Halloween recap

OK, almost two weeks after the fact, I can finally talk about Halloween - now that I'm not sick of it. I have a tendency, the two weeks leading to All Hallow's, to seriously OD on all things horror.

I crashed big time this year. I'm just starting to get over it. Though, if I see one of those stupid Travel Channel shows about haunted travels, I just might pull an Elvis and shoot out the TV. Or maybe not, I always seem to get suckered into those shows. Sad, really.

This year, I once again pulled out the FX and channeled my inner Jack Pierce/Tom Savini. The results were - colorful, to say the least. Usually I go subtle. But not this year. Oh no, not this year.

Here's this year's handiwork (except for the gentleman with the black and white face. That crazy shit is all his own) :
Here's some close-ups:


To quote my sister from my Myspace page: "You're such a happy zombie!"

Of course, I just got finished eating.

And then, the piece de resistance:


Yes, I'm marrying that. Who's more pathetic: me for doing it, or him for wearing it so well?

So yeah, I don't want to dwell on this too much, because, frankly, I'm fucking embarrassed to write this.

I owe Eli Roth an apology.

Yes, finally watched Hostel for the first time. Didn't find it as repugnant as I thought it would be. Just shows what I know. I can see the point Roth was trying to make - ham fisted thought it was - but I can appreciate the effort. I even enjoyed bits of it. That eye scene - fantastic! I haven't been grossed out like that in a long time (since Dylan Moran's evisceration scene in Shaun of the Dead, to be exact). It was still full of gratuitous sex and violence - I still maintain that it's torture porn, but give Roth props where props are due. I kinda want to see Hostel II now. Just kinda.

But don't tell anybody, don't want to damage my street cred. Can you dig it?

I just had a brain flash of that Chicago song, "Saturday in the Park". You know the part that goes, "Can you dig it?" and a voice sings back, "Yes. I can!"

God, I'm lame.

And, just for fun, a Shaun of the Dead holiday greeting, seeing as everyone has lost their fucking minds and already playing Christmas music on the radio. Enjoy!

You, Sir, are a Gentleman and a Scholar (and a horror fan)

If I have any beef with Horror as a genre and a cultural institution (and I have many, torture porn and obsessive fans, notwithstanding - but those will be dealt with later) it's that there is an over-abundance of novice horror criticism floating about. Everyone - from the fangirl who's gotten her hands on Max Brook's World War Z or the reviewer when a rare high budget horror film comes around - feels qualified to take a stab at what horror films really mean, what it's all about, the social significance of monster/killer/slasher XYZ. Now, I'm not an educational snob - I think it's just as viable to be an autodidact as it is to be university taught - but the key concept is knowledge, something most would-be reviewers lack.

Horror has an egalitarianism about it, an everyman aura that welcomes the poor and huddled masses; the basis of its appeal, and its wonderful magic, depends on it.

Like any film genre, it has a vocabulary for its criticism, a delightfully varied pattern of themes that accompany it. And most people, by sheer ignorance or snobbery (as if to say, how can something as low as horror have a world of criticism to it? as the nose points in the air) lack it.

Maybe I'm just jaded by all the hoopla brought upon by the release of Captivity and Hostel II. Or maybe it's every single news source - who until recently wouldn't touch a horror movie with a ten foot pole if it lay bleeding on the pavement outside the office - jumping into the "torture porn" debate. Who knows.

That's why it's such a treat to read horror criticism from a true scholar's viewpoint. I am speaking, in favorable terms, of S.S. Prawer's Caligari's Children: The Film as a Tale of Terror (De Capo Press, 1980). I had been itching to get my hands on this book ever since I'd seen it referenced (in Robin Wood, I think) and was lucky enough to get a reasonably priced copy at a used book store. Talk about sublime! With references to literature, horror/mainstream film, psychology, philosophy, history (ad infinitum, ad nauseaum), this beautifully written piece of non-fiction is largely overlooked in splatterati circles. Not that there are many of them - especially in a university setting, but I digress.

Prawer's words, like the illumination on a medieval manuscript, manage to gild and dignify a genre that prides itself on its jocularity and readability. Though it is a bit heavy on the German horror films - Prawer is Taylor Emeritus Professor of German Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, so read up on your German expressionism, kids - and a little conservative by modern standards (the man was born in 1925, so we can give him a break), the marvelous insight and language the man imbues in his writing are worth the search for this magnificent book. One can only wonder what he thinks of the horror films that came after publication, as I'm sure they're fascinating.

Do yourself a favor, get yourself a copy. You'll be a better horror fan for it.