Chaos Rules!

At its core, director Lars von Trier's controversial ANTICHRIST is a horror film, but not the type of horror film a Friday night multiplex crowd would appreciate.

A toddler manages to get out of his crib and finds his way to an open window. As he falls to his death, his parents (Willem DaFoe and French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, listed in the credits as "He" and "She") have sex in the laundry room. Flash to the child's funeral: She passes out during the procession and is taken to a hospital. He (a psychiatrist) thinks they're treating her the wrong way and she eventually heeds his advice by flushing away her medication. When all of his talking fails to help, the couple head to a remote cabin in the woods where He begins a series of physical and mental tests, trying to get to the bottom of his wife's grief, fears and anxieties.

She had spent some time alone with their son at the cabin the previous summer as she worked on a thesis based around wtiches and how women were treated in the 16th century.

Shortly after the halfway point, ANTICHRIST goes from a (mainly) psychological assault to a brutally physical one; while He latently torments She with psychobabble during the first half, She comes at He with all gloves off in the second (I'm betting even some jaded horror fans will get a jolt or two here). Just before these gruesome scenes that gave this film its reputation at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, the wife's strange tales and folklore of the woods (ominously refered to as "Eden") begin to come true. One brilliant sequence features DaFoe discovering a still-living mutilated fox in the bushes; the film keeps its deadly serious tone despite the absurdity of what ensues.

ANTICHRIST is an assault on the senses (much help from the pulse-raising soundtrack and vivid cinematography) and a twisted view of the potential for evil all mankind has inside them. Critic Roger Ebert (google his fascinating review) believes this is an allegory of a reverse-creation story, and by the climax it's hard to argue with him. Either way, von Trier has painted a picture of a world where nothing positive exists and everything you thought you know has been turned inside out.

The final shot of the film looks like a living painting; ANTICHRIST is a unique art/horror hybrid that I won't be forgetting anytime soon. Willem DaFoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg have given their all to this project (Gainsbourg even won the Best Actress award at Cannes) and do things few actors would even dream of doing. This is dark expressionism taken almost to its limit.

(Be warned that the film is NOT RATED and features a couple of sequences that will easily upset mainstream film goers).

SUPER FETUS by Adam Pepper (2009 Eraserhead Press / 87 pp. / tp)

White trash mother Sue Ellen reminisces about the three times she got knocked-up. Inbetween, she's abused by her live-in boyfriend, tormented by her bratty kids, and wonders what on earth all that rumbling is inside her womb.

The other viewpoint of this quick & sick novella comes from the Super Fetus, an aggravated pre-born who spends his days working out and building his young body into a mini-mountain of pure muscle. When his mother decides that she can't handle another kid and tries to abort him, Super Fetus gets ticked; when the doctors fail to do the deed after several attempts, Sue Ellen decides to take matters into her own hands.

And this is when Super Fetus REALLY flies off the handle.
Despite the author's note that this tale isn't meant to be any kind of social or political commentary, I think there's some good humor that will work with those on either side of the fence.

Leave it up to Eraserhead Press to publish a tale dealing with abortion that's as funny as it is demented. My only gripe is Super Fetus doesn't "come out" until the end; perhaps a sequel is in order?

Been There, Haunted That . . .

AUDREY'S DOOR by Sarah Langan (2009 Harper / 412 pp. / mmp)

Langan (author of the excellent, Stoker-winning novel, THE MISSING), pens a haunted house story in the vein of such classics as THE SHINING and THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE. Unfortunately, this one is so similar to Jeffrey Konvitz' classic THE SENTINEL I had a hard time appreciating the fine writing and well-done suspense.

A trouble-infested woman named Audrey leaves her boyfriend and moves into The Breviary, an Upper West Side apartment building that she discovers has a dark history. She's so determined to live on her own that she takes an apartment despite the super's mentioning a woman drowned her four children in its bathtub (yeah--okay!). From here the novel builds some decent tension, and the flashbacks of The Breviary's history are interesting and spooky. But it's the typical by-the-numbers conclusion (that REALLY reminded me of THE SENTINEL) that killed it for me and made me wonder why FANGORIA magazine named this their "Book of the Month" in a recent issue.

AUDREY'S DOOR, while seeking to pay homage to the haunted house genre, offers horror fans nothing new. Aside from a brief comment on modern society (something I think some will find unnecessary to the story), this is purely generic paperback pulp. I'm hoping Langan gets back on the killer track she started with THE KEEPER and THE MISSING.

Hefty Hefty Hefty...

EXPERIMENTS AT 3 BILLION A.M. by Alexander Zelenyj (2009 Ebionvale Press / 658 pp. / hc)

2 questions immediately popped into my mind when I lifted this hefty volume out of its box: Who in the world is Alexander Zelenyj? -and- A 658-page hardcover short story collection? Not that lengthy shorts collections are non-existent (i.e. Tom Piccirilli's DEEP INTO THAT DARKNESS PEERING), but one from a relatively unknown author is a kind-of ballsy move on the part of the publisher.

So I started with David Rix's brief Foreword (I had no idea who he was, either) before diving into the first story, 'The Potato Thief Beneath Indifferent Stars.' I was pleasantly surprised at both the writing and the unusually tender nature of what the editor chose for the lead off entry: this thing could go anywhere from here . . . and it does.

There's 40 stories, 20 published for the first time. Most deal with isolation and are hard to classify; Zelenyj jumps from sci-fi to horror to fantasy to bizarro, many times within the same story.

Highlights include 'Black Flies Inside,' a warped muse on obsession; 'Teenage Pirates and the Ghosting of Texas,' a wickedly fun pulp-style horror yarn; 'Let the Firefly Men Remind You,' a wonderfully eerie tale that puts a nice spin on the alien encounter thing, and 'In the City Where Dreams Wander the Sidewalks' where the author displays his skill of suggestion, here crafting a surreal tale of people's lives transformed by a mysterious man.

The final story (featured here in white font on black paper) is one of the best. 'Poppy, the Girl of My Dreams, and the Alien Invasion I can Detect Like Radar Through My Braces' is a quick yet fantastic apocalyptic, scifi love story with a genuinely heartbreaking finale.

EXPERIMENTS AT 3 BILLION A.M. surprised me from beginning to end. While it took me a while to get through its massive length (and the few head-scratchers), the majority of this fine collection is quite impressive, especially coming from an author I knew nothing about. Recommended.

Creepy & Classy

ENTER DEATH, STAGE RIGHT (MY SOULD TO TAKE PART II) by William A. Veselik (2009 Mundania Press / 189 pp. / tp)

In this second installment of Veselik's Victorian-era vampire saga, Professor Smythe (along with his friend, Scotland Yard Inspector Arthur Jenkins) are on the heels of a cult of vampires who hunt their prey around a local theatre. Smythe lets one of his students, percy, move into his attic to help out. When the vampire's lair is discovered (as well as a swere tunnel they use to move around), our protagonists devise a devistating trap . . . only to really tick off the leader of the cult.

For those not familiar with this series, it reads like a Christopher-Lee era Dracula film, complete with honor paid to all the classic vampire mythos, as well as something sorely lacking from many vampire novels today; class. There's also some interesting scientific discovery made into the bacterial-vampiric germ, and some well done gothic atmopshere.

I'm looking forward to the final chapter, 'The Vampire Lord Unmasked,' due out any day now. Veselik has a wicked grasp on Hammer Films-era vampires, and this series feels more like you're watching a classic spook film than reading a novel, which in the wake of countless sappy "Twilight" clones, is a breath of much needed fresh (or should I say, 'rancid') breath.

Attack of the Raunchy Rednecks

DEPRAVED by Bryan Smith (2009 Leisure Books / 324 pp. / mmp)

Smyth's 6th novel is a no-holds-barred entry into the redneck slasher genre. Like his debut, HOUSE OF BLOOD, some people get lost in a rural backwoods town, but this time instead of a single house we get an entire community (including two brawling, cannibalistic hick families) bent on collecting bodies not only for dinner, but for an annual sacrifice.

As Smith (and many other) authors have done, we're once again in ancent-evil-is-still-active territorty here. And while comparisons to Jack Ketchum's OFF SEASON novels and films like WRONG TURN and THE HILLS HAVE EYES come to mind, Smith throws in hints of a terrorist plot, a shadow-government conspiracy, and more strip-club antics than 100 80s hair-metal videos combined. There's even an little dip into bizarro territory (see chapter 35) which may seem out of place until you get to the end.

While this is standard 80s-styled pulp sleaze, Smith delivers it with gusto and isn't boring for a single page. Gorehounds are sure to eat this one up (full pun intended) as it makes even the aforementioned Ketchum classics seem tame.

Small and Spooky

There isn't much that's gonna scare a 41-year old horror fan who has been watching and reading this stuff since he was 7. One of the reasons I think THE BLAIT WITCH PROJECT disappointed so many viewers were early comparisons to THE EXORCIST and claims of being "The Scariest Movie Ever." I enjoyed it, but didn't find it half as scary as all the hype procalimed.

10 years after BLAIR's shaky, home-style camera work, there have been many imitators. The tripodless-shooting style has even been adapted by legends such as George A. Romero (DIARY OF THE DEAD) and a big budget monster flick (CLOVERFIELD) among others. Neither had the effect that BLAIR did, nor BLAIR's grossly underrated predecessor, THE LAST BROADCAST.

When I started hearing buzz about PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, a film allegedly shot for somewhere between $11,000 and $15,000 in a single home with a camcorder, I rolled my eyes, especially with the buzz it was getting. When I saw the trailer (which featured a jumping/screaming audience at a test screening) I really began to get suspicious.

But then I saw the film. Not sure what to make of it, I saw it again 3 days later.

While the film does look very professional (causing one of my friends to think this might be Hollywood trying to dupe us, which is believable as there's almost no credits before OR after the film), it still has a grainy-type of feel that has been the benchmark of many classics (such as the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Dawn of the Dead).

Studio conspiracy theories aside, PARANORMAL ACITIVITY works. A simple idea is played up to the max: a woman named Kate claims something has been haunting her since she was a kid; her live-in boyfriend begins to videotape their bedroom at night, and when he begins to capture sounds and strange sights, he becomes obssessed with finding out who or what is causing it. The director's ability to force the viewer to use his/her mind works as well here as it did in the (mostly) suggestive film, HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER. Aside from a couple of cuts and bruises, there's no gore. There's no sex or nudity to get your mind off what's going on around our 2 characters. Even the daytime scenes of Micah and Kate watching footage from the previous evening help to set up the next sequence's tension.

Who would think the simple acts of seeing a light turn on by itself in the middle of the night, or a psychic being freaked out and abruptly leaving the house could cause more chills in an audience than 100 gore-filled horror remakes combined?

After two viewings, I can say that horror fans who are still willing to use their imagination will most likely appreciate PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. At the very least, no one can deny that the simpler a film is (especially a horror film), the stronger its impact CAN be when done the right way. Here's a fine example.

(PS: Non horror fans will probably have the crap scared out of them by this, and fans of occultic horror should dig it).

October Updates at THE HORROR FICTION REVIEW

There's several reviews this month that I didn't have time to post on my blog here...check 'em out:

http://www.freewebs.com/hfrzine/october09reviews.htm

Need Some Inspiration?

In the early 80s I used to LOVE hitting my local record store and browsing through the import section. I found contless punk and metal bands this way. Canada's ANVIL was one of them. While I was never a huge fan (I liked a lot of their music but always found the vocals horrible and the lyrics silly), I always respected bother their drummer and the fact they were one of the first metal acts to have a genuinely HEAVY sound.

When I heard one of the old fans had become a film producer and was making a feature about them, I couldn't wait to check it out. And it lives up to its hype and then some.

Even though all the "Spinal-Tap"-ish moments are entertaining, funny, and (at times) sad, it's the sequences between singer "Lips" and drummer Robb that make this one a keeper; there isn't a soul on this planet who wouldn't kill for a friendship this strong. I haven't been this moved by a documentary in a long, long time.

ANVIL: THE STORY OF ANVIL is a testament to DEDICATION, not caring with others think, and following your dreams. Lips' ability to stay positive despite the dreariest of circumstances is mind-boggling, and when you realize how faitfhul to the Anvil cause his drum-smashing partner Robb is, you can't help but stand up and cheer.

Simply brilliant.