Jon Hastings at The Forager takes a cue from my illustrated favorite horror-movie list and presents his own. It’s bigger (50!), it eschews the “horror” label to encompass scary movies that might not fit within the genre, and though he doesn’t come out and say it I think it’s even ranked in order of preference.
May I humbly suggest that if you enjoyed his or mine and have a blog, you post your own?
Read: Wolves of the Calla–“The Way of the Eld”; “Todash”
You could probably look at this section as an illustration of how bloat affects these books. During their palaver with the Calla’s representatives, and again during their todash journey to NYC77, each member of Roland’s ka-tet is given a sentence or two to ponder or comment upon nearly everything that’s said, done, or seen. Even the neutral narrator takes too long to get to the meat of the story, wasting time on unnecessary and uninteresting details. I’m not sure we needed to know that the plates Roland had Jake use to show off his targeting prowess were still greasy, you know? Normally I’d support that kind of attention to detail, but the book fairly groans under the weight of all that accumulated minutiae.
An abridged version might have cut to the chase, and given these chapters’ standout sections a little more space to shine. For those keeping track at home, those standouts included Roland’s todash flashback to the battle of Jericho Hill, the last stand of the gunslingers. In a thrilling “Charge of the Light Brigade”-type sequence, we learn how Roland’s pals Alain and Jamie De Curry bought it, we see Cuthbert take his fatal wounds and still insist on going down shooting and cracking jokes, and we get the pretty glorious image of Roland leading his surviving troops in a suicidal charge against the enemy (“the barbaric remnants of Farson’s forces” or something to that effect, implying that Flagg/Fannin/Farson/Marten/Walter/Man in Black/Dark Man/Good Man/Ageless Stranger/Walkin Dude/Wizard/Maerlyn/Legion/etc. had already buggered off, abandoning his followers now that the main work of destroying civilization had been accomplished) while screaming “NO PRISONERS! NO PRISONERS!” That’s pretty much the Roland I want to see.
The other highlight was the Calla residents’ description of what happens to the roont twins when they’re sent back by the Wolves. The most horrifying aspect is how the poor kids grow from child-size to over seven feet tall in the span of a year to a year and a half. The process, vividly described as like teething for their whole bodies, leaves them screaming and crying in near-constant agony, which their ruined brains can’t possibly process. Now, this is the kind of thing it might have been better to be shown rather than told during palaver, but aside from that it’s pretty nightmarish, one of the first genuinely horrific images these books have conjured up in a long time. It’s also a key to really appreciating Tian Jafford’s desperation, and to hating the Wolves something fierce. That should help sustain me through the fallow periods before we finally get to see Roland charging the bastards, screaming “NO PRISONERS! NO PRISONERS!”
I interviewed Bryan Lee O’Malley about his new book Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together (Volume Four in the Scott Pilgrim series) and you can find the results at Comic Book Resources. WIN!
(Pictured: What might have been.)
I don’t think Steven Wintle at The Horror Blog has gotten nearly enough attention for his series of mini-interviews called Scarred, in which horror notables from Anne Rice to Judith “They’re coming to get you, Barbara” O’Dea share their memories of some work of art or fiction that frightened them. So I’m doing my part.
Using a charmingly democratic process, Shoot the Projectionist has assembled its list of 31 Flicks That Give You the Willies, which is another way of saying the best horror movies of all time. Interestingly for a list assembled from the votes of film buffs and horror fans, it has a lot more in common with AOL/Moviefone’s general-audience countdown than it does with Richard Corliss’s showoffy Time list.
Read: Wolves of the Calla–“Overholser”
I didn’t read much and don’t have a whole lot to say about what I read, other than the more of the made-up lingo and speech patterns King gives us, the more I enjoy it. It comes so natural! Say thankya, I beg, if it do ya fine…I totally want to throw these onto the ends of all my sentences. This is actually quite an achievement on King’s part, because anyone who remembers reading Spider-Man 2099 as a high-schooler will tell you that invented dialect is just a “what the shock?” away from complete insufferability.
Aside from that I had two insights:
1) For a while now I’ve been giving myself a hard time for giving King such a hard time about this 19 business. You may not know this about me, but the use of the 23 enigma and the Law of Fives in The Illuminatus! Trilogy blew my goddamn mind and was a philosophical and even political touchstone of mine for years. It was also just plain entertaining as hell to read. Isn’t King just doing the same thing? The answer is no, because RAW and Shea didn’t just slap a number into their books out of nowhere–they dug up every conceivable iteration of 23 and 5 (and sometimes 17) in the real world, and used that as the springboard for their characters’ birthdays and the number of potential ways to immanentize the eschaton and so forth. Doing that is a far cry from being all “wow, this supporting characte’s’ name is 19 letters long!” as though you, the author, had nothing to do with that.
2) I want to finish these books so I can find out how it all plays out, but honestly I think I could read the wikipedia entries and find that perfectly satisfying in terms of the main reason I’m reading this series, which is to unearth the secrets behind King’s cosmology.
Comments seem to be working even on old posts now, so go ahead and put in your two cents. Woo!
Read: Wolves of the Calla–“Mia”; “Palaver”
Wow, November. I’m starting to feel like Roland. Who apparently has been at this whole “quest for the Dark Tower” thing for 1,000 years, which is lame because it busts the scale of his journey wide open and spills his mortality all over the floor. It’s fine that time is wonky, but you still need to place your hero’s life against the backdrop of a finite span of years or else his quest loses any sense of urgency. I’m certainly not the first person to point out that immortality has this effect. I know Roland’s not really immortal, but same difference.
Also in the “oh brother” category for this section: yet another obnoxious split personality for Susannah, although at least this one has the decency to slither around naked and covered in mud while eating small animals alive; the revelation that Roland and Company’s Fistful of Dollars reenactment in the Calla will be interspersed with thrilling New York City real-estate acquisition action in the Mighty Maine-Man Manner; and oodles of self-congratulatory there’s-no-such-thing-as-a-coincidence synchronicity. While the first two faults are probably more troubling in the long run because they indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of what is interesting about these books on the part of their author, it’s the third that irritates the most at the moment. Look, it’s really not that impressive that the number 19 keeps popping up–Stephen, you’re the one making that happen. Shit, you re-released the previous four books in large part so you could slap that number after the table of contents. Same thing with the name of the big-shot farmer in the Calla being the same as a Western author the bookstore owner mentioned to Jake two books back–Stephen, you named the character that! It’s all so transparently forced; none of it creeps up on you from between the cracks in the text like these sorts of mystical coincidences are supposed to do.
I remember the first time I read a book and realized not just that I didn’t like it, but that it was poorly written. It was a Kevin J. Anderson Star Wars novel in which Luke or whoever really needed to find potential Jedi to train. Any guesses as to whether an amazing ancient Jedi-detector device gets found within a few chapters? Home runs are a lot less impressive if they’re clearly the result of tee-ball.
How’s this for a treat–don’t quote me on this, but I think my comments are working again!
(At least for new posts. It LOOKS like you can comment on old ones, but you can’t. Still, good enough, right?)
1. 28 Days Later
2. 28 Weeks Later
3. Aliens
4. Barton Fink
5. The Birds
6. The Blair Witch Project
7. Body Double
8. Dahmer
9. Dawn of the Dead (1978)
10. Dawn of the Dead (2004)
11. Deliverance
12. Della’morte Dell’amore (Cemetery Man)
13. The Descent
14. Eraserhead
15. The Exorcist
16. Eyes Wide Shut
17. Heavenly Creatures
18. Hellbound: Hellraiser II
19. Hellraiser
20. Hostel
21. Jeepers Creepers
22. Lost Highway
23. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
24. Nightbreed
25. Psycho (1960)
26. The Ring
27. Rosemary’s Baby
28. The Shining (1980)
29. Shivers
30. The Silence of the Lambs
31. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
32. The Thing (1983)
33. The Village
34. War of the Worlds (2005)
35. The Wicker Man (1973)
Watch one tonight! Happy Halloween!
AOL/Moviefone has finished up its countdown of the 31 Best Horror Movies of All Time (click the link for the whole shebang). Unlike that goofy Time/Richard Corliss list, this one’s very, very solid. There are a lot fewer surprises (maybe some in where the selections are ranked, but not in the selections themselves)–and that’s good! If you’re honestly trying to come up with a list of the 31 greatest horror films of all time, rather than just run down your own favorites or impress people with your catholic tastes, the list should be full of the standards. Indeed, most of the selections here that did make me say “huh!” are ones that mainstream audiences still thrill to but we horror cognoscenti largely ignore (Scream, say, or The Sixth Sense), and most of the ranking decisions that took me aback were in the same vein (the high placement of the initial Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th installments, for example, the latter complete with an anachronistic hockey-mask-Jason photo, the lists’s one big misstep). It was also satisfying, and comparatively bold when you look at Corliss’ list, to see a film as recent as The Descent make the grade. Well done.
Happy Halloween!
Read: Wolves of the Calla–“Prologue: Roont”; “The Face on the Water”; “New York Groove”
I wouldn’t call what King’s doing in these opening sections subtle–repeating certain unexplained phrases regarding life in the Calla over and over so we make sure to catch that there’s a mystery behind them, giving Father Callahan from ‘Salem’s Lot an entrance as big as a Ray Harryhausen monster, brewing up a nice hot glass of instant 19 numerology (just add incessant repetition!), even indulging in a conversation between Roland’s ka-tet about mixed-genre storytelling in which the gunslinger all but turns and winks at the audience. King’s not so much guiding the reader as riding herd.
But while it may not be subtle, it’s definitely intriguing. Years of toiling away in comics criticism have taught me that I should have nothing but contempt for those “hey, look, it’s a character I’m already familiar with!” reveals, but even though I knew it was coming eventually I was still thrilled by Father Callahan’s appearance here in Roland’s world. (Shouldn’t he be a vampire by now, though?) I mean, those kinds of continuity-porn moments are a big part of the Dark Tower-verse’s structure, so it would be churlish to deny myself the pleasure of them because Green Lantern is inaccessible to new readers.
The set-up in this little farming village hooked me, too. It was smart of King to root the prologue in this farmer character Tian. He’s not super-bright (though apparently he’s Mensa material compared to the Calla’s other residents, not even counting the “roont” ones), he’s not super-nice; in fact, he comes across as a bit of a jerk. But that makes his rage against the raiders who loot his twin-heavy town of half their children every generation, then send them back as retarded giants, all the more convincing. If there was any way at all he could stand to take the easier way out of the situation, we know he’d do it. No such luck. He’s as mad as hell and he’s not going to take this anymore.
This leads to the most spaghetti-Western twist in the series so far: the townsfolk, led by Tian and Father Callahan, are going to hire Roland and his band of gunslingers to defend against the raiding Wolves. I for one would love to see the book serve up a straightforward, lead-slinging Western action-adventure, maybe with the occasional robot or vampire thrown in for good measure. I don’t think that’s what I’m going to get–the book’s size, that dopey number 19, and the return of the central-casting mobsters from The Drawing of the Three during Jake, Eddie, and Oy’s interdimensional sojourn back to New York indicate otherwise–but there will be water if God wills it.
I became a vegetarian two years ago, and I’m married to a vegan recovering anorexic who initially became a vegetarian because of upsetting scenes in the horror movies Wolf and Jurassic Park. Naturally, I’ve picked up on the relationship between horror and carnivorousness. (You might have noticed this in my “state of the beast” posts, among others.)
A pair of noteworthy posts elsewhere make this case. First up is David Carter of Not Coming to a Theater Near You on PeTA’s Chew on This: 30 Reasons to Go Vegetarian, which views the animal rights organization’s bloody documentary on the treatment of animals by the meat industry through a horror lens.
Meanwhile, Lindy Loo of Yeah, That “Vegan” Shit (and, not coincidentally, horror blog Come Play with Us, Danny…) examines the anti-meat implications of arguably the meat-movie (rimshot!) masterpieces, The Texas Chain Saw Massacare and Hostel–and Motel Hell for good measure.
The Onion AV Club has posted two lengthy, boffo pieces on horror in time for Halloween. First is Noel Murray’s film-by-film overview of the Friday the 13th franchise, with special attention paid to the ways each film is a creature of its era. Lately I’ve been almost preoccupied with how gratuitous violence works in a movie, so this is like crack to me. Highly recommended.
Next is an imaginary 24-hour horror movie marathon curated by Eli Roth. Listening to Roth repeatedly place himself in the company of the likes of John Carpenter and Sam Raimi indicates just how much the guy believes his own press at this point. Actually, perhaps “believes the press he thinks he should have” is a more accurate way of putting things post-Hostel: Part II. But that aside, he’s made many interesting choices from a range of eras and styles, and has some intriguing things to say about them, from their influence on his own work (which only feels like he’s paying himself a compliment some of the time, and frequently yields insights like his characterization of the second half of Hostel as driven by a Vanishing-derived compulsion to know) to an almost elegiac appreciation for the kinds of horror films that could never get made today (the original Wicker Man, for example). Also highly recommended, and with the hope that he eats some humble pie and finds his way again.
Watching the film once again, Romero’s carefully calculated deconstructions on social woes of the time seem most brilliant in their simultaneously identifying the film as a distinctly American work rooted in the cultural anarchy of the 1970’s as well as one packed with universal truths on the human condition, borders of time and place notwithstanding. The former packs the greatest punch in the third-act war between the main protagonists holed up in their shopping mall fortress and the military convoy that overruns them (bringing the zombie population flooding back in), stealthily evoking not simply the tensions between pacifist movements and more aggressive social orders of the time, but any scenario in which men turn on each other in the face of greater disorder (in other words, look at any historical timeline and pick your example of choice)….In a prolonged television debate meant to inform viewers on how to handle the crisis at hand, a lone scientist stresses the importance of exterminating the dead “without emotion.” How fitting, then, that the soldiers who underestimate the zombies – treating them more like disposable hunting targets worthy of ridicule than a lethal force to be reckoned with – are generally those who find themselves being torn limb from limb.
—Rob Humanick on Dawn of the Dead.
I feel like I pick on another one of Humanick’s zombie-blogathon posts every day, but the people who overrun the mall simply aren’t soldiers in a military convoy–they’re a biker gang. Meanwhile, the people who supposedly represent “pacifist movements” in this formulation include two SWAT cops.
Time Magazine has posted its list of the Top 25 Horror Movies of all time, by critic Richard Corliss. It’s pretty ridiculous. Red Dragon? It includes a lot of films that are fondly remembered but not in serious contention for the canon–Dead Alive, Black Sunday, freaking Blood Feast. And then there are the countless omissions–obviously these things are subjective, but the absence of The Shining, The Blair Witch Project, Dawn of the Dead, and Rosemary’s Baby seems particularly glaring, and that’s before we get into more tenuous or debatable territory like The Sixth Sense, The Ring, Hellraiser, Evil Dead 2, Henry, Suspiria, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Hostel, 28 Days Later, etc. And again, The Silence of the Lambs doesn’t make the cut but Red Dragon does. Finally, the too-clever-by-half non-horror selections are pretty preposterous–Bambi? Arrival of a Train? I understand what they’re saying, but those films aren’t horror films, they’re movies that had parts that scared people. The flying monkeys scared the shit out of every little kid in America but The Wizard of Oz is not a horror movie.
Lists like this one really make me question the value of listmaking as part of the critical enterprise, because the “hey, it started a conversation” thing is only worthwhile if the conversation doesn’t muddy the waters and force knowledgeable people to spend valuable time smacking down stupidity. This goes double when the list is presented not as one dude’s opinion but by a publication that presumes authority on all topics about which it speaks.
Read: Wolves of the Calla–The Final Argument
Another book, another infodump of stuff that had never been revealed in the actual story. The magical crystal balls are called Bends o’ the Rainbow. The guy who accidentally ran Jake over when he was pushed into the street by Jack Mort, who’s now called “Walter’s representative on the New York level of the Dark Tower,” was mafia don Enrico Balazar. The Turtle’s name is Maturin. Roland is the last seppe-sai (“death-seller”). Books Two, Three, and Four are subtitled “Renewal,” “Redemption,” and “Regard” to match Book One’s “Resumption” and this volume’s “Resistance.”
And yet King still can’t bring himself to make it clear that Walter is the same person as Marten Broadcloack/Richard Fannin/Randall Flagg/John Farson/The Good Man/The Walkin Dude, just in disguise. At the beginning of the Argument he even appears to use the names “Walter” and “Marten” interchangeably, with no explanation as to who this “Marten” character might be.
Also, the letter R is not the 19th letter of the alphabet. Come on, man.
Bruce Baugh sings the praises of Children of Men and 28 Weeks Later, my two favorite films of the past year and harrowing post-apocalyptic narratives both. Interestingly, he cites Children of Men‘s long-take action and suspense sequences, singled out by many critics as a case of ostentatious filmmaking getting in the way of emotional immediacy, as doing precisely the opposite–recreating the emotional endlessness of traumatic moments in filmic terms. That feels right to me.
I think criticism of the technique used in those set pieces bespeaks a certain conservatism among film critics in its implicit belief that movies use the stuff of moviemaking at the expense of emotional resonance.
I’m linking to Tom Spurgeon’s post in praise of the current state of comics because I think it’s at least as important to read as the recent complaints about same by Craig Yoe and Frank Santoro and Heidi MacDonald. Hell, I was going to write something along the lines of Tom’s post (particularly the “Craft and Story Are Valued as Never Before” section) myself, but my version would have come out something like “if you are interested in and knowledgeable about comics enough to write about them but still think they’re in dire artistic straits right now, WHAT THE HELL????” so I didn’t.
Brian Ralph presents the Zombie Hall of Fame, parts one and two.
There’s more at the links, but not enough, goddammit. I want to see Flyboy, Bub, Big Daddy, the priest from 28 Weeks Later, the little girl from the Dawn remake, the mom from Dead Alive…and then I want to pay money to own these things, so Brian, if you’re listening, let’s make this happen.
Troma is selling its Hell’s Kitchen walk-up and moving to Long Island City due to financial woes. I spent a summer in that building, and I have, well, let’s call them vivid memories of the place. In a way I feel like the McDonald’s next door that Lloyd Kaufman has blamed for Troma’s rat problem in every interview he’s done for the last decade has won some sort of titanic struggle for the soul of that block.