Movie Review – IT! (1966)

IT! (aka Curse of the Golem) (1966) Directed by Herbert J. Leder. Starring Roddy McDowall, Jill Hawthorn, Ian McCullock & Paul Maxwell

When a London warehouse burns to the ground, an unattractive stone statue is found unscathed amidst the rubble. It’s removed and taken to another museum under the care of assistant curator, Arthur Pimm (Roddy McDowall). On closer inspection, it’s found to be the 16th century Golem of Judah Loew ben Bezalel. Though the statue was meant to be used for good, the insane Pimm, finds the secret to bringing it to life and uses it for his own selfish and deadly reasons. He eventually regrets his mistakes and tries to destroy the Golem. In doing so, he loses what little control he had over it in the first place.

I am a lifelong fan of Roddy McDowall and love to watch him in anything and everything he’s ever been in, but this movie has a lot to be desired. It’s a shame his talents were wasted on the nonsense presented here. The first three-quarters of the film are actually not too bad, with McDowall playing the very Norman Bates-like character, complete with the dead corpse of his mother he talks to and keeps at his home. His unrequited love for Ellen Grove (Jill Hawthorn) and his clear jealousy towards the NY curator, Jim Perkins (Paul Maxwell) could have been used with a lot more depth, yet other than kidnapping Ellen at the end, Pimm really does nothing about any of it. And I’m still not sure why Detective Wayne (Ian McCullock) believed in the power of the Golem so easily and quickly. He took it as just a matter of fact almost without question. His by-the-way, Pimm-has-brought-this-thing-to-life attitude just feels very off and unnatural for a police officer.

The last fifteen minutes are lame and contrived. It was as if the director just ran out of ideas, dropped the ball and made a break for it, leaving the cast and crew to make up their own contrived and ludicrous finale. Sorry, Roddy. You know I love you, man, but this movie would have been best left off your list of acting credits. You’re better than this!

Three of Five Stars for Roddy’s performance. The rest is pretty much rubbish.

Secrets of the Scarecrow Moon – Coming Soon!

Things are chugging along nicely with the upcoming release of Secrets of the Scarecrow Moon, a rewrite to my first paranormal murder-mystery formerly known as Blood of the Scarecrow. Even if you’ve read the original, you’ll still enjoy the rewrite! I’ve added several new scenes, new information about some of the characters including a link to the novel I’m currently still writing, Dark Hollow Road, and you’ll find out what happens to the scarecrow that wins the competition. Fun stuff!

For those not familiar with Secrets of the Scarecrow Moon, here’s the blurb!

For nearly two-hundred years the sleepy, little town of Barnesville has kept a secret, several in fact. Had it not been for the gruesome death of Peter Wakely, those secrets may have remained hidden another two centuries. Authorities deem it an accident when an 85-year-old man is crushed to death under a headstone during a particularly heavy March snow storm. Detective Sergeant Simon Michaels and his assistant, Angela Jennings, are two of the first on the scene. Angie grew up in Barnesville and almost immediately suspects that not all is at it appears to be. Without the help of police to back her suspicions, she quickly takes it upon herself to investigate.

The more she digs into the victim’s life and the role his family played in the founding of the town, the more bizarre things become. Even the town historian and librarian, a good friend of Angie’s mother and a self-proclaimed witch, is reluctant to discuss matters until after the passing of the Scarecrow Moon. It seems the past has come back to haunt and torment the current residents of Barnesville or at least those involved in the witchery on which it was founded.

Even Angie is not immune as vivid and gruesome dreams and uncanny hunches begin to plague her. Eventually she must face one of her deepest fears to unravel the mystery, break the spell, and reveal the dark secrets of the Scarecrow Moon; secrets and laced with blood, witchcraft, and at least one scarecrow that refuses to stay where it should.

We’re hoping for a late March release date! Stay Tuned!

Photo Credit: http://elvisegp.deviantart.com/art/The-scarecrow-304692467

 

The A-B-C’s of Sweet Dreams, Horror Style!

Horror Movies / Just Plain Random Weirdness

Sometimes it’s hard to fall asleep at night. You lie there with your mind running a mile a minute with, what a friend of mine calls, Hamster Brain. I could never get into the whole counting sheep thing. Sometimes I’ll turn the TV on to our local ads channel and turn the volume down just low enough so I can hear the soft elevator music they play. That works pretty well. My fiancé counts backwards from 100. I’ve tried that, but usually start at 200-300. Sometimes that works, too. For some reason I lose track of the numbers around 287 or 187 or 87, get confused and restart at 290, 190, or 90. Now my little hamster brain is trying to do math which is not always conducive to the goal of falling asleep.

In the past couple months I’ve devised my own method to induce sleep using the alphabet. I’m a person of letters and words, not numbers. First, I select a theme; a types of food, wild animals, movie stars, friends, songs, band names, professions, and the like, whatever floats your boat. Last night it was Horror Movies. Don’t give it a lot of thought, just use the first thing that pops to mind and move on to the next letter. The point is to keep your mind focused on one somewhat meaningless and monotonous task. I fell asleep around the letter O or maybe it was N. In either case, it works like a charm for me. I seldom make it through the whole alphabet before I’m out. Here’s what I came up with last night, at least as well as I can remember.

A – Amityville Horror

B – Beetlejuice (Technically not a horror movie, but that’s what came to mind first.)

C – Carrie

D – Dracula

E – Evil Dead

F – Frankenstein

G – Godzilla

H – (The) Haunting (original version, of course..)

I – I Spit On Your Grave

J – (had to pass on this one, nothing came to mind)

K – Killer Klowns from Outer Space

L – Let’s Scare Jessica To Death

This is where things start to get fuzzy. I’m sure I had a movie for M but I can’t really remember what it was.

M – ??

N – Night of the Living Dead

O – (The) Omen

And that was it. I was snoring by the time young Damien was shoving his mom over the upstairs railing. Sweet dreams are made of this.

I’m curious. What would your Horror Movie Dream List look like? What methods of sleep induction have you tried? I’d like to hear if one of you actually tries this and if it works as well for you as it does for me.

Movie Review – The Woman In Black (2012)

Rated PG-13. Directed by James Watkins. Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Ciaran Hinds, Misha Handley, Jessica Raine, and Alisa Khazanova.

London-based lawyer and widower, Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) is sent to a small, isolated village in the English countryside to orchestrate the sale of Eel Marsh House and go through the papers of its deceased owner Alice Drablow. Arthurs’ job is on the line. If he fails to complete this job, he will be sacked. Kipps leaves behind his four-year-old son, Joseph, (Misha Handley) with the nanny (Jessica Raine) and they plan to meet at Eel Marsh House three days later. Kipps’ arrival is anything but welcoming. Numerous people beg, warn, and even threaten him about going to the property, but the lawyer is determined. He’s barely in town a day when the deaths begin. The locals blame The Woman In Black, believed to be the now dead Alice Drablow, who somehow enthralls the children into self-destructive behavior. The people of the village take great lengths to protect their children, but their efforts are repeatedly thwarted.

While going through the papers, Arthur begins to unravel the story behind The Woman In Black and the revenge she’s sworn to extract for all time and why. Arthur comes to believe he has found the answer to stopping the hauntings and the horrific deaths. With his son on the way, Kipps frantically employs the help of wealthy land owner, Samuel Daily (Ciaran Hinds), and together they put Arthur’s theory into practice. Will it work or will Alice’s hatred and the curse remain intact forever?

Based on the 1983 Susan Hill novel of the same name, The Woman In Black was produced, in part, by Hammer Films, the same company that brought you Christopher Lee as Dracula back in the last 1960s and early 1970s. If you’re familiar with Hammer Films, as I am, you’ll definitely see the similarities in colors, filming angles, and textures. It’s very atmospheric, but not quite as dark as I’d hoped. There are plenty of creepy moments, sudden startles, along with a slow build-up of tension as Kipps gets closer and closer to the truth and the pure, insatiable evil that is The Woman In Black. The ending was amazing and I didn’t see that coming at all. Well done! What a twist.

Although I really enjoyed the film and do recommend it, for me it wasn’t quite as creepy and mysterious as I would have liked it to be. Perhaps more scenes done at night, or having Kipps wander the house and grounds a bit more, seeking out the woman would have helped. The suspense and psychological tension could have been more deeply done were the film rated for an older audience. The PG-13 rating toned down what could have an even more awesome adaption of the novel.

All in all, though, well done and an excellent film for budding horror film neophytes. Had I seen this as a teenager, I probably would have ranted and raved a whole lot more about it. Well worth the watch if you’re of a certain age.

Jaded old woman that I may be, I still give The Woman In Black 4 out of 5 stars.

Why Do We Say That?

Word Play / Writing

Installment #2: As Easy As Pie.

As a writer, I ponder not just words and how to string them together into some sort of interesting and entertaining tale, but the meanings behind certain common words and phrases. Last week I posted the first installment where we learned all about hogwash. This week it’s going to be much more appetizing!

Our second installment is the phrase, “It’s as easy as pie!”

I’ve made pies in the past. I watched my grandmothers make pies. I’ve watched my mother make pies. I even helped my ex-hubby salvage a pie crust once. For all these reasons, I buy pre-made pie crust. Pie isn’t easy! Making a good crust is hard. Making sure the filling is right is hard, too, especially apples! God! How many apple pies have you bitten into only to find the apples aren’t cooked all the way, or the filling is so wet and sloppy it’s more like filling and crust soup than a nicely intact, wedge-shaped serving of deliciousness? No, pie making is not easy, so what’s up with that whole nonsense of something being as ‘easy as pie’? There are a couple of ideas on where the phrase originated.

There are those that speculate it came from the Maori term ‘pai’ which means ‘good’ and wasn’t popular until the 1920s, however, much earlier examples exist. The phrase, “You’re always as polite as pie to them.” was used by Mark Twain in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Two years later, in 1887, The Newport Mercury, a Rhode Island newspaper, used the phrase we are most familiar with today. You see veuever I goes I takes away mit me a silverspoon or a knife or somethings, an’ I gets two or three dollars for them. It’s easy as pie. Vy don’t you try it?” The 1910 Zane Grey novel, The Young Forester also included the phrase, “as easy as pie” as did a 1913 Saturday Evening Post article.

None of this really explains why or how something is ‘as easy as pie’ when pie-making itself can be difficult.

The answer comes from the earliest example we have from an 1866 article in Sporting Life magazine, “As for stealing second and third, it’s like eating pie.” As it turns out, the phrase has nothing whatsoever to do with MAKING the pie, but the enjoyment and ease involved in EATING the pie. This same meaning is applied to something being ‘a piece of cake’. It’s not the creation of the cake, but the consuming that we enjoy and find easy to do. As sweets, pies and cakes also became synonymous with people, things, or experiences being the same way, sweet, pleasant, and nice to be around.

Other 19th Century American phrases such as “It’s a cake walk.”, “That takes the cake.”, and “They’re reaching for their pie in the sky.”, all refer to these confections as something pleasant, easy to do, or something we will get as a reward.

And now you know why we say that.

Movie Review – Bone Tomahawk (2015)

Written & directed by S. Craig Zahler. Rated R

Starring: Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, Richard Jenkins, & Lili Simmons

The deserts of the American Southwest were, and still are, very scary and dangerous places, even more so when two bumbling idiots named Purvis (David Arquette) and Buddy (Sid Haig) stumble their way upon the hunting grounds and the sacred stone circle of something not quite human living out there. Eleven days later, Purvis arrives in the small town of Bright Hope and is confronted by Sheriff Hunt (Kurt Russell) after Purvis is seen burying luggage out in the desert by Assistant Deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins). Purvis is shot trying to escape. While he is being treated for the wound late that night in the jail cell by Samantha O’Dwyer (Lili Simmons), whatever attacked him and Buddy kidnaps Samantha, Purvis and, Deputy Nick (Evan Jonigkeit) as well as stealing six horses from a nearby stable and killing and gutting the stable boy.

Samantha’s husband, Arthur (Patrick Wilson), is suffering from a broken leg but insists on joining the search and rescue for his wife. Sheriff Hunt, Chicory, Gentleman John Broody (Matthew Fox), and Arthur O’Dwyer head out. The remainder of the film is devoted to tracking down the beings which we are told are a tribe of troglodytes by a local Native man. He’s willing to show them on a map where they can find the cave of these creatures, but he’s unwilling to go with the posse to rescue anyone.

Oh, the potential! I really enjoy a good western and it’s no secret I’m a huge fan of the horror genre, but this. Ugh. This was not a good western nor was its potential to be an amazing horror film at all met. The scene with the Mayor and his wife was farcical and irrelevant. Way too much time was spent dwelling on the very, very dull trek to the cave itself. Zahn McClarnon’s role as Native known as The Professor could have been so much more interesting, instead it was brief and brushed aside, used as a mere information dump instead of actually having any depth and meaning to it. It could have been used to heighten the suspense, to give us an idea what sort of evil madness our intrepid team was walking into. Instead, no, we’re merely told they will be facing dangerous, inbred cave dwellers.

When we finally get to meet our gruesome enemy, they just wander about their caves, call to each other in what appears to be some sort of paranormal howling-scream, go out and kill or capture for their own heinous reasons whoever happens to come along, and to steal horses. We never do find out what happens to all the horses they are taking. There is one particularly nasty scene in the cave in which Deputy Nick meets his demise which is not for the squeamish.

Even with its simplistic plot, this film could have been done better, A LOT better. It wasn’t dark enough (in a psychological way), it dragged on needlessly, too many questions were left unanswered, and the character roles were shallow and uninteresting.

1 out of 5 stars for Deputy Nick’s shocking death scene!

Secrets of the Scarecrow Moon

The goal is to have “Secrets of the Scarecrow Moon” available some time in March! SotSM is the predecessor to “That’s What Shadows Are Made Of” and was first published in 2013. Unfortunately, its shelf-life was very brief and it was quickly out of print. It takes place two years before the events of TWSAMO. Those who have read the earlier version will still be able to enjoy the re-write. New scenes have been added that give more information about the role of the Natives involved and you’ll learn what happens to the winner of the Scarecrow Festival!

Here’s your teaser…

For nearly two-hundred years the sleepy, little town of Barnesville has kept a secret, several in fact. Had it not been for the gruesome death of Peter Wakely, those secrets may have remained hidden another two centuries. Authorities deem it an accident when an 85 year-old-man is crushed to death under a headstone during a particularly heavy March snow storm.

Detective Sergeant Simon Michaels and his assistant, Angela Jennings, are two of the first on the scene. Angie grew up in Barnesville and almost immediately suspects that not all is at it appears to be. Without the help of police to back her suspicions, she quickly takes it upon herself to investigate.

The more she digs into the victim’s life and the role his family played in the founding of the town, the more bizarre things become. Even the town historian and librarian, a good friend of Angie’s mother and a self-proclaimed witch, is reluctant to discuss matters until after the passing of the Scarecrow Moon. It seems the past has come back to haunt and torment the current residents of Barnesville or at least those involved in the witchery on which it was founded.

Even Angie is not immune as vivid and gruesome dreams and uncanny hunches begin to plague her. Eventually she must face one of her deepest fears to unravel the mystery, break the spell, and reveal the dark secrets of the Scarecrow Moon; secrets laced with blood, witchcraft, and at least one scarecrow that refuses to stay where it should.

Why Do We Say That?

Word Play

Installment #1: HOGWASH!

As a writer, I ponder not just words and how to string them together into some sort of interesting and entertaining tale, but the meanings behind certain common words and phrases. With this thought in mind, I am going to start posting, hopefully on a regular basis, a little thing I’m going to call “Why Do We Say That?”

Our first installment is the word, “Hogwash”.

No, sorry, nothing to do with the actual washing of pigs or those motorcycles known as Hogs.

Believe it or not, hogwash is neither slang nor some sort of modern term. It’s been around for centuries! Its earliest use can be traced back to around 1440 by the Oxford English Dictionary which uses it in the following sentence; “They in the kechyn, can iape, poured on here hefd hoggyswasch.” or to the rest of us, “They in the kitchen, for jest, poured the hogwash on her head.”

But, what is hogwash and why would someone find amusement pouring it over another’s head?

There are three early variations on what substance is being referred to as hogwash. In the mid-15th century, a definition can be found that states hogwash is a compound noun formed by two nouns. The first word, hog, refers to a type of swine, a pig. Easy enough to understand. Wash, in this instance, has to specifically do with cleaning up a kitchen. A wash was the waste liquid and food left over from making and serving a meal, the leftovers that were not fit for human consumption. This concoction was all dumped together and used to feed all manner of domestic animals, most commonly, pigs.

By 1712 another meaning was added to the term. A cheap, poorly made liquor was often referred to as hogwash. Poorly written documents and manuscripts were labeled as hogwash around 1773.

In modern English, if something is said to be hogwash it means it should be tossed away. It’s useless or of little value, illogical, badly done, ridiculous, and invalid. Simply put, it has as much value to the human race as that savory barnyard slop that gets tossed to the pigs at the end of the day.

And now you know why we say that.