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Neal Barrett Jr.’s Author Emeritus Party

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

Since Austin’s own Neal Barrett, Jr. was named SFWA Author Emeritus for the 2009 Nebula Awards, FACT threw a party at Casa Siros to celebrate the occasion, with luminaries coming from as far away as Nacogdoches (Joe R. his ownself) to pay homage.


Susan Wade, William Browning Spencer (occluded), Neal Barrett, Jr. (holding up the art SFWA had commissioned, featuring himself and three of his characters), Don Webb


Susan Wade, William Browning Spencer, Neal Barrett, Jr., Don Webb


Susan Wade, William Browning Spencer, Neal Barrett, Jr., Don Webb


Neal Barrett, Jr. holding up the SFWA Author Emeritus, which is a kaleidoscope. (“Kaleidoscope” is also the name of an awesome Ray Bradbury story from The Illustrated Man.)


The back of Joe R. Lansdale’s head, Ruth Barrett, someone whose name I should remember, and Scott Cupp


A closer (albeit oblique) view of said painting; I took a straight-on picture, but the flash reflection on the glass made it impossible to see.


Neal iz 2 kewl 4 this skewl!


More of the same. Less of the sane.


Just a few of Casa Siros’ vast array of Glowing Gizmos.


Three excellent authors who have had their books published by St. Martin’s. Also, three authors who are not on The New York Times Bestsellers List. These two facts may be related.


Neal cuts the cake, while Carol is just slightly too slow to avoid being incriminated with the rest of us.


Joe R. Lansdale, William Browning Spencer, Don Webb, and Neal Barrett, Jr. Susan Wade would be in this picture, had she not been eaten by a Grue.


FACT party attendees. Just after this picture, one of their number was ritually chosen by lot to be stoned to death.


Joe R. Lansdale and William Browning Spencer, in the last known photo of them before being horribly devoured by Pixar characters.


“Walk towards the light….walk towards the light…”

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Nightmare-Inducing Communist Playground Sculptures

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

Ah, Communism! The political system of the deadly controlling the deluded and disillusioned. As the system decayed, Communism would frequently produce funhouse-mirror versions of Western goods, virtually identical except the communist versions were produced by people who didn’t care and couldn’t be fired and thus sucked liked a Communist vacuum cleaner didn’t. Take, for example, these nightmare-inducing playground sculptures from Dark Roasted Blend (and here’s pages 2 and 3). Though a few of their examples come from outside the Eastern Bloc, the vast majority hail from a land forgotten by taste, talent, and personal injury lawyers.

Well, this certainly isn’t going to encourage your children to visit the doctor:

Here’s some first class Nightmare Fuel:

No way would this sculpture be put up in a Western park without some kind of fence. “Child impaled on modern art sculpture, details at ten.”

“Mommy, can I play on the giant tarantula? Please? Pleaaaseeee?”

Though they seem singularly unsuited for children, some of them are decent art sculptures in their own right. I really dig the Nightmare Bears:

This is the sort of thing Posadas would do if he were an Eastern European sculptor:

And this leather Cthulhu is awesome:

(And I’d just liked to point out that “Leather Cthulhu” is a good name for a rock band.)

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Thoughts on Insane Japanese Films and Some DVD Sets of Note

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

I have friends who collect Criterion DVDs. However, even they, I think, will be hard-pressed to pick up Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films. With a whopping 50 films (and an even-more whopping price tag of $772 through Amazon), you get a lot of classic films (The Seven Samurai, Kind Hearts and Coronets, M), so I suppose it would be a good deal if you planned on picking up all of them anyway. Until I stumbled across this, I never realized Janus FIlms distributed so much of what we regard as the essential “art house” films of the 20th Century. If they had never existed, would only hardcore film buffs know of these films, or would a we revere a completely different set of art house films that are currently obscure?

I was also fiddling with Amazon’s Carousel widget, so here it is with a bunch of other DVD sets:

Although this box set is nearly four years old, I stumbled across it when looking for information on Hausu, which looks to be a completely insane Japanese haunted house movie that’s also distributed by Janus Films. Just take a gander at this off-the-charts, blood-and-weirdness packed trailer.

I’m given to understand that, later on, one of them gets eaten by a piano.

What’s more, it’s playing here in Austin at the Alamo Ritz May 22-27th.

I hope it’s better on the Weird Japanese Cinema front than Wild Zero, which was a real disappointment.

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Book Proof Received:
Little Women and Werewolves

Monday, March 29th, 2010

No, really.

Louisa May Alcott and Porter Grand’s Little Women and Werewolves
Del Rey, 2010, $14.00

I try to create a parody, and instead it comes out as prophecy.

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Filed Under “Nightmare Fuel” On TV Tropes

Friday, March 5th, 2010

I can’t possibly imagine why…

And Alice in Wonderland opens today, and Easter is just around the corner, so it is topical…

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Posted in Horror, Uncategorized, weird | 1 Comment »

Mark Finn on Howard and I on The Wolfman

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

And here’s Mark Finn’s take on Howard and I’s review of The Wolfman. (I’m not sure if non-Facebookers can see that page, though.)

And here’s your receipt for my receipt.

P.S.: As for the commenter that suggested that people who didn’t like the movie “don’t know what an old fashioned monster movie was or they just don’t want to see one”: Well, I’m not untutored in the genre, but you could certainly find more knowledgeable classic horror movie buffs than I. But if you actually want to suggest that Howard Waldrop doesn’t know/and or like old horror movies, then BEEEEP! I’m sorry, you lose, you get nothing. Good day, sir!

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The Wolfman: A Review (and Alternatives)

Monday, February 15th, 2010

Howard Waldrop and I’s review of The Wolfman has finally been published over at Locus Online. As you can tell from the review, we were, ahem, not enthusiastic.

That brings up the question: if you have a hankering for some hairy, gut-ripping werewolf goodness, what should you watch?

  • Dog Soldiers: Director Neil Marshall’s first film, which shows British soldiers running into a pack of werewolves while on maneuvers in the Scottish highlands.
  • An American Werewolf in London: The first really good werewolf movie of the modern era. Also the first (as far as I know) to use the now-cliched “character wakes up from a nightmare only to find out they’re still in the nightmare” move, which worked brilliantly the first time, and less and less every time since…
  • Kibakichi: This was one of the themed previews they showed before the feature at the Alamo Drafthouse. It features samurai, werewolves, demons, and Gatling guns. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’d like to, as it looks completely insane (in a good way).
  • Ginger Snaps: Smart-ass teenage girls get the werewolf treatment. Another film I haven’t seen, but which I’ve heard good things about.
  • Don’t forget the original version of The Wolf Man.
  • Finally, for a film much (and gloriously) worse than The Wolfman, here’s the full MST3K version of Werewolf, online for your grainy viewing pleasure. (Alternately available as part of Mystery Science Theater 3000: 20th Anniversary Edition, along with First Spaceship on Venus, Laserblast, and Future War.)

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    Books I added to my library this week

    Sunday, November 15th, 2009

    And now some book geeking, for those interested in same.

    All first edition hardbacks:

    • Howard, Robert E. Conan the Barbarian. Gnome Press, 1954. Fine copy in a Fine- dj with very slight fading to spine. Bought from a book dealer off the Internet.
    • King, Stephen. Under the Dome. Simon & Schuster, 2009. Signed/limited edition (which came out just before the trade), one of reportedly 1,500 copies signed by King, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, with limited edition trading cards, a belly band, better paper than the trade edition, and full-color maps on the endpapers. Bought pre-publication from the publisher.
    • Lansdale, Joe R. Vanilla Ride. Random House, 2009. The latest Hap & Leonard novel. Would have bought a copy off Joe at Armadillocon, but all he had were second printings. From Half Price Books.
    • Moorcock, Michael. The Opium General. Harrap, 1984. A Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket. From Half Price Books. Formerly Scott Cupp’s copy.

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    Posted in Books, Horror, Science Fiction | 2 Comments »

    Movie Review: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

    Sunday, November 1st, 2009

    The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
    Directed by: Robert Wiene
    Written by: Hans Janowit, Carl Mayer
    Starring: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher, Lil Dagover

    It being the spooky season, I decided to pick up The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the classic German Expressionist horror film from the 1920s. (I’d studied German Expressionism a little bit in college, especially the work of Georg Kaiser.) It’s pretty much a must-watch for serious students of film history. For the more casual viewer, you have to ask yourself: How much are you willing to put up with a slow, creaky silent 1920s German melodrama to get to the weird stuff, and how much do you like strange sets?

    Because the story of a carnival mesmerist whose casket-dwelling sideshow attraction seems to commit murders between shows just isn’t that interesting until the Usual Suspects-esque conceptual twist at the end. But those sets! Every single set in the main story is filled with distorted lines meeting at weird angles.

    Here’s a couple of examples:

    If you want to spend some 70 odd minutes looking at those sets (dozens of them, all weird and twisted; if many living in CaligariWorld weren’t already mad, trying to sit on those conical chairs would certainly drive you around the bend in short order), you’ll have a grand old time. If not, there may not be enough here to hold your attention. Cinema hadn’t yet developed the language all of us in the glorious world of the 21st Century all take for granted, so they hadn’t learned to do things like jump cuts; all the scene changes are done by irising the lens shutter. Neither German Expressionism nor silent melodrama were known for their restraint, so the acting is exaggerated.

    There’s nothing in here really remotely scary, but a few scenes do manage to remain unnerving all these years. And it may very well be the first “screw-with-your-head” conceptual shift ending in cinema. Something for the serious cinephile, or the Howard Waldrop fan who wants to get a little more out of “Occam’s Ducks”.

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