The Science of Making Zombies

Zombification is the art of creating and sustaining a zombie – however, there is a lot more science behind it than you might think. To begin, there are a few things you must understand in order to comprehend how this process could possibly take place. Haiti is a place that is unlike any other – its culture stands for things that, in America, we would take as Hollywood mumbo-jumbo. Voodoo is the religion, and within it is Hoodoo, the magic you see in most movies, ancestor worship which can lead to possession, and spirit incantations. Zombification is the worst punishment anyone could ever bring upon themselves, and so it is used as a social barrier to keep people in line. There have been many documented cases of Zombification, but very few are actual first-hand accounts. 

23 Hours, David Wellington (2009)

David Wellington has redefined monsters - or perhaps brought them back to their original forms? First he started with zombies in the Monster Island, Monster Nation, and Monster Planet series. Then he tackled vampires with state trooper Laura Caxton in the book 13 Bullets, followed up by 99 Coffins and Vampire Zero. The latest installment is 23 Hours, and it seems that Wellington hasn't run out of steam just yet.

Caxton is now an ex-trooper and in jail - arrested at the end of Vampire Zero for her neglectful behavior towards proper police procedure, federal agent Fetlock has her locked away in a women's state penitentiary.  Caxton believes that she can just serve her time and maybe even get out early for good behavior, but it seems that a supernatural  force has other ideas; ideas that will make the penitentiary into a buffet for the living dead.

Justinia Malvern, seemingly the last vampire, infiltrates the prison with one thing on her mind - Caxton. Her MO is to turn vampire killers into vampires, an irony she finds all too amusing. However, this time around Malvern may have something else in mind; who can tell? All Caxton knows is that she has one last chance to kill the vampire who's taken everything away from her - her mentor, her job, her life. Clara, Caxton's girlfriend, provides us with an outsider's view into the battle between the living and the dead with her struggle to understand why Caxton can't let go of the past.

Perhaps the best thing about this series is the originality of the vampires. Going back to the image of Count Orlock, Wellington's vamps are completely bald (and I mean hairless - no eyebrows, nothing) with pointed ears. Their mouths are full of shark-like teeth, intended to rend the victim; which is useful, considering that the vampires need more and more blood to survive night to night. The vampires continue to age as they grow older, eventually becoming too weak to feed themselves. They are described as unnatural, so much so that you can feel the wrongness of the creatures. And when they go to sleep? They fall apart! They literally liquefy in order to regenerate, leaving them completely vulnerable in the daylight hours. 

Rife with realistic police procedures and protocol, as well as action packed scenes between both human and non-human enemies, Wellington adds yet another chapter into this exciting and original series. These are vampire books for people who are sick of Twilight and want something with a little more...blood.

Meeting Anne Rice

Hi everyone! Or all of four people who follow this blog? In place of SHS, I decided to do a video post about meeting Anne in SF. Sorry for the poor video quality, I'm pretty new to all of this. Hope you found this as entertaining as I'm about to find it potentially embarrassing...

Normal posting schedule will resume Monday! Have a good weekend!

Experiencing Technical Difficulties

I feel really lame doing this, but I've run out of articles/reviews/what have you to post on schedule, but I also don't want to simply post nothing. There's a laundry list of complaints that I could sing to you as to why I've got nothing to post, but I won't drudge that out here. So you're getting another video! That's right, two videos in two days instead of just one. I'll make this up hopefully soon, though with what I have yet to decide. Today I'm going to meet Anne Rice in San Francisco while she's on her Wolf Gift tour. Maybe something will come of that. Anyway!

This was a nifty little video that I found on Youtube awhile back, while researching the Spiritualism movement. It's stop-motion animation, which is something I highly admire and adore, because it shows real dedication to the craft. The story is pretty easy to follow: I hope you enjoy it as much as I did when I first found it.

After.Life (2009)

A young woman, fleeing from a break up with her longtime boyfriend, ends up in a head on collision with a truck. The next time we see her, she's on a mortician's slab, being clinically disrobed in preparation for burial. Suddenly, the woman's eyes open and she asks where she is. The mortician, without batting an eye, calmly informs her that she's in a funeral home - she was in a car accident. She's dead. The young woman attempts to get off of the slab, but finds herself in a paralyzed state, unable to move and held fast as the mortician cleans her wounds and continues to calm her in a low, monotone voice that brooks no argument to his words. He even shows her a death certificate - it all sounds pretty convincing, right?

Defending The Vampire Diaries As Horror

To be entirely honest, I looked down on The Vampire Diaries along with the rest of the horror fanatics. I am not a fan of the current vampire trend, because it seems that the majority of the bloodsuckers it introduces are defanged, teddy bear type monsters that hold no real scare factor for the viewers. Instead they're the bad boys that have been tamed, usually because they want to be forgiven and are too full of remorse to be terribly interesting. TVD looked like more of the same from Twilight, and so I was confused when I saw it appearing on my favorite horror sites. Obviously they must be pandering to the crowds who were eating up this Twi-phenomenon. Now that I've caught up with all three seasons, I'm completely changing my tune. 

Saturday Horror Short #3

Welcome to another installment of Saturday Horror Shorts! This week's showing is an interesting little tale about why it's not very nice to steal from the dead. In a classy, black and white setting, Ring Wraith follows the story of a mortician who takes home one little thing, and quickly comes to regret it. Get your snacks, dim the lights, and enjoy!

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines (2004)

You're out partying at a club one night, and a stranger catches your eye. He (or she) is impossibly beautiful, or maybe that's just how you're perceiving them. Either way, this person sweeps you off your feet with just a few words, and before you know it you're back at their place. One thing leads to another, and they say they want to show you something. This is about to get kinky, right? Sort of - suddenly you're waking up from a blackout, your neck hurts, and people are barging in through the door. They drive a sharpened piece of wood through the chest of the person who brought you home, and through your chest as well, and it's lights out all over again.

This is the opening sequence for Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, based off of the pencil and paper game Vampire the Masquerade by White Wolf. VTM is one aspect of World of Darkness, which encompasses mages, werewolves, fae, Frankenstein-esque creatures, ghosts, and who knows what else. It's a vivid, rich world that draws from mythologies all over the globe. This is especially evident in VTMB: in the game, the player can choose to enter into one of seven clans, each representing a stereotype in vampiric fiction. The most easily identifiable is clan Nosferatu, who shares a similar physical appearance to the character played by Max Schreck. The Ventrue are posh, upper class monsters, while their cousins the Malkavians each suffer from acute insanity. Gangrel hold the power to shift into different animals, while Brujah are anger-driven killers. Tremere are blood mages, and the last are the Toreador, who have a deepseated passion for art and all other things created by humanity. Each clan offers a variety of different ways to play the game: the Nosferatu require you to be incredibly stealthy, Toreadors are lovers rather than fighters, and getting people to understand Malkavians is a job in itself. But all of this makes the replay value of the game extremely high.

Sandman Slim, Richard Kadrey (2009)

There are all sorts of boogie monsters - ones for children, ones for adults. But what about a boogie man for the monsters themselves? Enter James Stark, aka Sandman Slim. After spending eleven years in Hell, he's back topside, walking the streets of Los Angeles in order to enact revenge on the man who both sent him to Hell and orchestrated the death of the only woman he ever loved. In a sea of wise-cracking, magic-wielding male anti-heroes, Stark attempts to stand out by using a brash attitude and blatant violence that usually borders on sucidially idiotic.

Richard Kadrey's book is like most first person point of view stories around a central 'badass' character - more than likely a self insert of the author themselves. Stark here reminded me of a less charming John Constantine, a less funny Harry Dresden. There are so many other types of these heroes that Kadrey doesn't do much to set his character apart. Sure, Stark was involved in a group of magic-wielding, power-hungry people, and of course, within that group he was technically the best. But his own youth and idiocy is what allowed the leader of the group to eventually trap him in hell. The one thing that Stark has going for him (in terms of survival within the story) is his absolute brutality, along with the ability to take a lot of punishment. This man is a killer - during his time in hell, he was sent to something similar to a gladiatorial ring, in order to amuse the deviants of Lucifer's kingdom. Stark was eventually sold into the service of one of Lucifer's higher generals, and used as something of a hit man in order to kill the general's enemies. Once topside, Stark uses these questionable talents in order to enact revenge on the people who sent him to Hell in the first place.

Sandman Slim starts off right when Stark gets back from Hell, stepping back onto the mortal coil through a graveyard. When I first opened the book, I have to admit that I thought I had missed a book in the series - it truly felt like the reader was missing pertinent information that the author was referring to, as though there had been another volume. But the details are slowly colored in, somewhat sparsely, throughout the telling of the story. One thing that miffed me was that we get to see so little of the cult that Stark was originally involved in. The two main baddies remain out of the picture for the majority of the book as Stark chases after them (with the exception of one scene where Stark ends up barreling into a busy street in the middle of the day, causing a huge number of accidents and explosions that have to be written off as movie stunts gone wrong), but the moment the other characters are introduced, you see them for a handful of pages before they're written off entirely.

For example, the women in this book make token appearances, and with the exception of Candy, they are all the stereotypical damsel in distress, frigid bitch, or prize at the bottom of the box tropes. If you think about it, the book is all one big allegory for Los Angeles, what with its attempted veneer of class that hides a world of intense violence, both physical and mental; a place that judges people by their looks (especially women) rather than their skills. Stark tracks down one of the women from the cult, essentially a witch who uses her powers to maintain a jailbait look; she's in her sanctuary at the time, but later arranges to meet Stark at a local taco joint. She never shows, and from there it's assumed that she's dead. The other woman from the cult, the frigid bitch trope, is seen for all of five seconds when Stark finds her accidentally while doing another mission, and then is never heard from again.

In the vein of loose ends, it's never explicitly explained what Sandman Slim even means. Stark simply learns, one day, that the denizens of Hell started calling him that, when he was elevated to assassin while working for the general. It sounds like something cool the author came up with and slapped on at the last minute - for some reason needing an alternate name for his character when James Stark wasn't cutting it.

There is one new, novel idea - Stark has a key that allows him entrance into the Room of 13 Doors. Each door can get him into various places in the world, including Heaven and Hell. It's through this key and room that Stark is able to reach his victims, and how he was able to gain such a reputation in Hell: and it eventually brings him to the book's antagonist, who is hiding in an alternate dimension entirely.

All in all, Sandman Slim is a quick, somewhat amusing read, but does little to do anything new with the genre it's entered into. With giants like John Constantine and Harry Dresden, it's definitely hard to do something that is new and helps your character keep up with bigger names. Of course, the one thing about these sorts of characters is the fact that they will grow throughout the series - in the beginning, few characters are outrightly likeable because they haven't had time to develop, to change, to really find their footing. Maybe this will happen for Sandman Slim: perhaps given time, he'll become a more robust character that finds his niche, rather than just looking like a gorilla-esque copycat.

Remakes Are Not The Monster Under The Bed

Art by Joshua Hoffine.

If there's one genre of film that receives more remakes than any other, it is horror films. For some reason, the reingesting and spitting up of old ideas with the current technology seems to be a recurring facet for scary movies. And, in my opinion, it's really not something that people need to constantly get their panties in a twist over. Take the most recently announced remake, Evil Dead. Firstly, it's being produced by both Sam Raimi, the original film's creator and director, as well as Bruce Campbell, the original star (who might even have a cameo as a "milk man"). Any time I see the announcement of a remake, the instant fan reaction is "don't fix what's not broke" or "they are going to ruin the original". I want to explain why both of those reactions are just plain wrong. 

Saturday Horror Shorts #2

Welcome to the second installment of Saturday Horror Shorts! I hope you all enjoyed last week's video, Ask a Mortician; this week, I've got a short film for you, titled Still Life. Today we do all kinds of things to keep ourselves motivated, keep ourselves moving - coffee, pills, whatever it takes. But when does it go too far? The film has an ending that you definitely won't see coming. Get some snacks, dim the lights, and enjoy the film!

Book vs Movie: The Woman In Black

Gothic horror brings to mind Victorian period, where people were obsessed with death, what came after, and how to be sure that their loved ones were in a safer place. Queen Victoria's reign made the mourning period a culture - and thus a variety of ghost stories were born. Susan Hill's The Woman In Black continues this tradition, and the story carries such weight that it's been made into several different formats: a radio program, a theater play, and a british film. Most recently it was adapted by the newly reopened Hammer Studios for a theatrical film starring Daniel Radcliffe. Here I'll talk about the adaptation of book to film, and compare what works, and what doesn't. There will be some spoilers, as I'll have to cite specific scenes and passages for comparisons, so read on with that warning in mind.

Hatchet (2006)

What It's About: When a group of tourists on a New Orleans haunted swamp tour find themselves stranded in the wilderness, their evening of fun and spooks turns into a horrific nightmare.

Review: Slasher films have definitely become a staple of horror films; where once it was all Gothic and nothing but atmospheric music and fog now comes visceral sprays of blood and gore in order to truly frighten a public that was too quickly becoming bored of the simplistic idea of 'less is more.' Of course, once you start going down the path of showing rather than telling, people become desensitized, and then things get ramped up past eleven so your audience feels something...and you see where this is going. Of course, not all slasher films are bad - in fact, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, and Friday the 13th are all familiar faces (Freddy, Michael, and Jason, respectively) that every horror fan knows and loves. But its a very fine line in proving what makes a good slasher - generally the requirements are nothing more than a huge lumbering man who doesn't speak and either kills teenagers who drink and have sex or is just really pissed off for some inexplicable reason. And Victor Crowley fits that stereotype nicely. 

Smile for the camera!

A Vampyre Story (2008)

There are lots of vampires these days. Lots of vampires trying new things, adding twists and attempting to be original. Mona of the puzzle RPG A Vampyre Story is not one of those vampires - and it's a good thing. 

From the minds of the beloved Monkey Island series comes a rather stereotypical story; in my mind, so stereotypical that it's actually refreshing. Some people like trying new things, but for me, I'm a homebody, a slave to familiarity and things I know I like. A Vampyre Story takes everything from vampire mythology and has fun with it, presenting it in a fun, stylized fashion with interesting characters and dialogue. I mean, just look at the title. It's obviously an homage to John Polidori's The Vampyre, just looking at the spelling. The plot of the game is similar to many other horror stories as well - we have a young French opera singer who is captured by a fiendish if short vampire and taken to his castle in Draxsylvania. Young French opera singer? Sounds like Christine Daae from Phantom of the Opera. Draxsylvania? Why, what a clever twist on Dracula and Transylvania! And this is only the beginning of the dozens of references to both horror films, books, and other memorbilia as we follow the main character's story throughout the game.

Saturday Horror Shorts

Beyond just doing MWF updates here, I wanted to try doing something that would be unique to this particular blog - of course, on the Internet, there isn't much that particularly unique. Being a speshul snowflake is usually the one way to make yourself ripe for humiliation at the hands of millions, but I think I found something that both I and my readers can enjoy.

I call it Saturday Horror Shorts. I, Ash, will brave the wilds of YouTube (and other video hosting sites) in order to return with interesting, terrifying, or plain hilarious horror shorts that I can find for you, the reader, to enjoy. Like this idea? Well, if you don't, too bad, because this is what we're going with!

For the first installment of SHS, I want to introduce you to something I myself have found pretty recently through the FaceBook page for Creepy LA: the newly hatched webseries, Ask A Mortician! Now, you might be asking yourself, has no one done this before? Actually, there have been quite a few uploads of various aspects of the burial process, but nothing quite like this. 

Mortician Caitlin Doughty takes and answers questions of all varieties in a comedic fashion. To paraphrase a comment posted by her on her YouTube channel, her hope is to familiarize viewers with the funeral process, thus making death seem not as terrifying as it's currently considered in our society. It's definitely a noble goal, one that I support wholeheartedly. 

Here's Episode 4, by far my favorite episode:

Check out the other videos on her YouTube channel, Order Of The Good Death, and subscribe for updates! Hopefully next week's SHS won't be as wordy, but we'll just play this one by ear! Have a bloody awesome weekend!

Pandora's Bride, Elizabeth Hand (2007)

As stated in a previous post, I adore all things Frankenstein. So when I found out about Pandora's Bride, I tried to find a copy in stores (which was futile). Recently I purchased a copy from Amazon - unfortunately, I didn't really find the book to be at the same level as other Frankenstein-esque titles I've read (Frankenstein's Monster, Frankenstein's Bride, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein - which, to be fair, are all more recent titles, though not by much).

This is an officially sanctioned sequel to the Universal Studio's film The Bride of Frankenstein. For those who haven't seen the film, here's a spoiler alert - the Bride (played by Elsa Lanchester) is in the film for all of six minutes (and what glorious minutes they are!). The bulk of the film follows Dr. Pretorius as he slowly manipulates Henry Frankenstein into creating a female version of the creature. Though in the film Dr. Pretorius is supposed to be an evil man, I didn't quite find him to be so - after all, when no one else has taken pity on the creature (not even Henry, his creator), here is Pretorius, who steps up to give the creature something to help soothe his pain. Pretorius is found to be quite the mad scientist, having created several creatures already: all miniature in size, they vary from a king to a mermaid, each one more perfect than the last. 

In the book, Pretorius continues his role of a gray-area benefactor to the female creature, who he adopts as a daughter of sorts. Perhaps in keeping with Shelley's original book, when the female creature is asked to pick a name for herself, she eventually settles on the greek Pandora, who is known for her curiosity and unwittingly releasing all of the horrors into the world; however, Pandora is described as a goddess of femininity (along with the more well known myth), which is what sways the female creature's decision. The story goes from Pandora's birthplace to the city of Berlin, with a wide cast that ranges from Pretorius' Children of Cain (the miniature creations he's made through various experiments, including a large horse that eats rodents), a narcoleptic named Cesare who acts as Pretorius' assistant, and another scientist named Rotwang who creates his beings out of mechanical parts. The villains of the piece turn out to be Henry and his wife Elizabeth, who are planning on remaking all females in the world into obedient slaves, through which they will control all men.

A theme of feminism is the most striking thing about the book, which is only natural since we're dealing with the creation of a woman solely for that of a mate (not unlike Eve in the Bible, but any Frankenstein-esque book is rarely without its religious themes) but it often comes off as heavy handed. I did enjoy having the main character be the bride herself, but I wish that she had shown the same amount of wit and inner turmoil that the creature exhibits in nearly every incarnation of Frankenstein that I've seen - instead she is of one mind, that she knows all, and if that's supposed to be a blatant statement about women, well, it's a poorly done one at that. Pandora bucks against expectations for her gender, but eventually comes to realize that one cannot be taken in by appearance and must learn from experience. 

After reading Frankenstein's Monster by Susan O'Keefe, the writing definitely felt underpar; just as being sexually alluring is Dracula's trademark, the juxtaposition of an ugly exterior with a brilliant mind is Frankenstein's creature, and I simply didn't feel that level of intelligence coming through in the writing. I do enjoy the fact that the creature got a voice this time around (it's essential to his character, and being stripped of it in the film really destroys his evolution as put forth in the original book), and that he is also given a chance to prove himself to earn Pandora's affection; but honestly, the book doesn't do much that's new. It was also an incredibly quick read - I literally sat down and was done with it in the same day. I certainly wouldn't reccommend this book to a Frankenstein purist, either of the Universal Movies flavor or the book; I'm a little sick myself of seeing Henry/Victor being shoehorned into the villain role. I would tell anyone interested in this book to pass on it.

Trollhunter (2011)

What It's About: A group of students investigates a series of mysterious bear killings, but learns that there are much more dangerous things going on. They start to follow a mysterious hunter, learning that he is actually a troll hunter.

Review: When I think of trolls, I typically am reminded of the Three Billy Goats Gruff; you know, the weird looking creature living under the bridge who threatens to eat the goats as they pass, but is eventually tricked out of his meal. Trolls definitely have a reputation of being one of the less pretty creatures in mythology, but they usually fall into the category of faeries who like to talk and bargain their way out of anything. Trollhunter knocks all of these usual expectations out of the ballpark, and is a really inventive use of the shaky came trick that's so damned popular right now. 

No! Not more shaky cam!