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Renfield
Renfield tanked at the box office. And that’s too bad. It is an irreverent horror-comedy that gleefully satirizes support groups and the loopy nature of vampire lore. Clocking in at a sensible hour and 33 minutes running time, the movie doesn’t suffer from tired blood. As the eponymous protagonist, Nicholas Hoult gives a layered performance. He’s got the winning Hugh Grant twitchy quality that is endearing. Then adds on the Woody Allen persona of sophisticated neurotic. And in the wonderfully choreographed fight scenes, goes full on Keanu Reeves in John Wick mode. Energized to the max by consuming insects, his Renfield is major league badass. But enough about “the familiar,” as…
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Night Hunter
Author Michael Reaves died at age 72 on March 20, 2023. His novel Night Hunter was published by Tor in 1995. Set in 1990s Los Angeles, the book takes the reader on a tour of the city’s seedier side. There are echoes of film noir but instead of perpetual rain, Santa Ana winds and smog punctuate the mood. Decay and decadence permeate a narrative hellbent on painting the town a garish red. A color which bleeds through any attempt at veneer. Police detective Jake Hull’s personal woes mirror the city’s decline. An ulcer is eating away at his gut, what he sees on the streets makes him teeter on the brink of…
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Piñata
William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel, The Exorcist, was a game changer for horror fiction. The often-emulated book was the gold standard for narratives that ventured into the realm of demonic possession. There was a deluge of Exorcist wannabes. Then the craze, as all crazes do, came to a lull. With the release of Piñata this month, there came a quiver of anticipation. The novel by Leopoldo Gout was marketed as a classy take on the subgenre. There’s the striking jacket illustration by João Ruas, and much ado was made about the thematic gravitas. Indeed, the plot covers complex indigenous folklore, the extremely important acknowledgement of culture erasure, perils of illegal border crossing, Mexican cartels,…
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The Ghosts of Travels Past
As the year ends and another begins, it’s easy to fall into sentimental ruminations. Such thoughts insidiously creep into the mind as nostalgia nudges around the edges of one’s brain. Memories are ghosts. Some are more welcome than others. Prior to the pandemic, I frequently traveled overseas. Many of those trips included sights and sites that relate to horror fiction and/or the supernatural. In Prague, for example, I saw a terrific statue of Franz Kafka, a large and unsettling skull sculpture, and a poster for a stage production of Dracula. Theatre vampires were a part of a visit to Vienna where I saw Tanz Der Vampire, a musical version of Roman Polanski’s…
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Having the Sense Not to Watch a DVD with Subtitles While Ironing
Train to Busan is a movie that has been haunting me for years. And I still haven’t seen it. The film, released in 2016, was touted to me by a range of people including: an in-law, a guy who worked in a car lot finance department, numerous zombie movie fans, and foreign film devotees. I don’t generally like zombie flicks, though there are some like the groundbreaking Night of the Living Dead (1968) and the action-adventure World War Z (2013) that I found worthwhile. The rom-com Warm Bodies (2013) which was a riff on Romeo and Juliet, the comedy Zombieland (2009) and its sequel Zombieland: Double Tap (2019) also had appeal. Getting back to Train to Busan, I had accumulated over the course…
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The Menu
Foodies with a taste for horror and warped humor will revel in the film The Menu (2022.) The movie is deliciously subversive, feeding on the absurdities of haute cuisine and the performance art aspect of fine dining. It is a scathingly biting satire that is performed with straight-faced brilliance by a superb cast led by Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy. Carnivores and carnage aficionados will have their appetites satiated in this irreverent take on restaurant reverence. Fiennes portrays celebrity chef Julian Slowik. Chef Julian’s obsession with minutiae and perfection dominates his kitchen. His creepily loyal staff follow his commands to the letter, bunking on the premises since his renowned restaurant…
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Haunted Tales
Say the term “ghost story” and you have me at hello. Still, I was a bit wary of reading another collection about spooks and the supernatural. The lengthy subtitle of Haunted Tales is Classic Stories of Ghosts and the Supernatural. This reinforced my trepidation since “classic” implies that the tales have been reprinted many times. And indeed, some of the narratives in this compilation do give credence to that inherent supposition. But in addition to my great fondness for ghostly/supernatural short stories, I greatly respect the editors of this anthology. Leslie S. Klinger and Lisa Morton are, individually, extremely thoughtful in analysis and explication. Together, they make a terrific team that deftly dispenses historical and…
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Where Black Stars Rise
The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers has had a storied influence on the arts. In the 2014 first season of HBO’s True Detective, for example, there are references to the work and H.P. Lovecraft made passing allusions to it in the story “The Whisperer in Darkness.” Music has been composed in reverence. And to make things ultra-meta, The King in Yellow is also the name of the play which is referred to in some of the ten stories that comprise the eponymous book. In the graphic novel Where Black Stars Rise, writer Nadia Shammas and creator Marie Enger seize upon the meta element, expounding on it and expanding the possibilities. The title…
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The New Annotated Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Dr. Jekyll is a character who wanted to delve deeper into dormant aspects of his persona. How appropriate then that Leslie S. Klinger in The New Annotated Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde chose to burrow deep into the narrative and expose detailed layers of information regarding the man-men. And in the process, reveal quite a bit about the story’s author Robert Louis Stevenson. Indeed Klinger, an editor-annotator par excellence, has produced a cornucopia of insights about Jekyll and Hyde including adaptations to stage, screen, and graphic novels. Reading Stevenson’s novel with the annotations and copious illustrations enhanced my appreciation for the work. I found myself being drawn in by passages…
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Spectral Suburbia
Early October in the suburbs of Southern California. It was already happening: a witch here, a skeleton there, wraiths hanging from palm trees. And before you could say “Poltergeist” there was, scattered among the cacti and succulents, a proliferation of ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night. It was positively…scary. Making matters eerier, there’s a contrast between the perceived notion of the season (cooler temperatures, falling leaves) and the locale. It appears barmy when the weather is so balmy. Applying the methods of an anthropologist, it’s possible to view the setting of this holiday ritual with bemused interest. Tile roofs and cul-de-sacs, subdivisions dictated by homeowners’…
