Romero and stuff

The Guardian has a sorta interesting article about the current renaissance of the horror flick in American culture. You can easily draw parallels between trends in horror movies and the social climate, and Tom Shone, the article's author, argues that the current crop of scary offerings are filmmakers' answer to America's war on terror:

...America's war on terror may be the single biggest boost for the horror genre since Haley Joel Osment claimed to see dead people. Once again, America finds itself facing a nebulous, wraithlike enemy that scatters and regroups whenever you strike it, growing a new head every time it is lopped off. Throw in a gnawing sense of self-indictment, and you have the fertile shadowy ground in which horror likes to grow.

Well, I could maybe buy that if you're citing films such as George Romero's Land of the Dead or Wes Craven's Red Eye, which Shone does. He also, however, references blecchfests such as The Amityville Horror remake and The Fog remake, which are, as the infinite wisdom of C + C Music Factory would dub them, things that make me go 'hmm'. Stretching it a bit, maybe?

Funny, isn't it, how the recent movies with a bit of a message (or at least a point) are made by the vets who were making movies with a bit of a message (or at least a point) 25-30 years ago? Isn't it funny? Well, isn't it?! Go watch The American Nightmare if you don't believe me. Hollywood's proclivity to pump out bad horror movies to turn a buck is nothing new, but that's my point- horror movies are popular, but very few of them strive for anything more than box office position. The fact that the market is currently favorable to horror excites me, but so much of it seems to be sub-par- which, um...unexcites me. Don't get me wrong, I love my schlock, I love my crap, I love my bad horror movies. But let's not pretend that these turds are meaningful, alright?

Courtesy of Mike Imboden, who got it courtesy of Empire Magazine online, comes news of a sequel to George Romero's Land of the Dead. Unexcited, I am NOT! Was that confusing? I meant to say, this news makes Stacie happy. Still too confusing? Zombie good...me gooder. Wait, now I'm confused...

Yes, LotD did so well overseas and in the DVD market that a sequel is on the way. Huzzah, I say! Huzzah! I was one of the few who really liked Land...it definitely strayed from Romero's usual style and feel for a zombie movie, but it seemed to me the logical direction for him to go, if you consider all his zombie flicks in one large arc. It was more action-y than I'm used to from him, and it was bigger, less intimate...but it was also gory and fun and un-WB. I'm excited about a sequel because of this:

If it happens, a new Dead movie will follow the surviving characters from Land on their journey north...

That quote, to me, means the sequel could be more like Romero's earlier '...of the Dead' efforts- the story of how people cope and work together in a world overrun by zombies. More character studies, less fireworks. Me am happy. You can read the rest of the article here and decide for yourselves. I can't hold your hands forever, you know.

Tomorrow, I will have a movie review for you. A crapload* of movies arrived at Casa Stacie today, but I had no time to watch any. Patience, my pets...patience.

Oh, there have been a few kind-hearted readers who have inquired about purchasing the smash hit** comic of Mid-Ohio-Con '05, They Won't Stay Dead! Well, for anyone curious, the cost is a whopping $1.50, which includes postage. If you'd like a copy, just email me and we'll work out the deets. Righteous!

*crapload = 4
**smash hit = miserable failure

The Great Con Con

Well, gentle reader, I'm back from Mid-Ohio-Con '05...I was there and I was square.

I sold out of my mini-comic They Won't Stay Dead!, and angry hordes of nerds crowded around my table, demanding I go to Kinko's and print up more right this minute! I sheepishly approached Margot Kidder at her table, and when I held out the DVD sleeve for Black Christmas for her to sign, she stood and exclaimed "YOU are the fan I have been waiting for! I've signed so much Superman shit for so many nerds, but you...YOU! Come to me, fan of discriminating taste...let's hug here in the hallway of the Columbus Hilton and be Best Friends Forever!" She then handed me one of those half-a-broken-heart pendants that read

ST
ENDS

while she put on the half that read

BE
FRI

I handed her a copy of my comic, and when she was done reading it, she said, with tear shining in the corner of her eye: "You're my fan? No...no...I am but your humble servant. Now let's split, score some Oxy, and talk all night about Black Christmas.". We clinked our new pendants together like champagne glasses and walked off just as a rainbow peeked out from behind the clouds. The huzzahs of the mighty nerds echoed in the Hilton's corridors behind us.

All of that really happened, honest. It happened, and then I woke up in my bed Saturday morning in time to head to the first day of Mid-Ohio-Con.

I remembered my books! Good for me. I did have to drive back home before I got to the convention because I forgot my wallet, though. What the hell is wrong with me? I can remember the smallest little detail from some shitty movie- "Wow, did you know that the person who played Taffy McFattfatt in Halloween XIV: The Mild Irritation of Michael Myers liked to chew Juicy Fruit between takes? She also appeared on 2 episodes of Small Wonder!"- but I can't remember my wallet when I go somewhere to spend money. Screw Oxy, Margot- I need to score some Gingko.

The con was pretty quiet. Could there BE a more terrible weekend to hold an event like this? People are spending money on Christmas presents, not back issues of Night Force. OK, I am, but I've heard that I'm weird. It's also a terrible weekend for folks to travel. I shake my fist at whoever chose Thanksgiving weekend as the traditional weekend for Mid-Ohio-Con! I shake my fist and sneer! I did manage to sell some stuff- copies of the BloodRayne book and some BloodRayne pages. That was dope. But man, I just could not move They Won't Stay Dead!. What's wrong with people? Does no one have sense? They're all bastards! I did sell a few, however- to my frickin' tablemates! Kevin Melrose from Dark, But Shining bought one, as did Mike Imboden. They are truly stand-up fellas, and I think that perhaps they weren't even completely pity purchases. But the general public can, as my gramma would say, "kiss my ass and call it love". Yes, she really would say that, too. Deon Nuckols, another buyer, tablemate, and stand-up fella handed a copy of my book to some guy. The guy opened it, took one look, said "It's just a buncha sticks!", put it back on the table, and left in a huff. That's right, folks- my comic pissed him off because it's stick figures. Yeah, you heard me- it's stick figures, dammit. It's stick figures and zombies and zombie stick figures. Other comic books might have "real-looking people" and "rendering", but, I ask you, do they have THIS?

If you can find me an issue of Spider-Man where he's punching out some lovingly rendered elderly zombie, I will give you a quarter. Incidentally, drawing stick figures is harder than you'd think. It took me a long time to get that woman in the panel above NOT to look like Q*Bert. She still bears a passing resemblance, unfortunately. Long story short, I just could not get the comics-buying public to part with a measly buck for my book. A dollar! Kevin did get a copy of the book into the hands of Gotham Central artist Steve Lieber, however, as I was too chickenshit to give him a copy myself:

See, comic nerds? If it's good enough to be enjoyed by one of the best artists around, one of my favorites, one of the nicest guys on the planet, then it's certainly good enough for YOU! Hmm...maybe I'm on to something here. Yeah, I'll berate the fans into buying! That's it! "What, you think you're too good for my book? With that outfit? Are you serious? Come spend a dollar, you cheap fucks!" Maybe that should've been my marketing strategy. Well, there's always next year.

I guess by now you're suspecting that the tale of Margot & Me I told above wasn't entirely true. Sadly, you would be right. Yes, I gave her a Black Christmas DVD sleeve to sign. The guy with her, whoever he was, asked where I got it, and I said "Amazon". She signed it, I said something about it being a great, scary movie, she said something like "It is!" and we shook hands. No promises of being best friends forever. No skipping off under the rainbow together. She did, however, say that it was nice to meet me, so I guess that means there's hope for us yet. There's always next year.

Extry! Extry! Read All About It!

OK, so this may be old news...but it ain't old to ME, so I'm sharing.

You may recall me citing Adam Rockoff's book Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, 1978-1986 as an interesting read chock full of info on the slasher genre. Apparently I'm not the only one singing its praises, because Starz Entertainment Group and distributor THINKFilm are producing a documentary based on the book. At the risk of sounding like Kool-Aid Guy, I just gotta give an OHHHH YEAH! to this news.

The film provides a comprehensive and original look at the importance, prominence, and newfound legitimacy of the horror film genre and, more specifically, the sub-genre of the "slasher film." The feature-length documentary will contain an abundance of clips from classic films of the genre, as well as many current hits, and interviews with pre-eminent actors, directors, and producers, many of whom are themselves founders and masters of the genre.

I'm a total sucker for this kind of thing. I'll watch a documentary on just about any topic, but one chock full of slasher clips and related talking heads sounds to me like someone's been reading my diary or something. IFC's The American Nightmare is an entertaining documentary I highly recommend to you gentle readers out there, but it focuses more on horror from the 60's and 70's and the parallels between the films of directors such as John Carpenter, George Romero, David Cronenberg, and Wes Craven and societal attitudes and issues. But a documentary about slashers? They cite Sleepaway Camp and Black Christmas, and that's good enough for me. Again, I say- OHHHH YEAH! Read all about it here, and then someone go start an online petition to have a movie made about Final Girl. It'll be excitement on celluloid! Me sitting around watching movies, me a-type-type-typin' away, me staring off into space trying to think of something witty to say...yoo hoo! Starz Entertainment! I'm ready for my closeup!

In other news, I'll be parked at a table this Saturday and Sunday for Mid-Ohio-Con, a comics and other crap extravaganza. Should you find yourself at this illustrious event, stop by the Digital Webbing table where I'll be hawking my wares, as will Kevin Melrose from some website called "Dark, But Shining". I must remember my books...I must remember my books...I must...

The Killers Are Coming!

Do I like Prom Night (1980)? I really don't know. I've seen it enough times that you'd think I do. I watched it again today, though, and it just...I can't...I wanna...it didn't...well, I guess I was left wondering why I've seen it so many times.

The film is laid out like your archetypical slasher: we open with a flashback sequence which provides the killer with a reason to kill.
Some kids are playing hide and seek in an abandoned convent- except instead of just hiding and seeking, the person who's "it" is "the killer". So while searching for everyone who hides, the kid yells "The killer is coming!". If someone is found, instead of just being out of the game, they, too, become a killer. Kids play the darndest things!

Little Kim, Alex, and Robin are on their way to school and hear the others playing in the abandoned building. Kim runs home to get a forgotten textbook like a good little nerd, Alex heads to school, and Robin decides to check out the game. She should know that older kids never want to play with younger kids, though- but she has to find out the hard way. All the other kids gang up on poor Robin and chase her throughout the building, yelling "The killers are coming!" in her face. Robin is clearly terrified, but the little punkasses keep coming at her, backing her up against a window and shouting "KILL! KILL! KILL!" at her until they force her out the window. She falls a few storeys to the ground and dies. The "killers" (Nick, Wendy, Jude, and Kelly) decide NOT to go for help, but rather to swear never to tell a soul. They hop on their bikes and ride off. Children are truly heaven's gifts to us here on Earth, and I do believe they are the future.

We move up to the here and now, and everyone is six years older and getting ready for the prom. Grown up Kim (Jamie Lee Curtis) and grown up Nick (Casey Stevens) are prom queen and king and so totally in love! Grown up Wendy (Eddie Benton) is Nick's ex-who-won't-let-go and is all bitch and attitude as she rides around in her orange Corvette. The other girls, Jude and Kelly, are The Nerd Who Will Do "It" and The Nerd Who Says She'll Do "It" But Then Will Change Her Mind At The Last Second And Really Piss Off Her Boyfriend, respectively. Each of the "killers" gets a phone call from someone who intones in a raspy voice things like "See you at the prom!", "Tonight it's my turn!", and "Do you still like to play games?". Guess it's payback time! Not that anyone really gets the hint- no one seems to feel particularly threatened, and the calls get chalked up as simply unobscene obscene phone calls. Personally, I think the calls would have been more effective if the Prom Whisperer had said "The killer is coming!"- at least someone would catch on, maybe. As an audience member, I find it decidedly unscary when the killer crosses names off of his "to do" list after he calls them. There's just something mundane about it- like on one page he has written NICK, KELLY, JUDE etc, but then what- BUY SCOOP AWAY AND BACON on the next page? Chores, chores, chores. And let's talk practicalities, here- keeping a list of your intended victims is probably not a good idea. I realize, though, that this is 1980- the days before CSI taught America and the rest of the television viewing world what NOT to do when trying to commit the perfect crime.

And now, the night of every child's dreams...the prom. Being made in 1980, Prom Night is fully- and I mean fully- entrenched in the disco era. From the moment the prom starts until the end credits, the disco music is virtually non-stop. At times this is fun: there's a song called Prom Night ("Prom night! Everything is all right!"), to which Kim and Nick do an elaborate choreographed dance while the rest of the promgoers stand in a Clapping Circle. That's right, if you've ever wanted to see Jamie Lee Curtis get down on a lit-up floor, this movie is for you. At times, however, the music is not fun. It goes on SO LONG that at one point I was considering putting lit matches in my ears just to make the music stop. Then I found the 'mute' button on my remote and I was saved.

During the festivities, various main characters go off to various places to have sex...or in the case of Kelly, come thisclose to having sex. And now, finally, the killer makes his appearance. Yes, besides poor defenestrated Robin, no one gets killed in this movie in the first hour. This is fine if the buildup to murder and mayhem is filled with tension and dread, as in Halloween. In Prom Night, however, the buildup is filled with disco music ad nauseum. Anyway, yes, the killer is coming! Dressed in black with a matching ski cap, he chases people around and offs them in a generally inept fashion. For example, he takes a swing at Wendy with an axe, and when he misses, she runs off. He runs after her, but comes back right away because he forgot his axe. Heat of the moment, I guess. At least he remembered before he got her cornered, though, and found himself weaponless: "Uhh..hey, wait right here a minute! I'll be right back! Err...don't run away, please.".

After Jude, Wendy, and Kelly are dead (as well as a few unlucky others who got in the way), it's Nick's turn- but Kim ain't havin' none-a that! Ain't no one gonna kill her man! Not at the prom, beeyatches! Don't worry, it only turned into an episode of Jenny Jones in my head for a second. Nick and the killer struggle on the dance floor...the killer loses his axe...Kim grabs the axe, and when she has a clear shot, she takes it! Wham! She whacks the killer in the head with his own weapon. Jamie Lee Curtis is once again a kickass final girl. She has saved the day, but...she and the killer lock eyes for a moment, and she realizes with horror that the man in black is her brother Alex! Nooooo! But yeeees, it's him. He tells her with his dying breath that he saw what happened to Robin all those years ago at the abandoned convent and he had to make them all pay! Pay! Paaaaaay! He's not so wordy, though- it's more like "Robin! They did it! Shmlehhhhhh...." and he dies in Kim's arms. Lucky Kim- she gets to spend the rest of her days musing on the fact that her friends killed her sister when they were young, that her brother killed her friends when they were older, and that she killed her brother at the prom. Hmm. Maybe it IS all a little Jenny Jones.

The most terrifying thing about Prom Night is the ruthless children at the beginning yelling KILL! KILL! KILL!. Little bastards. Other than that, it's not scary and is ultimately pretty forgettable. Maybe that's why I've seen it so many times. I'll probably watch it again in a few months, then ask myself why I keep watching it. Well, there's always Jamie Lee on the light-up dance floor. I give it 6 out of 10 smoove mooves.

I was 9, Part II

I promised that 1981 saw the release of more great horror flicks than just the bevy I wrote about yesterday, didn't I? And you were all "Nuh uh, I bet not", weren't you? Well, after this you're so gonna wish you had just believed me in the first place! Haven't you learned to just believe me by now, gentle reader? Haven't you?!

I hope you read the fine post I pointed you to yesterday about the werewolf flick The Howling. 1981 was a banner year for the lycanthropes and the fans who love them, as audiences were treated not only to The Howling but also to Wolfen (which is more about Indian mythology than a straight-up werewolf tale, if you want to be picky...) and to the John Landis classic An American Werewolf in London. If you've never seen it, then you'd best go rent it right this minute and watch it. Then come back and we'll continue talking. Go on, I'll wait. OK- got it? Seen it? Great! Now you know that American is a scary, funny flick long on atmosphere and even...umm...longer on fantastic pre-CGI special effects. When I saw "fantastic pre-CGI", I don't mean "fantastic even though they're not CGI", because to my mind Rick Baker's Oscar-winning man-to-wolf transformation sequences would be tough to top even 25 years later.

The Burning: This above-par slasher flick gave Oscar winner Holly Hunter, Seinfeld's Jason Alexander, and that guy you've seen in a million movies but you can't name one Fisher Stevens their first movie roles as campers doomed to death by the eeeevil Cropsy. Armed with giant scissors, Cropsy set about to get some revenge on the prankin' campers who burned him alive in a joke-gone-wrong years before. When you've got Tom Savini at the helm of the FX department, you know you're in for some gory treats, and while I'd LIKE to vouch that the film delivers, it's currently out of print and the only version I've seen (original release VHS) is so cut up that the effects are severely limited. I sincerely hope The Burning gets the DVD re-release treatment soon so we all get to see Cropsy take out an entire raft full of campers the way it was meant to be seen, dammit!

My Bloody Valentine: I used to reeeeeeally dig this Canadian slasher flick. It's fairly by-the-numbers as these things go: way back when, a mining accident left five miners dead...on Valentine's Day! Seems the accident happened because some selfish, good-for-nothing supervisors shirked their duties to attend the annual St Valentine's Day dance. The one survivor, Harry Warden, swore revenge on the whole town- with lots of raised-fist shaking, one can assume. Now, years later, the kids want to resume the V-Day dance tradition, and Harry sure is ticked off! You know where it goes from there, right? Like I said, by the numbers...but this movie has always stuck out in the crowd for me, for some reason. The killer, all done up in miner's gear with gas mask and pick axe, stalking the mine shafts, smashing the lightbulbs out as he went along was a very scary sight to young Stacie. Older, wiser, kinder, gentler Stacie still thinks it's a little scary. Don't make fun.

Deadly Blessing: I haven't seen this Wes Craven effort in soooo long, I had even forgotten it existed- and thinking about it is making me want to track down a copy. Wes Craven, Ernest Borgnine, Sharon Stone, spiders, snakes, the "Incubus", and the Amish-ish folks who fear it. Ohhhhh yeah.

Scanners: David Cronenberg. Telepaths. Michael Ironsides. Exploding heads.

Hell Night: Linda Blair. Sorority initiation in a haunted manor. Murderer inside. You've seen it all before, but in '81 the ideas were still fresh. Plus, Linda Blair.

Oh 1981, what else? What else could there be? Well, and then there's Maude...no, wait, I don't mean Maude. I mean there's Just Before Dawn, a flick recommended to me by a kind reader- it's on the way to my house as I type this. There's The Entity, with Barbara Hershey and her invisible, demon rapist. There's The Hand, the Oliver Stone directed flick about...umm...a hand...a hand that KILLS! I gotta revisit that one sometime soon. Nothin' like a detached hand scuttling about, getting up to all sort of nefarious derring-do. Let's not forget The Fan, Dark Night of the Scarecrow, Blood Beach, Final Exam...the list of Stars of the Class of '81 just goes on and on.

Did you think I would could possibly write about 1981 without mentioning my favorite flick from that year- nay, one of my favorite flicks, period- Friday the 13th Part 2? Sorry if I scared you- I was simply saving the best for last. This movie features crazy, potato sack-wearin', backwoods Jason- the best Jason Voorhees in all 11 F13 movies, in my humble opinion. This movie features Amy Steel as our final girl Ginny...and if you don't know how I feel about Amy Steel, well, then you must just be tuning in to this site. What else can I say about this flick that I didn't say during my Friday the 13th marathon in Shocktober!- which you can read about here? Probably not much. And thusly I shall but silently post some pictures.

Oh, 1981, will you marry me?

I was 9

Recently I was looking for something amongst all my papers and crap and came across this little gem:
Yeah, boyeee, it's Fangoria #10, from 1981. My mom found it amongst all her papers and crap and gave it to me the last time I was home. Yes, I read Fangoria (and Famous Monsters) when I was but nine years old. I haven't looked at an issue of this magazine in years, but when I was a kid, in the early years, it kicked ass. Gross pictures, scary pictures, articles on filmmakers and comics and blah blah blah...man, Fango sold me on so many movies- Motel Hell, Dead and Buried, Fade to Black...I wanted to see them all oh so badly. Most of the time the movies didn't hold up to what my imagination inferred from the pictures, but once in a while they did. Fade to Black was a movie I looked forward to, thanks to Fango, after they printed pictures of Eric Binford (Dennis Christopher) in all the various getups he wore throughout the movie. If you read my review (link above), you know I wanted to kick it in the nuts because I didn't like it. Well! Perusing the letters column from this little time capsule, apparently I wasn't the only person who fell for it. Quoth one Paul Lanner of Staten Island, NY:

Being both a movie critic for my high school and an avid fan of horror films, I strongly felt that Fade to Black should have been omitted from your very good magazine. Let me tell you why.

And so he does.

Ha! Was I made a fool of! Fade to Black left a bitter taste in
my mouth. Not only was the screenplay insidious, the acting was also. Dennis Christopher resembled nothing more than a zombie from Dawn of the Dead. In fact...(it) was not a horror movie, it was a stale, obnoxious comedy with no laughs. I feel it should only receive *1/2.

And there you have it. I just wanted to point out that my opinion has been validated by a high school movie critic from yesteryear. Oh, and Fangoria's response to his letter? "You should know better than to listen to us!"

Inside the magazine there's also an article, An Anatomy of Terror, that has this for a teaser:

What makes terror work? And what will frighten us in 1981? We asked John Carpenter, Sean Cunningham, Richard Rubenstein, Don Coscarelli- and lots more people who should know!

And I thought to myself- if I could turn back time...if I could find a way...I'd take back the words that hurt you, and you'd stay. Then my little Cher make-believe fantasy ended and I thought to myself- Wow! 1981 rocked! Not only did my Mini-Minor League softball team go undefeated all season (and thusly become the champs), but '81 saw some wicked sweet flicks hit the screen. It's true. Behold the treasure trove!

Halloween 2: Written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill, this was more a continuation of Michael Myers's's's shenanigans from 1978's Halloween than a sequel. Or would that make it a true sequel? What is a sequel? Anyway...Jamie Lee Curtis stars once again as Laurie Strode, stalked by her craaaaazy brother Michael while she's all doped up in Haddonfield Memorial Hospital.

The Howling: Des did a marvy post about this werewolf flick during his October blogathon at Without Me You're Only You. I just loved Dee Wallace Stone in every movie she was in back in the day. She totally gets overlooked when people talk about "Scream Queens" (which, you know, is all the time), but I think she rocked. So there!

Evil Dead: Yeah, that Evil Dead. I think I saw this movie at just the right age that it's always been scary to me. It's waaay over the top, some of the effects are extra hokey, and the tongue is definitely in cheek with this Sam Raimi flick...but when Cheryl turns all evil? When she's locked in the cellar? The voices that are all demon-y? I thought that was some spooky shit back in the day. I think that's why the rest of the movies in the series don't matter to me- somewhere along the line it became more comedy than horror, and it ticked me off. Eh, maybe it always was a comedy and I just didn't get the joke. And you know what else? I don't think Ash (Bruce Campbell) is all that great. There, I said it. Nyah.

Ghost Story: Based on the novel by Peter Straub, Ghost Story centers around 4 fellas (Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, John Houseman, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr) who have a very dirty secret from their youth that comes back to haunt them in their golden years. Get it? "Haunt"? "Ghost Story"? Oh, man. That is beyond clever. This movie is a nice, simple, atmospheric spook tale, and I like it- even though it has old people in it. Now that's saying something!

Night School: This better-than-I-expected little slasher featuring Rachel Ward and her bare behind was part of my Shocktober! madness. See! A black-leather clad, motorcycle-ridin' killer stalks college girls on the wild, wild streets of Boston. See! A head in a shark tank at the aquarium. See! Someone smear weird red stuff on Ms. Ward's arse in a shower scene.

Dead & Buried: Another surprise from Shocktober!, this Twilight Zone-esque flick is all about the evil deeds perpetrated by the residents of the sleepy New England town Potter's Bluff. While it's not particularly scary, I really like this movie and its twist ending.

There's so many movies from that magical year to talk about that I need to continue this post tomorrow. I know you, though. You're thinking...there can't possibly be that many more. She's gone mad! But you'll see. Oh yes...you'll see.

Just to tease, let's end this with some killer non-horror movies that debuted in '81, shall we?

Nighthawks: Oh, how I love this movie. A bearded Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams as detectives on the trail of a crazy, murderin' Rutger Hauer? Notice I ask as if there's any other kind of Rutger Hauer...anyway, I'm there, baby. And that ending- you know what I'm talkin' 'bout, Willis. You know...

Then there's some little-known gems like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Road Warrior, Clash of the Titans, Escape from New York, Time Bandits, and The Brady Brides. See what I mean? I swear, I'm gonna figure out a way to go back in time and marry 1981 if it's the last thing I do.

Short, yet sweet

I'm cookin' up something tasty and fab for tomorrow- trust me. But for today, you get a little of this and a little of that. Don't lose hope- I've been busy, but you're never ever out of my thoughts, Final Girl...except between 4 and 5- that's Stacie time.

Exhibit A: Yesterday saw BloodRayne: Lycan Rex hit comic shelves everywhere. It's got vampires and werewolves, but doesn't have anything to do with the upcoming Uwe Boll BloodRayne movie, I swear. I've never seen a Uwe Boll movie, but he seems to be universally reviled. I'm gonna have to check out at least one of his flicks, though, in hopes it'll be enjoyable on that good/bad level. I mean, didn't Alone in the Dark feature Tara Reid as a rocket scientist or something? I'm there. Here's some previews from Lycan Rex

Oh, and I'm mentioning this book because I inked it, ha HA! It's available in comic shops, if you care about that sort of thing, or you can order it online right here.

Exhibit B: from Lilja's Library comes a synopsis of the new Stephen King novel, Cell.

Civilization doesn't end with a bang or a whimper. It ends with a call on your cell phone.

What happens on the afternoon of October 1 came to be known as the Pulse, a signal sent though every operating cell phone that turns its user into something...well, something less than human. Savage, murderous, unthinking-and on a wanton rampage. Terrorist act? Cyber prank gone haywire? It really doesn't matter, not to the people who avoided the technological attack. What matters to them is surviving the aftermath. Before long a band of them-"normies" is how they think of themselves-have gathered on the grounds of Gaiten Academy, where the headmaster and one remaining student have something awesome and terrifying to show them on the school's moonlit soccer field. Clearly there can be no escape. The only option is to take them on.

CELL is classic Stephen King, a story of gory horror and white-knuckling suspense that makes the unimaginable entirely plausible and totally fascinating.

CELL is scheduled to be released on January 24, 2006.

I'm cautiously optimistic. King's pretty hit-or-miss with me, especially in recent years. What I like, I really really like, and the rest..meh. Remember back when he had editors and his books were a tight 300 pages long, instead of a rambling 700? Those short, early books are among his best: Carrie, Cujo, The Shining...although The Stand is pretty damn long and pretty damn good. I tend to dig his short stories most of all. What worries me about the above synopsis is the promised "soccer field" scene. I hope it doesn't involve...monsters. Too much of King's work leads you down Path A, which can sometimes be a spooky, kick-ass little journey, and then suddenly you turn on to Path B, which is a cop-out monster mash. I'm looking at you, It!

Exhibit C: For your reading pleasure, here's a link to an interview with Ray Harryhausen, just because. Just because why? Just because I love Ray Harryhausen, that's why.

Until tomorrow, my pets...