In the spirit of Kindertrauma's "Name that Trauma!" feature, I'd like to share this old, strange memory I have. Whether it was from a movie, a TV show, or a particularly vivid dream, I don't know. It's just a fragment of something, but it's pretty freaky as it is. In it, an older couple are checking something in an attic (it may not have been for the first time), and find a doll sitting in a rocking chair, rocking back and forth. Anybody who came up to see this doll was terrified, even though it didn't do anything other than rock in the chair.
Now, a quick Google search doesn't bring up anything like it. Just things like a 100-plus-year-old doll named Robert, and a link to the productivity black hole known as TVTropes (which I will not link to from here, thankyewverymuch.) And, sure, creepy doll movies/TV episodes are a dime a dozen (I did peer into the aforementioned productivity black hole just to see), but I recently stumbled across something interesting that brought this whole thing up in the first place. It's part of a phenomenon I call the Thing in the Chair.
I came across this last week while watching some old episodes of Dark Shadows, a few instances in the space of 10 episodes. First, when governess Rachel went to investigate the mysterious tower room, the cliffhanger showed, just beyond the door, a cradle with two dolls in it, rocked by an unseen hand. Then, after another cast member gets killed and revived via black magic as a zombie, Rachel (again!) wakes up to find him rocking in a chair right next to her bed (another cliffhanger). Interestingly enough, the next episode has a scared-more-than-usual Carl Collins go into the bedroom to confront said zombie, similar to how my memory of the Thing in the Chair plays out.
As of this posting, I haven't seen how the zombie storyline goes from there, but let's look at the math. Dolls are creepy (thank you, doll room in the Million Dollar Museum). In fact, anything resembling a person, yet clearly not alive, but still somehow sitting up (like the aforementioned ambulatory dead guy) is pretty damn creepy. Rocking chairs that rock on their own? You bet that's creepy. Combine them together, and you get the Thing in the Chair (which, surprisingly, doesn't seem to have been used as a title nearly as often as you'd think. Maybe I'll crib it for a ghost story of my own). In fact, I've had a real-life Thing in the Chair moment myself (though, in the interest of tact, I'll not talk about it now.)
Here's where I leave it to you, dear readers. Have you ever come across the Thing in the Chair? Or is there something else, some nagging fear-thing in the back of your mind? Comments are open, so feel free to reply.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Man vs Arbitrary Goal Month
Yikes, did I really go through all of October with only one post to show for it? Not even a post on Halloween? (What kind of blogger with sometimes horror-related content am I?) However, I had an epiphany, just after midnight, that just may change my blogging habits for the better. Now, I hear that blogging about blogging is a sin, but this is something I feel needs to be shared.
Now, there is a certain writing challenge thingy out there on the internets for the whole of November. I'm decidedly not participating this time around, rather than ambivalently not participating like previous years. (Last year, I was psyched up to throw my horror western concept at it, but my user ID apparently got eaten during the registration process. I still don't know how that happened, but I took it as a sign that maybe I didn't want to continue after all.) This particular challenge emphasizes quantity over quality anyway, and given my propensity for self-editing (you don't want to know how many times I re-wrote this sentence), I would either give up entirely or have very little personal time remaining trying to meet that goal.
Monday night, after the Halloween festivities died down (that is to say, some left to make an early night of it, others left to attend the launch of the aforementioned writing challenge thingy, and the rest made repeated attempts to find, somewhere in town, a copy of somewhat-after-my-time witchy kids movie Hocus Pocus (And they call that a Halloween tradition?) Just before I drifted off to sleep, it hit me. What if, instead of focusing on a word-count goal set by someone else, I were to set my own goal in time with something I was already doing? And thus was born Arbitrary Goal Month.
So, here's the gist of it. For the month of November, I'm going to write at least five quality, substantial blog posts. This way, I'm not bound to any one narrative (other than the ongoing text that is my life), and I can self-edit until I have something I deem "passable." Will this experiment work? It's too early to tell (and, having pushed this very post aside for four days, I already have my doubts). At any rate, I'll be around throughout the month, with a few more words here or there. Until next time, have a safe and happy Arbitrary Goal Month!
Now, there is a certain writing challenge thingy out there on the internets for the whole of November. I'm decidedly not participating this time around, rather than ambivalently not participating like previous years. (Last year, I was psyched up to throw my horror western concept at it, but my user ID apparently got eaten during the registration process. I still don't know how that happened, but I took it as a sign that maybe I didn't want to continue after all.) This particular challenge emphasizes quantity over quality anyway, and given my propensity for self-editing (you don't want to know how many times I re-wrote this sentence), I would either give up entirely or have very little personal time remaining trying to meet that goal.
Monday night, after the Halloween festivities died down (that is to say, some left to make an early night of it, others left to attend the launch of the aforementioned writing challenge thingy, and the rest made repeated attempts to find, somewhere in town, a copy of somewhat-after-my-time witchy kids movie Hocus Pocus (And they call that a Halloween tradition?) Just before I drifted off to sleep, it hit me. What if, instead of focusing on a word-count goal set by someone else, I were to set my own goal in time with something I was already doing? And thus was born Arbitrary Goal Month.
So, here's the gist of it. For the month of November, I'm going to write at least five quality, substantial blog posts. This way, I'm not bound to any one narrative (other than the ongoing text that is my life), and I can self-edit until I have something I deem "passable." Will this experiment work? It's too early to tell (and, having pushed this very post aside for four days, I already have my doubts). At any rate, I'll be around throughout the month, with a few more words here or there. Until next time, have a safe and happy Arbitrary Goal Month!
Friday, October 14, 2011
Man vs the Soap Addiction
I'm not ashamed to admit it. When I was in college, I was addicted to a soap opera, to the point where I would tape it during morning classes and come back to my room and watch it at lunch (not entirely unlike the oft-repeated "I used to run home after school to catch it" anecdotes) Of course, since nothing's ever that simple, it was a 30-odd-year-old soap running repeats on a cable channel. Now, serialized storytelling is one of the most dangerously addictive forms of entertainment known to man (due, no doubt, to the Audience's driving urge to know What Happens Next), but add vampires, ghosts, witches, and other horror elements, and I can't help but watch. Yes, I was hooked on Dark Shadows.
In my previous post, I mentioned catching syndicated repeats in the early evening during the "1897 flashback" storyline (before the timeslot was eaten by the infomercial beast), but I also got to see the film House of Dark Shadows on television as well (so used was I to the Victorian trappings of the episodes I saw, I was surprised to learn of the film's more contemporary setting.) The film told an accelerated version of the initial "Barnabas" arc of the series, but got to be a bit less stagey and a bit more bloody. (I didn't get to see the sequel, Night of Dark Shadows, until much later.)
Years passed, and along came college, on-campus housing, and paid cable. A new multitude of viewing options became available, and I soon zeroed in on one bit of something I remembered from my childhood. One station had Dark Shadows available, for two episodes daily! Sure, it was a morning timeslot, while I would be in classes, but that's what VCRs were for, right? After classes, I came back to my room to watch. Barnabas Collins, sometime vampire and former heroic figure, had reluctantly become a villain again, acting on behalf of the Leviathan cult, recruiting a local antiques dealer and his wife for the cult's nefarious needs. Meanwhile, the long-missing, once-believed-dead Paul Stoddard had come back to Collinsport to re-unite with his estranged daughter, and Chris Jennings learns of his Collins ancestry. (Did I mention Chris was a werewolf?) Oh yeah, I was hooked all through the Leviathan plot arc, with the return of Quentin and his groovy sideburns, to Angelique the witch on the side of the angels for once. And then they brought in the abandoned room that lead to the parallel timeline...
Needless to say, I could go on about it. I loved the idea of arcs in different timelines, giving the actors (many of them from the stage) chances to play different characters, though this wasn't without its strangeness (David Selby played four different characters, all named Quentin Collins!) True, the production values rivaled those of '70s Doctor Who, but the line flubs, camera bumps, and other technical mishaps added to the show's weird charm. Its cult status gained it entry into the home video market (to this day, it is the only English language daytime soap with a complete run on DVD), and production company Big Finish, primarily known for their Doctor Who audio adventures (and yes, I do own several of those), also have a range of full cast dramas and audiobooks based on Dark Shadows, featuring original cast members.
However, there is another piece of the story missing. For that, stay tuned...
In my previous post, I mentioned catching syndicated repeats in the early evening during the "1897 flashback" storyline (before the timeslot was eaten by the infomercial beast), but I also got to see the film House of Dark Shadows on television as well (so used was I to the Victorian trappings of the episodes I saw, I was surprised to learn of the film's more contemporary setting.) The film told an accelerated version of the initial "Barnabas" arc of the series, but got to be a bit less stagey and a bit more bloody. (I didn't get to see the sequel, Night of Dark Shadows, until much later.)
Years passed, and along came college, on-campus housing, and paid cable. A new multitude of viewing options became available, and I soon zeroed in on one bit of something I remembered from my childhood. One station had Dark Shadows available, for two episodes daily! Sure, it was a morning timeslot, while I would be in classes, but that's what VCRs were for, right? After classes, I came back to my room to watch. Barnabas Collins, sometime vampire and former heroic figure, had reluctantly become a villain again, acting on behalf of the Leviathan cult, recruiting a local antiques dealer and his wife for the cult's nefarious needs. Meanwhile, the long-missing, once-believed-dead Paul Stoddard had come back to Collinsport to re-unite with his estranged daughter, and Chris Jennings learns of his Collins ancestry. (Did I mention Chris was a werewolf?) Oh yeah, I was hooked all through the Leviathan plot arc, with the return of Quentin and his groovy sideburns, to Angelique the witch on the side of the angels for once. And then they brought in the abandoned room that lead to the parallel timeline...
Needless to say, I could go on about it. I loved the idea of arcs in different timelines, giving the actors (many of them from the stage) chances to play different characters, though this wasn't without its strangeness (David Selby played four different characters, all named Quentin Collins!) True, the production values rivaled those of '70s Doctor Who, but the line flubs, camera bumps, and other technical mishaps added to the show's weird charm. Its cult status gained it entry into the home video market (to this day, it is the only English language daytime soap with a complete run on DVD), and production company Big Finish, primarily known for their Doctor Who audio adventures (and yes, I do own several of those), also have a range of full cast dramas and audiobooks based on Dark Shadows, featuring original cast members.
However, there is another piece of the story missing. For that, stay tuned...
Friday, September 30, 2011
Man vs Channel 27
When I was growing up, television was much more of a cultural touchstone than it is now, especially since we lived on the outskirts of town where there wasn't much within walking distance aside from the Big Pantry convenience store. Don't get me wrong; there was still time for playing or reading or what have you, but television was such a big part of my life it still sometimes surprises me that I don't watch nearly as much of it as I used to.
This, of course, was back in the days when local channels were king of late afternoon, pre-prime-time programming, and cable was just something other people had. Aside from the PBS station, which served as the home of Grover Monster, the Frugal Gourmet, and the Doctor, one channel in particular rose above the rest: Channel 27. With their mix of weekend movies and weird rerun packages, Channel 27 was the go-to channel. Other stations on the dial played it relatively safe with their I Dream of Jeannies, or their Laverne and Shirleys, but Channel 27 hit late evenings with the one-two punch of The Monkees and Gothic soap Dark Shadows (which they replaced with infomercials in the middle of the crazy awesome Victorian werewolf/cursed hand storyline. Not that I'm bitter or anything...) They even ran weird short-lived shows like Ghost Story/Circle of Fear and the quite bonkers The Fantastic Journey.
This, of course, was back in the days when local channels were king of late afternoon, pre-prime-time programming, and cable was just something other people had. Aside from the PBS station, which served as the home of Grover Monster, the Frugal Gourmet, and the Doctor, one channel in particular rose above the rest: Channel 27. With their mix of weekend movies and weird rerun packages, Channel 27 was the go-to channel. Other stations on the dial played it relatively safe with their I Dream of Jeannies, or their Laverne and Shirleys, but Channel 27 hit late evenings with the one-two punch of The Monkees and Gothic soap Dark Shadows (which they replaced with infomercials in the middle of the crazy awesome Victorian werewolf/cursed hand storyline. Not that I'm bitter or anything...) They even ran weird short-lived shows like Ghost Story/Circle of Fear and the quite bonkers The Fantastic Journey.
Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention their "Sci-Fi Saturday" block, a triple feature of schlocky B-movies, British horror, Japanese monster movies, or whatever cheapie films they had the rights to air (sometimes with an episode of Hammer House of Horror thrown in for good measure.) While I liked the schlock-monster flicks just fine, I gravitated more to the horror films they showed. Soon, I was planning my Saturday around which ones to watch and which ones I could afford to skip. Of course, anything with Vincent Price was a given, especially the Dr. Phibes films, and the Poe stories, like Masque of the Red Death. I had a weak spot for anthology films, too, with Doctor Terror’s House of Horrors being a recurring favorite. My first Dracula movie was not the Lugosi film, but Christopher Lee in one of the many Hammer sequels* (I can’t remember the details, but I want to say the hero attempted to dispatch of Dracula by burning his coffin before sunrise, leaving the Count with nowhere to go when the sun came up.) And, yes, if Godzilla Versus the Cosmic Monster came on, you could bet my brother and I both would be right there watching.
It has been a few years since I lived in the Dallas area, but I was saddened to learn some time ago that Sci-Fi Saturday was no more. An infomercial void sits where it used to be. Of course, thanks to things like Netflix and Hulu, I can recreate my own programming block, but there's something to be said about seeing this stuff on TV, week after week. Maybe tomorrow I'll throw on my DVD of Masque of the Red Death, for old time's sake.
*By the way, Dracula was the “safe” Hammer vampire to watch. I remember their airing of “The Vampire Lovers” not sitting well with my Mom, who claimed she saw, uncensored, an exposed breast. I don’t actually remember the incident in question, and I never found another televised airing of “The Vampire Lovers” to find out for sure!
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Man vs the Radio Silence
Just a quick little post to remind myself I'm still around. Some bad stuff went down a couple of days after my last post (I may expand on this later), and my fledgeling blogging activities were the furthest from my mind. While this may be Blogging Cliché Number One, I will be back with more content, like it or not.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Man vs the Cult of Abbadon: Bloody Mallory Review
After seeing it in my Netflix suggestions for a while now, I decided to take the plunge and watch French monster action-pop film Bloody Mallory, and, really, why did I wait so long? This is like the adaptation of a French comic book that never was, but should have been. It's Buffy the Vampire Slayer times The Fifth Element with a dash of Cutie Honey thrown in for good measure.
Olivia Bonamy stars as Mallory, leader of a paranormal commando force who is haunted by the spirit of her dead husband (whom she killed because he was a demon, admittedly, but still...) Oh, and that's not a spoiler, by the way. It's revealed in the opening scene, where a wedding-dress-clad Mallory is shown to be stalking the demonic groom, in a subversion of expectations. Also in Mallory's team are Vena Cava (Jeffrey Ribier), a drag queen demolitions expert (yes, you read that right, and it is every bit as crazy-awesome as it sounds.), and young mute telepath Talking Tina (not the only pop-culture-horror reference here).
After a routine mission against a group of nun-kidnapping ghouls goes wrong, thanks to a mysterious masked figure, the team needs time to recover, and Mallory gets a new assignment: The newly-elected Pope has been kidnapped, and the security footage shows the same masked figure! After consulting with her informant, the aforementioned spirit of her dead demon husband (doomed to wander in limbo due to a demonic technicality), she learns that this is the work of the cult of Abbadon, a old-school fallen angel who wants to open the gates to the Abyss and release his brethren.
While the rest of her team recuperates, Mallory sets out on her own to find the missing Pontiff, tracking supernatural disturbances to a village that got sucked into a hell dimension, where she comes across Papal bodyguard Father Carras (see pop-culture reference, above). They're not alone, though, since Talking Tina, in a coma back home, telepathically hitch-hiked in the brain of a bat, and Vena Cava parachuted in behind them. With our heroes re-united, it's time for another action scene, as they try to fight off a band of cultists. Did I mention Carras could fight, too? ("God will guide my fists," he says.) And I would be remiss if I didn't mention Vena Cava's machine-gun-toed shoes. (No, I don't know how it works, either.)
As it turns out, in Hell Dimension Logic, jumping down a well leads right to the fortress of Abbadon, where cult leaders Morphine, the shapeshifting succubus and Lady Valentine, the aristocratic vampire who survived her run-in with the guillotine (and has the scars to prove it!) prepare for the imminent arrival of the fallen angel himself with the requisite blood-draining and other sundry sacrifices. While it's hard to pick a favorite character in a movie that has both a kung-fu Papal bodyguard and a drag queen demolitions expert, Lady Valentine just may be it. Veteran actress Valentina Vargas plays her with with the right mix of crazy and apathetic, yawning over the use of commoner's blood one minute, and relishing a duel with Mallory the next.
If you think you know where this film is going by now, you may be right. One unfortunately telegraphed plot twist later, Mallory is captured by the baddies, but another encounter with the Former Mister Mallory (who clearly still has feelings for her, despite being a dead demon) gives her the strength she needs to escape her bonds and go after Abbadon before he can open the Abyss and release Hell on earth. As this is a French-language action movie and not a Fulci film, you can probably guess the outcome, but there are still a couple of treats on the way, including a dramatic wig throwing, another bodyhop for Talking Tina, and one more duel between Mallory and Lady Valentine.
What this movie lacks in substance (don't get me wrong, there is some there there, but it just takes some effort to find) it makes up for in style, style, style. From the color-coded costumes to Mallory's taunting pose before jumping down the well to Vena Cava's frequent use of English to just about any scene with Lady Valentine, this movie has the comic book aesthetic all over it. The special effects, unfortunately, tend towards the hokey, but I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt and say it's intentional, just because the movie can't help but be fun. Funnier than Van Helsing, less self-important than Dogma (and with fewer poop jokes, to boot), it's currently available on Netflix Instant Watch in its original French language track. Recommended, especially for those who miss syndicated action dramas (you know who you are) and fans of crazy French action films.
Olivia Bonamy stars as Mallory, leader of a paranormal commando force who is haunted by the spirit of her dead husband (whom she killed because he was a demon, admittedly, but still...) Oh, and that's not a spoiler, by the way. It's revealed in the opening scene, where a wedding-dress-clad Mallory is shown to be stalking the demonic groom, in a subversion of expectations. Also in Mallory's team are Vena Cava (Jeffrey Ribier), a drag queen demolitions expert (yes, you read that right, and it is every bit as crazy-awesome as it sounds.), and young mute telepath Talking Tina (not the only pop-culture-horror reference here).
After a routine mission against a group of nun-kidnapping ghouls goes wrong, thanks to a mysterious masked figure, the team needs time to recover, and Mallory gets a new assignment: The newly-elected Pope has been kidnapped, and the security footage shows the same masked figure! After consulting with her informant, the aforementioned spirit of her dead demon husband (doomed to wander in limbo due to a demonic technicality), she learns that this is the work of the cult of Abbadon, a old-school fallen angel who wants to open the gates to the Abyss and release his brethren.
While the rest of her team recuperates, Mallory sets out on her own to find the missing Pontiff, tracking supernatural disturbances to a village that got sucked into a hell dimension, where she comes across Papal bodyguard Father Carras (see pop-culture reference, above). They're not alone, though, since Talking Tina, in a coma back home, telepathically hitch-hiked in the brain of a bat, and Vena Cava parachuted in behind them. With our heroes re-united, it's time for another action scene, as they try to fight off a band of cultists. Did I mention Carras could fight, too? ("God will guide my fists," he says.) And I would be remiss if I didn't mention Vena Cava's machine-gun-toed shoes. (No, I don't know how it works, either.)
As it turns out, in Hell Dimension Logic, jumping down a well leads right to the fortress of Abbadon, where cult leaders Morphine, the shapeshifting succubus and Lady Valentine, the aristocratic vampire who survived her run-in with the guillotine (and has the scars to prove it!) prepare for the imminent arrival of the fallen angel himself with the requisite blood-draining and other sundry sacrifices. While it's hard to pick a favorite character in a movie that has both a kung-fu Papal bodyguard and a drag queen demolitions expert, Lady Valentine just may be it. Veteran actress Valentina Vargas plays her with with the right mix of crazy and apathetic, yawning over the use of commoner's blood one minute, and relishing a duel with Mallory the next.
If you think you know where this film is going by now, you may be right. One unfortunately telegraphed plot twist later, Mallory is captured by the baddies, but another encounter with the Former Mister Mallory (who clearly still has feelings for her, despite being a dead demon) gives her the strength she needs to escape her bonds and go after Abbadon before he can open the Abyss and release Hell on earth. As this is a French-language action movie and not a Fulci film, you can probably guess the outcome, but there are still a couple of treats on the way, including a dramatic wig throwing, another bodyhop for Talking Tina, and one more duel between Mallory and Lady Valentine.
What this movie lacks in substance (don't get me wrong, there is some there there, but it just takes some effort to find) it makes up for in style, style, style. From the color-coded costumes to Mallory's taunting pose before jumping down the well to Vena Cava's frequent use of English to just about any scene with Lady Valentine, this movie has the comic book aesthetic all over it. The special effects, unfortunately, tend towards the hokey, but I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt and say it's intentional, just because the movie can't help but be fun. Funnier than Van Helsing, less self-important than Dogma (and with fewer poop jokes, to boot), it's currently available on Netflix Instant Watch in its original French language track. Recommended, especially for those who miss syndicated action dramas (you know who you are) and fans of crazy French action films.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Man vs the Last Three Weeks
Initially, when I started this blog, I didn't intend to post about Things that Happened Recently, but this was just too big to let go. To make an unnecessarily long story short, my apartment got flooded less than 48 hours after my last post, forcing me to relocate, first to a temporarily vacant apartment (with no internet connection, but that was the least of my problems), then to the spare bedroom in a friend's home/office, with a third move in the works this month if the currently-staying-with-his-parents roomie and I can find a new place. It was only recently that I motivated myself enough to post again.
Fear not, readers, for regular-ish content will return shortly. I've got a doozy of a review in the works for... ah, but that would be telling. (I need to watch it again to take notes anyway, not that I mind watching it again...) À bientôt...
Fear not, readers, for regular-ish content will return shortly. I've got a doozy of a review in the works for... ah, but that would be telling. (I need to watch it again to take notes anyway, not that I mind watching it again...) À bientôt...
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