Post by edwardlee on Apr 22, 2024 21:33:52 GMT
No doubt you’ve all heard that horror novelist Ray Garton has passed away after a very grueling turn with cancer. Ray was one of the load-bearing girders that supported the hardcore horror scene, starting back in the early 80's. I only met him once, at a Vegas con a long time ago–what a wonderful, energized, inspiring guy. Recently I was honored by getting to write the intro for a limited hc reprint of his great Bestial. He and I even discussed collaborating someday. He’ll be hugely missed, and was hugely important in the history of modern horror. On an added bummer note, I just learned the novelist James. A. Moore died a week or so ago–another high-caliber dude who contributed immensely to the modern horror genre, and who couldn’t be nicer. May he and Ray both sleep sweet.
Dialysis continues to go well. I read a lot and sleep. Got more minor skin cancers cut off me today. Somewhere in the VA there must be a pile of me somewhere, snow-man-sized. The little tiny needles with stick in you for the anesthetic hurt SO MUCH I bellow aloud and vocally hurl inventive curse-phrases, but the good doctor and her assistants only chuckle; they say they hear worse every single day. Last night I reread David Schow’s story whose title defies replication in that it’s not composed of words but a graffito that serves as the coat of arms for a gang of homeless screw-ups. It’s a magnificent piece about the state of our modern cities, and as important today as Leiber’s Smoke Ghost was in the ‘1940s. Also reread again Basil Copper’s Camera Obscura, one of the best pulp horror stories ever written. My collaborative film scripts Alien Pervert and Amityville Wet T-Shirt Contest remain healthily in progress, and I just started a new story called Lester. It’s about a giraffe! All I can say about it is this: Have you ever seen the TONGUE on a friggin’ giraffe? Everyone have a great week!
Best
EL
PS–here are my most recent movie reviews.
DAGR: Should be retitled CLUNKR. Incoherent found footage about two royal pain in the ass Social media chicks so bereft of lives that they run around and film themselves stealing stuff. They go to a mansion where an inconceivable tv commercial is being shot and, well, I guess Celtic ghosts cause turmoil that you don’t care about. I wasted five perfectly good dollars on this!
DEVIL’S DIARY (2007): I’m a sucker for any movie about ouija boards, seances, and evil books. This movie, pulp fare that it is, kicks butt. Misfit chick finds a grimoire that gives her the power to fug up all the a-hole bullies who mock her in high school, and lemme tell ya, those bullies go through the wringer. Ah, but then worse people get their hands on the grimoire, and that’s where the fun starts!
LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL: Outstanding flick about a 70's variety show that makes the demon inside a wacky possessed chick manifest itself on national TV. Very cool job and well worth the hype!
STEPHEN KING: A NECESSARY EVIL: In this doc, there’s more great footage of King talking his gig than probably all the other documentaries about him put together. It’s fascinating for any King junkie; the only bad thing about this project is it was too short. I wanted it to just keep going on, because with each minute, you learn more about King The Guy rather than King The Biggest Novelist of All Time. Nuggets of wisdom pour forth, which you cant help but consider when accessing all your favorite King books. What a cool guy.
MIDNIGHT DEVILS: cool pulp horror with icon Michael Berryman, a bunch hot foul-mouthed chicks, and a really slick monster. Two girls steal money from the wrong guys, and that’s the least of their worries. And then...there are the strippers...
PATIENT (2016) Alarmingly good occult pulp horror flick about a gal who used to hang out with the wrong folks and now she’s paying the piper. 95 percent of the movie takes place in a hospital room but it NEVER drags. Great acting, great FX, great production, and cool as sheiss plot devices. Not a single thing I can criticize about it.
VAMPIRE CLAY: A box of haunted clay winds up at a Japanese sculpture studio; the Japanese chicks who are students there find out the hard way where the clay came from and why they fugged up using it for their art projects. I don’t know, it sounds silly but there’s something fun about watching evil clay heads walk around and kill people.
THE NIGHT BEFORE HALLOWEEN: Perfect deadpan characters and PC-busting dialogue provide for the funniest movie I’ve seen all year. This came from out of nowhere; it’s rude, crude, non-linear, and knee-slappingly hilarious!
Rewatched the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Horror Perfection. The notes suggested it was strongly influenced by H.G. Lewis’ Gruesome Twosome, so I rewatched that too. It was a hopper full of dog crap 50 years ago when I first saw it in the drive-in, and it’s STILL a hopper full of dog crap. At least the potato-chip-eating/fruit-squashing scene was original. I read somewhere that Stephen King said Lewis’ Blood Feast was one of the worst flicks he’d ever seen. He must not have seen this!
FESTIVAL OF THE LIVING DEAD: I’m sick of zombie movies. Dozens per year for decades. Nine times out of ten, it’s just the same old crap. The only original zombie movie (excluding the voodoo precursors,) is, of course, Romero’s NOTLD. This flick is the coattail on which ALL OTHER ZOMBIE MOVIES hang. The only other original zombie movies, in my opinion, are Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things by Bob “Porky’s” Clark, and Messiah of Evil, directed by Willard Huyck (who is unfairly branded for the financial failure of Howard the Duck, but also cowrote American Graffiti, did a draft of Lucas’s Star Wars for no credit, and cowrote Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, a colossal success.) Most other zombie movies, in my opinion, are boring rehash. But now this, Festival of the Living Dead, by the infamous Soska Sisters. Is it rehash? Well, sort of, ‘cos it’s got garden variety zombies in it. But despite annoying Gen Z main characters who all think drugs are great and are such a-holes you can’t wait to see them die, it’s not same old thing due to the verve and reverence that the directors infuse into the property. This is Genre Love, for sure, and exacted with artistry. Not the same old thing but a veritable celebration of this eternal sub-genre of film. Hence, Edward Lee gives it a big Thumbs Up.
AT THE DEVIL’S DOOR: dense, intricate occult thriller, uniquely characterized. Perhaps a little too non-linear at times. A demonic agency is looking for new clothes to wear, and the director’s way of conveying the story is quite original. You only see the monster for a second, but that second is more than enough to muss up your brain.
BAGHEAD: 2nd winner in a row on Shudder. The old Thing In The Basement motif done better than I’ve seen in ages. Brit chick inherits a 400-year-old pub from her screwed up father and instead of the same old cliches, we get excellent twists and a very formidable “monster.”
EMILIE: Holy cannoli! There have been good evil babysitter movies and there have been bad but this one it the very best that I’ve seen. Literally an edge of your seat flick, and so unpleasant you’ll be clawing your thighs dreading what comes next. It’s rare that a movie’s power effects me this profoundly. Whoever directed this knows how to turn an audience inside out. The kids in this flick should get awards, and so should the babysitter. One of the most effective flicks I’ve seen in long time. My gut’s still churning.
DECAPITARIUM: Silly? Sure! Ridiculous? Without a doubt!
CRYSTAL LAKE: starts out a comedy then tried to be a thriller. Sassy college kids go to a cabin where Friday the 13th-type murders occurred. Not a very invigorating plot but some hugely funny dialogue in parts, cringingly politically incorrect. Great rapport amongst the characters, and a great cracker cop. Worth watching? I... The funny parts are VERY funny. Several night scenes were shot in broad daylight but they used a terrible day-to-night filter in the editor. In the first 3 minutes, one girl advises “You should just grab her by the p*ssy.” You don’t hear that everyday from a woman!
BYE BYE MAN: If you say his name or even think it, he comes to you with his pit bull from Hell. New paint on the old Bloody Mary canvas and very engaging and well done. Towards the end, a familiar actress appears, Oscar winner Faye Dunaway. How cool! She’s just as good as she was in Little Big Man!
BLOODY MUSCLE BODY BUILDER IN HELL: This Japanese howler is a must-see, an overt rip-off of Evil Dead. Says 1995 but looks more like 1980 to me, and shot with Super 8. It’s so bad it’s good, and I suspect that’s why Sam Raimi didn’t sue them; he was too busy laughing.
LAKE OF DEATH: Swedish, similar dense creepiness as another Swedish horror called Wither but not the same chunk-blower. Haunted lake, said to be bottomless. Very well done.
CITIZEN KANE: every year I rewatch this movie, and every year I am able to certify without reservation that it’s the greatest movie ever made. So immediately afterward, I decide to AMITYVILLE FRANKENSTEIN, which I can now can certify without reservation that it’s the WORST movie ever made. Holy moly!
SKULL: Shot in Brazil. Add a crooked female cop seeking redemption, a creepy incantation about the earth’s “bowels moving,” a mythological monster skull, then drop 10 tons of pork innards into a wood-chipper, and you get Skull, one of the greatest gorehouse flicks ever made. I can’t believe nobody ever mentions this movie in the discussion of great pulp horror movies.
THE SECT (1991) stylish dog-doo. Satanic hippies from America terrorize a teacher in...Frankfurt. Herbert Lom is great but then the next best actor in the movie is a white bunny rabbit. Proof that not everything with Argento’s name on it is great.
YOU’LL NEVER FIND ME: It’s about a sullen guy living a in a trailer...like me. Compelling atmosphere, great acting, and looked great but...not much payoff in the end.
SLAXX: The most original modern slasher in the genre? It just might be! No need for Freddy or Jason. A pair of haunted designer jeans do the job better. When your high-end clothing company has a logo that's an SS insignia, you know something is amiss. Great movie and a relevant subtext. Hilarious and expertly done with GREAT acting!
STOPMOTION: Claymation artist who makes creepy clay things starts to monkey with her materials. An astoundingly original film, and totally nightmarish. You’ll hear these things walking around at night. Expect to lose sleep!
ROADHOUSE: Contrived, Hollywoodized remake even more tropy than the original but, man! It’s so much fun to watch bad guys get their butts kicked! Jake Whatshisname was damn good.
Dialysis continues to go well. I read a lot and sleep. Got more minor skin cancers cut off me today. Somewhere in the VA there must be a pile of me somewhere, snow-man-sized. The little tiny needles with stick in you for the anesthetic hurt SO MUCH I bellow aloud and vocally hurl inventive curse-phrases, but the good doctor and her assistants only chuckle; they say they hear worse every single day. Last night I reread David Schow’s story whose title defies replication in that it’s not composed of words but a graffito that serves as the coat of arms for a gang of homeless screw-ups. It’s a magnificent piece about the state of our modern cities, and as important today as Leiber’s Smoke Ghost was in the ‘1940s. Also reread again Basil Copper’s Camera Obscura, one of the best pulp horror stories ever written. My collaborative film scripts Alien Pervert and Amityville Wet T-Shirt Contest remain healthily in progress, and I just started a new story called Lester. It’s about a giraffe! All I can say about it is this: Have you ever seen the TONGUE on a friggin’ giraffe? Everyone have a great week!
Best
EL
PS–here are my most recent movie reviews.
DAGR: Should be retitled CLUNKR. Incoherent found footage about two royal pain in the ass Social media chicks so bereft of lives that they run around and film themselves stealing stuff. They go to a mansion where an inconceivable tv commercial is being shot and, well, I guess Celtic ghosts cause turmoil that you don’t care about. I wasted five perfectly good dollars on this!
DEVIL’S DIARY (2007): I’m a sucker for any movie about ouija boards, seances, and evil books. This movie, pulp fare that it is, kicks butt. Misfit chick finds a grimoire that gives her the power to fug up all the a-hole bullies who mock her in high school, and lemme tell ya, those bullies go through the wringer. Ah, but then worse people get their hands on the grimoire, and that’s where the fun starts!
LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL: Outstanding flick about a 70's variety show that makes the demon inside a wacky possessed chick manifest itself on national TV. Very cool job and well worth the hype!
STEPHEN KING: A NECESSARY EVIL: In this doc, there’s more great footage of King talking his gig than probably all the other documentaries about him put together. It’s fascinating for any King junkie; the only bad thing about this project is it was too short. I wanted it to just keep going on, because with each minute, you learn more about King The Guy rather than King The Biggest Novelist of All Time. Nuggets of wisdom pour forth, which you cant help but consider when accessing all your favorite King books. What a cool guy.
MIDNIGHT DEVILS: cool pulp horror with icon Michael Berryman, a bunch hot foul-mouthed chicks, and a really slick monster. Two girls steal money from the wrong guys, and that’s the least of their worries. And then...there are the strippers...
PATIENT (2016) Alarmingly good occult pulp horror flick about a gal who used to hang out with the wrong folks and now she’s paying the piper. 95 percent of the movie takes place in a hospital room but it NEVER drags. Great acting, great FX, great production, and cool as sheiss plot devices. Not a single thing I can criticize about it.
VAMPIRE CLAY: A box of haunted clay winds up at a Japanese sculpture studio; the Japanese chicks who are students there find out the hard way where the clay came from and why they fugged up using it for their art projects. I don’t know, it sounds silly but there’s something fun about watching evil clay heads walk around and kill people.
THE NIGHT BEFORE HALLOWEEN: Perfect deadpan characters and PC-busting dialogue provide for the funniest movie I’ve seen all year. This came from out of nowhere; it’s rude, crude, non-linear, and knee-slappingly hilarious!
Rewatched the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Horror Perfection. The notes suggested it was strongly influenced by H.G. Lewis’ Gruesome Twosome, so I rewatched that too. It was a hopper full of dog crap 50 years ago when I first saw it in the drive-in, and it’s STILL a hopper full of dog crap. At least the potato-chip-eating/fruit-squashing scene was original. I read somewhere that Stephen King said Lewis’ Blood Feast was one of the worst flicks he’d ever seen. He must not have seen this!
FESTIVAL OF THE LIVING DEAD: I’m sick of zombie movies. Dozens per year for decades. Nine times out of ten, it’s just the same old crap. The only original zombie movie (excluding the voodoo precursors,) is, of course, Romero’s NOTLD. This flick is the coattail on which ALL OTHER ZOMBIE MOVIES hang. The only other original zombie movies, in my opinion, are Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things by Bob “Porky’s” Clark, and Messiah of Evil, directed by Willard Huyck (who is unfairly branded for the financial failure of Howard the Duck, but also cowrote American Graffiti, did a draft of Lucas’s Star Wars for no credit, and cowrote Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, a colossal success.) Most other zombie movies, in my opinion, are boring rehash. But now this, Festival of the Living Dead, by the infamous Soska Sisters. Is it rehash? Well, sort of, ‘cos it’s got garden variety zombies in it. But despite annoying Gen Z main characters who all think drugs are great and are such a-holes you can’t wait to see them die, it’s not same old thing due to the verve and reverence that the directors infuse into the property. This is Genre Love, for sure, and exacted with artistry. Not the same old thing but a veritable celebration of this eternal sub-genre of film. Hence, Edward Lee gives it a big Thumbs Up.
AT THE DEVIL’S DOOR: dense, intricate occult thriller, uniquely characterized. Perhaps a little too non-linear at times. A demonic agency is looking for new clothes to wear, and the director’s way of conveying the story is quite original. You only see the monster for a second, but that second is more than enough to muss up your brain.
BAGHEAD: 2nd winner in a row on Shudder. The old Thing In The Basement motif done better than I’ve seen in ages. Brit chick inherits a 400-year-old pub from her screwed up father and instead of the same old cliches, we get excellent twists and a very formidable “monster.”
EMILIE: Holy cannoli! There have been good evil babysitter movies and there have been bad but this one it the very best that I’ve seen. Literally an edge of your seat flick, and so unpleasant you’ll be clawing your thighs dreading what comes next. It’s rare that a movie’s power effects me this profoundly. Whoever directed this knows how to turn an audience inside out. The kids in this flick should get awards, and so should the babysitter. One of the most effective flicks I’ve seen in long time. My gut’s still churning.
DECAPITARIUM: Silly? Sure! Ridiculous? Without a doubt!
CRYSTAL LAKE: starts out a comedy then tried to be a thriller. Sassy college kids go to a cabin where Friday the 13th-type murders occurred. Not a very invigorating plot but some hugely funny dialogue in parts, cringingly politically incorrect. Great rapport amongst the characters, and a great cracker cop. Worth watching? I... The funny parts are VERY funny. Several night scenes were shot in broad daylight but they used a terrible day-to-night filter in the editor. In the first 3 minutes, one girl advises “You should just grab her by the p*ssy.” You don’t hear that everyday from a woman!
BYE BYE MAN: If you say his name or even think it, he comes to you with his pit bull from Hell. New paint on the old Bloody Mary canvas and very engaging and well done. Towards the end, a familiar actress appears, Oscar winner Faye Dunaway. How cool! She’s just as good as she was in Little Big Man!
BLOODY MUSCLE BODY BUILDER IN HELL: This Japanese howler is a must-see, an overt rip-off of Evil Dead. Says 1995 but looks more like 1980 to me, and shot with Super 8. It’s so bad it’s good, and I suspect that’s why Sam Raimi didn’t sue them; he was too busy laughing.
LAKE OF DEATH: Swedish, similar dense creepiness as another Swedish horror called Wither but not the same chunk-blower. Haunted lake, said to be bottomless. Very well done.
CITIZEN KANE: every year I rewatch this movie, and every year I am able to certify without reservation that it’s the greatest movie ever made. So immediately afterward, I decide to AMITYVILLE FRANKENSTEIN, which I can now can certify without reservation that it’s the WORST movie ever made. Holy moly!
SKULL: Shot in Brazil. Add a crooked female cop seeking redemption, a creepy incantation about the earth’s “bowels moving,” a mythological monster skull, then drop 10 tons of pork innards into a wood-chipper, and you get Skull, one of the greatest gorehouse flicks ever made. I can’t believe nobody ever mentions this movie in the discussion of great pulp horror movies.
THE SECT (1991) stylish dog-doo. Satanic hippies from America terrorize a teacher in...Frankfurt. Herbert Lom is great but then the next best actor in the movie is a white bunny rabbit. Proof that not everything with Argento’s name on it is great.
YOU’LL NEVER FIND ME: It’s about a sullen guy living a in a trailer...like me. Compelling atmosphere, great acting, and looked great but...not much payoff in the end.
SLAXX: The most original modern slasher in the genre? It just might be! No need for Freddy or Jason. A pair of haunted designer jeans do the job better. When your high-end clothing company has a logo that's an SS insignia, you know something is amiss. Great movie and a relevant subtext. Hilarious and expertly done with GREAT acting!
STOPMOTION: Claymation artist who makes creepy clay things starts to monkey with her materials. An astoundingly original film, and totally nightmarish. You’ll hear these things walking around at night. Expect to lose sleep!
ROADHOUSE: Contrived, Hollywoodized remake even more tropy than the original but, man! It’s so much fun to watch bad guys get their butts kicked! Jake Whatshisname was damn good.