Countdown Recap

Here's a quick pictorial recap of the countdown of Top 20 American Horror Movie Posters, numbers 20-2 (click on the corresponding number to read the individual post for that poster).  Be sure to travel back to the Macabre Republic tomorrow, when the choice for #1 will be revealed. 

#20

#19

#18

#17

#16

#15

#14

#13

#12

#11

#10

#9

#8

#7

#6

#5

#4

#3

#2

Short Story Spotlight: "You Must Remember This"

"You Must Remember This" by Gary A. Braunbeck  (Chizine.com)

Gary A. Braunbeck's fiction is marked by its uniquely weird premises, by the author's knack for dramatizing the disruption of quotidian existence by the uncanny.  "You Must Remember This," Braunbeck's latest short story, is no exception.  Randy and his wife Cindy are watching the old home movies that they just had transferred to DVD from 8mm, when Randy makes an unsettling discovery: the scenes he views onscreen deviate strangely from the past he recalls, and in some instances prove to be outright fantasies with no connection whatsoever to his actual experiences.  What possible explanation could there be this perplexing turn of events, other than Randy (who takes Zoloft to treat his depression) being mentally unstable?  Well, let's just say that the story builds to a whopper of a plot twist, one that manages to be both surprising and fitting.  And poignant, as Braunbeck's greatest gift--his ability to craft realistic, recognizably human characters, people nursing both physical and emotional wounds--is also on full display here.

Ultimately the imperative phrasing of the title is unnecessary, because this is one story that the reader will have no trouble remembering.

Most Gothic Place Names in the United States--Oklahoma

[For previous entries, click the "Most Gothic Place Names" label under Features in the right sidebar.]


Oklahoma offers up such darkly musical names as Strawberry Spring (beware fog-cloaked serial killers), Hitchcock (this place is for The Birds), Shrewder (the inhabitants are always looking to outfox you), Hester (a scarlet letter on every varsity sweater), Ketchum (a real Jacktown), Tenkiller (gives new meaning to "shooting a supermodel"), and Mound Grove (a glorified graveyard).  No sooner did I spy the following, though, than I knew it constituted Oklahoma's most Gothic place name:

Dead Women Crossing.  The name suggests a site of misogynistic massacre.  Or some shunned town where female ghouls are on the prowl.  A locale where life and death intersect, and ghosts eternally search for the correct path to the beyond.

Countdown: The Top 20 American Horror Movie Posters--#2

[For the previous entry on the countdown, click here.]


#2. Cloverfield


This poster proves that you don't need famous faces or witty taglines to grab people's attention.  Encountering this depiction of unfolding apocalypse, the observor can't help but wonder what decapitated Lady Liberty.  Also, the smoking New York City skyline inevitably evokes the spector of 9/11.  Even the film title sparks curiosity here, based on the poster's imagery (what exactly is the significance of "Cloverfield"?).  Overall, an ingenius poster, in perfect keeping with the film's viral marketing campaign.

The Gothicism of American Gothic: "Potato Boy"

[For the previous entry, click here.]


This episode of American Gothic actually never aired during the show's 1995 run, perhaps because it is rife with sexual innuendo (a lonesome Selena gets frisky with ten-year-old Caleb during an after-school lesson in her apartment).  Also, religion is debased throughout: a dead bug floats belly-up in a basin of holy water; a church looks like the setting for a splatter movie after a priest spills blood-red wine all over during communion; Sheriff Buck (providing voiceover) also wonders if one the prim and proper churchgoers is "a screamer or a squealer."  Yet anyone who has read The Monk 
knows that the negative portrayal of religion is a traditional feature of the Gothic.

The Potato Boy of the episode's title is a Boo Radley-type bogey that has captured the imagination of Trinity's children.  Rumor has it that the boy is the bastard child of creepy Old Man Warren and the young woman he imprisoned and impregnated.  She died delivering him, since the boy allegedly weighed 30 pounds at birth.  He was also wretchedly deformed (no eyes; giant claws for hands) and thus has been kept locked away in the mouldering Warren house ever since.  Turns out, the Potato Boy is inside, and he is disfigured, but he has a beautiful soul.  In another example of the episode's coupling of religion and the grotesque, the Potato Boy is given an angelic voice (which he uses to belt out church hymns).

The episode shows that Trinity is populated with secret sinners.  The school teacher is a harlot; the local psychiatrist is a pedophile; the priest is a dope fiend (who doesn't practice what he preaches when it comes to Christian forgiveness: he's disowned his wanton daughter, Selena, banishing her from his church [how a priest has come to have a daughter is a question the episode skirts]).  And of course, the sheriff is the most duplicitous figure of all.  But give the devil his due: Lucas Buck makes a good point when he advises Caleb, "Be careful what you see in a man's eyes.  It might not be the truth."  In Trinity, South Carolina, the windows to the soul tend to be darkly shaded.