Hey, look at that–I finally picked a title for my horror linkblogging posts! It was right in front of my nose all along, don’t you think?
The other day I mentioned how much I love a good (or, really, even a bad) water monster. (Catching the episode of MythBusters where the guys debunk nearly every major plot point and set piece in Jaws this weekend did nothing to lessen this love, by the way.) Inspired by that post, I spent a little time surfing Cryptozoology.com for watery cryptids like the sucuriju, the mokele-mbembe, and the strange creatures of Lake Iliamna in Alaska, about which I’d never heard before. (Interestingly, the theory in this particular lake-creature case is the same one advanced in Loch Ness these days, as I mentioned the other day–large, lake-locked sturgeon. And oh, hey, I took a trip to Loch Ness and wrote about it a couple years back, if you’re curious.)
And while on Cryptozoology.com, I came across a link to Leviathan: The World Serpent Revealed. The link loudly noted that “this site is fictional,” but more than five minutes reading the tall tale contained therein would have been sufficient to reveal that; the nature of the sea monster described in this particular bit of web fiction is simply too far beyond belief to maintain the illusion that what you’re seeing is true. But I think that’s what makes the site so interesting, and well worth a thorough visit–this fellow clearly could have concocted this fiction in a more persuasive fashion, but apparently the aspects of this particular monster that fascinated him were beyond the realm of believability, and admirably, he didn’t let that stop him. There are several moments of fine descriptive prose to be found here, but the real highlight? Using an “infinite canvas” model of Web art at which Scott McCloud himself would nod approvingly, this “size comparison” plays upon basic fears of heights, depths, the sea, snakes, and simple enormity so effectively that it gives me the freaking chills regardless of how self-evidently unreal it is.
A little more sniffing around the BigWetOcean.com domain at which Leviathan rests revealed this creepy untitled short story about a very different kind of ocean-based horror. Again, plausibility is not a strong suit of the piece–the first-person narration simply doesn’t make sense as constructed–but the central image is genuinely compelling, an echo of one of the more overlooked aspects of the horror of The Blair Witch Project, actually. Assuming author M.K. Davis is responsible for the Leviathan site as well, he’s a voice worth keeping an eye on. (Can you keep an eye on a voice? Ah well.)
Next up: Bringing more worth-reading insight to the situation than I can muster at the moment, Jog at Jog the Blog brings our attention to a bit of back-and-forth between the makers of the self-proclaimed exploitation flick Chaos and critic Roger Ebert, who hated, hated, hated the movie. If you start with Jog’s piece, then read Ebert’s review of the movie, then read the filmmakers’ response to the review and Ebert’s response to the response, you’ll pretty much be caught up. The long and the short of it is that Chaos is apparently an incredibly cruel, misogynistic, violent, and nihilistic movie whose debt to Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left is comparable to that which Bono has encouraged the G8 to drop; Ebert objects to the film on both counts, and the filmmakers retort that they’re only a reflection of The Way Things Really Are. Jog says most of what I’d say on the subject (which probably wouldn’t be that much, seeing as I haven’t seen Chaos or (this makes me a bad horror fan) the Last House on the Left, or even Virgin Spring for that matter), placing special emphasis on the fact that the movie’s apparently brazen theft from Craven’s earlier film (right down to the promo posters) makes their claims re: Chaos‘s Redeeming Social and Artistic Value a lot harder to swallow. I’ve said quite a bit on where I draw my particular line in terms of cruel, misogynistic, violent, nihilistic films in the past, though: Basically, this is one side of that line, while this is the other.
Another one bites the dust? Not quite. Though it seems like more horrorblogs are on hiatus than not these days, Steven at Corpse Eaters explains that while his blogging has been comparatively light of late, that was his plan all along, pretty much. He’ll be posting once a week, and I definitely recommend visiting his site at least that often.
Finally, in not-quite-horror news, I’ve got a review of cartoonist Paul Hornschemeier’s Forlorn Funnies #5 in this week’s issue of The Comics Journal. There there be monsters…