Joshua Reynolds's Blog, page 16

Another Day

December 1965. Is that all it has been since I inherited the world? Only three years. Seems like 100 million.

– Robert Morgan

It’s the anniversary of Vincent Price’s death, so I decided to revisit one of his old films and one of my favourites, The Last Man on Earth (1964). It’s one of several cinematic adaptations of Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel, I Am Legend – another of my favourites – and arguably the most faithful of the bunch.

What makes it a favourite of mine is how Price approaches the role of the embattled Robert Morgan, the eponymous Last Man. Price, especially in the latter half of his career, had a tendency to play up the camp in many of his roles, lending even creatures like the murderous Dr. Phibes a welcome (if unsettling) sense of humour. But here, there is none of the expected mugging and not a hint of a chuckle. Price as Morgan is a grim spectre – a living dead man, stalking the ruins of his world and bringing oblivion to the bloodsucking remnants of humanity.

Price plays Morgan as a man on the razor edge of sanity; a slave to routine, for whom even the most minor of deviations is a cause for panic. Every day is the same for Morgan, a monotonous prison of his own making – a just punishment for his self-perceived failure to create a cure for the ailment that doomed mankind. Price is restrained, even as Morgan’s carefully constructed world begins to collapse. It is only in the final moments of the climax that Morgan’s desperation and fury boils over at last. He becomes the monster his attackers believe him to be – a ranting horror, a shadow of the world that was – challenging their mastery of the broken world with fire and stake.

All in all, it’s one of Price’s best roles, though possibly not among his most memorable. His Morgan is at once sad and savage, a man made into a monster by necessity as much as anything. If you haven’t seen the film, you definitely should – perhaps especially if you’re not a fan of Price.

I give it five stakes out of five.

This Unspeakable Evil

He must be found and destroyed.

– Dr Van Helsing

Terence Fisher’s 1958 Dracula (or Horror of Dracula, to us Americans) isn’t so much a remake of the 1931 Universal version as it is a reimagining. Christopher Lee’s take on the character is as iconic as Lugosi’s, for all that he feels less developed on the whole. What he lacks in velvet menace he makes up for with feral savagery. Lugosi’s Dracula was icily reserved, save in moments of stress or triumph. Lee’s version of the Count is always a hairsbreadth from murder – a great, stalking presence that conquers the screen without so much as a word.

While I like Lugosi’s version, it’s Lee’s that dominates my imagination. Largely, that’s because I saw Fisher’s Dracula well before the Universal version. When I write about Dracula, whether in fiction or just in general, it’s probably Christopher Lee that I’m thinking about. And the same goes for Peter Cushing’s Dr. Van Helsing. While not as charismatic as his opponent, there’s something powerfully reassuring about Cushing’s fearless vampire killer. Where Dracula is all sound and fury, Van Helsing is the eye of the storm – eerily calm, until he snaps into action. When the two collide, its a sort of magic.

That isn’t to say the film doesn’t share the same issues that plagued the other early Hammer films. There are other characters in this film; they are largely insignificant. They exist to be victimized or enlightened. The only two who matter are Dracula and Van Helsing. Their conflict drives the film and, indeed, all of the subsequent films, though Van Helsing is largely absent until the films move to the modern day.

Yet despite that, there’s something about this film – it’s almost a distillation of the very idea of Dracula. It is the heart of the matter. Dracula and Van Helsing, turning on a great wheel, struggling over the souls of the innocent.

The Devil’s Son and God’s Madman, locked in battle for eternity.

Anyway, as you might have guessed, I like this film a lot. If you haven’t seen it, watch it.

That Terrible Lonesome Cry

What kind of thing can pick up two one hundred pound hogs and walk off with them?

– John W. Oates

For Day 23 of the Fright Festival, I went with another old favourite – The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972). I’ve watched this one I don’t know how many times. It’s comfort viewing for me – if I’m having a crap day, or just need to chill, on goes The Legend of Boggy Creek. There’s something just so dang soothing about the tale of the Fouke Monster. Or maybe I’m just a sucker for that dynamite film poster by Ralph McQuarrie. Seriously, that thing is a constant source of inspiration for me. So simple, yet so full of story. I could stare at it for hours. Great stuff.

Anyway, the film bills itself as a docudrama, and it’s a good enough descriptor. There’s no plot as such; just a collection of encounters, loosely arranged to show the increasing ferocity of the monster’s attacks. There are also no actors as such, besides the guy in the monster suit – everyone else is just restaging their encounters with the Fouke Monster. That lends the whole thing an air of legitimacy that is only enhanced by director Charles B. Pierce’s decision to keep the monster largely out of sight and always out of focus. Instead, Pierce relies on the weird, haunting cry of the monster to denote its presence in many scenes – a spine-tingling howl that echoes among the trees or across empty fields and sends animals and people alike fleeing in terror.

That sound is probably my favourite bit of the film, honestly – other than the scene where the monster tries to pull a dude through a bathroom window. It’s a cry that mingles malice and melancholy into one wordless howl – a deranged protest against the injustice of its own existence. The cry of something that finds no solace in madness, no comfort in isolation.

The cry of a monster.

Of course, the real stars of the film are the Arkansas swamps that the creature calls home. Throughout the film, we get scene after scene of lush, primeval wilderness and a rustic way of life that has, sadly, vanished since the film was shot. The whole film is one long smorgasbord of eerily beautiful sequences that only add to the foreboding atmosphere.

I recommend this one every chance I get, and today’s no different. It’s not a good film, as such, but I think it’s a great one. It’s honest and enthusiastic and scary and charming. Do yourself a favour and check it out.

I give it five three-toed tracks out of five.

Come Alive

This was supposed to be our night!

– Zoe

I decided to start the weekend with something new, only it was more like something old. By which I mean that I watched Adam Randall’s 2021 vampire thriller, Night Teeth. It’s basically Michael Mann’s Collateral (2004) crossed with the vampire politics bits of Blade (1998). This doesn’t mean its bad, by any stretch – steal from the best, as any writer will tell you.

It’s a stylish film. Daytime is grimy orange-filter, and night-time is all neon and flash. The human characters are down to earth and subdued while the vampires are bombastic and predatory. A handy voiceover during the opening crawl sketches out the world the characters inhabit – vampire cabals, secret societies of vampire hunters and hints that the world is much larger than the events of the film would have us believe. The story itself isn’t earth-shaking – its an undead turf war, a struggle between middle-management monsters over control of a single territory. But its drawn so vividly, in such an over-the-top pulp novel fashion that its hard not to be a little impressed.

Unfortunately, the characters suffer some in comparison. We never learn much about any of them or what motivates them beyond a few obvious, abrupt declamations – dead fiancé, power, etc. – and the film moves so quickly that we don’t get much sense of them beyond a set of broad attributes – Lucy Fry’s Zoe is crazy, Alfie Allen’s Victor is a schemer, Debby Ryan’s Blaire is resigned, Jorge Lendeborg Jr.’s Benny wants a music career – that are never fleshed out to any real degree. They exist as largely static archetypes, unchanging and unchanged by their experiences save in the most obvious fashion (it’s a given in a vampire film that one of the characters will become a vampire, f’r instance).

Again, this is not to say the film is bad. Far from it. The actors make a lot out of a little, investing their characters with quirky charm aplenty and the script gives them plenty of room to play. It’s hard not to like all of them, even Zoe – except Victor, but that’s Alfie Allen’s strength really: he really knows how to portray a character you can hate without reservation.

Its an entertaining hour and a half, full of some brilliantly stylish sequences and the SFX for vampire deaths is on point (they crumple and contract as they burn, which is a fantastically original take on the usual ashy collapse), and if it leans a bit too hard on some tropes – well. That’s no great sin, especially when it comes to vampire films. Surprises are overrated, especially when it comes to horror films. I enjoyed it for what it was – a pacey thriller in the vein (get it?) of Near Dark (1987) or Prowl (2010).

Last Resort Interview

Josh sits down with Anjuli from Aconyte Books to talk about Zombicide: Last Resort! Watch the full interview here:

To learn more about Last Resort, be sure to check out the Aconyte Books website!

LATEST NEWS

Below you’ll find all the latest news in regards to Josh’s work, including interviews, appearances and new releases. Check back regularly for updates!

LATEST INTERVIEW

Josh sits down with Anjuli to talk about Zombicide: Last Resort!

LATEST NOVEL

Zombicide: Last Resort is Josh’s first foray into the apocalyptic world of ZOMBICIDE. Join Westlake, Ramirez and El Calavera Santo as they battle undead park rangers and worse in the Adirondacks.

The zombie apocalypse has driven humanity up into the Adirondacks. Enter Westlake, a hardened career criminal on the path of “the Villa”, a legendary mafia hideout where he can escape the devastation. When he’s ambushed by the undead, an old FBI “friend” and his squad of survivors rescue him… and then force him to reveal his secrets. Reluctantly, Westlake is saddled with an oddball team to navigate minefields, trip wires, and flesh-eating zombies at every turn to find their safe haven…

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LATEST SHORT STORY

“Bruno J. Lampini and the Sanguinary Assignation” is the fourth Bruno J. Lampini story to appear in print, and the wildest outing yet for the amoral acquisitionist of the eldritch!

Enter freely, and drink deeply of fifteen vampire tales told by a sanguinary collection of modern horror authors. Here you will find both traditional vampires, and those who stretch genre boundaries. Not all of these Nosferatu drink blood, but they all share an unholy thirst for human lives. So step into the shadows, and listen for the children of the night.

With Stories by:
Amanda DeWees
Donald F. Glut
John Linwood Grant
Leanna Renee Hieber
Paul McNamee
Chris McAuley
Lee Murray
Josh Reynolds
Cat Scully
Jeff Strand
Plus:
A new Sonja Blue story by Nancy A. Collins
A New Bubba the Monster Hunter story by John Hartness
A New Deacon Chalk story by James R. Tuck
A new Jonathan Crowley/Carter Decamp story by James A. Moore and Charles R. Rutledge
And introducing Renard Duvall in a story by Cliff Biggers

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Every Seven Years

[Sound of crabs eating a chopped up body]

– Crabs

I’ve got to be honest – I really have no idea what’s happening in Night of the Sea Gulls (1975) because I decided to learn Latin instead of Spanish. You’d think Latin, being a root language, would help with the translation, but – well, I didn’t really pay attention in Latin class either. So, no dice. Really, that goes for all of the Blind Dead movies, because the only versions of them I’ve seen are in Spanish with Italian subtitles. Sure, I could seek out the versions subtitled in English, but watching them this way is honestly more fun; it reminds me of the first time I saw them, in a cramped college apartment, late on a Halloween night after work with half a dozen other people, none of whom could speak Spanish either. With some things, it’s the context.

All that aside, what we have here is a classic folk horror film: we get some clearly out of place townies wandering into a dilapidated village at the base of a site of ancient sacrifice in order to start new lives – check. The villagers are sacrificing people to the restless corpses living in said site every seven years – check. Things proceed from there, as the aforementioned townies run afoul of both the villagers and the blind dead. We get some nice slow motion shots of the zombie templars rising from their tombs and riding out to claim their sacrifices.

Director Amando de Ossorio does a good job in evoking a sense of place with this one. The previous films in the series were exploitation fodder, built on oddball scenes – who can forget the sight of a band of undead templars hijacking a train, for instance? – but this one is developed at a slower pace, with more attention paid to the village and the characters who inhabit it. I might not have understood what people were saying, but I knew where they were coming from nonetheless.

I really enjoy the Blind Dead series, and while I think the first one is the best of the lot – seriously, zombies hijack a train, it’s great – Night of the Sea Gulls is as good a way to close out the series as any.

Oh, and if you’d like to check out my homage to the series, “The Riders of St. George”, you can find it in the second volume of The Casefiles of the Royal Occultist, Hochmuller’s Hound.

Death and Contagion

There’s no danger!

-Joe

I’ve seen Lamberto Bava’s Demons (1985) a fair few times, but this year I decided to check out the 1986 sequel, the imaginatively titled Demons 2 for Day 20 of Fright Festival. Right off the bat, its as weird as the first one, albeit in an entirely different way.

It’s a sequel without being a sequel – the events of the first movie being part of a movie the characters in this film are watching. The demons erupt from the movie within a movie, slaughtering their way through an apartment building in an orgy of carnage. As far as the plot goes, that’s about it. As with its predecessor, there are a lot of unanswered questions, but the point of these movies isn’t the why but the what. It doesn’t matter why the demons are doing what they’re doing, or why they manifest as they do – all that matters is what they do when they arrive, i.e. kill people. Lots of people.

As with Demons, the sequel is a grim slice of nastiness. Once it gets started, there’s not a slow moment and the tension doesn’t let up. No one is safe, not cute dogs or children. Anyone can be possessed by the demons and turned into a drooling, mutilated monster. That anyone survives the film at all is a surprise. That sort of tension serves its purpose, though – it keeps you watching, if nothing else. The problem is, there’s no real story to it. It’s like an extended nightmare sequence – glowing eyed phantasms loping down smoky corridors towards you forever, their screams drowning out even the pounding of your own heart.

It’s a more impactful film than its predecessor, I think. It’s not that more is happening necessarily, but its the idea of the demons as a memetic pestilence – a contagion that can breach the barrier between fact and fiction, infecting the ‘real world’ as easily as it infected the world on the screen. It’s a powerful concept, though its not really explored to a satisfying extent. Then, as I said above, I don’t think that’s the point of the film. It’s not aiming for a satisfying experience – just a visceral one.

Nevertheless, of the two, I think I still prefer the first one, if only because I really like the instigating factor in that one – the mysterious silver mask that’s an artefact of some nameless esoteric cult. But that said, the scene where the first demon rips itself out of the television is hideously fantastic, and its worth watching the film just to see that bit.

I give it three bulgy eyed spittle-freaks out of five.

One Long Smorgasbord

Broke into the wrong goddamn rec room, didn’t ya you bastard!

– Burt Gummer

Tremors (1990) is one of those films that’s so incredibly close to perfect that it’s hard to talk about. So that’s why I figured I’d give it a shot for Day 19 of the Fright Festival. Directed by Ron Underwood, and starring Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter, Michael Gross, Reba McEntire and Victor goddamn Wong, it’s been one of my favourite films for nearly a decade.

This is a monster movie, plain and simple. It’s not supposed to be scary (suspenseful, sure) or thought-provoking. It’s a throwback to the old atomic anxiety B-movies of yesteryear, with a giant critter of unknown origin chowing down on the residents of an isolated community. And as in those films, the only way our plucky band of oddballs will survive is if they work together to see off the creature threatening their lives, and way of life.

What I like most about this film is its utter lack of pretension. There’s no deep meaning here – it’s about some scrappy desert yokels mixing it up with overgrown earthworms, and it makes no apologies. But neither does it plant tongue in cheek or wink knowingly at the audience. There’s humour, sure, but it comes from the characters interacting, or reacting to the situation they’ve found themselves in. A film that takes itself seriously, without taking itself seriously – if you get me – is a rare treat these days.

If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend you give it a try. And while the sequels are of varying quality, they are almost as enjoyable, if a trifle predictable. Give the whole saga a shot. At the very least, you’ll be entertained.

An Unholy Thirst Out Now

The new anthology from Pavane Press, An Unholy Thirst, is now available. It includes Josh’s short story, “Bruno J. Lampini and the Sanguinary Assignation”, and is the wildest outing yet for the amoral acquisitionist of the eldritch! More below:

Enter freely, and drink deeply of fifteen vampire tales told by a sanguinary collection of modern horror authors. Here you will find both traditional vampires, and those who stretch genre boundaries. Not all of these Nosferatu drink blood, but they all share an unholy thirst for human lives. So step into the shadows, and listen for the children of the night.

With Stories by:
Amanda DeWees
Donald F. Glut
John Linwood Grant
Leanna Renee Hieber
Paul McNamee
Chris McAuley
Lee Murray
Josh Reynolds
Cat Scully
Jeff Strand
Plus:
A new Sonja Blue story by Nancy A. Collins
A New Bubba the Monster Hunter story by John Hartness
A New Deacon Chalk story by James R. Tuck
A new Jonathan Crowley/Carter Decamp story by James A. Moore and Charles R. Rutledge
And introducing Renard Duvall in a story by Cliff Biggers

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