HORRIBLE NIGHTS - found.

“Do you want to be the kid that gets picked on

or the kid that gets in trouble?”

[Image source]

I've been curmudgeonly about new films for about a decade now for the same reason that I was driven back in time by music. The stuff that gets promoted is crap, it's that simple. But three years ago I stumbled into a tomb of wonders called bandcamp. It's a place for new independant bands to share and sell their music. It's a place where artists are free to exploit their own creative vision free from corporate restraints. Recently, I've challenged myself to tap a similar vein for underground filmmakers. I have this crazy notion that there's a world of worthwhile auteurs out there that you won't find in theaters. In my imagination, these freewheeling visionaries do what they want, take no prisoners and do it on a shoestring budget. The problem is, there's no bandcamp for filmmakers, not one that I know of anyway. Youtube could have been it, Vimeo tries to be it, but as of this writing I've yet to find the "filmcamp" website. Not too big a problem though, you've just got to dig. Finding great bands on bandcamp is a gold rush, finding great underground horror films is a scavenger hunt.

Probably the biggest prized piece of that hunt has been the movie Found (stylized as found.). Based on the novel by Todd Rigney, Found is the coming of age story about an adolescent boy whose older brother is a serial killer. Marty (played by Gavin Brown) suffers constant abuse from everyone around him. His only solace is making comic books and watching horror movies (as if that doesn’t sound familiar!). He goes into  his brother Steve (Ethan Philbeck)’s room when he’s not around and goes through his stuff. He already knows about the severed heads in bowling bags in the closet and likes to pull those out to have a look at, but the real hidden treasure is in Steve’s VHS collection. Replace “severed heads” with “skin rags” and “VHS” with “comic books” and Rigney and director Scott Schirmer (co-screenwriters) have just basically described my childhood.

In one cool scene Marty plays his brother’s tape deck and a scorching rendition of Eyehategod’s “Sister Fucker” blasts out courtesy of a band called Racebannon. You can find the complete soundtrack, including Racebannon’s contributions at this location.

But thee forbidden prize of them all comes in the form of the ‘Headless’ VHS tape. It shows a depraved film with no story, told from a maniacal, costumed killer’s point of view. The Headless movie ends up being the only thing that truly motivates each brother to take charge of their own lives and put their respective feet down to end the abuse, even if it means getting into trouble in the process. For Marty it’s a mostly negative process, for Steve, it’s an entirely negative one.

There’s really no avoiding it, if you want to live your own life on your own terms, you WILL get in trouble. In some ways there’s just no winning in life and this film doesn’t flinch from that reality. In some ways it can be seen as having a nihilistic or pessimistic point of view. Well, it IS a horror picture. But I don’t see it that way. It’s a sophisticated look at a brutal, capital T Truth.

The end of the film is as brutal and uncompromising as it gets. There’s no going back, there’s no classic happy ending and yet there is survival. Is that not a happy ending? One supposes it would have to be in a movie this stark. Found isn’t a nihilistic movie, it’s an existential one. It’s a cost / benefit analysis for sticking up for yourself, and the response is equivalent to the depth of one’s suffering.

More importantly, it’s a good movie. The violence and gore is mostly off-screen, though you’d never know it thinking back because of the unflinching use of sound. Most, if not all of the bloody violence takes place in the film-within-a-film, Headless. Director Scott Schirmer set up an ultimately successful crowd-funding campaign to bring Headless to life in its own right. Headless is already being called “a feature length gore fest” and if the scenes in Found are any indication, that ain’t just hype. There’s a teaser trailer up for it and it looks like pure sleaze. It should be good. You can watch the teaser at this location.

Found is available on DVD, iTunes, Xbox, Google Play and Amazon instant video.

Rating: ««««½ / 5

Reminds me of: Childhood

Found official website

Found on IMDb
Found wiki
Found on Rotten Tomatoes

HORRIBLE NIGHTS - Patrick Bruss - The Gorgon's Gallery

American multi-instrumentalist Patrick Bruss is one half of the horror-inspired death / grind metal band Crypticus. Together, he and Norwegian drummer Brynjar Helgetun have released three full-length albums and a host of E.P.'s and other items. Now, death metal isn't my thing but for Crypticus I can say that what I've heard from the band is better than 95% of the genre, this coming from someone who loves riff-based metal with organ so take that for what it's worth to you. 

But Crypticus is only one outlet for Patrick Bruss's dark imagination. This past October he released a solo eight song E.P. of synth-based horror themes called 'The Gorgon's Gallery'. I've talked at length and I'll continue to talk at length about how it's tough to find good synth-based horror music that isn't dance-y, well 'The Gorgon's Gallery' is exactly what I'm looking for. Matter of fact this is one of the best imaginary horror soundtracks I've heard.

The difference here is that Bruss uses live instruments so that the atmosphere maintains its horrific focus. It's hard to maintain an eerie or creepy feeling when your feet feel like dancing. Horror music should make your feet feel like running or at least stay very, very still so as not to attract attention. Bruss achieves that goal here. It's easy to tell that this horror-inspired music is coming from someone with a heavy metal, rather than a dance music background. The sensibility pays off as you can practically feel the blood pulsating and oozing from the throbbing basslines.

Again, this album is caked with castle dungeon atmosphere. It sets the mind off into secret tunnels and cobwebbed lairs of darkness. If that sounds corny to you, then you're probably not a horror lifer. Bruss is, and it takes a certain sensibility to realize and maintain such moods. But as important the feel is to this E.P., there's memorable themes here. Ultimately, the combination of the two, atmosphere and melody is what brings me back constantly.

Three of my other personal favorite horror-inspired musical projects, Blizaro, Slasher Dave and Werewolves in Siberia also come from musicians with heavy metal backgrounds (although Blizaro is more metal with horror music touches), a fourth of those favorites, Zoltan uses live instruments. The organic quality of live instruments and heavy sensibility of the artist comes together to create perfect horror music so that the sense of menace runs rampant. If I were to try to pinpoint this album on the horror music scale of heaviness it would fall between Blizaro and Slasher Dave. No matter where it lies though, this has been one of the best albums of horror music I've heard and I hope Patrick Bruss continues to do this kind of thing. 

He also did the music for a short film called "For the Team" which you can find at this location.

Rating: «««««/ 5

HORRIBLE NIGHTS - Demons (1985)

"They will make cemeteries their cathedrals 

and the cities will be your tombs"

While many other sites will be talking about the Friday the 13th film franchise today, I'm going to give you an alternative. I'm going to show you a movie that is one part mondo schlock and one part metafiction in overdrive. This is a horror film about people watching a horror film. As the film-within-a-film unfolds, the audience's reality intertwines with the story's plot. Like many Italian horror films, there's an ambiguity of intention due to narrative dissonance. While American filmmakers torture themselves over details of a tightly constructed plot, Italians have often gravitated toward pure expression. For audiences trained in Hollywood storytelling, these films appear to be a confused jumble of ideas. Things just sort of happen on screen and it's on the viewer to shuffle them into order. The film might be saying that horror films make demons of their audience, or it might be saying nothing at all.

The nihilistic tendencies of the story negate any sense of meaning at all. What begins as a story about people infecting and destroying each other in a self-contained environment, ie: the Metropol movie theater, ends in an apocalyptic outbreak. There is no hope here, no moral victory and that just may be the muted point, that the violence and destruction horror fans witness desensitizes them and destroys the moral fabric of society. The horror film itself is the demon infecting those in theaters who are then unleashed upon the world. Or it might be saying nothing at all.

Demons (Dèmoni) was directed by Lamberto Bava, the son of legendary Italian director Mario Bava and produced by Dario Argento. Argento's association with the film has taken precedence and many believe that the movie was directed by him. With such a pedigree the film may be a slight disappointment aesthetically. This is sleazy camp, the story is a mess and the English overdubs are atrocious. But no matter, those are reasons to love this film.

When a second set of characters are introduced we stay with them for a while and get to know them. They do interesting if hideous things like drive while sniffing coke out of a straw sticking out from a coca-cola can, then spill the can on their ladyfriend's chest before using a razor blade to scrape up the mess. They bicker, we understand their group dynamics and the air in their car is electric with sexually charged danger and tension. Ultimately, they're there to free the demons from the barricaded theater, a simple job that might have been handled by less developed characters. Their punk rock sleaze may be symbolic of a destructive force in society. In this film, it's those racy, drug-addled punks who literally set the demons free. Then again, the film might be saying nothing at all.

Those trapped in the theater and suffering at the hands of the demons are no better. The daughter of a blind man (what's he doing at the movie theater?) who relies on her to give him 'descriptive audio' sneaks off to bump uglies with a man, as far as we know a complete stranger, without exchanging a single word with him. These are people who talk during the movie or, in other words, assholes. Then there's the even bigger asshole who incessantly shushes them. There's the pimp and his two whores. The horndogs and their all too willing prey. And when the shit hits the fan, they're just people. Leaders emerge and are dragged or thrown of balconies, replaced by new leaders. Demons could be saying that this is what people are, scratch the surface (literally, with a metal mask) and underneath you'll find the most horrific, lustfully murderous perversions.

Under the surface of this film is a kind of frame story. The same actor who appears in the film being screened at the Metropol, whose character is the first to don the fateful chrome mask, hands our heroine the complimentary pass for the theater. He doesn't say a word, he just hands her the ticket.

The storytelling in Demons seems ham-fisted, the acting is distracting and much of the plot makes little sense at first brush. But the sleaze is on point, many of the kills are highly memorable and there are some good moments on the soundtrack. Behind it all is a subtle social message, a warning gilded with fun. As if to prove the underlying point of Demons, I'd love to have seen the highly atmospheric film-within-a-film that the spectators are watching. There have been endless sequels that are only tangentially related to this film, one that ends with very little possibility for a sequel.

WATCH DEMONS HERE:

HORRIBLE NIGHTS - John Carpenter - Lost Themes

“It can be both great and bad to score over images, which is what I’m used to. Here there were no pressures ... It’s just fun.”

- John Carpenter [source]

You know John Carpenter. He needs no introduction, but he deserves one nevertheless. One of the most creative forces in the latter quarter of the 20th century in both film and music, John Carpenter scored and directed over 15 films between 1974's Dark Star and 2010's The Ward. His list of accomplishments during that span is significant. He helped defined the slasher film subgenre while simultaneously helping to define (along with Italian atmospheric prog masters Goblin), how music sounded in film for the next decade with but a single work: the classic 1978 film Halloween. He went on to direct and score some of the most iconic films of the 1980’s: They Live; Big Trouble in Little China; The Thing and The Fog among other classics.

[Image source]

So what John Carpenter does today? According to recent interviews he plays video games and watches the NBA on TV. How's that for one of the most innovative musicians of the latter quarter of the 20th century? Well it seems the video games help fuel his creative fires. In between rounds of Borderlands 2 and Assassin's Creed: Unity, he would sneak off to his home studio to improvise an idea in sound.

'Lost Themes' is a deceptive title and I imagine it's intentionally so. It automatically makes one think that these songs are unused themes from his films, but that's not the case. Though he's had many a soundtrack album released from his films over the years this is in fact, his first standalone album of all-new original material. But that doesn't mean he's forgotten the lessons learned in his film work.

Carpenter improvises when scoring a film. He starts with a drone, adjusted for the mood of what's on screen. Then he adds layers of keyboards as he watches the scene in real time. For 'Lost Themes', Carpenter used much the same process, but he didn't have a picture reference to draw from and the result is apparently liberating. Carpenter is free from the constraints of narrative, budget and the limitations of special effects to imagine all-new scenes and then to score the hell out of them. 

[Image source]

Music can often "suggest" images. It's one of the great joys of listening to music, specifically that of the "horror synth" or "darkwave" subgenres which Carpenter basically created. On 'Lost Themes', the opposite is taking place. Imagination creates images which suggest music. The resulting album is unique within Carpenter's ouevre. While still filmic, the music is free to be more than accompaniment, it's free to be just what it is, music for music's sake.

The songs or "themes" are highly atmospheric, as always the songwriting process begins with a mood, which is turned into a drone. But rather than remain static for the duration of a scene, the compositions are free to wander around and tell entire short stories of their own within their 4 to 8 minute lengths. That means they're structured, though not rigidly so. Of course, the best moments on the album are the darkest in both tone and title, "Night" and "Obsidian" stand out as particular highlights, along with "Mystery" and "Abyss". If nothing else, how often do you see a 67-year old release one of the best electronic albums of the year?

The LP version will be released in March by Sacred Bones Records. The album proper stretches 47 minutes across 9 songs, but the iTunes download comes with a half hour’s worth of remixes, which is jarring, unnecessary and their entirely different tone (read, dancey) only serves to undermine the carefully laid fabric of the album. Stick to Carpenter and you'll do fine.

Rating: «««« / 5

Also check out:

John Carpenter's official site

The Sludgelord write-up that originally turned me on to Carpenter albums

and

This cool beginner's guide to John Carpenter's music

HORRIBLE NIGHTS - Wake Wood

*NO spoilers*

I first heard about Wake Wood on the A Year in the Country blog. All I knew going in was that the trailer had the feel of The Wicker Man and it stars Aidan Gillen from The Wire. That's more than enough for me to check it out.

The premise is simple, a married couple move to a small village in the country after the death of their daughter. There, they discover the townsfolk engage in disturbing rituals. When the couple decide to leave, they are convinced to stay by one of the civic leaders. He tells them that he can bring their daughter back to life for three days, but of course, it comes with a heavy price.

It's one of those story ideas you would swear you've heard a million times, I call it the Monkey's Paw device.

I can’t say I loved Wake Wood, but I certainly didn’t hate it. An easy criticism to level at it is that the emotional element of the story is taken for granted from the get-go, rather than developed. The storytellers introduce the Daley family to the audience then kill their young daughter. This happens immediately, before the title card is even up on screen. From that point forward, the emotional impact of the daughter’s death on the parents is taken for granted and left unsaid. I understand what an impact that loss would have on a person, but how does it affect these people? What’s needed are a few quiet scenes of grief, that’s all, taking whatever form you’d like.

These can be boring scenes to write and I understand the urge to just push through the story, but when mother Louise (Eva Birthistle) experiences the occasional minor breakdown, it’s difficult to empathize with her and that impacts an otherwise wonderful performance. When we see her sprawled on the floor amid the daughter (Alice)’s things, it feels forced. Storytellers always fear losing an audience if things don’t play out at breakneck speed, and real empathy takes time to develop.

Amateur lessons in melodrama aside, I was pleasantly surprised by this film. My mind had already entangled Wake Wood with The Wicker Man and that’s heavyweight company. Paradoxically, I’m pleasantly surprised because I was expecting a lot from Wake Wood and it didn’t disappoint.

Pagan horror is an underused subgenre. When Alice (Ella Connolly) is resurrected we see the whole ritual of return, which involves finding a corpse, breaking the pelvis, severing the spine, covering it in mud or manure and burning it. It’s one of several satisfying and memorable scenes, satisfaction being key.

Too often in films and stories magical or pagan rites are glossed over because again, these scenes are difficult to write, especially if you’re just making it up. I can’t vouch for the kind of research that went into this one scene in particular, but it has the smell of esoteric authenticity. Or maybe that’s just the manure. Either way, because I was expecting that smell, when it actually does reach my nostrils, it’s satisfying.

The film also becomes self-aware in a good way. Because we know that our sympathetic characters are outsiders and that the townsfolk of Wake Wood engage in secretive rituals, when the townsfolk start doing things like entering the Daley’s home uninvited and sitting there in the dark, it’s unsettling. This is an old and necessary trope of horror: the violation of the homestead. There can be nothing sacred, there can be no safety in a horror film and this conjuring trick is performed well by the storytellers. We never really know who is on the Daley’s side up until the very end of the movie. We genuinely don’t know what the Wake Wood residents plan is for the newly resurrected Alice when they subtly separate her from her parents.

The ending is a bit off in terms of tone, ensuring a darkly happy ending for father Patrick (Gillen). The problem is the rest of the film is not a dark comedy, it’s tense and serious, the ending is inappropriately weird, and I'm saying this as an admitted weirdo. Still, it's well worth watching.

Wake Wood falls under the resurrected Hammer Films banner. Wake Wood is an Irish film, it was filmed in Ireland and directed by David Keating.

Rating: «««½ / 5

Reminds me of: The Wicker Man, Pet Sematary

Wake Wood on IMDb
Wake Wood wiki
Rotten Tomatoes

HORRIBLE NIGHTS - Jacula

Jacula was formed in 1966 by Satanist Anthony Bartoccetti and his wife Doris Norton. Their 1969 album 'In Cauda Semper Stat Venenum' is the most evil music that the world had ever known at the time of its release. That is, until a certain Brummy blues band stormed the world months later.

[Image Source]

Still, the impact of this album remains keen. There is a conspiracy theory that the album was actually recorded in the 80's or 90's and some of the production touches certainly seem to indicate that. In its original form, the album was said to be released as an edition of 300 copies, and they weren't sold in stores. In fact, they weren't sold at all. According to legend, the band gave copies away to anyone they met who had an interest in the occult. Most, if not all of the original copies have been lost or destroyed. I have yet to find any mention online of someone having dug up one up. If they did, I suspect they would hear much the same music as you would today on the iTunes version, for example ... minus some of the crushingly heavy guitar and synth overdubs.

But regardless of its true origins 'In Cauda Semper Stat Venenum' is an amazing album. In 1969 this album wouldn't have fit in anywhere. Church organ, played by Charles Tiring is the lead instrument, followed by thunderous timpani (played by Norton), with the occasional spoken/whispered vocal laced throughout. The album features 6 inverted hymns and insists on being listened to by candle light. This is dark ambient music before there was a concept of such a thing. While the infant prog scene of the day seemed to be focused on some of the more fanciful applications of the hippie ideal, Jacula were provocative, unapologetic occultists. One thing's for certain, this isn't pop music, but is it even prog?

Anthony Bartoccetti [Image Source]

The best way to describe the sound would be to call it devotional music. The thing is, what the group was devoted to would surely have sickened the sensibilities of the masses. They seemed to be made to inspire hatred. One could only imagine the response to the band at the time. Keyboardist / organist Charles Tiring was said to be in his mid to late sixties and married to an 18 year old girl by the time of their second (and last) album 'Tardo Pede in Magiam Versus' in 1972. This is one of those bands that every story you read about them gets crazier and crazier. Jacula is almost too good to be true. Another clue to make one question the authenticity of 'In Cauda Semper Stat Venenum' is to compare it to what came later.

'Tardo Pede in Magiam Versus' is very much a product of its time. It's certainly progressive. At times the album transposes the spookier organ works of J.S. Bach onto a Fairport Convention album. However great that idea looks on (e-) paper, it sounds even better in practice (see "U.F.D.E.M."). Doris Norton's singing voice is deep, rich and powerful, her spoken word passages sound desperate and pleading, whenever possible she leads group chants. Much of the album however is devoted to organ solos. There are jazzier / loungier / dreamier parts of the record however, such as "Jacula Valzer" which belies any proto-metal leanings. In spite of that, much of the record is steeped in eerie moods, but falls somewhat flat when compared to its predecessor.

[Image Source]

After this second record, the band changed parts and Anthony Bartoccetti changed gears into Antonius Rex with new personnel. The new group first appeared in 1974 with their 'Neque Semper Arcum Tendit Rex' album and continue to this day. Their latest record, 'Hystero Demonopathy' came out in 2012.

The beautiful and talented Doris Norton would eventually go on to become an early electronic music pioneer in the 1980s, actually working in IBM's research lab to create music. It's very much "robot music", not entirely unlike Kraftwerk. In hindsight, her fast moving electronic compositions might sound "retro futurist" to modern ears. They are not without their charms.

HORRIBLE NIGHTS - Crypt Vapor

You won't find much dancing here, except maybe a totentanz.

When I plug my nose and dive feet first into the murky waters of "darkwave", "giallo" or "horror synth", this is what I'm looking for, this is my pearl. Crypt Vapor's 'Erotik Maniac' EP appeared on Heavy Chains Records bandcamp page from out of nowhere. I know nothing about this project, who made it or where it comes from. If I had to guess I'd say Australia because that's where the cassette specialty label is based (Tasmania).

What I do know is that 'Erotik Maniac' is a 7 song, 24 minute collection of Carpenter drones and 80's horror film atmospheres. Crypt Vapor is an apt name for the sounds and mental imagery those sounds create. BPMs never reach an obnoxious level, at best the music is at rock n roll tempo, the beat provides a pulse, creating tension. The 7 tracks are split up into 4 main songs with brief, droning interludes between. All parts are equally listenable.

The album title suggests that the music was created with an imaginary slasher film in mind. Though it's always open to listener interpretation, and I make no illusions about deciphering the true intent of the artist, but it isn't hard to imagine the storyline. A shifty eyed or charming pervert (take your pick based on mood), meets, stalks, maims, etc. the object of his desire or (and here's a better vision) attempts to, but the intended victim escapes in the exciting "Red Chase Sequence". What's great about it is that without even having read the track title I heard the music and said, "that is unquestionably some chase music". To me it sounds specifically like subway station chase music which spills out onto crowded, but unsympathetic downtown streets. This is what I love about this genre of horror music, it tells a story, but that story becomes a collaboration between artist and listener.

An added bonus to the bandcamp download is a full 25-minute "tape mix" which puts all seven songs onto one seamless track. Even the cover artwork is an inspiring thing of beauty. Once more, this is perfect horror music, not entirely unlike Slasher Dave, Voyag3r, Videogram or even Zombi when they focus more on thick atmospheric horror textures.

If you're like me and you like your 80's horror film music, and you want to dive in to the next generation of synth composers who have followed in the footsteps of John Carpenter but can't stomach dance music, you could do much worse than starting with Crypt Vapor.

HORRIBLE MONDAYS - Terror en Camino Negro

This three-song EP came out in August, but I've been listening to it again lately and figured it could use a little more time in the sun. It's a FREE DOWNLOAD up on bandcamp so there's no telling if it`s made the rounds or not. This is as close to "what I'm looking for" as you can get when it comes to my horror music without being Blizaro. Horror themes are introduced via keyboard before heavy riffs join the fray. I don't know from this quartet's other songs or recordings, but these three tracks are instrumentals, although their facebook page does list guitarist Facundo Osorio as vocalist. Honestly, these songs don't need vocals. Of particular interest here are the first two songs "Adela Morta" and "Children of the Corn". The latter is a cover of the theme song to, and uses clips from the classic 1984 Fritz Kiersch film based on the Stephen King novella of the same name. If the other two are covers then I don't know or recognize the originals. This is good metallized horror film music, each song carefully builds atmosphere with the keys, but eventually builds into solid songs that stand on their own. The third and final track "Camino Negro" has much more of a stoner rock stamp on it.

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Unsolved Mysteries

"What you are about to see is not  

a news broadcast."

On Tuesday, January 20, 1987, the magazine-style show Unsolved Mysteries first aired on NBC, as a special, hosted by Raymond Burr. The special and its subsequent sequels proved so popular that it was developed into a weekly series, hosted by Robert Stack. For anybody who was a single digit age when it first aired, chances are that the theme song (composed by Gary Malkin, see video above) still sends a chill down your spine. I know the X-Files theme is usually listed as the "it" spooky television theme, but Unsolved Mysteries has me running to my blanket, cardboard and pillow fort to this day.

Robert Stack [Image Source]

The show lasted an incredible 14 seasons on the air after a scrappy existence. In spite of still solid ratings, NBC cancelled the show in 1997 citing the desire for a "younger audience". It was revived by CBS for four or five more seasons before being cancelled in 1999. It was revived again in 2001 by Lifetime, but only lasted a little over a year before going off the air in September of 2002. The show was exhumed a final time in 2008 by Spike TV, this time hosted by Dennis Farina until the run ended in 2010. No new episodes have been developed since that time.

But the real grist of the show was aired during those initial few years. Ghosts, UFOs, people disappearing without a trace, all narrated by the stoic Robert Stack, the show was a pivotal feature of my childhood. I remember when a woman disappeared from my hometown of Richmond, BC and her story aired on Unsolved Mysteries. It was a Big Deal in town, let me tell you. After the show was aired her body was found in a strawberry patch across the street from the 7-11 on 3 and Blundell. That may not be exactly how the story played out, but that's the way I remember it.

That field is apartments now, I doubt any of the residents know about what happened there. Aside from being a sad story, it had a deeper effect on me as a child. Because the tragedy was so literally "close to home", and undoubtedly because of the way it was presented, eerie music and all, the story showed me that Unsolved Mysteries can happen in my own backyard. That the familiar didn't need to be mundane. That under every bush may lie a monster, even though I may walk by that bush every day on my way home from school.

[Source]

I remember one day when I was 7 years old I rode my bike outside the neighborhood block. I wasn't supposed to and I knew it. The place I rode to was the 7-11 on 3 & Blundell. This was as far away from home as I had ever been on my own. I remember because when I went inside the store I got myself a slurpee and a copy of Marvel Universe Update '89 #5 because it had Mr. Sinister and Sabretooth on the cover (see picture).

I suppose there's no shame in admitting now that the reason I went to that 7-11 as opposed to say, the one on 3 & Williams which was closer to my house was because I wanted to see a dead body. It's stupid logic, but well, if something happened once, it could happen again, and I wanted to be there to see it. But standing across the street with my slurpee in hand and comic book folded in my back pocket, it all became a little too real. All of a sudden, dead bodies could mind their own business thank you very much, and I'd mind my own. I'd already seen enough Unsolved Mysteries by that point to imagine what could happen next if my curiosity got the better of me.

By the time I was in Grade 8 that overgrown lot had developed a reputation among local teens. There was a path in the grass you could take to get through to the other side of the block. The grass was between six and eight feet high by then and it was the home of at least one homeless guy who it was said would attack anyone cutting through his territory. Some of my friends had actually been spit on walking through there, who knows, maybe if he'd have caught them he'd have done a lot worse. It might even have demanded a new Unsolved Mysteries episode.

There are so many segments from the series that traumatized me for life. The most memorable of them all was about a family who lived in a haunted farm house. One of the daughters told the story that one night, she was sleeping on her side, facing away from the wall into the room, when she woke up, opened her eyes and saw a shadowy figure standing next to her bed looking down on her. Any attempt for me to explain the level of terror this story put me through pales to what it actually did, but I'll just say that to this day I sleep facing the wall and until recently, on the wall side of the bed.

[Source]

In another segment, I learned what fear is: the Men in Black. I don't remember the details of it, but the gist of the segment was that if you report seeing a UFO, be prepared to get a visit from vaguely human looking men in dark sunglasses and black suits. My imagination took the scenario a couple steps further however, inferring from the segment that it didn't matter whether you reported the sighting or not and that you might just get disappeared after a visit from the Men in Black. This was long before the Will Smith movie came out, by the way.

So, when I saw my first UFO in the night skies above Glenbrook Drive when I was 11, I could have dropped dead from fright about what was going to happen next. But growing up didn't help much. When I was 21 years old I saw the same type of UFO in the night skies while in the next block over from the house I grew up in. I was scared shitless that night and the following night and the night after that ...

[Source]

And just so you don't think your old pal LK Ultra has lost his remaining marbles, I don't believe the UFO's I saw were piloted by "alien visitors" or even piloted at all for that matter. They were remarkably similar in behavior, I just couldn't identify what they were, they might have been balloons, Asian lanterns or ball lightning for all I know, but it didn't matter, because Unsolved Mysteries taught from a very young age to BE AFRAID, and to BE VERY AFRAID.

As someone who at least tries to write horror stories I've often thought about how the hell do you actually scare people? Invariably I think back to Unsolved Mysteries as my touchstone. It's the scariest program I've seen, or ever will see, almost certainly because of the impressionable age I was when it first came on air. At this point, a good DVD collection would be vastly superior to the "best of" selections that are available today, it might be a bit unwieldy but one is long overdue.

SOURCES:
IMDB
Wiki

MUST-KNOW TRIVIA:
Here's a mystery for you: where did Matthew McConaughey get his big acting break? "That's easy," I can hear you say, "it was Dazed and Confused." But you're wrong, it was Unsolved Mysteries. Read about this and 26 other useless bits of fascinating trivia at this location.

HORRIBLE MONDAYS - Lucifer Rising

The occult has long been an object of fascination for many horror fans, particularly those with a supernatural bent.

The allure of it has to do with the idea of accessing secret or hidden ('occult') knowledge and the power it contains. Also, there's a morbid curiosity that maybe ("I seriously doubt it, but just maybe") there really is a hidden hand that grants such power. A dark hand with claws. But in reality, 99% of the time, the occult is practiced by earnest (though perhaps a bit off-kilter) folk like you and me who manifest no supernatural phenomena (save for personal interpretation) nor have any intention of doing so.

Many of the popular horror films of the 1960's and 1970's skirted around the subject of the occult, using guess-work and imagination regarding what rituals actually look or feel like and the overall effect is campy more-often-than-not. If you're looking for authentic occult, look no further than Lucifer Rising and the works of avant garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger.

Lucifer Rising is an occult film. It seems to describe an occult ritual, couched in esoteric visual terminology. If nothing else, it is a marvel of surrealist filmmaking. And behind it all, it is the movie equivalent of a haunted house. At different points the film stars a murderer, a satanist and the brother of Mick Jagger. To get those esoteric elements just right, the "Thelemic Consultant" on the film was Gerald Yorke, an associate of Aleister Crowley, an early cut featured an appearance by Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey and the soundtrack was composed by Manson Family member Bobby Beausoleil while in prison for murder (he's still serving that sentence (more on him later)). You couldn't possibly have had a more notorious pedigree at that time, one simply didn't exist.

The 28-minute film was completed in the early 70's but not distributed until 1980. Lucifer Rising is, at its core, about the dawning of a new age, the Aquarian age. However, to summarize the storyline would be to catalog the moments of a madman's dreams. Rebirth, lightning, resurrection, volcanos, revelation, clouds, decay, pyramids, souls depicted as UFOs in ancient Egypt, this is one weird film. But in the context of Anger's filmography, it's eminently watchable, because the kaleidoscopic storytelling moves along at a good pace and there's always something captivating on screen. It may or may not feature a classic linear storyline, but it's more accessible than Anger's other films, like Puce Moment, Invocation of my Demon Brother (essentially an early cut of Lucifer Rising) or it's homoerotic antithesis Scorpio Rising.

For all intents and purposes Lucifer Rising is a silent film. The musical accompaniment was originally composed by Jimmy Page but wasn't used in the final cut after Anger, living in Page's basement at the time, got into an argument with Page's wife Charlotte and was subsequently thrown out of the house. Former Anger associate Bobby BeauSoleil then wrote to Anger from prison and petitioned to take over the project. The score he composed is alternately haunting, trippy and rocking. I bought the soundtrack album from iTunes many years ago and it's still something I whip out every now and then. It's not frightening, but it's specific. Much like the soundtrack to Under the Skin it sets a specific mood, in the case of BeauSoleil's Lucifer Rising, that mood is wall-eyed fascination. It's murderous psychopathy with the twist of child-like innocence. The soundtrack to a back-alley "ripping" in the way a child might try to flush a cat down the toilet or pull the wings off a moth. I'm speaking about the piece that you'll at about the five minute mark in the video below.

Watch Lucifer Rising, right here:
 

HORRIBLE MONDAYS - A Year in the Country

While doing a google image search, I came across the most amazing thing, unfortunately, as with most things in life, I was a day late and a dollar short in finding it. A Year in the Country was a multi-media art project that featured photography, recordings and some excellent writing. There was a blog for it, and a bandcamp page. I can tell already that it will take much longer than a year to sift through everything on hand here.

Treasure trove? Goldmine? What is A Year in the Country exactly?

“A Year In The Country is a year long journey through and searching for an expression of an underlying unsettledness to the English bucolic countryside dream; an exploration of an otherly pastoralism, the patterns beneath the plough, pylons and amongst the edgelands… it is a wandering about and through the trails of things that have influenced, inspired and intrigued me along the way, which will quite possibly take in the further flung reaches of work with its roots in folkloric concerns and what has been labelled hauntological culture.“

I've already discovered several awesome things on the blog, including this short video:



It's loaded with little things like this, little images and links, I have barely even begun my blogaeologic dig, but I already feel like (an uncursed) Howard Carter.

The website was updated every day all of 2014 with observations, pictures, links and other recordings about the author's reflections on the countryside, in what seems to me to be a prolonged attempt to capture an unsettling feeling that comes with being there. The watched feeling that Stephen King so eloquently described as "He-Who-Walks-Behind-the-Rows". It's folk art with a big emphasis on folk music from the late 1960's British psychedelic scene. I only had to search the site for Comus to bring up results that featured United States of America and a UK folk group I'd completely forgotten about called Forest and the Gather in the Mushrooms compilation, among other things. The site is loaded with references big and small with links to many incredible things I've never had an inkling of before.  But aside from the things that take you away from the site, there are plenty of things which hook you in.

View gallery here.

The site is loaded with folk art and pictures that look ripped directly from the walls of Rustin Cohle's storage unit. This is the Wicker Man and True Detective writ large, scrawled with a stick through the wet sands of a sprawling private beach.

One of the most captivating things that I found here, so far is something that just shouldn't be. It's a recording. It's not musical, it's a recording of a practical object in motion with the sound manipulated. It's the last thing you'd expect but 'Torridon Gate' (see player below) is captivating and even a little unsettling. According to the artist, "All of the music on this album was created from a single recording of a front garden gate on Torridon Road in Hither Green, London. These sounds were captured using a contact microphone and processed, looped and edited on three reel - to - reel tape machines with all electronic effects or artificial reverb strictly forbidden."

There are six other recordings up on bandcamp that I`ll have to go through, if any of them are as unusual, interesting or spooky as this one I'll consider myself lucky.

If it does nothing else, it reminds me that horror isn't necessarily horror all the time, it can be a more subtle thing and be as, if not more effective.

Here's the link for the site
Here's a link to the site index so you can easily navigate from the beginning, starting with day 1 of 365.

HORRIBLE MONDAYS - Anima Morte

You may have read about my adventures on reddit in the Gypsy Wizard [et al] feature. Well that little hour or so of spelunking continues to net results. The previously uncharted territory unearthed there is seemingly endless, as is usually the case in musical explorations. One of the names on Thatool's seminal occult rock list is Anima Morte. They've been around for a while but I'd never had the occasion to hear them until now. There aren't many bands that sounds like them. They takes the Goblin-worship one step further than most: rather than recording tunes that sounds like lost gems of the film score superstars, Anima Morte take the Goblin blueprint and blaze their own trail. That is, progressive rock with a horror-inspired cinematic scope.

There are similar bands out there, metal and prog bands at least partially indebted to Goblin, Blizaro is always number one in my mind in that category as they are arguably my favorite current 'band' (in quotations because it's mostly the work of one man, John Gallow), then there's BlackQueen and Midnight Zombie Alligator among the most memorable. But Anima Morte isn't really a metal band at all, although they maintain a hard and dark edge. It would be fair to label this "dark prog".

I like the moods here. Anima Morte are more interested in atmosphere than melody so the results are more 'Dawn of the Dead' than 'Suspiria' (I don't mean to pigeonhole Anima Morte here, but I can't resist the Goblin comparisons). This emphasis creates a truly cinematic experience for the listener. That's not to say they've done away with melody completely, just that their interest lies in the "story" they're trying to evoke.

Take a taste:


If you like the flavor, you might want to order yourself a CD or vinyl by ordering at the Transubstans Records online store. And you can always grab up a digital copy from iTunes.

HORRIBLE MONDAYS - Velvet Robe - The Devil Bat Re-Score

[Image source]

[Image source]

I like classical music, but not a lot of it and not all the time. When it comes to 20th century composers, I like the minimalists, guys like Steve Reich, Terry Riley and Philip Glass. One of the best things Philip Glass ever did was his re-score of the 1931 Universal monster classic 'Dracula' starring Bela Lugosi. The story goes that the original score for the film was lost, so Universal drafted Glass and the Kronos Quartet to re-score it, which they did in stark and startling style. It slices and dices nerves and leaves the viewer electrified. I've got it on CD and it's become one of those rare few classical scores that I've gone back to for well over a decade.

So I was delighted to hear that The Velvet Robe, those mysterious blackened doom experimentalists were working on the score to a Bela Lugosi movie. Well, the results turned up in early November on youtube and they are incredibly creepy (see video below). I mean theremin bat-scream creepy. The film in question turned out to be The Devil Bat (1940), a story about a cosmetics chemist who seeks revenge against his employers for short changing him on his inventions. I'm no vintage film buff so I'd never seen the picture before. I hate to say it, but those old timey soundtracks sometimes serve to hurt a film by telegraphing emotion and by being overbearing. The best thing Velvet Robe has done here is to liven up the story by toning down the soundtrack.

I like the restraint shown here by Velvet Robe. If it was me scoring this thing, I almost certainly would have shown no restraint whatsoever and taken a kitchen sink approach which would have simply thrown a wet blanket of noise over the film. Velvet Robe reserve their touch-ups to atmospheric brush strokes under key moments in the plot and the occasional but always effective 'sting'.

It makes me wonder just how large a role those original Universal monster scores contributed to their perceived campiness. Given a sonic updating, The Devil Bat becomes deadly serious. Listen to and watch the bat attack scene about 47 minutes in to the video. Something that could have been, and most likely was, so corny becomes positively unsettling.

This is brilliant.

Watch the entire video with Velvet Robe's re-score below.

HORRIBLE MONDAYS - The Implicit Order

This is the weirdest thing out there. Not necessarily horror music under the strictest definition, nor even music at all if we're going there, it's an audio hallucination. A bad trip inside the head, somehow captured on tape. It's an experimental project that uses many of the elements of movie soundtracks here to tell an overarching narrative on 'Spirits Are Using Me Higher Voices Calling'. Drones abound, strange voices chant or mutter and the atmosphere is thick and weird. The narrative in question focuses on a bizarre cult.

The Finnish band Mansion takes on the persona and tells the story of the real-life cult of Alma Kartano. According to The Implicit Order, this album is "an audio love letter to the New Age and murder cults of the 1980's and 1990's."

The track "Trying to Recruit You" is particularly memorable and actually fascinating as it plays a spoken instruction / recruitment manual over an eerie drone. It discusses recruitment techniques designed to confuse and manipulate then goes into a section which attempts to break down an individual psychologically. That one alone is worth picking up this unsettling album. And why not, there's no asking price, it's a PAY-WHAT-YOU-WANT deal. If nothing else it feels like a lost sequel to the film Beyond the Black Rainbow and wouldn't seem out of place in the discography of Velvet Robe (more on them in the next post). Of course, The Implicit Order has been doing its thing for longer than either of those two things have been around.

As for the bizarre madman behind this cult recording, read the "just the facts" section after the write-up for an interesting bio.

Though not strictly horror, this is the kind of thing I'll throw on when I'm in the mood for something weird, something wherein my mind can wander, something that I can write to.

WARNING! This album is not for the impressionable or the weak minded!

JUST THE FACTS:
Founded on May 9, 1989

Genre: No genre or scene.

Band Members
Anthony Washburn

Hometown: Smilax KY U.S.A.

Record Label
Wholeness Recordings, AIN23, Phantasma Disques, Hal Tapes, Classwar Karaoke, Vuzh Music, SuRRism Phonoethics, Black Circle Records, Clinical Archives, EE Tapes, Cohort Records

Short Description
The Implicit Order is not involved in any wave, stream, genre or scene.

Impressum
https://soundcloud.com/theimplicitorder

Long Description
Rural Psychedelia, Avant, Musique Concrete, Hauntology, Electronic Folk Physics, Plunderphonics, and various tomfoolery. "The Implicit Order" describes the state of a system when certain information or characteristics are present but not apparent through direct inspection. Hidden.

Bio
The Implicit Order started in 1989 as a Mail Art project and by the early 1990’s it developed into a full time musical project incorporating many of the early Industrial/Experimental ideas of the late 70’s, 1980’s and beyond. The band always tried to inject a sense of the Occult, humor and an off-kilter view into the image and recordings. The Implicit Order was active in the Cassette Culture of the 1990’s up to 2001. In 2002 the band took a break from recording and resumed in 2008. I/O have released many recordings on Cassette, CD, CDR, and digital download and have appeared on various compilations. ..

JUST THE MUSIC:

HORRIBLE MONDAYS - The Blind Dead Series

[Image Source]

[Image source]

So, Zoltan's 'Tombs of the Blind Dead' EP got me thinking about the Spanish Blind Dead film series. I have all four of them on DVD and I've considered it one of my many 'guilty' pleasures. I think "guilty pleasures" is a good phrase, I know some people don't like it, but there's no better way to describe the cognitive dissonance of liking something that you know intellectually is genuinely bad. And I'm not going to sugarcoat it, the Blind Dead series, on the 'high art' wall chart, notches at about the ankle level. Some of the films are better than others. I like the first and third films in the series 'Tombs of the Blind Dead' (see video below) and 'The Ghost Galleon'. I'm sure if you asked any four Blind Dead fans what was their favorite and least favorite of the four, they'd each give you a different combo, but all would be equally enthusiastic about the underlying concept of the series: A cloaked legion of mummified zombies seeks revenge on the descendants of those who murdered them. Oh yeah, and the sadistic undead just happen to be Knights Templar.

As I said, I like the Blind Dead series, but they're the kind of movies I'll put on mute and watch as I listen to a band like Moss. It's not the kind of thing that warrants repeat viewings, not with the sound on anyway. The problems with the series are numerous but I'll try my best to narrow them down to the major few. 1). Poor Acting. I hate to point the finger here, but the reactions and line delivery leave a lot of to be desired and undermines the carefully built-up horrific atmosphere. 2). Limited Visual Vocabulary from the Director. This situation improved as the series went on, but those first two films (again see below) are all medium or full shots, no matter what the situation. It keeps the audience at a distance, reducing the viewer to spectator, rather than participant. 3). Sloppy and / or Awkward Editing. The series is plagued by sloppy editing. Once again, the first film is atrocious with this but there's an obvious jump cut in the middle of an early scene in Ghost Galleon that just feels amateurish and sets an awkward tone (but increases its 'guilt' appeal!) 4). Special Effects that Aren't So Special. Guns that don't actually fire. Miniatures that fail to capture the minutiae of their larger studies. Fog that just sits there. The list of examples is long and tedious. One of the things that makes the Blind Dead creatures so cool and creepy is their stiff, shambling gait. Watching them engage in sword fights is far less inspiring than having them gouge eyeballs with their bony fingers and tear limbs slowly asunder with unnatural strength.

This franchise is due for a re-make.

[Image source]

It's been to my infinite shame and gut-twisting regret to watch classic horror film after classic horror film be re-made, "updated ... for today's audience!" and done in piss poor fashion. I tend to fall on the hate side of the re-make fence more often than not, I think it just may be how I'm built. I remember in Grade 8 we had to do a "what's your dream vacation" project where you get to create a totally fictional vacation / travel agency and itinerary, etc. Me and my buddy Andy came up with "The Booze Cruise" and it was funny for its time, but one kid in that class, who didn't have any ideas of his own, saw what we were doing and decided he was going to do "The Alcohol Cruise". The Hollywood Horror re-makes remind me of this forehead-slapping moment. I fell for it with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre re-make and the shame was on them. Then I fell for it again with the Dawn of the Dead re-make and the shame was on me. The 21st century horror re-makes that I've seen invariably miss the point and are completely devoid of soul. To me, this policy of re-making established classics is socially retarded. The worst example isn't even from horror, but it illustrates the point and that is the American version of The Office. Forget the fact that NBC thinks so little of its home audience that they feel the need to re-make an English language comedy for an American audience, the British Office's greatest asset was understatement, something that is completely lacking from the American version, given Steve Carell's over-the-top performance. This is what I mean by missing the point and devoid of soul. Why is there an audience for this stuff? Why re-make a film that already works on so many levels levels? So the visuals can be corrupted with unconvincing CGI? Why not re-make a film with a strong concept and cool characters with visual appeal that just didn't work for technical reasons?

If you're going to re-make an existing property, why not re-make the Blind Dead series?

I got that same thrill when I was doing an image search for this post as when I first discovered the series. Seeing the Blind Dead in all their dusty, bony glory I'm reminded that the ENTIRE appeal for this series rests in their appearance (that and the boobs) and the atmosphere surrounding them. The way they move on screen and interact is sometimes lame, the staging and composition are disappointing at times, but the threat that, at any moment some real scares might break out looms over every frame of this series because the Templars are cheesy and unembellished enough to actually be creepy. Any producer / director / writer teams out there willing to take on this project would have a wide field to play in because the details of the stories are not sacrosanct. If nothing else, you've got a built in quadrilogy, and studios love endless sequels.

If put into the hands of the right creative team, who takes the good elements of the series (the emergence from the tombs; the thick layers of atmosphere; the unforgettable image of the corpses riding on horseback; the inhuman look and stiffness of the Templars), it could be a kind of redemption for Hollywood's re-make mania. But it almost certainly wouldn't fall into the right hands. The project would go to another TV commercial / huge budget music video director whose entire oeuvre involves flash and no substance. Still, it would be something many frustrated moviegoers have been clamoring for: something different. And anyway, screw Hollywood, let's put on our imagination hats for a minute and place Stuart Gordon in the director's chair, backed by the same Spanish producers who helped him to make Dagon. Who's with me?

"I am!"

WATCH TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD: