The Four Queens
Today Arcanalogue has posted an overview of all four Queens from the Tarot deck, having recently covered the card in all four suits. Take a brief look under the hood and see what makes these ladies tick!
September 17, 2008
Celebrate October's Blood Moon With BPAL
Every month contains its own lunar holiday, and our beloved sponsor Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab anoints each of them with a signature fragrance and rad T-shirt design. Welcome to October and the waxing of the Blood Moon:
BLOOD MOON 2008
In October, the crop harvest has past, and all hands turn to the Hunt: the third and final harvest before winter. Blood Moon shines over huntsmen as they ride over reaped grain in pursuit of their prey.
In Christian mythology, Blood Moon may have a darker significance:
"And I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind." -- Revelation 6:12-13
The feral scent of the heat of the chase, deep woods, undulating musks, brushed by forest flora, swirled in the incense of the anointed cherub that covereth,and touched by blood-dimmed lunar oils.
September 16, 2008
INTERVIEW - Tobin Bell Explains What Sets Saw Apart
"Piecemeal the body dies, and the timid soul
has her footing washed away, as the dark flood rises."
That's an excerpt from a poem that Tobin Bell referred me to as we discussed his long-running stint as the serial killer-cum-moralist "Jigsaw" in all five Saw films. I admitted to him that I'd only recently seen the original Saw for the first time, and that I was surprised to feel that it didn't seem to fit the "torture porn" bill that people have hung on the franchise. But most surprising was Bell himself, who shared his thoughts on acting and the significance of the Saw movies with an alacrity and wit that I found very refreshing. Here's the product of that conversation, and here are a few more thoughts from the reigning grandmaster of fear.
On his character's pivotal role in the Saw films:
"It’s always fun to be central. But I learned from the first film of any real consequence that I did, Alan Parker's Mississippi Burning: I didn't come into that film until halfway through, and I did not have a big part in it, but on a certain level, the point where I arrived in the story was really very powerful. It really helped jump-start people's recognition of me in film."
On Saw being lumped in with "torture porn:"
"I don’t want to bash anyone else’s movie, but I think I know what you’re talking about. The kind of films you’re talking about, I don’t think they have the intelligence or the storytelling that our films strive for."
On relating to a character who faces his own mortality:
"D.H. Lawrence wrote a poem called Ship of Death. It’s a favorite of mine, it makes you think and gives you pause and makes you think about where we are all headed – and we are all headed there."
September 14, 2008
Today's Obsessions...
Cake Wrecks: one tragic, inedible eyesore after another.
Sarah Palin vivisected by the NY Times, finally.
Pope Benedict derides love of money and power as "pagan," then flies home in a solid-gold plane.
Meryl Streep vanishes into character and devours souls in the new Doubt trailer.
September 11, 2008
MicroHorror Featured Pick -- "Flawed Jewel"
Congrats to MicroHorror for posting its 1000th story! This week's glistening selection by C. Morgan Clayton is from the most recent batch of entries:
by C. Morgan Clayton
Dragonflies dance outside my window; their shifting silhouettes touch the frosted glass, even in the night. It is for me they wait, my treasures adorned with emeralds and amethysts and sapphires, disguised in beauty, yet deadly to the unsuspecting. Cunning in their game, as I am.
From my lair, you enticed me with promises I could not dismiss, offered light, and then tainted it with wind and clouds and rain. Your deceit begat this tormented soul–my mind twisted and tangled. The dark daggers in your eyes, my love, mirror the pain inflicted upon my heart, torn and ravaged.
Lovelorn and lost, my innocence raped, I unleashed my dark secret. The dragonflies and I are as one, alike in our assault, and I preyed on you, but unlike mine, your crimson wounds will heal. An imperfect suffering is yours, but I promise to return.
Today a man in white inquired as to why I harbor a sinister side. I smiled and asked, “Do you like dragonflies?” He did not answer, only closed the door. I thought I heard a key turn.
Copyright: © 2008 C. Morgan Clayton
September 10, 2008
Seen Between Fingers -- Chris Kelly Takes Argento's Ballerina Challenge
In this regular feature, wimp and noted horror non-enthusiast Chris Kelly reports back with his first-impressions of memorable scary movies. I decided that by suffering through two Hellraiser films, Chris had earned a break from the ordinary. It seems that Dario Argento's 1977 classic struck quite a nerve...
Well, score one for horror fans. As it turns out, I genuinely liked Suspiria. It is a frightening, engrossing, all-around well-made film. I'm still going to mock it, as that is my job, but I thought you should know that it comes from a loving place this time. Like when a ballet teacher makes you dance until you hemorrhage: she just wants to see you grow as an artist.
I knew from the first moment that I was going to enjoy this one. Before anything really happened, I was hooked in with the eerie accompaniment of Goblin's score. The music plays over the entirely mundane depiction of Jessica Harper walking hesitantly through a German airport. It's normal in every way, but the haunting chords and rhythmic open-and-close of the automatic doors highlight the tension of being alone in a foreign country in a palpable way. I was clenching my fists so tightly I almost bled, and this is before anyone in the movie has even considered razoring someone in the face. In general, the soundtrack is best used when nothing all that scary is happening: it's baffling how alarmed I became at the pointless story about an old lady snoring.
Harper's character proves to be a helpful foil during the film, because she behaves much as I would if I were thrown into a ballet school run by occultists. And that's the thing: no one is working too hard to put up a front here. Madame Blanc, who runs the school, exudes the kind of practiced politeness described by the neighbors of serial killers in televised interviews. Her best teacher, Miss Tanner, is built like a ham-hock in high heels with a voice like an automatic garage door. Pavlo, their servant, has a rapist's leer that is, despite assertions to the contrary, only worsened by his false teeth. These are the first three people Suzy meets at the school, and yet what is a person to do in these circumstances? I've met lots of creepers in my day, and the inherent politeness in most of us forces us to play along. Suzy's activities, sleeping arrangements, and food consumption are taken over in short succession, but it all seems so plausible. Who goes around accusing people of being witches? They're German artists, after all, which is probably the most airtight cover story they could have dreamt up.
Dario Argento knows that to scare people -- or at least to scare me -- you need to toy with expectations. It's not enough to surprise or shock; you have to undermine reasonable assumptions. There are few deaths in this movie, but the ones that are there are spectacular and sent me instantly covering my face and howling like a toddler. Surely if you're above the third floor, you can lock the door and rest assured that no one will magically teleport through your window! (You can't.) Of course when you jump to safety from a raised ledge, the floor below won?t be a teeming mass of barbed wire! (It will.) Certainly a blind man with his seeing-eye dog in an empty courtyard will be able to hear his attacker coming! (He won't). Every time you think you know what's next, you're wrong, and Argento is all too happy to rub your nose in it, allowing the camera to linger lustily on the gore that results from guessing incorrectly.
Another smart trick is to provide the viewer with only as much information as one of the protagonists would have. And bear in mind, Argento didn't stage this story at a MENSA retreat. Out intrepid investigators are distressed, perhaps brainwashed, definitely malnourished ballerinas: they're graceful as swans, with about the same cognitive capacity. The conceit works, however. We're given just enough input to pique our curiosity, but never enough to answer the questions being posed. Maggots are eating through the ceiling, people are disappearing left and right, and that horrible Miss Tanner continues to shoot white-hot hatred from her eyes, but everything terrible that happens is quickly glossed over by the faculty. The students are left to accept the propaganda or explore at their own peril, and it's unclear which choice is worse. As the film's finale proves, by the time you realize you're surrounded by witches, it's a bit late to be asking questions about their master plan. It's fight or flight, and the movie is positively triumphant in its ability to convey that dire anxiety.
And yet, the tension I felt throughout the film broke to laughter almost instantly as the credits began with the redundant announcement: YOU HAVE BEEN WATCHING SUSPIRIA. It was at this exact moment that I realized how silly the movie might look upon review. To truly grasp its level of nonsense, I had to try to explain the plot to a friend who had never seen it. Most of it sounded like this:
So wait, the witches run a ballet school?
Well, yeah.
But they kill all the students.
No, no, most of the students they just teach to dance. They only kill a few. Just the nosy ones, I guess.
So you're telling me that they legitimately teach lots of people ballet but occasionally kill with witchcraft?
Um, yes.
When the movie ends, the gaps in the story that seemed insignificant as people were dying suddenly seem glaring and insurmountable. What exactly were they feeding Suzy? Why did it make her tired? What was the deal with the maggots in the attic? Why did the directress sleep among the students and keep everyone awake with her vile wheezing? Do the witches really support their school through the occasional sacrifice of a student? Is that a viable business plan? Why are they so committed to the arts, anyway??
I recommend that you see Suspiria. Just turn it off as soon as it's over and never think about it again. You're much smarter than Suzy and her friends, and the burden of that intelligence will ruin the movie forever. And if that doesn't, the planned remake sure will.
Next week: David Lynch's Eraserhead
September 9, 2008
INTERVIEW - How Nick Hooker Turned Grace Jones Into a Corporate Cannibal
If you've already seen Grace Jones' hypnotically insectile performance in the video for "Corporate Cannibal" -- the first single from her upcoming album Hurricane -- then you surely haven't forgotten the experience. If you haven't yet been initiated, click the interview link below, where you'll also find a detailed conversation with the video's creator, Nick Hooker. Our chat about the filmmaking process (and the miraculous Jones herself) was captured in just one take... just like the video itself:
TB: How did you wind up working on this video?
NH: Ivor Guest is a very talented producer and a very good friend of mine; he started working on the album with Grace, and we both became friends with her. She'd already seen and liked some work I'd done for U2. Ivor and Grace had just finished recording the album, but hadn't remixed or mastered it or anything. They played it for me and Grace just said, "Listen, which of these do you like?" Right away I jumped at the one I visually responded to the most, and that of course was "Corporate Cannibal."
TB: The video's concept is deceptively simple. How do you pitch an idea like that?
NH: Actually, I didn't. She trusted me. That's just who she is... Grace is incredibly smart, very wise. I think that's how she works; when she trusts someone, that's it! She just goes for it. So I didn't know before I made the video precisely what I was going to do -- all I knew was that I wanted to get her head, and I wanted to get her intensity. I didn't do concept drawings or sketches, or pre-visual stuff... I just found it. She only had one worry, which is that I'd hold back -- that I wasn't going to go whole-hog.
TB: Can you tell me a little about what it's like to spend time with Grace?
NH: First of all, she's hyper-charismatic. It's like a condition that she has. Also, she's been famous for a very long time, so she really understands how to master her charisma. I've been out with her at times when she's dialed it down, and she becomes practically invisible... anonymous. And then I've seen her turn it on and turn it up, and when she does that, within 5 minutes people are suddenly starting to pay attention, and within 10 there's a crowd. After about 15 it's like, "How are we going to get out of here?"
TB: What's the rest of Hurricane like?
NH: Half of it is really strong vintage Grace that you can easily connect to her earlier stuff, and then the other half is much more contemporary, and of course "Corporate Cannibal" is an example of that. It's funny, when Ivor first told me he was working with her, I noticed something... I've always loved her music and I've always thought she was amazing, but I'd never realized that every day, when I'm in New York, I'd hear her music playing somewhere -- whether it was in a bar or cafe, in a taxi, in a shop. It's just there. It's part of the soundscape of the city.
TB: What did you (and Grace) have to do to capture these striking images?
NH: Because she's a model, she has like a Marlene Dietrich thing where she knows exactly what the light's doing to her, or how she looks from two different sides... She's very confident in her beauty. When we shot, she'd just been in Jamaica for three months, so she was intensely black, like dark, dark black. She didn't have any makeup on... in fact we put a face-mask on her, like a skin, and used it to peel off every bit of dirt and grit, whatever the city had put on her face that day. All that remained was sort of the raw glow of her skin. She had a bit of lip-gloss, and that's it. There are people out there working on videos for artists out there like Madonna and Mariah Carey, and they spend weeks and weeks rotoscoping every shot and removing every blemish... It doesn't take much to make Grace look good.
TB: Did you have to film over and over to get it right?
NH: It was only one take! There were two cameras: one camera directly in front of her on a tripod, and there was a handheld infra-red camera that I was operating. If you look at the video, you'll see there's a lot of head-on stuff, and the other material is a little bit grainier and it's all from the right. That's the handheld, same take. We did other run-throughs to set up, but we just wound up filming the once. We started working at midnight, and we finished as the sun was coming up.
TB: And then after that, what next?
NH: When I got back to New York and I finally put the head into the computer, I found the key image that was going to be the cornerstone of the video. Then my heart sank, because I knew it was going to be a frame-by-frame job and it was going to take weeks and weeks! It was very labor intensive... very low-fi on the input side of things, but hi-fi on the output. But there wasn't any time pressure, and I wasn't nervous about anyone breathing down my neck. In fact, she almost forgot about it! When she came back to New York, I went to visit her and show her some raw, unedited pieces. It's funny, I was recovering from a hernia operation, and I still had the stitches in; I walked in and opened my laptop and played the clips for her, and she couldn't believe it, she went completely mad, and jumped on me -- so I'm staggering around holding her and thinking any second my hernia scar is going to give way and 30 feet of intestines are going to fly across the room.
TB: Overall, it sounds like a pretty surreal production experience!
NH: Yes... honestly it was refreshing to be able to go fast. It didn't have that quality which I often dread, in which we're in the studio and the clock is ticking and money is being spend, and every hour that goes by is another $10,000 out the window. Fuck fuck fuck... panic panic panic! It was a really truly ideal situation. There's a misunderstanding about Grace that some people have and need to get straightened out on, which is that she's just a sort of lump of clay in the hands of these Svengali types, that her work is really their work. That's completely wrong. She's very savvy, smart, sophisticated artist who really knows what she's doing. Sometimes when we were editing she'd make calls about the edits that made me think, "Fucking hell!" But then she always ended up being right. She was almost always bang-on.
INTERVIEW - Poltergeist's JoBeth Williams Prefers Making Films to Remaking Them
Like most fans, I feel really strange about the news that a Poltergeist remake is in the works. After a recent screening of the original I felt particularly entranced the emotional demand of JoBeth Williams' role. She agreed to chat with me this week about MGM's announcement, but also opened up about her directorial work. And here's a choice bit about her role on the show Dexter, playing the mother of the serial killer's girlfriend:
"I loved doing this, I'm a big fan of the show -- the writing, directing, acting, all of it! And Michael C. Hall is just the nicest North Carolina guy. But you get into a scene with him and look into his eyes while the cameras are rolling, and you think, killer! It was very exciting to play this character, because she challenged his character. I kept saying to the producers, 'Please, let him kill my character, I think that would be great!' And they'd say, 'His character only kills other killers...He can't kill you unless you're a killer.' Still, it was fun to play such a great, very flawed character."
September 7, 2008
Time Capsule From 1983 Reveals English Isn't Roger Ebert's First Language
I've read lots of arguments over whether Roger Ebert deserves his title of American critic-laureate. In my opinion, it needn't be a matter of which films he likes or dislikes -- almost anytime I wind up reading his reviews, his writing alone is enough to damn him. Here are some excerpts from his review of a film I recently saw for the first time on the recommendation of my oral surgeon, 1983's The Hunger. The fact that I adored the movie and Ebert considered it "agonizingly bad" is secondary to his incredibly leaden, hackneyed self-expression:
"After an initial orgy of fancy camerawork, the movie settles down into the story of Bowie's final days. He has that disease, where you age suddenly."
"Then Sarandon visits the lavish town house where Deneuve and Bowie lived, and that's where a glass of sherry leads to the seduction scene. Now I've got to be honest about this scene. Part of its interest lies in the fact that Catherine Deneuve herself and Susan Sarandon herself are acting in the scene. That gives it a level of reality that would be lacking in a porno film, even a much more explicit one."
"Sarandon's scene by the window in Atlantic City, bathing herself with lemons, created great sultriness."
"There's so much crosscutting, so many memories, so many apparent flashbacks, that the real drama is lost -- the drama of a living human being seduced into vampirism. In Herzog's Nosferatu we felt some of the blood-scented lure of eternal death-in-life. Here it's just -- how would an ad put it? -- 'Catherine Deneuve for Dracula.'"
I don't really understand much of what Ebert's saying here, although it appears that he celebrated his editor's day off by skimming The Hunger for moments of "great sultriness." As one observant friend put it, "That's some Borat shit, right there."
September 5, 2008
I try not to editorialize...
...but if I never hear the words "hockey-mom," "PTA," or "Alaska" again, it will be too soon.
Jon Stewart expertly dismantling the GOP's fawning.
Wonkette on what "hockey-mom" is code for.
Gloria Steinem says: "Wrong woman, wrong message."
An unfortunate likeness...
Today's Obsessions...
On second thought, maybe the world can live without "Spy Kids + Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me = Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me Kids." [Via MeFi]
Gus Van Sant's Milk finally gets a trailer.
Cat Heaven, or Crazy Cat-Lady Heaven?
An exhibition of Charles Burns' artwork, including works from Black Hole, will be in NYC through October 5th. Anyone want to ditch work and go get repulsed with me?
September 4, 2008
MicroHorror Featured Pick -- "Strip Tarot"
Each week you'll find a new 666-words-or-less story from MicroHorror showcased here on Hermitosis. Perhaps I'm impartial, but Kevin Sweeney managed to fire my imagination with just five sentences:
by Kevin Sweeney
The Hanged Man, the Fool, the five of cups, the five of swords, the ace of coins.
The Devil, the World, the Female Pope, the seven of wands, the nine of swords.
“Take it off,” he said, grinning.
“Sorry pal, Erebus hold ‘em rules, remember?” she said.
Damn. Aces wild. He sighed, and pulled the flesh from his skull.
Copyright: © 2008 Kevin Sweeney
September 3, 2008
INTERVIEW - Jewell Parker Rhodes Bases Her Voodoo Mythos on Real Monsters and Memories
In her novel Voodoo Dreams, Jewell Parker Rhodes told the story of real-life voodoo priestess Marie Laveau's rise to adulthood (as well as power and infamy) in 19th century New Orleans. The tale doesn't end there, however. This month Rhodes published the second installation of her trilogy that extends Laveau's lineage to the present day. Kirkus Reviews describes Yellow Moon as "...a satisfying and eerie story that lies somewhere between the work of Anne Rice and James Lee Burke... A spooky, sexy novel about things that go bump in the night."
Bump indeed... While Yellow Moon continues to usher medical doctor Marie Levant toward truths about her ancestry and identity (a journey that began in 2005 with Voodoo Season), it also introduces an ancient evil in the form of the wazimamoto, a vampiric entity from African folklore that stalks a pre-Katrina New Orleans. In this incredible interview, Rhodes speaks at length about the practical and mystical aspects of storytelling -- and about making monsters that ooze authenticity.
TB: Having spent so many years writing the powerful dreams and visions of your characters, do you set more store by these kinds of experiences in real life than you used to?
JPR: My grandmother Ernestine, who taught me to believe in the power of dreams, raised me. She’d moved north to Pittsburgh -- and brought from the south, her hoodoo/voodoo traditions. She’d say: “A bird with a crooked wing means sorrow;” “Signs everywhere. Pay attention;” “Scratch a wall, somebody die.”
More importantly, my grandmother who has been dead for thirty years is still alive to me today. In the African American community the dead are never gone, their spirits are always accessible to us as ancestors. I still speak with my grandmother every day.
I believe in dreaming -- the power of dreaming for healing and making one’s self “whole.” Writing Voodoo Dreams helped to heal me. The process literally changed my life. As I was writing, I had vivid dreams -- even dream-states while writing. I also felt the presence of Marie Laveau and my grandmother. In the Amazon short -- “Down South: A Granddaughter’s Memories,” and the book, Porch Stories: A Grandmother’s Guide to Happiness, I celebrate my grandmother’s tales. As a child I witnessed grandmother getting an “impossible” call from an aunt who had just died. I can also tell you that my grandmother, while a minister’s wife, was also a conjure woman -- but I didn’t truly understand what she was teaching me until I wrote my first novel, Voodoo Dreams. I told my grandmother, just before she died, that I was writing a tale about a child “born with a caul,” which meant that the child would be prophetic with visions, dreams. Grandmother was so happy. She promptly told me how to bury a caul and never to forget the power of my own dreaming.
TB: Though the creature/killer in Yellow Moon, the wazimamoto, has traditional African roots, getting to make this monster your own must have been exciting. Can you describe that process?
JPR: Ever since I was a teenager and stumbled onto the idea of the African vampire, I’ve been waiting for the right tale to create the monster! Stoker’s Dracula seeks immortality; the wazimamoto, a vampire created from colonial oppression in Africa, seeks to destroy cultural traditions. For Africans, the British, French and Portuguese tried to steal “cultural blood.” So, Africans created oral tales of a vampire that drains blood. In America, we can talk about the slave traders as wazimamotos and folks who are mentally enslaved, who learn from the oppressors to hate their selves and their culture, can become wazimamotos, too.
I created my wazimamoto with the same respect that I would use to create any other character. The vampire has a history and motivation and while racist and misogynistic, it is also vulnerable and sympathetic.
I especially liked creating the vampire as a spirit that rises from the water. Water can baptize, cleanse. Agwe, the sea-god, is a force within the water. And water symbolizes the middle passage and all the sick slaves who were tossed overboard into the waters. My vampire comes to life not knowing what it is or who it had been in the past. In uncovering knowledge about itself, accessing memories, it has an opportunity to make a choice -- heal instead of hurt. But the wazimamoto—in learning its own name and history, rebirths itself into a killing machine. I like, too, how my vampire prefers the blood of sinners -- a pedophile priest, a murdering musician, etc. Evil begets more evil.
My creation was fun to write but underneath the vampire persona (I hope!) are some real questions about the nature of goodness and evil, the nature of humanity and re-birth.
TB: Voodoo is a classic staple of film and fiction to this day, usually exploiting these traditions for a cheap scare; your novels, though often scary, strive against that trend. Do you find it hard to strike that balance?
JPR: Absolutely. Stereotypes about voodoo lurk insidiously inside our cultural imagination. As a novelist, I try to be transgressive, working within fictional traditions -- historical, mystery, and horror -- yet, always questioning the cultural subtext of imagery, characterization, and themes that appear in western literature. This questioning helps me layer another perspective that has been historically suppressed in our history books, literature, and media.
For example, in Voodoo Dreams, I can embrace the idea that snakes are evil and use it to play on reader’s fears -- but then undermine that fear by discussing how many Louisiana slaves were forcibly baptized Catholic because the masters were fearful of their African-based spiritual traditions. In Catholicism, the snake from the Garden of Eden is evil, Satan, the fallen angel. But for slaves from an African tradition, the snake isn’t evil; rather, Damballah, the snake-god, is symbolic of fertility and creation. In authentic voodoo, knowledge is always considered good. So, in the voodoo tradition, Eve’s “fall from grace” isn’t a “fall” at all.
In western culture, we’re taught that darkness is evil; blackness, terrifying. In America, particularly, darkness was used as a religious reason to enslave Africans. The belief that Cain was given the “mark” of darkness for fratricide, and that all black peoples are Cain’s children marked by his sin, is terrible. In my books, I can overturn conventional imagery by demonstrating that darkness can be comforting (a home place for one’s soul) and that all people of color are beautiful. Darkness can be as illuminating as light.
As a writer, I try to use literary conventions that “scare" us; but, then, I try to educate and demonstrate another perspective. In Voodoo Dreams, I juxtapose authentic versus inauthentic voodoo ceremonies. I ask the question: how did we get these stereotypes of African-based faiths? While the short answer is racism and the slave trade, I also consider how the great Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau, might have contributed to these stereotypes. If you were a woman living at a time when most women of color were slaves or mistresses, and you discovered that by playing to the dominant culture’s fears, you could have more freedom and aid your community, wouldn’t you scare the dominant culture even more?
TB: How has that informed the way you portray zombies?
JPR: The zombies in Voodoo Dreams and Voodoo Season are terrifying. Nonetheless, research indicates that zombies can be created by using chemicals from “the gills of a puffer fish,” known for their paralytic power. I embrace this idea and argue that in authentic voodoo, with its respect for human life, no one would ever create a zombie. But as in all religions, there are those who practice faith in a humanistic, loving way and those who use faith as an excuse to hurt, discriminate, and oppress.
In my novels, zombies aren’t creatures trying to eat people. Rather, they are people who are experiencing the ultimate horror of losing their identity. Losing one’s self is something to cry about -- a human tragedy far more graphic, and psychologically terrifying, than shuffling around as a dim-witted cannibal. If zombies are mentally alive, then what does it mean for their bodies to buried? In Voodoo Season, a caesarean is performed on a young girl that my protagonist believes is dead, but isn’t. That’s horrifying.
In Voodoo Season, the zombies are quadroon women being used for modern-day prostitution. This echoes the tradition of nineteenth century New Orleans’ quadroon balls when women of color were bred quadroon -- to be one-fourth black, and become mistresses for French aristocrats. (This tradition was truly perverse.)
TB: How do you feel about the state and fate of New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina -- especially since the city's gothic and romantic associations have always seemed so connected to its geography?
JPR: Voodoo Season was published the day the levees broke in New Orleans. Because of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, my mystery/ horror trilogy, was forever changed. My protagonist, Dr. Marie Levant (Laveau’s descendant) is a doctor in Charity Hospital. In Voodoo Season, Dr. Levant is just learning about her spiritual heritage. In Yellow Moon, it rains never-ending, because as a writer, I know, the hurricane is coming. Dr. Levant is tested both spiritually and scientifically…because Hurricane Levee Blues, the last novel will have a monster more devastating than the wazimamoto—namely, social and environmental injustice. It is no accident that parts of Louisiana and Mississippi are called “Cancer Alley.” It is no accident that the bayous are rapidly disappearing, no accident that poor people and people of color were hurt disproportionately because of Katrina.
On September 23, I am scheduled to give a reading in New Orleans at Octavia Books. As I write this, Hurricane Gustav has become a Category Three Hurricane and New Orleanians are trying to evacuate their city. Can disaster really strike twice? I hope not. As Americans, we show our true character in how we protect all our citizens and communities.
TB: What does it feel like to find yourself entrusted with introducing new generations to voodoo traditions and tales? Are you surprised to find yourself still writing about these things after all these years?
JPR: I never would have guessed how central Marie Laveau and voodoo would have become to my writing career. I’m not from New Orleans but I feel it is my second home -- the landscape, people, and the food all call to my soul. When I started writing about voodoo, many folks told me they were afraid to read my books -- not because of horror conventions, but because they were afraid that I would contribute to stereotypical images.
Over the years, I have been honored by the folks who read my novels -- especially honored that Voodoo Dreams (a 1993 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Authors selection) has stayed alive and available for so many years. There are German, British, and Italian editions. Recorded Books did an audio version in 2002 and, in 2008, a Turkish publisher bought translation rights.
I believe twenty-first century readers are more open to diverse stories, tales of differing paths toward spirituality. I also believe readers identify with my passion and my respect for all cultures and people. And if I can entertain a reader... so much the better. My job is to make readers believe in miracles, feel that the world is alive with spirits, and understand that voodoo is rooted in life-affirming beliefs. I made this journey in understanding -- I knew nothing about voodoo, nothing about Louisiana history, nothing about the voodoo queen who, it is said, walked on water and healed yellow fever victims with brush of her hand.
Fundamentally, I’m a storyteller -- telling stories that I need to believe in, stories that have the potential to shape my life. I believe I was “called” to write about Marie Laveau and voodoo; however, I’m not a religious or cultural expert. Just a tale-maker. I’m still searching for clarity -- asking essential questions about how to live a good life. Amazingly enough, I’ve found answers in telling tales about the bayou, wazimamotos, zombies, spirit-loas, and the music inherent in African-based faiths. I’m so grateful.
September 2, 2008
Seen Between Fingers -- Chris Kelly Returns to Hell, Fires Decorator
For this new regular feature, wimp and noted horror non-enthusiast Chris Kelly will be reporting back with his first-impressions of memorable scary movies. Two weeks ago Hellraiser left him cold. Considering how crazy-bananas the sequel is, I figured one bad turn deserves another...
OK, horror fans, you’ve officially lost me.
It’s not that I don’t understand the appeal of a trashy movie, a scary movie, a gross movie, or even an outright terrible movie. All of these indulgences have their place. What I don’t understand is how anyone could willingly subject themselves to a viewing of Hellbound: Hellraiser II, which is easily one of the crappiest pieces of so-called entertainment I have ever seen. That it was chosen for me as viewing material suggests that it enjoys continued popularity despite being an unsalvageable mess. So incoherent is the work that I cannot review it. I give you, instead, a list of completely unanswerable questions suggested by the events depicted (which I hesitate to dignify with the term “plot”).
1. What’s so terrifying about flying hooks?
Is anyone going to defend the blatant overuse of this completely un-scary tactic? This movie starts out pretty much exactly like the last one (ignoring, of course, the rehash of the first film’s ending, which must have looked dated even to audiences seeing it only a year later). It’s less thrilling the second time around. Sure, they added nails, but we’ve already seen Pinhead, and it’s otherwise pretty much the same flesh-fishing as before. Later, the Cenobites punctuate their interrogation of Kirsty with a little menacing swing of the chain, and interestingly, we learn that Pinhead pre-gores his hooks: even though he only hits the wall, his weapon still drips blood. It’s more odd than it is creepy. Then there’s the disappointing showdown nearer to the end of the movie -- all it takes to kill a Cenobite is a flying hook? Within ten seconds, the movie’s four most ominous characters are neatly dispatched with the same tool that one uses to lure a cod to its pan-seared grave. The law of diminishing returns has rarely been so effectively illustrated.
2. How much murder-blood does it take to rebuild a human body?
This is a question from both movies, really, but Hellbound in particular seems to make inefficient use of its resources. To resurrect Julia from the mattress, Dr. Channard brings home a mental patient and allows him to mutilate himself in the most awful scene of the film (it goes on forever and I’ll admit to fast-forwarding through half of it). Before the dude is even close to dead, his plasma has provided enough material for our favorite ‘80s antivixen to build an entire skeleton, including cartilage and supporting muscle structure. Six murders later, however, she’s still missing quite a bit of flesh. What gives? How much blood does it take to create a square inch of skin? We’re eight bodies deep before she’s fully formed. I feel like that’s just wasteful.
3. Where did Dr. Channard learn to decorate?
The time spent at chez Channard fills the viewer with disquiet, and not only because he has fallen in lust with an undead mass of viscera (more on that later). Let’s examine his choices as an interior designer. His study is painted in lush forest green, populated with tasteful wooden furniture, lined with books and pictures, and generally adorned in an austere-yet-homey fashion. That is, if one can ignore the old soiled mattress he eventually hauls into the center of the room. The rest of his house, on the other hand, is white and empty -- literally. I don’t think I saw a single piece of furniture anywhere else in the place, despite the fact that the external shots clearly establish it as a veritable estate. Does he really spend so much time in that one room that he never felt the need to furnish the rest of his living space? Sure, that left him with plenty of open area in which to savage his patients, but he can’t have planned for that when he moved in. Better still: at the end, there’s suddenly shit everywhere to pack up. Where did the moving men find all those chairs? What’s in all those boxes? This house was a wasteland.
4. Why is Julia so irresistible?
Yes, the scene where Channard bandages her is kind of arty and unnerving, but really? His first interaction with her was to watch her bloody, half-formed corpse wriggle across the room to eat a mutilated lunatic alive. Even his unhealthy obsession with Hell doesn’t quite make it plausible that he’d be sexually compelled by a woman whose entire body is a gaping wound. She does look less icy this time around, but then again, maybe that’s just because it’s such a relief when we finally see her with skin.
5. What were the writers thinking?
It was nearly impossible for me to write this column because of Hellbound’s exceptionally low level of quality. It makes no fucking sense at all. It’s long, and it clearly doesn’t need to be. The most nauseating bits, namely the inmate’s self-inflicted razor wounds and Julia’s mummification, are dispensed early: it’s beyond me why they didn’t just clock this one at 75 minutes and call it a day. I’m also still completely in the dark about the purpose of that cube. Sometimes it calls Cenobites, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you need it to enter Hell, while at other times you can just go there because you feel like it. Sometimes it’s a different shape, which makes people act as if life is suddenly more difficult, though nothing seems immediately worse. Oh, and how did Channard manage to keep a basement full of filthy howling nightmare people secret for so long? Where did he learn to drape a bedsheet like a Grecian dress? Since when is it possible to wear someone else’s skin as a convincing disguise? God, I could go on and on.
I’m disappointed that this is considered a classic of the genre. It does not give me high hopes for my future assignments.
Next week: Dario Argento's Suspiria
INTERVIEW - Five Minutes With David Cronenberg
Okay, I'll just say it. Last week I got to interview David Cronenberg.
During my trip to Los Angeles I visited the exquisite set of The Fly: The Opera, listened intently as Placido Domingo and Howard Shore explained how all this came about, and waited bashfully to see if I would actually get a chance to speak with Cronenberg one-on-one. You can read the results of our five-minute conversation here in my Web Stalker column. I wish that I had extra bits to offer you here, but I'm lucky I got anything at all. Upon reviewing my recording, however, I can at least report that he didn't sound nearly as miffed that I called his movies "disgusting" as it seemed at the time.
It was a productive trip. In the coming weeks, look out for interviews with Tobin Bell, JoBeth Williams, and Bruce Campbell...
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