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Thirteen Great Scary Songs for Halloween That Aren’t The Monster Mash

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October 15, 2011
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It’s time for Halloween party-planning, so I figured it’s a good time to take a stroll through some of my favorite Halloween / horror film theme songs. Here goes …

13. Tales from the Crypt

Another classic theme from Danny Elfman. It was a bit of tough call which Elfman piece to go with for this article, the other strong contender being something from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Either way, no Halloween mix is complete without something from this guy.

12. The X-Files

It might’ve ended ingloriously, but this theme still recalls years of pleasant creepiness. The best episodes of The X-Files still hold up, and I’ve yet to find a good replacement for the hole left by its slow dissolution.

11. Ghostbusters

The song that became a cliche, and yet … it’s still fun, just like the movie. Of course, it’s also unintentionally hilarious in places, such as when Ray Parker, Jr. sings, “Bustin’ makes me feel good!” I mean, I’m sure it does, but c’mon, Ray, there are children here.

10. Unsolved Mysteries

Ever since I was a young kid, this theme has filled me with the uneasy sense that something terrible is at work in the world. It doesn’t hurt that the show was about awful things happening in the real world that were always left disturbingly unresolved.

9. Hellraiser

Now it’s time to start getting a bit more scary. Christopher Young’s theme sounds exactly like the kind of horrible, revelatory stuff you’d hear playing when someone opens a gateway to Hell. Perfect for any party!

8. Pennywise the Clown Theme

Ha ha ha! C’mon, everybody loves a creepy clown theme that almost sounds like it could be a jingle for an ice cream truck. And really, I might have just loved this photo of Pennywise, one of Stephen King’s finest creations. “We all float down here …”

Oh yeah.

7. 28 Days / Weeks Later

This adaptation of “East Hastings” by Godspeed You! Black Emperor is the perfect theme for an apocalyptic nightmare spinning out of control. I listen to it all the time while I write.

6. Thriller

Arguably the best music video ever made, I might sometimes think I don’t need to ever hear this song again … until it gets to the Vincent Price part.

5. Scream, “Red Right Hand”

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Red Right Hand” was on endless repeat after I saw the first Scream film. Nick Cave is really at his best writing songs about murderers. Special points awarded to the editor who timed Deputy Dewey closing the car door to one of the dramatic musical hits in this song. Nicely done!

4. Halloween

John Carpenter not only wrote and directed a movie that spawned a franchise and gave endless fuel to the bogeyman/slasher film sub-genre, but he also created one of the single best scary movie themes ever made. This one is not only a must for a Halloween mix, it’s also probably a given.

Did I mention it’s what I programmed into my phone’s to wake me up every day?

3. Dead Man’s Bones, “My Body’s A Zombie For You”

Not technically from a movie or TV show or whatever, although it was originally planned as a kind of musical, Ryan Gosling’s odd side-project is actually amazing and perfect for Halloween. I can’t get enough of the album, and this song in particular is especially great. As if being a good-looking, talented actor wasn’t enough, Gosling has to go and make one of my favorite creepy cool albums …

2. Rosemary’s Baby

Never has a lullaby been put to such good effect. The way this theme is woven into the film through several clever variations is masterful. This is gorgeous, creepy stuff!

1. The Shining

I mean, you could try to do better than this opening music to one of the best horror films of all time.
You could try … 

Review: The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

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October 8, 2011
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The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

How can you tell if you, or someone you know, is a psychopath? Reading Jon Ronson’s superbly entertaining exploration into the way we catalog each other and the benefits and dangers inherent in affixing labels to people, I found myself doing exactly what Ronson describes himself doing the first time he picked up the DSM-IV–I started diagnosing myself and worrying about the contents of my own head. Luckily, by the conclusion, I felt reassured that I was probably fine, but the question remains: if I can’t be sure about myself, how easy is it to be sure about someone else? And what’s the cost of being wrong?

Ronson’s stories and the portraits he presents of the people he interviewed are quite compelling reading. There’s Tony, who is stuck in an institution for violent psychopaths but maintains he isn’t insane and that he claimed to be so only to escape his jail sentence. The trouble is no one believes him, because psychopaths apparently never want to admit they’re insane, too. Then there’s the former CEO of Sunbeam, who may have had a bit too easy of a time firing people, and a man goaded into coming up with insane sexual fantasies by an undercover police officer hellbent on proving he’s a murderer.

As a librarian with a professional interest in the idiosyncrasies of the cataloguing process, I was fascinated to read the chapter detailing the history of the DSM itself. While I don’t follow Ronson all the way down his path, I am overall sympathetic to the point that all systems of categorization are flawed, the people behind them often full of strange prejudice (just look at Melvin Dewey! that guy was a total jerk!), and the application of any given taxonomy to the complicated stuff of life is never an exact science.

But make no mistake — this book is fun reading. I was engrossed and fascinated the whole time, and I adored the enthusiasm and open-mindedness of Ronson himself.

This is some well done pop nonfiction, and I’m definitely going to read The Men Who Stare at Goats. Highly recommend this one.

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Review: American Horror Story

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October 8, 2011
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“Don’t make me kill you again.”

When the pilot episode of American Horror Story opened with a shot of another creepy house behind another creepy gate, I braced myself for a boring hour of television. While I loved the promos, I was almost certain they wouldn’t deliver on their promise. I could not have been more wrong. If this show, created by Glee co-creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, stays as good as its first episode, I am going to have a new obsession.

The story is a perennial favorite: a family, looking for a fresh start, moves into a house with a troubled past, hijinks ensue. Any story of this kind lives or dies by the strength of its cast, and it’s here that American Horror Story really shines. There’s a creepy daughter next door, Adelaide (Jamie Brewer), who likes to walk into the house and tell people they’re going to die, but there’s also her mom, Constance (Jessica Lange) who’s even creepier overbearing nature masked by southern courtesy recalls a bit of Ruth Gordon’s character in Rosemary’s Baby. Add to these two the (literally) two-faced housekeeper, played by Frances Conroy, and the delightfully earnest and psychotic Tate, who in one scene writes ‘TAINT’ on a chalkboard for no apparent reason, and I was having a blast even before the Rubber Man showed up. While I have yet to warm to Dylan McDermott’s acting skills or his philandering character Ben, I already adore the other two members of the family, Connie Britton’s Vivian and Taissa Farmiga’s Violet.

The show itself is unnerving; I’m never entirely sure what is going to happen next, and there’s never long to wait between the creepy moments. American Horror Story sets out to spook and entertain us, and I appreciate its commitment to those goals and the earnest delight the creators seem to take in pursuing them. This is a show made for people who like scary stories made by people who love scary stories. There’s also wit and sexiness and misbehavior–although maybe a few too many shots of Dylan McDermott’s naked butt. You can’t win them all.

There were a few logical problems (psychotics, I’m learning, are not curable, and it seems like Ben at one point suggests he has cured some in the past; after what I’ve seen in the first episode, I would move out of the house; there is no way the school bully would go to the house of the girl she’s bullying, especially without backup), but aren’t there always? For now, I’m choosing to give these a pass.

I hope the show stays this strong. I am already looking forward to next week.

 

Review: Jenny Finn: Doom Messiah

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October 6, 2011
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Jenny Finn: Doom Messiah
Jenny Finn: Doom Messiah by Mike Mignola

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A friend suggested I read this after reading some of my stories, and I can see why. The character designs are wonderfully weird, from the Prime Minister to the guy who never puts his feet on the ground to the medium with the creepy mask–not to mention Jenny herself and the excellent scene where she is found in the giant mass of fish-guts–there is some real imagination here.

The story feels rushed. I wish they had more time to explore, but even as short as this book is, it was rich enough in fun ideas to be worth the journey.

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Review: The Lottery and Other Stories

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September 23, 2011
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The Lottery and Other Stories
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Read this collection because I think The Haunting of Hill House is one of the greatest horror novels ever written. The twenty-five stories collected here are not exactly horror, but they’re usually dark enough to suggest that even if creepy things aren’t happening in these rooms, horror is never that far down the hall.

“The Lottery” is still probably the best in the collection, although I might prefer “Flower Garden,” which is a nicely nuanced story about racism in a small town. Other standouts include “Elizabeth,” about a woman realizing her disposability to her boss; “Seven Types of Ambiguity,” which is a fantastic bit of quiet cruelty; and “Renegade,” about a woman who is left to deal with a chicken-killing dog.

Almost all the stories here echo “The Lottery” in their depictions of society strangling the individual. Often, there’s a battle between the city and the town, as well, as Jackson writes quite well about people moving from one population density to another. As someone who grew up in a small mill town in Maine and now lives in New York City, I related to a lot of the troubles some of the characters were having.

While the balance of the stories are well-written and evocative, some others fail to have the punch I think Jackson was intending. “Charles,” in particular, was dreadfully predictable. So, a few gentle points off for that and for some of the other shorter pieces that didn’t work so well, but overall a wonderful collection.

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Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray

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September 16, 2011
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The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Oscar Wilde, defending his own book from its detractors, hailed his own work a classic. I agree. This book is a delight, and certainly one of the best horror novels ever written. Smart, witty, diabolical, and even sometimes charmingly earnest for a book absolutely dripping with irony. The prose is beyond brilliant; Oscar Wilde knew how to turn a phrase. Much of the time, the novel feels like a play, but Wilde’s dialogue, especially that of Lord Henry Wotton, carries these chapters well.

But what a dark journey! A pretty young man wishes on his own portrait that it should age and he should not. And so it happens. Dorian continues living his life–a rather debauched one, it turns out–and the painting suffers all the ill effects. No matter, he locks the hideous thing away and continues on a magnificent downward spiral into doom that leaves no trace.

It is a clever premise, especially as it plays out in scenes such as those when Dorian falls in love with a woman for her success at playing various Shakespearean roles. He falls in love with her as the characters, not as herself. This echoes the earlier love of surface, of Art itself, more than the love of the soul. Funny that Wilde, who was known for being an aesthete early in his life, would paint such a scathing picture of people so in love with Art that it corrupted them completely, but I think there’s more to this book than the simple message that “sin is bad for your soul.” This is a novel of homoerotic betrayal and suppression, where a young man makes a bad choice to chase artifice (Lord Henry, who loves nothing more than to say clever stuff he doesn’t even feel he needs to believe himself) over substance (Basil Hallward, who paints the portrait itself and clearly loves the hell out of Dorian).

More than that, it’s just damn good at being creepy and fiendish. I can see in this everything from Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to the stories of Poe to American Psycho to the Last Werewolf. The characters are complex and convincing, the writing is some of the sharpest I’ve ever seen, and the story is a knockout. A great novel!

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Review: The Family Fang

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September 12, 2011
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The Family Fang
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My favorite book of all time might well be Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, so when The Family Fang opened with a strange family doing odd performances, I knew this book was likely to be up my alley. Kevin Wilson’s debut novel is a quick and easy read and one I really didn’t want to end.

The plot concerns a family of artists, where the mother and father use their two children as props for their real-world artistic stunts, staging elaborate hijinks in the real world to elicit reactions from the unsuspecting public. This lifestyle naturally somewhat traumatizes the kids, who end up feeling like they are always somehow part of an approaching disaster staged by their parents. The four Fangs are delightful characters, though Buster and Annie are the most well-drawn (as they should be, I guess), with their parents seeming almost impenetrable in a way. Wilson has a gift for coming up with often hilarious stunts for the Fangs, and I looked forward to the end of each chapter, where another Fang piece would be detailed.

Sometimes I felt like Wilson was a little less imaginative, or a bit sloppy. Would a barber in Tennessee (or wherever they were) really tell someone he was going to make them look like Jean Seberg from Breathless? Really?! I don’t buy it. Also, there’s a reference to Annie’s boyfriend, a screenwriter, being “quickly on his way to becoming one of the most powerful people in Hollywood,” or something to that effect, which is completely ludicrous. Screenwriters are not, as a rule, powerful, and it seemed like Wilson was writing about a world he didn’t really know that well whenever he wrote about Hollywood. While the ideas for the Fang pieces are genuinely cool, the ideas for the screenplays and movies and video games he writes about are much less convincing. I hated every time I had to read about Fatal Flying Guillotine III, which is a fake video game that really makes the rounds in the book and just reads as a really cheeky invention by the author.

Furthermore, the ending to the story itself seemed way too abrupt and far too easy. I was captivated by the mystery, but the resolution left me wanting more. And I really didn’t like the final chapter, which seemed cheesy to me, almost treacle.

Overall, though, a fun read and an impressive debut.

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Daily Words: One Month Until Publication …

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September 4, 2011
I Held My Breath as Long as I Could, Writing
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I visit Stephen King's Bangor house

At the gates

Not a lot of time left now until I shove my ebook out the door. Recently went on vacation to visit the family back home in Maine, swung by Stephen King’s famous Bangor home to see the bats and take a photo of myself lurking at the gates of the master. Wore my Daukherville shirt to warn him of things to come, ha!

All in good fun. He is still the writer I’ve read the most. Even if he wasn’t one of the most prolific, I think that would still be the case. His were the first books I ever read, and to say that I was influenced by him is an understatement; his books were part of the landscape of my childhood, and I’m grateful for it. It was a lot of fun.

But now it’s back to the hard and stressful work of trying to make my stories better. I’ve been working a lot, even if I haven’t been posting much, and I feel great about the first and fourth sections; it’s the damn middle two now that I have to get into shape.

So little time, and it just doesn’t stop being scary. I have no idea if I’m doing the right thing.

Review: Mile 81

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September 3, 2011
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Mile 81
Mile 81 by Stephen King

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Great story for a quick flight from Logan to New York. I’m not going to say too much about the plot, since the story’s so short, but I’ll say that, once again, it’s the people not the monsters that King draws best. Something bad happens at an abandoned rest stop, do you really need more? Most of the characters meet a terrible fate, and it’s King’s ability to make you care so quickly about them that steals the show. Also, the atmosphere of the abandoned rest stop is outstanding. Loved every creepy detail.

All that said, the “big bad” of the story, to borrow a phrase from the Buffyverse, is laughable. King writes the hell out of it, of course, but it’s still an embarrassing concept. Again, I won’t spoil anything, but I do want to say that there’s a wobble effect described here that seems like King’s trying to describe some really terrible CGI. Two things about that: 1.) when writers start letting CGI color their imaginations, they need to be slapped and told to work harder; 2.) even if you want to let the modern abomination that is Hollywood CGI color your imagination, at least write about expensive CGI. The effect King sells in this story is some Syfy Channel-level work, at best.

Giving this one four stars for being compelling and filled with great details and characters; docking it a star for having a worthless, uninspired (and rather recycled, in terms of the King-verse) central villain.

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Review: The Last Werewolf

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September 1, 2011
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The Last Werewolf
The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, damn. Here I was, really enjoying this book, until it just … got old fast. The title sums up the plot accurately enough: Jacob Marlowe is the world’s last werewolf, who is being hunted by an international group dedicated to killing occult creatures, but the joke’s on them, because Jake has a bad case of ennui and plans to kill himself, anyway. Think James Bond if James Bond was a werewolf who wanted to kill himself after too many women, too much booze, and too many years on the prowl. The first few chapters were unique and fun, lots of great lines.

But then … ?

The first moment of disappointment came with the first major love scenes in the story. So many good lines, and yet–too many overwrought ones. And the action and story itself I found far too simple and almost entirely predictable. Also, like Jake I found myself not quite caring about what happened. Maybe that’s the problem with having a character who doesn’t want to live.

Story is a bit like a dessert that you start eating feeling delighted by and end feeling like you should’ve stopped ten forks-worth ago, because now it just seems like the worst thing you ever did, eating that cake.

That said, there were too many sentences I loved to give this book any less that three stars.

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