dark culture. movies, books, toys, papercraft.
“THE WEIRDEST
STORIES EVER
TOLD”
2 THRILLING MYSTERY – TERROR NOVELS:
SATAN’S MISTRESS
by HUGH B. CAVE
* * *
THEY THIRST BY NIGHT
by WYATT BLASSINGAME
* * *
JOHN H. KNOX – PAUL ERNST
CHANDLER H. WHIPPLE – ARTHUR J. BURKS
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Ah, zombies. How far are we all from being zombies, anyway? I often find myself wondering that very thing when I get a vapid hankering for some meat, or when I find myself mindlessly consuming something. Sometimes I feel dull and listless, or as if someone could hack one of my arms off with an axe and I would just lurch around the room, spraying gore, and wonder what was for lunch. Yes, I am far too familiar with these kinds of feelings. These zombie feelings. They’re all around us. You know: everything in its own season and all that?
So let’s talk. You all know that I’m a monster and that being a monster, I’m like a monster expert? Well, the secret that nobody wants you to know is that while there IS a tooth fairy, there are no lurching, flesh-eating, brains-craving zombies. And no there is no debate in the monster world over whether or not fast-moving zombies are more scary than the slow type. Real zombies are poor horrible victims of Voodoo priests who were driven mad by being buried alive with huge spiders, like the poor guy in Serpent and the Rainbow. This book kind of walks a line between the two.
Enter Way of the Barefoot Zombie by Jaspar Bark. The book bills itself as a satire about capitalism, the rich and powerful, paperback gurus, and zombies. The villain of the novel, Doc Papa, hosts a billionaires club where evil capitalists learn to discard their souls and act like zombies. Our heroes infiltrate this seminar with the goal of freeing the zombies.
I’ve got get one thing off my chest right now. Being someone who has read enough about the history of Haiti to know about Francois Duvalier, I was unable to read a book with a character named Doc Papa without being pissed at the author. Like this bold choice of character names, Barefoot Zombie is naive and heavy-handed. It’s also all over the map. All in one book we have: the pain of growing distant from a parent, rampant consumerism symbolized, a perverted self-help seminar for rich capitalists, the senseless and cruel murdering of environmental activists, poorly aimed teenage angst, anger at step parents, an unfortunate character with Asperger’s, good and evil portrayed as lovers, evil capitalists tearing the aforementioned activists apart with their bare hands, a psychologically-neatly-stitched up necrophiliac (he kissed his mother on the lips, at her WAKE), a guilt-wracked Voodoo priestess, some Voodoo lore, and of course, zombies of the brain-eating kind.
(Wow – how’s that for a movie subtitle? “He kissed his mother on the lips – at her WAKE!” I like it.)
What was I saying? Oh yes. I think the book needed some focus. Barefoot Zombie lurches in the direction of being a slasher novel, then veers off into teenage angst, then over to political relevance, and back to gore island, but ends up being a coming-of-age story. I was able to make peace with the book when I turned off my brain and enjoyed it as trashy zombie fiction. This book is trashy zombie fiction. If you’re looking to read a piece of trashy zombie fiction with a lot of exposed brains and intestines and people getting their eyeballs popped out, you can’t go too far off the mark with Way of the Barefoot Zombie.
Yes one thing that Barefoot Zombie definitely succeeds at is over-the-top gore. The body count is high, and we have a real contender for the “worst possible way to die” of the year. Thus we’ve bumped up the Creepy Factor.
Creepy Factor: 3 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 3 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 0 out of 5
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 2 out of 5
Final result: Trashy zombie fiction from a publisher who appears to be serious about finding new authors and publishing outrageous horror fiction. While it is a very imaginative book, I was left wanting more focus. Recommended for die-hard fans of Zombies and Voodoo who are looking for a trashy read with plenty of gore.
Way of the Barefoot Zombie by Jasper Bark – Abaddon Books – 2009
Way of the Barefoot Zombie
Everything Zombie
Many thanks to Abaddon Books for sending me this book to review. (See my disclosure policy.) Thanks for reading another one of my book reviews. Hopefully next time I review a nice juicy horror novel with loads of Weird Erotic Tension. I’m working on it! See you next time!
This isn’t a book or music review, but I’m bending the Dark charter a bit today because I’m a member of Final Girl’s Film Club and this is my entry for this month’s Film Club choice, Grindhouse (2007.) Many of you probably already know that it’s a double-feature of Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof.
I think the filmmakers set out with several common goals. There may be more, but the ones I caught were:
There’s something about sexual politics and emasculation going on in both these movies too, but I decided not to cover that.
Wow I loved this movie. There are several sub-plots to it but the basic gist is this: A military biological weapons project goes wildly awry and a town in Texas is over-run by zombies who are hungry for brains. The result is suspense, gore, violence, crazy stop-motion effects, and hilarity. Choice moments include:
Horrible Infections Catalogued
…and…
All that pole dancing finally paid off!
I had to edit my list of favorite moments down quite a bit so as not to bore you with screenshots. The moment I keep coming back to in this movie is the part where Dakota, the maybe-lesbian anesthesiologist who is trying to escape her psychopath doctor husband, shares a funny and tender moment with her son, and tells him to be careful with the gun she just gave him (with instructions to shoot his father if he shows up.) She says. “Be careful where you point that thing. You’ll blow your own face off.” Then she gets out of the car and hasn’t made it ten feet before you see a flash from the car and hear the gun go off. I haven’t figured out how, exactly, this scene encapsulates the whole movie, but for me it does. Probably because it takes a horror standard (the wise boy and his panicked, caring mother) and turns it on its ear.
Be careful with that.
I also have to say that I loved how Rodriguez used the “old film” effects in a purposeful manner. There are several choice scenes where the film jitters, develops streaks, warps out of shape, or gets “jammed” and burns through in ways that add depth to the movie. Also, the ending credits are simply beautiful.
Creepy Factor: 4 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 5 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 2 out of 5
I have to say up front that besides the inevitable Pulp Fiction, I am not a fan of Quentin Tarantino, so for this film I decided to set my baggage aside and give it as fresh a viewing as I could. I had my work cut out for me, it appears, especially because Netflix said I was going to hate it.
Uh Oh. 2.5 stars?
Netflix turned out to be right, but not for the reason I expected. Death Proof is agonizingly long, boring, and stupid. By stupid, I mean that all the dialogue is stupid and everything everyone does is stupid and boring. Tarantino knows how to make an interesting movie with sly dialogue so this turn of events makes me think he set out to make a dull, stupid movie on purpose.
XXXX lap dance = *YAWN*
The dialogue is about who is and isn’t sleeping with who, who is in this month’s fashion magazine, who isn’t drinking and who is (and how much.) The lap dance is boring. Even the final chase scene is rendered impotent by someone yelling the already-tired-in-2007 phrase “tap that ass!” over and over and over and over.
Om Nom Nom Nom
For me the most disturbing part of this movie was watching Stuntman Mike (played by Kurt Russell) eat nachos. Another thing I liked about this film was the Technicolor-like opening credits. Oh – and for some reason I was fascinated when Stuntman Mike put eye drops in his eyes, and then also where he stopped to sneeze but then didn’t. (This may sound like I’m joking but I assure you I’m serious.) See? I found three nice things to say.
Besides the coloring, Tarantino decides to use his “old film” effects almost randomly, and they end up mostly pulling the viewer out of the scene to remind them that they are watching a film, not a movie. Perhaps most annoying to me is that Tarantino decides to pull a Tarkovsky and insert a seemingly arbitrary black and white scene into a color movie. The black and white scene chronicles another several dull minutes at a convenience store.
Creepy Factor: 1 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 2 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 0 out of 5
Grindhouse – Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez – Dimension Films – 2007
View Planet Terror at Amazon
View Death Proof at Amazon
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