Stephen Mark Rainey's Blog, page 103

Bold Moon and the Sandy Level Creep

Last night, I headed up to Martinsville to take my mom out for a slightly belated birthday dinner — it was her 80th last week — and returned to Greensboro today, which I did, as I often do, by way of the back roads of Henry County, VA. The route takes me through a little rural community called Sandy Level, which I pretty much consider the southern redneck version of H. P. Lovecraft's Dunwich. There's not much to Sandy Level; just a few houses, a business or two, and a rather spooky old church — the Gospel Light Church, which has been rebuilt nearby, but the original building still stands. Not far from the church, an old fellow I call the Sandy Level Creep stands by the road side with an arm raised in greeting. This is not a Halloween prop (although he may have started that way); he's out there 365 days a year, and he always has a smile and a wave for passersby. Yep, that's him in the photo there. Today, he was accompanied by a tall, bony, shambling figure that sent me a long, hard stare as I drove by; almost certainly one of the local walking dead, of which I'm told there are many. I made it through without mishap, but this is not a place I'd much care to have my automobile break down.
Red oak and red maple trees growing as one
at the Bold Moon Preserve
From there, it was off to the Bold Moon Nature Preserve, where a new geocache had been published. I had been there last year (see "Bold Moon at Twilight," November 11, 2014), and I'd found it a slightly creepy and very endearing location out in northeast Guilford County. When I arrived at the trail head this morning, the place was deserted, mine the only car in the little parking area. It's an easy hike out to where the cache was placed, but just before arriving at ground zero, I had to cross Reedy Fork Creek, which in this area is fairly wide and fast-moving. I did so without mishap, but the briers on the other side did a number on my clothes and exposed skin. I was first to find the cache, which made me happy, but I had just signed the log when I heard the sound of someone — or something — approaching. My god, it was more of the undead! A pair of zombies, sometimes known as the McTwins, were having a time of it getting across the river, so I very cleverly goaded them into crossing at the riskiest point. And then — success! — a wee bit of a splash, and one of the carnivorous monsters uttered a few words of dismay, for there were now wet feet. However, because I can be sporting even when it comes to the walking dead, I offered to share in the first-to-find honors on the new cache.

On the way out, the parking area was no longer empty. More like full and then some, as there was apparently a grand opening ceremony about to commence, which struck me as a little odd since the trail opened over a year ago. No matter, it was kind of nice to be coming off the trail as those folks were preparing to get on it, especially since I had a couple of dangerous-looking zombies in tow. There's always a little spectacle involved with that.

A good morning it was. Tonight... our regular monthly supper club gathering, this time at my place, appropriately Halloween-themed, with It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown in the lineup. Yay!
The old Gospel Light Church building in Sandy Level Clearly the lair of an unearthly horror, not far from the cache. Possibly the McTwins' summer hideaway?

Messiah of Evil

1973's Messiah of Evil , written, produced, and directed by Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, somehow got on my radar several years ago; I recall not the specific circumstances. I do remember that the big draw for me was Anitra Ford, who was one of the original models from The Price Is Right .   I might as well confess that in my young teens, I watched The Price Is Right from time to time because... well... Anitra Ford. Our main female protagonist, however, is a young woman named Arletty, played by Marianna Hill, who comes to a small town on the California coast to find her missing father, an eccentric artist, played by familiar character actor Royal Dano (fresh from Night Gallery ). Another familiar face is Elisha Cook Jr. (fresh from just about every movie from the 60s and early 70s). Now and then, especially during the Halloween season, I find it necessary to load up the DVD and give it a look, largely because of Anitra Ford, but also because it's a creepy-as-hell movie. More than a tad Lovecraftian, with a dash of Mario Bava and George Romero thrown in, Messiah of Evil offers a handful of gory moments, but it's the pervasive sense of the locale and its inhabitants being pretty far off-kilter that makes the film suspenseful and occasionally unnerving.

Indeed, as soon as Arletty arrives in the town of Point Dune, it's clear that something about the town is out of whack. Most of the time, the place is deserted, and the few people in evidence usually appear quiet, sullen, furtive, bringing to mind Lovecraft's description of the town of Innsmouth and its strange, quasi-human population. In her father's studio, Arletty discovers that he has been producing some rather disconcerting artwork: stylized, distinctly creepy portraits painted in duo-tone, a rendering of a huge staircase, a life-sized painting of a figure that resembles Rod Serling from The Twilight Zone . But of her father there is no sign, and no one at the local art shop even knows him.

Soon, Arletty makes the acquaintance of an odd trio who have arrived in town: a young, aristocratic chap named Thom (Michael Greer) and two young women, Toni (Joy Bang) and Laura (Anitra Ford), who appear fascinated by a local legend — that when a blood-red moon appears, as it did a hundred years earlier, a strange darkness will overtake the town. Thom interviews an old man (Elisha Cook Jr.), who claims he has seen the blood moon, a "dark stranger," children eating raw meat, and other bizarre goings-on that suggest everyone in town — except for him — has gone mad. He says the townspeople don't kill him because he's a harmless drunk (a strong parallel to old Zadok Allen in Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"). However, due to their association with with the old man, the threesome is ordered by the motel manager to leave. Reluctantly, Arletty allows them to take up residence with her at her father's place.

To her horror, Arletty begins to have strange cravings for blood, and she feels no pain when she accidentally burns herself — the very kinds of things the old drunkard indicated was happening to others. Her companions appear to be immune to this seemingly contagious condition. Laura, however, desperate to get away from the oppressive studio, ventures out for a walk, only to encounter a truckload of townspeople who appear almost catatonic — except for the driver, a strange albino (Bennie Robinson) who offers her a ride. Against her better judgment, she accepts. To her shock, the driver presents her with a live rat, apparently to eat. When she refuses, he gleefully chows down on it. Disgusted, she gets out of the truck and goes to a nearby supermarket, which, like so many places in town, appears deserted. However, inside, she finds a number of townspeople gathered in the meat department, happily gorging themselves on raw meat. Upon seeing her, they chase her down and, in rather Romero-esque fashion, happily devour her alive and screaming.

Shortly afterward, unaware of her companion's fate, Toni visits the local cinema. Once she goes inside, the theater staff close and lock the building. At first, there is only a handful of people in the auditorium, but as the movie runs (a western featuring Sammy Davis Jr.), more and more townspeople fill up the seats, all silent and robotic in manner. When Toni realizes they are closing in around her, she panics and tries to escape, but the crowd traps her and are soon enjoying a feast of flesh and blood.

Arletty has found her father's journals and, as she reads them, discovers that he underwent the same cravings and lack of pain she has been experiencing. He relates that, in years past, during the blood moon, a dark stranger — a survivor of the Donner Party — came to Point Dune and began converting the locals to a new "religion," which involved worshipping an unknown, evil deity and eating human flesh. While her father is fighting this strange conversion, which is as much physiological as psychological, his will is beginning to falter. He finally appears to her and warns her to get away from Point Dune and never return, but now the evil cravings overwhelm his resistance and he attacks her. To save her life, Arletty throws an oil lantern at him, which sets him alight and finally destroys him.

She and Thom attempt to escape from town, but the rabid townspeople pursue them as they run along the beach. Thom drowns in the ocean, the zombie-like horde captures Arletty, and, at last, the "dark stranger" manifests himself. This character is never fully revealed, though it seems clear that, at least in body, the stranger is Thom. Rather than kill her, he charges Arletty to go forth and spread his evil influence wherever she goes. At the end, we see that she has complied with the stranger's order — only to end up confined in a mental institution.

Messiah of Evil takes its time getting where it's going, relying on an atmosphere of wrongness to keep the viewer engaged — an aspect of the film that earns my whole-hearted approval. I am beyond weary of the slam-bang cuts and endless crashes of deafening noise that are the hallmark of most contemporary horror movies. These tricks do not for horror make. The long, slow scenes that introduce Point Dune, with its weirdly mesmerized inhabitants, these instill far more dread than any clashing, clanging, jumping, and screaming. Most of the more frenetic scenes in Messiah are accompanied not by deafening bursts of sound but by a warbling, whistling electronic score that generates a sense of other-worldliness, of emotional rather than mere physical discomfort.

The first truly bizarre character we meet is the albino played by Bennie Robinson. With his deep baritone voice and penetrating glare, he conveys a unique and ominous presence. When he stops to give Laura a ride and shows her the rats he is carrying, she asks what he's going to do with them. With a hellish chuckle, he says, "I'm going to eat them, that's what I'm going to do with them!" He then proceeds to bite the head off a rat, turn, and smile at her with blood running from the corner of his mouth. It's his delivery of that line and his smile, more than the actual chomping of the rat, that make this scene so disconcerting. Given his early introduction and remarkable screen presence, he appears to be a character bound to play a more significant role in the film than he actually does. After his first few scenes, he fades more or less into the background. Less a shortcoming than a surprise, I would say; still, not presenting him as the actual "dark stranger" seems a wasted opportunity.

The true standout set pieces in the movie are Laura and Toni's death scenes, in the grocery store and the movie theater, respectively. Both are nerve-wracking in their build-up — excruciatingly so. However, both scenes, while ending on violent notes, only suggest the brutality of the young women's deaths; unlike the gory violence of George Romero's zombie films, the less-graphic depiction of these young women being devoured by animalistic humans nonetheless has the power to make one squirm.

Messiah of Evil  is a true product of its time — featuring characters, settings, pacing, and a style that couldn't be reproduced in today's world. But much like Night of the Living Dead , the open window to the past it presents admits a chill that is right here and right now. Certainly, this film is fraught with imperfections and at times falls short of its promise. However, I'll spare you specific examples to keep from going overlong and because, for its better part, the film does deliver, in spades.

Fans of Lovecraft, Romero, and atmospheric horror in general can't go wrong with this one. I rate  Messiah of Evil  a pretty good slew of Damned Rodan's Dirty Firetinis.
Creepy cannibal albino, played by Bennie Robinson Arletty (Marianna Hill) visits the local art shop in search of her father. The odd traveling trio: Thom (Michael Greer), Laura (Anitra Ford), and Toni (Joy Bang) Laura (Anitra Ford) is nonplused by the goings-on at the supermarket. The goings-on at the supermarket The Last Picture Show, at least for Toni (Joy Bang)

The High-Walking Dead

Team Old Fart — "Bloody" Rob Isenhour, Scott "Diefenbaker" Hager, "Yoda" Rob Lee, and Old Rodan — reunited after way too long apart on the geocaching trail, sadly still minus Debbie "Cupdaisy" Shoffner, whose family obligations have kept her too busy for much caching in recent months. It was a damn fine day for it, so we Old Farts made our way out to the game lands/waterfowl impoundment zone between Chapel Hill and Durham for some enjoyable, occasionally rugged hiking and caching. There was a lot of bog, swamp, and mire to make our way through after all the recent rains, but we managed without major mishap or injury, although Bloody Rob lived up to his piratical epithet, as usual. We worried a little about Yoda Rob ascending a precarious, mostly rotten tree to get a cache that needed to be got, but he made it up and down with only a few minor abrasions and a less-than-gentle bumpity-bump on a backward slide that left him with a slightly higher pitched voice for a few minutes. And being such thoughtful souls, we signed a log sheet or two as "Shoffnerless," since we were, in fact, without.

Best location of the day really looked like an apt home for the Walking Dead: a long-abandoned water treatment facility out in the woods, down a forgotten little spur road road off Highway 54. Something was making a heavy clumping and bumping in there as we made our approach, but whatever it was beat a hasty retreat before we could get our eyeballs on it. Make no mistake, any creature that wouldn't beat a hasty retreat at our approach would worry the hell out of me. Just look at us.

I am the winner of today's inadvertent social faux pas. As we were passing a little place called Chubby's Tacos (I shit you not), I noticed on the window of the establishment a cartoony rendering of a hefty mouse or some such critter holding a taco. I said, "Hey, that must be Chubby!" only to realize a second later that a somewhat not really petite woman was at that moment going in the door. She stopped, turned, and gave me a death stare, which highly amused my caching companions. I am sure apologies would ring hollow, though I did not intend to be rude. Not to the woman in question, anyway.

Nineteen finds logged today, with one unfortunate DNF (Did Not Find) — which I just learned from the cache owners was missing because they had picked up the container to make some reparations. Ah, well. I'll be back. Current total number of finds stands at 8,268.

L: How low can you go? R: Shoffnerless Maybe that thumping and bumping in the old water treatment facility was Mom Zombie. Scary place. Why, yes, they do impound waterfowl. Careful; they might impound you too. No. Just no.

Throw Another Activist on the Barbie

I wasn't sure whether I wanted to check out Eli Roth's The Green Inferno , mainly because, well, it's an Eli Roth movie. After Cabin Fever and the two Hostel movies, Roth struck me as very much a one-trick pony. However, having read a few positive remarks about the film — as well some some that one might politely call blistering — watch The Green Inferno I did. While it's not an altogether displeasing movie, little about it alters my original perception of its writer/director. It is, in the way of exploitation movies, exploitative, brutal, graphic, loud, and ultimately silly. It follows the Roth formula to the letter, introducing in its first act a bunch of youthful characters, most of whom are not even a little bit sympathetic and whom you can rest assured will end up in a pickle. If there is any departure, character-wise, from Roth's earlier movies, it's that these youngsters aren't out simply to get their jollies doing mindless young-person things; they appear to have a purpose in life, and an honorable one, at least on the surface: to stop the destruction of the Peruvian rain forest and protect the indigenous tribes therein from being massacred by corrupt developers and the militia that accompanies them.

The story in a nutshell (spoilers):

Swayed by a charismatic activist named Alejandro (Ariel Levy), naïve college freshman Justine (Lorenza Izzo) joins his group on their trip to Peru. They successfully stop — at least temporarily — a crew of developers and their attendant militia from devastating a village deep in the Amazonian rain forest. However, as the group makes a jubilant exit via small charter plane, an engine fire causes it to crash. Several of the young people are killed in the crash, but some, including Justine and Alejandro, survive. Members of the aforementioned tribe now arrive on the scene and, believing the youngsters are part of the team of developers, forcibly drag them back to the village. Neither the students nor any of the tribe speak the other's language, and this communication gap proves a serious obstacle to good relations, a fact made abundantly clear when villagers hack up, cook, and eat Jonah (Aaron Burns), one of the few sympathetic members of the team. Over the next few days, more of the survivors are added to the menu, and things start looking bad in a slightly different vein for Justine, who has been selected to undergo female genital mutilation, another of the tribe's less-than-gentle customs. However, before she meets her unpleasant fate, circumstances arise that allow her to escape the village, and she makes her way back to the original logging site, where she is rescued by the very militia she faced down at the beginning.

Much has been made of the movie's stereotypical portrayal of cannibalistic natives and implied racism. Although I think it's been overplayed, a case could reasonably be made for such a view. On those grounds, there was at least one call to suppress the movie, which I don't think ever gained any momentum (more on this topic in "Ban The Green Inferno," July 16, 2015). While Roth used primitive people, indigenous to a little-explored, remote corner of the earth, as bloodthirsty cannibals, one could also argue that any less-than-desirable portrayal of any minority negatively impacts entire groups. As a writer of fiction, I have great difficulty applying blanket accusations of prejudice and worse over a totally fictional — not to mention implausible — scenario. No, The Green Inferno does not paint the Amazon natives in a pleasant light; neither does it insinuate nor otherwise imply that these characters are actually representative of such people, or that it's anything other than fiction. Whether it's good fiction is certainly debatable. Roth may be guilty of lazy storytelling; or insensitivity; or of nothing more than exploitation for exploitation's sake, which, for better or for worse, is his specialty. Roth uses tropes that might best affect his target audience, and who do you suppose that is?  Hostel  offered a negative portrayal of small town Eastern Europe, but we don't jump up on our moral high horses over that one. (Simply because the villains are white?) I hardly think The Green Inferno  is a film of sufficient power to influence anyone's way of thinking about indigenous Amazonian tribes — certainly not anyone with the capacity for critical thought. The most power it has, I should think, would be the power to bring someone's lunch back up.

On that count, for me, it was quite the reverse. I worked up a hell of an appetite sitting in that theater. There's no question the violence is graphic and unsettling, Jonah's murder in particular. Immediately following, there's an effective scene with the villagers, down to the youngest children, happily feasting on the roasted body parts. The atmosphere here, as a matter of fact, is not unlike what one might expect to find at a neighborhood pig pickin'. (And I'd really kind of like to get the recipe they used for slow-cooking Jonah's body; it looked fabulous.)

Despite their savagery, the villagers, however, are not played as particularly evil. Brutal, yes, but many members of the human species behave with brutality against their enemies — and there's no question that in this film, they believe the activists are their enemies, not their allies. Apparently, the tribal mum (Antonieta Pari), takes a shine to Justine, since she decrees that Justine is to undergo an indelicate procedure involving her private parts rather than end up in the cooker. I've found myself a little peeved at certain critical reactions to this scene, in that more than one writer has appeared miffed that the movie makers should expect the audience to feel badly for Justine, since she's white and who knows how many women in cultures around the world undergo such torture. For God's sake, I should be quite the ass if, in real life, I could downplay the trauma this woman would suffer because she is not a minority. Roth, as a storyteller, focuses on the individual he feels is most representative of his audience. I've no doubt that Roth, like it or not, has a fair handle on his target demographics.
Lorenza Izzo as Justine and writer/director Eli Roth on locationThe ending of the movie, which I will not detail here, very nearly stands everything Justine and her late fellow travelers experienced on its head. I have to wonder about Roth's purpose here. Is it to express some kind of faux nobility on Justine's part? Is it pure denial? An exercise in lame irony? Or is it a roundabout way of trying to keep others from going back and experiencing the same horrors she did? And then, as the credits begin to roll, there is one last scene, no doubt in place because Roth isn't quite ready to let us leave the rain forest in peace, that is good for one great big bona fide eye roll.

Nope, Roth didn't hit on all cylinders here, not that I expected him to. Nor did he totally blow it. I cannot go so far as to say I enjoyed this movie; I think to truly enjoy it, you'd have to have more of the sadist about you than I do. And while I can get into some fairly deviant fiction — emphasis on fiction — I tend to stop shy of relishing sadism, except maybe when I'm driving to work in the morning or listening to Fox News. There are a few moments of levity in The Green Inferno that, despite being sophomoric as all get-out, actually caused me to crack a smile. And on the whole, since the movie doesn't lapse into cartoonishness — not much, anyway — it doesn't go south as badly as either Cabin Fever or Hostel , both of which ventured into some pretty chilling territory before turning ridiculous.

I suppose it's fair to say I have some appreciation for this movie, though I have no desire to watch it again. Of course, I believed the same thing about Hostel , until I happened to catch it again when I was in the hospital a few weeks back. It turned out to be a little more engaging than I remembered. Whether I might at some point feel the same about The Green Inferno remains to be seen.
On the plane, before the poop hits the prop Young activists Samantha (Magda Apanowicz) and Amy (Kirby Bliss Blanton) contemplating a hideous fate A lot of this happens in the movie. The tribal elder (Antonieta Pari) enjoys a little tongue. After smoking a bit of high-powered Pervuvian pot, the natives get the munchies.

Red Rage for Christmas

It doesn't happen often — I'd wager no more times than I could count on a couple of fingers — but I creeped myself out the other night. I have a happy little Christmas-themed story titled "Red Rage" set to appear in a couple of months in the new Dark Regions' anthology, Christmas Horror, Vol. 1 , edited by Chris Morey. I wrote the original draft just over a year ago, as the anthology was initially scheduled for release in 2014, but rather than attempt to rush the book out, Dark Regions pushed its release back a year. An astute editor, Mr. Morey had a suggestion for "Red Rage" that proved crucial, and as a result, I'm far happier with it — mainly because, while reworking a scene to accommodate the suggested alteration, I freaking creeped myself out. While I thought the original draft was pretty good, at least by that Rainey guy's standards, nothing in it creeped me out. If the finished version creeped me out, there's no telling what kind of effect it might have on readers, their pets, sunspot activity, continental drift, or anything else. Something dire, I expect.

Now, you wouldn't want to miss out on that. Delve further into this and other horrific offerings over Dark Regions. Order two copies for Christmas — one for yourself and one someone you loathe.

Blue Devil Squadron To Soar Again

[image error] Blue Devil Island cover art by M. Wayne Miller
With its former publisher, Marietta, permanently shuttered, my World War II novel, Blue Devil Island , has been put into the hangar for repairs and is just about ready to soar off again, courtesy of Crossroad Press. It will be first released as an e-book, followed by trade paperback and audio editions. Crossroad Press, for a relatively youthful publisher, has become a first-rate enterprise, with an extensive catalog of work by many of the biggest names in the industry. They've done a killer job with my novels The Nightmare Frontier , The Lebo Coven , and The Monarchs (plus the audio book of Balak ), and I couldn't be more pleased they'll be giving Blue Devil Island the kind of treatment it's needed for quite some time. Happily, the Crossroad editions will retain M. Wayne Miller's beautiful cover art, pictured at left.

THE STORYAUTUMN, 1943: The beginning of the American offensive against the Japanese in the South Pacific. Just west of the Solomon Islands lies a remote, desert island called Conquest, where the U.S. Navy stations a new fighting squadron, led by Lieutenant Commander Drew McLachlan, an ace pilot and veteran of the Battle of Coral Sea.

With his group of air warriors, who call themselves the Blue Devils, McLachlan soars into frequent combat with the Japanese, inflicting serious casualties upon the enemy. However, on the squadron's island home, signs appear that it may not be entirely alone, for in nearby volcanic caves, McLachlan finds evidence of habitation by unknown natives — natives that resemble no known living race, and that may yet exist in the mysterious subterranean catacombs. As the tension on the island mounts, McLachlan is forced to fight on two fronts: against their known enemy, the Japanese, and an unknown, predatory force that leaves mutilated victims as the only evidence of its presence.

As the Solomons campaign enters into its final skirmishes, the Japanese at last turn their attention to Conquest Island. In the final conflict, the Blue Devils find themselves the target of an overwhelming assault by the desperate Imperial Japanese forces—and McLachlan must face the reality that the key to his men’s survival lies deep in the dark and deadly caves of Conquest Island itself.

"...An enjoyable World War II adventure with a science-fiction plot twist. Readers nostalgic for the era's war movies and pulp fiction will enjoy the ride." — Publisher's Weekly
You may read an excerpt here. And do stay tuned for all the news that is the news across the nation....

Willow Creek: Fearing the Unseen

I seem to have stumbled into a mess of found-footage horror movies lately, not so much because the style appeals to me (it really kinda doesn't) but because several of the subjects I do enjoy — ghosties, trolls, and bigfeet — apparently also appeal to movie makers with an affinity for the form. Bobcat Goldthwait's Willow Creek is the latest of these I've checked out, and I did so mainly because a couple of writers whose opinions I trust gave it high marks. With some caveats, I will do the same.

Here there be spoilers.

Willow Creek is about a young couple who set out in search of Bigfoot. Their destination: Bluff Creek, in Six Rivers National Forest, CA, the site of the infamous 1967 Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film. Jim (Bryce Johnson) is a confirmed believer looking to make a documentary about the legendary beast. His girlfriend, Kelley (Alexie Gilmore), though skeptical of the critter's existence, is sporting enough to accompany Jim on his venture. They head out to the wilderness, via the town of Willow Creek, a.k.a. the Bigfoot Capital of the World. We have a few lighthearted moments here, especially at some of the establishments that actually exist, but soon enough, things start looking a bit hairy. In town, they find posters displaying a photograph of a woman who has recently gone missing. And immediately they reach the old logging road that leads to the filming site, an unfriendly local accosts them and warns them to get the hell out of there and return to town. But having come this far, Jim refuses to abandon his plans and finds another route to his destination.

Once the couple has set up camp, they take a swim break at a nearby stream. However, when they return to their campsite, they find it in shambles. Figuring it to be the work of a curious bear, they resolve to be more cautious, but the incident does little to dampen Jim's mood. After sundown, though, exuberance gives way to trepidation as the couple hear strange noises in the darkness. Indeed, the sounds — ranging from inexplicable knocking to bizarre vocalizations — move steadily closer. And it isn't long before Jim and Kelley — and we, the audience — discover the source of the sounds.

It's sort of what you expect, but sort of not.

Willow Creek breaks no new ground, none, following the formula established by The Blair Witch Project to a tee. A crucial difference, however, is the fact that the two main characters in Willow Creek , unlike the former film (and so many other horror movies with youthful protagonists), are not obnoxious idiots. While perhaps myopic and foolish enough to make you want to give each of them an occasional swift kick, Jim and Kelley make for a believable couple, and even his Bigfoot mania isn't so over the top as to be ridiculous. Having some positive emotional investment in the characters shouldn't be such a breath of fresh air, but this is an aspect of characterization that movie makers have failed to understand from time immemorial — particularly in the realm of horror movies, where I would argue that a positive emotional connection is most needed.

Until Jim and Kelley retire to their tent after dark, there hasn't been much in the way of suspense. But when it kicks in, it kicks in, and I can safely say that, as one who frequents the woods and has been an avid camper, I haven't been so riveted by a movie scene since a nurse got her head chopped (just off camera) in William Peter Blatty's mostly excellent Exorcist III . The power in the scene in Willow Creek comes not from any visual effect; in fact, for 17 full minutes, the camera is focused solely on Jim and Kelley, listening, inside their tent. And the sounds coming from the woods could not be more disconcerting. As the camera comes on, we see Jim gazing into space wearing a curious expression, and Kelley stirs beside him. He tells her he has heard a knocking sound in the forest, but she doesn't hear anything. Neither do we — until a few moments later, a distinct knocking does echo from the distance. Gradually, more sounds rise out of the night: weird, muted sounds that might be voices, or perhaps low, non-human vocalizations; rustling; increasingly loud knocking. And as the source of these noises draws nearer, it's easy to feel as if we are right there with the characters. As Jim's fascination turns to fear, one might just feel compelled to get the hell out of, well, wherever the hell you're watching the movie.

The staging in these last few minutes is not quite spot on. Once Jim and Kelley do leave their tent, too much time is spent with the camera simply aimed at their faces. It only stands to reason that if there's something out there in the woods, and you're bound and determined to keep that camera running, you'd be trying to record whatever is out there and not your every facial expression. To put a more positive spin on it, at least this keeps the shaking, weaving, lurching camera work — the single biggest blunder of found-footage movies — to a bare minimum.

Without completely giving away the ending, I'll mention that at no time do we actually see Bigfoot — and in this movie, that's a clear positive. We don't need to see Bigfoot. The things we've heard are far more convincing than any image. The movie Exists (reviewed here), which in many ways blew beans, did present us with an excellent visual depiction of ye Sasquatch; but in Willow Creek , we're better left with the one disturbing visual it does afford us just before the movie ends. And because there is at least some emotional investment in these characters, there's a deeper sense of tragedy than one could derive from Exists , or The Blair Witch Project , or (insert most any teenage victim movie title here) during which most of us are praying for the characters to die and thus put us out of their misery.

I haven't read many positive reviews of Willow Creek , and to some extent, I can understand the lack of love. As I said, we're not breaking any new ground. There's no big visual payoff. Some viewers find the protagonists as vacuous those in The Blair Witch Project ; I disagree but I do grant that these people are not colorful, deep, or particularly clever. I find them to be individuals who might be my next-door neighbors (actually, sadly, my former next-door neighbors). In this movie, these characters are just made to order.

What shines in Willow Creek is its superior immersion factor. I am in this movie. I am loving the gorgeous forest scenery. I am hearing those inexplicable noises in the dark. And I am feeling the terror build as the sounds move nearer. And what happens in those 17 minutes in the dark in that tent, well, that is precisely what pushes my fear buttons.

3.5 out 5 Damned Rodan's Dirty Firetinis.
Jim interviews Bigfoot for his documentary in the town of Willow Creek, the "Bigfoot Capital of the World" Jim and Kelley enjoy Bigfoot Burgers at The Bigfoot Restaurant in Willow Creek — a real treat at a real location. Jim gives an on-the-spot report at Bluff Creek, the site of the infamous 1967 Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film clip Noises in the dark wake Jim and Kelley in the middle of the night. Something is out there. But Bigfoot beware! Kelley is brandishing a big stick!

The Equinox Devil, Part Deux

I love it when there's a perfect storm of some of my favorite things in life — my lovely girlfriend, geocaching, scary stuff, wine, autumn, and a picturesque location — such as last night's Autumn Equinox geocaching event in the quaint village of Bethania, just up the road from Winston-Salem, NC. The host, Ms. Vicky "Honeychile" Hallenbeck, put together a wonderful little event at Belle La Vie Studio, featuring geocachers, wine, delicious snacks, personalized trackable items, and... the Fugue Devil! If you've read "Fugue Devil" or any of my blogs about it (such as "The Equinox Devil" from September 3), you'll know that the Fugue Devil is known to appear at midnight on the Autumn Equinox. If you know about it, it knows about you. And if you see it, it will come for you. A few weeks ago, I had mentioned in my "will attend" log for the Equinox event that this just might be the night the Fugue Devil appears to go about its ugly business. Much to my surprise, Ms. Honeychile apparently took the story to heart.
Ms. B. looking a little dangerous herself
The business wasn't terribly ugly, but the Fugue Devil did appear last night. Ms. Honeychile not only placed a new cache called "Fugue Devil" near the Bethania Village Mill Shoppes, where the event was held, she also created a set of trackable buttons bearing the beast's image as it appears on the back cover of my collection Other Gods (art by M. Wayne Miller). These turned out to be so nice that, as an impromptu door prize, I decided to offer up one of my very few copies of the original edition of Fugue Devil & Other Weird Horrors , published by Macabre, Inc., in 1992 — long out of print and exceedingly rare. When I drew the name of the unlucky winner, who should it turn out to be but Mr. Tom "Night-hawk" Kidd — at which time a certain spontaneous expletive came unbidden to my lips. (No, I don't have Tourette's or anything; it's merely my involuntary response to insurance men.) I do hope no one was offended! (Sorry, Pastor Jay!) In any event, congratulations to the old man, and may he enjoy his prize without an accompanying visitation.

To make a nice evening nicer, Ms. B. and I had an excellent dinner at Silos Bistro in Reynolda Village, I got a first-to-find on a new cache in Winston, and we finished up with a last glass of wine at Rioja Wine Bar in Greensboro.

All I can say is, after these last few weeks, some good horror was just the ticket. I'm so pleased to have been able to share it with a great bunch of folks.
The (un)lucky winner with the writer and a lovely lady

Marsh-a, Marsh-a, Marsh-a

It pains me to say I've had a rather disagreeable summer, with more things going wrong — hellishly and expensively so — in a short span of time than the law ought to allow. However, on the positive side, the geocaching this summer has been most satisfying, as I've managed to claim a number of old nemeses. A few weeks ago, I found "Pirates of the Seven Lakes," an aged but recently refurbished multi-stage cache that required hikes of varying degrees of difficulty on several different trails ("Pirates," August 11, 2015); last weekend, I picked up "Vanishing Point," which had been doing its best to drive me to excessive drinking ("Arch-Nemesis," September 13, 2015); and today, at least two years since starting after its first few stages, I finally knocked out "Marsh-a, Marsh-a, Marsh-a" (GC18NT4), one of the few trail hides in Greensboro I had yet to claim. Marsh-a is the work of my frequent caching partner, "Bloody" Rob Isenhour, and his cohort, Sarah "Sssharkie" Stevens, though the cache been out there in the wild since before I even knew either of them.

As you might guess, Marsh-a is so named for the very dense, very wild marsh along Reedy Fork Creek, which connects Lakes Brandt and Townsend, just north of Greensboro. The first few stages are close to the Reedy Fork Trail, and while they're challenging enough in their own right, they don't really take you into the thick of it. That's reserved for last couple of stages, and the final, more often than not, is only accessible by boat or by swimming. Since I don't have the first item and am not overly keen on the second — at least in this environment — hunting that final stage has not been number one on the priority list. I had found the first few stages a couple of years ago, but at that time, the lake was high, so old Rodan ended up retreating in defeat. Recently, though, the lake levels have been very low, so today I decided to have another go at it. After hiding a new cache of my own on the nearby Blue Heron Trail, I made the lengthy hike out the Reedy Fork Trail, and — what do you know — reaching ground zero on foot looked more promising than it had on previous excursions.

Still — ye gods, what a monster! Though the water had receded, the reeds, briers, and brambles between the trail and ground zero looked ominous, almost impenetrable. But with the cache only 500-some feet away, there was nothing for it but to make my way into this darkest of marshy thickets. For about half the distance, I had to hack my way through grasses that rose higher than my head, and just beyond my line of sight, I could hear things slithering through the reeds and hopping into murky pools. It's been a mean season for Copperheads, and as they're particularly active at this time of year, I took pains to make my presence known to any lurking specimens well in advance. As I emerged from the reeds, I came upon the dry creek bed, where I discovered a very large pile of bones; perhaps a deer, perhaps something... other.

The last hundred feet was the most difficult. Tangles of briers and creepers made forward progress painfully slow. But when I was about 50 feet from ground zero, I spied the cache: an ammo box tethered to a huge, partially collapsed tree. I knew it had been out here since early 2008 and had not been found for well over a year. Much to my delight, I found the can in excellent condition, the contents clean and dry, almost pristine. Apart from the age of the some of the items within (particularly certain devices that would have been considered high-tech in their day), one might think the cache had been hidden yesterday.
The cache is in there somewhere....With my signature on the log, the deed was done, and now I had to make my way back to the trail. Easy enough, I figured, if I retraced my steps. I had certainly left a mean geotrail through the reeds. Or so I thought. The first hundred feet or so, I managed to stay on a true course, but somewhere I lost the trail I had hacked, and now I was having to hack my way through it anew. Checking the track record on my GPS, I discovered I had veered some 40 to 50 feet from my inbound path. Simple enough to get back on track, no? Well, no. The marsh had eaten my geotrail. Even when my GPS indicated I was in the middle of the ground I had previously covered, there was no sign of trail. Nothing to do but push onward. And that was when a barbed wire–like strand of briers came whipping forth, slashing me across the face, dislodging my glasses. Thank Yog I was wearing them, though, or I would have ended up stumbling blindly out of there — quite literally. The wounds were not as painful as all that, but there was lots of blood, which was all over my shirt in no time. Once I got a look at the lacerations, it turned out they were fairly small, but deep. And that is one of many reasons I carry a little bottle of Purell with me everywhere I go.

So, finally, I reached the trail safe and sound, if shy a few milliliters of blood. But as Bloody Rob says, "No blood, no glory," and I reckon it's only fitting to shed copious quantities of blood on one of Rob's caches.

At least it wasn't my nose.
No blood, no glory

Timber!

Up goes the bucket... down come the limbs.
Going...going...gone
It's a helluva job, I reckon, going up and down in a bucket with chainsaws and ropes, securing limbs so they don't fall where you don't want them to, buzzing them off the trunk, finally reducing a towering tree to a mere stump in the backyard. I don't think I'd want to do such a job, as an accident in that environment is probably not going to be minor. If you're reading this, and you're one of those guys, then you've got some thoracis.

I hate to lose trees, and if I had my way, I'd live in the middle of a forest rather than surrounded by grass, but sometimes, a tree just has to go. Years ago — sometime in the mid 90s, I guess — a hurricane came through and set one of the big trees in the backyard to leaning. It was otherwise still healthy, so the tree people we called cabled it to a nearby poplar, which helped keep it upright and stable for a good couple of decades. Lately, though, water running through the yard has eroded the soil at the roots to the point the tree has been looking too precarious for comfort. So today it came down. Hated to lose it. Hated to spend the money. But I'd have really hated for it to fall on the neighbors and/or take out my storage shed out back.

Well, then again, neighbors can always be replaced....