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.

New Kindle Single Now Available!

My short story Get the Greek is now available as a Kindle Single in the Amazon bookstore!

To paraphrase the great Mark Twain, "Everyone talks about the commercialization of the holiday season, but nobody does anything about it!"

Had this story been written by populist television personality Bill O'Reilly, it would have been titled Killing Santa. My publisher wanted to title it When Judah Met Santa (though in her Boston accent it came out like "When Juder Met Santer"), but I nixed it because this isn't a love story. It's a short, comic tale about Hanukkah, Christmas, and the lengths one historical figure might go to end the commercialization of the holiday season.

Actually, it's got a few historical figures in there. Plus an angel. And Santa Claus. It all works, believe me.

Get your copy for $0.99 while they're still so cheap!

A Jewish Man's Perspective on Anti-Christianity

I've discussed this horror cliché in the past, but certain points need amplifying in the wake of the Roseburg, Oregon shooting.  Some reports say that the murderer deliberately targeted Christians for death, though this is unclear.  Witness accounts can be undependable.

What's concerning is that even if it's untrue, it's plausible.

I want to tell you a story about something that happened at the reception of a friend's son's Bar Mitzvah.  The family was interfaith: one parent Jewish, the other secular Christian (that is, they celebrate Christmas with a tree and presents and Easter with Cadbury eggs).  Near the end of the party the secular mom of the Bar Mitzvah boy was telling a few off-color jokes about Christianity, which many other people laughed at.  I didn't think they were funny, but I let it go.  I was a guest, after all.

At one point, another guest walked up and said, "You might want to cool it with some of those jokes.  People'll think you're Jewish!"  

I opened my mouth to say, "You don't know me, lady, but I'm Jewish, and you don't see me laughing at this stuff or telling those kinds of jokes, do you?" But I closed it before the words came out.  As a virtual stranger I didn't see the value of setting her straight.  It's not likely I'll meet her again.  Not my faith, not my fight.  Still, I regret not saying something.

Months later, I told my younger brother this story and asked him if he makes anti-Christian jokes, or any religious jokes at all, and he told me no, of course not.  In fact, neither of us know any fellow Jews who do that.  No doubt there are some.  Many.  Lots.  But we don't and don't associate with the ones who do.  You want to make religious jokes, have at it.  I'm not against it.  I'm just not for it.  

There is a difference between lighthearted fun, especially in a small group, and nasty, stupid, mean memes and jokes.  We all know the difference, even the most anti-Christian among us.  That's not what I'm talking about.

It's become a cliché that religion is the new favorite punching bag in our culture, but that's just not true.  Christianity has become the punching bag.  The vast majority of anti-theists simply won't attack Judaism, for example.  This is not to say that anti-Semitism doesn't exist; a casual look at American college campuses, where the ancestral homeland of the Jews is factlessly and regularly called an apartheid state, proves anti-Semitism's existence, as does the UN and Obama administration's hostility to Israel.  Anti-Semitism has also found new respect among the fringe right: the internet trolls who throw around terms like "cuckservative" and openly wonder why American foreign aid should be sent to our only democratic ally in the Middle East.  

Nor do the anti-theists go after Hindus or Buddhists.  And, most notably, none of them go after Islam, which in its purest form is the most anti-science, anti-woman, anti-Enlightenment system of belief on the planet.  The reason why anti-theists don't attack Islam is simple: unlike fundamentalist Christians, fundamentalist Muslims will try to kill you for disrespecting their beliefs.  

To call such people anti-theists is, then, a misnomer: they're anti-Christian.  They've got cover from Hollywood and the basest elements of our culture, and they don't have anything to fear from the people they attack, because Christians don't hit back and don't have the same cultural cachet as a Hollywood comedian.

That's cowardice, and I'm tired of it.  

I work hard to address issues of faith fairly and thoughtfully in my fiction, and while I do meticulous research, I don't claim particular wisdom.  In The Blessed Man and the Witch, when the characters are confronted with the stark reality of a Biblical apocalypse, they handle it as real people do, some of them better than others.  What I don't and won't do is address the material with contempt, as though I know something you don't, and  hence am smarter or more ethical.  I have my beliefs, you have your beliefs, and that's okay.  We can all get along.  My faith is strong enough to withstand disagreement and proselytizing from other faiths.

Like I've said before, it's no longer daring or cutting edge to portray Christians as deluded, hypocritical fools and priests as deviants in cassocks.  Attack my faith, if you've the courage to do so.  Attack Islam, if you've any courage at all.  Me, I'm done with that sort of fiction.

Friday Links!

Here are some Friday links for those of you celebrating Good Friday:

It's also the first night of Passover, where Jews across the world celebrate redemption from slavery in Pharaoh's Egypt.

Have a great weekend!

Reminiscence and Analysis: Omen III

I must've been twelve or thirteen when I first saw Omen III: The Final Conflict.  I watched it with my older brother (the same brother with whom I'd watched Kolchak: The Night Stalker when I was too young staying up too late on Friday nights) on a Sunday evening.  We'd recently gotten cable TV, and my dad had sprung for subscriptions to both HBO and a local cable channel called Prism.  I think it must have been a package deal to get both, because Dad wasn't into movies very much.  He liked baseball, and Prism broadcast all the Philadelphia Phillies games that the local TV stations didn't or couldn't due to blackouts.

We loved Prism, not least because, unlike HBO, it showed rated R movies during the day.

I can't remember if I'd seen The Omen before watching Omen III.  Probably not, but it didn't matter at the time.  The synopsis in the cable guide told us everything we needed to know: Adult Situations, Adult Language, Violence.  (Horror, 108 mins.)  I also can't recall if my younger brother watched it with us or not.  I hope not, because it had some pretty disturbing stuff for an adult, let alone a kid.  Now that I'm the parent of a little boy, media management has become a concern.

The beginning of the film was brilliant: they wrote and filmed a commercial for Thorn Enterprises that Damien didn't even like.  He poked holes in it.  It was a great way to show Damien's intelligence, power, and amorality.  The previous ambassador's bizarre suicide was another great piece of moviemaking: how many people shoot themselves under the nose?  I assume the effects guys measured the angle of the bullet to determine where it would go from the gun under the desk and said, "Well, it should go here."  Truly disgusting brain splatter.  Very shocking.

Harvey Dean's character had some depth.  Rather than have him just ignorant of his boss's true nature, he knows that Damien Thorn is the Antichrist.  Consider the kind of person who knowingly works for the personification of evil.  He's conflicted about ordering the deaths of the potential Christ-child babies, but does it anyway.  And when it comes time for him to pay the piper and have his own son killed, he refuses.  It's all too much for him.  He wasn't a sniggering caricature of an evil henchman, but a man who'd chosen the wrong side and paid for it with his life.  And soul.  There's an unexpectedly poignant moment late in the film when his wife learns what he's been doing and who his boss truly is.  She confronts him, holding his own baby son, with a monstrous series of crimes.  She's broken and horrified and scared for her baby, and we feel for her.

There is still a part of the film that I can't watch: the burned face of Dean's baby when Damien uses the hell hound to implant horrible suggestions into Dean's wife's mind.  It showed the true, unadulterated evil of Damien Thorn in a way the other scenes did not.  His foiling of the monks' plan to kill him was self-defense, but the baby-killing went way too far.  The method of the baby's death was no accident; Damien had quoted Genesis 22:2 when telling the shocked Harvey to kill his own son, saying, "Then God said, 'Take your son, your only son, whom you love--Isaac--and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you'[emphasis mine]."

The screaming monk swinging from the cable, swathed in burning plastic, was also disturbing.  As a youngster, the sex scene seemed more brutal than in later viewings of the film.  What was worse was that they killed the kid.  They wrote that the monk, a good guy, should accidentally stab a child to death.  Very brutal.  The kid was doomed, an apostate of Hell, but still, how often do boys get murdered in movies?

Damien praying to his own father Lucifer and cursing Jesus Christ was an extraordinary soliloquy.  It combined fury and loathing and even self-pity as he, the son of the Devil himself, describes the glory of suffering.  This insight into true evil was riveting and imaginative, making you understand Damien, if not sympathize.  Later, the juxtaposition of the monks' exaltation at the star alignment heralding the rebirth of Christ with scenes of Damien in agony over the same event show us that in the end, Damien isn't a man.  He is a figure, a supernatural creature.  A thing born of a jackal.

Note also that Damien only once or twice refers to Jesus Christ by His title: Christ.  He speaks to and of Him often, but uses the term "Nazarene," denying Him His kingship as the Messiah.  In Damien's mouth, Nazarene is a pejorative.  It works.

As Jews, we knew that demonic and vampiric bad guys in the movies could be turned by crosses (Richard Benjamin showed how useless the Magen David was against vampires in Love at First Bite), but we didn't feel left out.  Judaism doesn't have demons like Christianity, so things like the Antichrist and hell hounds were part of their mythology.  We could be frightened by it in fictional representations, but at no point did any of us say, "Hey!  That's exclusionary!  You're not being inclusive!"  It was a strength of the film that we were as caught up as much as any Gentile: after all, we're talking about Armageddon here, and Jews will die at the end of the world, too.  The weird crucifix in Damien's secret chamber was disquieting because we knew it was meant to be profane, especially when we saw what he was doing with it. Thorn's Herod-style killings of the babies born during the star alignment lacked any deeper meaning for us when we first saw it (I didn't learn about Herod until later in life when I read the New Testament), but the end was cathartic.  The good guys won, despite the terrible price.  We could rejoice in the death of the Antichrist and the horrible Armageddon he represented with clear hearts.

Looking back, it's easy to see how different the film is from today's efforts.  Even though the monks were bumbling and even foolish at times, they were the good guys.  And they represented the return of Jesus Christ.  No bones about it.  No pedophile priests, no new chapters of the Bible revealed to show how evil the Catholic church is.  Damien was the son of the Devil, and the priests, as incompetent as they were, fought to save the Christ child.  The religious iconography was relevant and poignant, including the vision of Christ at the end.  Even Jews could be moved.

The end was rushed, especially the last confrontation.  It didn't make sense.  I'm not sure if some elements had been edited out for time constraints or if it was written that way in the beginning, but getting Damien to the place where he'd be killed should have been a lot more difficult than it was.

Despite its flaws, the 80's hairstyles and terrible grating American accent Neill was obliged to adopt, The Final Conflict still holds up today.  If you haven't seen it in a while, give it a look.

Movie Review: The Possession

The Possession is an excellent horror film that puts the lie to the notion that good horror can't be rated PG-13.  The nature of the supernatural antagonist was different enough to be interesting and woven deeply enough into the film to be more than a gimmick.  Don't be fooled by the silly "Based on a true story" thing.  A spoiler-free review follows:

• John Winchester: Jeffrey Dean Morgan showed great range in this role, and was believable as both a college basketball coach and a terrified father trying to save his youngest daughter.  His frustration and confusion were palpable throughout.  Even though he'll always be Sam and Dean's dad to me, and I was hoping he'd just kick the monster's ass the way he would in Supernatural, he showed that he could believably go beyond his beloved television role.
• Poor Kid: Natasha Calis as Em, the dybbuk's victim, did a great job.  Usually, let's face it, kids in movies tend to get shrill and annoying when dealing with perilous situations, but Calis didn't go there.  What was happening to her wasn't fair, and you wanted that filthy, horrible thing out of her.
• The Others: Kyra Sedgwick was her usual, irritating self in this film, which was probably deliberate on the casting director's part.  She's unlikable in every role she's in, so it worked here as the ex-wife.  Matisyahu as Tzadok stole the show: he was funny without it spoiling the film's intensity, and authoritative as a Hasidic exorcist, of sorts.  The filmmakers used him just enough.  
• Dybbuks: The notion of a dybbuk box was very neat, and it was quite interesting to see Jewish exorcists using the power of Adonai to fight a demon, rather than the standard Catholic priest vs. Lucifer contest.  There's a great deal of wealth to be mined in Jewish mysticism and folklore.
• Nastiness: the rolling eye effects were particularly disturbing, as were the moths and other nasty, horrible things the dybbuk inflicted.  The MRI scene was bizarre, but worked.  Seeing the dybbuk out of the box...gross.  This was a filthy, disgusting monster that did appalling things, and it showed.
• Caring Is Sharing: Unlike far too many horror movies made these days, effort was made to get you to care about what happened to the characters.  This wasn't a film about bad things happening to bad people: it was about awful things happening to decent people, so the outcome mattered.  

Go see The Possession on Netflix when you have a spare 90 minutes.  4 out of 5 stars.

Breadhead Friday: Holla for Challah!

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, started the evening of Wednesday, September 24.  Jewish holidays always begin the evening before, because Judaism goes by the lunar calendar. The next day begins when the sun sets. According to the Jewish calendar, this is the year 5775.

The holiday is traditionally celebrated with challah, apples, and honey to guarantee a sweet new year.  Challah is a braided egg bread, rich and a little bit sweet.  Some people put in raisins, others scatter poppy seeds and/or sesame seeds on the surface before baking.  Me, I just like it plain.  No raisins, dried fruit, or seeds.

The dough, freshly made

The dough after two days in the fridge. Note the bubbles

I've made challah before with some success, so for this new year's celebration I decided to make it again.  Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the results, though my next batch of dough won't be quite so wet.  I get so wrapped up in the artisan bread requirement of less flour=more holes that this dough ended up a little slack and difficult to work with.

Three-braid loaf after two hours of rising and egg wash

For ease of shaping, I went for a three-braid loaf.  You can do all kinds of braids, including round 7-braid loaves, but I'm working like heck to finish this YA Halloween novel and didn't want to make too much work for myself.

Fresh out of the oven

So, Happy New Year!  Even if you're not Jewish, challah's a very tasty, flaky bread that's great for sandwiches and French toast.

The crumb shot