Book Review - Joyland

Review by The Mike.

I hope that someday, when I get old, I'll be able to look back at my life with the wisdom shown by a Stephen King narrator. King has often been able to tell a story from the viewpoint of a grown man looking back on his tumultuous youth - for us movie fans the easy example is when Richard Dreyfus told the story of Stand By Me, though my favorite might be the lead character from his more recent tale Riding the Bullet - and he does it again in Joyland, a 2013 novel that offers just enough of the supernatural and the homicidal to suck a horror fan like me into this fantastic coming-of-age story.

At the center of the book, telling his tale from an older and wiser future, is a man named Devin Jones who went by Dev or Jonesy when he was a 21 year old amusement park employee in the summer of 1973. Jonesy, as I'd like to call him, is an altruistic English student, a virgin who spends his summer pining for the girl he lost while listening to The Doors and reading The Lord of the Rings when he's not working, and someone who just seems to bring out the best in the people around him. Maybe that's because he's the one telling us the story - our narrator does point out that everyone makes their past sound a little more exciting than it really was - but when we like the guy so much we're willing to go along with their version of events.

Jonesy's dramatic tale features plenty of interesting characters - carnies and college kids and a librarian and a sick kid and more - and all of them seem to orbit around his place of employment, the fictional North Carolina amusement park which shares its name with the novel. Joyland isn't a big deal of a place and Jonesy never paints the most glamorous picture of it, but he and King certainly paint it as an environment that would inspire someone to mutter that the place "has character."  King is more than willing to pull back some curtains in the entertainment business, providing Jonesy and his co-workers with their own lingo that he dubs "the Talk,"  but most of the seedy prejudices you might have about carnival workers are absent from this book. King doesn't want us to think of Joyland as a bad place, despite some of the terrible things he creates there.

Those who know Stephen King's work (at this point in his career, is there anyone who doesn't?) might be surprised at how much of the book (which runs a meager 280ish pages in total) is about the carnival life and our lead's self-discovery during his time away from school. King does everything in his power to make Jonesy seem like a good kid - thanks to his narration from thirty years later things like suicidal tendencies and masturbation are brushed off as dumb kid stuff - but it never seems too forced. It's essential to Joyland that the reader truly likes Jonesy, and after finishing the book I don't see how anyone couldn't. He's a sweet character who is slightly one note, but he's never too simple or cliche.

This is a Stephen King book, and you're right to expect something sinister, but it's one of his most restrained supernatural tales. There are hints that some characters possess what his other books might call "a shine" and there's a ghost and there's talk about a few brutal (but not so brutal that you wouldn't see them on a prime time network drama) murders inside the story. Joyland left me wanting a little more in these areas - there are lots of explanations of experiences had by others but not enough direct reader-meets-evil moments to keep a more cynical horror fan's attention - but it's also a bit poetic how King manages to tell a story of a killing and a haunting without losing the book's more life-affirming message.

Joyland worked for me because it's written like so many other great King stories of redemption and growth and hope - themes that often get forgotten when people want to talk about Pennywise the Clown or Randall Flagg or Jack Torrance and his axe - and because it manages to keep a positive twist on death and the macabre. The book is full of death and sadness, but its structure - especially all the asides from the older Jonesy that key us in to some twists down the road - provides plenty of levity that keeps us from sinking too far into the darker details of the story. It feels like this was all so simple to King - this is one the slightest books I've ever read from him - but I couldn't help being impressed when I realized how invested I was in this character and the events that made his time at Joyland so unforgettable. Joyland isn't an epic of terror like some of his more renowned classics, but it's a reminder that the author can still grab our focus and hold it for as long as he likes.

Book Review - Doctor Sleep

Somewhere among my Top 10 favorite movies of all-time (probably later than number 6 but earlier than number 10) sits Frank Capra's slapstick comedy Arsenic and Old Lace. It is a silly film - full of murderers, lunatics, and one seriously confused Cary Grant - but it also contains a line of dialogue that has long stuck in my head as a bold moment of truth. The most murderous member of the film's family, who looks like Boris Karloff, has decided he wants to kill somebody and scolds his assistant (played by Peter Lorre) about what happens when he makes up his mind. Lorre's character, Dr. Einstein, responds with a sigh, saying "Yes, yes, I know. When you make up your mind, you lose your head."

This sticks with me because I think there's a type of personality that is explained by this statement, and I don't think it's just for murderers with the face of Frankenstein's monster. It's a great way to explain addicts. They're people who get attached to the idea of something - whether it be alcohol, drugs, food, or anything else - and who then find themselves trapped by their own desires as they chase what they are focusing on without regard for anything else.

What does this have to do with Doctor Sleep, the sequel to The Shining that Stephen King has finally offered readers? Well, I think that Doctor Sleep is a book by a person who makes up his mind and loses his head (or at least did, back in his drinking days), a book for people who make up their mind and lose their head (people like me, who avoided vices like alcohol and became junkies for horror stories instead), and - most importantly - a book about people who are dangerous because they can make up their mind and lose their head.

First and foremost among these people is Dan Torrance, formerly Danny, the child who survived The Overlook Hotel in the 1970s and who grew up to face everything else life had to offer. King presents Dan first as a defeated child - dealing with the ghosts of The Overlook while trying to get help from his mother and the cook who also "shone" - and then as an adult who hit bottom and had to fight his way back to the top. Dan's bottom - an AA term that King will explain, along with many other loving and accurate descriptions of Big Book meetings - is handled marvelously by the author, and this early book segment (which was suggested, according to King's post-novel notes, by his son Owen) really sets the tone for Dan's journey through the book. It's difficult to see this grown version of Dan Torrance - especially as the book covers more than 30 years of his life - and remember the little boy from The Shining (then again, everything about a 36 years later sequel is a little difficult), yet King does a good job of making Dan a new character while reminding us of his first journey into horror just often enough.

After he bottoms out, we're treated to Dan's search for redemption as he tries to kick his habit and use his gifts in a positive way. This is not an easy task for someone with his afflictions (physical, mental, and supernatural afflictions - if you're counting along at home), but he finds the motivation thanks to some help from his old friend Tony, some new friends in Alcoholics Anonymous, and (most notably) a young girl named Abra.

Little Abra Stone, much like Danny Torrance when he was a child, has the gift of The Shining. We meet Abra as she is born, and some of the book's best segments relay her developing talents as she grows up. Though she's still developing as a teenager when the book hits its dramatic and horrific high points, King shows us enough to make sure we know from an early age (including a bizarre sequence where King connects the infant Abra to the 9/11 attacks) that she has powers that surpass what we've seen from others in the book. Once we see everything Abra can do we realize that Dan and her are a dangerous combination when they get together. King plays upon this, making it easy for readers to get behind these two characters.

The antagonists that Dan and Abra must face are a group of nomadic, soul-sucking, vampire types called The True Knot, a somewhat silly concoction of ageless killers that feed on the essence - or "steam" - of children with Shining powers. The idea of The Knot doesn't really work too well, but is strengthened by its leader, a juicy villainess called Rose the Hat - thanks to her trademark top hat, which becomes one of the book's more enduring visuals. All the side members of the Knot are a little underdeveloped (one character gets a great introduction very early in the book and then becomes second fiddle for the rest of the journey, the rest are caricatures of horror sidekicks) but Rose the Hat is an imposing mental presence who is given a lot of depth by the author. King tries to build up Rose as a devilish talent for evil, yet some of the sequences where he shows us the insides of the True Knot camp and Rose's struggles to lead them are interesting because they make these character seem human. She's ruthless and murderous, but she's also confused and frightened of death - just like we are. Rose the Hat is one character from King's universe that I definitely want to see more of, if only because the author does such a good job of showing both her strengths and weaknesses. There's an argument that could be made about her and Dan being more similar than Dan and Abra are, but that's a much bigger discussion for a different day.

As you can see, there's a lot going on in King's book, and sometimes it felt like he left a storyline behind too easily to tell us something different. For example, I got to a point where I wanted more of Dan's struggles with alcohol and the ghosts of the Overlook, but then King offered descriptions of the Knot and their murderous acts. Or, I got to a point where I wanted to make sense out of Rose the Hat, and just then King dropped a newborn named Abra into the story. It was hard to keep track of where Doctor Sleep was going in the first few chapters, but once King started bringing things together - even tipping his cap to the theory of relativity in a not-so-subtle manner - it became obvious that all of these threads were about to come together.

Things start to clear up around the half way point of the book, but King still has some nice twists up his sleeve as he moves through the final act. Some of the major plot developments are blatantly obvious, but King finds neat ways to surprise us just when we think things are going the other direction. Characters who seem to be gaining power are abruptly killed off, schemes that are spelled out in one manner suddenly become something else, and even a few visitors from The Overlook Hotel make memorable returns. It all adds up to a wildly entertaining, if not ridiculous, final confrontation that wraps the story up rather quickly. It's a chaotic and unpredictable sequence - King even throws in an old man doing a cartwheel (I presume the kitchen sink was busy) - but it features some great moments that help make the ending work pretty well. The whole conflict is probably best summed up by the use of a character from The Shining in one crucial moment - don't worry, I don't dare spoil this one! - which is an out-of-the-blue idea that shouldn't work but had me pumping my fist and cackling like a madman because it was such a fun move by the author.

Doctor Sleep isn't a masterpiece by any means - there's too much going on (including a large number of distracting pop culture references, even for King) and very few moments that match the shock value of King's earlier work - but it works because the minds of the lead characters are opened up to us and because each of the main characters has the ability to surprise us. They are each powerful and unstable characters who could "lose their heads" at any time, which makes Doctor Sleep an interesting and unpredictable new addition to King's universe of horror.

Book Review - The Dead Roam The Earth by Alasdair Wickham

One of the most popular comments in horror history warns about gazing into the abyss and the abyss gazing back in to you.  It's a great line - a welcome reminder that there is a barrier between us and the spirit realm (and that it's best not to overstay your welcome) - and something I often keep in mind as I deal with horror.  But every once in a while, there's another train of thought that makes me wonder about horror stories - the one in which you start to consider that warnings in horror stories are really warnings about things in our own world. What if the abyss is reality and the things that gaze into us are already around?

That bit of speculation is the idea behind The Dead Roam The Earth: True Stories Of The Paranormal From Around The World, and British author Alasdair Wickham would surely welcome anyone with an open mind to his book's vision of this world.  But speculation is not Wickham's intention (though he does dabble in it a few times throughout the book's 296 pages) - his goal is to point out actual cases in which supernatural forces have impacted our reality.

Wickham's case for the paranormal is broken up into ten chapters, each focusing on a different aspect of horror and how it relates to the life we live. These chapters understandably cross paths - you try keeping every ghost, demon, and poltergeist separate and see how that works out - which can lead to a little bit of confusion and a little bit of repetition.  There are definitely some case studies featured in the book that grabbed my attention more than others did, but there's no saying that the same passages will work the same for each reader.

Perhaps the film's biggest flaw is that it leads with two of its most dynamic chapters. The first chapter focuses on ghosts and visitations and features some of the book's most vivid descriptions - which led to plenty of (pardon my pun) haunting images in my mind.  There were several moments during this chapter where I legitimately felt some goosebumps creeping down my spine, and it's safe to say that I tried to sleep with an eye open the next night.

While the first chapter was effective, the topic of hauntings wasn't entirely new to me. And that might have made the second chapter even more of a treat to me.  This one, entitled Creatures of the Threshold, focused on "monsters and angels" - which are two topics that I found myself most skeptical about.  I initially looked at the chapter as a potential deal breaker, thinking that if Wickham couldn't sell me on these abstract creatures then maybe the rest of the book would fail too.  So imagine my surprise when the creatures discussed in this chapter, including the Mexican "bruja" and the British "Huntsman" started to open my mind a little bit to Wickham's prose.  And the sections that recounts the West Virginia legend of the "Mothman" - which you may have seen told (poorly) in that flick with Richard Gere - might be the highlight of them all.  I was inspired to go back and watch The Mothman Prophecies again after reading this chapter, and I can confirm with no doubt that Wickham's retelling of the story blows that film out of the water.

The rest of the chapters have some highs and lows.  Sections on possession and poltergeists repeat themselves a little as the line between spirits blurs a bit. Ritual killing and witchcraft come up in a macabre chapter next and - while these three chapters were a little less interesting to me - there were still plenty of moments in which the imagery presented made me shiver. The second half of the book offers a lot of new ideas - covering topics such as military use of the occult, technology and the supernatural, and even cursed movies - and does so with a lot of intelligence.  Each of these chapters (plus the final one that warns about our potential for a shared global consciousness) take a few leaps of faith from time to time, but the ideas Wickham presents in them are rarely dull.

Littered throughout the book are text boxes that tell short accounts of hauntings or demons throughout the world, each labeled by the country of origin.  The subtitle of the book promises a global account of horror, and Wickham definitely delivers it.  All corners of the globe are covered in the book in one way or another, and even the least convincing of these case studies reminds us that there could be evil anywhere in the world - from Canada to Antarctica to the Philippines - whether we believe in it or not. 

Wickham offers plenty of information throughout the book and rarely makes his own conclusions, occasionally even putting the blame back on humanity.  The next to last chapter covers exorcism, a favorite topic of horror fans, but is surprisingly strong as it reminds us that humans can do as much damage demons in a misunderstood situation. Religion is brought up throughout the book, but this is another topic where the author passes no judgment. God has his place in the book, as does Buddha, as does any other deity you choose. Wickham seems to certainly feel that the supernatural exists in both good and evil, but is quick to point out that the truth of any matter is generally somewhere in the middle.

The Dead Roam The Earth isn't light reading, and I'm not sure if I've ever seen this much information crammed into this small a space.  But there are a lot of vivid and fantastic ideas inside the book, and anyone who's open to the idea that there's more to this world than humanity can see will surely find some good stuff here.  I'm very glad that I got a chance to read The Dead Roam The Earth, as the parts that hit home were well worth the parts that didn't.  The open minded horror fan will definitely appreciate Wickham's work here, and I certainly recommend the book to them.

The Dead Roam The Earth was provided for review by Penguin Books, and is available now at Amazon and other retailers.

How The Mike Met Horror, Volume 1 - The Books

I told y'all it was coming, and now it's here.  As the main course of From Midnight With Love's October festivities, I offer up an autobiography in four chapters, listing the inspirations that led me to become the dude I am today.

The first of four categories might be a surprise to some, as I discuss how books influenced my path to blogdom.  I often crack wise about books, because I'm lazy now that I'm old and mostly watch movies, but it would be a bald-faced lie if I told you all that books aren't important to the growth of anyone.  Do you think I could sit here and type these semi-sentences and use words that are probably too big for the point I'm trying to make if I hadn't read a butt-load of books? Of course I couldn't.  (Though, to be fair, few of the books I've read use words like "butt-load".  That's a different story for a different day.)
Not all of these books are exactly works of art...but they all had a special place in making The Mike happen.  And that's why I'm here tonight. So let's do this.

(And, if you missed the explanation behind this series, you should know that all credit for this idea belongs to the wonderful Mrs. Christine Hadden over at Fascination With Fear, who does lists better than anyone in the Western Hemisphere. For that, I salute her.)

The Spooky Old Tree

The legend may have grown over the years - I think one version of this story has me wrestling a bear - but one of my very first memories is "learning to read" The Berenstain Bears and The Spooky Old Tree when I was not yet three years old. It was my absolute favorite bed time story, and it was read to me so many times that my parents and I claim that I could pick up the book and re-tell the story to myself while I was still two years old.  Again, I'm not sure if this actually happened - I don't believe I've ever been that smart - but I know that the first thing I remember loving to pieces was this horror tale for children.

It's been a long time since I was that little boy who (pretended to) read a book for its horror contents, but I'm relatively sure I can still recite the book word for word.  (It starts with "Three little bears. One with a light, one with a rope, and one with a stick.")  At my current age, I'm not sure there are many chills - or as the book calls them "shivers" - left for me in The Spooky Old Tree.  But I'm pretty sure that this was the first horror story I learned, and that makes it extraordinarily special to me.

Those Orange Back Monster Books from the Library

These books actually have a name - the Crestwood House Monsters Series - but if you ask any monster fan who grew up in the late '70s and early '80s they probably know what you mean when you mention "the orange back books".  At least in my neck of the woods, they were kind of a big deal.

As best as I can remember, each book focused on one classic monster and retold the story of their films in a matter of fact way.  Even though they were re-telling fictional events, the way they were presented made them feel like they were basically research books for monster nerds.  In fact, I did a project on monsters for a school fair when I was in 2nd grade, and these were my main source of information.  I'm not saying I was the star of the show - that'd be boasting - but I don't remember anyone else from that 2nd grade fair whose booth was as popular as mine. I don't remember anything else from that 2nd grade fair, actually. But I know that I was awesome, and that (at least according to my mother) I've been a superstar ever since. (My mom never actually said that. But I know she would say it.)

The Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Series

As I got a little older, things like The Spooky Old Tree just weren't scary enough for little The Mike.  So, I asked for more "scary" stories...and I literally found more scary stories.  In this case, I found scary in three books of folk tales compiled by Alvin Schwartz, which retold urban legends and ghost stories that have been passed down through the generations and complemented them with spooky illustrations.  I feel like a lot of my respect for horror history came from these books, because this was about the time when I started trying to remember these horror stories so I could re-tell them myself.  I understood the idea that these were passed down through time, and that really lit my horror fire.

One of the first horror tales to truly corrupt my mind came from one of these books.  It follows two farm brothers and an abused scarecrow named Harold, who - naturally by horror standards, but surprisingly by young The Mike standards - rises up and gets revenge on the farmers who torture him.  I forgot the details of this story for years - even lamenting my inability to recall the "perfect" scarecrow story I once loved in a review once - but I always had the image of the scarecrow atop the farmhouse in the distance stuck in my brain.  And then I remembered that everything is on YouTube and found the audio of the story. And it was good.

The Amityville Horror

My relationship with The Amityville Horror is kind of like that line from The Royal Tenenbaums. To paraphrase - "We all know that The Amityville Horror isn't true...but what I'm presupposing is: Maybe it is."  I mean, I'd seen the movie, I'd heard how it wasn't real, even though a bunch of money grubbing folks tried to say it was. I was smart enough to know crud when I heard crud.

At the same time, I must admit that the presentation of this tale - at least to a middle school version of The Mike - was quite convincing.  I know it's hard to explain, just like that circular Tenenbaums quote that was intended for comedic purposes, but the part of me that knew this was all bollocks also wanted to believe that it wasn't. I sat there and I read the book and I was like "This isn't real...but it could be." I guess I just wanted to keep the horror dream alive, and The Amityville Horror at least gave me a chance to talk about a horror story and say it was a little bit true.  (Even though none of the horror parts were.)

The works of Stephen King

There's not a lot I need to say about why Stephen King is important, and I already said most of what I could say about King last October.  Yet I'm sure that many other horror fanatics out there can relate to the feeling I had when I first read King's work.  It was as if I had graduated from childhood horror fan to adult horror fan.  Y'know that feeling you got when you first got to watch R-rated movies or got to drive the car without your parents? It was that feeling, but with horror stories.  I was in the horror big leagues.

My first King novel was Insomnia, his over-long tale of geriatric fright that isn't the best representation of his talents.  But I was too pumped up by the fact that I was reading Stephen King to care.  I kept reading his works throughout my teenage years, and my love for horror only continued to grow.  As I learned more about The Shining and The Dead Zone and all these other King tales I'd seen in movies and on TV, I learned that there's a lot that can be done for horror in print that can't be done on screen.

Frankenstein

I thought I loved Frankenstein from the moment I read those orange back books and even more when I saw the Karloff movie. But it wasn't until I went to college that I randomly picked up a copy of the book, mostly because I was buying textbooks and saw it on the shelf for an English course that I wasn't taking and bought it anyway.  And while I was sitting in the laundry room waiting for my laundry to get done (What? I'm from a small town, I didn't know if I could trust a tower full of 500 18-21 year olds), I read the whole thing over two nights. (This might be why I didn't have many friends, but that's OK. I'm an introvert anyway.)

Going from littleville to college was a big culture shock for me, but it was this reading of Frankenstein that reminded me of something great about horror.  People sometimes give horror a bad name by pointing out examples of the genre that aren't exactly high art, yet Mary Shelley's novel - which makes the monster a more introspective being than even Karloff could - reminded me that horror can tap into scholarly and artistic avenues as well.  I planned to grow up and be an intelligent adult, and Frankenstein was a reminder that I didn't need to leave horror behind to do so.

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I'm not sure that "intelligent adult" thing has worked out yet, but at least I still love my horror.  And next week I'll share another few items that strengthened this love of horror in Volume 2 of this series. So come on back then, and if you have your own favorite horror books from times in your life as a horror fan, please do share them in the comments below. Until then, enjoy another selection from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which presents a scenario that you may recognize from a horror film of the '70s.  Until next time!

Book Review - The Slasher Movie Book

When you give your book a title like The Slasher Movie Book, you're inviting an army of rabid horror nerds to attack it, rip it apart, and pick at the scraps until they complain about the fatty bits.  Even though I'm merely a passing fan - heck, almost a guilty fan, considering how often I'm all like "Oh man, I don't like slashers; slashers are dumb; slashers are inferior; blah blah blah I'm trying to be intellectual blah" - of the subgenre, I took on the opportunity to review The Slasher Movie Book with a bit of trepidation.  I know enough about horror to know when someone's missing important details, and I didn't want to be that guy who calls out an author over missed points.

So, it is much relief that I can admit that I know much less about the slasher film than J.A. Kerswell, the writer who complied this entirely thorough look at the movement in horror.  Kerswell makes the case that the slasher had its "Golden Age" from 1978-1984, and I must also admit that my mind first thought this to be a surprisingly brief time period.  After all, A Nightmare on Elm Street happened in 1984 and spawned many sequels and knockoffs, and we know that the Friday the 13th and Halloween franchises ran through the end of that decade.  But Kerswell is very thorough in breaking down all aspects of the slasher's lifespan, and the case he makes for the time period listed is entirely reasonable once you get into his analysis.

However, a book on the slasher would not be complete if it only covered a six year span, and Kerswell knows this all too well.  I expected nothing less from the author - who founded and runs the fantastic site Hysteria Lives! - but I equally underestimated the time range that the book would cover. A lot of folks like to trace the slasher back to Psycho - a fair assessment, and I assure you that Hitchcock's film is featured in this book - but Kerswell goes much farther than that. In fact, the book ends up covering a span of time that dates back to (at least) 1897(!) and covers the progress of the slasher straight through recent remakes like Sorority Row, My Bloody Valentine, and of course Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street.

While chronicling the timeline that runs prior to, within, and beyond the slasher's Golden Age, the author leaves no stone unturned. I was floored to find a chapter on the German "krimi" movement, a precursor to Italy's giallo, that I had frankly never even heard of in my travels through film history. Kerswell also opened my eyes to plenty of other films that predated the tradition slasher, ranging from the obscure - he got me to hunt down 1962's Violent Midnight, produced by fellow Iowan and favorite of mine Del Tenney - to the obvious, like Michael Crichton's Westworld (a movie I've seen a dozen times but never considered as an inspiration to Halloween until just now).  There's also some well deserved recognition for Britain's Pete Walker, and of course an indepth discussion of the giallo the covers Bava, Argento, and the rest of the gang.

But really, the meat-and-potatoes of the book is when Kerswell starts to roll through that Golden Age, breaking down the slasher year-by year and covering the production, reception, and fiscal gains of what seems like hundreds of films.  It was incredibly difficult for me to get through this section - well, to get through most of the book, really - without having to take breaks to look up some of these films on IMDB or Amazon. (Don't worry mom, I didn't break the bank.)  The presentation bounces through the trends in the subgenre and details which films were influential upon which films, creating this big spider-web of knowledge that shows how much these films relied upon the same ideals.

Kerswell's writing throughout the book is informative, if not repetitive (as someone who writes about horror, I definitely understand that there aren't a billion ways to describe some hack-and-slash), and he throws in plenty of interesting tidbits about the cast members and filmmakers behind the horror.  My mind was particularly blown when he discussed the fact that 1984's Fatal Games was made (in part) by the sons of legendary directors Luis Bunuel and Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and his description of some of the sillier slasher films was equally entertaining. Few film descriptions have raised my eyebrows more quickly than when Kerswell revealed that the plot 1982's Blood Beat "seemed to have a seven-foot-tall samurai conjured up by female masturbation", yet Kerswell pulls that one off masterfully.  (No, I did not buy that movie - but it wasn't for lack of trying.)

Packed full of poster/VHS images for all kinds of horror films, The Slasher Movie Book is as good looking to a horror fan as it is informative. I had minor quibbles with some of the choices of page color - black text on a dark red or purple background is a little difficult to read in the darkness of my lair, but I bet overhead lighting would have helped with that - but the presentation is generally fantastic and this could easily shine as a coffee table item for a horror lover's home theater.

Combining all factors together, there's no reason a horror fan shouldn't check out The Slasher Movie Book. There's a lot to be learned from Kerswell's dissection of his topic, and the addition of an index, glossary, review section, and more to the end of the book should make it a nice reference for the horror scholar.  The book is now available through Hysteria Lives or directly at Amazon, and anyone who wants to enrich their understanding of horror's stabby subgenre should jump on the book immediately.

Book Review - The Testament of Judith Barton by Wendy Powers & Robin McLeod

I don't think there's a more hypnotic movie than Vertigo.  Alfred Hitchcock's tale of deception and desire in a surreal San Francisco setting has kept me fascinated for most of my adult life, and would easily rank as one of my three or four favorite films.  So when I got offered the chance to check out a new take on the tale, I dropped my "Hey, I don't know how to read you guys!" defenses and jumped at the opportunity to spend more time in the film's world.

That opportunity presented itself in the form of a new novel, The Testament of Judith Barton, which is told from the perspective of the female character who is the center of attention throughout Hitchcock's film.  Let's not kid ourselves here - Jimmy Stewart is the man, but it was Kim Novak that really drew our stares. So the chance to spend more time with her got me to light up my Kindle, hanker in to my recliner (which has a Vertigo poster right above it), and start turning the pages as fast as I could.

Despite how many times I've seen Vertigo - it was enough times to write a film history term paper on it more than a decade ago, and that number's gone up since - I'm not sure I ever really thought too deeply about Judy Barton, the small town girl from Salina, Kansas who became the key ingredient in the macabre plot. (I suppose talking about Judy Barton herself is kind of a spoiler for the film, but a) her name's kind of in the title, so it's inevitable, and b) if you haven't seen Vertigo in the last 54 years, there's probably no hope for you anyway.)  In my mind, I think I believed that Judy Barton was a lost soul by the time we were introduced to her in Vertigo.  I caught the back story about who she really was and where she really came from, but she was still just a pawn in a rich white guy's plans. (More on that guy later.)

This testament leaves few stones unturned, tracing Ms. Barton back to her hometown and her childhood.  After a brief introduction set in the middle of Vertigo's dangerous plot, the authors' decision to backtrack to her teenage years surprised me, but the first act of the novel quickly won me over by creating a whole new world and a strong sense of hope around a charming young girl.  Interactions between young Judy and her father - a hard working man who taught her a lot about life - and her older sister - an aspiring teenage actress with dreams of Hollywood - felt incredibly fresh and got me to take another look at the woman who I knew from Hitchcock's film. There's a lot of growth in the character as her early years are chronicled, and I really enjoyed what the authors' did to build Judy Barton into a sympathetic small town woman.

The second act moves from Judy's hometown past to San Francisco - and what I would call "the present" in Vertigo's universe - and it's then that the book gives a fresh coat of paint to another key character from the film.  But it's not the guy you'd expect - Jimmy Stewart's "Scottie" Ferguson really gets the short straw here - it's the devilish Gavin Elster.  The man who brings the two leads together is kind of an afterthought in the film, played only briefly by Tom Helmore. (BTW, is there a movie that relies more on its two stars than Vertigo? It's like the '91 Chicago Bulls of movies, except Kim Novak is about 12 zillion times hotter than Scottie Pippen.)  The Testament of Judith Barton, on the other hand, gets plenty of miles out of the Elster character, who I started to picture as a snarky fella in the vein of Laurence Olivier's character from Rebecca.  We know the character is a bad man once we've seen the movie, but this book really reminds us just how sinister the character who set up his wife really could have been.

I have to admit that I got a little disappointed as the book moved through the events that we saw in Vertigo.  I enjoyed the build up and I enjoyed gaining a better understanding of who Judy Barton was and how she got caught up in this awful situation, but re-tracing the steps that led to the film's finale was a slight buzzkill.  There were still some nice reveals inside Judy's mind, and the fact that we're drawn so much closer to her character makes the events that unfold even more heartbreaking than they were on film.  I should commend the book for these steps, and it's only fair that they remained faithful to the film.  Maybe I'm just let down by the final act because I really didn't want Judith Barton's story to end the way I knew it would.

The Testament of Judith Barton is at times a little too cute when it makes sly references to the film - a direct nod to Kim Novak had me struggling to decide between rolling my eyes or snickering at the twist - but there are also times when words that were spoken by Ms. Novak took on an entirely new meaning in my mind.  I'm not going to sit here and say that everyone who loves Vertigo will fall in love with this book, because I know how protective us nerds can be about our classics sometimes.  The book also acknowledges that it varies from the French novel that inspired Hitchcock's film (D'entre les Morts, if you're keeping score at home), but I'm definitely OK with Powers & McLeod's alternate take on Judy Barton's mind.

In fact, this Hitchcock nerd was more than pleased to scroll through The Testament of Judith Barton.  It might not be the most ground breaking novel, but it got me thinking about one of my favorite stories and opened my eyes to new perceptions of something I thought I knew completely.  That's worth a lot in my book, and I found myself unable to put The Testament of Judith Barton down.  I think there's a lot of entertainment to be had from the novel for even those who don't adore every minute of Hitchcock's film, too.

If you want to find out about Judith Barton on your own, feel free to head over to the book's website, which offers the plot synopsis, a sample, and the all important purchase links.  At an incredibly reasonable price ($3.99 at Amazon or Barnes & Noble!), there's no reason fans of Hitchcock or Vertigo shouldn't check this book out and see what they think about her journey from Salina to San Fran.

The Mike's True Heroes of Horror (7/10) - Stephen King

In the mainstream pop culture scene of the past thirty years, there probably isn't a bigger horror star than this guy.  With 49 novels, numerous short stories and over 130 film or TV productions based on his work, He's pretty much an institution at this point in his career.  I almost thought it was too easy to put him on this list, like I would just be stating the obvious to people who already recognize his effects on the genre.  Usually, the easiest answer is the right one. Which brings us to...

Stephen King

Who is Stephen King?

A favorite son of the state of Maine, whose real and fictional villages host most of his twisted tales, Stephen King was born in Portland and was educated in the state all the way through his graduation from The University of Maine in 1970.  At that point, King had already sold his first short story and had written for the campus newspaper, but it was his inability to quickly earn a teaching job that led him to keep selling stories to magazines.  He began working on his first novel in the early part of the '70s, which was published in 1973 and adapted for the screen three years later.

Around the same time is when King developed a drinking problem that affected him for much of the next two decades, which - along with his teenage love of H.P. Lovecraft and EC Comics - also contributed to the dark vision that inhabits his works.  Despite personal issues - including an auto accident that severely injured him in the late '90s - King has kept writing for over 40 years, and continues to stay in the spotlight with new works and a column for Entertainment Weekly on pop culture.  He remains married to his first wife, Tabitha, and has three children who have all become writers themselves.

King is most known for....

In horror circles, Kings early novels define his impact on the genre quite well.  After debuting with Carrie, King created 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, The Stand, and The Dead Zone by the end of the 1970s.  Each of these have been adapted for film or TV as well - all but The Stand have more than one adaptation as I write this, and that one's remake is allegedly coming - and each show a common theme that's become a known fact these days: it's really hard to adapt a Stephen King story to the screen and maintain all the detail of his intricate prose.

Other Horror Hits....

I might run out of hosting space on Blogger if I try to list everything King's done that has mattered to horror fans around the world. (I did recently try to sum up my favorite films based on the dude's stuff, however.)  Aside from the small sample of novels I listed above, King has produced plenty of horror classics.  Names like Pet Sematary, Cujo, Christine and Children of the Corn will be very familiar to fans of horror on the silver screen during the 1980s - which is probably when King's horror popularity peaked, though it hasn't really dropped off much in the ensuing decades.  King also got involved with writing and directing for the screen during that decade, though the results are varied from the epic Creepshow to the comically mishandled Maximum Overdrive.

In print, King has remained one of the best selling authors of ever throughout his career, and most of his horror tales dramatically tower over the film versions that are more popular to many.  I'm going to talk about my favorite King story and how it affected me shortly, but I would certainly be leaving this article incomplete if I didn't mention one of his most beloved creations, the Dark Tower series of novels that is now seven (going on 8 in 2012) books long.  I, out of what must only be ignorance or stupidity, have not yet read these works, but a large consensus of folks around the world will reference King's tales of Roland the Gunslinger as an epic tale that rivals The Lord of the Rings for pure fantasy bliss.

So why's Stephen King here?

I think - no, I hope - that my recounting of the man's career thus far has left little doubt that he has been one of the most iconic folks in horror throughout his career.  But the question remains: Why does he matter to me? I'm not here to just repeat popular opinion, after all.  If Stephen King's gonna be one of my top ten heroes in horror, I need to make darn sure that I really feel as strongly as most do about King's work.

Growing up in the '80s, I'm not sure I can pinpoint my first interaction with something related to Stephen King.  Around the time, he was just someone you knew about by living in the '80s, like Ronald Reagan or Sylvester Stallone or Madonna.  If I had to guess, I'd think that the first thing I officially experienced that had King's name on it was Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining, which was one of the first horror movies my parents made readily available to my sister and I.  Of course, King has nearly disowned this film, and when I later read his book, I could tell why.  Though Kubrick's film remains one of my very favorite horror films, I will often argue with myself that King's book is in fact a better, deeper, and more meaningful horror story.

I'm pretty certain I can pinpoint my first King reading experience, which I think was his 1994 novel Insomnia.  It isn't necessarily regarded as one of King's best works, and it's definitely been surpassed by most of the things I've read by him since, but it certainly painted a new vision of what horror movies could be in my teenage mind.  After being transplanted from the small town home of my first 10 years into the family farm in the nearby countryside, reading King's books - which were generally set in small Maine towns that were similar in size to my home town - was a mental escape back into the small town setting that I missed at the time.  It wasn't easy to relate to the novel's AARP lead characters, but the dark side of their life and the small town they lived in certainly awakened my active imagination about how evil could lurk everywhere, even in a quiet small town.  It would be later that I would really start to understand how King's world works and how many connections to his other works were hidden inside that 800 page book.  (The book was set in one of King's favorite fictional towns, Derry, which previously hosted King's revered novel It and later Dreamcatcher.)

That small town evil was expanded upon in one of the next King novels I read, and one that might still be my favorite King story in print.  Needful Things was that book, and at the time I thought it was the most awe-inspiring horror tale I'd ever read.  Set in King's other infamous fictional town, Castle Rock, the tale of the devilish Leland Gaunt setting up a shop that offers something specific to everyone, as long as they play a prank on another person in town.  The long tale focuses on how evil humanity can be when prodded in the right way, and really struck a chord with me.  I could picture the events playing out in my old neighborhood, even using real houses in town as the setting for the scenes in my mind, and it really blew my mind.  And when I later read The Dead Zone and Cujo - which I also loved - and found out they tied in to the landscape of Castle Rock is when I was kind of in love with King's crazy mind.

As if reading those four novels as a teen wasn't enough to blow my mind, a couple of collections of King's shorter works helped shape my universe as a horror fan too.  Different Seasons was most memorable for its less horror-tinged stories - particularly the ones that became The Shawshank Redemption, Apt Pupil, and Stand By Me - and Skeleton Crew introduced me to another horror tale that infected my mind for good: The Mist.  Remember the first time you read something and immediately started filming the movie in your brain with your favorite actors?  For me that was The Mist.  (Yes, I did mentally cast Kurt Russell. No, I was not disappointed by the eventual movie, though I did hate the ending.)

I lost track of reading King somewhere along the way - probably in the middle of the segmented release of The Green Mile in six boring parts - but my occasional revisits to his work have reminded me often that this is certainly someone who knew how to create horror.  He's been dismissed at times for writing popular fiction and churning out a few duds along the way, but I don't see any way I could leave King off a list of horror heroes based on his mainstream status.  King represents horror to an entire generation, and even some of his less famous works could inspire a young horror fan, just like Insomnia inspired me.

With his interlocking universe full of connections between several of his iconic stories, Stephen King's works did a lot to make me think about the horror genre and how deep a horror story could be, taking me out of the "monsters and slashers" mindset that I had previously known of in horror.  I worry that I sometimes get caught up in the film side of his work - which varies in quality - but a reminder of what his best books and stories could do is proof that Stephen King truly is among the best horror has to offer anyone who loves the macabre.

Book Review - Monsters: A Field Guide to Blood-Thirsty Beasts

It's football season again in America, which means there's an extra spring in The Mike's step.  More annoyingly, it also means that The Mike's Lair - which lies just down the road from his alma mater's football stadium, needs to be cleaned a little more often.  As I started to sweep up the remnants of the offseason from my living quarters this weekend, I couldn't help noticing how many books on genre flicks I happened to have lying around as reference materials.  Normally I only bring books to FMWL when some kind soul offers me an interesting and free piece of literature, but it's not fair for me to keep all these sources of knowledge to myself now, is it?

Enter Monsters: A Field Guide to Blood-Thirsty Beasts, a glossy 200 page handbook which - according to an introduction written by Abraham Van Helsing in 1898 - "could save your life".  The publisher's information inside the book states that it was first published in 2004, so I'm slightly confused as to what occurred in the 106 years between the fictional character's foreword and the publication of the book.  I mean, there were generations of potential monster victims in that time span - I sure hope that they had something like this to help them out.

After the introductions and some brief instructions - including a tutorial on "Monster Behavior" and some information on the classification and location of these creatures - the book is broken up into several sections that segregate a horde of cinematic terrors into "classes" of sort.  I guess that authors Dave Elliott, C.J. Henderson, R. Allen Leider didn't want to get all the monsters mixed up, so they've broken things up in to categories like "Mutated Lizards, Fish and Dinosaurs", "Monster Men", "Manufactured Monsters", and even "Mutated Vegetables".  Each section offers a wide variety of creatures and villains that spans the history of film (and television, briefly), most of which receive a full page of the book that focuses on their traits and how us humans can deal with them.

With only part of a page available due to the large images, the authors keep their commentary on each creature brief, yet still cover a bit of information.  There's a "tale of the tape" on each page, which breaks down things like the monster's size, habitat, intelligence (via a 1-5 brain rating scale), and film of origin.  The location and size are also illustrated in diagrams on the page, which are summed up in other sections of the book.  The text includes a description of the monster and comments on four key traits - Behavior, Lethality, Weaknesses, and Powers.  Though the book is less thorough than many online bloggers (this is where I could shamelessly plug my own budding "So You Want To Be a Monster?" series), it provides a nice introduction that should help less experienced viewers to find some horror classics.

It should be noted that the book is not all horror either, as villains from many sci-fi classics and even a few comedies (including the really weird inclusion of 2000's The Little Vampire, which was released near the end of the Jonathan Lipnicki craze of the late '90s).  It's interesting to see these characters included next to some of the classic horror and sci-fi stars we're used to reading about, yet the book still seems to miss a few rather important fellas.  I'm not gonna name names, but let's just say that there's a certain amorphous pink killer from outer space who showed up in 1958 and terrorized Steve McQueen and who has become very near and dear to me who DOESN'T appear in the book.  Yeah.  I know.  Sadness.

This field guide definitely proves it's not the most in depth resource for potential opponents of monsters out there - I gotta believe there's a full Oxford Dictionary sized reference book out there somewhere that really gets down to the nitty gritty of things - but it's a fun little "pocket guide" of sorts.  Full-time horror fans might not learn much new from it, but the well-designed and visually appealing book is at least good for those who want to learn a little more about monster cinema.  I've had the book - which I found on one of those tables at Borders where they put the marked down books they don't want any more - for over a year, and it's still good for a couple of reminders of movies I love or movies I meant to see every once in a while.

This book may have been a life saver in Professor Van Helsing's day, but today's horror fan has a lot of other resources at their fingertips too.  I'm not sure I'd trust my life to the book, but it's still a fun little horror handbook that's well designed and provides some good lauhghs.  If I ever run into Godzilla or Dracula or The Grim Reaper (as played by Bill Sadler in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey), at least it won't take me long to read up on them.  If you want that comfort - or if you know someone who could use the help - it's a super cheap pickup on Amazon.  If the good professor is right, it's a solid investment in your future.

Book Review - Shock Value by Jason Zinoman

In the history of my writing this blog, I estimate that I've hurled about 733 backhanded insults at horror films because they weren't made in the 1970s.  In doing so, I've repeatedly referred to the films of that decade as the "Golden Age of Horror" and lamented the fact that the overwhelming majority of horror films from the 1980s and beyond lost the power of their predecessors.  The genre became formulaic, and in doing so it lost something the films of that era had.  Something that Jason Zinoman calls Shock Value.

Truthfully, I've spent a lot of time thinking about what changed when the '70s ended.  At times I blame Friday the 13th, at others I mention the disappearance of supernatural and religious based horrors. (People these days will blame a lot of problems on religion, but I can't think of a time when its existence has hurt the horror genre...but that's another story for another day.)  Zinoman's book takes a far less theoretical approach than I do; focusing on the handful of filmmakers who made the biggest horror hits between 1968 and 1979 and looking back at the events that led to some of the most game-changing horror films we've ever seen.

All the films you'd expect are represented, and most of them - occasionally in roundabout ways - get a full chapter devoted to them.  Rosemary's Baby kicks off the book, as Zinoman recounts the early stages of the film and how William Castle ended up not directing the film with Vincent Price in the cast, and Night of the Living Dead and Targets also represent the late '60s.  (BTW, I can not understate how excited I was to find Targets getting some love in the book.  To me, it's basically the most underrated movie ever.)  As the book roles into the 1970s Zinoman brings forth The Exorcist, The Last House on the Left, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, and Alien - among others - and we'd expect nothing less from a book that promises to cover the decade's best horror filmmakers.  There's also a surprising amount of time spent on John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon's collaboration on Dark Star.  You wouldn't expect this sci-fi spoof to be a major player in the horror scene, but Zinoman does an excellent job of recognizing the connection between the film and each filmmaker's later works.

Zinoman seems to have been given the ability to look "behind the curtain" into the production of these films, and the amount of knowledge he presents on each film and each filmmaker is astounding.  While his discussion of each filmmaker is full of useful information, I was pretty blown away by his work in discussing the films of Wes Craven and Brian De Palma.  Craven's Last House has always struck me as one of the great "rogue" horror films because it falls so far outside the bounds of what we're used to seeing onscreen, and Zinoman does a fantastic job of getting behind Craven's assault on audiences in that film and The Hills Have Eyes.  His chapter on De Palma focuses primarily on Carrie, but it also draws out the voyeuristic side of De Palma's films that most already recognized - and offers a pretty fascinating look into why De Palma's films creep on their characters the way they do. 

The more heartbreaking side of the book features O'Bannon and Carpenter.  Two of my favorite voices in horror are chronicled here, and the recollection of the rift in their friendship that grew nasty over the years definitely was hard to read.  Again, Zinoman seems to have been given a lot of information (which seems to be mostly from O'Bannon's side) regarding what happened between these men at USC and after graduation.  The stories behind Dark Star, Halloween, and Alien all tie back to these two men and their different visions, and it's kind of sad to know that they had to go separate ways.  OK, maybe it's only sad if you're a huge horror nerd like me, but it's sad nonetheless.

I could keep rambling on and give away the whole book, but there's a simple way to sum up what I'm trying to say. If you've got any interest in the horror films of this era, Shock Value is a book you need to read.  If I had to teach someone on horror of the decade, this would be required reading.  (However, it's probably better if you see the movies first....don't worry, there's a comprehensive index in the back of the book!)

I did find some comments in the book that I personally disagree with (I'm not sure most horror fans would vote Rosemary's Baby as the best horror movie ever, and I don't feel The Exorcist and Night of the Living Dead have lost potency with age), but primarily he's talking about the same thing I'm trying to talk about here. (The difference is he's doing it well.)  There was something different about these horror films and the bold filmmakers behind them, and Shock Value manages to bottle that lightning into an easy to read 240ish pages.  Zinoman has done an amazing job of putting all of this information together, and his love for the genre carries the book from there.

If you believe in "The Golden Age of Horror", you need to find a copy of Shock Value immediately.

 Shock Value by Jason Zinoman has been provided for review by TLC Book Tours.  Head over there for more information on Shock Value, including more reviews from other great horror blogs!

Or, just head on over to Amazon and pick up a copy!

Book Review - The Dead Path by Stephen M. Irwin

I'm gonna go all out to open this review, because my point here is simple: The Dead Path offers pretty much everything I love about horror fiction.  In fact, author Stephen M. Irwin wraps most of those things I love up in his lead character, a haunted, paranoid soul named Nicholas Close.  Nicholas seems to carry all the fears of the world on his person, as the supernatural  forces around him mix with his human fears; his wife's death, his family concerns, and even his sexual frustrations all play into his ordeal.  This is the kind of horror that movies can miss out on; the kind of thing that famed horror authors write but lose when their story hits Hollywood. 

With new characters popping up - each holding different pieces of Nicholas' puzzle - throughout the near 400 page hardcover text, it's easy for the reader to get a bit overwhelmed, too.  Irwin's tale, like his character, mixes differing themes into one narrative.  Again, human fears (such as child abduction) mix with supernatural forces (like ancient runes).  The Dead Path no doubt believes in an interconnected world, taking a somewhat existential approach to the town Nicholas lives in and the people who surrounded him.

The early segments of the novel draw obvious comparisons to films like The Sixth Sense, but Irwin has a lot more up his sleeves than just a protagonist who sees dead people.  The plot heavily relies on that ancient symbol in the middle of the cover (the vertical line with half-diamond that a nerd like me might just recognize from Halloween 6), and I won't spoil the direction the plot twists.  I do feel safe saying that the plot feels like something from Stephen King, as a band of folks from different mindsets come together against a seemingly unstoppable evil.  As I mentioned earlier, the mixture of characters and developments can be a little befuddling at times, but Irwin's characters lift the material up and make these issues obsolete.

Irwin also offers some fantastic descriptors throughout the book, particularly when discussing the woods that contain most of the story's terrors.  (Warning: Anyone with a fear of spiders will squirm quite a bit.)  I often found myself re-reading passages to get a better picture of the setting in my mind, but not due to confusion.  The amount of detail in each setting is pretty impressive.

But let's go back to where we began, because it's the command over human terrors that really propels us into The Dead Path's trap.  Nicholas Close's dilemma, his struggle to deal with the apparitions around him while face-to-face with unbelievable real world problems, is handled brilliantly.  Nicholas isn't a deep character, but we don't need to know much about him to understand that he's a man against the world.  The character reads like a tortured soul should.  I usually cast books full of Hollywood stars as I thumb through them, but I couldn't come up with anyone to play Nicholas.  The character mixes a unique frailty with foolish intensity, and by the finale I found that I really liked this character.  There weren't many good reasons to like him based on his personality, but the perseverance that Irwin gives him is incredibly admirable.  He's a tragic hero if there ever was one.

It took me a while to really get into The Dead Path - the story comes at the reader from a lot of angles early on, and it's difficult to keep track of them all - but once the game is set the plot escalates with each paragraph.  There are a lot of surprising turns, right up to the final page, and Irwin seems to have everything bundled together neatly.  By the time I got to the final chapters, the story had become as intense as any piece of horror in recent memory.  An impressive feat is achieved by first-time author Irwin, and I look forward to what he has coming up next.

If you'd like more info on The Dead Path, head over to Stephen M. Irwin's website or his Facebook page!

GIVEAWAY TIME! Win a copy of The Dead Path, by Stephen M. Irwin!

The fine folks over at Random House have a copy of the new horror novel The Dead Path, by Australian author Stephen M. Irwin, that they want to give away to one lucky Midnight Warrior!  I too will soon be reviewing this book here at FMWL, but I don't wanna make you all wait that long.  So, I'm going to give you all a chance to win it NOW!

First, here's some details on the book from the publisher:

Do you remember the last time a book gave you the chills? The Dead Path is the ghost story we’ve been waiting for. 

A haunting vision in the woods sets off a series of tragic events, leaving Nicholas Close lost amid visions of ghosts trapped in their harrowing, final moments. These uniquely terrifying apparitions lead him on a thrilling and suspenseful ride to confront a wicked soul, and will leave an indelible mark on lovers of high-quality suspense and horror alike. 

Nicholas Close has always had an uncanny intuition, but after the death of his wife he becomes haunted, literally, by ghosts doomed to repeat their final violent moments in a chilling and endless loop. Torn by guilt and fearing for his sanity, Nicholas returns to his childhood home and is soon entangled in a disturbing series of disappearances and  murders—both as a suspect and as the next victim of the malignant evil lurking in the heart of the woods. 

Stephen M. Irwin is the kind of debut author that readers love to discover—and rave about to all their friends. His electric use of language, stunning imagery, and suspenseful pacing are all on full display here. The Dead Path is a tour de force of wild imagination, taut suspense, and the creepiest, scariest setting since the sewers in Stephen King’s It.

You can also head over to Mr. Irwin's Facebook page, where there is an excerpt from the book available to peruse.  I've only just begun the book, which comes in a nice hardcover edition with a pretty GLOW IN THE DARK(!) jacket, but the prose Irwin uses in the opening pages already has me a bit hooked.    

How can I win the book, you ask?  Well, it's pretty simple (no crazy screen grab challenge this time, thankfully).  Leave a comment below with your name and email, and tell me one your favorite horror novels you've read.  I'll accept comments through Halloween night, with the contest ending at 12 midnight (CST) on November 1st.  At that point, I'll randomly pick one winner from all who have commented.

Thanks to Random House for thinking of us Midnight Warriors, and thanks to you, the reader, for being ready for a spooky novel from down under!

Book Review - Dr. Dale's Zombie Dictionary: The A-Z Guide to Staying Alive

(2010, Written by Dr. Dale Seslick)

I'm a little tired of waiting for the zombie apocalypse.  It's been more than 40 years since George Romero promised it, and all we've gotten out of it are some incredible films and books surrounded by a lot of really crummy knock-offs.  In the last decade, particularly, zombies have been all over cinema screens.  For every Shaun of the Dead or Dawn of the Dead remake, there seem to be 7 awful indie zombie flicks out there too.  They're even invading our TV sets, thanks to the upcoming The Walking Dead series on AMC.

I must admit that, under these circumstances, I'm also awfully tired of hearing about the "inevitable" zombie apocalypse.  I can't take zombies seriously right now, because there are too many of them out there, and some of them can now randomly run or jump or spit or teleport.  (That last one's on you, Lucio!)

So when the fellow behind this book - Dr. Dale's Zombie Dictionary - got in touch with me about a review, my instant mental reaction was to wonder if we really need more zombies.  I mean, if you've seen a handful of the myriad of z-films (or read any zombie literature), you probably have a pretty good understanding of them by now.  What more is there to offer?  Can a Zombie Dictionary released in 2010 really sustain itself and not become a one-note joke you've already heard?

I'm happy to say that yes, it can.  Because Dr. Dale's Zombie Dictionary is a very, very fun read.

It seems to me that Dr. Dale - if that is his real name - has a pretty good understanding of how saturated the zombie market is right now.  He arms himself with this knowledge, and parlays it into an understanding that most people that would be interested in this type of book already know the basics.  With this in mind, he focuses on things you might not have considered about the zombie apocalypse, and keeps things light.

For example, I've certainly never considered how the Utilitarian Furniture Mart known as IKEA might play in to the zombie apocalypse.  Dr. Dale has.  I've never given much consideration to how pixies or "Spiderman Zombies" might or might not come into play, but he has.  Dr. Dale covers a  lot of things that I have occasionally considered, but gave me new info on them, too. For example, whether or not I'd wear a helmet whilst fighting zombies has crossed my mind, but Dr. Dale's reasoning about helmets took my breath away. 

I was mostly laughing while losing that breath, but that's the charm of the book.  It makes sense along with zombie lore (making sure to reiterate the fact that running zombies don't exist), but has a lot of fun with how to deal with the undead.  In a time when George Romero is up to SIX Dead flicks, we need to maintain a bit of comedy about the topic to keep it fresh.  He also peppers in some hilarious analogies using pop culture.  Some of it is very British humor, and I may have been a little to yankee to get all the gags entirely, particularly when he talks about London's road planning.  It's also worth noting that the book is very up to date, referencing last fall's Zombieland and plenty of recent pop culture names.

Dr. Dale's trying pretty hard to give us a lot of entertaining information here, and some of the topics in the 300+ page text do fall flat.  But the book still provides a lot of laughs, and there are plenty of truly interesting ideas inside the book too, including how Freud's idea of the Id might come into play.  Maybe it won't invade your psyche too deeply but, if nothing else, the book will come in handy to lighten the mood while you're dealing with zombies.  If you're reading this blog, you probably have a decent understanding of what you need to do when there's no more room in Hell.  But Dr. Dale has most certainly considered some things you haven't and his method of sharing them works well.  I highly recommend it.

If you want more info about the book, check out the official website here.  And, if you like, you can pick up your own copy at Amazon.

Book Review - Tales of Woe by John Reed

When I was contacted about doing FMWL's first book review, I had some reservations.  The book? Tales of Woe, a collection of real stories about real events.  The common theme? Suffering and sadness.  Not necessarily my thing, but I was intrigued.  I'm a horror fan who grew up with true crime stories on TV (so much so that my sister made forensics her beloved profession), and that was enough to convince me that something about this book would be entertaining to me.

From the start, I severely underestimated John Reed's collection of emotionally destructive true stories.  I was sure I could find a way to enjoy what was spelled out within the pages of the book, which appeared to me as a small hardbound edition of black pages covered in white text, with some blood red print sprinkled in for effect.  I've watched enough tales of woe take place on movie and TV screens, surely I could manage about 150 pages of sad tales and 50 pages of illustration, right?  I picked up the book figuring I could power through it over the next 2-3 hours.

I ignored the warnings on the back cover which promised "Crushing Defeats. No Happy Endings.  Abject Misery. Pointless, Endless Grief.".  Another warning stated that there would be "No lessons of temperance or moderation".  I didn't think that possible to a jaded lover of dark cinema like myself.

As I said, I severely underestimated Mr. Reed's collection.  The early stories were easy to get through - a little sad, sure - but nothing that really hit me in the gut too hard.  As I passed the 60-70 page range, I started to get a little tired of the book, but my inner tough guy figured it was just the strain of trying to read the white and read text in my poorly lit apartment.  As I passed the 100 page mark, I realized that I really did need a break.

That old saying that us horror fans love to bring out warns about staring into the abyss, and that's exactly what I felt like I was doing as I read the stories collected here.  There was animal cruelty (both by and against humans), racial injustice, freak accidents, lewd sexual behavior, and more.  Some of the stories seemed too crazy to have actually happened.  Did a baboon really eat a baby's brain and then drop it from a telephone pole?  Could a female luchador really be a serial killer of epic proportions?  I wasn't quite buying into what the book was offering, but it was gazing back at me with an unflinching resolve. 

My pace slowed considerably as I continued to travel through the tragic scenes Reed and his artists painted for me.  By page 140, I gave up.  I was resigned to finish the book the next day.  In fact, I momentarily considered giving up on the book entirely.  Of course, that ended quickly, because there's no way would I slight my readers and the fine folks who offered me the chance to review this book.  But the fact that the book was getting to me enough to make me consider giving up was a scary thought.

I went on to finish the book the next evening.  There were more times when I had to put it down and shake my head in disbelief.  A late tale about a doomed mother and child had me begging the back cover was lying - that maybe there would be just one moment of divine intervention in the book.  I was completely broken down by the tales within this little black book.

The back of the book also made a claim that its purpose was Greek Catharsis, meaning that "You watch people suffer horribly, and then feel better about your own life."  In my case, it made me immediately want to partake in things I enjoy (In the interest of full disclosure, that included watching a video of my 18 month old niece, some music by Meat Loaf, and an ice cream bar).  I enjoyed these things a little more than usual, definitely, and I also found myself thinking a bit about the people in my life who I may unintentionally distance myself from at times.  I'm not sure I was left feeling better about my own life, but I was more grateful.

If that is its goal, then Tales of Woe is a depressing and harrowing success.  I'm glad that I've had the chance to experience these tales - from the silly ones (did we need so much emphasis on the evils of Sarah Palin?) to the destructive ones (I'll never look at the cupboards under my kitchen counter the same way), because they offered me something powerful and thought-provoking.  If you think you can find your way through them, John Reed's Tales of Woe will take you on a journey of suffering.  I must warn you, however.  Tread that road carefully.

(Tales of Woe is available as of August 17th from MTV Press.  Visit the official website for more information. For another take on the book, check out a review by Geof over at Enter The Man Cave!)