“That sure was a weird movie,” I’ve found myself muttering ever since watching Messiah of Evil a few nights ago. Yvan later remarked, “well, when YOU keep referring to something as weird, that’s how I know it’s REALLY weird.”
A film I’ve been hearing about in passing for a while now, Messiah of Evil was specifically recommended to me last October, and a year later when I saw MondoHeather mention it on twitter just the other day, I knew it was a sign to finally sit down and watch it.
A surreal and unsettling coastal-set tale (my favorite kind!) and an exercise in moody horror, the film follows a very concerned Arletty, who is in search of her missing artist father. She heads to the small, strange beach town of Point Dune where she finds his abandoned beach house. and a diary full of his frightened ravings. Vampiric/cannibalistic madness ensues.
My first thought about Messiah of Evil was “…huh…this isn’t what I thought this was going to be about?” But I also had no idea what it was about, so how could I have had any expectations? My second thought was along the lines of how I would like Lana del Rey to play every character in this movie, or at least write a song and make a music video inspired by it. My third thought was how I wanted to knit a cute version of Arletty’s pumpkin-hued short-sleeved sweater because of course I was going to think that.
Also! Check out this bed! A platform swinging from the ceiling with room not only for one sleeping body, but possibly another, along with the bed linens, pillows, a whole mess of books, three potted plants, and a stuffed armadillo!
Lana look-alikes and oddball aesthetics aside, I actually really loved this strange, striking, and uniquely …weird little film.
Is anyone else watching the recent version of I Know What You Did Last Summer? It’s trashy as hell and it’s making me feel old as dirt (if I hear that one kid call someone “sus” one more time, I am gonna lose my shit) but you know what? It’s a lot of fun.
I don’t recall the original series of movies very well, but the source material, Lois Duncan’s 1973 book I Know What You Did Last Summer, wasn’t my favorite among her titles, so I’m not too precious about it.
A loose adaptation though the premise remains the same: a group of teenagers/young adults (I can’t tell? Everyone between 15 and 30 looks the same age to me now?) are involved in a hit and run and a year later, they begin receiving threatening messages from someone who doesn’t want to forget and who knows “what they did last summer.” And of course begins stalking them and picking them off one by one. It feels a bit Pretty Little Liars to me, but with more drugs and sluttery. So if that’s your thing, you may enjoy this! It’s definitely my thing. All the delicious drugs and promiscuity, please!
…but this version is set in Hawaii, which feels weird and off. Or rather, that it’s a show steeped in Hawaiian culture, but it’s still centered around a white family--that’s the part that doesn’t feel right at all. I think they are going for something very Twin Peaksian, but it doesn’t work. Still, it’s more gruesome than I expected, it’s genuinely funny in moments, and if I’m being honest, I just like to see “young people horror” …although I don’t know how reflective this is of young people culture? These characters are like 18 going on 40. But what do I know? I feel very out of touch sometimes.
Are you guys watching this? I’d love to know your thoughts!
I have been meaning to read Tananarive Due’s The Good House from the moment that I closed the last page of Ghost Summer, which I thoroughly, delightedly enjoyed. My review for Ghost Summer wasn’t super in-depth or intensive, but about the book, I wrote the following:
These engaging short stories by Tananarive Due tick every box for what I want in a summer read. (I think I read this in September, so that still counts, as far as I am concerned!) A vast spectrum of supernatural business, characters that I care about, masterful writing that is emotive and nuanced but not super dense or difficult or inaccessible. It’s got everything!
Ghost Summer was previously my only experience with Tananarive Due’s writing, and though I believe that it was published more than a decade after The Good House, which I just read, it had all of the hallmarks that I’ve now come to expect from her work. I feel like it’s almost trite to say that a story or a book has “a lot of heart”…I mean, I say that a lot, but what does that mean, anyway? It’s the first thing that comes to mind when I think of this author’s writing, I am tempted to say “horror with a lot of heart.” I suppose what I’m trying to get across is that her stories seem to be written through an empathetic, compassionate lens. That her characters are fully fleshed out, down to their annoyances and imperfections, and their stories are treated in such a way that they’re wholly, profoundly human, and we really grow to care about them.
Also, Tananarive Due writes in such a way that you don’t feel punished for having read and connected with the work. I sometimes feel like a certain subset of writers must really hate us, the reader. That’s probably not true, but it’s easy to feel that way when you see your favorite, beloved characters brutally dismembered on the page before you. I just…never get a sense of that with Due’s writing. Of course, in her books, there’s horror and heartlessness and heart-stopping moments…but there’s also hope. I love that she gives us that, too. I guess that’s what I mean when I say a story “has heart;” that no matter what else transpires, no matter how big and expansive the horror and heartbreak is, she leaves the door open for goodness and hope, as well. I come away feeling good about what I read.
The Good House (unlike the House movie that I wrote about yesterday) is actually a pretty scary story in concept, and I did find myself a little freaked out while reading it. The home that belonged to Angela Toussaint’s late grandmother is so cherished and revered that the local townspeople refer to it lovingly as the Good House. All of this changes one summer when a terrible tragedy takes place during a Fourth of July celebration at the house, and both the Toussaint’s family history and its future is irrevocably altered. Two years after, following her son’s suicide in the house, Angela returns and finally starts to unravel what happened and put things right.
Masterful storytelling combining multiple perspectives across different timelines, witchcraft and family curses, the burdens of inherited guilt, trauma, rich history, and mythology, and an overwhelming, palpable sense of stomach-curdling dread present from almost the very first page made this a vividly enthralling read and an intense page-turner, and I’m going to make it my mission in life to read everything author has every written.
Speaking of houses and homes–what’s more homey than a cozy bowl of porridge? Or steel-cut oats, to be more specific!
Here’s a little oatmeal bar I set up yesterday, with all the fixings: dates, pumpkin seeds and almonds, apricots, cream, and sugar. It was perfect for our 70-degree morning…which, if you live in Florida, you know that’s practically freezing, and about as close to autumn as we are likely to get! The little Halloween ramekins were a lovely surprise from Yvan, who picked them up for me from Le Creuset! I can’t seem to find them on the Le Creuset site (though he assures me there were quite a few in stock at the actual store and they weren’t exactly flying off the shelves) but if you are looking for them, it’s this set.
House is another one of those horror movies that had intriguingly gruesome cover art that greatly appealed to my 13-year-old brain. Of course, I never got the opportunity to watch it, so 30 some odd years later I was very excited to sit down and take it in this past weekend.
To put it kindly, I was …not…impressed. “This is what everyone is reminiscing so fondly about?” I thought. “But it’s so stupid!”
I was, however, greatly impressed by the bizarre artwork that adorned the fantastically wallpapered walls of the titular house. They looked like marvelously weird Gertrude Abercrombie/Frida Kahlo/Salvador Dali hybrids creations, and I could have watched a whole movie about them alone!
I stopped watching the film about halfway through. I’ve only got so much time allotted to me on this earth, and slogging through this silly film was not how I wanted to spend it. But in zipping through it afterward to grab some stills of these nutty paintings for a blog post, I wondered if maybe…the art wasn’t somehow important to the plot? I mean, if I was going to the trouble of sharing the art, shouldn’t I at least finish the film to get an understanding of how it played into the story? So the next day I revisited the film. And I finished it. For art!
Ok, so maybe it wasn’t THAT bad. I think I just wasn’t in the mood for it, in that initial viewing. If you’ve not seen it, it’s more or less just a haunted house story with some comedy, ridiculous but fun creature effects, and I guess you could say it’s got a lot of heart. The short version of the story is that Roger Cobb is a best-selling author; he and his wife are divorced and they have lost a son, and he’s moved back into his late aunt Elizabeth’s house to focus on writing his war memoirs. Turns out the house is balls-out bonkers haunted. In an interview, the director as described this as “a tongue-in-cheek, Mad magazine-style, effects-heavy hootenanny with goofy neighbors and comical monsters.” Sure, I guess that sums it up
I do have a lot of questions because so much of this is baffling. Why did his elderly aunt kill herself at the beginning of the film? And from the flashbacks, it looks like Roger and his wife and child were living in his aunt’s home at one point? While she was still living there? I mean, he was a famous writer and she was a famous actress, so why didn’t they have their own place? And getting back to the aunt–what was the deal with the paintings? Over the course of the film, you can see how she, as an artist, was no doubt influenced and inspired by the haunted goings-on in the house, and so I think there should have been at least a tiny bit of focus and backstory about her art and practice. And it turns out the paintings were *sort of* important, at least one of them was–but I’ll not give that away, in case you, like me, were one of the handful of people who have not yet seen House.
I was able to find the actual artist behind aunt Elizabeth’s strange canvases, though unfortunately, I can’t find any larger images. Richard Hescox has created a considerable amount of horror and monster movie poster art and seems to be fairly prolific, although his official portfolio seems to mostly showcase his fantasy-inspired works.
Now this all has got me thinking that I need to see House II on the off chance that there’s more of Hescox’s paintings and maybe old aunt Elizabeth gets a bit of story? Hm! Should I continue?
I am up to Halloween: H20 in my Halloween marathoning and oooof. I just did not recall how bad, I mean really REALLY bad, 4, 5, and 6 are. That business with the cult (and the cloning? Is that right?) was really, really dumb. Halloween H20 wasn’t great, but at least we get Jamie Lee Curtis, and maybe it was a little scary? That could be just me though, rewatching it alone in the house, at 1am in the morning.
Anyway, I have no further thoughts on any of these films, however, a particular scene in Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers, did inspire the following poem…
Reflections after a death scene in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers
Sometimes I remind myself that in a basement sequence during Halloween 6, Michael Myers demonstrates that apparently he knows something about how to operate a washing machine. It’s not like those bloody linens sloshing around during the rinse cycle were placed there by the dead woman, lying still, glasses cracked and broken, chest split by the blade of an axe. And sure, the load was massively unbalanced. And Michael probably didn’t use any pre-soak or stain remover. It’s funny, you know, he drives? Where did he learn that? What else is this murderous tulpa man-child doing when we’re not looking? Contributing to his Roth IRA, and hot yoga, and meditation, and 12-step skincare? Is Michael Myers a more capable and competent adult than I am? I mean, if even the bogeyman can get his shit together and start a load of wash, then what’s my problem?
Another horror cheat day! I am still processing some recent things I have watched and read, so while that all simmers on the back burner of my brain’s greasy stove, I thought I’d take you on a tour of some of my horror-related or generally creepy/eerie art! These are probably things I have shared before, but it may be a new sight for new friends and followers (hello to all one or two of you!)
Of course, I hope you’re okay with trio of weirdos accompanying us. These are various Halloween masks I have stolen from my brother-in-law over the years. Except for the cat, which I bought and paid for with my own money during a hurricane when I was meant to be out, procuring supplies.
On a nearby wall is a massive poster of the fabulous Lucy Westenra, by the artist Sara Deck. Honestly, she could recreate every scene in this version of the film and I would poster my whole house with them. Especially this iconic trio!
This is the back wall in my office. It used to appear a bit more finished, but we moved the day bed that was directly underneath this grouping of arts. That means…that …I can continue the arrangement down to the floor, right? Woo hooo!
This is a view just above a small bookcase in my parlor. It’s a spot that could certainly use a bit more fiddling with, but though it’s imperfectly arranged, I really do love these pieces. The eye is from corpsehaus, the ghostly hand (“The Uninvited”) is by David Seidman, and a spooky lady from Jessica Dalva.
Who are some of your favorite illustrators of darkness and artists of the eerie and the macabre?
You may recall that I mentioned early in the month that this year’s version of 31 Days of Horror may be a cheat. So far, I think I’ve done pretty well, but I think I’m calling in a cheat day today because I don’t think I have anything I am quite ready to talk about just yet.
So instead, here is a list of the horror movies I have watched this year. Some of them might be horror-ish, or horror-adjacent, but I’ve kept them all on the list. This is actually from an ongoing Google doc that I continually update throughout the year. Does anyone else do this? I’ve marked the ones that I’d actually recommend to people with asterisks and yes, I did like the really dumb Disturbing Behavior. There’s something about stories that take place on isolated island communities that are just an immediate win for me.
Some definite standouts for me this year were the ghostly eerieness of Lake Mungo, the batshit insanity of Queen of Black Magic, and the quiet, freaky dread of The Wind. And the final .02 seconds of Saint Maude was the most horrifying thing I have ever seen. Noroiand Pulse are two Japanese horror film staples of the early-mid 2000s and I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to watch them. They are both so very deeply unsettling.
Old or new, or new-to-you, what are some of your favorite horror films that you’ve watched this year?
1/27 Perfect Blue (rewatch) *** 2/12 Vivarium 2/14 His House*** (?) Interview with the Vampire (rewatch) (?) Impetigore 3/18 Queen of Black Magic*** 4/2 Noroi*** 4/14 Pulse*** (?) Seance on a Wet Afternoon***
4/19 Unfriended 4/26 Lake Mungo*** (?)Saint Maud 6/24 Sator 7/4 Fear Street *** 7/5 La Llorona (not the Linda Cardellini one)*** 7/10 Fear Street II *** 7/17 Fear Street III*** 7/28 Pandorum 7/29 Slice 7/30 Disturbing Behavior*** (?) When a Stranger Calls 8/8 Scream 3 (rewatch) 8/10 The Binding*** 8/12 Werewolves Within *** (?) Brand New Cherry Flavor***
(?) Los Espookys*** 9/5 The Old Ways*** 9/6 The Wind *** 9/12 Malignant 9/13 Halloween (rewatch) 9/14 Halloween 2 (rewatch) 9/15 Halloween 3 9/18 Halloween 4 (rewatch) 9/24 The Abyss 10/2 Candyman (the new one) *** 10/4-10/7 Midnight Mass *** 10/7 Things Heard and Seen 10/08 Halloween 5 (rewatch) 10/9 Nightmare on Elm Street 3&4 (rewatch) 10/10 Blood Red Sky*** 10/12 Dolls***
10/13 Halloween VI: The Curse of Michael Myers (rewatch)
If I am being honest, I have been fixated on DOLLS ever since I first passed by its lurid half doll/half skull cover art on the shelf in a Blockbuster Video seventy kajillion moons ago. But that was back in the days where between you and your sisters you could only pick ONE movie to take home on a Friday night, and no one could ever agree on anything and certainly, no one else but me wanted to watch this one.
But I am an adult now and I can do whatever I want and no one even has to agree with it!
Six travelers stranded in a sudden thunderstorm– a trio consisting of a shitty father, a wretched stepmother and an imaginative young girl, and another group of two awful (but awesomely attired) hitchhiking punkettes and the well-intentioned but derpy guy who picked them up– seek shelter in a nearby mansion. An elegant old doll-maker and his wife live in this creepy, wonderfully atmospheric place full of gorgeous old dolls, and they offer to put the group up for the evening. The charming elderly couple is very welcoming and hospitable to this group of very rude assholes. Too welcoming, one might say.
Over the course of the evening, all the baddies get what’s coming to them and by the closing credits, the doll-maker’s collection has mysteriously grown. I LOVED THIS MOVIE.
Most of all, I loved this doll in the right-hand corner in its little pig costume! Rabbit costume? I don’t actually know what’s going on there, but I love it more than anything in the world! But I’m fairly certain that no matter what happened over the course of this film, I was going to adore it. I love old dolls. I love any kind of doll. If I had more space and more money, I would totally be an unhinged doll collector, filling every room in my house with their ruffles and lace little staring eyeballs. Here’s a controversial thing: I even love clown dolls! (Heck, I also love clowns!)
The creature effects in this film were a lot of fun (Teddy in an early scene was fantastic!) and the menacing, mischievous stop-motion movements of the dolls, their frowning expressions, and devious grins with those tiny demonic teeth, were wonderful. I would have liked to have seen more of that, but I think it was probably *just* enough.
This is maybe the only time in my life where, upon finishing a movie, I immediately wanted to watch it again. Is it a “good” movie? I don’t know about that. But it was extremely satisfying on a visually appealing level, and its messages of both appreciating the imagination and the stuff that keeps you young at heart really spoke to me. Plus…I loved Ralph. I know he was awkward and weird, but I really want to be friends with that character! So…again. A good movie? Probably not by the standards that a lot of people might measure such things. But I think it is! And even more than that, it’s a “feel good” movie. I never really had a feel good movie in my arsenal, but I think DOLLS has become my go-to.
What other creepy doll movies do I need to watch? I don’t really care about Chucky or Annabelle, I’ll just go ahead and put that out there. I’ve seen Pin and maybe Dead Silence, but I might be getting that mixed up with something else.And I just learned that there’s an Amityville Dollhouse movie! It’s probably awful, right? But…I should watch it anyway, right?
Speaking of dollhouses, one of my favorite books when I was a little girl was The Dollhouse Murders by Betty Ren Wright. I wonder how that holds up? Author of the weird and eerie, Robert Aickman wrote a story about a dollhouse if I recall. Ah, here it is: The Inner Room.
I guess I understand why people are freaked out by their little uncanny, almost-human faces, their imagined movements from the periphery of your vision, and why the creepy doll is a long-standing horror trope. Here’s an interesting article that goes into more of an explanation, with a bit of history as well. But me, well. I’m scared of lots of stuff. I mean…A LOT. But dolls just aren’t one of them.
[EDIT: A GIVEAWAY WINNER HAS BEEN CHOSEN AND CONTACTED! THANKS, EVERYONE!]
Happy birthday, The Art of the Occult! You, my first published book, are now officially a year old!
Is there anything horror-related within its pages? Well…not really. Not in a spooky, Halloween season way. We could argue that esoteric knowledge and arcane philosophies form the backbone of quite a few horror stories. Ceremonial magics gone wrong, demons conjured and gone amuck. That sort of thing. And of course witches and witchcraft–you can’t have 31 Days of Halloween with at least one witchy film, right? I mean, as far as I am concerned, you can barely have a story of any sort without a witchy character moving things along.
Here’s what I write in the Potions, Persecution, and Power portion of The Art of the Occult, wherein I begin by quoting another favorite and famous witch that you may know….
‘Witches have always walked among us, populating societies and storyscapes across the globe for thousands of years,’ writes Pam Grossman in Waking the Witch, a reflection on women, magic, and power. And it’s true – can you conjure forth a single folk or fairytale, myth or legend worth its salt circle that doesn’t contain a witch or some witchy archetype stirring up trouble and sowing supersensory seeds of discontent? The witch provides the element that surprises, startles, and scares, provides struggle and strife, a snag in the story, a shift in the narrative.
This fascination for witches has long gripped artists, both of the classical and contemporary ilk– the witchly archetype being an evocative canvas onto which some of the greatest artists have projected their most intensely bizarre imaginings. Many continue to draw inspiration from the dark and cruel origins of the classic image of the witch, and the tragic history of the witch continues to instill fear and provoke anxieties in contemporary creators today.
Here’s a handful of my favorite witches on canvas, inspiring and powerful artworks steeped in magic and superstition. What are some of your favorite visual representations of the witch?
And sneaking this in here, which means you had to read this whole post in order get to this point: wouldst thou like to win a delicious, signed copy of The Art of the Occult in celebration of its one-year anniversary inhabiting our earthly realm? If so, leave a comment! Tell me about your favorite witches! Artful, literary, cinematic or otherwise. A winner will be chosen and contact one week from today!
The Witch Barry Windsor-Smith, 1978.
Circe Invidiosa John William Waterhouse 1892
Les Sorcières Leonor Fini, 1959
La Sorcière, Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer, 1897
Morgan-le-Fay Frederick Sandys, 1863
Witches Sabbath Rik Garrett, from Earth Magic (Fulgur Press, 2014).
From Songs For The Witch Woman, Marjorie Cameron, undated
I was doing a Google search just now to find something striking to use as the feature image for this blog post and apparently one of the most frequently asked questions about this film is “is Blood Red Sky a horror movie?”
Well, if you can’t tell from the trailer, or from this German version of the movie poster, yes, yes–Blood Red Sky is very much a horror movie. If you’re one of the horror fans constantly griping and moaning about how there are no scary vampires anymore, and it’s all sparkles and romance and you’re looking at these befanged, velvet-clad dandies wondering “what kind of interview is this, anyway?” Well, first off, quit your bitching, there’s room in the world for all kinds of vampires. But secondly, the monsters in Blood Red Sky are on par, fright-and-terror-wise, with those in 30 Days of Night. They might even be scarier! I am still trying to decide.
Blood Red Sky is an intense and emotional, dark and savage horror-action spectacle, and follows a woman with a mysterious illness and her son, on board an overnight transatlantic flight that gets highjacked by terrorists. You can look at the poster and figure out the woman’s illness and its terrifying nature, but what you don’t see there is her struggle to reign it in, how her concern for her son’s safety overrides the brutal, vicious nature of her vampirism. And the bad guy that she faces off with in one portion of the film? Hoo boy. That guy is gonna give me nightmares.
Vampires have been scaring me since I first saw a Dracula in Scooby-Doo so many years ago, and it was awesome to stumble upon a vampire film that was still able to freak me out. Typically, my own bloodthirsty tastes for celluloid creatures of the night, run to the strange and surreal, like the dreamy gothic poetry of Jean Rollin’s films. Or…stories of people who are suffering delusions that they are vampires, when in fact, they’re just lonely and confused (or are they??) Good examples of this would be George Romero’s Martin, or the more recent Transfiguration. And certainly, the slick, stylish glamourous vampiric gems like The Hunger or Only Lovers Left Alive. And of course the thoroughly weird and difficult to classify, like Let’s Scare Jessica To Death and Lair of the White Worm!
I’m leaving quite a few off of those lists. The 1992 Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a favorite. I enjoyed the vampire-noir of A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night. And you know…oddly, Let The Right One In didn’t really do anything for me, both the book and the film left me a little unenthused.
I think what I probably need more of is classic vampires or Hammer vampires. There are quite a few of these movies that I haven’t seen. Also, I just learned of a Larry Fessenden film called Habit, which sounds interesting, and even if it’s not, well, I will get to see that beautiful weirdo, Larry Fessenden!
What am I missing? What are some of your favorite cinematic vampires?
