Friday Links: Ginger Wildheart, Quachil Uttaus, and Sedona Vortexes

It's Friday, so let's hit the links:

• If you do nothing else this week, check out the lobby card from Cat-Women of the Moon that Zombos' Closet unearthed.
• Quachil Uttaus was the subject of a recent piece at Sean Eaton's always-brilliant R'lyeh Tribune: "In this context, The Treader of the Dust is both eerie and sad, ably capturing the author’s state of mind at this point in his life.  More a nightmarish prose poem than a story, it seems to personify—in the entity called Quachil Uttaus—the relentless and inescapable approach of aging, deterioration and death."
• Ben Daniels of Terrorphoria fame went outside the site to tell us about two of his favorite horror films: "When someone asks me to name my favorite horror film, Texas Chainsaw Massacre always tops the list. Director Tobe Hooper’s magnum opus, TCM helped to define the genre and move it into new, frightening places. Based loosely on the true life crimes of serial killer Ed Gein, it recounts the story of five unlucky youngsters travelling to visit a gravesite in rural Texas who encounter a psychotic family. Everything about this movie is unnerving and designed to shock and challenge its audience. The majority of events take place in broad daylight, which is far more frightening than classic “bump in the night” horror because it removes the illusion of daytime being a safe place."
  
• At Jim Mcleod's Ginger Nuts of Horror, Kit Power and Jim interviewed musician Ginger Wildheart: "A great movie makes me rejoice that the genre is still alive, much like rock music. A lot of heavy music these days sounds like CGI horror to me.  Shit, it IS CGI with everything tuned and tightened by Pro Tools.  If I hear honest, slightly out of tune but righteous-as-fuck rock music it makes me feel like a kid again, when bands used to play with a true love and artistry for the style.  Horror is no different. I feel like the future is in the hands of experts when I see great new directors refusing to dilute quality for a new, younger, more mainstream audience."
• Taliesin Meets the Vampires reviewed the film Story of My Death: "The first part of the film concentrates on Casanova as he rattles around a mansion, amusing himself with his servant Pompeu (Lluís Serrat). With a delivery that might be said to be lackadaisical, Altaió’s performance is good but he is never asked to engage or challenge the audience. Casanova amuses himself with bodily functions – finding bowel movements especially amusing. We, as the audience, are almost duped into a trance like stupor that causes us to less engage and more become wrapped in the unfolding production."
• Nev Murray spent the week on a Christina Bergling kick, starting with an interview at his Confessions of a Reviewer!!: "Story ideas always just hit me. Either remembering some dream or just a wayward thought. Then the narrative will just start pouring over my mind, and I better just hope I have a writing implement nearby. I usually sleep with a notebook nearby when I’m sleeping. Many scenes have been scribbled in the dark, and if I’m lucky, I can decode them in the morning. Then I try to sit down and put out at least a thousand words on it a night, after the kids are in bed."
• Ghost Hunting Theories brought us weird things in the Arizona mountains: "Sedona Vortexes:   This magical red-rocked land has 4 vortexes or supposed energy areas where leylines converge and the earth creates healing energy.  I admit to visiting them and they absolutely do have something to them. As well, many believe that there suspicious underground bases in Sedona. The Airport Mountain has a vortex where it is said that earth energies converge and create an amazing and healing power."
• John Kenneth Muir was all Rocketeer, all the time this week: "Why do fans prefer modern superheroes over ones operating in the past? Perhaps it is because the superhero template is -- broadly -- similar to the Western format, only with some technological upgrades. Substitute a cool car like the Batmobile for Silver, and a man in a cape for a cowboy in a ten gallon hat, and one can detect how alike the genres truly are. In both brands of stories, singular men (or sometimes women) tackle corruption and evil, and then, largely, go on their way…until needed again."
• Here, I pointed you to a review I wrote of Drew Foote's Angels to Ashes, and wrote about pooping during the Zombie Apocalypse.

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

Friday Links: Monsters in the Night, Vatican Exorcism Courses, and The Silence

All you've got to do is make it to the weekend.  Here's what happened during those days you hoped to fast-forward through to get to today:

• We learned about an exorcism course taught by the Vatican: "The tenth annual course on exorcism has gotten off to a bang in Rome, with a full house of 170 students eager to learn how to recognize and fight demonic possession.  Sponsored by the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy and organized by the Sacerdos Institute, the weeklong course titled “Exorcism and Prayer of Liberation” is taking place at the European University of Rome from April 13 to 18."
• Jim Mcleod himself reviewed Tim Lebbon's The Silence at Ginger Nuts of Horror: "And yet the  narrative isn’t even the bravest or strongest part of the book.  It is Lebbon’s characters that really make this book stand out.  In particular that of our heroine Ally.  You see Ally has been deaf ever since a car accident, living a a world without sound it is up to her to lead her family to safety.  Ally’s character could so have easily been a gimmick, however Lebbon has clearly got into the mind and soul of our heroine.  She is a believable character, flawed, and human this isn’t your all action hero."
• At Taliesin Meets the Vampires, Taliesin took a second look at The Tomb to determine if it was a vampire movie or not: "I remember watching this Michael Staininger directed film back in 2009 when it was released. I couldn’t remember too much about it however. I knew, of course, that it was loosely based on the Poe story Ligeia but couldn’t remember why I had thought, as I watched it, that the potentially vampiric story was not vamp."
• Nev Murray had an exciting announcement at his Confessions of a Reviewer!!
• John Kenneth Muir took on the 1975 film The Ultimate Warrior: "The film’s great virtue is its sense that mankind will endure. That fatalism can be outlived. The final scene -- set outside the confines of the de-humanized City -- promises a re-birth of hope, and an end to the fatalism that reduced man to selfish barbarian.  But of course, such catharsis can only arise after a particular brutal confrontation between Brynner and William Smith -- local warlord -- in a subway car."
• Sean Eaton presented us with his typically trenchant analysis at his invaluable R'lyeh Tribune: "[Clark Ashton Smith's] Monsters in the Night is an interesting blend of fantasy and science fiction.  Smith imagines a contemporary setting that includes werewolves and vampires as well as unspecified monsters of more recent creation.  He seems to imply that there are traditional monsters in the country side and “newfangled” ones in the cities—all of them equally lethal."
• Terrorphoria gave us some good news about horror on Blu-Ray.
• Here, I talked about the cartoons my son and I watch, discussed writing about grief, and celebrated the publication of my short story Hold On.

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