Friday Links: Purity, Bituminous Coal, and The Plague of Zombies

Amazingly, it doesn’t appear that any celebrities have died this week. While you’re celebrating that, take a look back at what happened over the last several days in the world of the strange, bizarre, and horrific.

Jon’s Random Acts of Geekery brought us some sci-fi pulp covers that demand your attention. There’s a topless Lamia (SFW), an unhappy-looking cat with blue eyes, and a big green guy who may be a god.
In addition to it being Nev Murray’s blogiversary, the indefatigable Mr. Murray reviewed William Malmborg’s novel Santa Took Them at Confessions of a Reviewer!! : “William Malmborg never makes things that simple though. I am not going to give anymore away in the plot but I will tell you there are more twists and turns in this story than the biggest roller coaster in the world! Just when you think the story is going in one direction and you have it all figured out, Mr Malmborg pulls the rug from under your feet, wraps you up in it and throws you down a very big hill, until you hit the bottom and fall out with your eyes spinning in your head!”
Silent-P reviewed the 2005 film Cry_Wolf at The Slaughtered Bird : “Who doesn’t love a masked slasher mystery? Bunch of kids get together, tell scary stories, get into fights, sleep with each other and slowly get picked off one by one by someone, who, more than likely, is one of them. It’s a formula that’s been tried and tested, repeated and plagiarised. Some pull it off well, others not so much.”
Something a little different from the standard monster fare fell out of Zombos’ Closet , but it’s definitely worth a good look: “What’s intriguing in this advertisement for the bituminous coal industry are the use of the stereotypical 1950s housewife taking some serious umbrage from the Puritans, and the small-print patriotic blurb that reads “The contributions of the Bituminous Coal Industry are typical of the many ways in which the people benefit when business enterprise is allowed to operate freely as it is in the U.S.A.”” I know, I know. Look at it anyway: it’s hysterical.
A home in Indiana that reportedly housed demonically-possessed children has been demolished: “The residence, in Gary, Indiana, was destroyed two weeks by Zak Bagans, a host and producer of the show Ghost Adventures. It was filmed for a documentary he plans to release later this year. Bagans bought the home back in 2014 for $35,000 after Latoya Ammons reported that she and her three children had been possessed by demons while living there, a claim which was later backed up by members of the local police department and workers from the Indiana Department of Child Services.”
At one of my favorite places on the internet, the unmissable R’lyeh Tribune , Sean Eaton deconstructed Thomas Ligotti’s Purity: “The intricately balanced, symmetrical structure of the story is impressive. In Daniel’s family, father-and-son and mother-and-daughter are dyads that exist in completely separate worlds that do not communicate. By the end of the story, there is a victim left in the basement of both houses, bereft of cash, sanity, and in one case, life. Both families have to flee to new houses as a result of horrific events, a process the author implies will occur again and again in the future.”
Horror Movie a Day analyzed the 1966 Hammer horror film The Plague of Zombies: “Indeed, the film has a vague Frankenstein-esque feel at time, particularly Frankenstein Created Woman, as it also has a scene where a girl is terrorized by local thugs and shares that film’s teacher/student relationship between the two male leads. However it should be noted this one came first, so maybe they were just borrowing elements for Frankenstein instead of Plague using familiar/successful material to fall back on as they waded into new territory with the undead.”
If it’s boobs you’re looking for, go no further than to visit Anything Horror ‘s review of Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse: “SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE begins where so many zombie films before it began—in a laboratory. It is night time and the majority of scientists are gone. Left in one lab is a researcher burning the midnight oil and a goofy janitor, Ron (Blake Anderson), who you may recognize from Comedy Central’s WORKAHOLICS). Ron screws up big time and accidentally releases the subject that the scientist was working on, who I’m sure you already guessed is infected with a zombie virus.”
Too Much Horror Fiction reviewed Lawrence Block’s novel Ariel: “Roberta and David Jardell live in an expensive old home in tony Charleston, South Carolina, with their adopted 12-year-old daughter Ariel and newborn son Caleb. Despite living a charmed life, all is not well: since the unexpected conception of Caleb, Roberta has withdrawn from Ariel, who strikes her more and more as an unlovable, unfathomable child, somewhat wiser than her years.”
Here , I pointed you to a book review I wrote at The Slaughtered Bird and gave European women unsolicited advice about how to not get raped.

Illustration by Tom Sullivan for Call of Cthulhu’s Cthulhu Classics supplement.