Category Archives: Horror

The Curator of Schlock #307: The Brood

24 Friday Jan 2020

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The Curator of Schlock #307 by Jeff Shuster

The Brood

Seriously, what is wrong with David Cronenberg?

Criterion DVDs are weird. They have weird special features. On my DVD for David Cronenberg’s The Brood, we have an interview with Oliver Reed on The Merv Griffin Show from 1980. Other guests include Orson Welles and, naturally, Charo. I’m terrified because Oliver Reed starts taking jabs at Welles and I’m expecting the whole affair to get bloody, with Merv Griffin getting set on fire at some point, but Reed spends much of the interview talking about his love of American hamburgers and eventually praises Orson Welles as a god among directors. At know no point in this interview is The Brood even mentioned.

Why did Criterion include it in the special features on the disc?

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1979’s The Brood from director David Cronenberg is a disgusting little movie. The movie begins with Oliver Reed wearing nothing but a robe while sitting in yoga pose on a stage berating his son in front of live audience. No, this isn’t a method-acting lesson, but a public therapy session. Oliver Reed stars as Dr. Hal Ragian, a psychotherapist who runs the Somatree Institute where he employs the use of psychoplasmics, a therapy method that has patients unleash their suppressed feelings by physically altering their bodies through pure will of the mind.

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Frank Carveth (Art Hindle) thinks Dr. Ragian is a quack. Nola Carveth (Samantha Eggar), Frank’s wife, is a patient at Somatree, dealing with anger issues while fighting with Frank over custody of Candace (Cindy Hinds), their five-year-old daughter. Frank notices marks and cuts on Candace’s back and doesn’t want her staying at Somatree. Dr. Ragain tells Frank that Nola needs Candace there to help with her therapy. He tells Frank that he’d better bring Candace back the following weekend or there will be legal action.

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Frank drops Candace off with his mother-in-law while he goes talk to a lawyer. I suppose Candace is having a better time with Grandma, as she seems more mellow than her mother. Granted, Grandma is indulging in some Scotch and it’s not even 3 PM. While going to refresh her drink, she gets attacked by what seems to be a small child in her kitchen. The attacker hits grandma with what I believe is meat tenderizer. It’s quite awful. There’s blood everywhere.

The child shrink at the police station tries prying some info out of Candace, but the girl remembers noththing. Frank’s father-in-law flies over to attend the funeral. Grandpa and Grandma got divorced about ten years prior, but he gets distraught over her death and decides to get smashed in his old house. Guess who shows up again? It’s that same child that killed Grandma earlier. The child beats Grandpa to death with a snow globe.

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Frank discovers Grandpa’s body and we finally see what the killer child looks like. It’s some kind of mutant freak. A really ugly kid. Its face is all caved in. The kid drops dead after fighting with Frank for a bit. Doctors do an autopsy on the deformed child. The kid has a beak-like mouth, no sexual organs, and no navel. This is bizarre. You’ll be seeing more of them as the film rolls on. And trust me, you don’t want to see how these things are born.

I could go on, but I’m about to lose my lunch. The toilet beckons.

Jeffrey Shuster 3

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #306: Rabid

17 Friday Jan 2020

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The Curator of Schlock #306 by Jeff Shuster

Rabid

David Cronenberg ain’t right.

I’ve got nothing profound to say about anything at the moment. I’m cranky. I’m wishing I could time travel back to 1997. I miss my Nintendo 64, my bubbled out CRT TV, and a new X-Files to look forward to on Friday nights. Or had The X-Files moved to Sundays at that point? I don’t remember.

This is why I like movies. They can be miniature time capsules that let you wallow in a particular decade for a couple of hours.

Tonight, we’ll travel back to 1977 to experience a violent rabies epidemic that could have occurred on the outskirts of Montreal, Canada.

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1977’s Rabid from director David Cronenberg was released in not just a very important year for movies, but also a very important year in the history of the world as it is the year I was born.

Imagine if that hadn’t happened.

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You would not be reading this blog right now. What would you be doing with your life? Contemplating plastic surgery? Speaking of which, our movie begins at the Keloid Clinic for Plastic Surgery somewhere in the Quebec countryside. A young couple named Rose (Marilyn Chambers) and Hart (Frank Moore) are riding motorcycles near the clinic, but get into bad accident because some loser can’t get his RV started and he’s blocking the whole Canadian road.

The Keloid Clinic is the closest medical facility in the area. Hart’s injuries aren’t critical, but Rose is going to die unless Dr. Dan Keloid (Howard Ryshpan) tries an experimental procedure to that uses morphogenetic skin supplements to repair her skin and organs.

Don’t ask me what that is. I ain’t no doctor.

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Rose stays in a coma for a couple of months until she wakes up screaming. A patient named Lloyd (J. Roger Periard) at the hospital goes to check on her, and Rose asks him to hug her because she’s cold and he’s warm. Lloyd complies because she’s young and attractive, like someone out of Behind the Green Door, but then a tendril emerges from her armpit and sucks his blood. This Rose has a thorn.

Rabid - 1976

Lloyd wakes up later with no memory of the attack, but gets transferred to another hospital because his blood isn’t clotting. The next night, Rose leaves the clinic to feed on the blood of a cow, but, naturally, decides to snack on a purvey old farmer instead. Both of these men develop a nasty case of rabies and begin attacking people like zombies. If they bite you, it’s only a matter of time before you start foaming at the mouth too. Rabies shots don’t work either.

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Rose leaves the clinic and begins spreading the rabies as she takes the blood of one victim after another. Martial Law gets declared in Montreal as the rabies zombie army begins to grow. There’s a rather tragic scene of a police officer gunning down one of the infected in a mall, and a mall Santa Claus gets caught in the crossfire.

Rabies ruin Christmas.

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I don’t think this is going to end up well for anyone. Anyway, Rabid is a good little body horror/zombie movie from the late 70s. It’s no Dawn of the Dead, but this will keep your attention on a Saturday night.

Pray for David Cronenberg, though.

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Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #305: It’s Alive

10 Friday Jan 2020

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The Curator of Schlock #305 by Jeff Shuster

It’s Alive

There’s only one thing wrong with the Davis baby: it’s alive. 

How ‘bout that Babu Frik? Okay. I’ve got nothing to talk about. It’s a new year and a new decade and why do I get the feeling that this decade will not be as much fun as the Roaring Twenties? Certainly, this year’s offerings from Hollywood don’t exactly pique my interest. Untitled Universal Event Film? What is that? Was Cats the Untitled Universal Event Film of 2019? Oh, I will be covering that at some point, but I will not be paying money for that nonsense. In the meantime, let’s ignore our current era and look to the past for cinematic goodness.

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Tonight’s movie is 1974’s It’s Alive from director Larry Cohen. The movie centers on the Davis family and the troubles that result from the little bundle of joy they are expecting. Frank Davis (John P. Ryan) and his wife, Lenore (Sharon Ferrell), drop their son, Chris (Daniel Holzman), off with a family friend because Lenore is about to have a baby. At the hospital, Frank hangs out in the waiting room for a few hours while his wife and the doctors contend with the fact that she’s about to give birth to a mutant.

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Seriously, the baby has claws and fangs and manages to tear apart half of the hospital staff before going into hiding. Naturally, Mr. Davis is none too pleased that the hospital staff lost his newborn son, but maybe that had something to do with them bleeding out.

The news media leaks that it was the Davis family that brought a killer, mutant baby into the world. Frank works as a publicist for an advertising film, but they’re hoping he’ll take his vacation days during this difficult time for all concerned. By taking his vacation, they really mean that he’s fired. Clients don’t want the father of the killer mutant baby in charge of their publicity. They can be touchy that way. Frank doesn’t let his son, Chris, back home. He tells him the baby is sick. Fortunately, Chris didn’t hear the news about the killer, mutant baby.

I think it’s alluded to that a pharmaceutical company may be responsible for the mutated pregnancy. And some scientists offer to pay one hundred thousand dollars to the Davis family for the rights to experiment on their killer mutant baby. Frank Davis accepts their offer. Can you blame him?

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I know many of you out there would love your baby boy no matter how many people he killed and ate.

Yes, I think this kid is taking chunks out of his victims.

Waste not, want not.

Frank begins noticing some unusual behavior from his wife, Lenore. Seems she’s having the milkman drop off a few extra bottles of milk than usual. And the fridge is stuffed with lots meat she must have picked up from the butcher shop. I bet she’s planning a barbeque for the neighborhood. I guess all that milk is for some homemade ice cream she’s going to make. It couldn’t possible mean that the killer mutant baby is inside their house and she’s feeding the damned thing.

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It’s Alive will end in tears (as if it could end any other way). But it’s got a killer mutant baby in it. That’s well worth your time.

So how ‘bout that Zorii Bliss?

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Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Aesthetic Drift #24: On Steven Moffat’s Dracula

08 Wednesday Jan 2020

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Aesthetic Drift #24 by Michael W. Merriam

On Steven Moffat’s Dracula

I often resent television. I feel better compensated for my time when I listen to audio drama or read books. When I saw there was a new Dracula series on Netflix, I knew I’d only want to see it if somehow Steven Moffat had written it.

 

In Dracula, Bram Stoker gave the world a complex and cryptic masterpiece. The book is epistolary, a trunk full of letters and clues, and it’s only because it’s famous that we know it will amount to more than the sum of its parts. Though it has some clear plot points, many of its ideas are hard to detect, and much of what passes for its story are assumptions. The “story” inside it is something the reader must make up for himself. To read it is to re-invent it, on the fly.

Dracula

Steven Moffat’s stock in trade is re-invention. His genius is in not in stories, but in his take on them. The first scene of his Dracula re-writes the novel in a weirdly faithful way: the wooden stakes we see in Sister Agatha’s bag before she starts her interview,  her hilarious false-interest in Dracula’s sex life, and her rant about God (similar to one given by a sister in Don DeLilo’s White Noise) make the script literate without being literary. This marks the divergence between the subversive and the simply dumb.

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Moffat rarely settles for a cheap surprise, always holding out for true subversion that makes story twists satisfying. The subversions of this Dracula are so deft and pleasantly startling, the script feels like a promising early work, one left sitting in Moffat’s desk since before his exhaustion at the hands of Doctor Who. Even so, this new Dracula (while very good) is not quite intricate enough to demand a re-watch. As the novel was a bit of a puzzle, I found that disappointing.

The show’s only bad moments involve the villain’s wise-cracks, marred with anachronistic turns of phrase.  It’s tempting to blame Gatiss’s writing, but the same dialogue-landmines were everywhere in Moffat’s Jekyll, so he must shares the blame. Quipping villains (traditionally) help us sympathize with the devil, and at their best they’re like one of William Blake’s Proverbs From Hell: “Excess of sorrow laughs, excess of joy weeps.” Maybe a dim memory of that explains why critics still consider sympathetic villains a sign of excellent writing. That and some nostalgia for Byronic darkness might be why otherwise good writers cram wit into their villains’ mouths. Stoker would not have approved, since his novel’s theme was that mankind is already, by its nature, sympathetic to evil; Stoker’s art shows us why we shouldn’t be. This show abandons that theme, which is why it sometimes lacks daring.

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Bram Stoker in 1906.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula was written just as the first rays of 20th century prose threatened the deathless clichés of the 19th. In Dracula, handwritten letters are full of misunderstandings and pompous mistakes, while practical, typewritten ones actually help the good guys win. It’s a book about how an ancient monster was ultimately no match for incredible new wonders of the age, like telephones, and women who can type. When the good guys win, it’s less like David killing Goliath and more like War of the Worlds, where ultimately, the germs of our planet took the alien invaders down. Dracula was not a story of heroic victory, until the reader accepted that true heroism lay in careful, sharp perception. That insight drives the humor, horror, and surprises in the Gatiss / Moffat adaptation. It is absent from all others I’ve seen.

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Deep faithfulness aside, the show betrays the book in exactly the right way, too: the show’s writing isn’t cryptic—it’s just clever in its exploration the original text.  Together, these episodes provide a grandly entertaining vision of the novel. If nothing else, their Dracula is a good way to enjoy the depth and suggestiveness of the old story.

If you feel you’d rather watch something else on Netflix, let me remind you: there’s a library near your house, and you should go there instead.

Michael Merriam

Michael Merriam is a writer and game designer based in Orlando, Florida. His work has been featured in the LA Review of Books, Time Out, The New Yorker, and World Literature Today, among other publications. He is the co-founder of Partly Wicked, a blog that explores escape rooms and other cryptic immersive media, and he teaches Writing for Games at Full Sail University.

The Curator of Schlock #304: Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker

27 Friday Dec 2019

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The Curator of Schlock #304 by Jeff Shuster

Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker

It’s Pinocchio. 

Merry Christmas everyone! Here we are on Week 4 of Silent Night, Deadly Night month here at The Museum of Schlock. I didn’t think I’d make it this far. Nothing puts a damper on the holidays like psychotic Santas, undead psychotic Santas, sexy witches, and killer toys.

You must watch out what you unwrap under the tree because it just might kill you. We can’t have nice things.

1991’s Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker from director Martin Kitrosser begins with a kid named Derrick Quinn (William Thorne) answering the door in the middle of the night a couple of weeks before Christmas. He finds a wrapped gift addressed to him with one of those “Do Not Open Until Christmas” tags. Naturally, Derrick tears the gift open only to be interrupted by his father who yells at him for answering the front door in the middle of the night. He tells Derrick to get to bed as he inspects the box. Derrick’s father uncovers a robotic Santa Clause ball that wraps its tendrils around his neck and starts electrocuting him. Derrick’s father then falls and gets impaled through the eye with a fireplace poker. The ball detaches from his neck and rolls into a corner. 

Derrick witnessed all of this, which might explain why he hasn’t spoken for two weeks after the incident. Yeah, I guess watching your father die a gruesome death might make a small child glum.

Sarah Quinn (Jane Higginson), Derrick’s mother, decides that a trip to the local toyshop, Petto’s Toys, is in order. A new toy might make Derrick forget about his father getting a poker through his eyeball. The proprietor of Petto’s Toys is Joe Petto (play by none other than Mickey Rooney).

This is funny considering that Mickey Rooney had condemned the original Silent Night, Deadly Night. Joe Petto lives in the toy store with his good friend, Jack Daniels, and his demented son, Pino (Brian Bremer). Pino keeps shoving some kind of worm toy in front of Derrick, but Derrick wants no part of it. 

The worm toy ends up in the hands of a local motel owner. It gets activated while the dude is driving home. The worm crawls inside his head and pokes holes trough his skull. How disgusting. The motel owner loses control of his vehicle since he’s dead. The car flips and explodes immediately. I used to have this video game, San Francisco Rush. It was a racing game and every time your car would flip over, it would immediately explode. I always wondered if that would happen in the real world, but Silent Night, Deadly Night 5, with its firm grip on reality, confirmed it. 

We learn that Pino is making the killer toys with the hope that one of them will finally kill Derrick. There’s a cool scene where some obnoxious teen steals roller blades meant for Derrick and ends getting take taken for a wild ride before getting run over by an oncoming car. What else? Clint Howard guest stars as a sleazy department store Santa!

Oh, and Pino is actually a robot created by Joe Petto. Pino wants Sarah to be his mother, which is why he keeps trying to kill Derrick. So yeah, it’s a demented version of Pinocchio. Stick a fork in me. I’m done with this series.

Happy New Year!

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #302: Silent Night, Deadly Night 3

13 Friday Dec 2019

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The Curator of Schlock #302 by Jeff Shuster

Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!

Is that supposed to be funny? The main character is blind!

Is gooseberry pie any good? I have never tried it. In fact, I’ve never seen it sold anywhere. Not even on a restaurant menu. I’m beginning to think that gooseberry pie (and the gooseberry in general) does not exist. It’s what country folk eat in Hollywood movies. Some cigar-chomping producer probably insisted that the gooseberry pie be inserted into movies every now and again in an effort to mislead the public for nefarious purposes. Gooseberry pie is mentioned in tonight’s movie, but it does not, in fact, make an appearance. 

1989’s Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! from director Monte Hellman is the follow-up to Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, which was the follow-up to Silent Night, Deadly Night. The movie begins with a young woman named Laura Anderson (Samantha Scully) being chased down hospital corridors by Ricky Caldwell (Bill Moseley, later of Devil’s Rejects fame). Ricky Caldwell now has a glass scalp with some electronics plugged into it. Through that glass scalp you can see his brain and a pool of blood. Here’s your monster, folks. Someone behind the scenes thought this was a good idea. 

Laura wakes up screaming and we find that she’s actually psychic and that a Dr. Newbury (Richard Beymer) was using her to probe a vegetative Ricky’s mind. It seems that all those bullets did a number on Ricky at the end of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, leaving him at the hands of intense reconstructive surgery at the hands of Dr. Newbury. The good doctor even managed to put Ricky’s brain back together and Laura’s psychic probing is proof that something of Ricky still exists in that living catatonic husk.     

Laura may be a super psychic, but she’s also blind. She asks the receptionist at the hospital if she could keep an eye out for brother who’s picking her up. The receptionist is very rude to her. Laura falls asleep and has a dream where the receptionist’s throat is slit. You see, Laura can see in her dreams and in her visions. Laura’s brother, Chris (Eric Da Re), and his girlfriend, Jerri (Laura Harring), pick her up as she wakes up screaming from her violent vision. Jerri is beautiful. Chris is hairy. Seriously, I thought the guy was wearing a shag carpet under his shirt, but that’s neither her nor there. The three of them are off to visit Grandma’s house many miles away. 

Meanwhile, a drunken Santa Claus roams the hospital halls. He visits Ricky’s room, makes fun of Ricky, calls him a vegetable and what not. Naturally, Ricky wakes up and slaughters him. Then he kills the receptionist just like in Laura’s vision. Then Rocky steals a car and decapitates a gas station attendant. And since Ricky has a psychic link with Laura, he knows where she’s going. Ricky decides to get to Grandma’s before Laura. 

Grandma is busy getting Christmas Eve dinner ready for everyone. There’s a glistening roast turkey in the oven that she bastes in its own juices. I’m sure chestnuts are roasting on the open fire. Oh, and Grandma has apparently made Laura’s favorite: gooseberry pie. (Liar.)

A knock at the door reveals not Laura and brother, but Ricky Caldwell. Grandma welcomes him with open arms, even feeds him. It is Christmas after all. Plus, she didn’t see Ricky’s exposed brain because he cleverly covered it with a cap. 

At this point, I’m almost thinking the movie will turn into Hallmark Christmas movie. The love and good cheer of grandma will reform Ricky’s psychotic heart. But then Grandma gives him a wrapped present. Ricky gets triggered and turns into the mass murdering Santa Claus once again. Grandma isn’t long for this world. Those of you expecting a scene of Chris opening up the oven to grab some turkey only to find Grandma’s seared corpse will be sorely disappointed. You were hoping to see Grandma’s seared corpse?

What is wrong with you?

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #301: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2

06 Friday Dec 2019

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The Curator of Schlock #301 by Jeff Shuster

Silent Night, Deadly Nigh Part 2

It’s not the most wonderful time of the year!

When you’re written three hundred blogs about movies, you tend to forget what you’ve covered. For instance, you would think in the six years I’ve been doing this that I would have curated 1984’s Silent Night, Deadly Night from director Charles E. Sellier Jr. at some point. But it looks like I never did. And it’s not streaming on any services, but the sequel is, so we’re moving on ahead. Deal with it. 

1987’s Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 from director Lee Harry is half the movie that Silent Night, Deadly Night is. I mean it’s literally half of Silent Night, Deadly Night cobbled together with scenes from two other movies. That’s what it feels like, a Frankenstein monster of a movie. And I had to sit through it for your reading pleasure, so let’s get this over with. 

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 begins in a mental hospital with a deranged young man named Ricky Caldwell (Robert Brian Wilson) being interviewed by Dr. Harry Bloom, a psychiatrist. Seems that Ricky Caldwell is the younger brother of Billy Chapman, the maniac Santa Claus who got shot to death at the end of the first movie. Didn’t see it? That’s okay since Ricky gives us the highlights of the first movie with flashback scenes that seem to take up half of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2’s running time. Granted, I can’t get enough of the scene of Billy decapitating an eager sledder on Christmas Eve. 

We learn that even though Ricky was an infant at the time, he witnessed the murder of his parents by a gun toting Santa Claus just like his older brother did.

Ricky was raised in the same orphanage as his brother, raised by the same overzealous Mother Superior as his brother. Eventually, a nice Jewish couple adopts Ricky. The hope is their lack of Yuletide cheer won’t trigger Ricky and transform him into a psychotic Santa Claus.

Doesn’t work.

As a teenager, Ricky repeatedly runs over a drunken redneck that was getting too fresh with a date. The woman thanks Ricky and saunters off. It’s odd that a different actor plays the teenage Ricky considering adult Ricky is eighteen-years-old! It’s like they started making a sequel to Silent Night, Deadly Night, abandoned the production, and shoved the footage in the new sequel. 

Now we get flashbacks of adult Ricky murdering a bookie with an umbrella outside of the restaurant he works at. He falls in love with a girl, but gets triggered into murdering more people when she suggests they go to the movies and watch a film about a killer Santa Claus. Ricky kills people in the theater, kills his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend, kills his girlfriend, and starts shooting random people in a suburban neighborhood before getting arrested. 

ater, Ricky murders Dr. Bloom, busts out of the mental hospital, murders a sidewalk Santa, dons the Santa suit, tracks down the abusive Mother Superior, decapitates her, and is shot to death by police just like his older brother. Okay, that was exhausting.

Oh, I just realized. I didn’t review Silent Night, Deadly Night all those years ago. It was Silent Night, Bloody Night, a completely different movie. 

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #300: The Cannibals

29 Friday Nov 2019

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The Curator of Schlock #300 by Jeff Shuster

The Cannibals

What’s eating you?

I said I wasn’t going to cover anymore cannibal movies for Thanksgiving. I had learned my lesson last year with a little French/Belgium production called Raw. But your humble Curator of Schlock must give his readership what they want. I know you want cannibal movies. And this is blog #300. I have to make it count. Jess Franco’s The Cannibals that also went under the title White Cannibal Queen should do the trick. 

The movie begins with an explorer named Professor Jeremy Taylor (Al Cliver), his wife Elisabeth, and his daughter, Lana, taking a boat ride somewhere in South America. I think the country is named Melabi, but nothing showed up in my Google search. Jeremy tells Elisabeth that it may have been a mistake to take his family with him due to rumors of cannibals attacking other boats going down the same river. Naturally, the cannibals show up right after mentioning this. They spear the boat captain and then proceed to devour poor Elisabeth Taylor on sight. That’s Elisabeth Taylor not Elizabeth Taylor, who to my knowledge did not die by getting devoured alive by cannibals. 

Was there a market for this type of movie back in the day? Did people have a fetish for seeing wild tribesmen in grass skirts ripping and choking down the intestines of screaming victims? These scenes go on forever. I didn’t know where the term “gutmuncher” came from. I do now! Professor Taylor is bound and carried to the Cannibal Village. They chop his arm off and eat it in front of him, but don’t manage to finish him off because their Chief proclaims that he found the “White Goddess” on the riverbank. Wouldn’t you know it?  It’s Professor Taylor’s daughter, Lana!

Professor Taylor slinks off as the tribe worships their new deity. Some explorers find him in the forest, but he’s delirious. Professor Taylor spends the next five years in a mental hospital in New York City. He keeps rambling about seeing his wife eaten alive. Finally, he snaps out of it and visits Barbara Shelton, head of the Shelton Foundation, which funded his original expedition. Professor Taylor hopes he’ll get funding for another expedition to rescue his daughter. Barbara and her elderly, wealthy, blue-blooded boyfriend, Charles Fenton, tell him he’s crazy and ask him to leave their penthouse. 

Professor Taylor travels back to … Melabi, trying to no avail to get a guide to take him back into cannibal country. Guess who shows up? Barbara Shelton and Charles Fenton had a change of heart and have decided to fund an entire expedition to help Professor Taylor find his daughter. Fenton says shooting a few cannibals for sport sounds smashing. I think wealthy Americans traveling to exotic locals where violent natives reside always works out well. Just fire off your boomstick. Show them who’s boss!

Of course, to get to the cannibal tribe, they have to travel through a swamp infested with alligators and rattlesnakes. Barbara sprains her ankle and gets a fever. Charles gets lost while having a heart attack. Cannibal Tribesmen start picking off members of the party with poison arrows. Barbara gets abandoned and is eaten alive in slow motion.

Seriously, I don’t get off on this crap.

The “White Goddess” looks on as her husband, the chief, feasts on entrails of poor Barbara. 

I think Professor Taylor has gotten eight people killed in his quest to retrieve his daughter from the Cannibal Tribe. Maybe he just should have left well enough alone. His daughter seemed fine taking on the role of the “White Goddess.” I don’t think anyone thought this through. Maybe it’s best just to stay out of Cannibal Country.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Enjoy your leftovers. 

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Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #297: Terminator 3

01 Friday Nov 2019

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The Curator of Schlock #297 by Jeff Shuster

Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines

It ain’t that bad. 

Terminator: Dark Fate premiers this weekend. I expect it to smash box office records. I see Terminator sequels, spinoffs, and television series in the future. Arnold Schwarzenegger will dance in the limelight once again. Commando II will soon follow. In fact, I’ve got ten large riding on my personal prediction that Terminator: Dark Fate will outdo the opening weekend gross for Joker. That’s a lot of Mai Tais!

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Terminator: Dark Fate is the latest attempt at a proper sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day. I thought it might be interesting to revisit the first of the sequels, 2003’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines from director Jonathan Mostow. Many critics at that time felt that this movie missed the mark. Roger Ebert felt the movie was “dumbed down for multiplex hordes.”

Well, consider me a member of the horde.

I don’t know if Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is thought-provoking or blah blah blah! What it is is fun. Anyone remember when going to the movies was fun instead of feeling like going to a funeral?

We’ve got an adult John Conner (Nick Stahl) in this one. Sarah Conner died of cancer. The human race escaped Judgment Day. The machines didn’t rise up, but John has stayed off the grid because he didn’t trust that the future was safe. And he was right. The T-X, a new terminator in the form of an attractive blonde woman (Kristanna Loken), shows up to terminate other important soldiers of the human resistance since no records of John Connor exist at that time. One of these future soldiers is a straight-laced veterinarian named Kate Brewster (Claire Danes). She catches John stealing medicine at the animal hospital she works at.

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Meanwhile, Arnold’s Terminator, the T-800, is back. He walks naked into a Male Strip Club into a crowd of appreciative ladies while a stripper on stage takes his clothes off to the tune of The Village People’s “Macho Man.” The T-800 tells the stripper he wants his clothes and the stripper tells him to “Talk to the hand!” The T-800 steals the stripper’s clothes after breaking that hand. Arnold reaches in the jacket for a pair of sred-tinted, star-shaped sunglasses. He removes them and crushes them under his boot. I’m sorry. I laughed at this.

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T-X shows up at the animal hospital. So does the Arnold Terminator. T-X has a gun hidden in her arm that can shoot electricity, flames, and who knows what else. The Arnold Terminator, Kate, and John escape, and we get some explosive chase scenes. Turns out Kate will be John Conner’s second-in-command in the War Against the Machines. She’s also his future wife. Oh, and her father is General Brewster, the man who activates the evil super computer, Skynet. In an effort to stop Judgment Day, John and Kate race to her father’s military installation hoping to prevent him from activating Skynet.

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Too late. In addition to the T-X, they have to deal with Skynet and early models of the drones and land robots we’ve seen in future War Against the Machines. Is Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines as good The Terminator or Terminator 2: Judgment Day?

No.

Is it a thrill ride from start to finish?

Yes.

Is it better than any movie I saw over this past summer?

Yes.

A movie doesn’t have to be perfect. Sometimes a movie can just be fun.

Talk to the hand.

Jeffrey Shuster 4

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #42: Haunting the Panels

30 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by in Comic Books, Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart, Horror

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Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #42 by Drew Barth

Haunting the Panels

It is the eve of All Hallows Eve! For this, the spookiest time of the year, we have looked at some of the greatest masters of horror comics as well as a new series likely going to maintain chills well into the next decade. But for the end of the month, when the haunts are at their strongest, we can start to look at something new in our comics: a philosophical concept known as hauntology.

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At its core, what Derrida posits in his work Spectres of Marx is this idea that the past exists essentially as a specter. Although the past itself has no physical space, it can still occupy. It has no weight, but its impact can still be felt. For the most part, the past exists as an entity both living and dead, here and not here. The past then haunts the present and future with its existence. This idea has been further extrapolated and expanded upon over the recent decade, namely with Elisabeth Roberts and her hauntological approach to visual images. For Roberts, visual images occupy that same real/unreal space as the specters of the past. This idea can easily be extended to works in comics.

Where hauntology and comics begin to intersect is in the idea of the comic canon—the monolithic idea that what has happened in the past can and should influence all facets of the present and future. In many comic circles, when talking about monthly superhero comics especially, arguments frequently arise regarding what is considered canon. What is something we can ignore and what are the criteria we apply to expel materials from the canon? When looking through the lens of hauntology, the discussion of what can be considered canon becomes more nebulous. If specters of the past haunt what we know of the present, then what has come previously in comic canon exists forever—so long as a story exists for the haunting to occur.

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This idea of haunting occurring so long as the story exists comes into play for much of the mainline heroes of the DC Universe. Simply look at Batman. Every single moment of his life as a vigilante and purveyor of bat-flavored justice is inherently influenced by the specters of Thomas and Martha Wayne. Their shadow, their specter, is something Batman cannot escape. The ripped string of pearls we associate with his mother or his father reaching out to grab the gun of Joe Chill haunt Bruce Wayne’s entire existence. His present and future can never be divorced from those ghosts—his haunting is eternal. The same can be said of Superman and the eternal haunting of the doomed planet Krypton or Renee Montoya and the ghost of Vic Sage. These specters exist for these characters eternally within their canons regardless of editorial and creative changes throughout the decades.

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It is difficult to think of comics without the ghosts it carries. From the canon itself to the endless list of individuals who have contributed words and pictures to the canon, every hand is another specter that stalks through those glossy pages. But as it is now time for Halloween, it’s time to look more through those pages again. The old pages that have yellowed or curled with age are filled to bursting with the spectral memories of the last time they had been read. Bring back those old comics and see how those old specters have come to haunt the comics of the present.

Get excited. Release the ghosts.

drew barth

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.