Shock Totem 3: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted

by John Haggerty

  So, have I enticed you into watching this film yet? If not, then good for you. Feel free to stop reading now and never think of this movie gain. If this does sound like a film you want to see, then God help you...but then, I felt the same way so I can’t condemn you. So if you’re still reading this, let’s get too it.

  The story, such as it is, of The Taint is about some scientist making a drug to give guys bigger johnsons. Something goes wrong with the drug, it gets into the water supply, and soon all the men, save our hero Phil, are killing women. And that’s it for the story. But that does nothing to prepare you for what this little gem has to offer.

  Things begin with our stoner hero getting chased by a bucked-toothed psycho with a scythe who craps himself in the middle of the chase—and yes, we get to see him do it. A few minutes later, Phil finds a bloody, mangled corpse and promptly vomits...a lot. Yes, we get to see that, too, and it looks like the actor—and producer, writer, director, and just about everything else—Drew Bolduc went the extra mile and puked for real. Thanks for that, Drew.

  A few moments later, while Phil is taking a wicked wiz, another psycho comes out of the woods, holding a rock over his head, and with his penis sticking out of his pants, spraying semen all over the place like a sputtering garden hose. So at the five-minute mark in this film we have covered all of the bodily fluids and excretions and this flick is just getting started. What, you want more highlights? Ok, there are lots of women getting their heads caved in by rocks, a coat-hanger abortion, gallons of fake blood and semen, way too many gay jokes, vaginas vomiting out blood, sex as seen from the inside of a vagina, gratuitous nudie shots, Nazis sizing up men’s schlongs and executing those who don’t measure up, two different faces getting peeled off, penises getting shot and hacked off, and a cartoon about cute bunnies getting tortured in a test lab.

  Sounds like a good time, right?

  If you are into the mondo gory, offensive, silly, and disturbing flicks then you might dig this. If not, then you should stay the hell away from this movie. As for me, I ping-ponged back and forth. Sometimes I laughed out loud, other times I cringed, and at other times I just rolled my eyes. The Taint is uneven and could use some polish, to be sure, but I did admire the “Screw it, we’re gonna go for it” attitude. Love it or hate it, they really don’t make movies like this anymore, at least not in America.

  –Brian Sammons

  Mistress of the Dark, by Ghoultown; Angry Planet Records, 2009; CD: 6 tracks, 24 min; DVD: 97 min.

  On the rusty-spurred boot heels of Life After Sundown, Ghoultown returns with Mistress of the Dark, a hellbilly horror-fried ode to the true Mistress of the Dark, Cassandra Peterson, better known to generations of horror—and boob—fans as Elvira. The limited edition release (only 2,000 copies were pressed) includes a six-track EP and a DVD, all housed in a digipack that was brilliantly designed by artist/writer/director Gris Grimly. He also directed the DVD portion of Mistress of the Dark.

  Conceived after Cassandra’s manager heard Ghoultown playing a special acoustic set, and upon her personal request for an official—not to mention long overdue—theme song, bandleader Count Lyle wrote “Mistress of the Dark,” a darkly swingin’ and surf-rock groovin’ punk tune with a killer hook. The song’s tongue-in-cheek lyrics—“What I wouldn’t give, for one night, to climb those haunted hills”—fit perfectly with Elvira’s quirky persona, and it’s done in such a sincere manner that it avoids coming off as cheesy. This one is an instant classic.

  (On behalf of the universe, and with no disrespect to The Oak Ridge Boys, thank you, Lyle!)

  The EP is backed by a newly recorded version of the fan-favorite “Return of the Living Dead,” from Give ‘Em More Rope. This new version has a fuller, more in-your-face sound, with horns replacing the female harmonies that were on the original. There’s also a new, very Misfits-like track called “My Halloween,” plus the epic “Drink with the Living Dead” from Life After Sundown. Closing the EP are two title-track remixes, which strike me as more novelty/filler than anything. I dig bands like KMFDM and Front Line Assembly, so I like the songs, but they’re not essential tracks.

  The EP is worth the money alone, but there’s also the DVD, the main focus of which is the video for the title track, starring none other than the Hostess with the Mostess, Elvira, and filmed in the legendary Magic Castle in Los Angeles. In addition to the video, there’s a 25-minute documentary with footage of Count Lyle, Cassandra, and Gris Grimly discussing how the project came to be. There’s also a video-to-storyboard comparison—which syncs up the storyboard concepts with the actual video—and a campy spoof of Hee Haw, the late-60s/early-70s variety show, called Har Har. Bad jokes, Buck Horn, the hilarious host, and Ghoultown performances (to studio tracks) of “Mistress of the Dark,” “Find a Good Horse,” and “The Ballad of Clarence Heckles,” a wicked song currently only found on the companion CD to Grimly’s Cannibal Flesh Riot! Rounding things out are four easily-found Easter eggs.

  Little more need be said, really. Mistress of the Dark is fantastic. Sadly, despite its limited nature, there are still copies available. Please do yourself—and the band—a favor and buy a copy.

  Ghoultown, Gris Grimly, and Elvira. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

  –K. Allen Wood

  Toplin, by Michael McDowell; Abyss/Dell, 1985; 277 pgs.

  When I was a teenager, I would frequent the book stores and local department stores and scour the racks for anything that may curb my hunger for horror. I bought countless pulp novels with cheesetastical covers of demons and skeletons. Some were not so good, but others stuck with me forever. This is one of those classics that I credit with helping me fall in love with horror...again. I bought this paperback when it was originally published, and read it in an evening. I loved that it was so different.

  Devoid of a linear plot or traditional narrative, Toplin tells, in first-person, the story of an unnamed hero. The tale begins with him going to the corner market to buy an essential spice needed for a recipe—“Recipes must be followed exactly,” he later explains—and follows him on a long and winding adventure that encompasses all manner of urban paranoia and serious OCD issues.

  The “main character” decides it is his duty to help an unspeakably ugly waitress die. This quest then becomes more intriguing as his path crosses with a cast of strange characters. He runs into a strange street gang, comprised of two sets of identical twins, dressed to mirror one another. He meets an unusual pharmaceutical deliveryman and his elderly grandfather. Drunken truck drivers and a homeless sculptor all make appearances in this story. But the most interesting person is the teller of the tale himself. Never actually named, I always assumed him to be the Toplin of the title. He can’t see colors and locks his apartment with a combination lock. He has twelve shelves of cookbooks and a closet full of identical suits numbered S-1 through S-6. He cleans in a fashion so detailed and compulsory it was OCD when OCD wasn’t cool. He schedules his masturbatory practice...and his walls bleed.

  If this piques your interest, then track this one down, as well as all of McDowell’s other books. A gifted writer who passed away too soon, he was more widely known for his screenplay work with the Tales from the Darkside series and a little movie called Beetlejuice, but it’s all about Toplin for me.

  –John Boden

  The Occult Files of Albert Taylor, by Derek Muk; Impact Books, 2009; 204 pgs.

  The great thing about short stories is that, if written well, you can’t stop reading until they’re done. Every word means something, and every section is important to the overall arc of the story. They can strike you in the gut, force you to think, or simply leave you speechless.

  Then again, if they’re not written well, you can throw out what is written above.

  The Occult Files of Albert Taylor, a collection of eleven short stories by Derek Muk, is a perfect example of this.

  This book maddened me. I kept going from story to story, thinking that the one I’d just read was simply a dud and the ne
xt would be better. With a couple exceptions, they weren’t.

  The only two stories that leapt out at me were “Dear Boss,” a tale that combines the Freemasons and the reincarnation of Jack the Ripper into a tidy little snippet of adventure, and “The Boogeyman,” a story in which a dimension-hopping baddie who might be some sort of demon kills kids in an abandoned tunnel.

  Yet even with these two stories, the only thing that pulled me in was the subject matter, not the writing. That aspect, just as with all the other stories inside, is stiff and robotic. In fact, it reads like a poorly-constructed collection of young adult stories that R.L. Stine might have thought of and then discarded. I found myself skipping ahead, especially with the longer tales (such as “Footprints,” a story about Bigfoot), which is a death knell for short fiction.

  In all the stories, Albert Taylor is the main character. The problem with this, however, is that he isn’t interesting. He seems to know a great deal about strange occurrences, but a chipmunk is more emotionally relevant than he is. In fact, I found his cohorts much more interesting, though even they weren’t very fleshed out…or believable.

  Perhaps the most painful part of this anthology, however, is the dialogue. It is so poorly constructed and stiff that it might seem as if the author has never held a conversation in his life. For example, at the beginning of one story, a young man meets up with a young lady at a local eatery. The young woman’s reaction to his greeting goes as follows:

  “Sorry for pigging out,” she giggled. “I was starving. I eat a lot but none of it shows on my skinny frame.”

  Huh? Seriously? Who talks like this?

  I was so bored with this book that I struggled to reach the end…but reach the end I did, and that, in itself, is an accomplishment. At first I couldn’t decide if I didn’t like the book because of a clash of tastes, seeing as most of these stories were previously published in magazines such as Sinister Tales and Switchblade, but after mulling it over a bit, I decided this is just a perfect example of poor writing. In other words, it’s really not worth your time if you’re older than twelve, and even then it’s an iffy proposition.

  –Robert J. Duperre

  They Had Goat Heads, by D. Harlan Wilson; Atlatl Press, 2010; 135 pgs.

  The deliriously bizarre writings of D. Harlan Wilson have become a personal favorite of mine within the last year, beginning when I purchased the two-volume Bizarro Start Kit. In They Had Goat Heads Wilson continues to do what he does best, which is paint sometimes abrupt and always bizarre pictures of everyday situations gone down the rabbit hole...most never going beyond a page or two in length, some just a sentence long.

  I think my favorite of the bunch is the dire tale “The Sister.” It has the honor of being the only illustrated piece in the book, and that eerie narrative and unique art style meld to create an unforgettable thing.

  If you don’t appreciate the Bizarro movement, or the less than linear subject matter of some of the fringe authors out there, then They Had Goat Heads will not appeal to you. However, if you like things that are off- kilter and unusual, vicious wordplay and high octane assault with a deadly vocabulary...D. Harlan may just be your poster boy.

  –John Boden

  Pieces, by Juan Piquer Simón (director), Dick Randall and John Shadow (screenplay); starring Christopher George, Lynda Day George, Frank Braña; 1982; Unrated; 87 min.

  This weird, weird, freakin’ WEIRD movie is one of my all-time favorite slasher flicks, and not because it’s a great film. No. It is far from that, and yet it is not laughably bad either, like so many other “crazy killer” flicks that I can’t stand to watch. For me, Pieces exists in a world of its own. It’s got lots of blood and naked woman (the staples of all good slashers), but it takes so many trips into far leftfield that it leaves you scratching your head or laughing out loud. This Spanish film, with many English-speaking actors, is one import not to be missed by fans of off-the-wall splatter flicks. And at long last the mad geniuses over at Grindhouse Releasing have given it the two-disc special-edition DVD treatment it deserves. So let’s dive into the pure insanity of Pieces.

  The story begins with a little boy putting together a jigsaw puzzle with a nude girl on it. Mom catches him and freaks out. The boy tops his mother’s freak-out with one of his own, except his involves an axe—and her face. Many years later, the story picks up at a college where the same boy, now all grown up, wants to make his own naked woman jigsaw puzzle. So naturally he breaks out a chainsaw and starts collecting limbs from all of the lovely coeds. Oh, and then a girl on a skateboard crashes to her death through a mirror two moving men were holding up across a sidewalk. What, you didn’t expect that? Well that’s what makes this movie great; you never see what’s coming: a woman walking alone on the campus at night suddenly getting attack by a Bruce Lee impersonator who, after three minutes of punching and kicking at the air, says sorry and goes on his merry way; or the killer sneaking into a tiny elevator with a potential victim, his chainsaw hidden from her by holding it in one hand behind his back; or the amazing way actress Linda Day George delivers the line, “That bastard! Bastard! BASTARD!” Honestly, this is one of those rare movies that descriptions really can’t do it justice; it must be experienced firsthand to be properly appreciated.

  A different version of Pieces came out on DVD a few years back, but that edition was pretty horrible. The picture and sound was bad and it had no special features whatsoever. Thankfully, Grindhouse Releasing swooped in to save the day. This reviewed edition gives us the movie uncut, so it’s packed with gallons of blood and gore. And what good are buckets of blood if it doesn’t look good? The picture and sound have both been beautifully restored, and there are some new and very cool special features on the discs: There’s an audio track recorded during a live screening of the movie at the Vine Theater in Hollywood, so you can get the full theater-going experience. Also, a Spanish soundtrack, if you want to hear the film as it first came out. Interviews with the director and genre star Paul L. Smith, who plays the crazy campus caretaker. A few hidden Easter eggs—there’s a great one with noted horror director Eli Roth—and in this day of opening up a DVD case to find only a disc inside and nothing more, Grindhouse has included a mini poster and liner notes by horror historian and author Chas Balun. With all this love shown to it, Grindhouse Releasing has set the bar pretty damn high on how a little DVD releasing company can take a cult classic and do it like it was a multi-million-dollar-making movie.

  As I said at the start, I love this major-league weird movie. If you’re a slasher fan with tastes as warped as mine then I know you will, too. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy.

  –Brian Sammons

  Jacob's Ladder, by Adrian Lyne (director) and Bruce Joel Rubin (writer); starring Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Peña, Danny Aiello; 1990; R; 113 min.

  It's been twenty years since this classic film of psychological horror was released, but it was a movie that had a history going back more than thirty years. Bruce Joel Rubin wrote the original screenplay in 1980, but resisted interest from traditional horror directors and overcame objections from mainstream Hollywood. The script gained a reputation as one of the best unproduced scripts in Hollywood while Rubin held on to it until he was confident it would receive the treatment he wanted for it.

  Eventually, Adrian Lyne signed on to direct and gave Jacob's Ladder a nightmarish feel that few horror films ever attain, blending what appears to be dream and reality so successfully that it is often difficult to tell them apart. He pioneered the shaking-head effect later used in films like The Ring and Silent Hill, and still did it best, in my opinion. The demonlike creatures that plague Jacob Singer are among the most effective and creepy images ever filmed, and Tim Robbin's vulnerable portrayal draws the audience into his visions, and whether real or imagined makes little difference. The film's final twist, while not totally original, is deftly done and anyone with a suspension of disbelief will be fooled on first viewing. I was.

  It's likely that most if not
all Shock Totem readers will already be familiar with this classic. It is a prime example of Hollywood's failure to recognize good original writing, and illustrative of how those limitations are worsening with time. For a few years now, there have been discussions aimed at remaking this film, but to what end? Will they improve on the original film? It seems unlikely to me.

  What is sought is a quick payoff, a cheap and easy remake that will net a profit while ultimately degrading the legacy of a truly great film. It is a theme that we see played out more and more each day, and one reason why the film industries in other countries are gaining the respect that Hollywood once had—but is selling off a piece at a time like an aging hooker.

  I have to believe that there are other original scripts like Jacob's Ladder out there that filmmakers are ignoring; preferring to make an easy buck rather than taking a risk on an unknown product. It’s a shame.

  –Nick Contor

  The Butcher Bride, by Vince Churchill; Black Bed Sheet Books, 2009; 275 pgs.

  There is a delicate balance you need to obtain when violence against women is the driving aspect of a novel. I have read and seen many examples of this over the years. The hideousness becomes the focal point of the tale and it is disgusting. There is something inherently vile about sexual abuse, especially of women and children, and the use of rape as a major plot device can register anywhere from irresponsible to downright evil.

  Needless to say, when I started reading The Butcher Bride, by Vince Churchill, and discovered that a gang rape at a Halloween party in the beginning of the book is the impetus for everything that comes later, I was more than a little wary.