Since I’m recovering from post-convention fever (that is, laziness), I felt like rewatching some old favorites. Pre-Code films are awesome, because they are just as fixated on torture, mutilation, and sexual deviance as so-called “torture porn” and “hardcore horror” films.
Animal cruelty and sexual perversion collide in The Most Dangerous Game (1932), when big game hunter Rainsford and his lover Eve (Fay Wray) are shipwrecked on an island owned by a wealthy foreigner. The antagonist, Count Zaroff, is himself a big game hunter who has become bored with hunting animals, and and is now a hunter of humans. This film, based on the novella by Richard Connell is still relevant today given the connections between big game trophy hunting and serial murder. This psychological connection was also recognized by Erich Fromm in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness in his brief discussion of “elite hunting” (note this phrase was borrowed by Eli Roth in the Hostel franchise), which is differentiated from hunting in which the objective is to consume the animal’s meat.
A glimpse of Count Zaroff’s…unique collection.
In true serial killer fashion, Zaroff keeps a trophy room fillled with the heads of his victims, and confesses that a successful “hunt” makes him desire physical “love.” Following the “hunt,” he believes the Rainsford to be dead, he plans to rape Eve as a means to celebrate his conquest. Rainsford saves her and kills the Zaroff, who is then torn apart by his own dogs. Having survived the ordeal, the protagonist is able to empathize with the animals he himself hunted, and renounces his hobby.
Berlin Syndrome is a slow-burn movie that lacks any significant onscreen body count, but is disturbing nonetheless. In many respects, it reminds me of the John Fowles novel The Collector and its film adaptation starring Terrence Stamp. Both stories are about men who “collect” the women with whom they are obsessed. Arguably, both stories are also about Nice Guys as villains. Note that I differentiate nice guys from Nice Guys, the former being genuinely good and kind people who happen to be men, and the latter are men merely performing a social script of niceness to cover an ulterior agenda, and who are not nice people at all. For more information about the scourge of Nice Guy behavior and their diseased mindset, read this excellent article by Dr. Nerdlove, or listen to my guest appearance as part of a roundtable discussion on the KitchenShrinks podcast episode about benevolent sexism.
Berlin Syndrome nicely exposes Nice Guy psychology and their twisted view of women and relationships. Thankfully, most Nice Guys do not keep women as human captives, but if they had the means to do so without getting caught, they would likely view it as an effective solution to being “friendzoned.” (Although even then, the Nice Guy would view the female captive as a moocher or gold-digger, living in his home rent free and therefore definitely owing him sexual favors.) In Berlin Syndrome, an Australian tourist Clare has a one-night-stand with Berlin Nice Guy Andi, who can’t accept that she doesn’t want a long-term relationship with him. Once Clare is Andi’s captive, she discovers that Andi is a serial kidnapper and possible serial killer, abducting a new victim as soon as the “romance” is gone in his relationship with the current captive. When we see Andi interact with multiple potential victims, we see that all of his charming and endearing behaviors are just part of a script that he repeatedly performs. Like all Nice Guys, Andi hates women, and in fact sees them as literally dirty, as evidenced by his compulsive urge to wash himself after being touched by a female coworker.
Max Riemelt as Berlin Syndrome’s Nice Guy Villain. Photo by Sarah Enticknap.
I have not read Melanie Joosten’s novel, and therefore don’t know if it provides further insight into Andi’s simultaneous hatred of women and desire to keep women as captives to fulfill his romantic fantasies. But his behavior fits nicely within Erich Fromm’s theory of the necrophilous personality, as discussed in The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil and The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. As discussed in an earlier essay, the necrophilous personality is not the same as necrophilia, though the personality and the paraphilia can coexist. One trait of the necrophilous personality is to transform, literally or metaphorically, something that is alive into something that is dead. In The Collector, Miranda’s captor kills and collects butterflies. Instead of admiring these living creatures in the wild, he kills them and keeps their bodies on display so that he can enjoy looking at them. Miranda realizes in horror that, in his mind, she is exactly like those butterflies. In Berlin Syndrome, Andi compulsively photographs Clare, sometimes in candid moments, other times forcing her to model lingerie. When she behaves in a sexually provocative manner during one of these photo sessions, seemingly mocking Andi’s fantasies, he becomes upset with her. She is perhaps too alive with too much a mind of her own. Fromm himself discussed the the compulsive need to take photographs as a symptom of necrophilous personality in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. True crime author Brian Masters, himself influenced by Fromm’s work, took the observation further in his biography The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer:
“The person, once threateningly alive, now exists insofar as the photographer allows him to exist through images of his creating. It is a translation of life into death, of sentience into petrification, of will into object, the dissolution of all into one triumphant thing—the photograph. (p. 163) … It is important to recognize that the camera does not enhance, it reduces (in so far as the person photographed is now no more than an image), and it insultingly proclaims ownership too. (p. 164).”
Andi controls every aspect of Clare’s life.
For the antagonists in The Collector and in Berlin Syndrome, women’s autonomy is somehow so threatening that the Nice Guy psychopaths need to assert control at any cost. They would rather have a sterile, scripted “relationship” than risk rejection or the dreaded Friendzone. Fortunately, things ultimately work out for Clare better than they did for Miranda in The Collector, with women helping each other escape from a horrible situation.
Crispin Glover as ” Mr. World” in the Starz series American Gods
On June 16th and 17th at Alamo Drafthouse (Omaha ), I attended both nights of Crispin Glover’s appearance consisting of live performances, film screenings, Q&As, and book signings. And what a great time it was! Crispin Glover is one of the most wonderfully gracious, down-to-earth, and intelligent people I’ve met. His live performances films and should be experienced firsthand, because they defy easy description. But I’m going to try anyway.
Before I get to that, I want to foreground this review by saying that I didn’t know too much of what to expect from the event or from Crispin himself, and didn’t want to bias my opinion of the event by reading detailed reviews in advance. Aside from enjoying Crispin’s quirky performances in various films (including his recent role as “Mr. World” in the Starz series American Gods), I didn’t know much about him as a person, aside from media articles describing him as” eccentric” or even “crazy,” two terms that are neither equivalent nor interchangeable. Usually, the “evidence” for the “crazy” label consists of speculation about his cringe-inducing first appearance on Letterman in the late 1980s, or the fact that he used to collect antique medical equipment (a fun-sounding hobby that mostly makes me feel envious). As I discussed in an earlier post, “crazy” is a nebulous label, a sloppy blanket term for a range of behaviors and attitudes that don’t necessarily indicate actual mental illness. I’m not just carping about the descriptor “crazy” merely because Crispin Glover clearly isn’t. I also find it egregious because it’s an intellectually lazy way to dismiss someone whose ideas or behaviors are merely inconvenient, outside the status-quo, or fail to support one’s own agenda. More on this later.
An unexpected reference to bestiality in “Rat Catching”
This isn’t to say that Crispin’s artistic output isn’t eccentric or massively weird, because it is. If you have the opportunity to attend both nights, do so. There is some overlap in content but not so much as to be overly redundant. Both nights began with variations of “Crispin Hellion Glover’s Big Slide Show,” in which Crispin crawled out from somewhere beneath the stage (literally) and then presented dramatic reading of several of his books accompanied by a powerpoint presentation of the book text and illustrations. Most of Crispin’s books consist of Victorian-era texts and illustrations, which have been redacted, recombined, and annotated in ways that transform the narrative entirely, usually making it funny or into absolute nightmare fuel. For example, “Rat Catching” contains a surprise reference to bestiality. Other books, such as “Round My House,” consisted of Crispin’s original text, reprinted from his own handwriting. This was my favorite among the books available for purchase at the event and on his website. The others were out of print or never printed for distribution in the first place. My favorite among these was “The Backward Swing.” Crispin’s dramatic reading style most often further mutated or obfuscated the meaning of the text, because he would often read with an emotion that didn’t seem to fit the text, or would read in a counter-intuitive cadence or put emphasis on atypical words. I enjoy the books themselves, but would argue that they are best experienced when performed by Crispin himself.
Poster for It is Fine! Everything is Fine
Following the Big Slide Show on night one was a screening of It is Fine! Everything is Fine, which is directed by Crispin as part two if the “IT” trilogy. Part one, What is It? was screened the second night. In retrospect, I think I understand his reasoning for screening his films out of order. It is Fine! is a good way to warm up audience members who attended both nights, because of the two films, it is more palatable for mainstream audiences. Moreover, it’s in some ways helpful to learn about the screenwriter and lead actor Steven C. Stewart before seeing the first film. Steven C. Stewart, who had a severe case of cerebral palsy, portrays a serial killer who has a fetish for women with long hair. I won’t spoil this film for readers as I tend to do. While there are several taboo elements in It is Fine!, it’s a film with a coherent, linear plot.
Promotional still for What is It?
That said, the oddities of the Big Slide Show and It is Fine! did not adequately prepare me for seeing part one of the “IT” trilogy, What is It?, which Crispin describes as, “Being the adventures of a young man whose principle interests are snails, salt, a pipe, and how to get home. As tormented by an hubristic, racist inner psyche” ( the racist inner psyche is portrayed by Crispin himself). In his Q&A afterward (as in interviews which can be read online), he states that one controversial element was the fact that the cast of What is It? consisted almost entirely of actors who had Down syndrome portraying characters who do not necessarily have Down syndrome. That’s really only one of many controversial aspects of the film. I would go so far to say that there is something potentially offensive or disturbing for every viewer. Some of those things include excessive use of Nazi swasticas, screaming snails, and unsimulated sex scenes involving women in animal masks. In multiple interviews, Crispin said his goal in making What is It? is for audience members to ask themselves, “Is this right what I’m watching? Is this wrong what I’m watching? Should I be here? Should the filmmaker have done this? What is it?” It worked. Among the things that pushed my personal buttons were gratuitous scenes of snail-killing and some…unique soundtrack choices that included Johnny Rebel’s rendition of “Some N*ggers Never Die (They Just Smell That Way)” and selected songs by Charles Manson. To clarify, these songs were played in the main character’s subconscious by the aforementioned “hubristic, racist inner psyche,” which didn’t prevent me from dying a little on the inside anyway.
To say What is It? is disturbing is an understatement. More specifically, I actually found it more disturbing than one of my perennial favorite movies,A Serbian Film, and as least as disturbing as my friend Andrey Iskanov’s Unit 731 quasi-documentary film Philosophy of a Knife. I don’t mean this in a disparaging way at all. In contrast to a lot of big-budget dreck that is entertaining in the moment but which leaves you without a thought in your head, What is It?, like the other disturbing films I mentioned above, is not necessarily pleasant to watch , but is something to be appreciated in the long term precisely because it is thought-provoking.
Which brings us to the Q&A sessions, which were an oasis of calm rationality after the strangeness of the dramatic readings and the films themselves. In response to each question, Crispin gave thorough, intellectual answers that reminded me of my favorite professors’ lectures in film theory classes and from subsequent graduate school behavioral science courses. Although each night’s roughly two-hour Q&A had a different overall focus, one unifying theme was Crispin’s argument that corporately-funded films function as a type of propaganda because they discourage audience members from asking questions of any kind. Another observation was, and I hope I am paraphrasing this appropriately, that corporate films are intended for the eyes of children, because anything that could make an audience member uncomfortable is excised. I very much appreciated his in-depth insights and discussions in this subject, in part because I have a similar perception of such films. For over a decade, I’ve believed that most mainstream, corporately-funded films force the filmmaker to take a “No Child Left Behind” approach to storytelling, insofar that even if a film has subject matter deemed not suitable for children, that film is ultimately scripted and edited in such a way so that even the most intoxicated or least intelligent test screening audience member can understand it. Additionally, it seems that the budget of a film is inversely related to how taboo it is “allowed” to be. While that isn’t a terrible thing for every type of film, it’s obviously deleterious for horror films and any other type of film that by nature needs to convey things that are disturbing or controversial.
Crispin Glover as the screaming hair fetishist “The Thin Man” in Charlie’s Angels
Since What is It? was a reaction to corporate straightjacketing, it’s not entirely without irony that a significant a percent of Crispin’s acting work is in corporately funded and distributed films. However, that doesn’t indicate that Crispin’s views on corporate propaganda are somehow inauthentic, but rather that corporate control over the U.S. entertainment industry is so ubiquitous that it’s virtually impossible for an artist to detach entirely from the system. Crispin states that he used income from Charlie’s Angels and other corporately-funded films to cover the cost of making his independent films What is It? and It is Fine! Which brings me back to the issue of some journalists labeling Crispin as “crazy” or some variant on the term. On one level, it may just be an attempt to entertain celebrity gossip junkies or reflective of a common difficulty in separating an artist from his work product, but on another, more insidious level, it is also an easy way to dismiss Crispin’s more subversive views about the U.S. entertainment industry.
Crispin’s Q&A sessions weren’t restricted to professor-like discussions about corporate propaganda and relevant works by Noam Chomsky and Edward Bernays. He also discussed the influence of the Surrealist movement on his own work and shared several humorous personal anecdotes, including his intent behind his first appearance on Letterman. (I won’t reveal the answer here.) The fact that he openly answers questions in his Q&A sessions that he will not answer in typical media interviews is yet another reason to attend his live performances and film screenings.
Finally meeting Crispin at his book signing Friday night
After the Q&A sessions concluded, both evenings ended with a book signing. While it was a long wait to meet Crispin (I didn’t make it home until 2 a.m. on Friday and 1 a.m. on Saturday), I’m glad I did, and appreciated the opportunity to speak with him one-on-one. A staff member at Alamo Drafthouse told me that they had recommended that he spend only two minutes with each guest, but he generously spent quite a bit more time with those who wanted to talk. As I mentioned earlier, he was very gracious and grounded, and also genuinely interested in each guest and in hearing their feedback about his presentations and films. Even though I intended to not bring up weird or inappropriate topics, my conversation with Crispin started benignly and then evolved to an academic discussion about paraphilias. Fortunately, he seemed unfazed.
Crispin is currently writing a book about propaganda (I can’t wait for it to be released) and completing an untitled film starring his father, Bruce Glover. Visit crispinglover.com to sign up for his newsletter, buy his books, and get information about his tour dates.
Shortly after viewing The Mummy (2017), I watched a film with the polar opposite approach. It Comes at Night shows very little horror onscreen, but implies so much. The film centers around an interracial family who have isolated themselves in a remote cabin during a worldwide plague outbreak. The father, Paul, has devised an elaborate set of rules and protocols in order to keep his family safe from the disease, yet it repeatedly finds its way in.
In the opening scene, we see Paul’s wife comforting her sick father, whom Paul then kills and cremates. Later, Paul faces problems from outsiders who may or may not be carrying the plague. Ultimately, Paul’s authoritarianism fails because he has insufficient understanding of the plague and how it is spread. These themes remind me a bit of the Edgar Allan Poe short story “The Masque of the Red Death,” in which a hubristic prince falsely believes he can attain safety through isolation.
It Comes at Night is a tense slow-burn movie that has great atmosphere, but I have to admit that I was disappointed in the abrupt ending. Like other movies with similar pacing, such as The Invitation and The Boy, It Comes at Night culminates in an explosion of violence. Yet at the same time, it sort of fizzles and leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Nonetheless, I recommend it for its pervasive sense of paranoia and dread.
As you may have noticed, June has been a lazy month with no particular motif or theme, aside from some lackadaisical coverage of a few summer blockbusters.
Yesterday, I bit the proverbial bullet and watched the new remake of The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise, Russell Crowe, Annabelle Wallis, and Sofia Boutella. I tend to be wary of big-budget Hollywood horror films, not because I have anything against casting A-list actors or using sophisticated special effects, but simply because mainstream Hollywood tends to play things safe and not create films that are too disturbing. This is fine for some genres, but not for horror, for obvious reasons.
The original teaser trailer for The Mummy didn’t fill me with optimism. While it’s kind of neat that they have a female mummy, I was immediately put off by what appeared to be silly and exploitative costuming. Do her bandages really need to create a push-up bra effect? Why do female monsters have to be sexually objectified rather than just scary? The ancient Egyptians definitely did not beautify female corpses. In fact, the ancient historian Herodotus wrote that wealthy families deliberately let the bodies of their deceased women spoil a bit, so that embalmers would not be tempted to engage in necrophilic acts with the corpses. Also, the new mummy’s bandages progressively unravel during the course of the film, creating a revealing of macabre pinup look. That could be a legit problem, but at least Boris Karloff had the good sense and dignity to procure some real clothes in the original 1932 version.
Upon seeing the new Mummy, I had wished they had left some semblance of the original love story intact. Boris Karloff’s character in the original film was sympathetic because his only “crime” was forbidden love. This story could have worked with any gender combination, but the new mummy Ahmanet is massively unsympathetic. She was sentenced to being embalmed alive because she was a baby-murderer, motivated solely by power and greed.
Still, I believe in approaching every movie with an open mind. The 2017 version of The Mummy is actually a lot of fun, if you can approach it for pure entertainment. Aside from a few jump-scares, the film is never truly frightening, but it does seemingly pay homage to darker horror films. The mummy Princess Ahmanet reconstitutes her body by sucking the vitality out of her victims in a Hellraiser-lite fashion. Similarly, when protagonist Nick’s (Cruise) dead buddy keeps showing up to tell him he is cursed, it’s a lot like An American Werewolf in London. There’s also a lot of action, comedy, and a subplot involving Dr. Henry Jekyll.
The original film did so much with so little. There were no action scenes and all of the violence was offscreen, but director Karl Freund and his cast were able to convey so much with meaningful glances and subtle dialogue. In contrast, the 2017 remake does so little with so much. I was never bored while watching The Mummy, but it didn’t give me much to deconstruct afterward. For that reason, it’s not going to be a film I watch obsessively again and again.
This weekend, I’m looking forward to breaking away from mainstream entertainment by seeing Crispin Glover perform live at the Omaha Alamo Drafthouse, June 16-17. Check back soon for more information about this event, which will surely be anything but bland and conventional. For more information about Crispin Glover’s appearances, visit his website.
I’m going to preface this post by saying that I normally would not have considered going to a tattoo convention. Although I enjoy well-executed tattoos on other people, I have zero tattoos and have no intention of getting any. Likewise, I am minimally pierced with no plans to get additional piercings. That said, I’m glad I went to the 3rd Annual Kansas City Tattoo Convention by Villain Arts.
A victim of the volcanic eruption at Pompeii: The Exhibit.
What made this trip great for me was the quality of live performances, along with local sightseeing. Because I seek out morbid attractions, I attended Pompeii: The Exhibition at the Union Station. Of course the fate of the the ancient city was gruesome, but the glimpse into the daily lives of Pompeii’s inhabitants was fascinating and more technologically advanced than one would expect. Although the exhibit is no longer in Kansas City, I highly recommend seeing it at its next location.
At the tattoo convention itself, it was very cool to meet The Enigma, whom I immediately recognized from a popular episode of The X-Files. The Enigma’s live performance combined stand-up comedy with gross-out stunts, along with sideshow staples such as sword-swallowing. He best describes his own act by observing that stage magicians make the audience ask “how?,” whereas sideshow artists like himself make audiences ask “why?'”. I should also mention that he is an utter sweetheart in person.
But the most shocking things happened during the late night performances, starting with burlesque artist Marlo Marquise, who combined a striptease act with stunts similar to those performed by The Enigma earlier in the day. But then she went a few steps beyond his performance by balancing on machetes and piercing her own skin with metal skewers. Her other acts include fire-eating, a “burlesque on hooks” suspension act, and balancing on a staircase of machetes. You can watch clips of her performances at her website (NSFW).
After Marlo’s performance, there was a series of “suspension acts,” by three different women, one of whom had never tried it before. Although I had seen videos of suspension on TV, it was entirely different seeing such performances live. I’m not ordinarily a squeamish person. After all, I’ve assisted in dozens of autopsies, served victims of violent crime in emergency rooms, and once worked for a funeral home. But for some reason, I initially found seeing these women hanging from hooks in their skin to be disturbing. I feared their skin would rip, causing them to fall from a significant height. It also looked incredibly painful. Yet, the performers appeared to be having fun.
Marlo balances on a staircase of machetes, from her Youtube page.
The following day, I talked to some of the performers about what it is like to be suspended, and their answers made me more comfortable with the idea of trying it someday myself. But don’t take my word for it. I’m happy to announce that our next podcast guest will be Marlo Marquise herself! She will be discussing her unique stage performance and clearing up misconceptions about suspension art. In the meantime, read this article from The Atlantic to learn more about the 5,000-year-old art.
While watching Alien: Covenant with Todd and his family, I had to ask myself, “Is 2017 the year of the misanthropic Hollywood movie?”
Earlier this year, another big budget sci-fi/horror film Lifewas released in theaters. In a move more appropriate in a John Carpenter film than a Hollywood blockbuster starring Jake Gyllenhal, the creators of Life decided to end the human race through series of colossal fuck-ups, revealed in a deceptive twist ending.
Alien: Covenant is the latest entry in what I now view as the Space Fuck-Up subgenre, in which terrible things happen that were completely avoidable. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy the movie. I’m saying that virtually all the characters display terrible judgment based on impulse and emotions rather than logic. Explorers on an unknown, un-researched planet decide to flounce around the unexplored terrain with no protective gear and to eat the local vegetation without testing it first. It’s not what kills them, but surely that space wheat was full of gluten. They fail to enact quarantine measures when crew members are infected. Later, when things are completely FUBAR, a pilot risks the lives of thousand of colonists and human embryos because he wants to rescue his wife.
The endless fuck-ups and poor leadership displayed by the human characters may be among the issues die-hard Alien fans have with the movie. But I’m going to assume it was a deliberate thematic choice that explains and enables the villain’s motivation to get rid of the dipshit human species entirely. Yes, the android David is back from Prometheus, and because there can never be enough Michael Fassbender, he also plays the role of another android, Walter. As an added bonus, Fassbender gets to share an erotic scene with…himself.
David was a complex character in Prometheus. He does some terrible things to his human crewmates, but he’s also sympathetic, and exudes an almost childlike curiosity and wonder. Prometheus ended on an optimistic note, with heroin Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) extending kindness to David. One gets the impression that there will be a redemptive storyline for David, with him developing empathy for humans.
All of this optimism is blown to hell in Alien: Covenant, with David emerging as a full-blown villain. He has human qualities, but seemingly our species’ worst traits, combined with superior intelligence. A guy so narcissistic that he would literally fuck himself if he could. Someone whose definition of “love” in no way precludes vivisecting his beloved. Hence we learn of Elizabeth’s horrible fate following her decision to rebuild his body. Like any narcissist, he “loves” others to the extent that they benefit him. As a side note, because there was the implication that David has developed sexual urges, I do wish the film had more explicitly a homosexual relationship between David and Walter, or human-android relations between David and the new heroine, Daniels.
“Let me do the fingering:” that point when the audience erupted in guffaws of “that’s what she said!”
Because he himself is not human, it’s somewhat easy to understand his contempt or indifference toward humanity as a whole. In this respect, he’s not as strange as the antagonists of Carnosaur or In the Mouth of Madness, who are humans desiring the end of humanity. And while Alien: Covenant has a twist similar to that in Life, I think everyone in the theater saw it coming. But, since this is a mainstream Hollywood film, it’s unusual that the filmmakers not only decided to let the villain win, but to effectively make him the protagonist and to lay the groundwork for humanity’s destruction.
I’m personally very excited to see his recently completed film Sick People, starring Lin Shaye, C. Thomas Howell, and Jasmine Guy. Look for Tim’s appearance as a motorcycle accident survivor in the trailer below:
Tim appears in Penance Lane, starring Tyler Mane and Scout Taylor-Compton. The Film is currently in post-production.
He appeared in Steven Rea’s short film “Howl of a Good Time,” alongside Leslie Easterbrook and Tamara Glynn.
Tim’s FX work was featured in Death Rot, now available on DVD/blu and Amazon video.
His appearance and FX work in the Icky Blossoms music video “In Folds” are…disturbing.
Looking for the perfect movie to celebrate the woman who gave you life itself? We have a few suggestions
Wake Wood (2009, dir. David Keating). Grieving parents participate in an occult ritual to bring their daughter back from the dead, but she isn’t quite right. This outing from Hammer Studios has been compared to Stephen King’s Pet Sematary.
The Void (2016, dirs. Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kotanski). In this film full of gooey, disgusting birth imagery, some parents are eagerly waiting for their children to be born and others are grieving miscarriages. One character can caused the dead to be reborn, but as indescribable Lovecraftian monsters.
Grace (2009, dir. Paul Solet). A woman’s unborn child dies inside her, but she is determined to carry it to term. Her baby is miraculously born alive, but with a taste for blood.
Holidays (2016, dirs, Gary Shore, Ellen Reid, and others). This anthology film features two shorts about motherhood. In Gary Shore’s “St. Patrick’s Day,” a lonely schoolteacher gives birth to a “bouncing baby snake.” Ellen Reid’s “Mother’s Day” is a darker story about a woman who becomes pregnant every time she has sex, despite using birth control. Desperate for a cure, she seeks help from a cult.
Sleepwalkers (1992, dir. Mick Garris). A feline-phobic, vampiric mother-and-son duo share a, um, very special relationship in this film penned by Stephen King.
The Brood (1979, dir. David Cronenberg). A hysterical woman manifests her emotions in the form of mutant, parasitic babies hanging in embryonic sacs from her body.
Inside (2007, dirs. Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury). This entry in French extremity depicts the disturbing crime of fetal abduction. A woman who desperately wants a child plots to cut a fully mature fetus out of a pregnant woman and pass the child off as her own. The pregnant woman and her attacker creatively use common household objects and tools of feminine homemaking as weapons, including one death by knitting needle.
Mother’s Day (1980, dir. Charles Kaufman). A mother’s love can overlook many faults, even if her children are rapists and murderers. This campy rape-revenge film is one of Troma’s better outings.
While viewing films from Hammer Studios’ golden age, I found this little gem of a movie. The sci-fi horror film The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) aka The Creeping Unknown is surprisingly dark and gruesome for its era, although the violence would be considered quite tame by current standards. Not so in 1955, when British censors gave it the “X” certificate, banning admission to audience members under the age of 16. The filmmakers apparently reveled in the “X” rating, because they flaunted it in the unconventionally spelled title. The strategy worked, and the film performed well in Britain.
Richard Wordsworth gives a tormented performance as Carroon
You may ask, what could have been shocking about a 1955 science fiction movie? In The Quatermass Xperiment, an astronaut returns from outer space infected with an alien spore that could end all life on Earth. As he touches other living things, he absorbs those organisms’ properties and simultaneously drains them of their life force. Victims include unlucky humans, several zoo animals, and a cactus. In short, you have a guy running around and bludgeoning people with his cactus arm, turning them into twisted piles of goo, and leaving a snail trail in his wake.
Carroon reveals his cactus arm
Richard Wordsworth gives a sympathetic and tormented performance as the infected astronaut Victor Carroon, who fights to retain his humanity despite the alien consciousness gradually taking control of his mind. The “hero,” Bernard Quatermass, is a tough, egotistical scientist whose unethical experiment on Carroon is the catalyst for Carroon’s horrible transformation, yet Quatermass eventually prevents the destruction of the human race. Although the ending was reassuring compared to that of other “B” movies and the rare big-budget “A” film, The Quatermass Xperiment and its sequels were subversive for the time. This is something that we will hopefully discuss on a future podcast.
Carroon’s not looking so hot at the end of the “Xperiment”
This film not only spawned a franchise, but may have influenced TV series such as The X Files. It definitely influenced John Carpenter, as he explicitly referenced the later series Quatermass & The Pit in his meta-horror film In the Mouth of Madness.
, a film I had been anticipating for months after reading 
and 
:
and other corporately-funded films to cover the cost of making his independent films What is It? and It is Fine! Which brings me back to the issue of some journalists labeling Crispin as “crazy” or some variant on the term. On one level, it may just be an attempt to entertain celebrity gossip junkies or reflective of a common difficulty in separating an artist from his work product, but on another, more insidious level, it is also an easy way to dismiss Crispin’s more subversive views about the U.S. entertainment industry.
, now available on DVD/blu and Amazon video.
(2009, dir. David Keating). Grieving parents participate in an occult ritual to bring their daughter back from the dead, but she isn’t quite right. This outing from Hammer Studios has been compared to Stephen King’s Pet Sematary.
(2016, dirs. Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kotanski). In this film full of gooey, disgusting birth imagery, some parents are eagerly waiting for their children to be born and others are grieving miscarriages. One character can caused the dead to be reborn, but as indescribable Lovecraftian monsters.
. A woman’s unborn child dies inside her, but she is determined to carry it to term. Her baby is miraculously born alive, but with a taste for blood.
. This anthology film features two shorts about motherhood. In Gary Shore’s “St. Patrick’s Day,” a lonely schoolteacher gives birth to a “bouncing baby snake.” Ellen Reid’s “Mother’s Day” is a darker story about a woman who becomes pregnant every time she has sex, despite using birth control. Desperate for a cure, she seeks help from a cult.
in his meta-horror film 
My Horrific Life 