INVISIBLE MAN AND DOUBLE MUMBO-JUMBO

Spoiler alert: THE INVISIBLE MAN is one of my favorite movies of the year thus far in a year that’s been EXCEPTIONALLY strong (UNDERWATER, AFTER MIDNIGHT, GRETEL & HANSEL, motherfucking VFW, even SONIC THE HEDGEHOG have all rocked my socks off). The movie is tense, terrifying, and definitely surprising, and Elizabeth Moss turns in a brilliant performance. But that doesn’t mean the film is above criticism. While it didn’t stifle my enjoyment during the movie, only became a nit that nagged at me afterwards, there’s some double mumbo-jumbo in the movie and I think there didn’t have to be.

For those of you who haven’t read SAVE THE CAT, double mumbo-jumbo means that the script is asking the audience to accept more than one fantastical premise. The examples Blake Snyder uses aren’t great, so I’ll just create a hypothetical—imagine that in ALIENS, one of the Colonial Marines is a magic user. Single mumbo-jumbo is the Xenomorphs, but we can accept an alien like that in that world. But if you add in magic for some reason, we’re going to call bullshit.

THE INVISIBLE MAN asks us to accept the premise that a man can turn invisible, which isn’t all that far-fetched. But then it also asks us to accept the soap opera plot point of someone faking their death. Someone famous. And while occasionally people do try to fake their own death, it’s usually someone who’s not well-known who is facing some serious legal trouble—Samuel Israel III, for example. I have trouble believing that an Elon Musk-level tech celeb could get away with such a thing (and if you still think it would be easy for someone to do if they had enough money, why are mega-rich guys like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby sitting in prison when they could have faked their own deaths?).

And it’s not just that Adrian fakes his own death, he stages a suicide in a hotel room where he slits his wrists. If he’d disappeared at sea, okay, but a hotel? Think about it—the number of people who’d have to be in on the scheme is ridiculous. Adrian’s brother, sure, plus the hotel housekeeper who finds him, the EMTs, at minimum a couple uniformed officers and maybe some detectives, the coroner, the coroner’s assistant…that’s a lot of people to pay off and then trust not to tell their spouse, their priest or rabbi, or their friendly local bartender. Grand conspiracies usually fall apart under their own weight, because it’s demonstrably true that two can keep a secret when one of them is dead.

A quick fix to erase the double mumbo-jumbo would be for Adrian to be jailed, rather than fake his suicide. He could smuggle in his invisible tech, and continue to harass and stalk Cecilia. The plot point of people not believing her would work just fine, since her cop friend could even point to jailhouse CCTV footage that shows Adrian never leaving his cell. Sure, you lose the great urn gag in the brother’s office, but that’s the only thing that’s lost, and you’re not asking the audience to swallow too much fantastical stuff.

MIDSOMMAR is a Perfect Circle

Midsommar is a straightforward narrative and a morally complicated film, one that, like any good piece of art, seems to have grown far out of the intentionality that birthed it. Director Ari Aster’s called Midsommar a break-up movie, and in some ways it is. There’s definitely an argument to be made that the ritualized suicide that the Harga engage in when one reaches the ripe old age of seventy-two is a metaphor for ending a relationship that’s well past its expiration date. It’s better to end something than to let it limp along, one could say. And one could read murder/suicide as a distinct metaphor for a breakup as well, since it’s usually one person choosing to end things for both partners. But I think the movie is actually a little more complex than that. It’s ultimately about a woman turning into her sister, and how what I like to call the Mask of Exoticism prevents many viewers from actually understanding what’s going on.

Murder and suicide recur throughout the movie, and in every instance are partnered together. The film opens with a murder/suicide, the midpoint of the film is a murder/suicide, and the end of the film is a murder/suicide. But how differently do we react to the murder/suicides in the Harga village, versus that first murder/suicide in a snowbound house in Minnesota? Dictionary.com defines exoticism as “the quality of being attractive or striking through being colorful or unusual.” Each event is fundamentally the same, if you peel back what’s happening to the relevant first principles, and yet again and again I’ve heard people describe the Harga’s ritualized suicide as beautiful[1], in its own way. Why is that? Because the flower dresses and the pageantry and the breathing and singing in Swedish obscures what’s going on. The associated cultural relativism is even discussed in the movie, when Christian says “It’s - cultural. We abandon our elderly to nursing homes. I’m sure they find that disturbing.”[2]

Let’s talk about each murder/suicide, and how they might compare and contrast. First, the film opens on Terri Ardor running hoses from the exhaust pipe of a car in the garage of the Ardor home, duct-taping one to her own face and the other to the crack under her parents’ bedroom door. While we can’t know the exact circumstances, it’s assumed that Terri has made the decision to die for all three of them. Her final email to Dani reads “ i cant anymore - everything’s black - mom and dad are coming too. goodbye[3].” We’ve got a blend of willing and unwilling death, with Terri as the engineer.

Next, near the midpoint of the film we have the ritual of  Ättestupa. In Harga culture, when someone reaches the age of seventy-two, they jump off a gigantic rock and (hopefully) smash their head open on a much smaller rock, killing themselves instantly. In one of the more unsettling and tense moments in the film, Dani watches as two village elders sing to each other, ascend the rock on litters, cut their palms open and smear blood all over a rune-etched rock, and then jump to their deaths. One can argue that the driver for this behavior is societal pressure (what’s never mentioned in the film is what would happen if a 72-year-old opted out of the ritual), and therefore the decision to die is not being made by the elders, but by younger people in the village who would presumably ostracize them or maybe finish the job themselves if the elders refused to jump. This parallels Terri’s murder of her parents, but in this case “Terri” is the entire village. The Mask of Exoticism descends, and prevents us from seeing that the seeming “choice” of the Harga elders is no choice at all. The film puts a capstone on this idea when the male elder[4], having succeeded in maiming himself but not dying during his jump, is dispatched via mallet by multiple younger villagers.

Directly after this shocking event Dani, traumatized and in tears after seeing what amounts to a reenactment of the deaths of her family, stumbles off alone while Christian shouts after her “Good idea. I’ll find you in a bit?[5]” (In the film, the line is changed to “Just take some time to yourself, okay” which is much more effective--all he gives her is time to herself). The nature of the idyllic community is revealed at the same time as the nature of her relationship with Christian is revealed to her. In the wake of her family’s death, he was only half-heartedly there for her, and now he’s abdicated any sort of responsibility completely. This reveal completely informs the final scene, and Dani’s subsequent behavior--horrific as it is to watch two people leap to their deaths she does start feeling more at home and mingling with the villagers afterwards. One could argue that’s because of Christian’s emotional abandonment, but I would argue it’s because she sees her own family in the Harga.

A few scenes later, the British couple who freaked out during the ritual and disrespected the village’s tradition in the eyes of the Harga (Simon and Connie) disappear. We later find out they’ve been murdered, making this scene in the middle of the movie a true murder/suicide. This is one of the changes from script to final film that made a lot of sense. In the script, they linger on for another twenty pages, and the ultimate confrontation between the Brits and the Harga involves a totally different ritual, the sacrifice of nine animals. More closely tying the deaths of the Brits to the ritual of Ättestupa makes a lot more sense for the narrative. One, for most people it’s more impactful, since Ättestupa involves the deaths of human beings. Two, it turns the Ättestupa ritual into more of a clear murder/suicide, effectively tying the scene to both the opening and closing scenes.   

Finally, at the end of the movie nine people are sacrificed in the Sacred House. Some of these are unwilling murder victims (all of the “new bloods” as the movie calls them--Simon, Connie, Josh, Mark, and Christian), while some are not--Ulf and Ingemar get the “honor” of sacrificing themselves, since they were the ones who whacked the various visitors who dishonored Harga traditions. Ulf and Ingemar effectively commit suicide, in the same way as the two village elders from the ritual at the midpoint of the film--in fact their suicides are directly tied to the murders of Josh, Mark, Connie and Simon, since by Harga custom by killing these “new bloods” they signed their own death warrants. Dani presides over this final murder/suicide, in the same way as her sister Terri did at the beginning. She chooses Christian, sentencing him to death just like Terri sentenced their parents to death. Here it’s cloaked in ritual, done with fire instead of carbon monoxide (although positioned in the middle of the Sacred House, it’s possible Christian dies from smoke inhalation rather than the fire itself, which more perfectly mirrors the opening deaths--either way, the source of the carbon monoxide is a combustion engine, and fire is a more primal version of that very thing), but both Dani and Terri are engaging in the same activity--deciding that someone else should die, and then taking their own lives.

But wait, Dani doesn’t kill herself at the end of the movie--she’s watching Christian die and smiling: “A SMILE finally breaks onto Dani’s face...She has lost herself completely, and she is finally free. It is horrible and it is beautiful[6].” Except, in choosing to end Christian’s life, she’s also chosen to commit suicide. Yes, perhaps it’s another forty-six years in the future, and there’s always the chance another one of life’s perils might get her, but in this moment, by choosing the Harga, by choosing to feed the problematic person in her life to the flames, she’s choosing the ritual of Ättestupa.

And in doing so, she’s transformed fully into Terri, the nominal source of the grief that’s plagued and powered her for the past six months. The Mask of Exoticism prevents both her and most audience members from seeing this, and to be fair we experience the end of the movie with Dani while only seeing the aftermath of Terri’s actions. The tragedy lies in the fact that Dani thinks she’s found something different when she’s actually just traded one family that engages in murder and suicide for another (although due to the Harga’s size, it’s at least a bit more sustainable). In the end, Midsommar starts and ends exactly where it began--a fitting form for a movie about a recurring festival.

[1] Well, aside from the really dumb and superficial takes like “The Harga are eeeevvvvvillll.”

[2] Aster, Ari. “Midsommar.” 2018. 61. http://a24awards.com/film/midsommar/Midsommar_script.pdf

[3] Ibid, 1.

[4]Who, in the screenplay, is named “Dan”--an interesting allusion to our protagonist that I’ve not yet been able to parse.

[5] Ibid, 55..

[6] Page 115.

Not THAT Body: Craft Openings and Joe Lansdale's MUCHO MOJO

Joe Lansdale’s Mucho Mojo is a commercial crime novel about two middle-aged, Odd-Coupley best friends who talk smack to each other while solving mysteries. Lansdale himself is perhaps the most well-known contemporary writer who wears his pulp influences so plainly on his sleeve (guys like Stephen King do too, but most of King’s books read like an alien meteor crashed into Our Town), frequently writing weird westerns, pirate adventure stories, and geriatric creature features starring the King of Rock ‘n Roll. One wouldn’t be surprised if he started such a series novel with the discovery of a body or other crime--that’s usually the starting place in crime fiction for a reason. It’s expected, and frankly it’s easy. But Lansdale makes a different decision here, and delivers a much more interesting book because of it.

Mucho Mojo opens with narrator and East Texas redneck Hap Collins working in a rose field. It’s a nice little slice of life bit, detailing the back-breaking work available to a guy whose circumstances match Hap’s (much like Lansdale himself, a former rose field worker). The scene orients us nicely in our setting; foreshadows the fact Hap’s going to solve the central crime of the novel by literally digging, constantly; and also illustrates that like a rubber band he’s snapped back into ordinary guy shape after the events of the previous novel (which I’ve yet to read, having accidentally picked up Mucho Mojo thinking it was the first in the series, not the second--yeah, I’m a dummy).

Given that it’s a buddy novel, the writer has to set such an expectation in the first chapter. While one can indeed introduce a partner or sidekick for your protagonist up until the midpoint or so, that’s a fundamentally different kind of story, usually about a relative loner learning to connect with the world around him. This ain’t that, the emotional core of the story is the love Hap and Leonard have for each other, a bond that’s continually being strengthened through constant shit-talk and getting into and out of jams. So it’s no surprise that Leonard Pine shows up at the rose fields before the end of the first chapter to drag Hap away from sweaty mundanity and into their next adventure (the symbolism of a gay black man pulling a straight white man away from his day-to-day life into something more interesting is noted). Lansdale almost plays a joke on the reader, here--in a typical pulp novel, we’d be expecting a body right about here, by the end of the first chapter, and Lansdale gives us one. 

But it’s not the body we expect.

Leonard’s at the rose fields not to recruit Hap’s help in solving a mystery, rather to report the passing of his estranged uncle and press Hap into a different kind of service--getting drunk with him on the front porch. UNCLE PINE was not found dead under mysterious circumstances, necessitating an investigation (which is the trick a lesser writer, or at least a less-interesting writer, would employ). Rather, he’s found dead under pretty depressing ones, belly-up in a hoarder house courtesy of natural causes.

In fact, it’s not for another sixty pages before we get to the body in the book, the reason why we’re peeking in on these people’s lives in the first place: a dead child buried under UNCLE’s floorboards. Before that, it’s funerals and heart-to-hearts and Hap and Leonard doing renovations (which made me picture them as a partly-gender-swapped Chip and Joanna Gaines. In a perfect world HGTV would pick up Hap and Leonard and have James Purefoy and Michael K. Williams give us a home improvement show that would blow Vanilla Ice and the Property Brothers out of the water). Outside of a brawl with the drug-dealing neighbors, a helpful signpost inserted by Lansdale to remind us what kind of novel we’re in, the opening to the book feels like it could be a straight up literary novel rather than a series entry on the genre shelves, and that’s pretty damn cool.

A quick aside, I do get pretty annoyed at the term literary fiction (elevated horror, too). There’s rhyme and reason to how this stuff gets shelved, sure, but it’s not content, otherwise books like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell would be sitting in the SF & Fantasy section, and Beloved would be in Horror. Hell, I’ve been to stores where they’ve shelved Stephen King in three different places. I mention bookstore shelving practices because that’s a useful proxy for our collective attitude about a book. Is it literature? Or is it something else? To me, it’s all literature, or it’s all “genre,” or it’s all both, because at the end of the day every writer is trying to make the reader feel something (even if it’s a desire to go out and purchase the next six books in their Transformers tie-in series). Books that are tagged as “genre” have the potential to do everything that a “literary” novel can do, with the added benefit of a bunch of extra tools. Besides, many books that are now considered literature began life as kissing cousins of pulp. I’m talking about pay-by-the-word, serialized Dickensian prose. If Tragedy + Time = Comedy, maybe Pulp + Time = Literature?   

The reason I bring all this up is because Lansdale’s the kind of writer who can fuse all this stuff together, take a pulp framework and make it something more, tell us something real and true about the way we relate to each other, about the world around us. He does it again and again with the crime genre--I can’t imagine a better meditation on fathers, sons, and the perils of unconditional paternal love than Cold in July. Lansdale’s the kind of writer I very much look up to, because he so effortlessly and constantly shows us that the genres we love can do it all, all the same emotional and philosophical heavy lifting that a doorstop by some dead Russian guy can. He’s so good at hooking us from an emotional standpoint that he can wait fifty or sixty pages to get going, and none of it feels like filler, it all feels like part of the story. He’s got an advantage, stylistically, for sure. But he also knows how to build a story where I’m primarily concerned about how Leonard’s going to learn to forgive his uncle, and how he’s going to forgive himself for not trying harder to make amends while his uncle was still alive.

That first dead body? That’s the one that matters, not the one the back cover promises us. That other one? That’s just gravy.

Top Movies of 2019, Final

I put up a list of my top 10, so far, earlier this year (well, two lists, actually), and now it’s time for the real deal, the definitive list of my favorite movies of the year. To avoid tying myself in knots over rankings, I’m eliminating the numbering (and honestly I think there’s like twelve here) and posting my favorite movies of the year in no particular order. It’s been a fantastic year for film.

THE FANATIC

If I were to tell you that Fred Durst made a horror film—wait, come back! Hear me out. I get that Fred Durst is best known for rap-rock [legends?] Limp Bizkit, and considering their improbable success it’s fair to assume that making rap-rock music is the thing he’s best at (a talent comparable to chugging beer or doing Bill Cosby impressions in 2020), but no! He’s actually a pretty talented director, and he’s put together a movie that’s way better than it has any right to be. John Travolta kills it, KILLS IT, in his best performance since FACE/OFF. The movie’s not perfect, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s like nothing else you’ll see this year, I guarantee it.

PARASITE

I went into PARASITE knowing absolutely nothing about it other than the title and the director, and that’s the best way to watch it. I won’t say anything specific here other than this movie is gorgeously shot, funny, compelling, heartbreaking, surprising, and incredibly well-acted. Everybody involved brought their A-game and I can’t say enough great things about this film.

BELZEBUTH

Holy fucking FUCK, that opening. And the next scene. And the next. Terrifying, unflinching, ballsy, and with a hell of a lot of heart, BELZEBUTH is a fucking knockout punch of a movie. Just when I thought you couldn’t do anything novel with demonic possession, too. Underneath the scares, the movie’s ultimately about the power of international cooperation and never becomes heavy-handed or preachy, and considering how extreme it gets I’m still amazed I ended the film on my feet, literally fucking cheering, and full of hope.

TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID

I’d been hearing great things about this film ever since my friend Alia Smith caught it at the Telluride Horror Festival last year, and let me tell you, the hype is totally justified. Issa Lopez’s camera finds beauty in devastation and gets hall of fame performances from some incredibly gifted child actors. The story flirts with the familiar monkey’s paw build but is so much more. This movie shows me things I’ve never seen, and goddamn I’m grateful to Lopez for what she’s pulled off here.

I’M JUST FUCKING WITH YOU/PILGRIM/A NASTY PIECE OF WORK

Blumhouse/Hulu lumps these all together so why can’t I? All three are terrific fun, especially the bookending entries, and PILGRIM has one of the grooviest premises I’ve seen in a long time. INTO THE DARK continually impresses me. Not every one connects, but they’re taking some serious swings, and I appreciate that.

HAPPY DEATH DAY 2 U

HDD2U joins the proud pantheon of sequels that actually justify their own existence. The first fifteen minutes brilliantly recontextualizes the end of the first film, highlights a scene-stealing minor character, and deftly sets up the rest of the film. The way the film revisits the events of HAPPY DEATH DAY, adding depth and pathos, is to be much admired. The film addresses the emotional fallout from the first movie head-on, and the fact that it doesn’t shy away from examining how one might deal with killing someone else in self-defense is fascinating. The film also balances horror and comedy well, a difficult feat. Best watched in a double-feature with the first one.

MIDSOMMAR

Ari Aster is the greatest music video director of all time. The guy knows how to craft a compelling visual, that’s for sure, and the music is top-notch. Despite the legion of dipshits in my theater that laughed at literally everything, I found the movie to be almost unbearably tense (in a good way), disturbing, and consistently fascinating. Narratively there’s almost nothing going on, and if you’ve ever seen a pagan cult movie there are zero surprises. Every character that’s not Florence Pugh or her boyfriend feels like an NPC, and maybe that’s by design, but I can’t get behind that approach. The execution is brilliant but expected—while it’s a sterling example of what it is, I’ve seen this movie before. For a new twist on the pagan cult movie, check out Gareth Evans’ Apostle. I’m not saying that’s a better movie than Midsommar, but narratively I found it the superior movie of the two.

THE LIGHTHOUSE

I really loved THE VVITCH (yeah, I put the V’s in there, what?), and couldn’t wait to check out Robert Eggers’ follow-up. Like MIDSOMMAR, the movie turns more on performances, cinematography, and set design than plot—while the craftsmanship here is stellar, I can’t say the movie ever really surprised me. Like Aster’s sophomore effort, Eggers’ chugs ahead to a conclusion that’s inevitable but still hurts to watch. Similarly, both movies are packed with such depth that they merit repeat watchings.

VELVET BUZZSAW

Nightcrawler is one of my favorite movies EVER, and getting the band back together was a fantastic idea. I had a hell of a lot of fun with this movie. Incredibly compelling, I never felt the urge to check my phone which is my measuring stick for how good a movie on NetFlix is (regardless of how bored I am in a theater, I’m not pulling out my fucking phone like an asshole). If the movie had just been about pretentious art douchebags trying to out-douche each other over Henry Darger’s Gold, I would have liked the movie even more. The supernatural horror element felt tacked on and unnecessary, and this movie is the ultimate example of an all-time great title having fuck-all to do with the story. Still, I loved the hell out of this thing despite its flaws.

UNDER THE SILVER LAKE

USL was a fun, captivating joy ride through hipster Hollywood (both past and present). Yes, Andrew Garfield is kind of a mopecore asshole creep and no, I wouldn’t want to be friends with him, but I also don’t need a likeable protag to enjoy a movie. Not all of the elements come together in a satisfying way in the end, but the individual scenes are well-executed and some deliriously-haunting imagery has stuck with me the past week. The scene with the Songwriter is truly terrifying on an existential level, and the mystery of whether Topher Grace’s unnamed “Bar Buddy” character is actually supposed to BE Topher Grace still has me intrigued. If you go into this movie with expectations, you're probably going to hate it, but if you let the movie do it’s thing it’s a wild bit of what-the-fuck.

ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD

There’s fifty-six years of movie-loving and movie-making in every last frame of this thing. I can see this sliding up in my rankings over the next couple months for sure. Full disclosure, I just watched this last night but the movie’s managed to grow on me even more in those few hours. Part love letter to a bygone area of cinema, part bold challenge to anyone working in the true crime genre, OUTH asks and answers some pretty interesting questions while simultaneously telling a couple small, touching, human stories. After watching this I half-suspect QT hasn’t actually been making movies for the past twenty-five years; he’s been weaving a spell on a global scale, and when his tenth film is finished the circle will be complete and we’ll all be sucked into a new reality where everybody’s got a handy quip and a Red Apple cigarette between their lips.

KNIFE+HEART

A contemporary, ‘70s-set take on the giallo. Moreso than last year’s Suspiria, I thought Knife perfectly nailed the atmosphere and look of the ‘70s. Everybody looks kind of sweaty and gross. I found myself forgetting all the characters were speaking French because I was so invested in the story. Anne Pareze is such a fascinating, morally-questionable creation. Her creation of a pornographic film to both exploit and cope with the tragedy surrounding her is jaw-dropping, both in how some scenes are played for painful laughs but also in what it says about her as a person—insight and indictment in equal measure. Is she trying to make a buck off the deaths of her friends, looking for catharsis in all the wrong places, or a little bit of both? Either way, watch this fucking movie, it’s amazing.

THE BANANA SPLITS

Pure. Fucking. Joy. Taking the Banana Splits and making a legit horror movie is tough to pull off, and yet Danishka Esterhazy absolutely rose to the challenge. The jokes land, the gore is on point, the child actors aren’t annoying and the adult actors nail the shit out of their roles. Perhaps it’s not high art, but it’s a perfect example of a well-crafted, batshit-insane horror flick. The care and attention to detail is evident throughout (ex. and SPOILER the way one Split is taken out mirrors their first kill almost exactly). It’s a shame this movie is consigned to VOD/Blu-ray, because it’s the perfect flick to tie one on with your friends and go see on the big screen. Hoping it hits the midnight movie circuit one of these days. Goddamn incredible and I can’t see anything topping it this year.

HONORABLE MENTION: MASKED MUTILATOR

Holy fucking fuck. FUCK. If you’re a Troma fan, go check this thing out. Started in the ‘90s, finished last year and starring my man Brick Bronsky of CLASS OF NUKE’EM HIGH 2 and 3 fame, it’s about a wrestler who accidentally kills an opponent in the ring and then is somehow allowed to run a home for troubled youth. When said troubled youth start getting bumped off one-by-one, the newest deliquent must harness the power of karate and his sweet ‘90s bowl cut to save the day. I can’t say enough good things about this movie. It’s a fucking gift.

Movies That Just Missed This List: READY OR NOT, MA, CHILD’S PLAY, THE HEAD HUNTER, NEKROTRONIC, AVENGERS: ENDGAME, SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME, THE IRISHMAN, GIRL ON THE THIRD FLOOR, DANIEL ISN’T REAL, HAUNT, GAGS THE CLOWN, WOUNDS (holy fuckballs there were a lot of great movies this year, and I’m sure I missed a few).

Movies I Missed and Need to Catch Up On: DOCTOR SLEEP, CRAWL, SATANIC PANIC, DEPRAVED, SWEETHEART

Best Movies That Came Out Last Year That I Didn’t Watch Until This Year: APOSTLE, MONSTER PARTY, SUSPIRIA

Riding Shotgun with THE SPEED QUEEN

There are stories that are such clear distillations of a time and place and experience that one can’t picture them happening anywhere else or to anyone else. Not all works are of such a singular nature--one can pluck Juliet or Hamlet from Verona or Denmark and slap them down in south Florida or behind the handlebars of a Harley, and we’ve got a new, fresh take on the source material. The magic of Stewart O’Nan’s The Speed Queen is of an opposite but perhaps equal variety. Though elements of their story are absolutely universal, Marjorie, Natalie, and Lamont cannot exist anywhere but 1980s Oklahoma, and the specificity of their story is what is so appealing.

Before I begin to wax on about muscle cars and fast food drive-thrus[1], a few words must be said about the literary device O’Nan employs to tell Marjorie’s story. The book is written in the first person, but the conceit is that Marjorie is sitting on death row the day before her execution, recording tapes that will be used by none other than Stephen King to write a book about the Mach 6 killers from her perspective. This device is brilliant on several levels.

First, the device provides a clear motivation for Marjorie to tell the story of her life, from her childhood dog Jody-Jo to that last police chase. Never once do we question why Marjorie’s talking about some aspect of her upbringing, because we know she’s been given a set of questions from Mr. King himself that she’s supposed to be answering, and her answers become even more introspective, and revealing, due to this conceit. In fact listening to her wrestle with the questions, in her own words, does a gorgeously subtle job of painting her as an unreliable narrator (as when she calls her high school experience “pretty normal” and then proceeds to talk about her experiences with drink and drugs, or when she states emphatically she never got drunk while pregnant and then tells a story about being drunk while pregnant).

Second, Marjorie’s story is occasionally interrupted by a guard coming by, or someone yelling from another cell. Not only does this serve to put the reader right behind bars with her, it gives us all sorts of interesting background details on what life is like for four women on death row.

Third, the conceit provides further grounding in time and place because of the implication that Stephen King is trying his hand at a crime novel. Stephen King is still a genre giant today, but he was both absolutely massive in the ‘80s and still relatively new.. O’Nan could have made the author on the other end anonymous or pseudonymous, but simply the mention of Stephen King helps to call to mind the era. Plus, it’s fun.

Why does this story need to be set in the midwest in the 1980s? It’s ultimately a story about boredom that never manages to be boring, a cautionary tale about the dangers of under-stimulation to a restless populace. Boredom is a theme that comes up again and again while Marjorie relates her tale, from the highways of Oklahoma to death row, a place where the women’s efforts to occupy themselves until the end dovetail nicely with the youthful  ennui that landed at least Marjorie, and probably most of her compatriots, there. While boredom might be a universal impulse that manifests itself in diverse populations in every variation from 4H club membership to suicide bombings, the ‘80s in the midwest offers up a particularly peculiar cocktail of sources of boredom and antidotes.

There’s the landscape, of course. Vast, unending, and pretty damned flat. When the very earth beneath your feet is boring, it’s hard for anything particularly interesting to grow in that soil, thus you have a series of small towns without a lot going on, populated by people without a lot going on, either. And then there’s the decade itself. ‘80s nostalgia aside, the turbulence of the sixties and seventies led to a bit of a cultural hangover that lasted all the way up until 9/11. All those factors conspire to induce a special kind of boredom in everyone we meet, with deadly consequences.

Marjorie has little in the way of opportunity or stimulation available to her. No Internet, or course, and few activities other than driving around and doing drugs. While she clearly has an innate predilection towards addiction, it’s hard to imagine her running quite so headlong into the arms of drink and drugs, and at such an early age, if she were born into a more fascinating region or decade. Drugs and boredom are a powerful combination. Throw cars into the mix and things get quite combustible.

Being given a powerful machine and nothing to do is much like hitting puberty. All of a sudden you’ve got 400 horses under the hood and nowhere to turn it loose. The American muscle car represents a certain kind of freedom, sure, but also a certain kind of entertainment. Much of Marjorie and Lamont’s lives revolve around cars. Fixing cars, finding car parts, driving to car shows. Going out on the town and meeting up with a bunch of other gearheads at the malt shop. Again, O’Nan conjures up a special kind of geographical and temporal magic here, confirming once more why this story must take place in ‘80s Oklahoma. Unlike the sixties, these machines are now old enough to be mythologized. To be collector’s items. To empower and sustain a subculture. And since there aren’t gas shortages, there’s nothing stopping anyone from swallowing a few Black Beauties, popping in a Ramones 8-track, and driving all night.

The Speed Queen idles quite comfortably at the intersection of universality and specificity. We can identify with Marjorie, surely. But her life is only one we can sympathize with, not quite live for ourselves, the same way she drives with a finger and an atlas while waiting for the executioner. And the care taken to create this paradigm is something authors of crime fiction, and indeed any writer looking to solidly ground their novel in time and place, to the extent the story cannot happen anywhere else, should note.

[1] Only footnote, I promise--how brilliant an analogue for Sonic-style restaurants is O’Nan’s Mach 6? As someone who sends his hungry characters to their local Fasmart for a Pizza Pouch on occasion, I’m jealous.

Spark Me Up

You have to Spark me up/I’ll never Spark never Spark…

Sorry, that shit got in my head and the only way to get it out was starting my blog post with it. I make up dumb parody songs constantly—I’ve repurposed dozens of tunes to be about my girlfriend’s dog Zag (sample lyric: “All I do is Zag Zag Zag no matter what/got nothin’ on my mind ‘cause I’m a silly mutt/And every time I try to do anything my ears go UP/And they derp there/and they derp there”). You’re probably wondering how I got this particular Rolling Stones song in my head, or why the fuck I’m even writing this post in the first place, but trust me, there’s at least some semblance of a reason—I started using IngrahamSpark.

Now, no disrespect to self-published writers out there, but I’m more of a small press guy. There are aspects of publishing that I have no interest in participating in, and frankly I like being part of an imprint like Eraserhead—kind of feels like being in a gang, frankly. But Lucas Mangum (author of Gods of the Dark Web and many more) gave me this cool idea, he started printing short stories in book format, and I have a few old shorts I’ve published where the rights have reverted to me, so I figured I’d give it a go. I’m also doing a new horror convention this weekend, Horrorgasm, so I thought it would be cool to print up some chapbooks through IngrahamSpark.

I don’t want this to sound like a sales pitch, but the process was pretty damn easy. Surprisingly so. Laying out my book required a lot of trial and error, and there were some tricks I had to figure out to get IS to accept my files, like embedding fonts. When laying out my book, I thought I’d save page count by making the margins really tiny, but when I got the print copy of the book I had the epiphany that tiny margins force the reader to break the book’s spine to read it. Not a pleasurable experience. Because I’d already approved the files, I had to spend an extra $50 re-uploading files in order to reprint the book, but that’s on me for being a dummy.

So now I’ve got something nifty to do with my old stories other than look for anthologies that accept reprints, and I think offering an exclusive item could be a fun convention strategy. We’ll see how it goes.

Oh, and if you want the limited edition of NOW I DON THE MASK with exclusive bonus content that will never be available anywhere else, you’ve got to come to Horrorgasm this Saturday, October 24th, at Queen Bee’s in North Park.

Halloween Memories

I recently wrote a piece for the Horror Writers Association newsletter on Halloween memories. If you’re not an HWA member (it’s not just for writers—artists, editors, publishers, and fans can all join), check them out at hwa.org.

In retrospect, I should have titled this I REMEMBER HALLOWEEN. Never pass up an opportunity for a Misfits reference!

HALLOWEEN MEMORIES

Asking me to settle on a single, measly memory of Halloween is like asking me to name my favorite taco shop (I can probably get it down to a top ten but that’s pushing it), but here goes nothing. My favorite memory of Halloween is the specials!

Anyone who’s heard me pontificate on my influences for any length of time knows that I’m a huge fan of GARFIELD’S HALLOWEEN ADVENTURE. That, along with KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE and the Scary Stories books are my earliest horror memories. I remember ripping open the Sunday paper the week of Halloween, scanning the network listings to see what cartoon specials were spookily displacing their regularly-scheduled programming, and then circling them all with a magic marker so my dad would know what he needed to tape on our BetaMax unit (the last time he was ever an early adopter of anything—fool me once and all that). Garfield and his pirate ghosts were always a particular favorite—there are some legitimately great scares in there, from the opening scene with the unhinged and terrifying Binky the Clown to the King in Yellow-inspired fakeouts during the jazzy Lou Rawls number “Scaredy Cat.” And for my money, I’ve never felt quite the same flavor of dread as when Garfield and Odie are desperately searching for a place to hide in the old man’s house, knowing the pirate ghosts will be there any minute and there is nothing they can do to stop their return.

There were a bunch of other ones I loved too, from IT’S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN to THE HALLOWEEN TREE to some of the stuff the Disney Channel reliably showed year-after-year: their eponymous HALLOWEEN TREAT AND MR. BOOGEDY (weirdly, the sequel, BRIDGE OF BOOGEDY, has a similar build to JASON GOES TO HELL, if I remember correctly). The best was going out trick-or-treating, coming back with a sackful of fun-size candy bars, and binging on both sweets and BetaMax-taped Halloween content until I passed out on the couch. Good times!

THE FANATIC is the Best Movie You Won't Watch This Year

Yep, THE FANATIC.

The horror movie directed by Fred Durst, and from the trailers looks like it’s about John Travolta going full Simple Jack for an hour and a half.

Continuing the 2019 trend of movies being way better than they had any right to be (THE BANANA SPLITS, CHILD’S PLAY, MA), THE FANATIC is freaking great. I know, I can’t believe it either. After all, it’s directed by the lead singer of Limp Bizkit, a band whose oeuvre is the sonic equivalent of your older brother slapping you across the face with your own hand and repeatedly asking “WHY YOU HITTING YOURSELF?!?!?!” One might imagine said movie to be an extended, incoherent music video set to a tedious rap rock soundtrack and rife with vaping because it’s 2019.

Yeah, opposite.

John Travolta plays loner autograph-obsessive Moose, and it’s the second best role of his career (the first being FACE/OFF, and for those keeping score at home his masterful portrayal of terrorist-for-hire Castor Troy inside of FBI agent Sean Archer’s body is still only the third-best performance in that singular film; Nicholas Cage as Sean Archer in Castor Troy’s body easily takes first, followed by Nicholas Cage’s fake mustache in the opening scene). Moose is painfully awkward, probably on the spectrum, and doesn’t seem to be aware of the concept of boundaries. And yet he’s also endearing, in a goofy overgrown-kid way, and serves as a philosophical counterpoint to cynical, scummy street-performer Todd, who’s really there to rob his audience blind. Moose might live a life of loneliness and rejection, but he’s still a wide-eyed ingenue who truly believes in the magic of Hollywood. He makes his living by pretending to be a British police officer for some reason, and his awful attempts at an English accent are one of many areas where Travolta truly shines. This weird, gritty innocence allows us to continue rooting for this bizarre man-child, even when his obsession with douchebro horror actor Hunter Dunbar takes him to some seriously dark places.

The whole cast is great here, including Devon Sawa as the aforementioned Dunbar, Anna Golja as Leah, a young paparazzo who hangs out with weirdo middle-aged men like Moose for no apparent reason, and Jacob Grodnik as the vile Todd. And that’s what really sets THE FANATIC apart. Sure, the plot is fairly predictable, but the amount of care and effort that went into creating something so ridiculous is impressive. It’s not at the level of STREET TRASH, an exploitation classic that went so far as to have a minor character record a Sinatra-esque ballad about himself to play over the end credits, but regardless of what you think of the decisions Durst makes, you can tell he’s really thought it through. One telling detail is the OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN poster in Moose’s apartment—he’s not the sort of obsessive fan we’ve seen before, one who can rattle off arcane trivia about obscure ‘70s and ‘80s horror movies at will (like I just did two sentences ago), he’s the sort of fan who likes terrible, big-budget popcorn movies and obsesses over them the way neckbeards do over Fulci or whatever. It’s different, it’s fresh, and it’s quite well-executed.

This will always be the movie the guy from Limp Bizkit directed, but I can see a world somewhere down the line where some DJ spins “Nookie” at a ‘90s throwback night and one sentient vape cloud turns to another and says, “You know the guy rapping right now did that movie THE FANATIC?”

I hope Durst keeps making movies, because he’s done something cool, and you should totally check it out.