Friday Links: Creepy Mannequins, God Kuzya, and a Danish Pulp Haul

It;s been a short week for many of us, what with the Monday holiday and all, but you should still take some time to look back on what's happened over the last several days in the world of the bizarre, unusual, and horrific.

• Anything Horror brought us a review of 2013's Wasteland: "The Last Man scenario is a compelling one for filmmakers, however, and not just because of the dramatic potential: you don’t need a large cast or budget, just a few isolated, abandoned locations. You could probably fill a room with the DVDs of movies like this. So a filmmaker wanting to add to the collection needs to do something special to make theirs stand out.  Tom Wadlow’s WASTELAND, filmed in Derby, England, made a good attempt at standing out, by focusing on the emotional impact of a survivor of an apocalypse."
• Nev Murray, who is thankfully on the road to recovery, reviewed Peter Giglio's Shadowshift at his Confessions of a Reviewer!!: "Characters – there are a few but the main people to look out for in this are obviously Chet, Tina and Hannah. Chet is, how can I put it, vile? Yes vile. This is a man who has been using his gift for years and couldn’t care less who it affects or what damage he does. He’s just out for himself. He is horrible to Tina but sweet to Hannah. The only reason for that is because he thinks she has a gift too."
• Ghost Hunting Theories wrote a particularly creepy piece about mannequins, replete with disturbing photos: "I wanted to live among mannequins. I guess I hadn't realized how eerie it is. It's kind of like being in a relationship with someone who takes up space but adds nothing to the experience."
  
• Jim Mcleod reviewed the movie Goddess of Love at his Ginger Nuts of Horror: "In the early part of the film we get hints at Venus' mental instability, nothing too serious, just little hints that things might not be so right with her.  In particular the use of her neighbors loud music to show her anguish and inner pain is spectacular in execution.  The way in which the bass is distorted to extreme levels and the camera shakes that appear on film during these episodes is wonderful.   Is the music real? Is it really so distorted and intrusive or is it all just a figment of her imagination?"
• Breakfast in the Ruins showed us some of his Danish pulp haul. It's okay if you don't know what a Danish pulp haul is.  Give it a look!
• Cracked's For Monsters Only was the subject of a must-read post from Zombo's Closet of Horror: "Carrying this humor angle to the extreme was Cracked's For Monsters Only: The Official Magazine for All Monsters! Begun in 1965, and running through to its 10th and last issue in 1972, its funny cartoons and illustrations, wacky John Severin drawn comics and covers, and wide assortment of crazy-captioned movie photos populated by aliens, monsters, and other assorted creatures (and their victims), were aimed at the reader’s funny bone instead of his or her jugular vein."
• At the invaluably incredible R'lyeh Tribune, Sean Eaton discussed John L. Steadman's H.P. Lovecraft & The Black Magickal Tradition: "Steadman’s tone is respectful.  He is, after all, a practitioner himself, though not an uncritical one.  Readers can decide for themselves based on his thorough presentation of the material.  Among the traditions surveyed are various Vodou cults, Wiccan covens, the Typhonian Order, the Church of Satan, and—of interest to this writer—the Chaos Magick Pacts, a kind of post-modernist, Libertarian collection of disparate magickians.  H.P. Lovecraft & The Black Magickal Tradition is a well-researched, accessible and thought provoking book—an excellent base for further exploration of this fascinating subject."
• God Kuzya was detained by police in Russia: "Russian police have detained the self-styled “God Kuzya,” the head of a notorious radical cult accused of whipping and torturing members of his group, most of them women. Investigators found the equivalent of $4 million in his seven Moscow apartments.  38-year-old Andrey Popov, a visually impaired man, nicknamed God Kuzya after his dead parrot, is infamous for his claim, made in one of his speeches: “I was God who created Christ. I have already done eight times what Christ did.”"
• Here, I wrote a two-minute review of the movie Nightcrawler and discussed a horror cliché that I'd like to see go by the wayside.  

Illustration by Tom Sullivan for Call of Cthulhu's S. Petersen's Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters.