Tag: Found-Again

Found-Again Friday: Musical Interlude 4

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I know that on Monday I promised you no vampires, but I never said I wouldn’t come close. It’s Goth time!

Given that I’ve been drawn to dark themes since my first Halloween coloring book, it was only a matter of time till that included music, too.

Like a lot of people my age, I began with The Cure, and I’ll be forever grateful to the aunt who accidentally bought me an import album full of obscure tracks because it was the only thing by The Cure she could find at the store:

I was in eighth grade when this one came out, and I drove my family crazy listening to it.

Fifteen years later, I was still playing the same song all the time—just this one.

And then there’s this—I’m a sucker for a Poe reference or seventeen:

And as a parting gift:

Enjoy!

Next time: The Highlander takes a stab at romance. Yes, even things on Mars can see what I did there.

Found-Again Friday: The Mark of the Moderately Vicious Vampire/The Kent Montana Books In General

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This may be the first time I’ve been able to use that quote about tragedy and farce about…well, anything.

Why Found-Again? As I worked my way through ‘Salem’s Lot two weeks ago, I kept finding myself repeating the same cycle of thoughts:

This is better than I remembered…

sort of…

but on the whole, give me the parody.

My misspent youth.
My misspent youth.

I was in high school when I picked up The Mark of the Moderately Vicious Vampire, the fourth of five books in “Lionel Fenn”/Charles L. Grant’s series about Scots baron/unemployed soap actor/adventurer Kent Montana. The books, which are largely standalone, put their hero through his paces in a number of standard horror plots: Montana variously faces aliens, swamp monsters, an invisible man, the Elder Gods, and, yes, a peeved vampire named Lamar de la von Zaguar.

The Premise: Kent Montana likes his vacation home in a tiny town in Maine, at least until a mysterious nobleman moves into the big mansion on the hill and the locals turn to Montana for a little noblesse oblige and a lot of vampire hunting. Along the way, he’s helped—sometimes “helped”—by a local lass, an old salt, a clergyman with a weakness, law enforcement, a feisty funeral director, and an occult-expert dandy with an ultracompetent assistant.

I feel the need to issue a sort of warning about these books: they are very silly (if you remember my post about Cast A Deadly Spell, put these books into the same category). They’re rife with slapstick, puns, dialogue lifted straight from songs (I still remember hearing “Diana” playing on the radio in a Denny’s and suddenly understanding an entire conversation in MotMVV years after the fact), and in at least one book, a villain whose name is an anagram of another writer of humorous fantasy fiction. If digging those details out isn’t your thing, the books might not be, either.

The Verdict: Anything that can take ages to fully tease apart like this is my kind of book (see also the Butterfly’s speech in The Last Unicorn: it’s like a scavenger hunt for English majors). Besides which, the books are just plain fun. They’ve been out of print practically since I got them, but used copies can be found at Amazon and elsewhere, and I highly recommend giving them a try.

Might go well with: Scotch, junk food, old horror movies.

Next time: Is there a patron saint for good grammar?

Found-Again Friday: ‘Salem’s Lot (The Book)

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This week I’ll sink my teeth into a little Stephen King.

Why Found-Again? Every so often, I’ll get an idea for Found-Again Friday that I think is the essence of the project: picking up things I very deliberately put down a long time ago to see if I was too harsh. Some of it has worked out brilliantly (Mister Frost)…and then there’s Altered States. So what could be more appropriate than the book that caused me to stop reading Stephen King novels for a decade or more?

As I mentioned in my very first post here, I’ve had a weird relationship with Stephen King’s work, beginning when I had the crap scared out of me by “The Cat From Hell” in an anthology at age ten. A few years later, my parents accidentally acquired a copy of The Dark Half; I read it and did with it what I tended to do with horror novels in those days, which was put them away in another room where I wouldn’t be tempted to reread them at night, then sneak them back out again once a week anyway. Intrigued, I picked up Thinner from the library; the combination of fewer likable characters and my familiarity with strawberry pie made that a bit of a non-starter for me, as did finding an old Cornell Woolrich short story that was essentially Thinner but with voodoo.

So my King readership was on the bubble…but I did like vampires. I was in college when I first picked up ‘Salem’s Lot at the library, and other than the writing, I found nothing to like about it. I despised every character, I despised the exponential spread of the vampires, and I wasn’t too fond of the movie adaptation, if it came to that. And so I abandoned the author as a whole, give or take reading a short story or two and having cable during the years The Shawshank Redemption was viewable nearly on a loop.

(I don’t like The Shawshank Redemption very much either. I am probably a terrible person.)

In recent years, a few things have happened to persuade me that I ought to give Lot a re-viewing. One, of course, was The Shining, which I started reading with the lowest of expectations and which is now one of my favorite books. It’s possible, I thought, that I had finally matured into appreciating King. The other is Haven, the loosely Stephen King-based TV show about a small town with troubles both capital and lowercase. I love all the characters in the town of Haven: perhaps I’d been too hard on the residents of ‘Salem’s Lot way back when.

The Premise: A writer returns to the small town that was the locus of his boyhood terrors, just in time to find out his boyhood terrors were only the beginning: A vampire named Barlow is set on making ‘Salem’s Lot his own.

The Verdict: It’s just possible that I am improving as a human being, because I was much less judgmental about the town’s denizens—those who weren’t bullies or abusers, anyway, which seemed to be around 40% of them—this time. I no longer think of Barlow as a fitting plague sent to wipe out the Village of the Asshats. And I am more astute in my old(er) age at picking out the themes about the squalor of evil juxtaposed with the grandeur of vampire myth. I get all that.

But I still don’t understand the actual plot. Why would a vampire want to make an entire town full of competition? Or, if that’s the normal rate at which vampires (who presumably have to eat regularly) reproduce, how did the world ever make it to 1970-whatever with its human population intact when Barlow has been nibbling around since before Christ? The book does feature one scene of blood exchange, but otherwise, vampirism seems to spread sort of like Amway. I did like the book better this time, but I just can’t get over that, even though King literally leaves room to say the Devil made Barlow do it.

Might go well with: Red wine, raspberry sauce, Fright Night.

 

Next time: Going to church with Highlander!

 

Found-Again Friday: The Big Chill

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This week I didn’t finish reading that book I take a look at 1983’s The Big Chill, a movie I’ve sarcastically described as “Costner’s finest,” because his character is dead when the movie starts. It’s a sentiment that downplays my love of Bull Durham, Tin Cup and Silverado, but nonetheless has a bit of truth to it: 20+ years after I saw Dances With Wolves*, it’s starting to look like I’ll never forgive.

Why Found-Again? I’ve seen this movie many times: I’d love to tell you that it’s because even as a youngster I was interested in relationship dynamics, but no, it’s because I thought Jeff Goldblum was hot a good 7 years before most of the American public did. I do think it’s interesting that when I see him in interviews now,  he seems to most strongly resemble his character in The Big Chill, though.

The Premise: Following the suicide of their troubled friend, a group of college pals spends a few days together wondering what the hell happened to him—and to them—in the years since graduation.

Then they all have sex, more or less.

There are still lots of reasons to like this movie other than  Goldblum as the avatar of—well, of later, more universally beloved Goldblum: the soundtrack is amazing, it’s a really strong cast, and the Sam character’s TV-show opening credits are an excellent parody of the ’80s detective shows that haunt this Friday feature of mine. And I wasn’t kidding about the relationship dynamics: I remember having to watch this four or five times to really grasp who’d been feuding with whom, who’d hooked up with whom, and how it all led them to where they were as fully fledged adults.

The Verdict: Mixed. It’s definitely not a rewatch-till-you-drop movie, but watching it now I feel more sympathy for the characters and more admiration for the way the movie flows in general.

Might go well with: Cleaning up after dinner, wine, an identity crisis.

Here’s the trailer for the DVD edition I have:

And here’s one of the older ones, in case you thought I was exaggerating about the later Goldblum emphasis:

 

*The pathetic thing is that I didn’t even pay to see it: my friend and I sneaked into the theater when Warlock proved too intense for me, the Squeam Queen. The nicest thing I can say about Dances With Wolves is that no one gets their eyes ripped out by Julian Sands, but make no mistake, that is a nice thing.

Next time: Thank god someone in Highlander knows how to investigate—no, of course it’s not Moran. Also, how to catch a movie character up on the plot in 15 seconds (approx.).

Found-Again Friday: Musical Interlude 3

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This time we’re going down south to find out what my room sounded like when I was 15.

…And that sounds way more exciting—and disgusting—than it is. Oh, well.

I started my folk-music post with my “gateway drug” group; southern power-pop had them, too. Here’s my favorite REM song.

And I mentioned in the first musical post that these guys were local in the ’80s:

This band was my very first concert! And about 7 more, but only one in their native North Carolina.

[fights temptation to post every song from the Boylan Heights album available on YouTube]

But the group that consistently gave me chills, the group I listened to all the way to college interviews and back, was the incomparable Guadalcanal Diary.

And as a bonus, a song by the man who had a hand in producing music for everybody mentioned above: the video is odd, but hey, wolf spiders are cool.

Enjoy!

Next time: It’ll be Monday. Take a wild stab guess.

Found-Again Friday: Shadow of a Doubt

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Why Found-Again? I recently visited home, and this is my mother’s favorite Hitchcock film, so it seemed like a natural choice. (It was also, according to the DVD’s special features, Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite.) After being unexpectedly bored stiff by Vertigo, I wondered if I should even bother revisiting this one, but I’m glad I did.

The Premise: A little tired of her suburban family, late-adolescent eldest daughter Charlie is thrilled to discover that her namesake uncle (played by Joseph Cotten) will be paying them a visit. But as you might expect, Uncle Charlie has one heck of a dark secret: he’s also known as the Merry-Widow Murderer. When Little Charlie begins to smell a rat, it’s a tense contest of wills.

It’s a good thing Mom likes this film, since I immediately recognized myself in the movie family’s middle child, the never-silent bookworm Ann. Everything about this movie is close to perfect, in fact: the characters are multifaceted, there’s plenty of humor and pathos along with the suspense, and it’s a great portrayal of relationships…of people with the world at large, within families, within towns.

The Verdict: Very good, and thank heavens: hating on a legend always makes me feel terrible.

Might go well with: Charade remake The Truth About Charlie. Also, it looked like they were having crème brûlée in one of the scenes; on the other hand, is there anything that doesn’t go well with?

(Warning: trailer telegraphs most of ending and is wildly spoiler-y with regard to Uncle Charlie. I almost recommend against watching it.)

 

Found-Again Friday: Masters of Horror—Valerie On The Stairs

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So I watched neither the classic nor the classically goofy prospect for this week’s F-AF. It seems Netflix has started this proactive “Shipping Today!” feature, which I’m finding very satisfactory—not least because I now have two DVDs more than my plan requires. And so I took another peek at another Tony Todd villain a week earlier than I’d planned.

Why Found-Again? At no time is my “attracted, yet repulsed”  feeling toward horror fare more pronounced than when I watch Showtime’s Masters of Horror series. I’ve seen four of them so far, and these are the only DVDs where I avidly watch the previews, all of which are for other MoH episodes and all of which look fascinating.

Despite all this, I can barely make it through the opening-credits sequence for the show, with its decomposing rat and evilly smiling doll, among other dreadful things. Add a Clive Barker story to the mix, and we’re probably all lucky I watched this the first time.

The Premise: You know that guy in your English class who really wanted to be Raymond Carver, who wouldn’t shut up about it, and by the end of the course you wanted to kick him right in the inspiration? In Valerie on the Stairs, that man is our protagonist.

Rob, an aspiring writer with the requisite drinking and relationship problems, manages to get a rent-free spot at a house full of unpublished authors. No sooner does he sit down to write his first (pretentious) sentence than weird things start happening: there’s a beautiful girl in the walls, and a monster (Tony Todd, the only actor in the world who could have pulled off those demon ears his character has) who relentlessly pursues her. Rob has to turn to his fellow failed authors to find out what the hell—maybe literally—is going on.

Also, someone gets their spine ripped out through their mouth. I mention this because I wish someone had reminded me. Yuck.

The Verdict: This is what Found-Again Friday is all about: the first time I watched this, I found the movie’s end so insufferably twee that I almost couldn’t believe Clive Barker wrote it. And I was wrong: on this second viewing, it’s much easier to see the edge of despair in the ending, even if it does have a wry little twist in it, too. Better than I remembered.

 

Next time: TCBOM! When villains make me giggle… part 21,396.

Found-Again Friday: The Three Lives of Thomasina

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Sorry for missing last week: I guess I’m about as good at keeping to my writing schedule while distracted as you people are at voting in blog polls.

Here we are, at the third of perhaps six live-action Disney movies that occupied my youth (I’m trying to decide whether to buy the fifth, and the sixth is The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, to which I am declaring the less well-known eternal No).

Why Found-Again? It’s probably hard to find an adult audience for this: Unlike The Moon-Spinners with its intrigue or Darby O’Gill with its grown-up problems, this is pretty definitely a child-focused movie. Thanks to my natural immaturity, however, I persevered.

The Premise: What if James Herriot had been a widower with no bedside manner whatsoever?

Widower/veterinarian/emotionally crippled person Andrew MacDhui * (the Secret Agent Man himself, Patrick McGoohan) has an already strained relationship with his young daughter when he kind of kills her cat. Fortunately, the titular feline Thomasina is more resilient than she looks, and she’s taken in by a woman rumored to be a witch (Susan Hampshire:  if you told me she was the prettiest woman on earth when this was filmed, I’d believe you).

I think the ideal audience for this movie was probably kids exactly like me: raised on James Herriot stories and not allowed to have a cat. (Fans of Egyptian myth will also enjoy Thomasina’s brief trip to kitty heaven.)

The Verdict: Can you doubt it? Right back down the rabbit hole for me. Sure, it’s Disney, but beneath that is a story about the problems we have relating to each other as humans and the role our relationships with animals can play in solving those. And if that’s too sappy for you, there’s a snooty cat in a bonnet.

On the other hand, I’m still not sure what to make of the plot point where it’s essential to save the life of a guide dog who wandered into traffic. I hope that village also has a good doctor.

Might go well with: Fish, the All Creatures Great and Small TV series.

 

*When I saw this movie at age 8, I loved learning how to spell this. It’s still fun to type, in fact. MacDhui MacDhui MacDhui.

 

Next time: Connor MacLeod + fun. Weird.

 

Found-Again (Maybe) Friday: Vertigo

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Why Found-Again? An usually good question! When I told my mother I’d added some Hitchcock to the ol’ Netflix queue, she said, “Ooooh. Vertigo. Have you seen it before?” and I had to admit I was stumped: the end of Mel Brooks’s Hitchcock parody High Anxiety borrows heavily from Vertigo, and so I wasn’t sure whether I’d seen the real deal or a cunning imitation that would fool a five-year-old. I’m still not, either.

The Premise: Ex-cop with a well-founded fear of heights Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) is asked by an old friend to do a spot of surveillance. The subject? The friend’s wife, who is feared to be having a breakdown.

Is our hero being played as a pawn in a web of psychologically complex intrigue that will eventually involve tall buildings? Is this Hitchcock?

First, the good parts: Vertigo is a beautiful, beautiful movie, with gorgeous San Francisco scenery and costumes by Edith Head. It stars Kim Novak, the archetypical Hitchcock blonde, and features Barbara bel Geddes as an adorable artist who’s still sort of in love with Scottie. As someone whose youthful fear of heights once led to hyperventilating in a lighthouse, I expected to be sympathetic to the protagonist, if nothing else.

What I didn’t expect was to be slightly bored as our hero spends an awful lot of time 1) driving around while wearing a hat and 2) professing deep, passionate love for a woman he’s barely met. There are ways to pull this off—I may have mentioned I’m a fan of old-time radio, where plot contrivances aren’t exactly unfamiliar territory—but I don’t think it worked this time.

The Verdict: …Maybe? As someone whose favorite Hitchcock will probably always be an eternal tie between Charade and Rebecca, it’s possible I’m just not the audience for this one.

Might go well with: After the Thin Man, a good stiff drink like the ones all the characters have in abundance—even the artist with the tiny, crappy kitchen.

 

Next time: I’m so glad I’m not a relationship counselor. Related: is a book ever a bad gift?

 

Found-Again Friday: In Search Of…

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Why Found-Again? I’ll admit it: I was one of probably thousands of people who sat crying at their desks the day Leonard Nimoy passed away. Seeing him as Spock on Star Trek: TOS when I was a kid was the first time I can remember seeing a character on TV who was valued because he was smart, and it made a big impression on me. (Due to my mother’s unwillingness to deal with my hair, Spock and I also had the same haircut when I was younger, which is a distinctly less heartwarming memory.)

But I also liked the show from my childhood that Nimoy hosted and narrated: In Search Of….

The Premise: It was a weekly look at various longstanding mysteries and outré subjects—and after I saw the Amityville episode sometime in the ’80s, I dumped all my dolls in the closet for quite a while. So it was with the aim to scare myself again that I picked up season 1 on DVD last week.

First and foremost, it’s part of my moral code that I will never, ever say a bad word about Leonard Nimoy. That said, let’s just say his wardrobe on In Search Of… seems to be an homage to Gary Collins’s psychic investigator character on The Sixth Sense TV drama from the same era.

It’s reminiscent of The Sixth Sense show in another way, too: a number of the segments are about psychic phenomena, and it becomes obvious that part of the ’70s was spent waiting for people to unlock the more arcane powers of the mind (by the same token, we can assume cynicism about this had set in by the time Ghostbusters came out). And a lot of the actual bits of evidence presented (specific famous photos of Bigfoot and of Nessie, for example) have since been officially discredited: the program now seems to work better as a time capsule than an exploration, even though we’re still not sure where Amelia Earhart/yetis/aliens/Atlantis might be.

The Verdict: I find myself unsure whether anyone not around for it the first time could enjoy this show, but if nothing else, you have the voice of Nimoy.

Well, you also have unintentional hilarity resulting from the show’s title (one episode ends up being “In Search of…Killer Bees,” which sounds like a terrible idea) and some incredibly dressed 1970s-era scientists. Someone should start a Tumblr with screenshots, because those guys are amazing.

Might go well with: The X-Files; The Sixth Sense; the chips and bean dip I was undoubtedly eating the first time I watched the show.

 

Next time: We all watch Highlander and feel better about our own dating skills.