Friday, September 4, 2015

Friday Links: Voices of the Damned, Backcountry, and Charles Dexter Ward

Labor Day approaches, promising labor for some of us and rest for the rest.  While we look forward to the upcoming holiday, let's take a look back at what's happened in the world of the bizarre and horrific.

But before that, I want to give my buddy Nev Murray my best wishes for a speedy recovery.  Hope you're up and at it again ASAP, Nev!
  • Infernal Cinema brought us the news that actress and author Barbie Wilde's collection of short stories Voices of the Damned would be ready for sale in October of this year: "Enter into the mind of Barbie Wilde, whose disturbing interior world teems with the vo­ices of rebellious female demons, devilish witches, semen-hungry neo-vampires, raging gods and home invaders, the fiends of sleep paralysis, pint-sized store-front preachers with a whiff of sulfur, body horrors of the most grotesque kind, clandestine aliens and Zulu zombies."
  • A Jamaican teenager stabbed a police officer after watching a zombie film: ""I don't know what get in a him. A from last night we were watching The Night of the Living Dead movie and him just start to act up. We normally watch a movie together on a Sunday night, but when I saw how the movie was going, I told them that I wouldn't watch anymore, so I left them to watch it, but after the movie, him just start quarrel with him sister and start mash up the tings inna the house," she explained."  This story needs to be read in full to be believed.  Pleasantly, the policeman is in stable condition.
  • At Jim Mcleod's Ginger Nuts of Horror, Joe Young reviewed the pilot of Fear the Walking Dead: "The idea for this show is particularly interesting as it is somewhat akin to Titanic in that we already know what happens, we just have a desire to see how it gets there. There is plenty of scope for many a crossover as there may well be survivors from this series showing up in the next series of The Walking Dead and there are already hints that one or more actors from The Walking Dead could appear in Fear The Walking Dead so we may see something of their earlier pre-apocalyptic lives."
  • Terror Tales Vol. 5 Issue 5 from October 1973 was belched from Zombo's Closet, and it's a real doozy.
  • Sean Eaton deconstructed Charles Dexter Ward in a pair of must-read posts at his uncannily insightful R'lyeh Tribune: "As the title suggests, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, is essentially a clinical study of psychic possession.  It falls to the diligent family physician, Dr. Willett, to determine—from family report, genealogical records, correspondence, newspaper articles and his own observations—a terrifying diagnosis with frightful implications for all of humankind."
  • Horror Movie a Day reviewed Backcountry: "The editing is frustratingly quick-cut during the more exciting scenes, and I'd like to think it was just cutting around whatever safety measures they had in place, or because they could only get a few frames, but it's just as obnoxiously hyper-edited during non-bear scenes, like when our hero Jenn (Missy Peregrym) tumbles down a hill and we get something like half a second of GoPro footage tossed in as she falls. I can't and won't understand what the appeal of this sort of editing is when you're obviously sending the actor (or her stunt double) down a hill anyway - zoom out a bit and show it in longer takes!"
  • John Kenneth Muir gave us a fresh look at M. Night Shyamalan's Signs: "Stories tell people where they come from, and who they are; or who we think they are. So our perceptual sets include the stories we have heard all our lives, and Signs plays delicately with this idea.  At one point in the film, we even see a drawing of a farmhouse much like Graham’s in a UFO book…as it comes under attack from alien ships in that illustration.  This drawing suggests another important “sign” to interpret, a story of “truth” outside the selective exposure (self-reinforcing ideas) I mentioned above in regards to Graham’s world view. He comes out of his bubble of long enough to realize, "gee, that looks a lot like our house...""
  • Here, I discussed some little-talked-about aspects of the Vester Lee Flanagan murders and what it's like to live with a geriatric housecat.
Illustration from Call of Cthulhu's H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands supplement.

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