Archie Horror with Bookmonkey: Day One

Welcome to our 2018 look at the Horror Genre and this year we'll be digging in to the Archie Horror imprint of comic titles, including Afterlife with Archie, Chilling Tales of Sabrina, Jughead: The Hunger, and Vampironica.

Having been an Archie reader for most of my reading life (short stories AND sitting next to the grocery counter - how could I not read these little titles growing up?), and being a huge horror fan from my earliest days the mix of the two in 2013 was sure to peak my interest.

I'm going to spend the next month digging into the various series and ask myself whether they mix well, or work to simply alienate Archie and Horror fans from each other.

Come along with me!

Gearing up for October

As we’re heading into my yearly Halloween-themed month, I’m currently at work reading the primary stuff I’ll be reviewing (the 2013 Penguin horror imprint), and am also hunting down a variety of films, comics and other related texts to chat about as well.

At this point I’ve got at least one movie connected with each reading (except for American Supernatural Stories – it’s my last one so I’ll be researching it later in the month), but have been happy to find related materials from all sorts of places (friends, used-book stores, Amazon, and in one case the special features of a DVD I’ve owned for quite a while now).

I’m still hoping to knock out a Charles de Lint review before we start but my reviews on new genre TV (Constantine, Gotham, American Horror Story: Freak Show, and The Walking Dead) will all have to wait until November.

Looking forward to it!

Bookmonkey vs Hack/Slash: Day Fourteen

From One-Shots to an Ongoing Series

For the first three years of Hack/Slash the title was a series of one-shot comics, coming out a few times a year and although the stories connected with each other, previous issues were not necessary to follow the action in the series.

With the success of 2006's Hack/Slash vs. Chucky in which Cassie and Vlad fought popular horror movie character Charles Lee Ray (better known as the possessed doll "Chucky"), it was decided to move the series into an ongoing format from that point forward.  Also, the ongoing series featured penciller Emily Stone, who gave the series a more cohesive look overall, as compared to the many different pencillers and illustrators used in the earlier issues.  Different pencillers would work on specific issues of Hack/Slash as an ongoing title, but the artwork becomes much more uniform from this point forward.

In the original one-shots series Cassie fought Slashers which included a number of straight-forward "kill, but won't stay dead" types (like Halloween's (1978) Michael Meyers), a Slasher who attacked his victims through their dreams (like A Nightmare on Elm Street's (1984)Freddy Kruger) and even a Slasher who used her commands over another sleeping Slasher to kill her intended victims (not unlike the 1920 German film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari).

With the ongoing series, Seeley was looking forward to "...introduc[ing] more supporting characters, and have crazy little things like subplots!..and...finally hav[ing] the space to tell the story of Cassie's dad, which we've never really touched upon in the space of the one-shots." (Richards, 2007) At this point in the series Seeley also begins looking at other aspects of modern horror films, beyond the Slasher sub-genre with concepts like the rise of torture horror (like the Saw and Hostel series), and even classic concepts like the Faustian bargain (deal with the devil) and more.

It's also interesting to note that even as far back as 2007, Seeley had an overall plan for the series; "I do have an end," he said. "But the hope is that I don't have to get to it anytime soon. I can see myself doing a Garth Ennis or [Neil] Gaiman and going for 60 issues. So, ya'know, make sure ya buy it, so I can do all the cool stuff you won't get in any other book!" (ibid.)

IMAGE USED

Hack/Slash Omnibus #2 Cover.  Retrieved Online from

http://bloody-disgusting.com/photosizer/upload/HackSlaOmni2.jpg

WORKS CITED
Richards, D. (2007, February 8). "'Hack' Writer: Seeley talks Hack/Slash Ongoing" in Comic Book Resources. Retrieved online from http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=9279

Choosing A Halloween Movie Marathon

As a dedicated Horror fan; every October I try to get some friends over to my place to check out some Halloween-themed movies.

Rather than watching a series, or specific production company of movies, I've opted to try for something a little different.

I'm going to try and catch up on some classic horror titles I've never got around to see before.

First up (and as a guy who spent a year reading/watching/playing all sorts of zombie-themed stuff this is a little embarrassing), I'll be screening George A. Romero's 1985 film, Day of the Dead, the third of his original Dead Trilogy (after 19689's Night of the Living Dead and 1978's Dawn of the Dead) which honestly I've just never had the opportunity to check out before.

Honestly, as a zombie fan I really don't have an excuse for not seeing the film before, it just never came up as an option for me, and when I watched my largest amount of horror films (Junior High and High School), I was more focused on Slasher and Ghost movies.

I'm still working on deciding which other classics of Horror I should finally get around to seeing, but I think this may be a pretty fun way to spend my Friday's this October.

Movie Review: Paranorman

Okay, I just finished watching the 2012 film Paranorman with my kids and I really enjoyed it.  Although I didn't like it quite as much as my last favourite spooky kids movie, Monster House, but it was a lot of fun as well.

The film follows a kid named Norman, who has the ability to see and interact with ghosts.  Part of the fun for me was seeing just how normal he viewed everything, dealing with the ghosts as if they were friends and neighbours (which many of them in fact, are), but things do get trickier once zombies get involved.

The film was done in a stop-motion/CGI format, which was pretty cool to see, and although I'm not sure if it will get added to my Halloween themed marathon next year, it was definitely a lot of fun.

Halloween (2007)

The next three films we’ll be looking at, Halloween, Friday the 13^th, and Nightmare on Elm Street comprise the big three series I grew up watching as a child, and honestly, even though the quality on virtually every one of the series based on these films dropped per movie (except for the Elm Street films, which moved back and forth in terms of quality from creepy to forgettable), I still view these three original films as a major part of what got me into horror films in the first place.

Halloween (1979) is pretty much, in my opinion, one of the best horror films ever made. Until this film came out, horror was something that happened in past times, far off castles or (in the case of Night of the Living Dead) at least a remote farm house. Horror was something that happened somewhere else, but Halloween changed everything. The film takes place in Haddonfield, IL, a small suburban town that looked a heck of a lot like my hometown, and the main character Laurie was a regular looking kid. The killer appears in the background of the film at first and no one believes that anything as horrible as this man could possibly reach them in the safety of their own homes. The acting is great, the story is chilling, and honestly, for the squeamish, the violence is not that gory (that does changes in the sequel however).

Also the theme song is just about the creepiest tune I’ve ever come across.

Anyway, in 2007 it was reimagined by musician/filmmaker Rob Zombie and at the time I basically thought – why on earth would you ruin such a great film with an MTV-style treatment. The original is great, just leave it alone.

But for you, my dear readers, I decided to check out these recent reimaginings earlier this year and here is how the film stacks up.

The key to the reimagining of Halloween is that the film focuses on the killer (Michael) rather than the victim (Laurie). We are given an extremely detailed back story for our killer, including his time in an insane asylum, and the film is almost halfway over before we even meet our leading lady. Although it is an interesting way to focus the story, by making Michael more sympathetic and barely developing the characters of Laurie and her friends, the killings seem less about the terror the kids feel and more about the killer himself.

I will say, however, that I quite liked the acting on the part of Scout Taylor-Compton (Lauire), and Malcolm McDowell (Dr. Loomis), although the filmmaker made a bizarre choice by removing Dr. Loomis as a sympathetic character an making him more focused on what fame Michael can bring him.

Also, and hopefully this will carry through to the sequel (I’m waiting to watch it later this week), the film very clearly shows the affection that Rob Zombie has for the source material. Even though some of the choices he made in the film were strange to me, there is no question throughout the film that he really loved the original and did his best to do it justice.

Although I didn’t like it as much as I did the Dawn of the Dead remake, it was worth the watch (for fans of the original), and creates a consistently creepy feel throughout the entire film.