23 October: Harlem Unbound

 

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

I was hoping to switch things up more often for Cinematic Void’s 31 Days of Voidoween. While Voidoween is a daily challenge for Void-iacs to share their favorite horror movies for Halloween, I thought that I would be able to share some non-cinematic treats here and there. I’ve had a few up until today, but for the most part I’ve stuck to choosing movies. Boring! So, for today’s challenge - “Blaxploitation” - I’m gonna go way out on a limb and choose a supplement to my favorite role-playing game, Call of Cthulhu. Today, let’s chit-chat about Chris Spivey and Darker Hue Studios’ sourcebook Harlem Unbound!

H. P. Lovecraft is going through a renaissance lately. The Providence, RI, native has got a slimy tentacle in every media format you can think of: movies, music, comic books, board games, video games, role-playing games, etc. Unfortunately, Lovecraft and his works come with a lot of baggage. Lovecraft is a racists’ racist. Name a race, a gender, a sexual orientation, a national origin, attach the suffix “-phobe” to the end, and you’d have a pretty accurate description of ol’ Howard Phillips.

Yet, there’s something about the world Lovecraft’s words describe that keeps drawing people's attention. Men, women, Black, white, gay, straight, and every point on the spectrum these terms try to define – everyone, it seems, can find something in Lovecraft that they can use in their own work. I think it’s Lovecraft’s conception of “cosmic horror” that keeps folks coming back for more. Just go back and re-read the quote that begins this blog post. It’s the opening paragraph of Lovecraft’s short story, “The Call of Cthulhu,” and it serves as a good definition of the term.

Chris Spivey’s Harlem Unbound is a sourcebook and supplement to Chaosium, Inc's role-playing game Call of Cthulhu. It is an excellent example of the ways in which a black artist can use Lovecraft’s world but not his worldview. Call of Cthulhu is a game that usually takes place during the 1920s, the time that Lovecraft himself was alive. Harlem Unbound is also set in the 1920s, but it gives voice to those who were silenced in Lovecraft’s stories. Inside Spivey’s tome, you’ll find a history of Harlem and the people who live there. There are discussions of how to best create stories that don’t turn a blind eye to racism, but instead address the pain it causes through cooperative storytelling and improvisational gameplay.

Spivey and his team have done a terrific job creating Harlem Unbound. From the first page to the last, it is a great read and a lot of fun to play. They have also done a wonderful service for roleplayers everywhere - those of color and those not - by showing keepers and players how to give a voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless.

If you want to learn more about Call of Cthulhu, then go to Chaosium’s website. Keep up with what Darker Hue Studios is up to by visiting their website here. And play more games!

22 October: Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter

 

Slow burn horror is fine and dandy, but sometimes you just want your horror movie to feature a fanfare of trumpets on the soundtrack and a lot punch-ups on the screen. Today’s movie challenge for Cinematic Void’s 31 Days of Voidoween is “Action Horror,” and I’m all about Hammer Studios’ 1974 swashbuckling classic Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter.

Captain Kronos is a straightforward tale of derring-do. The good Captain (Horst Janson) is called by an old army buddy of his, Dr. Marcus (John Carson), to help investigate a lot of strange deaths happening in his village. The victims have been found prematurely aged before popping off this mortal coil. Kronos and his road buddy, the hunchback Professor Hieronymus Grost (John Cater), suspect vampires are afoot (as you do), and they begin the process of snuffing them out. Along the way, Kronos and Grost free a young gypsy woman from the stocks. Her crime: dancing on the Sabbath! Carla (Caroline Munro) joins the duo in helping to rid the land of its bloodsuckers infestation.

Captain Kronos is a romp, a hoot, and a real humdinger all rolled into one. There’s swordfighting, bodices, and creepy old age make-up. Horst Janson is a pleasant hero who can swing a sword and toss off a bon mot with a flourish. Caroline Munro is, as always, beautiful and feisty as the gypsy girl Carla. Director Brian Clemens keeps everything moving at a quick clip. (Sadly, this would be his only film as director.) The look of the picture screams “Hammer!” with its muted colors (except for the red stuff, if you know what I mean), outdoor forest scenes, and 18th century British village sets.

Captain Kronos was to have been the first in a series, but unfortunately that never happened. Hammer was falling on tough times, and soon closed up shop. There’s been a novelization and some comic book adaptations that furthered the tale, but we never got more of Kronos, Grost, and Carla on the big screen, to which I say “Boo!”

21 October: Black Moon

 

Macklin: The voodoo drums are going. They started when the natives found out that you were coming back. For the first time in years, there was a sacrifice that night.

Juanita: Well, you don't mean to tell me that my coming has anything to do with the voodoo drums?

Today we’re going to set sail for the Caribbean and take part in some dark rituals for today’s Cinematic Void 31 Days of Voidoween movie challenge: “Voodoo.” Didn’t we already do this, you may well ask? Sure, for “Val Lewton” day we walked with a zombie, but today things are gonna get a tad more freaky, because we’re going back to Pre-Code Hollywood, that moment in time before the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code. Today, we’re talking 1934’s Black Moon.

As a child, Juanita (Dorothy Burgess) escaped after her parents were killed during a voodoo ritual on a Caribbean island. Now that she is all grown up, Juanita has a burning desire to return to the island. Her husband Stephen (Jack Holt) doesn’t realize the danger, so he sends Juanita, their daughter Nancy (Cora Sue Collins), and Nancy’s nursemaid Gail (Fay Wray) to stay with Juanita’s uncle on the island. Once she arrives, the island’s black residents all hail her as their voodoo goddess. Soon, she begins taking part in their rituals...something she had done as a child. Anyone who tries to stand against her is killed. Before long, Juanita’s own daughter is in danger of becoming a sacrifice for Juanita’s voodoo death cult.

I stumbled upon this movie thanks to Michael H. Price’s Forgotten Horrors books and podcast. Price and George E. Turner began the Forgotten Horrors series of books in the 1970s to document the works of Poverty Row studios in the 1920s and 1930s. After Turner’s death, Price continued the work with writer John Wooley, and together the two started the Forgotten Horrors podcast. If you have an interest in off-beat cinema, older movies that you’ve only heard mention of, black-and-white horror from smaller studios, then Forgotten Horrors is for you.

Black Moon was made at Columbia, which was one of the larger studios operating in Hollywood in the 1930s. Jack Holt was one of their bigger stars. Fay Wray had starred in a string of genre pictures by the time Black Moon came out - The Most Dangerous Game, Mystery of the Wax Museum, and King Kong just to name a few. Dorothy Burgess, too, was an old hand at quickie Hollywood studio productions when she starred in Black Moon.

Black Moon has beautiful black-and-white photography which gives the plantation sets and jungle settings a creepy feel. Because this is a Pre-Code picture (just...strict enforcement of the Hays Code began in July of 1934...Black Moon was filmed in April/May and released in June), Black Moon presents its subjects in the (slightly) lurid light that would not be allowed in later films. Gail, for instance, tells Stephen that the man she is in love with is already married, but she won’t live with him in sin...unless he asks her to!

That said, Black Moon is not a politically correct film by a long shot. The people of color in the film are not depicted in a very positive manner. It should be pointed out, however, that their portrayal isn’t anything out of the ordinary for the time period. Not that that makes it any better. With that in mind, proceed at your own risk. I think there is enough outside of the ugly racism to warrant a look.

20 October: The Bay

 

Today for Cinematic Void’s 31 Days of Voidoween, we’re talking the much-maligned genre of the “Found Footage” film. Though there were earlier examples of the genre - namely Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust - when you mention found footage most people tend to think of The Blair Witch Project. These films are usually chock full of first-person perspective, official news footage, surveillance camera footage, and/or pre-existing footage of some sort, all of which are presented in a faux-documentary style. Oh, and shaky-cam. Lots and lots of shaky-cam.

(I am fighting the urge to go off on a tangent about my hatred of shaky-cam. It works well if you are showing someone being chased through the woods, but not so well if you are showing someone crossing the room to get a drink of water. Buy a tripod and leave the darn camera alone, folks.)

Anywho...where were we?

Oh, yeah...found footage movies.

Let’s talk Barry “Diner” Levinson’s 2012 f-f, eco-horror picture, The Bay. And let’s do it quickly, because it creeps me the heck out!

The bay in The Bay is Chesapeake Bay, a 64,000-square-mile watershed that covers parts of six states along the mid-Atlantic coast of the United States. It’s a beautiful area of the country, but thanks to the chicken industry, it’s become one of the yuckiest and most dangerous. Due to the use of steroids to make the chickens bigger (bigger = more money, natch) and the dumping of the chickens’ droppings into the bay, the water of the Chesapeake around the town of Claridge, MD, has become toxic.

But the toxicity of the water is only one of the problems facing the good people of Claridge. It seems the chicken-poop infected water has affected a tongue-eating louse, Cymothoa exigua, in the bay. These isopods are a normal part of the environment, but thanks to the toxins in the water, their life-cycle has sped up. They are no longer willing to settle for feeding on fish...they want bigger, two-legged game now.

Not only is The Bay a great found footage horror movie, it is also another variant of one of my favorite movie genre: the “We aren’t closing the beaches!” picture. Yep, it seems Claridge’s mayor, John Stockman (Frank Deal), took a page from Amity Island’s Mayor Vaughn’s playbook. He doesn’t want anything to get in the way of tourist dollars, even if that means that the streets of his town fill with corpses.

Who’da thunk that Barry Levinson would be able to bring the yucky, horror goods the way he does here in The Bay? Using pre-existing material that he’d shot for an actual documentary on the problems facing Chesapeake Bay, Levinson constructs are really creepy-crawlie film that’ll have you brushing imagined (or are they?!) isopods from your arms, neck, and legs.

19 October: Tales of Terror & Twice Told Tales

 

We have an anthology of anthologies, so to speak, lined up for Cinematic Void’s 31 Days of Voidoween. Both films were made in the early 1960s, both starred that doyen of Gothic cinematic horror, Vincent Price, and both were released together on a M-G-M Midnite Movies double-sided disc. We’re talking Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Terror (1962) and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales (1963).

All in all, you get six spook-tacular stories for your Halloween buck, a not too shabby return. From Poe, you get "Morella," "The Black Cat," and "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar;" from Hawthorne, "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," "Rappaccini's Daughter," and "House of the Seven Gables." While the Roger Corman-directed Poe picture is the better of the two, Sidney Salkow does a fair job with Hawthorne’s material, especially the first tale, "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment."

The cream of the crop is a toss-up between “The Black Cat” and “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.” In the former, screenwriter Richard Matheson combines Poe’s “The Black Cat” and “A Cask of Amontillado” into a single black comedic tale. Vincent Price and Peter Lorre engage in a campy wine-tasting contest for the ages. In the latter, Basil Rathbone plays a mentalist who hypnotizes a dying Price. Caught between the worlds of the living and the dead, Price’s Valdemar has a bit of a meltdown when Rathbone finally releases him.

Both of the these pictures have stunning visuals and that bright color palette that screams early-1960s horror. Both are also a wonderful gateway to early American Romanticism. Watch the movies, then seek out the stories they were based upon. It’s a great way to pass the night during this spooky season.

18 October: Kingdom of the Spiders

 

Today is all about animals for Cinematic Void’s 31 Days of Voidoween.

Uh...not quite.

No, not him either.

Now we’re talking!

It’s time to celebrate those movies that show us just where humanity stands in Mother Nature’s view. When we’ve gotten too big for our britches, ol’ Mom sends a horde of the creepy-crawlies to put us back in our rightful place. I can take an animal attack movie that uses big critters like lions and tigers and bears, but when movies start using our six- and eight-legged friends, that’s when I say, “Oh, my!” In 1977, one of the creepiest of the “animals attack” movies was released to theaters, but it wasn’t until it started showing up in video stores and on cable TV did the nightmares really begin. We’re talking John "Bud" Cardos’s classic Kingdom of the Spiders.

The film’s events take place in rural Arizona. Local veterinarian Dr. Robert "Rack" Hansen (played by none other than William Shatner) is asked to look at an ailing prize calf owned by local farmer Walter Colby (Woody Strode). The calf dies for unknown reasons, and Rack sends the animal’s blood to the university to get checked out. The test results come back: it’s spider venom!

Soon, spiders are attacking more than cows. People are found cocooned in webbing in their homes and vehicles. What’s more, these aren’t just the attacks of one kind of spider. Nope! It seems that for the first time ever, all spiders are putting aside their differences and working together, as the giant spider mound in the Colbys’ backyard makes apparent. Rack and university Professor of Arachnology Diane Ashley (Tiffany Bolling) try to figure out why this is happening while also trying not to let it happen to them.

Kingdom of the Spiders is not only an “Animals Attack” movie, it’s also a proud member of that post-Jaws genre: the “We’re not closing the beaches” movie. That’s right - not only are spiders attacking people, but the powers-that-be won’t deal with the problem in the manner that Dr. Ashley (an actual, honest-to-goodness expert on the subject) suggests because it would interfere with the County Fair! Sorry folks, spiders are oogie, but business is business!

This is also one of those movies that I saw on TV as a kid, and it gave me all sorts of nightmares. Tarantulas crawling all over the place - in basements, in cars, in planes - gave me the willies, but it’s the movie’s final shot that sent me over the edge. I won’t ruin it for you if you haven’t seen it, but I’m sure you’ll feel the same way when you do. It’s the perfect downer ending, maybe one of the better ones the 1970s served up. You'll sleep with the lights on for a month, unless...

17 October: Nightfall

 

For today’s Cinematic Void 31 Days of Voidoween, we are making a run for the border.

No, not that border…

Today’s topic is “Canada,” so we are headed to the Great White North. While we’re up there, we’re gonna drink a lot of Molson, eat some poutine, and listen to one of the scariest radio programs ever, Nightfall.

Nightfall was created by Bill Howell and aired on CBC Radio from July 1980 to June 1983. The majority of the episodes were horror, but there were other styles and genres mixed in, including science fiction and mystery. Nightfall's opening voiceover ranks up there with the credit sequence for Tales from the Darkside for spinechilling creepiness. Indeed, many listeners complained to the CBC that Nightfall was too scary and convinced certain affiliates not to run the program. If that isn’t a recommendation, I don’t know what is!

You can find many, if not all, of Nightfall’s 100 episodes on the Internet Archive. Today, though, I want to focus attention on just one episode: “The Monkey’s Paw.” Adapted by Len Peterson from the W. W. Jacobs short story, Nightfall’s rendition of is a terrifying piece of work. The sound design is just right - the chanting and singing that comes up in the background when the Sergeant-Major tells of his time in India, for example, is especially spooky. The performances by Eric House and Ruth Springford as the elderly couple whose lives are thrown into utter disarray by the wish-giving paw are heartbreaking.

All in all, it’s perfect listening material during this spooky season!

16 October: Snapdragon

 

Whither the erotic thriller?

During the 1980s and the 1990s, the erotic thriller (today’s Cinematic Void 31 Days of Voidoween movie challenge topic if ya haven’t guessed already) was as ubiquitous on cable TV and the shelves of the nation’s videostores as mullets on an NHL team.

The erotic thriller was where the nation’s youth went to experience the thrill of seeing the likes of Shannon Tweed and Tanya Roberts in their birthday suits. The soft-lit, Vaseline-lensed sex scenes were often counter-balanced with violent scenes graphic enough to keep your average slasher movie fan interested. Indeed, those of us old enough to remember the monthly HBO guide can recall going through the pages and circling anything containing “graphic violence, adult situations, and nudity.” Theses were the hallmarks of the erotic thriller!

My choice, Snapdragon, was released in 1993, right in the middle of the genre's heyday. It’s got all the markers of a good erotic thriller: nudity, sex scenes, murders, nudity, cheating boyfriends, nudity, “exotic” locales (if you consider L.A.’s Chinatown exoitc), nudity, and nudity.

Starring Pamela Anderson (in her first feature film role), Steven Bauer, and Chelsea Field, Snapdragon at first concerns the investigation of two murders with the same m.o. (both men were killed in bed during the throes of passion) by Sgt. Peckham (Field). Cool, you think, a female cop chasing after a female serial killer. Then, sadly, Peckham asks her police psychologist boyfriend, David Hoogstratton (Bauer) to help profile the murderer. Before you can say “Florence Nightingale Effect,” Hoogstratton is on the make with Felicity (Anderson), a beautiful amnesiac who keeps having these dreams about murdering her lovers. Weird, huh?

You probably think you know what happens next. And it does. Oh, it does. But there is also a twist that happily gives this by-the-numbers picture an ambiguous ending. Pamela Anderson was fresh off her 1990 Playboy layout and had recurring roles on Home Improvement and Baywatch. She does a nice job here as Felicity, though I maintain that the picture would have been helped if she had had more to do opposite Chelsea Field. 

If this has piqued your interest, and you want to learn more about this “lost” genre, do yourself a favor and read "Sex & Death on the Cheap: the Lost World of the Erotic Thriller" by Anthony Penta in Diabolique Magazine. (Part 1 Part 2 Part 3) It is an excellently researched and written essay that will have you wanting more.

Ah, the erotic thriller! Ah, humanity!

15 October: Wolfen

 

Today for Cinematic Void’s 31 Days of Voidoween, we’re taking a trip to the big city for an unhealthy helping of “Urban Horror.” Before Disney came along and cleaned everything up, New York City was like one of those ambulatory corpses in a Romero movie. The city was rotting before our very eyes, bleeding money and people in equal amounts. The pictures of places like the South Bronx looked eerily like those taken in post-WWII England, Germany, and Japan. What better landscape for a horror movie, then? Let’s go back to 1981 and take a look at Michael Wadleigh’s adaptation of Whitley Streiber’s novel, Wolfen.

Albert Finney is former NYPD Captain Dewey Wilson. He’s been talked into investigating a strange bunch of murders only after a rich land developer and his wife are killed in Battery Park. Working with criminal psychologist Rebecca Neff (Diane Venora) and coroner Whittington (Gregory Hines), Wilson uncovers clues that suggest the murders are being committed by wolves. Later, after speaking to Native American activist Eddie Holt (Edward James Olmos), Wilson begins to believe that shapeshifters - specifically The Wolfen - are responsible.

Wolfen was made at a time when there were a lot of werewolf movies hitting the theaters: An American Werewolf in London, The Howling, Full Moon High. Wolfen stands out from the crowd by not really being about werewolves. The creatures in Wolfen are, instead, shapeshifters. And maybe that’s why the movie never really made a splash. While special effects artists like Rick Baker and Rob Bottin were busy creating mind-blowing human-to-wolf transformation sequences, Wolfen used POV camerawork filtered through a thermographic-esque in-camera technique to suggest the presence of its creatures. Real wolves were used as the Wolfen.

Another issue working against the movie is that perhaps its scariest scene has nothing to do with the Wolfen. When Dewey Wilson talks to Eddie Holt, their conversation is held high above the city atop the Manhattan Bridge. I’ve only seen Wolfen on television. I don’t know if I could handle this scene on the big screen:

[Eddie and Dewey are up on the top of a bridgeworks]

Eddie Holt: Shape shifting. We do it for kicks. Turn yourself into a different animal. One night a deer, next night a salmon...

Dewey Wilson: Or a wolf?

Eddie Holt: Sure.

[Eddie unhooks Dewey's safety line]

Eddie Holt: Or an eagle.

[Dewey looks down, a long way...]

Eddie Holt: C'mon Dewey, just flap your arms and jump, it’s easy. It's all in the head...

Nope. Don’t even want to try it. Just looking at the pictures of this scene makes my stomach flutter. I’m quite happy with the small screen, thank you very much.