Friday Links: Master of the World, Ghanaian Exorcists, and Born in Ink

For us here in the states, it was a short week because of President’s Day. That doesn’t mean, however, that lots of things weren’t happening in the world of the bizarre, unusual, and even horrific. So yeah, that means things did happen, double negative notwithstanding. What were those things that happened? Check ’em out!

Holly Evans gave us a teaser of her brand-new urban fantasy series Born in Ink: “An all engulfing darkness filled my mental landscape, it threatened to choke and devour me, yet nothing emerged from it. Taking another deep breath I pushed through the viscous black that filled every inch of the space around me, nothing appeared. Frustration grew after what felt like an eternity of pushing and fighting the memories. There was nothing but black.”
Hayes Hudson’s House of Horror reviewed the Eli Roth film The Green Inferno: “Mr. Roth brings back true horror with this latest project.   If you are tired of all the PG-13 horror films coming out lately, you will be glad to finally see a true, rated R horror film.   The film definitely earns it’s R rating.   There is some extremely graphic gore in this film, as you would expect with a cannibal film.”
Sean Eaton gave us some family history in part three of his series on the theme of basements in horror at his trenchantly erudite R’lyeh Tribune : “It was by way of my most immediate ancestor—my dad—that I first learned about H.P. Lovecraft.  As a youngster I stumbled upon The Colour Out of Space (1927)—which involves considerable staring down into the depths of a bottomless well.  The story appeared in an ancient anthology of science fiction and horror I found on the slowest shelf of my father’s wall of books.  I consumed and re-consumed portions of this poisonous, oddly coloured fruit whenever my parents were not immediately nearby.”
A poltergeist is throwing shisha pipes around a bar in Moscow: “The bar’s owners were so worried they called in the Russian capital’s version of real-life ghostbusters, Laboratoriya Nepozannogo – or the Lab of Unknown. Spooky psychometric tests found powerful magnetic readings inside the bar, indicating a strong spectral presence, said the experts.”
At The Slaughtered Bird , the Blue Took reviewed the 2015 short film Whisper: “Jo Lewis’ Whisper reads as a short in the mould of Trainspotting and The Basketball Diaries – a gritty, grimy 11 minutes of cold-turkeying and dark discomfort – when, in fact, that assumption couldn’t be much further from the truth.”
If you’re interested in government propaganda about Social Security stuffed into a comic book, Jon’s Random Acts of Geekery has it for you in the form of 1958’s effort, Smash-Up at Big Rock!
Nev Murray posted the winning entries of the Confessions Birthday Writing Competition at his Confessions of a Reviewer!! : “Well this post is all about the four winners. Jo and I would like to thank absolutely everyone who entered. Jo thought it would be easy to pick a winner. It wasn’t. She thought the level of talent shown was immense and found it very difficult to eventually pick a winner so went for four, in different categories.”
Ghost Hunting Theories brought us giant skulls from around the world: “The practice of one misshaping a child’s head to be elongated was thought to somehow honor gods, but what if it was made to appear more like the giants who were thought to be gods – ahead of the other man upon the earth, early settlers of the planet…. What if the dominant culture had elongated heads and was superior? Would people rush to look like one of them?”
Islamic Ghanaian exorcists claim that beautiful women who wear revealing clothing are more likely to be possessed by demons : “Mallam Luthfi Jamal-Baba and Mallam Mohammad, exorcists based in Ghana, West Africa, say gorgeous women who wear revealing clothes are asking for trouble from supernatural body snatchers. The pair claim the only way for lookers to stay safe from Satan’s cronies is to wrap up as much as possible.”
Zombos’ Closet disgorged the pressbook of the 1961 movie Master of the World, starring Vincent Price. The cover alone, with a maniacally-grinning Price lifting his arms, is worth at least a click.
Here, I reviewed Valicity Garris’ novel Cross Academy and the 2013 movie I’ll Follow You Down .

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