Big Sleep news. Matt Pike is out, replaced by Bubba Dupree of Void. Also, Dale Crover from Melvins on drums? This new track is interesting, but there's a lethargy here that feels a bit ominous. I'll have to wait for the full album. In the meantime, this is being released as a flexi disc along with a Sleep comic book, put out by Third Man Records. You can pre-order the comic HERE. The link to the bundle that includes the music comes up 404, so it's probably sold out.
Watch:
From Writer Robert Bolesto and Director Agnieszka Smoczyńska, the team that gave us the delightfully messed up film The Lure (which The Horror Vision and Projexploitation crossed over to cover in great depth HERE):
I can only hope this hits theatres by me, even if it means driving to The Nuart in Nashville. I love that this feels a bit like The Lure, but also strikes me as having similar DNA to Ryan Kruger's Street Trash! There's so much energy on screen, and again, we have someone at work making a trailer who knows how to show us enough to whip us into a frenzy of expectation, but give nothing away.
Read:
I finished the third book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series, The Wastelands. Still one of my favorites of the series, but it took me longer to read than I anticipated. Next up: Wizard and Glass, the last of the books in the series that I've previously read more than once.
Once we get past this one, it's all first-time re-reads and not since Wolves of Calla, Song of Susannah and The Dark Tower each released. This endeavor has been a long time coming, and I've still got a pretty good head of steam.
Playlist:
Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest
Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music for Airports
John Carpenter - Lost Themes IV: Noir
Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley
Tomahawk - Oddfellows
Melvins/Helms Alee
The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir
Boards of Canada - Inferno
Perturbator - Age of Aquarius
Final Light - Eponymous
Greg Puciato - Mirrorcell
Lard - The Last Temptation of Reid
All Them Witches - House of Mirrors
Converge - Hum of Hurt
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
* Seven of Wands
• Page of Cups
* Eight of Wands
Positive results are the result of good communication. That said, it can be difficult to say what needs to be said to achieve those positive results.
As is often the case, I'm not picking up what the cards are putting down at the moment, so this one will sit on my desk until morning, just as a reminder.
Well, thought I forgot about the whole "Seven Days of The Reverend Horton Heat," eh? That's because I 100% DID forget.
The one that started it all for me. True, Mr. Brown and I had seen the Rev years before opening for White Zombie on the Astrocreep tour (along with Melvins!), but it wasn't until 88.3 WXAV St. Xavier University played "It's Martini Time" that I fell in love with the Rev's guitar sound and overall aesthetic and bought an album.
I still think this track's guitar is among my favorites ever.
NCBD:
Great list today.
Continuing on as my favorite of the Energon Universe books, this cover to Transformers 33 sends shivers of great joy through my body. I still can't get over all the massive changes Kirkman has added to the book - Optimus giving over Prime leadership to Elita One, Thundercracker ditching the 'cons and becoming a 'bot, and hey, let's not forget, what the hell is going on with Megatron? Hopefully, we'll see this issue.
The finale of this fantastic adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's The Thing on the Doorstep. This story has gotten maybe more traction than any other HPL story in a while, so it's been interesting to see the different takes. Pretty sure Birks/Roberts is my favorite (though I can't help my forlorn wonder at what Richard Stanley's would have been like).
I have zero idea what is going on with this family reunion from the afterlife storyline in TMNT. I mean, I'm following the story just fine; I'm just not sure what this means for the series going forward. I guess one thing to keep in mind is, I don't think this was ever done before. For now, I'll hold my reservations close to my chest and trust in the creative team, as we're almost 170 issues into the relaunch continuity that began back in 2012, and the book has been fantastic for most of that run.
Once again, totally forgot this book was even out there. Going to need a full re-read before getting into this, and I'm wondering if I should just wait until this second chapter runs its course.
Will this actually come out today? This final chapter of Rafael Grampá's Gargoyle of Gotham has been pushed back so many times, I lost count. Still, these are unbelievably gorgeous books that must take a lot of Grampá's heart and soul to produce, so I'm not complaining.
The Energon Universe tightens its stranglehold on my wallet with another book! I never had any of the toys as a kid, but I was always intrigued then and am still now. I've loved the introduction of these characters in the other books, so this feels like a natural evolution.
Looking forward to more of this weird Snake Eyes conundrum. I love that they went all the way back to the first two years of ARAH to show us something Dr. Venom did that we never saw until now. That kind of callback really shows that Hama continues to function at the top of his game, even after 329 issues.
The first issue was solid, and I'm curious what this title will mean for the evolution of SIKTC.
Read:
I'm still working through Stephen King's third novel in The Dark Tower series, The Wastelands. This is my favorite book, so it's a bit amazing to me how long it's taking me to read. I sailed through up to the Doorkeeper in the house on Dutch Hill, where he crosses over into Roland's world. Amazing scene that sort of serves as an act break. After, it's been a bit slower going. Part of that is various other things grasping at my attention - lots of comics to read for DwC, etc. Part of it is also something I only just realized this morning, as I blew through the chapter where Gasher absconds with Jake, leading him into the detritus tunnels of east Lud. This entire post-Jake's section is where the evidence of Roland's world having moved on grows to include people.
Sure, in book one, The Gunslinger, we had the town of Tull, but this is early on in the saga, and Tull feels like a town in a Western, which is what that first book purports to be for it's early chapters, only slowly peeling back the curtain and revealing Roland's world is actually very similar to our own, only a thousand or so years down a timeline where we destroy ourselves with, what I've always assumed, was warfare.
"The ancient, rusty hulks of what had once surely been automobiles stood at intervals along both curbs... There were no tires on any of these eerie hulks; they either had been stolen or had rotted away to dust long since. And all the glass had been broken, as if the remaining denizens of this city abhorred anything which might show them their own reflections... beneath and between the abandoned cars, the gutters were filled with drifts of unidentifiable metal junk and bright glints of glass. Trees had been planted at intervals along the sidewalks in some long-gone, happier time, but they were now so emphatically dead that they looked like stark metal sculptures against the cloudy sky. Some of the warehouses had either been bombed or had collapsed on their own, and beyond the jumbled heaps of bricks..."
The passage above switched on a fairly bright lightbulb when I read it yesterday morning. This is our world. We're not quite there yet, but the fact that, over the intervening roughly two decades since I last read The Wastelands, our world has become an eerily identifiable 're-echo' of Roland's. The key 'tell' here is the fact that the deeper Gasher, Jake, Roland and Oy descend into East Lud and the Tick Tock Man's domain, the more we get a sense that the people who inhabit this land enjoy living amongst the ruins of the old world. That's the thing I always get hung up on when contemplating, "could we actually take things too far?" in our own world, the operative idea being that, at a certain point, all of our in-fighting and disassembling of the mores, conventions and general social reform is going to leave our world covered in detritus and despair and that no one wants that. Only, maybe some people do want that. Maybe some people, to quote Michael Caine's Alfred in Christopher Nolan's film The Dark Knight, "want to see the world burn." We know those people have always existed; however, maybe they're not fringe, ineffectual nothings who can only damage small portions of our society. Maybe they are the people in charge. The same way late-stage Capitalism has seen the advent of destruction economics, maybe there's a big-picture advantage for those in power in destroying everything we've built.
"He thought he was at last beginning to fully understand what that innocuous phrase - the world has moved on - really meant. What a breadth of ignorance and evil it covered."
Jesus Christ. No wonder King hates trump so much - literally the Ticktock man of our world, and he predicted him over thirty years ago.
Playlist:
Boards of Canada - Inferno
Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons
Ennio Morricone - The Thing OST
sunn O))) - Loser
Pilot Priest & Electric Youth - Come True OST
Gnarls Barkley - Atlanta
Boy Harsher - Careful
Blackbraid - Celestial Womb EP
Revocation - New Gods, New Masters
Sinoa Caves - Beyond the Black Rainbow OST
Melvins & Lustmord - Pigs of the Roman Empire
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Six of Cups
• Queen of Pentacles
• Four of Pentacles
Emotional Balance takes a steady hand on Earthly concerns, something I'm struggling with at the moment, which makes feel isolated.
I saw Drug Church at Nashville's Basement East this past Saturday. Fabulous show! I'd been to this venue once before, back in 2023, and I forgot it's one of the easier Nashville locations to get to, so I'm going to stop being so gunshy about hitting shows there.
The driving here is really prohibitive. There's so many exchanges to get to some locations, and traffic is as bad or worse than LA (believe it!), so there have been a few events I purchased tickets to in the last year that I ended up not going to, simply because, on a week night after a day's work, the thought of doing these drives is daunting, to say the least. Good to know The Basement East is pretty painless.
Anyway, great show, great crowd. I watched a bunch of younger dudes doing full-on stage-dive cartwheels from the stage back into the crowd, and it was amazing. At a high-energy show like this, I miss the pit, but I especially miss surfing. I learned quite some time back, though, that the ramifications to those activities now can be pretty substantial. At 50? Maybe I'm buying my own pity story, but it's best to err on the side of caution, lest I remove myself from the flow of my daily life with crutches or a cast.
"What a drag it is, getting old."
Yeah, but also, I'm mostly okay with it. I mean, I did all that shit when I was younger (never stage dove - it's far more acceptable today. Back in the Aragon Brawlroom days, bouncers would throw your ass out of the show for that shit), and it's cool to see the younger gen do it while I sit back, bang my head and drink my beer.
Watch:
After 8 years, I canceled Shudder. It wasn't easy, because I've really been a huge supporter of them since I signed up back in the spring of 2018. But they had it coming after canceling The Last Drive-In. Ultimately, I understand that Shudder and the folks that run it aren't to blame, that it's the parent company AMC. I also understand that by canceling that and taking the $30 AMC+ deal for a full year, I basically just made the opposite statement I wanted to make.
Here's the deal, though: I've known for a few years that AMC is shitty to Shudder. I mean, you can pay for Shudder, or you can pay for AMC+, which includes Shudder. Not only that, but the Shudder portal on AMC+ actually has more Shudder material than Shudder does.
That's just messed up.
This has been stuck in my craw for a while now. I want to watch a particular movie with Joe Bob, it's not on Shudder, but it is on AMC+'s Shudder. WTF? I held off as long as I could, but by doing that, I've already made my statement. Now, I'm looking at my pocketbook. So it's backward, but it's what I need to do at the moment.
And the first movie I watched on AMC+'s Shudder portal? Nothing I couldn't see on Shudder, but still... Oily Maniac had been on my list for a while, so I dialed up this batshit crazy Shaw Brothers Horror flick and fell down a rabbit hole of whatthefuck.
So really, not much has changed, except I saved myself $69. I would have rather not canceled Shudder, but this is where we are.
Read:
I blew through Brian McAuley's latest novel, Breath In, Bleed Out, over the weekend and loved every twist and turn!
Equal parts a Slasher and a Mystery, this book had me guessing and wincing almost all the way through. The writing is crisp and lean - no fat here, so the plot pulls you right through. The characters, too, who are fantastic, are a great mix of folks you root for and folks who, well, maybe deserve the awful deaths they get. And the deaths? Breathe In, Bleed Out has some diabolical kills. One in particular, which I'll just say involves heat and a rattlesnake, really impressed - and disgusted - me.
Playlist:
Steve Moore - Jimmy & Stiggs OST
Sleep - Sleep's Holy Mountain
Converge & Chelsea Wolfe - Bloodmoon: I
High on Fire - Electric Messiah
Converge - The Dusk in Us
Converge - Love Is Not Enough
Nun Gun - Mondo Decay
Drug Church - Hygiene
Drug Church - Prude
Adam Egypt Mortimer - The Obelisk
Drug Church - Paul Walker
Geoff Barrow & Ben Salisbury - Drokk
Vitalic - OK Cowboy
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Three of Swords
• Five of Cups
• Five of Pentacles
Not gonna lie, I'm a little freaked out by this pull. We'll see.
No word on the new album yet, but this track is rad!
NCBD:
Big week. Let's get into it.
Perfect timing! I usually hang on to these Savage Sword issues until I have a chance to really sit down and enjoy them, and I just did that last weekend with issue 13 and was left wanting more.
This pretty much speaks for itself if you're a SIKTC fan. Looks like this is a three-issue mini-series that will no doubt help spin off big changes coming up in issue 50 of SIKTC, and as much as I've enjoyed these last few "young Erica" storylines in the flagship book, I'm pretty anxious to see how the whole thing is going to evolve. Thinking that starts here.
I know nothing about this new number one for Excommunicated, other than it's on Vault, and I miss Vault! Here's the solicitation blurb:
"When a faithful nun and a festering demon are each excommunicated from the church — and from hell — because of a botched exorcism, they must work together to uncover a sinister plot that endangers their lives and the world."
Definitely sounds like a 'me' book, so I'm giving it a shot!
I loved the setup of the first issue of Estuary: A Ghost Story, so I'm back for more. Nothing like an underwater ghost story.
As I mentioned, I wasn't able to score the free one last week for FCBD because I don't go anywhere near a comic shop on FCBD. Looking forward to this enough that I have no problem paying for it.
This is the issue we've been building to, and funny how it kind of dovetails with the current season of Daredevil: Born Again, which wrapped up last night (but which I haven't watched yet at the time I'm writing this).
I love this Fraction and Jimenez Batman series, and I love that they're playing the GCPD against them.
Watch:
llimage/textsddj
I'm putting this new Evil Dead Burn trailer here for posterity's sake, but I won't be watching it of my own volition.
Most likely, I'll see this a number of times at the theatre, but I'm really going to attempt to minimize exposure to the film before it's release, lest what happened with Evil Dead Rise happen here. As of now, I am very excited for this film! So excited, in fact, that I started re-watching Ash vs. Evil Dead from the beginning the other night. I know this is a completely different side to the Evil Dead Universe than anything with Ash (as it should be), but I never did get around to Ash vs Evil Dead season three, so now's the time.
Playlist:
Cristobal Tapia De Veer - Smile OST
sunn O))) - Loser
Art Brut - Brilliant! Tragic!
Killing Joke - Eponymous
Blood Mother - Eponymous (pre-release singles)
Converge & Chelsea Wolfe - Bloodmoon: I
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Mind Control
Type O Negative - October Rust
Tyler Bates & Chelsea Wolfe - X OST
Flying Lotus - 1983
Pepper Adams - Encounter!
Cage & Aviary - Migration
Vitalic - OK Cowboy
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
I realized recently that I never posted anything from Gylt's latest album, In 1000 Agonies I Exist. You can grab this over on the band's Bandcamp page. Both this and 2024's I Will Commit A Holy Crime: Tandem are fantastic records that infiltrated my regular rotation last year after my trip back home to L.A., when friends first played these guys for me. I would very much like to see Gylt live at some point.
Watch:
I caught the late show for Damian McCarthy's Hokum last Thursday night. I've been all but salivating for this one. Here's the 'final' trailer, released last week.
So how was it? Did I get what I wanted? Oh my god, yes!
Hokum is an excellent ghost story, and it's about haunted people as much as it is about a haunted place. The locations, as with all McCarthy's films, are gorgeous beyond compare. There are some legitimately frightening sequences here. One in particular, involving a circle around a four-poster bed, was the first example of a filmmaker creating a sustained sequence of fear in years.
That's my favorite, and it is rare. It's just really difficult to scare an adult with a ghost or monster movie when just living in this world means we operate with a low-grade level of sustained fear 24/7. But McCarthy pulls it off beautifully.
There are also some really great jump scares here. One in particular really got me.
Playlist:
John Cale - Fear
John Cale - Slow Dazzle
The Dream Syndicate - The Days of Wine and Roses
Portishead - Third
The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir
The Soft Moon - Criminal
The Misfits - Walk Among Us
Electric Youth and Pilot Priest - Come True OST
Corrosion of Conformity - Good God/Baad Man
Frank Black and the Catholics - One More Road for the Hit
Metallica - Ride the Lightning
Beach House - Bloom
Ghost - Ceremony and Devotion
NIN - The Slip
Gylt - I Will Commit a Holy Crime: Tandem
Slow Crush - Thirst
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• XV: The Devil
• Eight of Cups
• King of Wands
Adhering to your own dogma will drain your vitality, so have the presence of mind to recognize your own bullshit and subvert it.
Direct reference to a new project I've dubbed Film50.
I've felt drawn back to several 90s female artists recently, and PJ Harvey is a big one. I don't remember when I first heard To Bring You My Love, but I know it was an instant "all-timer" for me. That said, it's also one that takes me to a very specific inner place, a place I don't often necessarily find myself drawn to these days. Lately, though, I'm all about it.
NCBD:
Another fabulous Wednesday pull from Rick's Comic City in Clarksville. Let's take a gander at what will be waiting for me after work:
For whatever reason, it feels like it's been months since the last issue of Thundarr. Excited to get back into this, as there's potentially some really interesting stuff going on in this book.
Here's a surprise - the unreleased "Swamp Thing meets Jesus" by Rick Veitch and Michael Zulli finally sees the light of day as a four-issue series starting this week and published monthly for the next three months. Reminds me a bit of when Vertigo made a big deal about finally releasing that Constantine story that caused Warren Ellis to bail on the book after only two thin trades worth of what could have been a long and completely brilliant run. For as groundbreaking as they wanted to be perceived as back in the late 80s, I don't think DC had fully acquiesced to Karen Berger's autonomy until after Sandman proved the brand.
We come to the end of the Sssilent Missions event with a Firefly issue. No better way to end things, in my opinion. Like Copperhead, another of my all-time favorite characters.
Another facsimile edition for Larry Hama's original ARAH series, this time issue 14, which I believe is the first appearance of Laird Destro!
One thing I learned years ago is to stay the hell out of comic shops on Free Comic Book Day, which is this coming Saturday. So I'm not sure I'll actually be able to walk away with this, or if I should just wait for the not-free version that drops next Wednesday.
J.G. Jones and Phil Bram's dustbowl epic Dust to Dust finally comes to a conclusion with issue 8, and I'll be jumping in and rereading this one from the start sooner rather than later. I reread the first half a few months ago, but have held off on the subsequent issues due to publishing delays. I want a full-on, one-sitting reread on this one.
Watch:
While I now approach all YouTuber-turned-Filmmaker Horror movies with a certain degree of trepidation, I finally saw the trailer for Kane "Pixels" Parsons' Backrooms from A24, and I have to say, I'm excited and hopeful. This looks fantastic. I've expressed my fascination for the YouTube version of Backroomshere previously, and this film looks like the consolidation the admittedly sprawling episodic series needs to really lock in its power. Also, the inclusion of such a top-tier actor like Chiwetel Ejiofor adds significance, as does having Mark Duplass on board.
John Carpenter w/ Alan Howarth - Prince of Darkness OST
Deafheaen - Lonely People With Power
The Cure - Pornography
Cold Cave - Cherish the Light Years
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• IV: The Emperor
• Two of Pentacles
• VIII: Strength
Structure, collaboration on a project, and instinct.
I have lingering questions about a particular collaboration, and I think I just got my answer. Well, the cards don't answer questions; they just point you to the answer you already know.
From their 2013 masterpiece Tomorrow's Harvest, which, to my ears, plays like the sweetest soundtrack to an 80s Horror film that never existed.
All this talk of the upcoming album has me excited to dip back into all the BOC music I love, and I love this one the most.
Watch:
After swearing off Lee Cronin's The Mummy for almost two weeks, I ended up seeing it last Thursday, and I actually really liked it. I hate the trailer and pretty much every single piece of art released for the film, which was a large part of why I swore the film off to begin with, but here's something that's not too obnoxious:
To crib directly from my Letterbxd review:
"Lee Cronin suffers from publicity that seems bent on ruining his films. The trailers take the weakest, most trite scenes from his films and blow them up as if they were the entire movie. It happened with Evil Dead Rise, "Mommy's with the maggots now," and it happened with The Mummy, "Don't worry, grandma, it's fun to be dead."
Both of those scenes are cringe-inducing in my opinion. Especially when they've been forced down our throats for months on end at the theatres. But against all the odds, The Mummy actually turned out to be fun and pretty intense at times. Kinda “Evil Dead Exorcist.” In fact, I almost wish it could have just been another Evil Dead flick, so they could have shaved 30 minutes of setup.
Jack Reynor did a great job. His performance buoyed some of the more goofy stuff. He sold me on his grief, anger and frustration. And Natalie Grace… I didn’t care for the makeup they used for her, but she did a really good job. Creepy movements. Nightmare fuel."
Seeing and liking The Mummy (for the most part) put me in mind to revisit Cronin's Evil Dead Rise for probably the third time since I bought the Blu-Ray. And at least a year has passed since my most recent viewing, and two since the movie came out, I find that, as I originally suspected, I can honestly say I really like this one. None of the things about it that bugged me at the time it came out still do, except, of course, I really wish the trailer hadn't ruined some of the imagery centered around Lily, as trying to see it with new eyes definitely makes me think it would have been far more effective had it not been ruined by that same inundation The Mummy just suffered.
Also, EDR has probably the best opening of any Evil Dead film to date. Just my opinion, but it's pretty freaking epic.
Playlist:
Steve Moore - Christmas Bloody Christmas
Electric Youth & Pilot Priest - Come True OST
Radiohead - Kid A
Telefon Tel Aviv - Immoliate Yourself
sElf - Gizmodgery
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
Pink Floyd - Animals
Marilyn Manson - Antichrist Superstar
Big Business - Here Come the Waterworks
Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
Gnarls Barkley - Atlanta
sunn O))) - Pyroclasts
Blackbraid - Blackbraid II
Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• King of Cups
• Knight of Wands
• King of Wands
That's a lot of masculine energy. Let's look at some overviews here:
King of Cups - Emotional upheaval or conflict
Knight of Cups - Controlling those emotions with Will
King of Wands - Sometimes, to get control, aggression is required.
Being smart enough to recognize when my emotions are getting the best of me, and being strong enough to prevent my response to those emotions from getting out of control.
Total work pull. People piss me off all the time, and sometimes I get worked up enough where I want to say something. Here's the reminder not to say something. Grin and bear it. Stay dressed in the fatigues of the enemy. They pay your bills.
More new music from Low Cut Connie ahead of their new album, Livin in the USA, out July 3rd. You can pre-order a copy directly from the band HERE.
Watch:
Tuesday night, I rewatched Marcus Nispel's 2003 Platinum Dunes remake of Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel's seminal Horror film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. For context, I actually owned this movie when it first came out on video. I didn't buy it - an ex bought me a two-pack DVD set of the original film and this. I no longer remember if that was how I first saw Nispel's film, a blind gift given to me. I will say, back then, before my feelings about Michael Bay had solidified, I still regarded this film as a mixed bag. It's also important to note that 2003 was also before we'd become completely inundated with remakes. So take all that into consideration, and I find that, despite ranting and raving about how bad this film is for years, my feelings remain pretty much the same today.
A mixed bag.
First, you have to ask, right? Why would anyone remake a classic like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a film that, by its very mangled, outsider nature, you'd have no hope of repeating its cultural impact? Well, because, like the proverbial mountain, it's there. Hollywood has something of a 'pave the world' ethos; they can and will remake everything.
My reaction to this film over the intervening 20+ years has been one of general disdain, primarily for two reasons: Final Girl Jessica Biel's performance, which, true to form, starts and stops at looking great in a pair of low-rise jeans, and the melodramatic fashion flavor to much of the violence is off-putting at best and downright laughable at worst. Biel stabbing Mike Vogel's Andy through the chest is among the most melodramatic Horror deaths I've witnessed this side of Hammer.
And yet, I saw this pop up on Shudder recently and something moved me to give it another go. This is something I do quite often with films I don't like. Because I can and often am wrong. So I reevaluate.
This time, I felt a little better about Nispel's film. Honestly, I've realized that part of my issue with Jessica Biel isn't about this film at all, but more a combination of disdain for her performance in this film and in another, Pascal Laugier's bafflingly bad The Tall Man from 2012, a film that, to this day, I still cannot believe came from the same man as Martyrs 2008 and 2018's Incident in a Ghostland. I'm not going to eat crow and say I think Biel's performance in TCM is good, but it's certainly not nearly as bad as some others I've witnessed in Horror from the 00s (Prom Night remake, I'm looking at you).
Biel is adequate, and so is pretty much everyone else. I've been a fan of Eric Balfour since his role on Six Feet Under as Clair's troubled boyfriend Gabe, and I've always thought he should have lived a lot longer than most of the cast. Also, after roles on Justified and Hannibal, Jonathan Tucker has become a recent favorite character actor of mine, and he shows a bit more range outside of 'deluded psychopath' here.
The elements to really love about this film are the lighting and the camerawork. There are something like five or six wide shots of the Hewitt house during various parts of the day/night, and each one is a thing of majestic beauty.
Now, that's not really enough to hang a movie on, but there are some other things about this one that work for me. I like the structure of the family and the town, which appear to be one and the same. Like the original, we meet various people in various places that seem like they might help, only to find out they're in on it, too. Here, though, those tendrils of malevolence feel like they stretch farther. Maybe it's the inclusion of R. Lee Ermey as the Sheriff, a position that makes the Hewitts' reach feel more omnipotent, or maybe it's the trailer with the two women, a scene that might pack the most creep factor in the whole movie. Either way, the conspiracy - and it has always been a conspiracy in this franchise, hence why Henkel goes so far as to add the Men in Black to part four - feels way deeper and, ultimately, perfect for a Horror film: inescapable.
*That probably didn't happen until around the time the first of his Transformers movies came out; I had not seen any of his 90s films, so M.B. was basically unknown to me when I saw this TCM
Read:
l Jane Schoebrun has a novel up for pre-order! Public Access Afterworld will be released by Penguin-Random House on October 27! You can pre-order this now wherever you get your books.
The "visionary director" moniker gets bandied about pretty loosely these days, so I'm usually hesitant to add to that quagmire. Schoenbrun is one where the term is appropriate. No one else has been able to translate the weird flavors of the post-millennial liminal space occupied by Hauntology in the early-to-mid 2000s the way Schoenbrun has, and it speaks to my soul. Those were weird, dark years - hilarious by comparison to now - and something We Are All Going to the World's Fair and I Saw The TV Glow have both helped me process and even reconnect with.
Wow. It occurs to me more of my life has been lived in 'dark times' now than light. But I digress. Here's the solicitation, which thankfully tells us gloriously little, but just enough to stoke the flames of my anticipation:
"A mysterious realm on the other side of our screens. A dark force that draws victims into its static. The unlikely hero called to save them and herself from this electric hell."
Can't wait.
Playlist:
John Carpenter w/ Alan Howarth - Prince of Darkness OST
Steeve Moore - Bliss OST
White Reaper - Only Slightly Expanded
Grotus - Mass
Flogging Molly - Live at the Greek
Me and That Man - New Man, New Songs, Same Shit, Vol. 1
Carter Burwell - Blood Simple OST
Atticus Derrickson - The Black Phone 2 OST
Meat Puppets - Dusty Notes
Tossers - In the Valley of the Shadow of Death
Tar - Roundhouse
Grotus - Slow Motion Apocalypse
PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love
Poe - Hello
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Two of Pentacles
• King of Wands
• Queen of Swords
The Two of Disks, followed by the King of Wands, might suggest imbalance. The Queen of Swords reminds me that intellect, not emotion, will serve as the appropriate antidote.
I'm thinking this is a direct nod to an imbalance in my life regarding creative pursuits. I.E., too many podcasts, not enough writing.
Have we talked about how the Butthole Surfer's lost album, After the Astronaut, finally sees release next month on Sunset Blvd Records? This is one that, back when Napster was a thing, I used that platform to find as many of these tracks as I could and assemble the closest thing I could figure was the actual intended release as possible. Now I finally get to have this on vinyl? Damn!
I actually dug out my old burned CD and compared it to the track listing - looks like I got pretty freakin' close!
Pre-order After the Astronaut for a June 26th release HERE.
Watch:
Evil Dead Burn. I am going to go out of my way to avoid this and every other trailer for this film between now and July 10th, when I plan to plop my arse in the theatre and wait for Sébastien Vaniček's entry in the ever-expanding Evil Dead Universe. But I watched this twice and really dug it, so now I'm excited.
I get old school 80s Exploitation videos just from the opening shot of the house here. Reminds me of Don't Go In the House, or House at the Edge of the Park. And the entire sequence plays like something out of a Puppet Combo video game. Vaniček's Infested was in my top five of 2024, so when I saw his name get attached to this, my excitement began. This 'trailer' only ramps that up. I just hope that what happened to Evil Dead Rise doesn't happen here. The total saturation of that film's trailer just killed so many of the otherwise insanely disturbing images. Let's not do that again, okay?
NCBD:
Pretty big week. Let's go grab some comics!!!
Sharkticons and the pit of judgment? I'm still not sure I'm feeling the Quintesson War being as big a deal as it purports to be, but I'll show up for that on the cover, no problem!
This Spawn: The Dark Ages book by Liam Sharp has been a gorgeous reminder of what comics can be. I'm still stoked at all the Wrightson-worship with Sharp's character design, and honestly, this has been a pretty cool ride. One more after this. I can't say I'm invested in the story, but I'm enjoying the hell out of it regardless.
The second issue of The Peril of the Brutal Dark felt like it took twice as long to reach my hands as it actually did, so that definitely means this book has me. Outer Dark Crime Noir? How can that go wrong? especially in the hands of the That Texas Blood creative team. The short answer is, it can't.
I really dug both the Baroness and the Crimson Guard silent issues. The Zartan was so-so. But Copperhead getting his own issue? One of my all-time favorite Cobras, who really has not had hardly any 'screen time' since his creation over 40 years ago. Color me super jazzed.
One more after this! I have my bet on who is going to walk out of this alive, so let's see if I'm right.
I finally did that one-sitting reread of Event Horizon: Dark Descent and really liked it, so when I saw we're getting another chapter, this one a sequel to the film, I couldn't help but add it to my pull list at Rick's. I dig the fleshing out of the EH story, and am super curious to see what they do with this new chapter.
Easily the weirdest comic I've read in some time, I can't wait to get into more Death Fight Forever!
Playlist:
Steve Moore - Jimmy & Stiggs OST
Grotus - Mass
Grotus - Luddite
Garbage - Eponymous
Marilyn Manson - Mechanical Animals
MC50 - 10xMC5 Live
John Carpenter w/ Alan Howarth - Prince of Darkness OST
Massive Attack - Mezzanine
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Nine of Pentacles
• Knight of Cups
• XVIII: Death
Finish it. Don't drown in self-satisfaction, but recognize and celebrate the win. It will lead to the next thing.
A few years ago, the IG account bocpages began posting about hints that Boards of Canada were preparing to release their first record since 2013's Tomorrow's Harvest. I didn't get my hopes up, but I've been trying to keep my eyes peeled for more news. Slowly this faded from my radar, and my hopes went silent until last week when brothers Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin dropped the eerie "Tape 05." No word on a date or pre-order yet, but my eyes are not straying far until they appear.
I am a huge fan of Tomorrow's Harvest. I know a number of old-school BOC fans who didn't like the 2013 album, but for me, well, it's my favorite in their catalog. That's not an embellishment or an easy choice because all their music is fantastic, but Harvest feels the most like an '80s horror score, and for that, it wears the crown.
Watch:
RZA's debut film One Spoon of Chocolate played at Beyond Chicago a few weeks back, but it conflicted with other plans, so now I'm anxiously waiting for this to roll out in theatres. I'm assuming that the "Quentin Tarantino Presents" banner pretty much ensures that it will.
I expect this flick to be every bit as bombastic as one would expect from RZA.
Walk:
Two Wednesdays ago, Mr. Brown and I got to hang out with a very old friend. This was the first time the three of us had been together in the same room since the late 90s. When you're fifty and you hang out with your old friends, funny things happen. Mortality comes up, but also, the past. You just can't get away from it. None of us have ever been the kind of guys to sit around reliving our "glory days" because, honestly, the glory days are still happening in my book. Still, there were good times and some pretty crazy adventures, and it comes up. A reminder of who we were to better appreciate who we are, I guess. Or something like that. One of the things that came up from the past is a place I haven't seen or really even thought much about in the last thirty years, except, I dreamt about it recently, so it was fresh on my mind.
As teenagers and then young adults, we spent a lot of time up to no good, hanging out in the Cook County Forest Preserves. When we were just out of High School, we found something incredible in the woods surrounding the Cal Sag canal. I'm not going to say exactly where this was, and it doesn't really matter anymore, as you'll read in a moment. But out there in the middle of the woods, away from even a noticeable path, we discovered a place colloquially known as Stonehenge. This place consisted of a circular clearing with a flagstone floor and a slightly raised dais in a half-circle upon which sat flagstone thrones.
Thrones. Exactly zero BS here. Some enterprising stoners before us had built this place as a communal space, a liminal gathering spot of the locals cool enough to be let in on the secret.
Unfortunately, Stonehenge is gone. Long gone. Destroyed, I stood in the center of that dias and saw nothing but piles of rubble. My guess is the Forest Preserve patrol destroyed it to dissuade folks from hanging out in the middle of the woods at night.
Regardless, the fact that the three of us sought it out, actually did the trek and problem-solved our way into this now nearly unreachable place, well, it made for something special. So I guess it didn't really matter what shape Stonehenge was in, after all. It was more about the shape we were in as decades-long friends who could have just as easily sat in a bar or around a tv. Instead, we chased a dream.
Playlist:
Steeve Moore - VFW OST
Blackbraid - Celestial Womb EP
Flying Lotus - 1983
Massive Attack & Tom Waits - Boots on the Ground (single)
Fozy Shazaan - Dark Blue Night
A SOMBER FUNERAL - Since You Left These Shores
Nine Inch Noize
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
White Noise - White Noise 90s Minutes
Anthrax - Spreading the Disease
Megadeth - So far, So Good... So What?
Pestilence - Consuming Impulse
Flying Lotus - Yasuke
Gylt - I Will Commit A Holy Crime Random: Tandem
Gylt - In 1,000 Agonies, I Exist
Drug Church - Prude
Melvins & Napalm Death - Savage Imperial Death March
Anthrax - Persistence of Time
Deftones - Diamond Eyes
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Seven of Pentacles
• Five of Cups
• XIII: Death
Completing a long-running goal leads to emotional disruption, which in turn leads to a complete overhaul in what is deemed important. Disrupt success and learn from it, rethink goals and grow into something new.
Another on-the-nose writing prompt. I have to stop looking at what I'm working on as being the thing I think that it is and allow it to become the thing it is meant to be.
Tom Waits and Massive Attack??? Holy Christos - this is... wow. Just wow.
No idea if this is harbinger to a full collaborative album. Most likely, Waits is on one track from the previously hinted at new Massive Attack album. Either way, listening to this on headphones while I type, this feels like balm for my soul.
I finally had the chance to sit down and watch Steven Kostanski's reimagining of Roger Corman's Deathstalker. Not to dismiss a Corman flick from the 80s, but Kostanski's film renders the original irrelevant - especially with how goddamn hung up it is on SA.
The FX here are, as one would expect, top-notch. There are images in this film that unearthed shit from my imagination that must go back to early childhood. In particular, the red "licorice" armor guys. Coppola's Dracula in his wolf armor tickled this same nerve, too, but the feeling I get from Kostanski's work is vestigial. Add to this the surreal touches and odd humor he instills in everything, and we have us a winner.
Read:
About a third of the way through Stephen King's The Drawing of the Three, and it's even better than I remember it being.
"...but it was too late - they were tumbling backward thorugh that doorway, and the droning hum of New York City at night, so familiar and constant you never even heard it unless it wasn;t there anymore, was replaced by the grinding sound of the waves and the grating, questioning voices of dimly seen horrors crawling to and fro on the beach."
In my original discovery of these books, I think the "real world" of the titular three's world (our world) felt like a left turn when I read this, and of course, the year I read this, Wastelands came out, and that book has remained my favorite of the DT books since. Reading book two again now, I'm floored by how this hits the ground running. The whole beach/lobstrosity sequence ("Dad-a-chack? Did-a-chick? Drum-a-chum?") has stayed with me since that first read, and it's every bit as effective now, but the Eddie Dean on the airplane stuff is pure page-turning goodness. I can't wait to get deeper into this one, and the series in general. This is the reread I've been planning for years, and I'm jazzed about doing it now.
Playlist:
Zombi - Shape Shift
Steve Moore - VFW OST
Liars - Drum's Not Dead
Atticus Derrickson - Black Phone 2 OST
Plague Bringer - As the Ghosts Collect, the Corpses Rest
Corrosion of Conformity - Good God/Baad Man
Steeve Moore - Jimmy & Stiggs OST
Tangerine Dream - Sorcerer OST
Genghis Tron - Dream Weapon
sunn O))) - Loser
Blackbraid - Celestial Womb EP
Massive Attack & Tom Waits - Boots on the Ground (single)
Nine Inch Noize
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Nine of Swords
• XI: Justice (Lust in Thoth)
• Eight of Wands
Nine of Swords = deception. Eleven here is Justice, a primordial urge we lust for in 2026, fighting against the tyrannical mega corporations that define our increasingly suffocating existence. But wait - there's a way out. But it's a formidable act of Will, and not easily achieved from within the belly of this giant, dying machine called society that's bleeding out and drowning us in its blood.
