The Hugag - Cryptids of the American Frontier

I don't know about you, but sometimes I get a little tired of the usual cryptids.  You know: Bigfoot, the Mothman, and Chupacabras.  Every so often I just want to sit back in my flannel, pretend to be a lumberjack (that's why I'm wearing flannel), and hear a tall tale about a fearsome critter.  If you're with me, then I've got a treat for you today.  Tonight's the night I let you in on the secret of the Hugag.

What's a Hugag, you say?

Nothin' less than one of the most fearsome and dangerous critters ever to stalk the hinterlands of the lumberwoods, that's all.

Pictured above in a highly accurate illustration from the 1910 edition of Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, With a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts, the Hugag (Rythmopes inarticulatus) is a large mammal of the Lake States.  It's territory includes northern Minnesota and western Wisconsin, but is also known to thrive throughout the forests of Canada, even unto the Hudson bay.

There are lots of similarities between the Hugag and your common moose, but DON'T BE MISTAKEN.  There are several extremely important differences that will allow you to spot a dangerous Hugag rather than the totally harmless and safe wild bull moose.

First off, you'll notice that the Hugag has no knees or leg joints of any kind.  Indeed, its long legs prevent it from bending over and force it to remain standing at all times.  Further, the Hugag is possessed of an extremely long upper lip, which keeps it from grazing.  If it were to stand by a grassy hillock steep enough to reach with its stiff legs, it would merely scrape that big upper lip across the ground, and never manage to get any fodder in its mouth.

Other features of the Hugag include a hairless head and neck, "strangely-corrugated ears" that droop downward, four-toed feet, and bushy tail.  Overall, witnesses of the Hugag consider it to have a downright prehistoric appearance.

The behavior and habits of the Hugag have luckily been recorded for posterity.

The diet of the Hugag consists largely of twigs or the bark of trees.  The creature is known to flop its big old lip around trees and strip the bark clean off.  This accounts for the bare patches on trees you might see as you hike.

It's said that the Hugag has a veritable "mania for travelling", and is capable of moving for an entire day without stopping.  Thus, few hunters who have taken up the trail of the Hugag have ever returned to camp with a head to show for their troubles.  At night, though, the Hugag does pause for sleep and refreshment.  It does so by leaning its weight against a tree, as it cannot bend its legs to lay down.  So, the next time you're camping and you hear a tree suddenly crash to the ground in the middle of the night, that would definitely be a Hugag. Successful Hugag hunters have been known to lay traps for their quarry by sawing notches in trees, such that when the Hugag goes to lean against them, they topple.  The Hugag then, in its helpless state, is easily dispatched.

The last known Hugag to be killed was on the Turtle River in northern Minnesota.  It was reported to be a young Hugag, weighing 1800 pounds, and was found stuck in the mud of the riverbank.  It was knocked in the head by Mike Flynn of Cass Lake.

And there ya have it.  I hope now you're all educated so that if you're ever wandering the woods and secret parts of the frosty Midwest, you'll know to look out for this most fearsome of American cryptids.

-Joanna

Benny Kusnoto - Artist Review

Snail Jester by BennyKusnoto

Vivid and translucent, BennyKusnoto's art is vibrant enough to be alive.  Which is particularly disturbing once you see some of the horrifying configurations of his monsters.

On his Deviantart page (linked near the bottom), you'll find insane, grotesque mishmashes of human parts that juxtapose beautiful ladies' legs, raw red maws, and fiendish insectoid hooks.  These monsters are so detailed and the light so delicately rendered as it falls over them that they are elevated from being merely scary, to being real.  This is what sets BennyKusnoto apart from your typical tentacled-horror scrawler.  His work doesn't rely on blood and guts to get a point across.  Rather, it leverages the texture of pallid flesh, the glistening of mucous.

However, this is just his latest work.  As you explore the page, you'll see that the artist is quite varied and that his style can shift dramatically.  There is definite quality in the earliest submissions to deviantart, that include a lot of really badass Batman fan art.  Later, there's a series of artfully smudged black and white pieces that remind me of Stephen Gammell's nightmare-inducing illustrations for "Scary Stories to Read in the Dark".   Then, there are moody, dramatic portraits of Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster and the Mummy.  As you scroll on, you'll pass glossy background textures, and a steampunk beagle.  A STEAMPUNK BEAGLE.

My personal favorites are his horror creatures, though.  I'm glad that the artist seems to find the Joker inspiring because it brought about some of the most amazing scary-clown art I've ever seen.  And I'm not talking Killer Clowns with Big Teeth, I'm talking this:

Tears of a Clown by BennyKusnoto

Those tiny eyes....  (shudder).

Finally, some of the monsters are a bit more conventionally built, but extremely well-designed.  They capture something otherworldly, but in their execution are deeply plausible. There are squid-bats that look like David Attenborough should be narrating them, and aliens that might well skitter under distant foliage, if not the hull of one's spaceship.

Creatura by BennyKusnoto

This sense of reality is, in my opinion, what makes horror art really compelling.  The ability to create an image that suggests a fully-realized, if sinister, world is a talent not many possess.   BennyKusnoto, with his wrinkles and glimmers, creates such worlds.

If you're looking for some extremely high-quality horror illustrations, or just want to check out a super-cool looking redesign of Darth Vader, I will gladly point you to the link below.  

Check out more of his awesome artwork here: http://bennykusnoto.deviantart.com/gallery/

-Joanna

Killer Mermaid - Movie Review

Killer Mermaid
(Originally titled Mamula, also branded as Nymph for overseas release)
2014
Directed by Milan Todorovic

Just in case you were laboring under the delusion that Amanda and I only watch seriously serious horror movies, I've got a delicious, fresh-caught review for you today!

I, for one, believe that in order to know what is truly good and truly bad, you have to sample the whole gamut.  For horror movies, this means exploring outside the bounds of your conventionally passable horror movies like Paranomal Whatistface, and watch things like Nosferatu and Mansquito back to back.  Therefore, I LOVE ME a good SyFy Original.

The best thing about SyFy Original-type movies is that they're a neat showcase of green directors learning how to find their ass with both hands, and over-the-top monster-movie insanity.  I've rarely met a SyFy original that took itself too seriously, and there's a comfort in that.  I don't need everything I watch to be gritty, serious, and compelling.  Sometimes I really like to sit back, munch popcorn, and laugh as robot-Hitler has a hard time flying his spaceship to the Falkland Islands.  Getting familiar with how something is done badly then helps with knowing when something is done goodly.

Now, here's your buried lead!  Killer Mermaid aka Nymph aka Mamula is AWESOME.

I decided to watch Killer Mermaid entirely because of it's obvious value-proposition: Killer Mermaids.  And that is essentially what you get.  You've already seen the bones of this movie a hundred times. The plot is the same, the script is copied and pasted from a secret database in SyFy's headquarters (with a couple exceptions), and all the action goes down by the book.

What makes Killer Mermaid a treat, though, is how astoundingly GOOD some of it is.  It includes remarkable acting, jaw-droppingly gorgeous cinematography, and a few moments where the script shines through as something poetic and marvelous.

It's so Pretty!

Killer Mermaid was shot on location in Montenegro.  In case you're not aware, Montenegro is beautiful.  And the cinematographer, Dimitrije Jokovic, makes sure you know this is the loveliest place in the world.  Bright, sunny Mediterranean seas, soft-lit nighttime parties, Instagram-worthy sunset escapades.  Over and over again, I was struck with how Killer Mermaid just looks so damn pretty!

Of course, the second half of the movie is all about hand-held shaky cam and darkness lit with flashlights, but there are still bits where the cinematographer manages to make something that could look cheap look rich instead.  Also, there were several shots that I'm pretty positive were taken on GoPros and I'm still mulling over how I feel about it.

Those people are so Pretty!

This movie is so glamorous, you guys. This isn't just a feature of location-based establishing shots, it's also a matter of how flawless and glam the characters are.  They're ridiculously hot.  I mean... between the luxe locations and how fab the characters are, this movie ends up looking like Conde Nast Traveller: The Horror Movie.

But, wait!  They're also amazing actors.

Double-take.  Yeah, through sheer force of acting, the cast takes characters that might be bland and makes them subtle, human, and fascinating.  I honestly was a little disappointed when they got around to being killed by the mermaid because I was really engaged in the interpersonal drama of their lives.  

Which led me to a super-sad thought:  How in the hell are Americans doing it so wrong?  The people in this low-buidget Serbian monster-movie are both more gorgeous and far better actors than those in the highest-grossing American flicks.  What the hell, Twilight?  What the hell, Avengers?  (dodges bricks)

But in seriousness, this unserious movie packs in a huge amount of character and personal drama through the magic of actors doing their jobs.

For example, the final girl, Kelly, is deathly afraid of water after watching her brother drown as a child.  She took swimming lessons but hates the possibility of getting in the water.  This facet of Kelly's personality is brought up again and again, even when it's inconvenient.  This is not the "Yeah.. sharks killed my family," that is stated and then never cashed-in on.  This is a real feature of Kelly's character that doesn't just go away for the sake of convenient pacing.  

Further, because the movie is so consistent about this, it makes Kelly's act of bravery near the end deeply genuine.  What should be a simple matter is transformed into heroism.  And that's really tasty.

What about that mermaid, tho?  

Pretty good, I say.  It's a mixture of obvious cg and practical effects.  While the cg looks like what you'd see on a SyFy original, the make-up effects are actually pretty good.  The mermaid oscillates between total babedom and super-ugly-monsterdom, but that's to be expected.  Other reviews complain that there's not enough mermaid in this movie and they are dumb.  There is just the right amount of mermaid in this movie.  

The thing that impressed me the most was one shot of the monster-mermaid swimming underwater, where air bubbles are streaming out of her mouth.  This was neat because, Miroslav Lakobrija, the designer in charge of creature effects, apparently took the time to make an appliance that didn't just look good underwater, but also released air in a realistic way instead of through leaky seams in the neck or not at all.

Conclusions

But really, aside from how pretty the movie is, and how good the acting is, what you really should come for is the comforting snuggle it provides.  It's got everything you want and need in a killer mermaid movie.  It's got a grizzled old fisherman who quotes Homer.  It's got a spooky abandoned fort atop a lonesome island.  It's got dudes stumbling toward their deaths in a mermaid-induced trance.  It's got a hot mermaid that turns into an ugly mermaid.  It's got a dorky, spoopy theme that sounds like the whistle from The Hunger Games had a baby with the theme of The X-Files. It's got love stories and boobs and people jumping through the air with tridents while screaming.

And best of all.... it sets itself up perfectly for the sequel!!!!  

Killer Mermaid II:  Sisterhood.

I CAN'T WAIT!

-Joanna

The Mrs. Voorhees Problem

Wheee!

Everyone's written about the classic Friday the 13th franchise about a bajillion times.  So, I'm not gonna do a film review today.  I'm here for something different- a rant.  No, a theory.  I call it "The Mrs. Voorhees Problem."

An unofficial Twitter poll taken by Candice Frederick, relayed in her article for BitchFlicks titled Friday the 13th: In Defense of Pamela Voorhees (see footnote 1 for link), shows the surprising consensus that Mrs. Voorhees is scarier than her son, Jason.  Despite the fact that Jason is the monster for 11 movies, and Mrs. Voorhees only rampages through the first, it seems that she still lingers in the mind as the greater bogeyman.

Frederick goes on in her article to make a case for Pamela Voorhees as a more emotionally complex, and therefore compelling, character.  I want to make very clear, up front, that this is a point with which I completely agree.  There's no doubt that Jason is only given the flimsiest of character definition in the films, while Mrs. Voorhees' madness is clearly laid out in a strange, if tedious, monologue.  I thoroughly consider Mrs. Voorhees to be the more interesting character, and think that she's played brilliantly by Betsy Palmer.  The fact that Pamela Voorhees is a good character is not the Caesar I come to bury.  Rather, it is the good to be interred with her bones.

No, I come to talk about her crappy fight with the final girl.

It's about to get tl;dr up in here.

1 - See, what ha' happened was....

If it's been a while since you watched the original Friday the 13th, let me refresh you.  A group of 7 teenagers and 1 slightly-older owner converge on Camp Crystal Lake to renovate it for a new opening.  20-some years earlier, a boy had died by drowning (Jason), and the camp had shut down. The plot then unfolds with 6 of the teens and the owner getting brutally murdered in a matter of hours.  One of the first Final Girls in horror history, Alice, is left to tussle with Mrs. Voorhees, and triumphs in the end by chopping off Mrs. Voorhees' head with a single whack of a machete.  Thus, the formula for a slasher movie was born.

What you probably remember is the creepy little-kid voice Pamela Voorhees talks to herself in, murmuring "Kill her mommy!  Killlllll herrrrrr!"  You probably remember the fact that the killer was Mrs. Voorhees AT ALL was a shocking twist.  What you probably don't remember is how deeply incongruous the last twenty minutes are to the rest of the film.  Specifically, how the physical prowess (or lack thereof) of Mrs. Voorhees is insane if you believe that she has been responsible for all the murders up to this point.

To make myself clear, let's go over how these murders went down.

• The hitchhiker girl, Annie, that stops at Ye Olde Foreboding Gas-station is picked up by a silent and unseen driver.  They ride for a while until Annie realizes something is wrong and jumps from the vehicle.  She is then chased through the woods by the driver before having her throat slit in one neat slash with a hunting knife.
• Ned, the class-clown, enters a cabin by himself.  Hours later, his dead body is shown on the top bunk under which two of the other teens have sex.  Since the two teens had no idea he was up there, I reason that Ned must've been dead for a while, or drained of most of his blood such that the two lovers weren't soaked.  Rather, Ned only leaks a single drop.
• Jack (aka Young Kevin Bacon) gets arrowed through the neck.  This is probably the best kill in the movie, but let's go into detail.  As he wipes that single drop of blood off his forehead, a hand suddenly shoots out from under the bed and pins his head down to the pillow.  A moment later, the sharp point of an arrow protrudes through the top of his chest, barely south of his larynx, barely north of his sternum.  This means that the killer both held him to the bed with one hand, and stabbed an arrow through a mattress and the entirety of a young, athletic male's body with the other.
• Marcie, the other lover, is killed instantly in the bathroom with a single overhead blow from an axe.  (The strategic use of a vertical swing in close quarters will be important later).
• Steve, the owner, is stabbed in the torso with a machete of some sort.  He is later found when his body lolls out of a tree, upside down, as Final Girl Alice runs around panicking.
• Bill (Alice's boyfriend) was shot through with multiple arrows, including one to the eye-socket. Their wild angle suggests they were shot from a bow, and not stabbed by hand as with Jack.  Bill is then lifted off the ground and pinned to a wooden door via the arrows.    
• The body of Brenda, who wandered onto the archery range searching for the voice of a child, is tied to a set of boards and then thrown through a glass window.  Not catapulted or swung or dragged: thrown.  

So, what does it sound like we're dealing with here?  A BEAST, that's what.  Someone who is capable of tossing around a minimum of 125 pounds like it ain't no thang.  Someone who is so confident that they don't mind approaching their victims and letting them see their face (as seen with hitchhiker girl and Steve).  Someone who is patient enough to hide under a bed for the duration of a sex act, a snoozle, and some banter.  Someone who is also stealthy enough to completely avoid detection while running all over the freaking place, killing and planting bodies like Easter Eggs.  Someone who is so good at killing that they only need one swing to murder.

However, all of this mayhem is rendered at the hands of a silent, unseen killer.  One which the audience easily assumes is some hulking dude, possibly along the lines of the gorilla in a jumpsuit Jason turns out to be in the later films.  But, TWIST: It's Mrs. Voorhees, a middle-aged, average looking woman in a bulky sweater.  She looks like she ought to offer you cookies or maybe a hug.  Too soon, though, she begins her babbling monologue wherein we discover she's Jason's mom and has been on quite the killing spree this evening.

Voorhees then gets into the tussle/run/tussle/run cycle with the final girl that came to define the climax of slasher movies.  So what's so wrong with this?

Merely, the fact that the moment we observe Mrs. Voorhees as a woman and not a man, she looses all her previous strength and special-forces killing prowess.   

Whyyyyyy

2. The Fight with Final Girl Alice

Oh my God, you guys.  I hope you're still with me, because I'm about to tell you all the reasons I am a sad panda.  Yeah, that thesis statement in extra big letters might look like a tough one to support but let me lay my facts on you.  The following is what we get to see Mrs. Voorhees do visibly as Mrs. Voorhees.

Bout #1:  Hunting Knife vs. Fireplace poker.

Uh-oh.  Looks like Mrs. Voorhees is the monster, especially now that she's drawn her hunting knife.  Alice wisely backs up and grabs an iron fireplace poker.  Alice is armed at all, which is a good thing.  However, we've seen Mrs. Voorhees straight slice someone in a very similar situation: Annie, the hitchhiker.  But what does Voorhees do in this scene?  Run at Alice with the knife over her head like a volunteer in a haunted-house.  Alice easily smacks the knife out of Mrs. Voorhees' hand.  

This act of getting hit in the hand causes Mrs. Voorhees to collapse onto the couch.  

Alice then gives her a good whack across the back with the poker and runs.

Round 1 goes to Alice.

As Mrs. Voorhees chases after Alice, she forgets to even pick up her knife.  She just fucking leaves it on the floor for no reason.

Bout #2:  Gun vs. Slaps

Alice runs into another building where they keep the guns.  She finds an unloaded rifle and begins rummaging through the desk for shells.  Sadly, the shells are in padlocked drawers and we have to watch Alice fail at landing a good blow on a non-sentient, immobile object.  

Knowing the gun is useless, Alice throws it at Mrs. Voorhees.  The impact of being hit with the gently thrown gun knocks Mrs. Voorhees back a step.  

Alice throws a large ball of twine and what may be a pencil at Mrs. Voorhees while backing herself into a corner.  Finally, Mrs. Voorhees has closed in and grabbed her.  What does she do?  Break Alice's jaw with closed-fist punches?  

No.  She slaps her.  She... just... slaps her.     

And then pushes her.

Alice gets away from the slapping that reads more like a prelude to kinky sex than danger and grabs the gun again.  She stuns Mrs. Voorhees with a shot to the groin?  It's... awkward to watch.  Then swinging the gun again, she smashes Mrs. Voorhees in the face and runs.  

Round 2 goes to Alice.

Bout #3:  Machete vs. Frying Pan

Alice hides in a pantry.  Mrs. Voorhees uses a machete to smash through the door Jack Torrence-style.  As Mrs. Voorhees unlocks the door (btw, why is there a lock on the inside of a pantry?), Alice grabs a cast-iron frying pan.  Mrs. Voorhees completely forgets how she killed Marcie with an axe and proceeds to swing her machete wildly side to side.  It gets stuck in the wood of the shelves.

But even worse: Mrs. Voorhees wields the machete with two hands like it weighs a million pounds.  As if it were a CLAYMORE FOR FUCKSAKE.  What the actual fuck?  A machete is a one-handed weapon I'm capable of wielding!  Mrs. Voorhees threw a girl through a window!  She impaled a guy through a mattress and his whole boney-muscley body with ONE HAND in the cramped, leverage-free space beneath a bed.  Why on Earth does she have to use two hands on a machete?  I can't...even.

Alice bonks Mrs. Voorhees on the head as she flails like a moron.  It looks like Mrs. Voorhees is bleeding from a head wound when Alice runs to the shore of the lake to quietly contemplate life and all the vagaries of fate.

Round 3 goes to Alice.

Bout #4: Machete vs. Boat Paddle

A concussed Mrs. Voorhees comes upon Alice again.  She has the chance to get a blow in while Alice has her back turned and is on her knees.  Alice can hear the soundtrack, though, and just before Mrs. Voorhees straight murders her, Alice turns like a ninja and holds up a boat paddle just in time for Voorhees to cut it in half.

Mrs. Voorhees is yet again gently disarmed, and proceeds to angrily snuggle Alice.  Mrs. Voorhees tries impaling Alice with the broken paddle, but Alice rolls out of the way.  Mrs. Voorhees is established as a biter.  They then proceed to mud-wrestle.

Then this happens: Pamela Voorhees gets her head chopped off like a chump.

So, how does this all cash out, if you're just scrolling down to read the parts in big letters?

Mrs. Voorhees fights and dies like the chumpiest chump that ever fell on their own machete.

This is seriously the last face she makes.

3. Why?  There's got to be an explanation!  Please!

The following are rationalizations that don't hold water for me.

Mrs. Voorhees is more of a lay-in-wait kind of killer.  She's super-effective when she gets the jump on people.  She failed against Alice because she walked up to her and starting monologuing. 

• Nope. It's actually well-established in 2 instances that Mrs. Voorhees has no problem walking up to people before she kills them.  This is shown when she drives around with Annie the hitchhiker for several minutes, and when she shows her face to Steve, the owner.  She doesn't lay in wait for them, but wrecks them just the same.  

She's a middle-aged woman who worked as a cook.  She not special forces or anything, and women aren't that strong or good at fighting or whatever.  I mean, she seems pretty evenly matched with Alice afterall.

• Nope.  Were you even watching the movie?  She did things like hold a teenager up with one hand while pinning him to a door with arrows in the other.  She hoisted an adult man 10-15 feet up into a tree.  She moved bodies quickly like they were garbage bags full of leaves.  She kills with one hit in multiple scenes.  

What if Jason did some of it?  Jason's a big dude and could easily be helping his mom out.  Jason 4 LYFE WOOT!

• Nope.  Jason is supposed to be dead in this first movie.  At best, he's a figment of Alice's addled imagination when he jumps out of the lake at the end.  And at that, he's presented as an adolescent boy.  In the sequel, Friday the 13th Part II, the movie postulates (read: tells the audience) that Jason has been driven to murder after witnessing the death of his mother.  If that is the canon explanation for why Jason be Jasoning, then how could he have been helping his mom the whole time?  Not a part of this explanation makes sense.

Mrs. Voorhees was tired/ spent all her killing spells earlier that day/ got cocky.

• Nope.  I mean, what?  How is that even an explanation?  How can Mrs. Voorhees get up from THREE temporarily debilitating blows, but be "too tired" to fight correctly?  And cockiness doesn't account for why she completely forgets how to fight and kill.  It seems she genuinely wants to kill Alice, so then why does she forget everything she's shown us she can do in spades?

We shouldn't show violence against women.

• Um... we already killed three women in this movie.  We saw their throats slit open and everything.

Final Girl Magic.  Movie Reasons.  Hand-Wavey Jedi Mindtrick.

• So, what you're saying is that the writers needed a way to wrap up the story with a hero-girl at the end.  But they also really wanted their twist.  And they wanted the killing in the movie to look awesome and scary.  I understand these production concerns.  What's not cool with it is how they went about it.  Making the killer such a stupendous badass, only to take that badassery away because of how your twist works feels like a cheat.  I completely bought Mrs. Voorhees as being the killer.  In fact it had me cheering up until I watched her fight.  The complete and utter failitude of her on-screen combat was just so stark and stunning to me, it broke my suspended disbelief.  I belieeeeeved in Mrs. Voorhees, until I just couldn't.

• Further, there are multiple good ways they could have resolved this problem.  They could have made Alice more of a rugged badass.  They could have made Alice really familiar with gadgets or traps or the woods or a distance-runner.  Alice could have legitimately out-smarted Mrs. Voorhees at any point.  They could have had Mrs. Voorhees be wounded previously, so that she shows up bleeding when she first meets Alice. I dare say that would have made the twist even more head-snapping!  A moment of two survivors commiserating turns into a predator/prey battle! And it would have explained Mrs. Voorhees' on-screen impotence.

4. So what's your explanation then?

That Mrs. Voorhees' only mistake was being seen by the audience.  Let me show you how (dons Philsopher's hat).

Both Jason and Mrs. Voorhees do most of their killing unobserved by the audience.  While unobserved, one could say that Jason and Mrs. Voorhees have comparable abilities/properties when it comes to massacring human beings.  They're both super-strong, incredibly stealthy, good at fighting, good at anticipating behavior patterns so they know when and where to lay in wait.  In fact, the twist of Mrs. Voorhees being Mrs. Voorhees at all is leveraged off our assumption that she is a Jason-type character in the first place.

However, there is always a point in these movies where Jason or Pamela will be observed by the audience (not necessarily the cast).  When Jason is observed, he is revealed to be facially disfigured in a manner intended to horrify the audience, and is slightly suggestible when it comes to his mom, but otherwise loses none of his abilities.  He is every bit as strong, canny, and terrifying as he was the entire movie.  It usually takes multiple people, at least one of which must be male, to even harm him, and pretty much nobody is able to outright kill him (you know, because he's some kind of undead water-demon but that's a different theory-paper).

Mrs. Voorhees on the other hand, completely falls apart once observed.  There is really no other explanation for this sudden tailspin of incompetence.  There is no other factor that the movie gives for why there would be such an incredible change.

Nothing is different except Mrs. Voorhees' status as 'observed'.  And, once Mrs. Voorhees is observed, her properties change drastically.  They revert from that of the unstoppable killing-machine we've come to expect to a thing called "Woman". 

And we all know that women can't fight, they're weak, they're impulsive and foolish, and above all else they AREN'T SCARY.  /sarcasm

But, this stupid nerfing doesn't just happen to Mrs. Voorhees, it happens to every mundane woman in a horror movie.  Like, seriously, all of them.

At least I'm not alone!

5. The Mrs. Voorhees Problem

Or, Witch.Ghost.Demon.Other.

I've spent weeks thinking about this.  Whenever a woman is depicted as a lead in a horror movie there seems to be a very strict flowchart for what kind of creature she can be.  

Is she a hero or a villain?  If she's a hero, she gets to be a badass all she likes because Final Girl Magic.  Also, heroes come in the forms of actual badasses like Ellen Ripley or the ladies in The Descent.  They also come in the "brutally-raped so now I shall have my revenge!" flavor a la I Spit on Your Grave.  Heroes get to be powerful by definition.  This even sometimes applies when they are women.

However, if your woman is the head villain or monster, she has to be supernatural to be physically intimidating.  Yes, female villains can be cruel and manipulative and dangerous in sneaky ways.  They can play mind games and be abusive.  This can be disturbing and spooky, yes.

However, they aren't depicted as coming-to-kill-you scary unless they literally break the laws of nature.

They tend to come in 4 broad flavors: Witch, Ghost, Demon, Other.

Witches include actual witches, gypsies, psychics like Carrie, casually racist depictions of voo-doo priestesses, or women with otherwise loosely defined supernatural powers.  Ghosts are ghosts: think Sadako from The Ring.  Demons include succubi, Regan from The Exorcist, Deborah Logan, and all those poor girls in these found-footage movies about possessions and exorcisms.  Other includes shape-shifters like Irena from Cat-People, aliens or wasp-women or 50-foot women or robot-women (re: Terminator III) or that harpy from VHS.  Every so often there's an exotic reason for why the woman can't possibly exist in real life, and I consider that grab-bag to be Other.

Of course, each of these old archetypes has been riffed on, but one fact remains.  They aren't mundane.

Which is to say, women can only be the source of fear if we are utterly sure we'll never come across them in real life.

This is when I sat down like the Grinch and thought and thought about what female villain broke the pattern.  What lead female monster was utterly mundane and realistic?

-Carrie's mom!  She was totally mundane, super-abusive, and crazy as a loon!

Yes, but were you really afraid of Carrie's mom hiding in your closet?  In my opinion, the mom served more as character development for Carrie than as the monster or villain.  Yes, she was disturbing, but I never really feared her.  Rather, I felt sympathy for Carrie.  Ultimately, so long as our mom was not like Carrie's mom, then we can sleep safely knowing it's not our problem, so to speak.  Which, to bring it down to real-talk level, is probably how most of us cope with the reality of child-abuse that is happening all the time in the real world.  Like, right now.

-But, what about Kathy Bates' Annie Wilkes in Misery?

Now, we're getting somewhere.  I LOVED Bates in Misery.  However, I would still like to point out that the writer is entirely crippled and almost dead when Annie nurses him back to health.  It still takes a dude to be at a rare and exceptional disadvantage to be at her mercy and threatened.  Not breaking the laws of nature, no, but still not really a fair fight.  It would be extremely rare to find ourselves in that kind of circumstance.

-What about Sherri Moon Zombie in House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects or Juliette Lewis from Natural Born Killers?

Yes, Sherri is a mundane psychopath, but I don't particularly credit her as being The Villain of these movies.  Sure, she kills, and can take a bit of a beating, but she's also part of a group- an ensemble.  She spends a lot of her time using her sexuality and interpersonal skills to manipulate victims or getting her brother and step-dad to do the muscle-work for her.  Note: Sexuality and interpersonal manipulation being the classical arsenal women are allowed to have in lieu of physical power.

The same can be said of Lewis in NBK.  While she does do horrible stuff on her own, she's also sharing the spotlight with Woody Harrelson.  And, one could easily argue the scariest character in that movie is played by Rodney Dangerfield.

I'd say that while these come pretty close, they still don't fit what I'm looking for.  They aren't monsters by themselves.

It makes me so sad when you forget about me, sempai.....

5. Yes, Joanna, there is an Asami...

But then I remembered Audition!  And my heart grew three sizes that day!

Oh, Asami!  How I love you so!  You are completely mundane.  You have no magical powers except for your other-worldly charm and ability to puke on command, which is to say none.  You are just super-crazy.  And yet you murder dudes that are hale and hearty!  You are so deliciously creepy with your cute little smile.

I would like to talk more about all the ways and means Asami has of being awesome and one of the rare glimmering stars in a dark, dark night- but I also don't want to spoil Audition for you.  If you don't know what I'm talking about I just recommend you go watch it when you're ready for a far-out, richly crafted movie.  I will, however, let you know that it's pretty intense, involves torture and vomit and stuff, so steel yourself.

Also, a little birdie on the internet tells me that Marie in Haute Tension breaks the Mrs. Voorhees Problem into tiny little pieces.  This has moved it up my watch-list considerably (I'm dragging my feet on watching all the French Extreme stuff because gore is usually boring to me).  Once I watch, I'll come back for an edit.

In conclusion: Tell me I'm wrong!  Recommend movies with women that are scary and strong without having to break the 'rules' to do so.  Show me more Asamis.

Comment on this post below with your thoughts and recommendations and sundry hate-mail.

Feminist-hat and Philosopher-hat back on the stand,

-Joanna

John Kenn Mortensen - Artist Review

The bio on his website reads:

Born in Denmark 1978, I write and directed television shows for kids.  I have a set of twins and not much time for anything.  But when I have time, I draw monster drawings on Post-it Notes... It is a little window into a different world, made on office supplies.

That's right, Post-It Notes.  I first saw the artist's work a couple years ago, promoted along the lines of "You Won't Believe What This Amazing Artist Draws on Post-Its!!!!!"  Luckily, the link had an image with it, so I got a glimpse of an eye of a Kenn-brand monster.  It was big and fuzzy, and its gaping, toothy mouth and pale, sightless eyes struck the perfect chord of endearing, mysterious, and deeply creepy.

The artist's use of ink on paper allows him to be extremely detailed.  Thus many of his monsters sport shaggy pelts, tattered robes, or oozing, melted skin.  This along with hyper-detailed backdrops of trees, fences. or bedroom walls makes the spaces left vacant pop.  For example, the white eyes of his creatures, ringed heavily with black.

A thing I love about these drawings is their atmosphere.  If there's an heir to the Edward Gorey throne, I can think of no better fit than John Kenn Mortensen.  His pictures do encapsulate little worlds.  Worlds that ring with the strangeness of childhood daydreams and imaginary friends.  Worlds where the Wild Things Are.  Worlds that house the creepy-crawlies kids innocently doodle, only to have their parent discretely crumple up the drawing as chills run down their spine.  Monsters are lit against the night with glowing eyes, or slither from shaded closets.  Sometimes the atmosphere is wrought with irised-in shading, other times it is in how lonely the monsters look.

However, it's not always about the monsters.  There's a balance in each piece between the featured humans, usually children, and the beasts.  It takes these hallucinatory creatures and tethers them to a sort of feverish reality.  What does your child see behind them when they look in the mirror?  Oh, just the usual...

Further, there's a deeply Victorian part of me that loves miniatures.  The fact that this work is done on Post-Its isn't kitschy; it feels like a 21st Century update to locket-bound portraits.

The only thing that makes me sad about John Kenn Mortensen is that sometimes it feels as though his fame is leveraged more on the Post-It Note gimmick than on the sheer mind-blowing quality of his work.  I wonder whether he would have achieved viral-level exposure of his work if it were pencil on vellum.  I wonder how many other Mortensens are out there making mind-blowing monsters I'm not looking at, just because they haven't figured out or bought into the right gimmick.

But, at least this artist is doing well.  Check out his website, or buy his books "Sticky Monsters" and "More Sticky Monsters".  I know what I'm putting on my Amazon wishlist for next Christmas.

http://johnkenn.blogspot.com/

-Joanna

The Host - Movie Review

The Host
Released 2006
Directed by Bong Joon-ho

In the very first scene of The Host, we watch an American mortician order his reluctant Korean assistant to pour 200 bottles of formaldehyde down the drain, into the river.  This scene makes me sad, not because of what it actually is, but for what it seems to have done to people's perceptions about The Host.  This is another brilliant film I put off watching for far too long, mostly because I listened to what other people were saying about it.  Almost everything that mentions The Host name-drops it for its environmental message.  Which is a HUGE DISSERVICE!  Environmentalism probably fifth or sixth down on the list of 'Things This Movie is About'.  Let us list the others:

The Host is about:
Family
American-Korean relations
The Futility of the Individual when struggling against The System
Contagion
Loss
and then we get to Environmentalism...

Environmentalism and monsters go hand in hand. I get it; I understand. I mean, look at Godzilla.  Not just Godzilla the franchise, but Godzilla the institution.  For much of the 20th century filmmakers have used giant monsters to investigate the public's fears about nuclear weapons, pollution, and even genetic manipulation.  Bearing this in mind, it makes sense that The Host is usually name-dropped due to its heavy-handed environmentalist message.  But, to do this is to really miss so much of what makes The Host, truly, one of the best monster movies of all time.

The story is that a mutant monstrosity lopes up the banks of the Han river that runs through Seoul, causing chaos, death, and destruction.  In the midst of popcorn-munching Godzilla-brand crowd-panic, the monster kidnaps Hyun-seo, the daughter of Park Gang-Doo.  Thinking Hyun-seo is dead, the Park family gathers to grieve when they get whisked away to a decontamination hospital.  While going through the boring and confusing bureaucratic process of decon, Gang-doo gets a phone call from Hyun-seo.  She's still alive!  The monster has deposited her in its lair somewhere in the sewers.  So, what is the family going to do?  BREAK OUT AND RESCUE HER, THAT'S WHAT.

Hyun-seo and Gang-Doo, two of our heroes.

From here, The Host is part rollicking adventure, part hilarious satire, and part heartbreaking tragedy.  And I mean heartbreaking.  It has honestly been years since I've seen something that made me cry so hard and genuinely, only to turn around and make me laugh and cheer.  I did not go into this expecting an emotional roller coaster.  But, that's what I got.  This may explain why The Host is the highest grossing South Korean film of all time.  Just sayin'.  And mind you, this is not how I normally interact with movies.  I'm not swayed by emotional pandering- usually because the characters aren't developed enough for me to care.  But not here... not with The Host.

I wish I could tell you how much I love each and every one of the characters in this movie.  Even bit parts are fascinating.  The Host is one of those movies that I hope has a tiny fandom somewhere because I want to join it and look at fan-art cartoons and nerd-out because I ended up loving these people SO. MUCH.  I hope you will too.  Instead of rambling on and on about them, I suggest you just watch the movie- it'll be more elegant and concise anyways.

Need to go back and count the bullets in this movie.

Aside from how emotionally engaging The Host is, it's also a smart movie.  It refuses to satisfy tropes that make no sense.  Like tropes relating to bullets (*sob*).  Or tropes about how pretty, young girls interact with animals (*double-sob*).  Further, The Host knows how to balance on a knife's edge to make its satire very clearly understood without feeling didactic, or distracting from all the other things it's doing with tone and story.

Oh yeah, and let's not forget there are parts of The Host where you remember you're watching a horror movie.  Notably, the section of the film where American military scientists capture Gang-Doo and attempt to lobotomize him.  He calmly tries to bargain with the doctors in a scene so quietly dreadful it makes the ending of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest look justified in comparison.  Or maybe that's just because I like Gang-Doo at lot more than I do McMurphy.

"No guys, really, this is all a misunderstanding.  I gotta find my daughter."

This is usually the part of the review where I try to warn you so your expectations will not betray you, but to me this is difficult.  There's nothing I dislike about this movie.  The CG holds up beautifully, the pacing is spot on, the themes are up my alley.  Even that opening scene that caused so many to file The Host under "Enviromentalist Propaganda" and forget about it.  In context, the opening is actually very funny.  It's more about how laughably ridiculous and dumb American arrogance is than how formaldehyde makes a monster.

To stretch, I'm sure there are things others wouldn't like about this movie, but they're really a matter of taste.  Perhaps you won't like the characters like I do.  They reminded me a lot of the Bluths from Arrested Development, and I know that plenty of people find the Bluths "unlikeable".  The Park family is kind of like that.  Dysfunctional, but still loyal to one another.  Deeply flawed, but trying to be noble.  But also mean, or stupid, or cold, or drunk at times.

You might also dislike how The Host plays three games at once: Action-Thriller, Comedy, Tragedy.  It swirls between them quickly in a way I find delectable.  But this also means that the movie inserts humor in its darkest moments, and insecurity into scenes where you want the heroes to be invincible.  I love this so much, but I know others may think it scatterbrained or inappropriate (but I snub those opinions, anyway- snub, snub).

But if you like your monster movies to be great films too, I highly recommend The Host.  Or if you like your action movies to be wish-fulfilling and epic, I highly recommend The Host.  Or if you like your family dramas full of broken, realistic people, I highly recommend The Host.  You get the point...

-Joanna

Rika Ezaki

The world is harmful
Rika Ezaki

Eyes, fingers, band-aids, bondage.  Rika Ezaki's art combines otherworldly repetitions with lush details to create images at once striking, eerie, and disturbing.  Gentle, faded color schemes and delicately curving lines impart a refinement that matches the considered composition and content of Ezaki's art.  It's fascinating.  It's beautiful.  And in its beauty it is seductive and dreadful.

Ezaki's nightmare pictures frequently echo the traditions of Japanese erotica and the Japanese expression of the grotesque.  Schoolboys are caught lounging, glancing out at the audience with heavy-lidded eyes, sometimes entangled with lascivious monsters.  Schoolgirls are bound like pin-ups, harassed by demons, or skewered on mega-pencils like St. Sebastian.  

While I wouldn't call this art Safe For Work, it isn't as graphic as you might imagine.  There are no exposed genitals or blood.  But this modesty is exactly what makes the erotic subtext of Ezaki's work so deeply disturbing to me.  Mind you, the subtext is extremely clear.  Themes of abuse, bondage, and all manner of emotionally twisted relationships are on display.  Oftentimes, they're softened to seem appealing, even romantic.  For example, in Your Gold Lotus, a youth is surrounded with slender female legs.  On the surface it seems like a classic foot-fetish image.  It is only upon closer inspection that one sees all the shoes are far too tiny, and that all the feet have been bound down into body-horror nubs inside those cute little boots.

Of course, there are two other areas that Ezaki explores exquisitely: lonesome ghost-stories, and super-kawaii, super-monstrous sticker sheets (And OMG I NEED SOME OF THOSE).  

Attempted Double Suicide shows a long-haired maiden clutching a skeleton in the moonlight.  It suggests a classic folktale, complete with kimono and moths.  There are kitsune priests and black flames and filters that would make you utterly certain you're looking at a blockprint on silk.  Other works include a schoolgirl whose hair is levitating.  It's an understated bit of insinuation that reminds me simultaneously of Alfred Gorey and Rene Magritte.

Then, Ezaki swings far into Western horror imagery with angels, horned devils, crosses, and goat legs.  And then there are the sticker-sheets.  You'll just have to see them to believe them.

In short, I think Ezaki is marvelous.  With a gorgeous style and strange ideas, Ezaki makes things for gazing, things for delving deep into mysterious nightmare worlds.  

I highly suggest you give the website some traffic, and perhaps even contact the artist if you see something you like!  Despite being in Japanese, don't fear: click on Pix, then the blue link, and you can wander through a complete album of Rika Ezaki's work.

http://kizetz.com/

Sweet Dreams!

-Joanna

The Descent - Movie Review

The Descent
Released 2005
Directed by Neil Marshall

Slow-burn buzz.  Possibly the slowest burning buzz I've ever seen for a horror movie.  Over the past decade, The Descent has been gradually clawing its way higher and higher up on my watch list.  When previews for it first came out in 2005, I laughed at how terrible it looked.  I mean, really, who wants to watch a bunch of babes mud-wrestle in a cave and get eaten by orcs?  Not me! 

ONLY IT’S NOT LIKE THAT.  I promise.

The Descent is a remarkably good movie.  It sports a well-rounded all-female cast that’s exactly opposite your regular Werewolf in a Girl’s Dormitory babe-troop.  Aside from how satisfying the characters are, the movie is fast-paced and genuinely thrilling.  It takes the claustrophobia and unease implicit in spelunking, and ramps it up fast and hard.  Then, when you think the movie is glowing with adrenaline from scaling bottomless chasms, it hits you again with the grotesque cave monsters.  Which, I know, sounds dumb, but trust me on this: the cave monsters are good.  I’ll explain why in a bit.

So, about that cast of nothing but awesome women.  It’s got 6 actual women.  Not girls, not babes- women.  Women who are brave and have virtues and flaws.  Women who go hard-core caving for funsies.  They’re thrill-seekers.  They each have their own lives and careers.  There’s a delicate web of relationships between them of which, sadly, we only catch glimpses.  But even these glimpses are rich compared to the character-development we get for characters of any gender in most movies.

Not a duck-face in sight.

And the reason why they looked like they were mud-wrestling in the preview is because they kinda do- it’s just that they’re engaged in some of the most sloppy, brutal, true-to-life fighting I've seen for a while.  None of this prettily choreographed, laughably-unrealistic Black Widow bunk.  They slip and roll around in blood-mud with inbred mutants until they’re lucky enough to plunge their thumbs deep into said mutant’s eye-sockets.  It’s harsh.  And for someone who's looked up to Ellen Ripley since 4th grade, it’s also really satisfying.   

About those cave monsters.  Spoiler: they’re an ancient race of humans that have evolved underground.  They’re blind and use echolocation to hunt prey.  They crawl lots and it’s quite uncanny.  But they also have really bad senses of smell, and aren’t very good at knowing what’s in their bone-room.  Look… don’t worry about the logisitics.  This isn’t science-fiction.  This is a horror movie about The Moon-eyed People.  And while I was personally underwhelmed by The Moon-eyes as capital-M Monsters per se, I really loved them as a more subtly-shaded device: human-shaped animals.  The Descent shows you the monster lots.  And to be entirely fair, the make-up effects are gorgeous.  But once I got over the displeasure of how much I was looking the monsters in the face, the more they started to warp into something more interesting.  They began to seem less Other-y.  This coincides perfectly with the descent of the characters into primal survival states.

I'm considering investing in an climbing adze.

To make a note about cinematography/direction, there’s also a beautiful, lovely, gorgeous shot in this movie.  The lead has to scramble up a hill of bones to the surface.  She’s illuminated by a narrow shaft of light among the darkness.  She struggles, exhausted, covered in blood and death, up and up.  It’s one of the most heartbreaking expressions of grieving I’ve ever seen.  By the time you see it, it’ll make sense.  And, yes, a woman crawling up a bone-pile is very heavy-handed.  And I would happily call it silly in anything other than a horror movie that seems to have been crafted entirely around this gem of a shot.

Onto things that aren't great about this movie: the bad CG.  It’s mostly used for cave interiors that would be really unfeasible to construct or shoot on location, so just deal with it.  There are no CG monsters, and the movie makes use of practical effects for everything it wants to look good.  But, I know some people honestly just can’t stand older CG, especially on HD tvs, so if that’ll break your concentration- try to prepare yourself.

Also, the pacing is off, and I’m not sure whether it makes the movie better or worse.  The fight-scenes can seem a little sluggish.  They really wallow in the… well, wallowing.  There are parts that I think are drawn out just a touch too much in attempts milk every last sweet drop of tension and excitement out of a situation.  

Then again, the weird pacing of this movie made its jump-scares intense.  I have a bad habit of counting down to jump-scares in movies.  You know: “Jump-scare in 3, 2, 1…Rawr!”  Try it sometime, you’re probably better at it than you think.  But this movie is uncountable.  I’m having a hard time pinning down exactly why the scares are so effective, but suffice to say, I screamed “JESUS CHRIST!” more than once in alarm.

As an overall result, the pacing has some beneficial effects, but makes the movie feel loosey-goosey.  Preferably, it would be edited down into elegant perfection, but I know this isn’t always possible.  It’s just a touch disappointing when there are so many other yummy things going on.

In conclusion, if you love the idea of the Ted the Caver creepypasta but are too impatient to read all the way through it, have I got the movie for you!  While not the most subtle or psychological of horror tales, The Descent definitely hits all the good spots of a survival/monster movie.  Good characters, thrills, chills, and blood-mud.

Oh, and the best Apocalypse Now moment since… Apocalypse Now.

 -Joanna