Carpenter Makes a Shelf

I have now obtained all of John Carpenter's films. (Not pictured: Dark Star and Elvis, which are on the shelf above.) They're displayed here with action figures of Keith David as Frank Armitage (They Live), Adrienne Barbeau as Stevie Wayne (The Fog), Christine the Plymouth Fury (Christine), and three alien invaders (They Live). 
 

Themes and Nanogenres Mid-Year Check-In

Letterboxd's themes and nanogenres tracking is a fun idea, but it's taking a long time to tag the hundreds of thousands of films on the site. Hence, I'm sure I've seen more than 33 "Moving Relationship Stories" this year. 

I feel kind of accused by "Intense Violence and Sexual Transgression" appearing in my top ten themes. I don't shy away from that sort of thing, but I'm not actively looking either. My affection for the horror genre probably has something to do with it. 
 

A Minor Thrill from Thriller

 

From 1960 to 1962, Boris Karloff hosted Thriller, an anthology of suspense and horror stories. Midway through the first season, early in 1961, "The Hungry Glass" aired. It's a story about a young couple who buy an old mansion in Cape Caution, New England. As if that name weren't enough, the locals consider the mansion haunted, perturbed by the previous owners who removed all mirrors from the house. 

The new owners are played by William Shatner and Joanna Heyes; they're escorted to the mansion by their realtor and his wife--Russell Johnson and Elizabeth Allen. 

Before watching this episode, I had no idea that two actors so foundational to my tastes in popular culture had ever appeared in anything together. As Captain James T. Kirk and Professor Roy Hinkley, these two men left a strong impression on my young mind. Kirk was strong, compassionate, intelligent, decisive; the Professor was brilliant, inventive, curious, and somewhat gawky--a quality that I felt I shared. 

In "The Hungry Glass," the two characters played by Shatner and Hinkley start off friendly, then adversarial as the house starts to make Shatner paranoid. Haunted by his trauma from the Korean War, Shatner begins to see things--unexplainable double exposures in his photographs, faces in the glass. Hinkley manages to talk some sense into him--until Shatner's wife screams from upstairs. Shatner charges up and sees her being dragged into a mirror by ghosts. He grabs a poker and smashes the mirror, intending to chase after her--only to be stopped by Johnson, who reveals that Shatner, in his delerium, has actually killed his wife with the poker. 

Minutes later, as Johnson and his wife attempt to console Shatner, his wife's ghost appears in the upstairs window and beckons him forth; Shatner leaps through the window, to his death, to be with her. Johnson's wife faints, and he sees the ghosts of the doomed lovers; he carries his wife to safety. 

It's a grim, heartbreaking story, one that sees the violent dissolution of one marriage, two potentially close friendships (the two wives were becoming closer), and trauma for the survivors. Johnson and Shatner play off against each other really well. I wonder if anyone ever asked either of them what it was like to work together. I'd love to know. 

An Uncanny Obsession

The very best horror films are also tragedies. Obsession (Curry Barker, 2025) will haunt anyone who ever pined for someone beyond their reach; anyone who realized too late their true love was there all along; anyone who had to bear the guilt of not returning the love of someone they merely liked. 

Such is the tragedy of Bear, who loves Nikki; Nikki, who sees Bear as a little brother; and Sarah, who loves Bear. And Bear again, for not realizing that last truth until it's too late to even ponder it. And Ian, trying to be the best friend he can to the others, bewildered, concerned, helpless, powerless, and doomed. 

The uncanny is the most potent form of horror. It is malevolence for the sake of malevolence, striking out at the vulnerable, wreaking anguish just because it can and for no other reason. Bear, Nikki, Sarah, and Ian are all demonstrably good people who genuinely care for each other; their friendships, had the uncanny not intruded, could have ebbed and flowed into something more or something less; whatever happened would have been better than this modern variation of "The Monkey's Paw." 

The scariest thing about Obsession is how real it feels. The uncanny takes the form of the banal here--capitalist trinkets selling dreams for handfuls of change, complete with disclaimers and retro branding for nostalgic appeal. Break the One Wish Willow and your wish will come true--but we keep forgetting that in the fables, wishes never quite turn out the way you expect. In life as it is in horror. 

I really cared for these four young people, though I knew they were doomed from the start. The knowledge doesn't ease the heartache. Yes, this is a fiction, a scary parable--but it's a mirror of the fear and chaos that disrupts lives from out of nowhere. It happens to the luckiest of us, somewhere, sometime, and if it hasn't happened to you yet, just wait a while; it will. 

Salem's Lot Boo Boo

Today a lovely special edition of Tobe Hooper's adaptation of Stephen King's Salem's Lot appeared on my doorstep. It comes with a two-sided poster, a "Welcome to Salem's Lot" sticker, and a handsome perfect-bound booklet that collects essays about the miniseries. 

Alas, sometime during the editing process, someone--more likely, multiple people--missed adding the name of Bonnie Bedelia's character to the cast list. For the record, Bedelia played the ill-fated Susan Norton. 

DANGER LIVE BRAIN MAD HUMAN

In this jar a living brain
A silent scream its one refrain
While I consider, stern and smug
My floating captive in its jug
"This would give me
A whole lot of negative karma in Fallout: New Vegas" 
 

VULTURE MAN HORROR

What mad work of genius is this? I can't wait to find out. 
 

The Hate Pumpkin

Back in the mid-80s, Sean posed for a photograph while holding a jack-o-lantern up in front of his face to make himself look like he had a pumpkin for a head. I just asked Google Gemini to turn that image into a movie poster. It took just seconds. 

I'm not against using generative AI to play around and have fun, but I hate the impact it's already having on working artists. At the very least, everyone who's had their art scraped should be compensated. But how can we make that happen? At this rate, a universal basic income funded by the 1% will be the only thing that prevents the vast majority of people from sliding into destitution. 

 

When the Monsters Came to Edmonton

Sylvia and I went for a slow, cautious, leisurely drive around west Edmonton last night to see some Halloween decorations. Here are some of our favourites: 

I didn't get a photo, but I think our best creepy moment of the night was passing by some maniac who dressed up as Michael Meyers (from John Carpenter's 1980 slasher, Halloween). Whoever created the costume and played the role did a masterful job of looking really threatening without really doing anything other than standing still and staring out from blank, featureless eyes. Yikes! 

Have a Boo-tiful Halloween

The Creature vs the Invisible Man

SAVAGE GILL-MAN STRIKES AGAIN

4 DEAD IN EVERGLADES MASSACRE

Florida City--Four are dead in the wake of the latest attack of the so-called "Gill-Man." Names of the victims have not yet been released pending the notification of their loved ones.

The four were killed by the Gill-Man while sunbathing at Pelican Cay yesterday afternoon. None of the victims knew each other, according to eyewitness accounts.

"It came out of the swamp like a thing from hell itself," said Maribel Frost, a vacationer. "I recognized the awful thing from the newsreels. Those eyes! The claws! It tore through those people something terrible. Just sliced them up for no reason at all."

Citizens of south Florida are calling for more action from the authorities. Chief of Police Hayrock Tamshill says his department has called in a "special expert" to assess the situation, but refused to comment further . . .



"You're sure you know what you're doing?" asked the police chief. He had a hard time looking at the strange little man next to him, who must have been sweltering in his long overcoat and black fedora. The sun beat down mercilessly on the asphalt.

Jack Griffin tittered behind the bandages wrapped around his head. "Why am I here again?" he asked, his voice half-muted by the thick cloth.

Tamshill cocked his head down at Griffin. "The brass up at Miskatonic said you had the talent and the moxie to take care of the Gill-Man. You don't remember?"

Griffin clapped his bandaged hands together. "Ah! The creature from the black lagoon, yes! Gill Man, Gill Man, pray thee take a pill, man! Ha ha! Wondrous, yes. Take care of my things, will you?"

With that, Jack Griffin tossed his hat to the ground and shrugged out of his overcoat. Piece by piece, he removed his clothing: vest, shirt, slacks, shoes. Beneath these accoutrements his entire form was wrapped tight in those same white bandages; a pair of dark glasses covered his eyes.

Tamshill asked no questions. He'd learned it was best to stay quiet and obey orders when strangers came down from Miskatonic. If they thought this eccentric little man could rid Florida of the creature, he wouldn't argue.

But when Griffin handed over his glasses, Tamshill gasped involuntarily, staggering backward and nearly losing his balance. For where Griffin's eyes should have been there was only darkness.

Griffin tittered again.

"Look into a man's eyes and see his soul!" Griffin said. He reached behind his head and began unwrapping the bandages.

Griffin had no head! Tamshill took another step back. As lengths of cloth coiled on the road, more and more of Griffin's essential nothingness was revealed. He had no visible form at all, as if his clothes had been placed on a mannequin of perfect glass, glass so fine it reflected not, refracted naught.

"I'm the invisible man!" cried the nothingness where Griffin had once stood. "I'm the invisible man! Incredible how you can see right through me!"

There was a splash. Tamshill snapped his gaze in the direction of the sound, and saw ripples in the swamp water--ripples with no observable cause. After a moment, some air bubbles percolated to the surface; they popped silently, and then the water was still.

Tamshill sat cross-legged on the edge of the road. He'd been told to watch. So watch he would.

Gradually, the sun sank over his left shoulder, casting longer and longer shadows. Soon it was just Tamshill and the darkness and the silence; not even the insects were stirring.

Even at night, the heat was oppressive. There was no escape from it, so Tamshill stewed in his own sweat, his uniform sticky and cloying.

He fell into a fitful sleep, his head hanging down against his chest. He dreamed that his eyes were gone, but he could somehow see the empty sockets when he looked at his face in a mirror. His wife saw this and wailed, her body stiffening and then transforming into water, which held her form for a second and then crashed to the bathroom floor, washing down an air vent that was for some reason covered in moss.

Tepid water splashed him in the face, and Tamshill woke to horror.

The Gill-Man stood before him, shrieking in uncanny rage and pain. The monster's green skin had turned translucent; Tamshill could see thing thing's internal workings. Massive emerald lungs, a thick, dark, five-lobed heart, and a yellowish sac that was the stomach...which as now, too, turning invisible to reveal the half-digested parts of a human figure, a man--a man with a face frozen in terror, with bulging eyes, the freshly dead--

Griffin. The Gill-Man had eaten Griffin.

Tamshill couldn't move; he was frozen in the early morning heat, eyes agape as the Gill-Man stomped and thrashed and clawed at it's own head. Something in Griffin's body must have infected the Gill-Man not only with his invisibility, but his madness.

Was that Miskatonic's plan all along? Suddenly Tamshill knew it was so. But why? Why transform an already dangerous creature into something insane and unseen? There could be no hunting the Gill-Man now. It wouldn't be long before the Gill-Man was not merely transparent, but as utterly invisible as Griffin had been.

Tamshill drew his revolver. The Gill-Man had shrugged off bullets before, but there was nothing else he could do. Maybe he'd get lucky. He held his pistol in both hands, still cross-legged, aiming at the monster's left eye. Shooting at the creature's centre mass was futile; perhaps even the eyes were tougher than lead.

Tamshill fired. The bullet sang as it ricocheted off the monster's scaly skull. The creature roared even as it faded away to complete invisibility. Tamshill might get one more shot. He fired at where the monster had been. The bullet chased the horizon.

Tamshill scrambled to his feet. His only chance now was to dash for his cruiser, parked about a half-mile away where the road curved sharply from east to south.

The sun was rising in the east. At least he'd seen it one last time. One last caress from the divine before one last caress from the demon.

He could hear the Gill-Man's webbed feet slapping against the road in pursuit. He was only a few feet behind. No way could Tamshill dive into the cruiser before he was caught.

Sweat clouded Tamshill's eyes, stinging them, blurring his vision. He saw two lights suddenly hove into view behind the cruiser. A large vehicle--a moving van--

Tamshill realized he was running down the middle of the road. He dove aside with a scream.

There was a wet thump behind him as the van slammed into something. It careened off the road, burying its cabin in the swamp before bursting into flames.

Tamshill rolled from belly to butt, crawling backward toward his cruiser. The Gill-Man's wet footprints ended where the van's skid marks began. The van's engine sputtered and died, and then there was only the sound of crackling flames--suddenly broken by an anguished scream that ended with a bloody gurgle.

Tamshill fled to his cruiser. A moment later, he was gone.

Chucky and Lydia

This is the first time I've attempted to paint a flesh-toned minifigure using Jeff's most recent tips. I underpainted the hands and face with the thinnest coat of light red I could, then added very thin layers of flesh tone. The result is certainly better than typical for me; I shot the figure in two different places to try it out under different lighting conditions.

Note, however, that I did not add an ink wash to Chucky's flesh. This becomes relevant below.

Here are two photos of Lydia, Diana's conniving rival in the television series V. I painted this model the same way I painted Chucky, with one exception: I added an ink wash, typically recommended for miniatures to make small details like the shadows between fingers distinct. 

Lydia still looks better than a lot of my human figures, but the ink wash has given her a ruddy look; I was hoping for something paler to better approximate Lydia's actor, June Chadwick. 

I'm using Reikland Fleshshade for ink wash, but I wonder if perhaps there's a lighter shade I could use to avoid this muddy/ruddy effect. Or I could forego a wash altogether; Chucky seems fine without it. 

Some Thing from the 80s

I'm pretty happy with this Thing. Fans of John Carpenter or 1980s science fiction or horror films will recognize this monstrosity. 
 

Universal Soldiers

Liminal Effort

I can't say what compelled me
The door was open and a ray of sunlight revealed warped floorboards so I 
Went inside and the boards creaked under my weight 
There was an old locket in that beam of sunlight so I
Stooped to claim it but there was a sound from
The shadowed hall beyond like
Claws ripping at the couch cushions and then stopping suddenly
And I looked down that hallway, locket in hand--it was cold--
And I decided to back out but it was too--

 

10 Monsters I could Outrun If I Had To

1. The Mummy (Boris Karloff version) 
2. The Blob (original version) 
3. Frankenstein's Monster (Boris Karloff version) 
4. The Bride of Frankenstein
5. The Invisible Man (Claude Rains version) 
6. The Creature from the Black Lagoon (on land) 
7. Standard Dalek (no antrigravs installed) 
8. The Creeping Terror
9. Romero-style zombies
10. The Green Slime

The key in all cases is to ensure you don't get cornered. Given an open playing field, the average healthy human being who doesn't panic or take stupid chances or box themselves in should be able to escape any of these guys without too much trouble, although there's a chance you might get shot in the back by a Dalek with a death beam.

 

The Corruption Within

A few nights ago, I dreamed that I was in my 20s again. I was walking through downtown Edmonton, and my fingers hurt. They were swollen, and the pain was blunt as a hammer blow. I stood on the sidewalk as 90s-era ETS buses passed by, and looked down and wrapped the fingers of my left hand around my right index finger. I formed a tight ring around the base of my index finger and felt something squirming inside. I moved the ring forward, forcing whatever was inside my finger toward the tip. When I could feel the cyst or whatever it was at the tip of my finger, I looked and saw that a blister was forming--a greenish blister with something wriggling through the thin skin. I pushed and strained until that blister popped, and like some form of hellish toothpaste, a dark green slug-like pustule slid free. Disgusted, I flicked my finger to fling the corruption away, then looked inside the hole left behind. Instead of bone, there was a dark tunnel inside my finger, but the flesh was clean and pink and the missing bone didn't alarm me at all; instead, I felt relief. 

I repeated the process on two more fingers on my right hand, then two more on my left. I felt like I'd had a narrow escape. And then, startled, I looked across the street into the eyes of the camera watching me, the camera that was the older Earl in the "real" world, watching his dream. My dream. 

Boneless fingers, clutching at the bottomless well of time. 

Books I Read in 2022: The Fail Edition

 

Blogger wiped out about 80% of what had been a 2,000 word post right before I could save it. And no, I didn't write it in Word first, like an idiot. 

I was pretty happy with what I'd written, too, and flew into a fit of angry depression thereafter. Happy New Year to me. Bah. 

Hopefully I can muster up the desire to rewrite this post in a couple of days, based on what little was saved. Sigh. 

From Heck It Came

I tried to get Stable Diffusion to render a person being chased by a man-eating toilet, as in the unproduced Toilet Chase screenplay. I hope the AI isn't trying to tell me something. 
 

The Maltese Brain Served Up on a Silver Platter

Here are 28mm scale models of the Maltese Falcon and the criminal brain used to create Frankenstein's monster. I agonized over how to paint the Falcon so as to reveal the details of its surface, but then I watched a clip of the film and realized that yep, it's just black, and you see detail because of the light reflecting across its contours. So I just painted it black. 

The road to Castle Frankenstein wasn't exactly paved with gold, Sam Spade thought. In fact, it wasn't paved at all, except maybe with the blood and sweat of the poor peasant saps of the village that sat below and apart from the tall stone towers of the castle. That road now had a little extra paving in the form of Spade's blood and sweat, though not his tears - never his tears. 

Spade's right hand was clenched tightly around his Colt M1911A1 as he kicked open the door to Victor Frankenstein's lab. 

"Freeze, you butcher!" Spade cried. A stout hunchback carrying a silver tray yelped in surprise, and in his shock the hunchback's spastic motions launched the tray's contents - a bloody scalpel and a disembodied human brain - into the air. 

"You fool!" shouted Frankenstein, his mad eyes wide with anguish. The scalpel clattered harmlessly across the stone floor into a dark corner, while the brain plopped to the floor and was smushed by the impact. 

Spade's lips twisted in disgust as he eyed the broken, oozing brain. Horrified, the hunchback made his escape, dashing for the staircase to the lower levels as his master kneeled and scooped up the remains of the brain in hands wrapped up with black lambskin gloves. 

As Frankenstein lamented, Spade took a precious moment to assess the scene. The centrepiece of the laboratory was a human shape on a metal slab, a shape covered by a white sheet. The slab was attached to chains on a pulley system that seemed to suggest the corpus could be raised to the ceiling. But for what purpose? 

"Say, what is this screwy business?" Spade asked.

Tears streaming down his cheeks, Frankenstein offered up the smashed brains, chunks leaking between his fingers. 

"The stuff that dreams are made of," Frankenstein whispered. 

"Well, sweet dreams to you, sweetheart. Here's a love letter from Miles Archer," Spade said, aiming his Colt, squeezing the trigger, and plugging Frankenstein between the eyes with lead hot as hell.