Macabre in the Blogosphere: "Damn Love"

Just when I thought Dark Valentines Week had concluded...

I came across this post this morning while browsing the Fangoria website.  It contains a YouTube video for a five-minute short film entitled Damn Love.  The film chronicles the frustrated attempts of a "Geek" (as he's identified in the closing credits) to declare his love for the "Hottie" he's had his eye on.  Black comedy mixes with Valentine red in this enjoyable short, which is definitely worth a few minutes of your viewing time.

Book Review: The Loving Dead

The Loving Dead by Amelia Beamer (Night Shade Books, 2010)

Zombieland meets Scream (or: Romero does Emmanuelle) in this funny, self-aware, and unabashedly steamy zombie novel.  Beamer's brilliant conceit here is to treat zombieism as a venereal disease (the virus spreads through kissing as well as intercourse).  And once the infected start turning, they want your body for more than dinner.  This is a book that gives new meaning to sexual appetite.

As a first novel, The Loving Dead has plenty to recommend it.  The narrative brims with wit and sardonic humor, yet also manages to provide ample scares (including a terrific set piece involving a zombie outbreak amongst tourists on a zeppelin ride).  The sex scenes are expertly presented, proving at once erotic and authentic (no easy task in any novel, let alone a horror-comedy).  Beamer, a native of Oakland, also exhibits a deep familiarity with Bay Area geography and culture; the novel appropriately climaxes at Alcatraz, as the main characters seek a safe haven from apocalypse.
But perhaps Beamer's greatest accomplishment here is her creation of interesting, well-rounded characters, whose basic humanity renders them easy to identify with.  These are people who throw house parties, work at Trader Joe's, tell jokes, use iPhones and watch Netflix, have sex, want love, and fear commitment.  And they've seen a slew of zombie movies, an experience that comes in handy when the loving dead start pawing their way through civilization.

The novel concludes with an epilogue-type last chapter set "ten years later," which some readers might find  jarring, not just for its chronological leap but its shift into a more maudlin tone.  Taken on its own merits, though, the chapter stands as a fine piece of extrapolation, sketching a portrait of an America a decade removed from a successfully-quelled uprising.  More importantly, the chapter explores what life would be like for the still-infected (their zombieism held in check by antiretrovirals) as they attempt to make their way in quote-unquote mainstream society.  The uneasy mix of discrimination and coexistence here gives this last chapter a strong True Blood vibe.

Overall, this is not a flawless novel (at times, excessive character introspection reduces the pace to a slow crawl), but The Loving Dead nonetheless marks an impressive debut.  This clever variation warrants a spot on every zombie-lover's bookshelf--or bedroom nightstand.

Beelzebub Tweets

     BLZ, Bub







[For previous tweets, check out this post.]


Hope you fall deep in love this Valentine's Day (and move one step closer to a crime of passion).
--13 minutes ago


Horny devils of the world: unite!  May your carnal knowledge always be unlawful.
--7:24 P.M., February 13th


I ♥ the heartless, and savor the sweetly sinful.
--4:09 P.M., February 13th


An open call to all the masochists out there: care to re-enact the Massacre this Valentine’s Day?
--11:02 A.M., February 12th


Just not that into him/her? My advice: try using a sharper knife.
--9:31 A.M., February 11th

Make vs. Remake: My Bloody Valentine

Make (1981):

Remake (2009):





It's been awhile since I've done this type of post, so let me start by explaining the ten-point-total system used in the final scoring.  Think of it as having ten gold pieces to be distributed on the opposing arms of a scale.  Based on which film version is preferred, the scales will be tipped--either slightly or significantly--in that direction (if both movies are valued on an equal level, they will each receive a score of 5).

The 2009 version of My Bloody Valentine definitely ups the ante when it comes to graphic violence (the opening sequence alone strews more grue than the original does in its entirety).  The kills are not just more spectacular, but startling and original as well.  Conversely, I felt like the victim's deaths (and the particular manner of their downfall) in the first film could be easily foreseen.

Whereas the remake goes heavy on the "Bloody," "Valentine" is much more relevant to the original (granted, the filmmakers do get a bit heavy-handed, even naming the town where the action takes place "Valentine Bluffs").  February 14th has an especial significance to the plot of the 1981 version, while in the remake the holiday is mostly incidental.

Honestly, the acting in the original isn't bad--it is abysmal (and all those Canadian accents! It was like watching the slasher equivalent of Strange Brew). The cast of the remake (including Jensen Ackles, Jaime King, and Kerr Smith) proves not just more talented but markedly more telegenic (also, those who like plenty of T&A served up with their splatter will savor the remake's extended sequence featuring a fully-tanned, birthday-suited Betsy Rue).

Even more gratuitous than that nude scene, though, is the remake's use of 3-D effects.  At times, it felt like the action of the film was put on pause in order to showcase a pointy weapon poking out from the screen.  A distracting gimmick that the film need not have resorted to.

The original is obviously indebted to Halloween (right down to the use of the I-camera to present the killer's p.o.v.), but the remake follows more of the Scream formula.  Everyone appears to be a suspect here; the identity of the masked, pickax-wielding maniac (someone other than deranged miner Harry Warden, who went on a killing spree years earlier?) forms a much more intriguing question in the remake.

The 2009 version also distinguishes itself with its noir elements.  Developing the love-triangle storyline from the original, the remake offers a shady sheriff who has impregnated the co-worker of his wife, who herself still pines for her old flame, who himself has just drifted back into town after disappearing for ten years following Harry Warden's bloodbath.  These various complications make for a highly entertaining plot.

In final account, the 2009 version is an exemplary entry into the slasher-film subgenre, and a much heartier piece of horror than the original:

Make: 2

                   \

                     \

                        Remake: 8

So what's your take?  If you'd like to share your thoughts on either of these two films, you can post a Comment below.

"I Go to Pieces" (short story)

(A word of warning to the demure: the following short story, which was inspired by a segment on the old HBO series Real Sex, is chock full of adult content.)

"I Go to Pieces"

by Joe Nazare

Reaching down below my waist, she tears off my genitals with one firm tug.  Talk about an attention grabber--my mental haze sears off instantly.  There's an unpleasant pop as she unmans me, but no pain.  I sit there suctioned to a leather sofa, watching as she tosses my tool onto the coffee table and then picks up an even larger unit and snaps it into place.

"It's like a Mr. Potato Head for perverts," comments the woman standing by with her arms folded across her ostensible chest.

I ignore her, focusing instead on my manipulator.  She's tall, with long, sinewy limbs extending from her black t-shirt and jogging shorts.  Her blond hair is scrunched back into a ponytail.  A hottie, no doubt: most guys would be ecstatic to have her fondling their bait and tackle.

"Very funny," she replies.  "I thought you promised to be serious about this."  That voice: vaguely familiar.

"I'm sorry," the other one says.  "I just can't believe you spent six thousand dollars for a glorified dildo.  A big Ken doll with a strap-on and a goofy grin."

Hunh?

Hangmany

[For previous game, click here.]

Can you solve the following puzzle within 30 seconds, or are you going to choke?


CATEGORY: QUOTATION

T  __  __      __  __  A  T  __ ,      T  __  __  __ ,      __  F      A

__  __  A  __  T  __  F  __  __      W  __  M  A  __      __  __ ,

__  __  Q  __  __  __  T  __  __  __  A  __  __  Y ,      T  __  __

M  __  __  T      __  __  __  T  __  __  A  __      T  __  __  __  __

__  __      T  __  __      W  __  __  __  __ .


MISSES: G, K, V











HINT: Poe on prosody.


Correct answer appears in the Comments section of this post.

QuickList: 14 Great Tales of Erotic/Sexual Horror

Dark Valentines Week continues here at Macabre Republic with the following QuickList of 14 inflaming yet chilling narratives.  Tales that simultaneously titillate and disturb.  The chosen stories/
novellas are either overtly erotic in tone or take human sexuality (in all its perverse permutations) as their subject.  In the interest of symmetry, I've listed selections from seven male and seven female writers.

1.Poppy Z. Brite: "His Mouth will Taste of Wormwood" (1990). 
Borderlands: An Anthology of Imaginative Fiction. 
Goth debauchery takes a grave turn in this homoerotic update of Poe.

2.Christa Faust: "Tighter" (2004). 
Strange Bedfellows (Hot Blood, Book 12).
A bondage addict searches for a special kind of closeness in this modern classic of dark kinkiness penned by an ex-dominatrix.

3.Gemma Files: "Torch Song" (1998). 
Kissing Carrion. 
An erotic variation on the hard-boiled fiction of James Ellroy, in which a police detective is cursed (by a member of an Aphrodite-worshipping cult) into carrying an un-guttering torch for his male partner.

4.Jack Ketchum: "The Best" (2000). 
Peaceable Kingdom. 
Break-up sex with a Machiavellian twist.  No one handles scenes of sexual violence better than Ketchum.

5.Richard Laymon: "The Diving Girl" (2005). 
Dark Delicacies. 
Reads like the prose equivalent of the famous pool scene from Fast Times at Ridgemont High--at least until the eerie discovery at the end of the story.

6.Edward Lee: Trolley No. 1852 (2009). 
This lushly-detailed novella delves into some explicit extrapolation: what if H.P. Lovecraft had applied his writing talents to pornography?

7.Elizabeth Massie: "Hooked on Buzzer" (1988). 
Splatterpunks II: Over the Edge. 
Warped neo-puritanism begets sexual perversion.  One way or another, this story will put a charge into you.

8.Joyce Carol Oates: "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" (1966).
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?: Selected Early Stories
A moony teenager who likes to dress and behave beyond her years attracts the attention of the wrong older guy.  Arnold Friend's doorstep tete-a-tete with Connie comprises the most unsettling seduction scene since Satan convinced Eve to add more fruit to her diet.

9.Chuck Palahniuk: "Guts" (2005). 
Haunted: A Novel. 
That's exactly what it will take, dear reader, to get through this grotesque yarn about auto-erotic mishap.

10.Norman Partridge: "Spyder" (1995). 
The Man with the Barbed-Wire Fists. 
Partridge takes to heart the old tabloid rumors about black magic rituals, in this clever and steamy fictionalization of the relationship between Maila Nurmi (a.k.a. Vampira) and James Dean.

11.Dan Simmons: "Dying in Bangkok" (1993). 
Lovedeath. 
"Imagine an organism where you're ejaculating blood," offers one of the characters in this harrowing tale of vampiric fellatio in the Far East.

12.Lucy Taylor: "Fuck the Dead" (1997). 
Mondo Zombie. 
The title's a tad subtle, so allow me to elaborate: you'll be up to your neck in necrophilia in this nasty piece narrated by a teenage voyeur who's tired of just watching his prostituted zombie-mom and her living johns.

13.James Tiptree, Jr. (pseudonym of Alice Sheldon): "The Screwfly Solution" (1977). 
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever. 
Hands down, the most terrifying tale of sexual aggression ever written.  The basis as well for a blood-curdling episode of Showtime's Masters of Horror.

14.F. Paul Wilson: "Menage a Trois" (1987). 
Hot Blood. 
Three's definitely a crowd when it comes to a caretaker, a maid, and a handicapped hag in a hilltop mansion in West Virginia.  A masterful erotic-Gothic novella from the multi-talented Wilson.


These selections will likely leave you feeling spent, but by no means is this an exhaustive list (I could probably draw up another one using the very same group of writers, and there are countless other scribes out there who have produced exemplary works of erotic/sexual horror).  If you'd like to augment my QuickList and recommend other tales of this type to readers, you can make note of them in the Comments section of this post.

Book Review: Vicious Romantic

Vicious Romantic by Wrath James White (Needfire Press, 2010)


Needfire Press once again proves itself the leading publisher of horror poetry, with this collection of works of "terror, madness, pain, and sorrow" (as White himself glosses in the Introduction).  In Vicious Romantic, White deftly utilizes Japanese and Korean verse forms (e.g. haiku comprise the "stanzas" of select poems); the writing, as a result, is at once tight and resonant.  As one might guess from the book's title, the coupling of love and death forms an overarching theme here.  For instance, in "The Wind Over the Water," a heartbroken boy sitting lakeside and grieving over
"unrequited love" is targeted by a heartless, rapacious "monster."  The imagery in this poem, and throughout the volume, is as vivid as it is vicious.

There are several other standout pieces couched between the covers, such as "Consumption," in which the poet manages to make even cannibalism sound exquisite.  In the chilling "Not His Mother," a shotgun-wielding son faces off with his beloved but zombified mom.  Don't expect to find Bob Villa or Norm Abrams in "This Old House of Pain and Woe"--the titular domicile probably could use an exorcism more than an excavation.  And the darkly allegorical title poem--featuring a creature that battens on romance, that stalks
"desperate lovers" and "camouflages itself / As diamond engagement rings"--forms the perfect coda to the collection.

Just as the individual poems are brief but poignant, the volume overall is short yet haunting.  Easily devoured yet meant to be relished.  For those lucky enough to be in love with a horror lover, this book can serve as the perfect Valentine this coming Monday.