Friday Links: The Towering Inferno, The Devil's Bottles, and The Mark of Satan

The day we've all been waiting for: Friday! Let the revelry begin. As you celebrate, why not take a look at what happened over the week in the world of the bizarre, horrific, and just plain weird?

• Violent Shit: The Movie got an interesting write-up at The Slaughtered Bird: "Fans will be divided – they already know the story and want to see blood spraying as Karl hacks his way mercilessly through those that stand in his way. What they get is a benchmark to work off. Setting a new scene, a new pace, a new style…"
• Sean Eaton wrapped up his must-read analysis of Lovecraft's The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath at his always-erudite, never-derivative R'lyeh Tribune: "Another striking aspect of the novel is its overt religiosity.  This is a very temple-ridden, priest-ridden, prayerful adventure. In the very beginning, Carter “prayed long and earnestly to the hidden gods of dream” and asks for a formal blessing from two priests, whose advice—essentially: ‘Don’t mess with Great Ones’—he ignores."
• The Horrors of It All brought us The Devil's Bottles.
• In Japan, ghosts are taking taxicab rides: "Taxi drivers working in towns in north-east Japan that were devastated in the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami are reporting picking up "ghost passengers". At least seven drivers in the coastal town of Ishinomaki, where nearly 6,000 people died after it was battered by tsunami more than 30 feet high, claimed to have encountered phantom fares."
  
• At his Confessions of a Reviewer!!, Nev Murray reviewed Dallas Mullican's A Coin for Charon: "The plot has been done before. Hasn’t it? Serial killer that is seemingly impossible to trace and stop, with the main cop having a troubled past that interferes with his life on a daily basis? Yeah I seem to remember a few books and films with a similar vain. What makes this different then? Why does it hold your attention to the very end? This would be where tick three for writing skills comes in."
• The disturbing film Room got a poignant write-up from Jeremy the Critic: "The plot details of the screenplay (adapted by Emma Donoghue from her own best-selling 2011 novel) are almost incidental, as the commercials and trailers freely gave away what most would consider spoilers under different circumstances. It's also an ordeal, albeit one built on the foundation of logic and sound decision making by the filmmakers. And none of it comes together without the two performances at its center, functioning as a single unit."
• Zombos' Closet opened, and out fell issues one and two of Shriek! The Monster Horror Magazine. Take a look at them: they...they have to be seen to be believed.
• John Kenneth Muir dipped way back into 1974 to discuss an old favorite, The Towering Inferno: "Essentially, the film suggests that if the contest for a business is between turning a profit, or insuring the safety of its customers….the bottom line is going to win out, and people aren’t. As we discover early in the film, shortcuts have been taken on the fiery building’s electrical wiring by a morally bankrupt subcontractor, Simmons (Richard Chamberlain). Simmons wasn’t exactly acting alone, either. Jim Duncan (William Holden), the head of the construction company, was going perilously over-budget on the project, and needed Simmons to save two-million dollars...somewhere."
• Ruined Head reviewed Ann Loring's 1968 novel The Mark of Satan: "Unable to escape the considerable shadow cast by Rosemary’s Baby, The Mark of Satan casts a web of diabolical intrigue around its innocent young heroine, but fails to provide the least bit of surprise in delivering its occult chills."
• Albert Pyun's Alien from L.A. got the House of Self-Indulgence treatment: "Every time they would refer to "Africa," as if it were a country, I would cringe. Thankfully, all references to "Africa" cease the moment Wanda arrives in... "Africa." Judging by the climate and architecture, I'm guessing she's going to Egypt or Tunisia."
• Here, I reviewed the movie Pay the Ghost, told you about R.M. Huffman's Leviathan, and pointed you to an interview I conducted with Adam Howe at The Slaughtered Bird.

Illustration by Earl Geier for Call of Cthulhu's The Complete Dreamlands supplement, 4th edition.

Friday Links: Rogue Redcaps, Reptoid Tunnels, and The Making of Jaws 2

In addition to my big news there's lots of stuff going on in the world of the strange, the macabre, the horrific. Let's take a look back at what happened over the week.

• Sean Eaton began a must-read series of pieces analyzing H.P. Lovecraft's novel The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath at his always-incisive R'lyeh Tribune: "S.T. Joshi concurred with Lovecraft’s evaluation of the novel, which he dismissed as “charming but relatively insubstantial”.  However, Lovecraft’s renowned biographer felt that the novel was autobiographically significant in that it served as a snapshot of Lovecraft’s psyche at a particular point in his life, circa the late 1920s.  In my view the novel seems to be a kind of culmination or systematization of various ideas Lovecraft had been developing in various stories at that time in his career."
• The President of the International Association of Exorcists had something interesting to say about the Devil: "'Satan is not the god of evil against the God of the good, rather he is a being who God created as good and who, with some angels — also created good by God — became evil because they refused God and His kingdom with their free and final choice,' Father Francesco Bamonte, president of the International Association of Exorcists, wrote last week in Vatican Newspaper L'Osservatore Romano."
  
• The little-known but much-dreaded Reptoids' tunnels under Los Angeles were discussed at Ghost Hunting Theories: "The legends state that the key room is the directory to the rest of the city, and to the historical gold record tablets. These gold tablets were slabs of gold, 4 feet long and 14 inches wide. The tablets were believed to contain the records of the origins of the human race, and the history of modern man in the Americas, including details regarding the history of the mysterious Mayan people."
• It's been Karen Malena week at Nev Murray's Confessions of a Reviewer!!. Start with part one of this in-depth interview and keep scrolling: "It’s a scary thought especially when you write dark characters to realize that they are parts of you. For how else could we make this stuff up? You dig deep down into yourself. I also like to joke with people I know and say, “You better watch. You never know when you’ll end up as a villain in one of my books.” But seriously, I think all writers to some extent utilize people and situations they know. Or at least parts of them."
• It's going to seem a bit silly at first, but really, go take a look at these vintage photos of loving couples that Vintage Everyday posted. Some are funny, some disturbing, some just weird.
• Micro-Brewed Reviews reviewed the film Ex Machina: "Ex Machina is a small and relatively contained movie with an incredibly tiny budget for something of this scope with a cast that can be basically counted on one hand; a nice little throwback to the sobering sci-fi tales of the late 1960s and ‘70s."
• Hammer Horror Issue 1 emerged from Zombos' Closet (I'm always amazed at the material he posts: simultaneously nostalgic and bizarre).
• Holly Evans posted a piece of short fiction at her blog that's definitely worth your time, titled Rogue Redcaps: "The stench of old blood and rotting meat surrounded me while I tried to clear my head through the agony. A nail slowly ran down the side of my neck following the line of one of my butterfly tattoos there, I punched in the direction of creature it belonged to. The darkness shattered, bright white light filled my vision before it settled into a warm light that allowed me to see again. I wished it hadn’t."
• Cool Ass Cinema reviewed the book The Making of Jaws 2: "Authors and heavy duty JAWS fans, Pisano and Smith, have amassed a great deal of behind the scenes stories, anecdotes and rare photos from many who worked on JAWS 2; this extends to those who worked, albeit briefly, on the production before being fired and replaced. Among those released from the picture early on included a handful of the young cast, one of which was Ricky Schroder (SILVER SPOONS [1982-1987])."
• Here, I discussed what social media can't do for you as a writer, and announced the publication of the sequel to The Blessed Man and the Witch, titled The Nephilim and the False Prophet.

Illustration by Kevin Ramos for Call of Cthulhu's Cthulhu by Gaslight supplement.

Friday Links: David Hochbaum, Kristy, and Satan Is Waitin'

The Friday Links, like me, are back and better than ever. Now that you've had a week to shake off the detritus of the holidays, let's look at what's been going on in the world of the macabre, the bizarre, the horrific.

• Elisandre - L'Oeuvre au Noir brought us a number of bizarre, surreal images by David Hochbaum that must be looked at to be believed. NSFW but not pornographic.
• At the invaluable R'lyeh Tribune, Sean Eaton brought us an analysis of the Robert E Howard story Rogues in the House: "There are no heroes, nor are there any victims, at least not innocent ones.  It is useless to summarize the plot, because each of the characters’ plans unravel, leaving only a couple survivors.  Although there is an evil priest and a mysterious palace, there is a conspicuous absence of incantations, occult paraphernalia or supernatural effects.  Instead there are numerous scenes of simple, brutish violence complicated by several of the “red priest’s” treacherous contraptions."  (Note also that Mr. Eaton is accepting guest posts for the Tribune, so you Lovecraft fans with something to say should submit your best analytical work.)
• My good friend Holly Evans had some good news and cool photos to share.
• Breakfast in the Ruins brought us an entertaining Top 20 First-Time Viewings list for 2015. An eclectic collection, it includes Shaw Brothers kung fu films, Euro-trash horror, and much more.
  
• The hysterical Satan Is Waitin' was the subject of The Horrors of It All.
• If you're a monsterkid like me, you'll appreciate what emerged from Zombos' Closet: Monster World Issue 1. Part Two is available here.
• The Slaughtered Bird reviewed the movie Kristy: "Sure, this is another stalker/slasher film, and yeah, it’s a bit derivative, but it’s actually a really entertaining watch. There are great moments of genuine tension and catch-your-breath moments, and also a few jump scares thrown in for good measure. The acting done by the small cast is also what helps put Kristy above others of its kind."
• In very good news, Nev Murray's winter break is coming to a close, and he'll be back to full-strength reviewing next week at Confessions of a Reviewer!!
• Ghost Hunting Theories theorized that the gray aliens of song and story are actually of terrestrial origin: "I have come to believe alien greys were actually terrestrial people before our time, who evolved into a highly intelligent people and had to share this realm with us for a period of time when they were prepared to go to the next level of knowledge that takes us out of this limited world we still inhabit."
• Jess Franco's She Killed in Ecstasy was analyzed in The House of Self-Indulgence: Of course, I'm not saying Soledad Miranda should be allowed to murder the scientists who fucked over her hunky scientist husband just because she looks like Soledad Miranda. No, what I am saying is that the scientists should be thankful that their final moments on planet earth are being spent straddling a half-naked Soledad Miranda. In other words, if you have to be murdered, wouldn't you want Soledad Miranda to be the one holding the knife that plunges deep into your worthless, improperly utilized genitals?"
• Here, I talked about readers, writers, and Facebook; and reviewed the movie Sicario.

Illustration by Nick Smith from Call of Cthulhu's Masks of Nyarlathotep supplement.

Friday Links: Jeruzalem, Satan's Blade, and Yuletide Yog-Sothoth

The last Friday Links before Christmas! Yip yip yahoo! So, what's been happening in the world of the bizarre, the strange, and horrific?

• A demonic apocalypse film called Jeruzalem released a trailer that's worth a look.
• At his Confessions of a Reviewer!!, Nev Murray has been thrilling us all week with his Top Five lists of best books he's read this year. Start at the bottom and get clicking. You might recognize a title or two, and if you don't, then you know what you should add to your reading list!
• Fascination With Fear told us about three Christmas monsters that aren't Krampus: "It isn’t surprising to see Japan at the top of the list, as their folktales are equal if not more terrifying than the Germans’. Namahage are demonic ogres that dwell high up in the mountains—how they have come to live there varies by region. All year long they watch each household in the village and monitor the children’s behavior, keeping notes in a little book."
• The 2006 remake of the movie Black Christmas came up From the Depths of DVD Hell: "Yet another remake while one which chooses to tackle Bob Clark’s 1974 original which as I covered in my review of the original was also one of the first slasher and one which would have a much more subtle tone than the slashers which followed in its wake."
• Monster Times Issue #30 from February 1974 fell out of Zombos' Closet: "Issue 30 of The Monster Times gives Long Island a bad rap by providing way too much coverage on The Horror of Party Beach, annoys comic book fans with an assessment of The World's Worst Comics, and goes ape over John Landis's Schlock."
  
• Zombots has a brilliant article on Jewish mythology in movie and television horror: "I didn't cover the golem in my rundown of Jewish "monsters," largely because it's the most well-known creature of Jewish myth. For that reason, the golem often appears in Jewish-inspired genre fictions. The X-Files, of course, has a golem episode (season 4, episode 15: Kaddish). The last name of the Jewish family who play a central role in this episode is Luria. It bears mentioning that Issac Luria, who was a 16th century Jewish mystic, features in a number of Jewish folktales in which the rebbe deals with the supernatural. The Luria family in the X-Files and their use of a golem suggest that someone at work on the show had at least a passing familiarity with Kabbalah."
• Breakfast in the Ruins picked up another striking novel: Gideon's Ride by John Creasey.
• At Sean Eaton's always-brilliant R'lyeh Tribune, guest blogger John L. Steadman talked about The Dunwich Horror and the Christmas season: "The Christian mythographers, for various reasons, have shown interest in Yog-Sothoth.   The most prominent of these myth makers and the most representative, Robert M. Price, in Biblical Bits in Lovecraft (2013), imposes a Christian interpretation on Lovecraft’s great tale, The Dunwich Horror (1928). This tale develops the interesting idea of sexual congress between the Great Old Ones and human consorts.  In the story, Wilbur Whateley’s grandfather evokes Yog-Sothoth on the top of Sentinel Hill on Candlemas evening, 1913, and afterwards, Yog-Sothoth couples with Lavinia Whateley, a deformed albino woman."
• Of course, no self-respecting horror fan would do Christmas without another look at Silent Night, Deadly Night. The Dwrayger Dungeon does it right.
• The 1984 slasher flick Satan's Blade was the subject of an interesting post at Chuck Norris Ate My Baby: "On the surface, Satan’s Blade is a terrible slasher film. It’s not particularly well made, sharing more in common with a public access show than something like Halloween or Black Christmas. The performances, while being consistent, are amateurish and best comparable to that of an eighth-grade school play. And even the story – which focuses on two groups of vacationers being stalked and slashed by a guy who, as it turns out, is possessed by the spirit of a killer mountain man wielding the titular blade – is somehow convoluted, despite being so simple."
• Here, I celebrated my brief status as #1 and told you about my five favorite horror books of 2015.

Illustration by Nick Smith for Call of Cthulhu's Cthulhu Casebook supplement.

Friday Links: Embrujada, Charles Herbert, and Devil Times Five

As we start the next holiday countdown, this time to Thanksgiving, let's look back at what happened in the world of the strange, the unusual, the horrific:

• Nev Murray, the UK's foremost fan of turkey dinosaurs, reviewed the novel The Other Boy at his Confessions of a Reviewer!!: "Now, for whatever reason, I didn’t fancy this one. Don’t ask me why. I have no idea. I think it may be because I have never heard of either authors. I am generally a bit sceptical of collaborations, especially when it is authors I have never heard of. Very especially if it’s a husband and wife team. I have been there before. It didn’t work out so well. However, I have faith in the chaps at Dark Chapter Press so decided to give it a go. How did it work out?"
• Professor Kinema talked about the late, great Charles Herbert from inside Zombos' Closet: "At one Monster Bash several years ago Charles Herbert was sharing a table with B-movie/schlock producer/director Bert I. Gordon and his daughter, Susan.  He was very fan-friendly and we had one brief chat.  I bought a few items, he autographed a few items and, with Susan, posed for a few photos."
• The Horror Digest had this to say about the movie Last Shift: "It's not that I'm in awe by what I just saw but more like ummm what the fuck just happened? Also I need to change my underwear. Also seriously what just happened? Oh right THAT. Hot tip: If you're not into shitting your pants every 5 seconds, maybe stay away from this one." (I'm not into shitting my pants at all, so this is a no-go for me.) 
  
• At Jim Mcleod's Ginger Nuts of Horror, Mike Duke reviewed the movie Stung: "Later, once its dark and the party is in full swing a horde of the wasps burst out of the nest entrance and begin flying around and stinging some of the guests who, within in a couple of minutes collapse with seizures and then have a human sized wasp sprout out of their now shredded bodies. Here’s where the blood and gore begins to run rampant."
• Continuing our film theme, House of Self-Indulgence reviewed the 1981 movie The Loveless: "These cats have the market on coolness cornered, and no small town is going to cramp/undermine their style. Whether they're lighting a cigarette or dragging a comb through their greasy hair, everything they do has the potential give off an air of cool. In a way, I kind of feel sorry for those saddled with the task of being cool nowadays. I know, nothing's technically been cool since at least 1985, okay, maybe 1986, but that doesn't stop people from trying."'
• Embrujada was the subject of a post at Die, Danger, Die, Die, Kill!: "The problem is that Sarli’s character, Ansise, is married to Leandro (Daniel de Alvarado), a despotic lumber baron with a malfunctioning pee pee. This means that we get to see scenes of Leandro futilely humping the leg of a supine Isabel Sarli while weeping. In fact, if watching a voluptuous woman have blighted sex with catastrophically ugly old men is your thing, you can put those worn Ron Jeremy tapes away, because Embrujada is the only film you will ever need from now on."
• Sean Eaton reread Herbert West: Reanimator at his incisive, brain-ripping R'lyeh Tribune and analyzed the experience for our reading pleasure: "Herbert West: Reanimator is for the most part a pre-Mythos tale, and like The Horror at Red Hook (1927) derives some of its weird imagery from vaguely Judeo-Christian or Greek and Roman mythological sources.  (The latter story contains appearances by Satan, Lillith, incubi, succubi, Moloch and so forth.)"
• I Think, Therefore I Review brought us four movies from the 1970's involving bizarre children and/or horrific mothers: "Devil Times Five – Teen idol Leif Garrett and his sister Dawn Lyn make for some creepy youngins in this 1974 picture also known as Peopletoys – and a dozen other titles for good measure. Eerie seventies lullaby notes ironically accent the snowy vacation spot, yuppie couples, and old fogies as perilous, icy, winding roads lead to vehicular disasters. Nuns and kids should be a sign of safety, however, real snow filming, old fashioned cars, and past technological isolation up the apprehensive mood."
• Here, I reviewed the movie Bone Tomahawk and The Mighty Jewmanberg's book Super Syndicate: When Heroes Divorce.

Illustration taken from Call of Cthulhu's The Complete Dreamlands supplement.

Friday Links: The Haunted Palace, the Altay Princess, and Zombie Ninjas vs. Black Ops

Halloween's over, sadly enough, and as we recover and get ready for next year's holiday, let's take a look back at what's happened over the week in the world of the strange, the bizarre, the horrific:

• Mondo Bizarro reviewed the Australian movie Zombie Ninjas vs. Black Ops: "The Film is about...well, you can probably guess.  What you wouldn't guess, however, is the tone of the Film.  Despite the Troma-style Title, this Film is pretty much played 100% straight.  Alright then.  The Story involves mutated super-soldiers, the plot from Die Hard and lots of fighting."
• At the penetrating, perspicacious R'lyeh Tribune, Sean Eaton brought us an archetypal terror from Lovecraft contemporary William Sloane: "Stephen King, who wrote the introductory notes to the most recent release [of The Rim of Morning], notes that Sloane once met Carl Jung, the famous psychotherapist and J.B. Rhine, a renowned expert in extrasensory perception at a special luncheon in 1937.  Jung had read an earlier version of To Walk the Night—it had first appeared as a play—and was apparently impressed with Sloane’s work.  Jung’s notion of the mysterious archetypal feminine principle, the “anima” is strongly echoed in Sloane’s character of Selena LeNormand."
• The Slaughtered Bird reviewed Adam Howe's Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet: "I’ve written long & hard about Adam’s storytelling and it’s here in abundance, more so than ever before in fact. I can’t imagine why he restricts himself to the novella but it makes for a pacy, breathless and tightly wound read without ever feeling rushed or crowded. To compliment the oddest of tales are characters that never feel out of place, and with exquisitely torrid back-stories as a rule." (Interested readers can find my review of this book here.)
• Nev Murray reviewed Jonathan Janz's Wolf Land at his Confessions of a Reviewer!!: "The plot is not unlike some of those old horror films you might have watched when you were younger. Basically the werewolves come to town and it is a battle for the good to survive against the evil. The difference with this story is the fact that people know from the outset that they are dealing with werewolves. There is initial disbelief at what they have witnessed but at the same time an acceptance of what is happening and a desire to stop the evil in whatever way they can."
  
• Breakfast in the Ruins deconstructed Roger Corman's Lovecraft film The Haunted Palace: "As in so many things, Corman was ahead of the curve in choosing to adapt Lovecraft. Whilst HPL’s name may be ubiquitous in horror fiction today, he did not actually attract a widespread readership until mass market paperback editions of his work began to proliferate in the mid/late 1960s. At the time Corman was planning this film, Lovecraft’s following was still a closely-guarded cult within the wider cult of Weird Tales/fantastic fiction devotees, his reputation kept alive largely via the expensive, small-press editions produced by August Derleth’s Arkham House."
• Shock Volume 3, Issue 2 from May 1971 was the latest bit of horror to fall out of Zombos' Closet.
• Demonic possession is on the rise in the Philippines: "'These days we have around 80 to 100 cases at any given time,' says Father Jose Francisco Syquia, the chief exorcist at the archdiocese's Office of Exorcism. The sudden increase in cases of possession has stretched the country's few exorcists thin and, according to Fr. Syquia, most Philippine dioceses do not have in-house exorcists. As a result many of the faithful are turning to "healers and occult practitioners" in the hopes of curing the afflicted. This route, however, only attracts the demonic and exacerbates the problem, says Fr. Syquia. By the time the exorcists from the archdiocese of Manila are able to see people, the victims are in bad shape."
• Some of Siberia's most bizarre mysteries were the subject of discussion at Ghost Hunting Theories: "Siberian Ice Maiden "Altay Princess": From 5th century BC, this mummified lady was found in a subterranean burial chamber. This tomb was on the border of China. She was buried with food and with her horses, facing east. Her skin still showed tattoos of deer shapes. She was buried in a beautiful gown and leggings and a 3-foot tall headdress, a fur, a mirror, and deer figurines. Interestingly, DNA testing proved her to not be of Asian descent as the Altai's in the area."
• At the Film Gutter of Jim Mcleod's Ginger Nuts of Horror, Alex Davis introduced us to The Girl Next Door: "If there's a single thing that elevates this movie, it's Blanche Baker's role as pretty much the sole adult in the lives of the children of the neighbourhood. In the beginning she's free in giving out the beer and cigarettes to all the youngsters, but her attitudes towards men, women and sexual relationships are warped to say the least. And Meg is soon enough a victim of her ire, resulting in a couple of beatings and unpleasant scenes."
• Soiled Sinema sprayed us with the Aussie film Salt, Saliva, Sperm and Sweat: "A 47-minute piece of outstandingly outlandish and obscenely offbeat Australian iconoclasm, the alliteratively titled flick Salt, Saliva, Sperm and Sweat (1988) directed by experimental musician, composer, academic, film scholar, and sometimes filmmaker Philip Brophy, who is probably best known for his satirical slapstick biopunk horror flick Body Melt (1993), is indubitably one of the best kept secrets of Australian cinema."
• Here, I talked about social media strokes and why I'm no longer hunting skunk apes.

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

Friday Links: Bad Apples, Baked Apples, and The Duke of Burgundy

Last week's Friday Links had to be canceled due to multiple family engagements, so I'm making up for it with an extra special Friday Links, just for you.  Yes, you.  Let's get after it:

• It's been all Bad Apples all the time this week at Nev Murray's Confessions of a Reviewer!!: "So it’s my turn to confess. I have had this on my Kindle since it was released last year and have never gotten around to reading it. I am slapping the back of my hand as I type. Know how difficult that is?"  Read on to find out!
• Continuing our apples theme, Ghost Hunting Theories showed us some very neat things to do with everyone's favorite fall fruit.
• The Horror!? delved into early 80's nostalgia by discussing the slasher film My Bloody Valentine: "George Mihalka’s Canadian slasher is one of the handful of entries in the sub-genre I truly love, so it’s no surprise finally getting around to watching the uncut version of the film doesn’t change much about my opinion."
• Sean Eaton analyzed Edmond Hamilton's The Earth-Brain at his always readable, always trenchant R'lyeh Tribune: "In The Earth-Brain, adventurer Clark Landon has become a human epicenter for unusual earthquakes and seismic activity wherever he travels in the world.  He avoids the interiors of tall buildings and keeps far away from mountains to avoid avalanches.  Cities in Newfoundland, Norway, Russia, Egypt, Italy and other places are ruined as he travels through them, and thousands die amidst the rubble.  He is wracked by guilt and terror—cursed for an act of sacrilege committed a couple of years before."
  
• At Jim Mcleod's Ginger Nuts of Horror, Alex Davis tackled the horrific film Aftermath: "The visuals leave little to the imagination, but one thing that is effective in the first half of the movie – and even more so in the second – is the use of sound. The music in the film is used very sparingly, so what we mostly have is a funereal silence (not a word of dialogue spoken by any of the characters) punctuated by the crunching of bone, the squelching removal of organs and the insidious sound of saws and knives cutting through flesh."
• The Ringmaster's Realm reviewed Wyrmwood - Road of the Dead: "Recently, I have been staying far away from the zombie genre, as many of the films that have been coming out lately seem tired and played out. Fortunately, I am glad that I picked this one, because it took an interesting route outside of the box and created something rather original." (Interested readers can check out my review of Wyrmwood here.)
• At Zombos' Closet of Horror, Zombos presented the Jungle Woman pressbook, which demands your attention.  Note the name of the actress playing the titular character.
• The bizarre movie The Duke of Burgundy was an interesting topic of discussion at The House of Self-Indulgence: "I liked how the relationship in this film was two women, as opposed to a man and a woman. What I mean is, I'm glad it wasn't a man dominating a woman; I can't stand maledom. And while it's true, I do prefer femdom. The relationship depicted in this film can't really be classified as "femdom," as it doesn't properly identify who the dominate party is, and both parties are women."
• Here, I talked about a very good bad guy and described that careful face people sometimes put on.

Illustration by Earl Geier for Call of Cthulhu's Blood Brothers 2 supplement.

Friday Links: The Green Inferno, Rocktober Blood, and Total Recall

Halloween starts in a little less than a month.  As you count the days to what is arguably my favorite holiday, take a look back at what happened in the world of the strange, the bizarre the horrific this week:

• Dr, Lynne Campbell was interviewed about her book A Course in Demonology for Paranormal Investigators: "Exorcism of the home that is infested and/or of the person(s) who has been invaded is the only way to banish the demonic once they've found a "point of entry". Exorcism is a multi-faith practice. Every culture around the globe has exorcism rituals."
• Dawn Cano reviewed William Holloway's The Immortal Body for Ginger Nuts of Horror: "The Immortal Body has everything I want to see in a horror novel: likeable characters, great dialogue, plenty of gore, and unrelenting tension. There’s even a few bits of humour thrown in for good measure. This is a classic good versus evil story with one hell of a supernatural twist."
• Full Moon Reviews reviewed Eli Roth's The Green Inferno, and amazingly wasn't offended by the skin color and political philosophy of the victims: "Roth's basis for the story, besides the cannibal aspect, is his social commentary on current "slacktivists" on world social issues. Roth felt that people who claim to want to help the environment, do ice bucket challenges for ALS, or express anything about Kony 2012 at the time are hashtagging and sharing posts on these topics as a way to trend within social media, rather than doing something to help financially or physically."
  
• Zombos reviewed the film Kids vs Monsters at Zombos' Closet of Horror: "It's ho-hum from start to finish in spite of having talents like Lance Henriksen, Malcolm McDowell, Richard Moll, and Armand Assante. With the dialog they're given, I'm surprised they didn't roll their eyes more often when delivering each line."
• Nev Murray showed off Widowmakers at his Confessions of a Reviewer!!
• Tremendo Time took on the 1984 slasher film Rocktober Blood: "So after a late-night recording session, Billy suddenly goes ape shit and starts offing members of the band and members of the creative force that spawned it.  Like these guys."
• At the unmissable R'lyeh Tribune, Sean Eaton wrapped up his extraordinary interview of author, professor, and occultist John L. Steadman: "In the near future, also, I think that the great black magickal systems that I have focused on in the latter portion of my book will continue to flourish.  The Vodou religion has become a bona-fide religion and yet, unlike most of the Christian sects (excepting the Catholics, of course), Vodou has managed to preserve its magickal roots and its mysteries."
• Breakfast in the Ruins got out of its rut and reviewed the 1984 martial arts film Furious: "Basically, those anticipating a non-stop cavalcade of high velocity, laugh-out-loud zaniness will be left with only a fairly thin serving of WTF yuks spread across a modest 74 min run-time. Viewers willing to put such concerns aside though and simply take the film as it comes will find themselves experiencing a more genuinely inexplicable piece of work than they could possibly have anticipated."
• It's Mars week at John Kenneth Muir's site, and he tackled the greatest film on Mars ever made: Total Recall: "I suppose it’s tempting to witness all the blunt-faced, brutal, over-the-top violence of Total Recall and dismiss the movie outright. Yet even the film’s violence fits into Total Recall’s either/or dichotomy, representing a future of over-militarized police, or, contrarily, a world of the imagination where the death of innocent bystanders (as human shields) matters not…because they are just avatars in a fantasy, not real flesh and blood life forms."
• Here, I pointed you to a review I wrote of the movie I Saw the Devil and discussed the pitfalls of being the boss.

Illustration by Gustaf Bjorksten for Stormbringer's Sorcerers of Pan Tang supplement.

Friday Links: Death Note, Morituris, and the Halloween Weeny-Witch Party Book

As Fall falls upon us, promising cooler weather for everyone not in Florida, take a look back at the week to see what you might have missed in the world of the macabre, horrific, or just plain weird:

• Jasper Bark continued his study of author Michael McDowell at This Is Horror: "McDowell was a very fast and a very prolific writer. Before the sale of his first published novel The Amulet, he wrote five unpublished novels. Between 1980 and 1987 he wrote 19 novels, mainly crime and thrillers, in conjunction with Dennis Schuetz and John Preston under the pseudonyms: Axel Young, Nathan Aldyne, Mike McCray and Preston MacAdam. He also wrote three romantic murder mysteries about a couple called Jack and Susan."
• Jim Mcleod gave us an early look at Midwinter of the Spirit at his Ginger Nuts of Horror: "The plot is also intriguing, with Merrily being called in by the police when a body is found crucified in the wood (“We were led to understand you were the church contact for… this sort of thing.”), then later being taken to the house of the victim, where she discovers a Satanist shrine in the basement."
• Mondo Bizarro introduced us to the weird Japanese film series called Death Note.  Pleasantly, it doesn't seem to portray tentacles going into unfortunate places.
  
• Nev Murray reviewed some of Frank Westworth's JJ Stoner stories at his Confessions of a Reviewer!!: "Eh…..wow. JJ Stoner. I’ll bet my mortgage on this guy against anyone. Bond. Reacher. The Expendables (all of them together). This guy has it all. Let’s face it he is effectively a hired assassin. No idea who he’s working for and he doesn’t care. He also doesn’t care about who he kills. Give him a gun and a target and he will do the job. Simple as that. Sounds horrible doesn’t he? Someone you should hate and abhor and boo every time he comes on screen? Well I say arse to that! This character is superb. Brilliantly written. Straight to the point with no messing about at all. You cannot help but like him."
• In Kenya, a woman committed a horrific murder, claiming that she was possessed: "A woman who hacked dead her elderly mother-in-law in Kiambu county has said she was driven by Satan, who also wanted her to kill her mother and sister. Caroline Wanjiku, 29, turned herself in on Monday hours after killing Ann Nyambura in Gishobo village, Ndeiya ward, Limuru constituency. “I keep seeing visions of snakes coiling on my body around the waist,” she told journalists at Thigio chief’s post."
• At Hayes Hudson's House of Horror, Hayes reviewed the film Morituris: "Two lovely Romanian girls take a trip with three Italian men to a rumored midnight rave in the middle of a dark forest. As the gang proceeds on foot to their final destination, a mysterious graveyard is discovered, a shockingly vile plot twist is revealed and bloodthirsty undead Roman gladiators rise from the dead to torture and mutilate their victims!"
• From Zombo's Closet emerged the Halloween Weeny-Witch Party Book, which really must be seen to be believed.  
• Ghost Hunting Theories showed us a series of vintage witches, some cheesecake, some just plain strange.
• Sean Eaton drew from the past and the present to bring us modern necromancy at his never-miss, must-read R'lyeh Tribune: "Is there a modern, more reliable means of conjuring the dear and the not-so-dear departed, both for edification and profit?  Some readers may be familiar with the recent feature story in The New York Times* that described one young woman’s plans to preserve her connectome—a microscopically detailed three dimensional map of her brain—using advances in cryogenic technology."
• Here, I discussed the everyday horror of roaches and pointed you to a new short story I had published at Liberty Island.

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

Friday Links: The Yeast Men, Strange Behavior, and Mermaid in a Manhole

As you rush headlong into the weekend like a metaphorical thing doing something quite fast, look back on what you might have missed in the world of the bizarre and horrific and just plain weird:

• 1967 proved to be a very, very strange year, and Ghost Hunting Theories details why.  There's Bigfoot, UFOs, ghosts, Mothman, and more!
• Sean Eaton baked up some analysis of Lovecraft contemporary David H. Keller at his must-read, never-miss R'lyeh Tribune: "Keller’s The Yeast Men (1928) depicts an alternative universe closely parallel to our own in the early 20th century. Superficially it appears to be science fiction because of its weird pseudo-technology.  However, the paraphernalia that appear in Keller’s fiction have a different, even playful quality when compared to the devices and extrapolations invented by other pulp science fiction writers of the time." I've already made all the yeast infection jokes in my life I care to, so don't think you've got to pick up the slack here.
  
• The House of Self-Indulgence reviewed the 1981 Australian horror film Strange Behavior: "Now, I don't want to sound like a broken record. But what the fuck, guys? Strange Behavior is probably the ultimate film in the milfy lady scientists wielding syringes that contain iridescent liquid genre. Think about it. Not only is Gwen Parkinson (Fiona Lewis) a lady, she's milfy, and, judging by her lab coat, she's definitely a scientist. On top of that, it looks like she's holding a syringe in her hand, and the liquid inside said syringe has a iridescent sheen to it. So, I'll say it again, what the fuck, guys?"
• Alex Davis brought the disgusting Guinea Pig film review series to a close with Mermaid in a Manhole at Jim Mcleod's Ginger Nuts of Horror: "Now, if you can forgive the few leaps in logic there, that leaves us an artist obsessed with his new subject, whom he paints and paints and paints as her condition continues to worsen. As time goes by, her skin begins to blister into painful sores, which in turn become infected and infested with foul worms."  Make sure you give the Film Gutter Facebook page a like!
• Definitely check out more of the Danish pulp haul from Breakfast in the Ruins.  It's worth the clicks!
• Nev Murray reviewed the short story The Dogmen of Cedar Park at his Confessions of a Reviewer!!: "What I got this time was the exact same style of writing, but, and this is a big but, Ricardo Bare as honed his writing skills to perfection with this one. This is a contender for short story of the year from Confessions!"  Clearly Nev seemed to enjoy this one.
• A pressbook for Night Monster crept out of Zombo's Closet, along with many other incredible things. ZC has definitely become one of my favorite horror sites.
• The Horror Club did a comprehensive roundup of that most disquieting of horror sub-genres: home invasion horror.
• John Kenneth Muir's analysis of The Happening was better than the film itself: "For those seeking to take down the film and its director, M. Night Shyamalan, there is plenty of ammunition here by which to accomplish that task. Many folks have availed themselves of it.  And, I’ll confess, after watching the film for the first time again in seven years, I can see that it is a marked step down in quality for Shyamalan, after his earlier work. Some scenes just don’t come off well, and some scenes that should be powerful instead fall flat."  Read the whole thing: it might change your mind.
• Here, I pointed you to a review I wrote of Chris James's Alchemy and wrote about the importance of properly editing and formatting your indie novel.

I'm always on the lookout for fresh material for the Friday Links, so please drop me a line if you want to be included in next week's list.  The only caveat is that it has to be fresh! Last month's blog post on using Twitter to sell your book doesn't count.

Illustration by Frank Brunner for Chaosium's Stormbringer 4th Edition Rulebook.

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.

Friday Links: Lycans, Teenage Zombies, and Conan at a Desk (Plus Bonus Social Commentary)

It's been a brutal week and there are a few issues I'd like to discuss relating to the terrible murders of two journalists on Wednesday, so this will be a shorter Friday Links post.  If current events don't interest you, feel free to skip the bottom paragraphs.

• Shen Hart talked about Lycans in her Urban Fantasy universe: "They’re a meritocratic society of forms, meaning that whoever fights their way to the top takes control. The one at the top also has breeding rights. It can be very dangerous if a female becomes pregnant and either she’s pushed out of control, or the male who was in control loses said control. That means that someone who’s no longer in control will be passing on their genes. That puts them at risk of the alpha of the time killing them or their offspring. It’s not a common occurrence, but some packs are more prone to it than others."
• At the invaluable, incredible R'lyeh Tribune, Sean Eaton discussed the difficulties of being the king when you're Conan the Barbarian: "The opening pages of The Phoenix on the Sword finds King Conan uncomfortably enthroned as the king of Aquilonia, having overthrown its brutal despot several years before.  Howard contrasts the barbarian’s simple dress and gruff manner with the overly ornate decorations of the palace; the scene opens with Conan sitting morosely at a desk, reminiscing about the battlefields he longs to return to."
  
• Nev Murray began his Kit Power feature with an interview at his Confessions of a Reviewer!!: "So after that comes writing. Just keep pounding the keyboard, let the story come. Don't overthink it – try not to think at all, really. Which sounds ridiculous, but... it's like watching a movie on the inside of my head, only I can be in the film, smelling and tasting. And when I'm writing that first draft, it's reporting – what do I see? What do I smell? I write as fast as I can, and I try and write every day, keeping it alive and fresh."
• At Jim Mcleod's Ginger Nuts of Horror, Alex Davis actually liked one of the Guinea Pig films: "As we reach the third installment of the Guinea Pigs, I have to say this is that one that I have enjoyed the most. It's the sort of movie that would rate as a guilty pleasure – lashings of blood and gore, some genuinely strange moments of comedy (the two feet talking to each other still makes me chuckle now) and a finale that reaches heights of of bizarreness before plunging into a final scene with a fitting sense of bathos."
• John Kenneth Muir shone new light on M. Night Shyamalan: "I have rarely felt disappointed by Shyamalan’s silver screen work, in part, because it so relentlessly personal, so individual in visualization and story-telling.  Indeed, I find it highly ironic that this cinematic artist is criticized so regularly (and so angrily) for boasting a consistent, distinctive approach to filmmaking while dozens of generic, cookie-cutter superhero movies get made every year and are lauded breathlessly as being something special and unique."
• You've got to take a look at what came out of Zombo's Closet: The Incredible Petrified World and Teenage Zombies.
• Here, I pointed you to a review I wrote of Paolo Di Orazio's My Early Crimes and discussed the 2015 Hugo Award.

On August 26, a disturbed man named Vester Lee Flanagan shot three people, killing two of them. The two murdered were journalists and former colleagues of his. The details are appalling, from the racist motives (Flanagan was black, his victims white) to the video Flanagan shot of the crime to the youth of the victims. Many of the reactions to this horror on the gigantic, overflowing, unflushed toilet that is social media were disagreeable, so I'll address them here.  

• "We need more gun control!" I disagree that the best reaction to crime is to disarm every law-abiding person on the planet.  
• "Men who own guns are compensating for being wimps!"  I disagree that the definition of bravery or masculinity includes leaving the defense of oneself, one's wife, and one's children in the hands of other people.
• "Only in America!"  I disagree that the United States of America is the only country on the planet where people are murdered with firearms.

Illustration by Tom Sullivan for Call of Cthulhu's The Great Old Ones supplement.

Friday Links: Rebecca Hall, Growing up With Ghosts, and The Last Bus

It's almost time to get back to school for those of us who do such things or know people who do such things.  As you consider such things, take a long look back at the last week to see what you may have missed in the world of the bizarre, horrific, and unusual:

• Zombos' Closet of Horror burst forth and vomited out Monster Times Issue 19 from February 1973. 
• Sean Eaton brought us Schneider's theory of Hyperconstriction and Hyperexpansion at his amazingly readable R'lyeh Tribune: "The characteristics of the hyperconstricted mode include confinement, claustrophobia, diminishing life force, descent, retreat, and isolation.  Hyperconstriction directs one toward the grave—or toward the womb.  Taken to an extreme, it leads toward the experience of obliteration."
• Ginger Nuts of Horror interviewed SFX wizard Rebecca Hall: "I have always loved films ever since I can remember. I have wanted to be involved in making film. I was always arty at school always drawing faces and as I got older I started to appreciate make up and the changes it could make to your appearance so the two kind of fell together for me. I have always enjoyed horror films and thought that they always looked like the most fun to do !! As I was learning make Up I sort of discovered that I was better at the FX so from there really."
  
• Sharon Day talked about her book Growing up With Ghosts at Ghost Hunting Theories: "It all began in 1963 when my family moved into an estate in Fairfax, Virginia. Aspen Grove was built in the mid 1700s as a fort against Indians. In the 1800s, it was taken over by the North to be used as a field hospital and during the war, wrestled back as the same thing for the South. Both sides of the war agonized and died in that home. In fact, the wood floors were still stained with their blood, and the earth littered with bullets, guns, bayonets and the like."
• Morgan Freeman's step-granddaughter (I've never heard of such a thing until now) was murdered by her boyfriend, who shouted some bizarre things as he committed the brutal crime: "The perpetrator, identified by the New York Post as an ex-boyfriend, screamed "Get out, devils! I cast you out, devils! In the name of Jesus Christ, I cast you out!" as he stabbed E'Dena Hines, 33, whose grandmother was Freeman's first wife."
• It was all Duncan Bradshaw all the time at Nev Murray's Confessions of a Reviewer!! this week: "Right where do I start with this one? As I said previously I have discovered a new found love of zombie books, if they have something different. After agreeing to review this one I discovered it had a comedy element to it. Straight away my alarm bells go off. I like a certain amount of wit and humour in my books (the darker the better) but a comedy zombie book? Hmmm."
• John Kenneth Muir deconstructed 2010: The Year We Make Contact: "If Kubrick’s film took a big step back from the characters and attempted to observe the long arc of man’s development with a sense of cerebral detachment, Hyams’ film instead examines man at this juncture with passionate, colorful, up-close strokes.  When considered in such terms, 2010: The Year We Make Contact might be viewed as a pretty strong and, yes, wholly valid complement to Kubrick’s film. It is both a faithful continuation of the franchise’s overall narrative, and at the same time an apparent commentary on the visionary world envisioned by Kubrick."
• Here, I reviewed the movie The Conjuring and Paul M. Feeney's novella The Last Bus.  For those inclined to the political, I wrote a piece about conservative writers and Facebook at Liberty Island.

Illustration by Frank Brunner for Chaosium's Stormbringer 4th Edition Rulebook.

Friday Notes

When my laptop began to suffer from mechanical emphysema on top of the other ailments an aging machine suffers, I was able to replace it while the data was still accessible in its dying brain.  Dealing with the transfer of data and a sick little boy has made it impossible to get any work done, so Friday Links are canceled this week.  Still, I have something to tell you.

The rewrite of The Nephilim and the False Prophet is complete.  This is, of course, the sequel to my novel The Blessed Man and the Witch.  There is still more work to be done to make it ready for publication, but light is visible at the end of the tunnel.  The conclusion is tightened, the antagonists' aims are more clearly shown, and several characters die.  In keeping with tradition in trilogies of this kind, this middle book is really quite dark, though not unrelievedly so.  I like to peel back the skin of the universe to show you the gears beneath, and you'll get that here.  There's betrayal, magic, angels, demons, and glimpses of the higher planes of existence.  While the first novel dealt with the return of miracles to the world and how both witting and unwitting strangers must deal with the coming apocalypse, this one digs into what happens when the end is upon us.  Some hope to stop it, some to mitigate the terrible events, some to speed it up, and some hope to avoid it entirely.  Blood and violence and magick and profanity and real people.  And Nephilim.  You haven't seen Nephilim like these before.

Have a great weekend!

Friday Links: Pixels, Ancient Giants, and The Invaders

It's been a long, draggy sort of week, but you made it to Friday!  Let's celebrate by looking back on what happened over the last several days:

• Martin Lastrapes did a podcast with one of my favorite people in horror, the inimitable Jasper Bark.
• At the always-readable R'lyeh Tribune, Sean Eaton analyzed my favorite Lovecraft story, The Shadow Out of Time: "Its broad panorama of Earth’s existence in time and space, combined with its well-wrought depiction of the Great Old Ones and their interaction with human destiny form the basis for all kinds of interesting narrative possibilities.  Had the author survived the late 1930s, The Shadow Out of Time would have made an excellent starting place from which Lovecraft might have launched additional novel-length projects."
• The Film Connoisseur reviewed Pixels: "What this movie is though is a nostalgia bomb. If you were born in the 80’s and played video games in arcades the way I did, you will feel a shot of nostalgia in your system. I have to admit it was cool seeing a giant Pac-Man eating up taxi cabs and city streets, especially since I’m such a Pac-Man nut! It was awesome seeing a giant King Kong throwing barrels at Adam Sandler, and then there’s this scene where they simply throw as many old video game characters on the screen as they can, so you’ll see Frogger, Q-bert, Paperboy, Centipede, Galaga, Space Invaders…and that’s without counting all the other characters from 80’s pop culture that show up in the film like Max Headroom, Ronald Reagan, Madonna and Hall & Oates."
  
• In Detroit, a statue depicting Baphomet, the Prince of Darkness, was unveiled: "Ultimately, the Satanic Temple hopes to have the statue placed permanently next to a sculpture of the Ten Commandments monument now in place near a state courthouse in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, or outside Arkansas’ Statehouse in Little Rock, where a Ten Commandments monument also is planned."
• Nev Murray reviewed Adam Cesare's novel Mercy House at his Confessions of a Reviewer!!: "Our main characters in this book stand out big and tall for varying reasons. Harriett is nuts. There is no doubt about that. Her son Don and his wife Nikki are doing the best they can for her. She doesn’t see it like that. When the “thing” happens her level of nuttiness multiplies by a million. She goes on a horrific rampage with only one mission. Get Nikki."
• Zombos' Closet belched out an awesome pressbook from the 1959 film The Rebel Set.  
• John Kenneth Muir reached back into the 1960's to bring us that classic TV show The Invaders: "In this case, the series depicts a WASP-y figure of the establishment (David Vincent) suddenly introduced to the new America of the mid-to-late 1960s; the sub-culture or emerging counter-culture. Through his "radical" belief in an alien invasion, Vincent finds himself shunned by figures of the American ruling class (co-workers, government officials, the wealthy, and so forth) and even hunted by them (particularly the police force). These individuals now view Vincent with disdain because he has forsaken his safe "role" in white, middle-class American society for that of a prophet...a doomsayer warning of planetary emergency."
• Jim Mcleod himself reviewed the horror movie Scream Machine at his Ginger Nuts of Horror: "Scream Machine could be viewed in one of two ways, it could be looked at as a loving homage to the works of Troma, or it can be viewed as a pile of steaming shit.  I would imagine that some of it will come down to just how much you like Troma  films. However,  I don't think that the filmmakers' mothers, after drinking a potion of kindness, could view this film as anything other than a pile of steaming shit."  Read the whole thing to get the full effect.
• Ghost Hunting Theories may have found proof of ancient giants in the Grand Canyon: "We also have a legend of ancient giants being found in a cave in the Grand Canyon, hiding from a catastrophe with an inventory of all their seeds and animals and treasures by a man named Kinkaid in the early 1900s."
• Here, I talked about the new masculinity and pointed you to a review I wrote of Alan Rodgers's novel Fire.

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

Friday Links: Giant Seagulls, Flooded Cemeteries, and The Mind of Mr. Soames

It's been a busy week, so are you sure you managed to catch everything that happened in the world of the bizarre and horrific?  If not, here are some highlights:

• At Ghost Hunting Theories, we were treated to a roundup of stories involving flooded cemeteries (ew).
• Terrorphoria returned from summer break long enough to review the movie It Follows: "A menacing tone steeped in nostalgia for classics like Halloween is established from the first scene. Director David Robert Mitchell could be accused of borrowing too heavily from early John Carpenter works, but It Follows has enough original ideas to keep it from feeling derivative. There’s a lot of retro goodness here though, including a synth score from musician Disasterpiece, who is best known for his work on indie game FEZ. One of my favorite tricks that David Robert Mitchell borrowed was the use of still wide-angle shots. It was so refreshing to see that in the current horror landscape drenched in “shaky cam” found-footage movies."
• Giant seagulls attacked full-grown sheep in Ireland: "[The sheep owner] has since called for a gull cull as the animals show little fear of humans and are coming further inland. It's not the only gull assault that's been reported in the area. In nearby Iveragh, Vincent Appleby was on his motorcycle when a large gull nearly knocked him off."
  
• It was all David Bernstein all the time this week at Nev Murray's Confessions of a Reviewer!!, with  a two-part interview and a review of the novel Skinner: "So – a group of kids trapped in an abandoned cabin with some sort of wild animal outside that is basically scaring the crap out of them. Yeah it’s been done before hasn’t it? Whenever I get into a book like this and discover the plot I panic. Purely and simply because if there is nothing different to this story, I will not finish it if my attention is not kept at a high level. I finished this one. In fact I couldn’t really put it down. Why? Because Mr Bernstein added his own little twist to the story that made it the same, but different."
• From the Depths of DVD Hell reviewed the documentary The Death of "Superman Lives": What Happened?: "A project most people know about thanks to Kevin Smith regularly regaling audiences with his contribution to the project as the original screen writer as part of his Q&A sessions whenever given the chance. More recently though this project has generated a lot of discussion because it would have seen Nicolas Cage taking on the iconic role, but until now there’s never been any real attempt to explain what happened to the project outside Smith’s tales and that costume test photo of Cage in his Superman costume."
• Sean Eaton opined, contra the Rolling Stones, that time was not on our side at his thoughtful R'lyeh Tribune: "Lovecraft enthusiasts can depend on his able hagiographer, S.T. Joshi, to set the record straight.  The complex relationship between Derleth and Lovecraft is deftly analyzed by Joshi in volume two of his excellent biography of Lovecraft, I Am Providence (2013).  According to Joshi, one of the reasons Farnsworth Wright rejected work by Derleth as early as 1931 was because, quoting Wright, “you have lifted whole phrases from Lovecraft’s works, as for instance: ‘the frightful Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred…’”—Wright goes on to list several more examples."
• Zombos' Closet unearthed an awesome lobby card you have to see.
• At Jim Mcleod's Ginger Nuts of Horror, Kit Power reviewed Paul Feeney's novella The Last Bus: "Elsewhere, the author has described the plot as ‘B-Movie fare’ and while I understand the description, to me it read more like a feature length episode of ‘The Outer Limits’. The setting is really smart - a typical commuter bus in a busy city. It’s clever because it is a natural environment for a classic horror movie cast of strangers flug together by circumstance. It’s a canny move, and one that speaks to Feeney’s clear grasp and understanding of genre."
• John Kenneth Muir analyzed the 1970 film The Mind of Mr. Soames: "At England's Midland Research Institute, Dr. Maitland  (Nigel Davenport) and a brilliant surgeon, Dr. Bergen (Robert Vaughn) embark upon a unique experiment. John Soames (Terence Stamp) has been in a coma since birth, and never once opened his eyes. Now, a new surgical technique allows Bergen to awaken the thirty-five year old man for the first time. The surgery is an incredible success, and before the eyes of a curious TV camera crew, Soames enters the world of the conscious. Maitland enrolls the grown “baby” into a rigorous instructional program, attempting to teach him all the knowledge and important lessons of life in a mere six weeks."
• Here, I pointed you to a review I wrote of Jasper Bark's Bloodfellas and talked a little more about the July 4 DC Metro stabbing.

Illustration by Rodell D. Sanford, Jr. for Triad Entertainment's Lurking Fears Call of Cthulhu supplement.