C.M. Saunders's Blog, page 6
November 23, 2023
Samiam – Stowaway (review)
“Don’t call it a comeback. Call it an evolution, a rebirth, a continuation after twelve years of absence.”
So said the review of this album on Punktastic. I’d rather call it a resurgence. Strange band, Samiam. They formed in 1988 with their first couple of albums being released on indie label New Red Archives. Then, after a single album on Atlantic (1994’s Clumsy), they signed to Hopeless, home of the disenfranchised. Stowaway, their first on Pure Noise Records, is the California quintet’s first album since 2011’s Trip. That’s 12 long years. Where have you been, guys? I don’t think they ever officially broke up, they’ve toured intermittently, sometimes with some big artists (Green Day and Blink 182 included), but they’ve hardly been prolific. I didn’t think they even had a website, but evidently they do.
It requires something akin to a perfect storm for a band to become successful, especially given the fractured state of the music industry, and momentum is a key factor. Sadly, Samiam just never seemed to have any. They had everything else; songs, an identity, a following, talent, but they can’t seem to keep it together long enough to build up a head of steam. They are a bit like that old friend you have that spontaneously shows up every couple of years. You have a great night, then they go back underground and you don’t see them again for ages.
Anyway, here we are. If I had to describe the Samiam sound I’d go for a mash up between Smashing Pumpkins, Alkaline Trio, Deftones and maybe a touch of the Wonder Years. On Stowaway they race out of the blocks with Lake Speed, which segways neatly into lead single Chrystalized. All layered vocals, power chords, and soaring choruses, this is just about as perfect a track as you’ll ever hear. Listen to it. Just listen to it!
The pace doesn’t let up for Lights Out, Little Hustler, Shoulda Stayed and Shut Down. Samiam are at their best when they are being melodic, treading the thin line between thrashing about and staring at their shoes. Their music often has a kid of wistful, nostalgic feel, similar to latter-era Bouncing Souls, and it takes a couple of tracks before you remember how good this band were. Or are. A highlight for me is Monterey Canyon which is apparently about being an octopus, but don’t let that put you off. The second half of the album dips slightly but comes roaring back with Something, one of those that sticks in your head for days after a single listen. Guitarist Sean Kennerly said of the track: “The light perkiness of the music is belied by the heavy subject matter – searching for meaning and reason inside of everyday actions.”
Stowaway is closed out with the mid-tempo title track, which also happens to be the longest song on the record by some margin (though its still only 4:12). This just feels like an important album, one that I will probably forget about for a year, then rediscover one night and curse myself out for not paying it more attention to it. I only ever listen to MP3 and flac files these days but bizarrely, this album was practically crying out to be played on vinyl. Go on, treat yourself. I only hope we don’t have to wait another 12 years for a follow up.
November 13, 2023
RetView #76 – Night of the Creeps (1986)
Title: Night of the Creeps
Year of Release: 1986
Director: Fred Dekker
Length: 88 mins
Starring: Jason Lively, Steve Marshall, Jill Whitlow, Tom Atkins, Wally Taylor, Richard Miller
As regular readers of this series will know, I can’t resist some eighties schlock. And they don’t come much more eighties and schlocky than this. On the surface it’s a zombie flick, the splatter/comedy tone eerily reminiscent of Re-Animator (1985), right down to the zombiefied cat. But at it’s core, Night of the Creeps is a homage to the fifties B-Movies like The Blob (1958) and The Giant Claw (1957) we all love so much. It even opens with a cut scene which manages to encapsulate an alien invasion and an escaped lunatic before fast-forwarding 27 years to a university Pledge Week setting where Chris Romero (Lively) and his best friend JC (Marshall) are pining over lost loves (“I don’t like being depressed. It’s depressing”). In the crowd they pick out Cynthia Cronenberg (Whitlow) and join a fraternity in a misguided attempt to gain her affection. Unfortunately, Cynthia’s boyfriend is the head honcho and tasks the hapless duo with stealing a cadaver from the university medical center and depositing it on the steps of a rival frat house. In the process, they inadvertently thaw out a frozen corpse (“a corpsicle!”) who turns out to be the boy from the opening scene, who then goes to pick up his date at her sorority house 27 years late. And dead. Not only that, but he’s infected with an alien parasite which looks like a slug and likes to jump into people’s orifices. Before you know it, it’s carnage.
Released by TriStar Pictures the film is widely regarded as a box office flop, earning a meagre $591,366 domestically. But it was only released in 70 theatres so that isn’t too surprising, and apparently it was quite big in the Philippines where it was released on March 5, 1987, with free “protector” stickers handed out to moviegoers. I love a good bit of PR.
Director Fred Dekker, who was also involved with House (1986), Monster Squad (1987) and several episodes of the legendary series Tales From the Crypt, originally wanted to shoot the film in black and white. He included every B-movie cliche he could think of and insisted on directing the script himself. Most of the main characters (Romero, Carpenter, Raimi, Hooper, Cronenberg) are named after famous horror movie makers and ‘Corman University’ itself is a reference to Roger Corman. The script was allegedly written in a week and the truth is, it shows. Some of the jokes are weak and predictable, and the whole thing treads the line between being a homage and simply being derivative. Part of the charm is the slapped-together punk-tastic approach, but you can’t help but wonder how much better it could have been had it been a bit more polished. In their review, the New York times acknowledged as much but went on to say it also demonstrates, “A fair ability to create suspense, build tension and achieve respectable performances.” Writing for Fangoria, Michael Gingold called it, “One of the year’s most surprisingly entertaining fright features, one that homaged practically every subgenre imaginable yet kept a sure hand on its tone and never descended into spoofery.” Dread Central were even more complimentary, generously calling it, “A classic in every sense of the word.”
Strangely, in Cincinnati and a few other cities, the movie was re-named Homecoming Night and two different endings were made. The most common version shows Chris and Cynthia standing in front of the burning sorority house, with the camera moving to the street as police cars race towards the burning building past a ‘zombified’ Cameron, who stops and falls to the ground. His head then bursts open and the alien parasite slugs that incubated there scamper out and slither towards a nearby cemetery. The other, far less elaborate ending, has a dog in it. A later completely unrelated film called Zombie Town was marketed to some audiences as an ‘unofficial sequel.’ The original has been reissued in a number of formats, most recently on Blu-ray in 2019.
Trivia Corner
According to Dekker the prominent “Stryper Rules” graffiti visible in the bathroom scene appeared due to makeup artist Kyle Sweet’s relationship with future husband Michael Sweet, frontman of Christian metal band Stryper, who’d she’d met whilst working on their video. Kyle Sweet also worked on Teen Wolf (1985) and The Terminator (1984) and passed away from cancer in 2009. Stryper live on, releasing their most recent album The Final Battle in 2022.
The RetView series is taking a short break and will be back soon, giving you the perfect opportunity to catch up on some previous installments.
November 2, 2023
tiny frights!
I have not one, but two (count ’em!) ickle fings included in the latest edition of the ezine/podcast project tiny frights.
The Vase is a drabble, a story of exactly 100-words. Writing these things is an art form in itself. Brevity is key, and not a word can be wasted. I’m paraphrasing but Stephen King once said writing or reading a short story is a bit like having a one-night stand, while writing or reading a novel is more like having a relationship. If that’s true, a drabble must be like having a quick snog with a random in a night club toilet.
The other piece, Broken World, is a dribble. If a drabble is a quick snog with a random in a night club toilet, then a dribble (a complete story of exactly 50 words) is probably precisely that. A dribble. But who knows? It might tastes nice.
Both stories are free to read HERE.
Tiny Frights!
I have not one, but two (count ’em!) ickle fings included in the latest edition of the ezine/podcast project Tiny Frights.
The Vase is a drabble, a story of exactly 100-words. Writing these things is an art form in itself. Brevity is key, and not a word can be wasted. I’m paraphrasing but Stephen King once said writing or reading a short story is a bit like having a one-night stand, while writing or reading a novel is more like having a relationship. If that’s true, a drabble must be like having a quick snog with a random in a night club toilet.
The other piece, Broken World, is a dribble. If a drabble is a quick snog with a random in a night club toilet, then a dribble (a complete story of exactly 50 words) is probably precisely that. A dribble. But who knows? It might tastes nice.
You can read both stories for free HERE.
October 22, 2023
October 16, 2023
October 13, 2023
RetView #75 – From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
Title: From Dusk Till Dawn
Year of Release: 1996
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Length: 108 mins
Starring: Harvey Keitel, George Clooney, Quentin Tarantino, Juliette Lewis, Cheech Marin, Salma Hayek, Tom Savini, Danny Trejo, Michael Parks
There’s been a long-running debate as to whether or not From Dusk Till Dawn qualifies as a bona fide Tarantino movie, who was then riding the crest of a wave on the back of his masterful Pulp Fiction (1994) which he wrote and directed as he had his 1992 breakthrough Reservoir Dogs. Though he played a supporting role and From Dusk Till Dawn definitely benefited from his involvement, Tarantino’s creative input was limited to a screenplay writing credit, the original idea coming from Robert Kurtzman whose career had started in the special effects departments of Night of the Creeps (1986) and Predator (1987), and handed Tarantino his first ever paid gig, for which he was paid $1500. Universal Pictures originally considered Tarantino’s screenplay as the follow-up to Demon Knight (1995) but ultimately produced another vampire film, Bordello of Blood (1996), instead. With it’s slick production values and all-star cast, From Dusk Till Dawn was very much a movie for the MTV generation, a sentiment underscored when it cleaned up at the 1996 MTV Movie Awards, winning in three separate categories including Best Horror Film and Best Actor for George Clooney. Interestingly, Tarantino was nominated for Worst Supporting Actor at both the Golden Raspberry Award and the Stinkers Bad Movie Awards. The film was banned in, Ireland with Irish Film Censor Board head Sheamus Smith citing its, “Irresponsible and totally gratuitous” violence, which he felt was particularly untimely in the wake of the then-recent Dunblane and Port Arthur massacres. On January 27, 2004, the video release was passed with an ’18’ certificate.
Fugitive bank robbers Seth (Clooney) and Richie (Tarantino) Grecko hold up a liquor store, killing a clerk and a Texas Ranger (Earl McGraw, played by Parks. More about him later) in a shootout and go into hiding at a motel. Meanwhile, Jacob Fuller (Keitel), a pastor experiencing a crisis of faith brought on by the death of his wife, is on vacation with his teenage children Scott and Kate (Lewis) in their RV. They stop at the motel and are swiftly kidnapped by the Gecko brothers, who force the family to smuggle them over the Mexican border. In Mexico, they arrive at a banging strip club in the desert called the Titty Twister, where the Gecko brothers plan to meet a contact, Carlos, at dawn. During a bar fight, the bar employees reveal themselves to be creatures most commonly referred to in literature surrounding this film ‘vampires’, though they have very little in common with other cinematic portrayals. They attack the patrons, killing most of them, including Richie, and what was already a very tense evening (for the Fuller family, anyway) is elevated to a whole new level.
This can best be described as a horror comedy, with plenty of Easter eggs and nods to other works by Tarantino and/or Rodriguez. For example, Seth Gecko’s line, “All right, Ramblers. Let’s get rambling!” is a direct quote from Reservoir Dogs (1992). Chronologically From Dusk Till Dawn takes place after both Kill Bill movies (2003 and 2004) and Death Proof (2007) since minor character Earl McGraw was alive in those and was killed in this movie. Due to the heavy number of special effects, the film had to be strictly budgeted. Only six full body vampire suits could be made for the climax that called for many dozens of vampires. In the final film, the same six actors play all of the vampires getting killed over and over. In some shots, dummies, puppets and cardboard cut-outs were placed in the background to create the illusion of a large host of vampires. In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “The latter part of From Dusk till Dawn is so relentless that it’s as if a spigot has been turned on and then broken. Though some of the tricks are entertainingly staged, the film loses its clever edge when its action heats up so gruesomely and exploitatively that there’s no time for talk.” Meanwhile, in his review for The Washington Post, Desson Howe wrote, “The movie, which treats you with contempt for even watching it, is a monument to its own lack of imagination. It’s a triumph of vile over content; mindless nihilism posing as hipness.”
It’s fair to say that Tarantino’s work has always divided critics. Personally, I think it can be a bit hit and miss. Pulp Fiction is one of my favourite movies ever, and From Dusk till Dawn isn’t that far behind but a few of his other high-profile releases have been much-ado about nothing. From Dusk till Dawn was followed by two direct-to-video instalments, a sequel From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money (1999) and a prequel called From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman’s Daughter (2000). Tarantino served as producer on both, and Danny Trejo was the only actor to appear in all three. There was also a TV series which ran for three seasons from 2014-2016 and a video game.
Trivia Corner:
Salma Hayek had a morbid fear of snakes, so when she read the script, she knew her phobia would prevent her from taking the part. Robert Rodriguez conned her into thinking that Madonna was ready to step in should she not accept it so Hayek spent two months in therapy trying to overcome her fear. She didn’t have a choreographer for her now-legendary dance, because according to her, it wouldn’t be possible to choreograph the live Albino Burmese Python Reticulus around her neck. Therefore, she made it up as she went along. Rammstein’s video for “Engel” is an homage to this movie.
October 1, 2023
Cover Reveal – The Wretched Bones
It’s been a while since I did a cover reveal. I thought I’d better get back in the groove. Not quite an exclusive because the publisher Midnight Machinations Press just beat me to it, but here’s the cover of my forthcoming book. The artwork is by Jeffrey Kosh, who, coincidentally, also designed the cover of Out of Time back in the day. Small world. If you look at both covers, you can clearly see they are both drawn by the same hand.
The Wretched Bones is out on October 14th, and available for pre-order now.
September 13, 2023
RetView #74 – Cat People (1942)
Title: Cat People
Year of Release: 1942
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Length: 73 mins
Starring: Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Tom Conway, Jane Randolph, Jack Holt
God knows there are enough horror movies about werewolves, vampires and zombies. In my humble opinion, there just aren’t enough films about cats or, for that matter, people descended from an ancient tribes of cat people who metamorphose into panthers when sexually aroused. Enter Cat People. This classic from the war years was produced by a chap called Val Lewton, who had just been named head of the ominous-sounding ‘horror unit’ at RKO studios formed to challenge Universal’s stranglehold on the burgeoning horror film industry. His brief was simple; make horror films. Each one had to come in under a budget or $150,000 and run for under 75 minutes, thereby ensuring they were tailor made for the trend of marketing films as double features. Over the next five years, Lewton would deliver a string of genre-defining classics including I Walked with a Zombie (1943), The Leopard Man (1943) and Boris Karloff’s Isle of the Dead (1945). All these seminal titles stemmed from the unprecedented commercial success of Cat People, which despite being made in just 18 days raked in $4 million (this figure has been disputed) making it RKO’s top moneyspinner of the year. It has since become known as a landmark movie of the era, and in 1993 was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry. It led to a sequel, Curse of the Cat People (1944) and a later remake starring Nastassja Kinski and featuring a soundtrack by David Bowie.
The film opens at Central Park Zoo, New York City, where young Serbian-born fashion illustrator Irena Dubrovna (Simon) is drawing a black panther. She catches the eye of marine engineer Oliver Reed (Smith), who strikes up a flirty conversation. Irena invites him to her apartment for tea, where Oliver is intrigued by a statue of a medieval warrior on horseback impaling a large cat with his sword. Irena informs him that the figure is King John of Serbia, and that the cat is a metaphorical depiction representing evil. According to legend, the residents of her home village gradually turned to witchcraft and devil worship after being enslaved by the Mameluks, and when King John drove the Mameluks out and saw what the villagers had become, he had them “put to the sword”. However, “the wisest and the most wicked” escaped into the mountains, the implication being, of course, that Irena’s ancestors were among them. Oliver dismisses these as “fairy tales,” and now deeply infatuated, buys Irena a kitten as a gift. When it hisses at her, she insists on taking it back to the pet shop where all the animals go wild when she enters, which should have been a red flag. Irena gradually reveals that she believes she is descended from the ‘cat people’ of her village, and that will transform into a panther if aroused. Despite that, or maybe because of that, Oliver proposes and the two are married. However, afraid of the consequences, she is reluctant to consummate the marriage, the situation compounded when she tries to touch a bird and inadvertently frightens it to death. Oliver is understanding and patient at first, then as his frustration grows, he persuades Irena to see a psychiatrist (Conway). It’s no use, and Oliver is effectively pushed into the arms of his beautiful assistant, Alice (Randolph). Irena doesn’t like that. She doesn’t like it one bit. Hell hath no fury like a woman descended from an ancient tribe of Serbian cat people who metamorphose into panthers when aroused scorned.
Darkly insidious, Cat People is a masterclass in foreshadowing. At one point Alice shivers, prompting Oliver to ask her if she is cold. She replies, “A cat just walked over my grave.” Simone Simon was cast in the role of Irena by Lewton himself who commented that, “I’d like to have a girl with a little kitten face, cute and soft and cuddly, and seemingly not at all dangerous.” Perhaps as a reaction to RKO’s initial misgivings, the movie was generally panned by critics. Wanda Hale of the New York Daily News said it, “Tries hard to be a melodrama… but it doesn’t try hard enough”, while Bosley Crowther of The New York Times described it as a “Labored and obvious attempt to induce shock.” He (among others) also slated Simon’s acting, stating that actresses who are trying to portray “[feline] temptations – in straight horror pictures, at least – should exercise their digits a bit more freely than does Simone Simon.” Simon herself, along with fellow female lead Jane Randolph, publicly expressed displeasure at her performance.
Nevertheless, in more recent times, Cat People has attained ‘classic’ status. Noted film critic Chris Fujiwara dubbed it “A perfect film,” adding that even its flaws “have become classic,” and dismissing the withering criticisms of other reviewers. He further stated that Cat People, “Is still contagious; the viewer can still share the surprise and pleasure the film evoked in audiences who discovered this unheralded B horror film on its initial release”. He wasn’t alone in his thinking, as in 2006 Roger Ebert included it in his list of Great Movies noting that the film was, “Frightening in an eerie, mysterious way that was hard to define [and had] an undertone of sexual danger that was more ominous because it was never acted upon”.
Trivia Corner:
The suits at RKO were allegedly very dissatisfied with the finished product, suggesting it was too subtle and could not possibly compete with Universal’s more immediate brand of horror that gave us such delights as The Mummy (1932), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1942) and Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954).
September 1, 2023
String in the Bathroom!
I am excited to report that one of my short stories, String, is included in the anthology That Old House: The Bathroom, compiled and edited by the fabulous Angel Herrin from Voices from the Mausoleum. If you’re a horror lover, check out her awesome YouTube channel. Found Footage Fridays are not to be missed.
Anyone who follows my work will know that I have written some pretty gruesome shit in my time. And some weird shit. Sometimes I knock something out that is both gruesome AND weird. But everything else pales in comparison to String, which is essentially about a dude sitting in the bath pulling something out of his arse (come on, we’ve all done it). It’s definitely a horror story, probably edging towards the bizzaro, but there isn’t anything paranormal about it. Instead, it highlights a rare medical condition that makes you sit in the bath and pull stuff out of your ass. No shit. Okay, there’s a little bit of shit, but not much. I’ll be quiet now.
Please buy the book, and go subscribe to Angel’s channel. You won’t be disappointed.
Peace out.
