Creature From The Black Lagoon, Lair Of The White Worm, Trick R Treat, Christine, Pan’s Labrynth, Creepshow, Nightbreed, Fiend Without A Face, The Fly (both the original and the remake), The Fly II, Carrie, The Other, Trilogy Of Terror, Monkey Shines, Todd Browning’s Freaks, The Descent, The Mummy (Original), Manster, The Manitou, 28 Weeks Later, Grimm Prairie Tales, Ravenous.

In the words of my biggest junior high crush, “Unpleasent Dreams!”

Star Wars: Fists Of Ion Returns!

As part of the release of Star Wars: The Essential Reader’s Companion, Star Wars Books has reposted some of the long out of sight Hyperspace stories from Star Wars.com to suvudu, including my own Fists Of Ion, which is the quintessential story about boxing (known as shockboxing) in A Galaxy Far Far Away.

Set in the New Republic era (not long after Return Of The Jedi), Fists Of Ion is about how an up and coming shockboxer took down the oppressive Imperial-backed criminal government on a backwater industrial world with one punch.

You can read it abso-smurfly free here -

http://star-wars.suvudu.com/2012/10/star-wars-shorts-fists-of-ion.html

Art by Cat Staggs, logo mockup by my buddy Greg Mitchell

And for my fellow hardcore Star Wars fans, after you’ve read the story, here are the little easter eggs, which I originally posted on my now defunct Star Wars blog (taking a page from author Abel Pena).

Lobar’s race, the Calians of Shiva IV, their former enemies the T’syriel, their battle madness, and references to the destruction of K’avor (Lobar’s hometown, bombed out by Imperial General Bentilais san Sk’ar) originally appeared in Marvel Comics Star Wars issues 53-54.

The Rebel Alliance: Where everybody knows your name.

Major Bren (“Cliff from Cheers”) Derlin’s background details all come from West End Games’ The Star Wars Movie Trilogy Sourcebook, his entry in Alliance Intelligence Reports, and The Last Command Sourcebook.  I took the liberty of making his mission to Reuss VIII the one that earned him his promotion to Colonel. My big regret is not finding a way to work in the line “Who are three people who’ve never been in my kitchen?” Just couldn’t fit it in, though…

The plucky Alderaanian slicer Corporal Beezer is from the old Star Wars Customizable Card Game, and appears in the Endor Limited set where she’s described as part of Derlin’s commando strike force. Her first name, Dransa, is the author’s invention (my wife’s name tuckerized). The promotion to sergeant seemed like a logical progression after her work on Endor.

Torel Vorne

Torel Vorne, Deral Reiko, the Rust Rats, Moff Ammar, and Reussi VIII (as well as some of the details of Vorne’s organ donation trade and the Reuss Corporation’s hold on the populous) come from my favorite SWRPG book, West End Games’ Star Wars Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments From The Rim.Stitchy having once been court physician to Queen Apa-something, is a reference to Queen Apailana of Naboo, assassinated by Vader and the 501st for harboring Jedi in the Lucasarts video game Star Wars: Battlefront II.

“The Galaxy’s original talent free band” Boba Fett And The Assassin Droids, TriNebulon News, and Grada, an expensive brand of Cassandran Choholl are also from West End Games’ Star Wars Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments From The Rim.

Intelligence agents Resik, the Jillsarian bartender, Mygo Skinto, Ytavarg Aleema (the famous shockball player and secret Rebel sympathizer who lends his name to Lobar’s running shoes), and Colonial News Net reporter Fionna Flannis all appear in West End Games’ Cracken’s Rebel Operatives.

The Broken Tusk and the Dool Arena, including references to the vengeful Tolanese bounty hunter, the Jedi (Norrin Vaxx) beaten by Tull Raine, and the previous owners are all detailed in the last WEG supplement published, Wretched Hives Of Scum And Villainy.  The story behind that is The Broken Tusk was actually built out of the remains of the ship (The Tolan Tusk) of a bounty hunter named Var’rotha Fin’rotha, whose two Gamorrean slaves revolted on him, shoving him into an escape pod and inadvertently crash landing it on Reuss VIII.  The Gamorreans established The Broken Tusk and the Dool Arena, and operated a successful business for some years. One of the included adventure seeds was the return of Fin’rotha. I inferred its outcome, and that Torel Vorne would have jumped at the chance to take over the lion’s share of the Tusk’s profits and maybe legitimize the place (as far as somebody like Vorne could legitimize anything).

Zzip Product Concepts Ltd, makers of luxury speeders, are mentioned as one of the signing companies in the creation of the Corporate Sector Authority in The Han Solo And The Corporate Sector Sourcebook.

Micromite pate is listed as a Kubaz delicacy in the article “A Free Trader’s Guide To The Planets” from Star Wars Adventure Journal #10

The following terms and entities are my inventions –

bouncewire – Conductive, wire-wrapped syntherope strung around a shockboxing wedge.

Boz – The Calian creator deity.  Did the religion of the Calians somehow spread to or from Boz Pity?

Electrolast – Top of the line brand of shockboxing equipment.

glunked - A Chevin past tense version of ‘crapped,’ as in, ‘to crap out’ or fail in function.

GolanGear – Golan Arms’ floundering athletic equipment division and a brand of shockboxing equipment. You can bet their stocks went up after the Tull Raine fight.

gug - The Star Wars equivalent of a pug, or a broken down, past his prime shockboxer.

Kubindi mudbugs – A Kubaz delicacy consisting of succulent bottom feeders.

Qee-Zutton Booksellers – Purveyors of fine reading, the SW version of B. Dalton, of course. Possibly the Snivvian author and Chalmun’s Cantina patron had a bit of good fortune in later life…

ryastraad – The Calian word for their battle madness tradition. Actually derived from ríastrad, the ‘battle-distortion’ or berserker rage of the Irish folk hero Cú Chulainn.

Sha-nag! – A Chevin interjection equivalent to “bullsh_t!”

Tuffweave – A brand of pliant canvas material used in wedge flooring.

The idea of shockboxing was conceived by author Wayne Humfleet for the old West End Games RPG, I just expanded on it.

Star Wars esoterica aside, Fists Of Ion came about from my love of all things boxing.

Lobar Aybock is a tuckerization of ‘Rocky Balboa,’ and Lobar’s alien cornermen, Stitchy and Eedund Cus’ names come from Jacob ‘Stitch’ Doran, Muhammad Ali’s great cornerman Angelo Dundee, and Mike Tyson’s legendary trainer Cus D’amato, respectively.

You can read a little more about how I came to write Fists Of Ion here – http://emerdelac.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/happy-star-wars-day-may-the-4th-be-with-youze/

 

 

 

HWA Halloween Haunts Blog

Hey all,

For the month of October the Horror Writers Association is running a cool blog feature with thirty one guest posts a day from thirty one different writers, sharing stories of Halloweens past, excerpts from their latest works, giveaways, and cool Halloween related stuff.

Take a look at the lineup and schedule!

Oct. 1
James Chambers


Oct. 2
Russell James


Oct. 2
Laura Benedict


Oct. 3
John Taff


Oct. 4
Allyson Bird


Oct. 5
David Riley


Oct. 5
Kenneth Cain


Oct. 6
JG Faherty


Oct. 7
Roy Robbins


Oct. 8
Lisa Morton


Oct. 9
Annie Neugebauer


Oct. 9
Cher Green


Oct. 10
Rocky Wood


Oct. 11
Stefan Petrucha


Oct. 12
Rebecca Cantrell


Oct. 12
Marty Young


Oct. 13
Linda Addison


Oct. 14
Ed Erdelac


Oct. 15
Carol Jahme


Oct. 15
Nancy Holder


Oct. 16
Lincoln Crisler


Oct. 16
Adrian Ludens


Oct. 17
Derrick Hussey


Oct. 18
Jennifer Harlow


Oct. 19
David Annandale


Oct. 19
Brick Marlin


Oct. 20
Brad Hodson


Oct. 21
Benjamin Kane Ethrdige


Oct. 22
John Skipp


Oct. 23
Greg Chapman


Oct. 23
Peter Salomon


Oct. 24
Bryan Thao Worra


Oct. 25
Teresa Lo


Oct. 26
Douglas Wynne


Oct. 26
Max Booth III


Oct. 27
James Kendley


Oct. 28
Joe McKinney


Oct. 29
Patrick Thomas


Oct. 30
Charles Day


Oct. 31
Hugh  Sterbakov

October 14th I’ll be on there, talking about my latest book, Terovolas, and talking about Abraham Van Helsing and others of his ilk. There’ll also be a giveaway, so be sure and check it out.

Just click on the cool banner below, created by Greg Chapman.