Nosferatu Re-Mastered

The re-mastered edition of the silent film horror classic Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror is now available. This film has a very interesting history. It was based on Bram Stoker's Dracula (the title "Nosferatu" derives from the name given to Count Dracula by the local villagers).  Stoker's widow fought a successful battle to have the film declared in violation of copyright. The judge ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed, but apparently a remaining copy was circulated and subsequently reproduced and distributed to become a cult classic.

The film was made in Germany by director F.W. Murnau and was released in 1922. The re-mastered version is available through Amazon.

If you're in the UK, Scream magazine is currently running a contest for subscribers to give away five copies of the film. See http://www.screamhorrormag.com/. 

Happy viewing, and to you and yours I'd like to wish a safe and happy holiday. Merry Christmas!

Alas, Poor Hershel

It's an unspoken tenet of fiction that you don't kill off dogs if you want to endear yourself to your readers ... or if you do, you promptly resurrect them (if you're Dean Koontz) or establish that it was just a bad dream. I'd like to add a second tenet: you don't kill off your elderly and wise characters in a leading television series. This is what the producers of The Walking Dead have done.

As fans of the series know, The Walking Dead has a particularly high casualty rate for lead actors. I've had no problems with other main characters being killed off because their deaths at least served some purpose in advancing the plot or their characters had simply run their course (and in some cases were getting a bit tiresome). In fact, I was finding the Governor storyline very tedious and was glad to see him go. But this season has me wondering if the show's writers actually know where they're going with the story. First Carol is banished by Rick (who previously in the season was incapable of making any major decision) and now they've killed off Hershel, the compassionate elder and the voice of reason. And they've killed him off in such grandiose fashion--with his head hacked off by the Governor--that (unlike Carol) there is simply no path for bringing him back.

For his part, Scott Wilson chose the high road and, when advised his character was about to meet his demise, remarked simply that he thought the producers were "making a big mistake". (See his interview with Entertainment Weekly.) I'm sure there are a lot of viewers out there who would agree with him.

The Christmas Devil

I have to admit that I only heard of Krampus this summer, and I thought at first that it was a gag. But lo and behold, Santa has a dark counterpart that originated in pre-Christian German folklore and continues as a strong tradition in Alpine countries. (Source: Wikipedia)

Krampus even has his own website, in which he is billed as the Christmas devil. He still figures prominently on Christmas cards, although his images tend to be cuter and more marketable these days. Krampus, who is known by many names (as is Santa), is responsible for identifying the naughty children, whom he carts off to his lair, supposedly to eat. (Talk about an incentive to be nice!)

And ... wait for it! Some fear that Krampus, like Santa, has become too commercialized. See The Christian Science Monitor article at http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2013/1205/Is-Krampus-the-Christmas-demon-becoming-too-commercial.

Who knew that Christmas could be so scary!!!

Christmas Gifts for the Discerning Lover of Horror

Anthony J. Rapino has an interesting and fun blog post on Christmas gifts for those who love horror. The suggestions range from hand-crafted horror figures to e-books and boxed movie sets.

To view his list of suggestions, please visit http://www.anthonyjrapino.com/2013/christmas-gift-guide-for-horror-fans/.

If you have a limited budget, here are some fairly inexpensive gifts:

- Record some of the free offerings on television and make a themed set of horror movies (e.g., killer clowns; exorcisms; haunted houses);

- Give a magazine subscription to a horror magazine or buy a horror-themed calendar;

- Take advantage of sales on t-shirts from printing companies which have no minimum purchase requirement and order a custom-made t-shirt for less (as low as $5-$7.50) with horror graphics downloaded from the Internet;

- Visit dollar stores and local flea markets to see if there are horror collectibles that are reasonably priced; or

- Give your own gift certificate for a night of horror movie viewing at your house or a Walking Dead festival (complete with costumes if you're up for it).

If you have some free reading time over the holidays, you might want to download the works of Poe (for free or minimal cost). If you like psychological horror, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House is also a natural.

Have fun!



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Disaster(rous) Movies

I have been watching some really bad disaster and horror movies lately: ones that are so bad that they're actually fun to watch. Many of them are made in Canada (because of tax breaks), and so Vancouver or Montreal usually doubles as the latest U.S. metropolis facing extinction from a natural or man-made disaster. Sometimes it's even funnier when they forget to edit out Canadian flags or mailboxes.

I've been trying to decide whether it's the dialogue, bad acting, or campy special effects that I enjoy most in these low budget, good bad movies, and I've decided it's one or a combination of all three. In one disaster movie I recently watched, a family is fleeing from a man-made catastrophe that could be classified under "misuse of science". The father is driving, the mother is a passenger in the front, and the teenaged son is in the back seat playing a Gameboy. The kid exclaims something to the effect of "Mom, mom, everyone's getting vaporized". The mother responds: "Play your game, dear".

Of course the stereotypes in the bad disaster/horror movies are also fun: the most obnoxious or incidental character will get killed first. Sullen teenagers will survive and bond with their parents. The pretty lead actress will no doubt survive the gorefest, but her not-as-pretty-and-perky girlfriend will expire. The handsome lead man will also usually survive, unless he is too cocky, in which case he may suffer the same fate as the other expendables in the movie. Women appear to fall down a lot in these movies, just as the bad thing/weather/vapourizer approaches, causing the hero to swoop in like John Wayne ("never mind, little missy") and save the day. And if it's a man-made disaster, there is the good "scientist" trying to get the attention of the POTUS, army, air force, or his ex-wife, while the evil scientist is like Scrooge McDuck, seeing only $$$ in the invention that has gone astray and is destroying the earth, but could nonetheless be profitable if anyone's left to buy it.

And just when I thought they had run out of meteorites, asteroids, space ships, and other stuff falling on the earth, my faith in endless bad movies was renewed. In the most recent one I watched, it was falling plasma destroying the earth, the acting and special effects were terrible, and the hero was a chubby and ordinary-looking video store owner who still managed to save the world!

More popcorn, anyone?

Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the first airing of Doctor Who, the BBC's science fiction cult classic.

In honor of the occasion, here is some Doctor Who trivia you might enjoy:

The series was initially conceived as an educational, family-oriented program using time travel to explore science and revisit important moments in history. The historical element was later dropped in favor of the science element.

Among the show's many writers is Douglas Adams, the author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. 

There have been eleven main actors portraying Doctor Who (my favorite being Jon Pertwee) with the twelfth slated to take over soon.

The blue police box which is Doctor Who's time travel machine is known by the acronym "TARDIS" (Time and Relative Dimension(s) in Space). These boxes were a common sight in England at the time the series premiered. In 1996, the BBC applied for a trade mark to use the TARDIS blue police box design in Doctor Who merchandising. The Metropolitan Police Authority filed an objection in 1998, but the Patent Office ruled in favor of the BBC.

The acronym TARDIS is recognized as a word in the Oxford English Dictionary, and is commonly used to refer to something larger on the inside than the outside.

(Source: Wikipedia)

For more trivia fun, you can visit the official BBC Doctor Who website and try various quizzes.

The Walking Dead: Soap Opera or Social Commentary?

Fans of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and subsequent films, which owe a huge debt to Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, will recognize his influence on subsequent "zombie" films and specifically on the hit television series The Walking Dead. Like millions of others, I am a fan of the series, and I was surprised to read that Romero regards The Walking Dead as a "soap opera" and declined to become involved in its production. Romero indicates that his zombies were always used for satirical purposes or political criticism, and he sees this missing from the current series.

While I agree that there is an element of soap opera to the series in that viewers get hooked on what's coming next, I think the series is much more than that. For example, I compare the Rick of old, who apologizes to a crawling and mutilated zombie for what has happened to it and kills it as if wanting to end its misery (Season 1, Episode 1, "Days Gone Bye"), to the current Rick, who twice drives away and ignores the pleas of a hitchhiker for refuge and then stops to pick up his backpack after he has been destroyed by walkers (Season 3, Episode 12, "Clear"). I think the series is quite cynical in  regard to its depiction of humanity's capacity to become desensitized to violence in its efforts to survive. (In fact, the most recent episode in which Carol becomes an outcast because she has killed two members of the community  is entitled "Indifference".)

For the text of the article on Romero, please click here.

For an interesting article on Melissa McBride, who plays Carol, please click here.