Horror movies as books as movies

If you're a hardcore movie fan, odds are you spend an inordinate amout of time bitching about the cover art for home video releases. If you track the quality from the golden age of VHS to today's Blu-ray releases, you'll notice that arc isn't going upward. It's goddamn depressing. Amazon recently stepped in a pile of their own poo recently with an abominable thumbnail for their Suspiria remake ... but if you think it's weird that a company would foul their own next in such an exorbitant manner, let me introduce you to cover art for pretty much every Star Wars home video release since 1995.

It's not that 21st century media marketing is necessarily bad. The people creating these things are as talented and passionate as ever. But the folks controlling the purse strings have sucked all of the joy from commercial art. If you're lucky, a successful movie might get a nifty steelbook edition a decade after its theatrical release ... until then you're usually on your own. There's a subculture devoted to custom DVD and Blu-ray artwork to account for the sins of corporate culture (and because fans often feel an invalid sense of ownership over properties they love) and some of this art is terrific . Some of it ... not so much. But it's usually more fun to browse these galleries than it is to browse the home video aisles of your local Target.

Last week I had one of my stupid ideas, which are frequently the most fun ideas. As a child, some of my only access to horror movies were magazines like Famous Monsters of Filmland and Fangoria, as well as movie "novelizations" that were omnipresent during late late 1970s' and early '80s. One of the first novels I ever read was Alan Dean Foster's adaptation of Alien. Peter Benchley's Jaws was almost the first, but that book had a tendancy to disappear. I later learned that my mother had taken to hiding the book to keep her 7-year-old from reading the explicit sex scenes in the novel. By the time I turned 9 she'd given up, opting to tear out the offending pages.

Yes, I know that Jaws is not a novelization, but there was such a give-and-take between Hollywood and publishing in those days that many books and movies are permanently linked in my imagination. I tend to think of Friday the 13th Part 3 as being the first in the series that I saw, but that's not true ... I read the novelization at age 11 because nobody would take me to see a slasher movie.

This post is already too long for what it's meant to be, which is an introduction to some custom DVD covers for some of my favorite horror movies ... designed to look like book covers. There are some (ahem) vintage covers in the lot, as well as a cover for the more-recent Rob Zombie film The Lords of Salem. (Yes, there was a novel based on that movie.)

You can download the covers below. If you plan to print and use them, print them at 100 percent and trim them along the crop marks. I haven't watermarked them to avoid cluttering the art, so if you share them please tell people where you found them.

Monster Serial: MARTIN, 1977

By PHIL NOBILE JR

The mid 1970s. In an urban, blue collar neighborhood, a young man finds himself at odds with his Catholic family’s attempts to impose its rigid, oppressive lifestyle onto his own. Seeking escape, the youth goes out at night where he can act on his desires and truly be himself. Women are a complete mystery to him, and he goes through them as disposable pleasures. Eventually, he’s forced to re-evaluate his place in life when he falls for an older woman.

It’s an amusing set of similarities that exist between SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER and George A Romero’s MARTIN, but the films also share a cynical, deeper probing of the constrictive nature of family and the poisonous core of empty faith.

But where SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER invites us to find the humanity in a racist, misogynist cheeseball, MARTIN asks us to empathize with a protagonist who, the film tells us, might be an 84 year-old vampire, but in all likelihood is a 19 year-old serial rapist and murderer. Troublesome waters, but well worth navigating.

We meet Martin (John Amplas) on a train bound for Pittsburgh. He eyes an attractive woman boarding the train during a stop in New York. Later, he picks the lock to her cabin and flings the door open. The film immediately transitions to black & white as we enter Martin’s fantasy world. The woman is waiting for him on the bed arms extended, as haunting, romantic music swells.



Of course, none of this is actually happening. Back in the real world the cabin seems empty, and the unceremonious flush of a toilet tells us Martin’s quarry is in the shitter. She opens the door as Martin crouches behind it. Her hair is in a towel and her face is covered in cold cream - hardly the idealized, willing victim of Martin’s fantasy. She sees him just before he pounces, hypodermic needle in hand. After injecting her, what ensues is still not Martin’s romantic fantasy, but rather a clumsy, messy struggle, punctuated by profanity and a discordant, jazzy score. Through the images, action and music, Romero telegraphs the collision course on which he’s set fantasy and reality in his film.

Once she’s subdued (but, interestingly and distressingly, still somewhat conscious), Martin quietly rapes the woman before opening her vein with a razor blade and drinking her blood. Her eyes, fluttering, watch the entire thing with a hazy confusion. He kisses her passionately, his bloody face smearing her own. He turns his attention back to the vein and in the next shot, she’s dead. There’s a casual, horrible banality to it. In its opening moments, Martin boldly announces itself as a very different kind of vampire film.

But Martin is less interested in digging into or deconstructing the vampire myth than it is in exploring the stagnant well of religion, and of Catholicism in particular. It stands next to the aforementioned SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, and to varying degrees films like THE EXORCIST and MEAN STREETS as part of an incidental movement in 70s cinema to question the hoary, empty and sometimes dangerous phenomenon of blind faith.

That loyalty to ritual and tradition is embodied in Tateh Cuda (Lincoln Maazel), Martin’s cousin who meets him at the train station. Dressed immaculately in white and speaking in a thick accent (Greek? Lithuanian? Cuda references “the old country” but is never specific), Cuda presents himself as a “good Catholic” who believes Martin to be his 84 year-old cousin cursed with vampirism, “the family shame.” Cuda escorts Martin to his home in the blighted city of Braddock, a former steel town seemingly sucked dry. Echoing the plague-ridden village of Nosferatu, our titular vampire arrives to find the shadow of death over the entire town and everyone in it. The shops, the streets, the church are all sparsely littered with sleepwalking bodies- truly the living dead. Even the zealot Cuda seems pretty resigned in his initial interactions with Martin. “First I will save your soul. Then I will destroy you. I will show you your room.” Cuda subscribes to a belief system that has preordained our lives from beginning to end, his words seem to be suggest. No sense getting worked up about it.

Again and again, the film ties vampirism to antiquated religion. And much like any other religion, even the believers can’t seem to agree on what exactly it is. Shortly after unpacking, Martin reacts angrily to Cuda’s addressing him as “nosferatu.” Martin chases him through the house, ripping a string of garlic from Cuda’s door. As Cuda retreats to his bedroom, he’s backed into a corner, and as a last resort reaches into a drawer and pulls out...a glow-in-the-dark plastic crucifix. Martin bites into the garlic and presses the cheap cross against his cheek. “You see? It isn’t magic.” Yet a few scenes later Martin tells his cousin he’s 84 years old. So Martin really believes he’s a vampire; he just doesn’t have the same beliefs about vampirism that Cuda does. We learn that like any other religious fanatic, Martin cherry picks his belief system to justify his own actions, but gets upset and emotional when other people’s interpretations intrude on his version.

Cuda puts on a normal face for the outside world, telling his customers that his young cousin (and new employee) is nineteen years old, and dismissing their clucked tongues when they suggest it’s inappropriate that a young man live in the same house as Cuda’s young daughter Christine (Christine Forrest). “My family knows how to behave.” Cuda only lets his crazy side out to a trusted few. Martin shows his true self to even fewer, and it tends to result in their death. So he reaches out to a late night radio call-in show and begins having long phone conversations with the DJ. The calls become a de facto voice over for the film, allowing us to hear Martin’s inner dialogue mixed with a fair amount of mythbusting. Martin’s life as a vampire, he tells the radio audience, involves no coffins, no fear of crosses or sunlight, and he doesn’t turn into a bat.  “Those movies are crazy!” His refutation of vampire lore takes on an odd tone- incredulousness mixed with betrayal. The movies don’t just lie to us about vampires; they lied to him. And the myth Martin is most distressed about is that you can’t make women do what you want in real life.

Martin’s workaround for this inconvenience involves a fair amount of leg work: reconnaissance, staking out a target’s home over a period of days, figuring out how to get inside the home, and waiting for the right moment to strike. Martin patiently waits for one victim’s husband to go away on business, but again messy reality gets in the way of his fantasy: when he flings open the woman’s bedroom door, syringe in hand, the sexually naive Martin is confused by the presence of the woman’s side piece. He improvises masterfully, though, his mind remembering (or fantasizing) a cat and mouse chase from his younger days.

As these brushes with capture - the woman’s home, wandering into a drug deal/police shootout after murdering a wino - fool us into thinking they’re the only real danger posed to Martin, Cuda and his religious fervor take on an air of buffoonery. Martin accompanies his cousin to church and the only thing that threatens to destroy him there is boredom. An attempted exorcism proves to be a rather limp exercise. When Cuda invites a young priest (Romero) over for dinner, the priest has to stifle a giggle when asked about demonic possession. When pressed on the issue, the priest nervously says “I don’t know what to believe about that.” It’s a damning moment in a throwaway line.

Martin’s antagonistic relationship with Cuda comes to be portrayed not so much as an epic battle of good vs evil, but as Martin straight trolling Cuda. He becomes an insolent punk, smirking at Cuda’s convictions and delighting in pissing him off. AfIn one scene Martin menaces Cuda in a mist-shrouded playground, dressed up in a dime-store vampire getup. When Cuda clutches his rosary for protection, Martin cackles at him. “It’s just a costume,” Martin says, spitting out a set of plastic fangs that might have come from the same factory as Cuda’s glow-in-the-dark crucifix. Cuda is reduced to a frightened old man, a misconception which primes us for the film’s bleak finale.

This essay is one of dozens featured in our new
book, "Taste the Blood of Monster Serial."

Martin’s relationship with a lonely housewife (Elyane Nadeau) is his first sexual interaction with a willing participant. Although it’s not exactly an ideal romance - she likes that he seldom speaks, he’s happy she’s not unconscious - it suggests that perhaps Martin can make progress toward a more human, normal life. Martin’s fate does end up intimately tied to this woman’s, but not in a way he (or we) could have seen coming. Martin’s undoing comes from trying to be like everyone else; O. Henry style irony, or maybe Romero is indicting conformity all the way to his last frame.

Is Martin a vampire? People like to say the film doesn’t tell us; Romero likes to say “it doesn’t matter,” but the clues are there and any other answer than the obvious one serves no end other than cheap storytelling gimmickry. Martin is a delusional maniac, from a family of delusional maniacs, and they’re all far too human. The smoking gun that Martin’s “memories” are all in his mind is given right up front: when he busts into that first victim’s cabin, the black-and-white fantasy sequence transports him (and us) not into a distant memory, but into a fantasy of what’s about to happen. It’s just wishful thinking. Martin imagines the woman wants him, just as he imagines he’s an 84 year-old vampire. But as Martin says early on, there is no real magic, ever. It’s just a sickness.

PHIL NOBILE JR is a writer/director of non-fiction television projects, including the feature-length A&E documentary HALLOWEEN: THE INSIDE STORY (2010.) He is a contributing writer for Birth.Movies.Death and its sister print publication.

There are no "zombies" in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

The word “zombie” is never used in George Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

It comes as a surprise to some people that the world’s most famous zombie movie never once uses the word. It does make a appearance in the shooting script, though its use leaves a lot of room for interpretation. The Z-word is used to describe a moment of action about halfway through the script’s page count:

“The man’s face looks directly through the opening into the dead eyes beyond, the man struggling desperately to control the weapon and the zombie thing outside trying to pull it away by the barrel.”

So, if they aren't zombies, then what the hell are they?

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD’s science fiction subtext left Romero a lot of wiggle room, and it seems as though Romero didn't intend for his monsters to be literal zombies. There's some hoohah in the film about how the dead were being reanimated by "'radiation" emanating from a NASA space probe, but the story (wisely) refuses to commit to a particular explanation. The term “zombie thing” made for easy shorthand to explain to the cast and crew the mindless, glassy eyed dispositions of the monsters.

Regardless, the movie represented a massive semantic change in what “zombie” means in the United States. Zombies were originally a voodoo myth, one that had little to do with the flesh-eating ghouls seen in the Romero film. By the end of the 1970s, though, there had been so many rip-offs of Romero’s original film that the rules it established had — more or less — become the new canon. When Zach Snyder adapted DAWN OF THE DEAD in 2004, fans were wailing about the presence of “running zombies” as though he’d violated some cardinal rule ... forgetting that running, talking zombies took center stage in 1985’s RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD.

And also that Romero's monsters weren't intended to be zombies in the first place.

The score to George Romero's MARTIN coming to vinyl

Until a few minutes ago I'd never heard of Ship to Shore PhonoCo. Now, they've got my undivided attention.

The business (which is a vinyl music boutique and NOT a telephone company) is now accepting pre-orders for the score to George A. Romero's MARTIN. You can see the cover to the album above. If you want one you'd better snag one fast, because it's limited to 2,000 copies. Of those, 500 copies will be printed on Marble "Blood" Red, with another 500 as "Transylvanian Flashback" Black & White Swirl.

The Ship to Shore PhonoCo. edition features exclusive liner notes from composer Donald Rubinstein and star John Amplas. For the full track listing (and ordering details) click HERE.

Monster Serial: CREEPSHOW

Hello, boils and ghouls! October is upon us and that means one thing: HALLOWEEN! While most holidays get a measly day or two of formal recognition, orthodox Monster Kids prefer to celebrate it in the tradition of our people: By watching tons of horror movies. This month at THE COLLINSPORT HISTORICAL SOCIETY, we're going to be discussing some of our favorites every day until Halloween. So, put on your 3-D spex, pop some popcorn and turn out the lights .... because we're going to the movies!

By WALLACE McBRIDE

CREEPSHOW should have been a dream come true for fans of vintage horror comics. Too bad it was released during a rare tsunami of amazing films, crushing its chances for survival back in 1982. When movies like BLADE RUNNER, TRON and THE THING can bomb, what hope does a little movie like CREEPSHOW have?

Even without the year's stiff competition, horror anthologies are a tough sell. Audiences rarely have the patience to sit through a film that introduces new stories and characters every 25 minutes and it doesn't really matter how much talent you throw at the problem. Whether it's GRINDHOUSE, FANTASIA or TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE, an anthology film just looks too much like a primetime block of television programming for some people. Those who stayed home to watch JOANIE LOVES CHACHI back in 1982 missed out on a real gem, though. CREEPSHOW is not only one of the better films to have writer Stephen King’s name attached to it, but one of the best to appear in director George Romero’s list of credits, as well.

CREEPSHOW adapts a fictitious comicbook made up of five short vignettes. As with E.C.'s TALES FROM THE CRYPT, most of the stories are Old Testament-style parables: A character does something incredibly rotten, and gets an ironic comeuppance in the end. It's a pretty basic formula.

Even so, the five stories that make up CREEPSHOW are all incredibly distinct. Romero put a lot of time into developing highly individual stories, and then populated them with the kinds of actors you usually don't see in this kind of campy homage. You could waste an evening arguing over who turns in the best performance here. Is it the testicle-destroying bitch goddess played by Adrienne Barbeau? The ridiculous moron played by Ed Harris. The Dickensian one-man show staged by E.G. Marshall in the movie's final tale?

For my money, the best performance comes from none other than Stephen King. While I doubt he spends a lot of time bragging about it, his performance has the kind of warped inspiration of someone who has no idea what they're doing. The illiterate hillbilly played by King in the movie's second act certainly didn't call for an actor like Daniel Day-Lewis (though that would be awesome, now that I think about it) but still required an actor with a tremendous amount of charisma. When there's only one actor on screen, the audience damn well better like him.

King's performance also reveals the true soul of CREEPSHOW. Even though it looks and behaves like a horror movie, the film is really a comedy that just happens to use a lot of red Karo syrup.

There are few giggles in the film's opening tale, FATHER'S DAY, which turns the moralistic subtext of E.C. Comics on its head. Murdered by his daughter decades earlier, the cruel patriarch of a wealthy family returns from the dead to do some bad shit to his descendents. While the people who suffer in this story are mostly unlikeable, it's hard to justify their gruesome fates, or the story's downer ending. Part of me thinks this is King fucking with audience expectations. In their day, E.C.'s many horror titles were defamed as being mindless, nihilist entertainment with no social value, and FATHER'S DAY is certainly that. Gloriously so, in fact.

The second feature, THE LONESOME DEATH OF JORDY VERRILL, is centered on King's Garrison Keillor-meets-HEE HAW performance as the story's title character. There's not a scene in this episode that doesn't include the writer, though there are a few brief appearances by actor Bingo O'Malley (god have mercy on his parents) in various roles, as well as an uncredited turn by BATTLESTAR GALATICA's original Baltar, John Colicos. Contaminated by oozing from a meteor that's crashed on his farm, King spends the evening watching as an alien fungus slowly spreads across his body. It's a funny performance from King, but one that's still manages to be incredibly sad. It's also the last time in the movie that evil will prevail. More or less.

The third story, titled SOMETHING TO TIDE YOU OVER, is the most sluggish of the bunch, but it’s also the most cruel. Leslie Nielsen plays one of the film's many rich bastards, this time a man seeking revenge on his wife and her lover. His plan? To bury them up to their necks in the sand and wait for the tide to roll in. It takes a while for this story to get to the point, but that doesn't make the sadistic exchange between Nielsen and Ted Danson any less disturbing to watch.

THE CRATE is easily CREEPSHOW's crown jewel. A college janitor discovers a 159-year-old box stashed under a stairway at the school. Inside is a monster with an insatiable appetite. For one professor, the discovery is about something more than professional accolades, and provides him with the opportunity to get rid of an abusive, obnoxious wife.

I don't know if the sequencing of the stories that compose CREEPSHOW remained unchanged from script to editing, but placing THE CRATE so near the end of the movie shows a deft approach to pacing. The contrast between camp and realism even reaches its most distant divide in this segment, and relies less on the "comicbook" color palette than the previous tales. It's both more and less stylized than the other stories in the film, which makes it feel more ... legitimate, maybe? Cinematic?

THEY'RE CREEPING UP ON YOU is the most controversial segment of the film. E.G. Marshall plays a reclusive, Howard Hughes-type germaphobe who's created a sterile, perfectly isolated living space for himself. It’s also a place where he can hide away from his many misdeeds, until the widow of a former business partner begins to harass him via telephone.  Marshall is the only actor to appear on screen in the film, playing a character so hateful that you can't wait for him kick off. More than a few people have come to regret the character's demise, though, because it involves about 10,000 live cockroaches.

It's the most subtle story of the film, and maybe even the laziest. The story builds to a single moment of shock and, when it happens, it's something designed to play off audience phobias. The story also lacks the color and flair of the previous episodes, but there's something to be said for its patience. It's not a bad story, exactly ... just one that feels like it would have been more at home on Romero's later television series, TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE.

The anthology is bookended by the most sinister story of the bunch. A child, played by King’s oldest son Joseph King (now a best-selling writer himself, under the pen name Joe Hill) uses a toy ordered from the back pages of the Creepshow comic to exact revenge on his father for throwing away his favorite funnybook. The segment also features cameos by Tom “Thrill Me” Atkins and effects artist Tom Savini.  I don’t think many horror fans will take issue with the many zombies, monsters and premeditated murders of CREEPSHOW. But the closing scene, which involves a son killing his father over a comicbook, might be a bit much for some people.

(WALLACE McBRIDE is the editor of THE COLLINSPORT HISTORICAL SOCIETY.)