Books

BURNT OFFERINGS (1976)

December 27, 2021

(VOD) I happened to read Robert Marasco’s 1973 horror novel BURNT OFFERINGS a few years ago, a properly enigmatic ‘house possesses and feeds off of its guests’ work, focused more on male/paternal/provider anxieties that hasn’t necessarily aged as well as one would hope, but it’s an intriguing enough qualified read.

I had absolutely no idea that, not only had it been adapted into a feature film in 1976, but that it has a surprising roster that features Oliver Reed as Ben, the father who drags his family to a spacious, yet dilapidated, summer house for vacation, Karen Black as Marian, his wife, Bette Davis as Aunt Elizabeth, as well as Burgess Meredith and Eileen Heckart as the brother and sister renting the house to the family.

As you might suspect based on the roll call, what ends up on the screen is an eclectic oil-and-water mix of performances: Reed brings an old-school stiffness that occasionally balloons to an overly grandiose show; Karen Black plays it a bit more naturalistic, bringing a haunted quality to the film, and Bette Davis gleefully leans into the creep factor of the aunt’s ailing body. Only Meredith and Heckart bring a playful vibe to the film, but it helps that they’re both on-screen for less than ten minutes.

While the film mostly hews close to the novel’s original tale, which primarily consists of putting the family’s young son David (Lee Montgomery) through the physical and psychological wringer, it deviates in two important ways. First, director Dan Curtis inserted a bit of back story for Ben where he keeps seeing a pale, grinning chauffeur, first at his mother’s funeral. Allegedly, this was a bit of dream-inspiration on Curtis’ part, but it slots into the adaptation quite well. Second, the end is significantly more close-ended and shocking than the source material but, again, it suits the work.

Tonally, the film is far more interesting, if not occasionally maddening, especially given how it contrasts against similar horror films of the time. It’s not quite a throwback, but it doesn’t quite embrace the evolving style and leniency of 70s horror.

Warning: the trailer pulls no punches and spoils some of the biggest moments of the film.

THE DEVIL FINDS WORK (1976)

December 18, 2021

As someone who attended film school explicitly for film criticism and analysis (before I realized ‘oh I’ve made a huge mistake I love this but this is not a viable career’ and changed minors), and as someone who has followed longform film criticism since then, despite all of that, I had no idea that James Baldwin had penned this three-part essay on being Black and watching and disseminating American film via films from the silent era (you know Baldwin has a lot to say about THE BIRTH OF A NATION), the 30s (including Fritz Lang’s YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE and William Wyler’s DEAD END) to the 60s (IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA) to the 70s with THE EXORCIST.

Everyone knows that Baldwin was an amazing essayist, but with THE DEVIL FINDS WORK, he’s exceptional at interweaving his personal life, the films he’s examining, and the American cultural climate in an effortlessly gorgeous manner. This essay is certainly necessary reading for any writer, doubly so for anyone writing about media.

Again, while I’m frustrated I didn’t read it in my youth along with Chicago’s own Jonathan Rosenbaum, Kracauer’s FROM CALIGARI TO HITLER, and Lotte Eisner’s THE HAUNTED SCREEN, reading it now as someone who is familiar with many of the texts and films he references and examines — as opposed to myself as a blinkered teen who was largely unfamiliar with most of the works he discusses — makes me appreciate it in a way I doubt I would have then.

You can buy it, and many other amazing books that disseminate media, at the illustrious critic Matt Zoller Seitz’s personal storefront:

https://mzs.press/The-Devil-Finds-Work-Paperback-NEW-p580788363

NIGHTBITCH (2021)

December 10, 2021

I blindly bought NIGHTBITCH, Rachel Yoder’s debut novel, knowing only that it sounded like a maternal, early-middle-aged version of the teen girl werewolf-as-puberty film GINGER SNAPS: the struggles of a woman trying to reconcile her life as a stay-at-home mom tending to her toddler son, having abandoned her artist life and career, her loving-but-simple engineer husband bringing home the bacon, while also thinking she is turning into a werewolf.

While GINGER SNAPS leans on filmic horror conventions and tropes, NIGHTBITCH relies more on dark literary fairytales and lore and mystery, but they both get to the same place: underscoring and subverting what is perceived to be a woman’s place in society, of suburban ennui, of letting loose a howl, of diving into the dirt and grime, to take yourself off of this cultural leash and not give a shit about the repercussions.

NIGHTBITCH is singularly focused on interiority. The mother, the son, and the father are never explicitly named (although the mother does eventually refer to herself in her head as Nightbitch), and dialogue blurs into internal thoughts. The bulk of the novel is the mother examining and evaluating her life in the here-and-now and is thrilling and leaves you wondering what this is leading up to, which utterly flummoxed me while I was reading it, but I was delighted as to where it ended up. Nightbitch goes through one hell of a journey and, while it’s not nearly the horrific transformation tale I expected to read, it is a very satisfying one.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/665285/nightbitch-by-rachel-yoder/

THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP (2021)

November 7, 2021

There aren’t many genres I actively dislike, but the slasher genre is one of them. Sure, I’ve read and watched more of them than the average person — even recommended a few (FINAL DESTINATION 2 in particular) — but I often treat slasher pieces like homework, that they’re often cruel and misogynistic, and am always pleasantly surprised when they turn out to be intelligent and have something to say (e.g. SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE (1982 — I haven’t had a chance to check out the reboot yet) and WES CRAVEN’S NEW NIGHTMARE).

Near the end of October, I was running out of horror novels to read, and the feminist bookstore down the block predictably didn’t stock much in the way of horror, and most of what they had on the shelf I’d already read except for one book: Grady Hendrix’s THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP. I hemmed and hawed about a dude writing a horror novel about women, violence, and trauma, but looked at the back and all of the blurbs were from women authors who I am big fans of, so I decided to give it a chance. (For what it’s worth, I didn’t realize until later that my wife had previously gifted me a copy of PAPERBACKS FROM HELL, which he also penned, earlier this year.)

THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP takes place in an alternate ~2010 universe that asks the question: what if all of the slasher film franchises we know — HALLOWEEN, FRIDAY THE 13th, SCREAM, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, etc. were based on real-life events, and the final girls were real, and 20-30 years after the fact, after their film franchises have faded, how would they be coping, and how would their lives turn out? Well, they are in a therapy group to chew over their experiences, and have been for quite some time.

That said, some of them are doing worse than others, and that goes from bad to worse once it’s apparent that someone is murderously chasing after all of them. Again.

In the wrong hands, this novel could have been schlocky, insensitive garbage but, instead, it’s a surprisingly sensitive portrayal of living with trauma and fear. While Hendrix is lifting a lot from prior sources, he doesn’t revel in it, there’s not a lot of winking — it’s more along the lines of ‘oh, I see what you did there’ — and he makes the characters distinct, separate and often more interesting than the composites he is working from.

It’s also thrillingly plotted, with deft feints and twists and turns. In other words, it’s the total package.

I was initially attracted to horror when I realized that it could be more than sensationalism, when it also served as a way to highlight matters of humanity — especially emotional matters — that many refuse to acknowledge or publicly discuss. THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP goes above and beyond that, and is a surprisingly brilliant example of what the genre is capable of.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/658406/the-final-girl-support-group-by-grady-hendrix/

LAURA’S GHOST: WOMEN SPEAK ABOUT TWIN PEAKS (2020)

October 26, 2021

The crux of TWIN PEAKS is Laura Palmer’s death, a death due to a family and town that let her down, that turned a blind eye, that didn’t reach out. LAURA’S GHOST: WOMEN SPEAK ABOUT TWIN PEAKS is a collection of essays and interviews about women who have worked on, or been affected or influenced by TWIN PEAKS, conceptualized by, interviewed by, and collected by Courtenay Stallings.

It’s primarily focused on the film prequel, TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME, as well as Jennifer Lynch’s gut-punch of a novel THE SECRET DIARY OF LAURA PALMER (which created the foundation that would become TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME), but there’s plenty of discussion about the original series, as well as TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN.

While it does feature interviews and discussions with Sheryl Lee, Jennifer Lynch, Grace Zabriskie, and Sabrina S. Sutherland (Lynch’s “right-hand woman”, to use Stalling’s own words), the bulk of the book is focused on those involved in the fandom of TWIN PEAKS. Not all of the interviews are about relating to Laura’s sexual abuse and incest, but several women certainly do share their experiences, and most interviews and pieces note how Laura helped them process their own trauma and abuse. Especially noteworthy is film essayist Willow Catelyn Maclay’s piece, NORTHERN STAR but they’re all worth your time.

It’s a fantastic and insightful collected work that may change how you perceive the series, or may have you nodding your head and commiserating over shared trauma, or perhaps both.

I highly suggest purchasing it via media writer Matt Zoller Seitz’s online bookstore. He’s a fantastic booster of intelligent, non-CIS-white dude pieces on film and TV — I wouldn’t have heard about this book if it weren’t for him — plus, you get a signed copy.

https://mzsworldstore.com/collections/signed-items/products/lauras-ghost-women-speak-about-twin-peaks-paperback-signed-by-courtney-stallings

THE SUMMER PEOPLE (1950)

October 13, 2021

I consider myself more familiar with Shirley Jackson than most authors. I’ve read the majority of her works, including many short stories, as well as Ruth Franklin’s biography A RATHER HAUNTED LIFE (2016), and I previously wrote about THE HAUNTING (1969) and have a conflicted relationship with Josephine Decker’s SHIRLEY (2020), and don’t get me started on Mike Flanagan’s THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE (2018).

I attended a screening of the currently unavailable OFFSEASON (2021) — I believe it’ll be available via Shudder/VOD next year, but I felt it’d be dumb to recommend something no one can see — and the director (Mickey Keating, who I know best from DARLING (2015)) was in attendance and discussed the influences which were mostly obvious in a good way: SILENT HILL 2 (the game, not the film), THE FOG (1980), but he also name-checked Shirley Jackson’s THE SUMMER PEOPLE, which I’d never heard of.

For reasons I’m unaware of, Jackson’s short stories — many of which were published in long-gone magazines — have been frustratingly difficult to track down until relatively recently. This is speculation on my behalf, but the bulk of SHIRLEY — the fictionalized version of Shirley Jackson’s life that Decker adapted from Susan Scarf Merrell’s novel is seemingly built on the back of Jackson’s short THE MISSING GIRL, which was mostly unknown and out-of-print until 2018. Anyway, THE SUMMER PEOPLE was recently released as part of a new-ish Jackson short-story collection: DARK TALES (2017), with an intro from Ottessa Moshfegh (one of my favs: see DEATH IN HER HANDS (2020) and MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION (2018))

THE SUMMER PEOPLE is short, but very effective. It’s a rather quintessential ‘New England outsider’ take — as a number of her works are — but so expertly drawn, and ends on such a fraught and enigmatic note that I couldn’t help but love it, and certainly couldn’t fault Mickey Keating for leaning on it. Like all of Jackson’s shorts, it’s so economical and builds so well, it feels as rich and riveting as several hundred pages.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/558130/dark-tales-by-shirley-jackson-foreword-by-ottessa-moshfegh/

THE TOLL (2017)

October 8, 2021

I mostly know of Cherie Priest as a steampunk novelist, but THE TOLL is one wild, southern gothic weird fiction tale. It kicks off with newlyweds Titus and Melanie driving to honeymoon in the Okenfenokee Swamp. They drive over a bridge and then Titus wakes up, prone, outside his car. Melanie is nowhere to be found. He ventures to the nearest town, Staywater, for help, and matters only get stranger.

Priest peppers her characters with plenty of verve, especially two older sisters who happen to be two extremely badass geriatric witches. If you scrutinize the events and actions, it doesn’t exactly hang together, and the conclusion might feel a tad unsatisfying depending on what you expect, but the journey is a damn rip-roaring time.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765378231

THE SILENT COMPANIONS (2018)

October 2, 2021

Upon reading the first chapter of Laura Purcell’s THE SILENT COMPANIONS and the detailing of recently-widowed woman greeting a looming Victorian estate that resided in the middle of nowhere, I was a tad worried that it was yet another architectural horror work, of which I am a tad burned out on at the moment.

As I read on, I discovered that THE SILENT COMPANIONS is more of a ‘haunted object/grounds’ work, centered around a litany of hand-carved, hand-painted wooden depictions of youths and adults alike that evoked a certain Victorian ‘uncanny valley’, pieces named ‘silent companions’.

I digress — let us get back to the recently-widowed woman. Said widower is Elsie, a woman in her mid-20s who grew up working in her father’s match factory, and has the flame-scarred hands to prove it, as she burned them trying to put out a fire and, as her father went to rescue her, he fell into a sawmill, and that was the end of him. Her mother died shortly after, leaving her to take care of her younger brother Jolyon, and the two inherited the match factory.

Later, three investors come by, sniffing around to purchase the now-ailing factory. Both Elsie and Jolyon sit down with these three men, two object to Elsie’s inclusion, and her willfulness drives all but the third off, a Mr. Rupert Bainbridge. He invests in the factory, saving it, and weds Elsie — elevating her social status.

Elsie ends up marrying Rupert, and is elated to be marrying above her station, to live in London, waited on by staff and wearing finery. She discovers she’s pregnant, and Rupert sets off to their rural estate to make it fit for the three of them to live in but, sadly, he dies shortly after. Cue Elsie’s trip to estate.

What follows is a tightly interwoven generational tales about the house, the silent companions purchased by prior ancestors that haunt the estate, and flashforwards to Elsie in an asylum.

It is a lot, but it is measuredly spooled out and, while it doesn’t quite hang together at the end, it’s a thrilling read. The standout part of the novel itself is Elsie herself, who is a fascinatingly prickly woman, one who managed to rise above her station in hopes for greater comforts, then spends the bulk of her internal monologuing at the Bainbridge estate grousing about the lack of manners and fashion codes of her aides and staff. Well worth reading, especially if you are a Sarah Waters fan.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/554573/the-silent-companions-by-laura-purcell/

THE ARCHITECTURE OF FEAR (1987)

September 26, 2021

THE ARCHITECTURE OF FEAR — edited by Kathryn Cramer and Peter Pautz — is a very specific horror short-story anthology concerning architectural horror, horror that’s centered around interior structures. Take Shirley Jackson’s works, which are all classic horror texts that utilize houses in a multi-faceted way: from the looming paranormal events in THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE to the decay of the protagonists’ house in WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE, they’re pieces where the manufactured space factor heavily into the story.

I was worried that it’d simply be back-to-back haunted house pieces, which I’m not a huge fan of, but the anthology is richer than that. The short stories range the gamut from fairy tales (Gene Wolfe’s IN THE HOUSE OF GINGERBREAD) to meditations on barroom masculinity (John Skipp and Craig Spector’s GENTLEMEN), then leaping to chewing over forbidden, abandoned spaces (naturally, Joyce Carol Oates’ HAUNTING), then mulls over a funeral home worker dealing with the presentation of a corpse (Michael Bishop’s IN THE MEMORY ROOM).

It’s a surprisingly eclectic and substantial collection, and definitely one of the best horror anthologies I’ve read since the iconic BORDERLANDS anthologies. (Fun fact: THE ARCHITECTURE OF FEAR pre-dates them, and the BORDERLANDS anthologies are currently being re-issued! Sadly, not re-issued with the original Dave McKean cover art.)

Practically every story is memorable, but my favorites (including the previously mentioned shorts) were Scott Baker’s NESTING INSTINCT, which captures the odd feeling of settling into a foreign abode, and Jessica Amanda Salmonson’s THE HOUSE THAT KNEW NO HATE, which closes out the anthology, and subverts a lot of haunted house tropes. It reminded me a bit of the classic film THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE.)

Cramer & Pautz really swung for the fences with this anthology, and it shows with their respective afterword and foreward. This is an anthology that takes horror seriously, and gives the reader an exceptional collection of works that, while framed around interior spaces, encompasses a broader area of humanity.

AGENTS OF DREAMLAND (2017)

September 24, 2021

I first read Caitlín R. Kiernan via their excellent weird fiction tale THE RED TREE, and recently read praise for their novella AGENTS OF DREAMLAND, the first in a Lovecraftian/SCP Foundation-adjacent trilogy called TINFOIL DOSSIER. Upon finishing it, I was impressed by how stylistically it differs from THE RED TREE, and how ornate it is while being immensely agreeable. The novella consists of multiple point-of-views regarding a mysteriously horrific incident that involves a cultish leader.

While AGENTS OF DREAMLAND intriguingly sets up the crisis and builds out the agency investigating the issue, it’s slightly disappointing that it’s ultimately a prologue, and fizzles well before the end. While I’m excited to read the rest of the trilogy — the last in the series was published in 2020 — DREAMLAND doesn’t quite satisfy as an individual work. I will fully grant that I should not expect it to — while I haven’t read the other two books, I believe it functions exactly as Kiernan intended — however, when I initially tucked into it I didn’t quite realize that was the goal, and felt slightly disappointed with the conclusion.

To riff on the ‘it’s not a season of TV, it’s a 12-hour movie’ sentiment, the TINFOIL DOSSIER series is not so much three novellas, but a three-part novel.