David Dubrow's Blog, page 42

Two-Minute Movie Review: Bone Tomahawk

Bone Tomahawk is a low-budget movie ($1.8 million) that expertly weaves horror elements into a western setting.  It starts off slow and ends with a great payoff, but what keep the slow parts from tedium are the great dialogue and characterization.

As it turns out, the cast took low salaries to make sure the film could get funded: Kurt Russell, Matthew Fox, Richard Jenkins, and Patrick Wilson head it up, and each actor fills his role to a T.  Sean Young, David Arquette, and Sid Haig are given minor, even thankless roles, but they do a great job with them.

Chicory, played by Richard Jenkins, has the stand-out role, and his delivery keeps the clever repartee from descending into comedy.  Matthew Fox runs a close second as a fastidious-but-murderous figure: he's grown as a performer since Lost and takes full advantage of his tendency to seem, if not villainous, somewhat questionable of character.

There's not a lot I can say about this film without giving the fun away: a lot of it comes from the surprise as well as the creepiness.  There's one scene near the end that was particularly gruesome; it's the first time I can remember feeling nauseated during a film, which says something.  Just go see it.

Four out of five stars.

Friday Links: The Haunted Palace, the Altay Princess, and Zombie Ninjas vs. Black Ops

Halloween's over, sadly enough, and as we recover and get ready for next year's holiday, let's take a look back at what's happened over the week in the world of the strange, the bizarre, the horrific:
Mondo Bizarro  reviewed the Australian movie Zombie Ninjas vs. Black Ops: "The Film is about...well, you can probably guess.  What you wouldn't guess, however, is the tone of the Film.  Despite the Troma-style Title, this Film is pretty much played 100% straight.  Alright then.  The Story involves mutated super-soldiers, the plot from Die Hard and lots of fighting."At the penetrating, perspicacious R'lyeh Tribune , Sean Eaton brought us an archetypal terror from Lovecraft contemporary William Sloane: "Stephen King, who wrote the introductory notes to the most recent release [of The Rim of Morning], notes that Sloane once met Carl Jung, the famous psychotherapist and J.B. Rhine, a renowned expert in extrasensory perception at a special luncheon in 1937.  Jung had read an earlier version of To Walk the Night—it had first appeared as a play—and was apparently impressed with Sloane’s work.  Jung’s notion of the mysterious archetypal feminine principle, the “anima” is strongly echoed in Sloane’s character of Selena LeNormand." The Slaughtered Bird  reviewed Adam Howe's Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet: "I’ve written long & hard about Adam’s storytelling and it’s here in abundance, more so than ever before in fact. I can’t imagine why he restricts himself to the novella but it makes for a pacy, breathless and tightly wound read without ever feeling rushed or crowded. To compliment the oddest of tales are characters that never feel out of place, and with exquisitely torrid back-stories as a rule." (Interested readers can find my review of this book here.)Nev Murray reviewed Jonathan Janz's Wolf Land at his Confessions of a Reviewer!! : "The plot is not unlike some of those old horror films you might have watched when you were younger. Basically the werewolves come to town and it is a battle for the good to survive against the evil. The difference with this story is the fact that people know from the outset that they are dealing with werewolves. There is initial disbelief at what they have witnessed but at the same time an acceptance of what is happening and a desire to stop the evil in whatever way they can." Breakfast in the Ruins  deconstructed Roger Corman's Lovecraft film The Haunted Palace: "As in so many things, Corman was ahead of the curve in choosing to adapt Lovecraft. Whilst HPL’s name may be ubiquitous in horror fiction today, he did not actually attract a widespread readership until mass market paperback editions of his work began to proliferate in the mid/late 1960s. At the time Corman was planning this film, Lovecraft’s following was still a closely-guarded cult within the wider cult of Weird Tales/fantastic fiction devotees, his reputation kept alive largely via the expensive, small-press editions produced by August Derleth’s Arkham House."Shock Volume 3, Issue 2 from May 1971 was the latest bit of horror to fall out of Zombos' Closet. Demonic possession  is on the rise in the Philippines: "'These days we have around 80 to 100 cases at any given time,' says Father Jose Francisco Syquia, the chief exorcist at the archdiocese's Office of Exorcism. The sudden increase in cases of possession has stretched the country's few exorcists thin and, according to Fr. Syquia, most Philippine dioceses do not have in-house exorcists. As a result many of the faithful are turning to "healers and occult practitioners" in the hopes of curing the afflicted. This route, however, only attracts the demonic and exacerbates the problem, says Fr. Syquia. By the time the exorcists from the archdiocese of Manila are able to see people, the victims are in bad shape."Some of Siberia's most bizarre mysteries were the subject of discussion at  Ghost Hunting Theories : "Siberian Ice Maiden "Altay Princess": From 5th century BC, this mummified lady was found in a subterranean burial chamber. This tomb was on the border of China. She was buried with food and with her horses, facing east. Her skin still showed tattoos of deer shapes. She was buried in a beautiful gown and leggings and a 3-foot tall headdress, a fur, a mirror, and deer figurines. Interestingly, DNA testing proved her to not be of Asian descent as the Altai's in the area."At the Film Gutter of Jim Mcleod's Ginger Nuts of Horror , Alex Davis introduced us to The Girl Next Door: "If there's a single thing that elevates this movie, it's Blanche Baker's role as pretty much the sole adult in the lives of the children of the neighbourhood. In the beginning she's free in giving out the beer and cigarettes to all the youngsters, but her attitudes towards men, women and sexual relationships are warped to say the least. And Meg is soon enough a victim of her ire, resulting in a couple of beatings and unpleasant scenes." Soiled Sinema sprayed us with the Aussie film Salt, Saliva, Sperm and Sweat: "A 47-minute piece of outstandingly outlandish and obscenely offbeat Australian iconoclasm, the alliteratively titled flick Salt, Saliva, Sperm and Sweat (1988) directed by experimental musician, composer, academic, film scholar, and sometimes filmmaker Philip Brophy, who is probably best known for his satirical slapstick biopunk horror flick Body Melt (1993), is indubitably one of the best kept secrets of Australian cinema." Here , I talked about social media strokes and why I'm no longer hunting skunk apes.Illustration by Tom Sullivan for Call of Cthulhu's S. Petersen's Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters.

Skunk Ape Hunt

In an earlier post I mentioned Adam Howe's difficulty with the Society for the Preservation of the North American Skunk Ape (SPNASA) and how the contretemps spurred me to look for skunk apes in my area, as Florida is ground zero for such cryptids.

However, after last weekend's events, I'm afraid I'm going to have to swear off such explorations for safety's sake. As a husband and father I have responsibilities, and I can't just risk my neck the way I used to as a young man.  Let me tell you what happened.

Recent rains had brought a relative coolness to the weather (high 70's instead of high 80's, but you take what you can get out here), so when my wife and son went on a neighborhood bike ride, I drove into the swamps to catch another glimpse of the elusive Florida skunk ape.  I had no desire to capture or hunt one, mind: simply to see it and get further photographic evidence of its presence in my part of the state.  So, with my trusty cell phone camera and bottle of Zephyrhills Spring Water, I parked the car on a fairly dry patch of ground near an overgrown trail and went exploring.

While I didn't get lost, exactly, I will admit that after an hour of wandering the swamps I couldn't find my car again.  I had taken a picture of where I'd parked (a trick I learned from parking at the airport so often: if you photograph where your car is, you don't have to remember after your trip where you parked it), but getting to where the terrain resembled the picture presented some difficulty.  As the afternoon shadows lengthened toward evening, my concern became anxiety.  Wasn't this the grove of palms where I left the car?  No.  Not even tire tracks.  Damn it.  Was I going to have to call 911?  How embarrassing would that be, to call for help?

And that's when I smelled it.  Not quite feces, exactly.  Not quite gone-over tomatoes.  Not quite the buildup of bodily fluids on a hairy, unwashed animal, but something that combined all three into a stench that had me gagging.

I hadn't found a skunk ape: one had found me.

Panicking, I made my stumbling way across pools of slimy algae and sunken mangrove roots, frantically looking between the picture on my phone and my surroundings.  Where was my car?  Where was it?  If the skunk ape was following me I didn't hear it over my own labored breathing.  My car had to be somewhere here.  It had to.

Something in the trees above uttered a low, hollow grunt.  It was followed by a shriek and another grunt.  Were there two of them?

I reached into my pocket to hit the panic button on my keychain, and to my relief, my car's horn blasted across the swamp in staccato bursts.  There!  I must have passed by it at least twice, judging from the footprints.  Why hadn't I seen it before?

The alarm didn't put off my pursuers.  In fact, it incensed them: they shrieked louder.  Nevertheless, emboldened by the proximity of a safe haven, I spun, took a few hurried pictures behind me, and hauled the car door open.

I was on the road a few minutes later with the air conditioning on full blast and my hands shaking from the adrenaline dump.  The only picture that came out is a bit blurry, but it very clearly shows one of the creatures chasing me; I've circled the relevant part on the photo.



So I'm done with skunk apes for the time being.  Best to let the experts deal with them.

In fact, the safest and best thing to do is get Adam Howe's Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet , an excellent anthology of three novellas that includes Damn Dirty Apes, a hilarious story of skunk apes, redemption, and the desire for fame.

Social Media, Stroking, and You

Eric Berne's Games People Play, written in 1964, is a seminal book on psychology, something you must read if you're interested in understanding the nuts and bolts of human interaction.  I'm not going to summarize it, but one concept I'll describe from it is called strokes.

A stroke is a unit of human interaction: you pass a co-worker in the hall and say hi. Your co-worker says hi.  You've exchanged strokes and everything's good.  A problem arises when you pass a co-worker in the hall and you say hi and she doesn't say hi.  You're missing a stroke.  Perhaps she was distracted, perhaps she didn't see you, perhaps she doesn't like your necktie, whatever: you didn't get your expected stroke and it puts you off.  Perhaps a little bit, perhaps a lot: many factors go into the value of a stroke.

Social media is a near-perfect way of not just measuring strokes, but displaying them to the entire world.  Likes on Facebook, Favorites on Twitter, whatever they do on Instagram to signal approval of a photo: all strokes.  All visible, all measurable, all important.  We do things on social media because we want the world to see them, and we do these things to get strokes.

It's cynical to perceive human relationships as such a sterile mode of exchange, but nobody is exempt from wanting strokes.  How many times have you heard, "Well, a relationship is a two-way street."  "Give and take."  "Meet me halfway."  "I'm tired of crossing oceans for someone who won't cross the street for me."  And so on.  It's transactional: you want something so you do something to get it.  We all do it.

Some people need a lot of strokes to get through the day intact.  The ones who frequently post pictures of their breakfasts or random, meaningless thoughts or whatever the dog is doing: they're looking for their strokes online because they're not getting enough of them in meatspace for whatever reason.  It doesn't mean they're weak or stupid: it's just how they are.  Their closest friends are the people who give them the most strokes.  It's natural.  Who doesn't want strokes?

If you're looking to prove the stroking concept, try this experiment: select someone you know through social media and have frequent, if casual exchanges with.  Maybe it's me.  Maybe it's a former work friend.  Anyone.  Then, for two weeks, stop stroking them.  Ignore them and behave as usual with everyone else online. One or both of two things will happen: that person will directly contact you to see if everything's okay, or he'll stop stroking you, too.  It might take longer than two weeks to get a reaction or it might take a few days.  It almost always works, because deep down we all rely on stroking.  Nobody likes to chase after someone who's obviously indifferent.  The only caveat is that when you end the experiment it may take time for that person to return to mutual stroking.  They've built up that stroking deficit and you'll have to make it up with extra strokes.  Other people may immediately pick up where you left off. Depends on the person.  Doing this is mean and manipulative and awful, but you knew that already.

What's amazing about strokes is that they're valuable even if they come from people you don't particularly care for. Most of us, especially those who use social media as part of work, have online friends who we're not really friends with.  Some know people we want to get to know; others are professional acquaintances, colleagues, or bosses; yet others are friends of friends or relatives.  You don't like them but you know them because it's better to know them than not (or so you think).  If you get strokes from them, you're fine.  But when you don't get an expected stroke, that becomes troubling.  Are you really going to chase after someone you don't like over something you can't really quantify?  Of course not.  So you'll let it go.  Sort of.  Most likely you'll add it to the reasons why you don't like that person.  Resentment builds: maybe a little, maybe a lot.  It's okay.  It happens to everyone.

With all this in mind, give your social media interactions a good, close look.  Be mindful of what you're doing, which means examining why you're doing it.  It's small, it's petty, it's meaningless.  Except that it isn't.  They're your strokes, and you need them.  Bad strokes are better than no strokes.

Free E-Book for Halloween!

From today through November 1, my novella
Combining themes of Lovecraftian horror, ancient evil, teenage angst, and zombies, it's a short, punchy read that takes place at this time of year: Halloween!  In it, high school sophomore Paige Ashton and college freshman Ryan Kincaid face a terrible horror that seeks to not only consume their town, but the entire world.

The supporting characters were taken from local teen volunteers, and takes place in Dunedin, Florida, home town of Henry S. Whitehead, a horror author and friend of H.P. Lovecraft himself.

I guarantee at least one hour's worth of horrific entertainment with every copy, or your money back! How many YA, PG, non-PC Lovecraftian novellas are you going to read this year?  

Halloween, Zombies, and You

What follows is a short piece that didn't make it to the final manuscript of The Ultimate Guide to Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse .  Like all good survival advice, it is timeless and necessary, especially for this time of year.

For children, Halloween ranks right up there with Christmas as the best time of year.  For the informed adult concerned about the coming Zombie Apocalypse, Halloween can be a gut check.  It doesn’t mean, however, that you have to dread it entirely: costumes, free candy, and parties are celebrations of life and a thumbing-of-the-nose at grim death.  As such, you should have fun.  Take the kids out trick-or-treating.  Throw a party.  Dress up as Batman.  Just keep a few things in mind that will maximize your personal security.
A Supernatural Zombie Apocalypse is more likely at this time of year than any other.  Halloween is when the veil between life and death is at its thinnest, making it easier for unquiet spirits to cross over from Purgatory to the land of the living.

Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things : Stay away from graveyards at all costs.  A dead body buried in unhallowed ground can be an attractive vessel for ghosts seeking a return to life (or unlife, as it were).  It may be traditional to hold parties at cemeteries during Halloween, but as an enlightened student of zombie combat you know that the best way to avoid being killed by the undead is to not be where there are going to be large numbers of them.   The Craft : Stay away from practitioners of the occult, and don’t dabble in it yourself this one time.  Just like you wouldn’t play with matches near a gas station, getting out the Ouija board to see if you can contact a random spirit from the Great Beyond on Halloween is a terrifically bad idea.To most of us, Halloween means dressing up as someone or something else.  The continuing popularity of zombies in modern American culture means that there are going to be many people shuffling around outside at night looking like hungry undead.  One of the worst things you could do is shoot an innocent living person because he made the unfortunate choice of having a realistic costume.  So it’s up to you to make sure you can tell the difference between a zombie and a person dressed up as a zombie. The Scent of Blood: Because any true zombies active at this time of year are most likely Supernatural Zombies, they’re probably going to be more rotten, and hence smell a lot worse than a fresher Viral Zombie.  Putrefaction has a scent all its own, and the vast majority of zombie poseurs, even the most hardcore, won’t go the extra mile of smearing rotting meat on their bodies to complete the costume. The Naked and the Dead: Clothing and funeral cerements tend to rot in the grave, and the effort of breaking through a coffin and digging out from six feet of earth tends to destroy burial garments.  It’s extremely unlikely that someone will shuffle around town with his private parts exposed to the wind as part of his zombie costume (though you can’t entirely rule that out). Body Parts: It’s an easy thing to apply white, green, red, and gray splotches of makeup on your face, dress up in carefully torn clothing, limp around, make pitiful moaning noises, and call it a zombie costume.  But you can’t convincingly fake a truly skeletal hand with missing flesh over moving, bony digits.   The most important thing is to make 100% certain of your target before shooting.  That smelly, grunting, half-naked person might be an Occupy protestor, not an actual undead creature.  Don’t shoot until you know beyond a shadow of doubt that the zombie in your sights is a true monster.  If necessary, call out verbal commands.  Even the most “in-character” zombie actor will fill his trousers and stop approaching at the sight of a drawn gun and a proper command to freeze.
Just take behavior and appearance in aggregate before deciding to act on a perceived threat.  What’s unacceptable the other 364 days out of the year can be the norm on Halloween.  Use common sense.  Real zombies don’t ring doorbells looking for candy: they’ll try to break the door down.  Keep an eye out, make sure your children are safe, and have a good time this year.  I can’t speak to the specifics, but I’m quite certain that next year you’ll have more pressing concerns than buying the economy bag of Snickers or Clark bars for the neighborhood kids.
Happy Halloween, and if you're concerned about the safety of yourself and your loved ones at this  dangerous time of year, arm yourself with knowledge and run, don't walk to get your copy of The Ultimate Guide to Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse .

Beyond Lovecraft: Pickman's Model

Several years ago I had the distinct honor of working with Peter Fuller, arguably one of the most talented reproduction armorers alive today. Peter's a true artisan in addition to being a good man, and I'm privileged to call him a friend.

One thing he said to me is that in today's culture it's rare to own something of worth, something you use and look at and treasure that another person made just for you. Furniture, silverware, and even artwork are typically mass-produced and sold as part of a set or created to fill a stylistic niche.  We've lost our connection to the artist, to the craft and effort and sweat it takes to make something valued.

With that in mind, take a look at this short video from my friend Jasper Bark:


As perks go, this can't be beat.  At the brand-new Pickman's Model level you get a physical copy of Beyond Lovecraft, something you can hold in your shaking, horror-numbed hands as you read; an electronic copy of the same to take with you when your hard copy becomes too soaked with fear-sweat to carry; a 100 page behind-the-scenes e-book so you can truly learn what Man Was Not Meant to Know; your name inscribed on the honor roll of contributors for bragging rights; shout-outs on social media so everyone in the world knows just what kind of disturbing stuff you're into; and that most priceless thing of all: a piece of art by a true artist created just for you.

There are only ten Pickman's Model slots available, so don't wait until the last minute to see if there are any left: get yours right now.

Even if you can't afford your slot at the moment, please do what you can to support this extraordinary project by sharing the Beyond Lovecraft Indiegogo campaign link: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/be...

Friday Links: Bad Apples, Baked Apples, and The Duke of Burgundy

Last week's Friday Links had to be canceled due to multiple family engagements, so I'm making up for it with an extra special Friday Links, just for you.  Yes, you.  Let's get after it:
It's been all Bad Apples all the time this week at Nev Murray's  Confessions of a Reviewer!! : "So it’s my turn to confess. I have had this on my Kindle since it was released last year and have never gotten around to reading it. I am slapping the back of my hand as I type. Know how difficult that is?"  Read on to find out!Continuing our apples theme,  Ghost Hunting Theories  showed us some very neat things to do with everyone's favorite fall fruit. The Horror!?  delved into early 80's nostalgia by discussing the slasher film My Bloody Valentine: "George Mihalka’s Canadian slasher is one of the handful of entries in the sub-genre I truly love, so it’s no surprise finally getting around to watching the uncut version of the film doesn’t change much about my opinion."Sean Eaton analyzed Edmond Hamilton's The Earth-Brain at his always readable, always trenchant  R'lyeh Tribune : "In The Earth-Brain, adventurer Clark Landon has become a human epicenter for unusual earthquakes and seismic activity wherever he travels in the world.  He avoids the interiors of tall buildings and keeps far away from mountains to avoid avalanches.  Cities in Newfoundland, Norway, Russia, Egypt, Italy and other places are ruined as he travels through them, and thousands die amidst the rubble.  He is wracked by guilt and terror—cursed for an act of sacrilege committed a couple of years before." At Jim Mcleod's Ginger Nuts of Horror , Alex Davis tackled the horrific film Aftermath: "The visuals leave little to the imagination, but one thing that is effective in the first half of the movie – and even more so in the second – is the use of sound. The music in the film is used very sparingly, so what we mostly have is a funereal silence (not a word of dialogue spoken by any of the characters) punctuated by the crunching of bone, the squelching removal of organs and the insidious sound of saws and knives cutting through flesh." The Ringmaster's Realm  reviewed Wyrmwood - Road of the Dead: "Recently, I have been staying far away from the zombie genre, as many of the films that have been coming out lately seem tired and played out. Fortunately, I am glad that I picked this one, because it took an interesting route outside of the box and created something rather original." (Interested readers can check out my review of  Wyrmwood  here.)At Zombos' Closet of Horror , Zombos presented the Jungle Woman pressbook, which demands your attention.  Note the name of the actress playing the titular character.The bizarre movie The Duke of Burgundy was an interesting topic of discussion at The House of Self-Indulgence : "I liked how the relationship in this film was two women, as opposed to a man and a woman. What I mean is, I'm glad it wasn't a man dominating a woman; I can't stand maledom. And while it's true, I do prefer femdom. The relationship depicted in this film can't really be classified as "femdom," as it doesn't properly identify who the dominate party is, and both parties are women." Here , I talked about a very good bad guy and described that careful face people sometimes put on.Illustration by Earl Geier for Call of Cthulhu's Blood Brothers 2 supplement.

That Careful Face

My son was a difficult baby to feed: he would frequently pull his mouth off the nipple and arch his back, transforming what would normally be a brief experience into a frustrating ordeal.  He was obviously hungry, but something kept him from an easy feed.  He also spit up a lot.  A lot.  Our pediatrician told us that it was likely acid reflux, and suggested we try different brands and types of formula.

Over the course of weeks, we found that some formulas turned his poop slate blue, others seemed to work without giving him heartburn for a day and then he'd return to arching his back, and yet others made no difference.  After a month of muddling through we hired a doula to spend the day with him to see if we were doing something wrong.  It was silly at the time, but when you're sleep-deprived and frustrated, you go with anything that might help.

It wasn't us, obviously.  The doula thought that our son had a problem with his jaw, and recommended a course of expensive physical therapy that might or might not work to correct the issue.  After assiduous Google searching, my wife and I found that this was a suggestion that doulas frequently made when dealing with a problem like my son had.  You've heard the expression, "When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail," right?  Also, there was a minuscule chance that this treatment might kill him.

When we took our son to the pediatrician for his next checkup and explained what the doula said, the pediatrician's face took on a very careful, bland expression.  She said that such a thing might work, or it might not; she wasn't familiar with the treatment.  After the appointment, my wife and I talked about it and had independently come to the conclusion that the pediatrician thought the doula was full of shit, but didn't want to say it straight out.  Eventually my son grew out of whatever problem he was having and doesn't complain of heartburn of any kind, though for some reason he doesn't like carrots.  I mean, who doesn't like carrots?

A few years and several hundred miles later, I found myself in a dentist chair on Florida's west coast.  The dentist told me that I had gum disease due to infrequent flossing, and the only treatment would be Lanap laser gum surgery.  Luckily, they had a Lanap laser device right there in the office and could set up an appointment right away that would only cost a great deal of money, instead of all the money I had or could ever hope to make.
Remember: when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.  The corollary is, "When you have an expensive piece of equipment you'll find thousands of reasons to use it."  With that in mind, I asked the dentist (once she'd taken the hook and mirror from my mouth), "Will my gums heal over time if I return to regular flossing?"

The dentist and the dental assistant shared a look with each other over my recumbent form, and in that moment I knew I had asked the right question.  The dentist carefully allowed that such a thing wasn't unheard of, but it would still be better to zap the hell out of my horribly leprous gums with laser fire just to be sure.  I told them I would take that under advisement, wiped the infected drool from my chin, and left to buy more floss.

Pleasantly, I still have all of my teeth, including the wisdom teeth.

Face-to-face, most people don't want to disagree with you.  They'll mask it behind that careful facade, even when pressed.  When you're observant, when you examine not just what they say but how they say it, you'll sometimes get to the truth.

The Bad Guy

One of my all-time favorite television shows was Rome . The friendship between Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus, the dysfunctional family dynamics among the upper and lower classes, the fall of Gaius Julius Caesar and the rise of Octavian, Antony and Cleopatra, the casual bloodletting and English accents. Great stuff.

The show lasted two seasons, and in my disappointment at its finale, I turned to Spartacus (or, as I think of it, Spartacus: Blood and Tits). What it lacked in Rome's historical accuracy it made up for in cartoonish violence, naked people of both genders, and very uneven writing. The dialogue is at times lyrical and witty, at other times ludicrous (one memorable scene has a wealthy Roman rogering one of his house slaves, and in the throes of passion, grunts to a nearby male slave, "Ungh. Put cock in arse."). For reasons I haven't bothered to research, none of the characters in the show use possessive pronouns in conversation.

The hero, Spartacus, is in large part a vanilla do-gooder, lacking depth. His best friend Crixus is an unremittingly unlikable jerk. Every Roman woman is a manipulative, deceitful, wig-wearing harpy two steps away from murder.

For me, the best part of the show was Ashur. I'm one of those people who roots for the bad guy, and if you want to see a great bad guy, Ashur's your man. He's cleverly written, but what elevates him is his performance by
It's the sign of a good story that it excites an emotional response in the reader or viewer (other than contempt for the entire enterprise). I cheered when Glaber died with a gladius down his throat and mourned at Ashur's loss. So Spartacus: Blood and Tits isn't an entire waste of time.

One of the reasons why I'm writing my Armageddon trilogy the way I am is that I want the reader to see what the bad guys are up to and why. Who would want to fight on the side of Hell when the world's at stake? What motivates them? One reviewer said of The Blessed Man and the Witch, "It was sometimes hard to know the good guys from the bad guys." Not because the bad guys weren't bad, but because the bad guys had realistic motivations, like real people do.

It's okay to root for the bad guy, as long as he's an interesting bad guy. At least that's what I tell myself.