Movie Time!

Spare seven minutes and some change for today's short feature, in which a pink mountain lion with a flair for drama (ahem) meets a cheap knock-off of The Addams Family.

Skatin' Death

The Grim Reaper don't even look twice at your "No Skateboarding" sign.

[A note: If you're not following Weird Tales on Facebook, you're missing out on tons of fun artwork, photos and writing. We swiped this image from their feed. Whenever possible, if we re-post their selections, we give credit to WT, and more importantly, the artist.]

Holidays With the Devil

Hammer Films produced a lot of inventive, effective horror movies during the 1960s and early ‘70s. They put out a lot of dreck too, but that’s to be expected and in no way dampens the positively English stamp they put all over classic and new horror stories during their run as a go-to brand for movie-night scares. Even their duds are still fun in the right setting.

Just because Halloween has passed doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy some occult spookiness. We recommend a double feature of two Hammer titles: The Devil Rides Out (1968) and The Witches aka The Devil’s Own (1966). If anyone questions why you’re watching movies about the occult instead of some Christmas nonsense, tell them you’re following the European tradition of sharing ghost stories during the holidays. Then press play before they can protest.

The Devil’s Own
Hitchcock vet Joan Fontaine (Rebecca, Suspicion) stars as Gwen Mayfield, an English school teacher working in Africa. After a jarring encounter with a tribal shaman, and the local ancient pagan practices, she heads back to England. But soon after Mayfield settles in the village of Heddaby, she starts to notice strange behavior in the locals and outright claims of witchcraft.

Fontaine’s a joy to watch, hitting a very Hitchcock-esque tone of the everywoman in over her head. Mayfield tries to keep her wits and logic about her despite the mounting evidence that occult skullduggery is happening right before her eyes.

The pagan ritual at the climax of Devil’s Own may put off some viewers, as it seems a little like a community theater idea, but if those actors can commit to it, just give yourself over to the diet Walpurgisnacht and enjoy the ride. Besides, based on Pentecostal congregations, this performance probably isn’t too far off from the real thing.

One of the big charms of The Devil’s Own is the pacing of the story. There are pauses and diversions built into the story, including a surprising chapter in which Fontaine’s character is institutionalized. It makes the loaded front-end of the movie novel-like.

Based on Ebert’s Law of Economy of Characters viewers shouldn’t have too much trouble sorting the mystery of the village, and the ending reeks of MPAA style fiddling. But everything leading up to that is a good fun and a nice choice for viewers who generally avoid horror movies.

***

The Devil Rides Out
Christopher Lee gets to branch out from his regular Hammer jobs as Dracula, the Mummy, and Frankenstein’s monster in this chilling tale of Satanism.

Lee plays Nicholas Duc le Richleau (!), a scholar of the dark arts who calls on an old friend, Van Ryn, for help. Richleau is worried about a young acquaintance of his, Simon Aron. A visit to Aron’s estate confirms Richleau’s fear. There are 12 guests at Aron’s “party” and the guest called Mocata (the wonderful Charles Gray) has a certain air about him.

Spoiler: Mocata leads a Satanic cult and plans on baptizing Aron and his lady friend Tanith. Richleau is not about to let that happen, and the chase is on.

Rides Out is based on the Dennis Wheatly novel of the same name. We’ve never read it, but the film leads us to believe that Wheatly must have devoured the works of M.R. James, as the film unfolds with the casually mounting terror of James’ work, with real-world scares (a car chase on narrow country roads) gradually giving way to other worldly horror.

He sees you when you're sleeping

When Mocata actually summons Old Scratch (perhaps it’s Baphomet?) viewers may wonder where the filmmakers could go from there. Giant spider aside – which isn’t bad, but suffers from the effects budget – how do you top a middle act appearance from the Devil? Oh, but they do top it.

Richleau and his cohorts fumble on the way to toppling Mocata, ending in a showdown that turns out to be a demonstration for why you don’t come between a mother and her child. We repeat: Don’t mess with mom.

Like Devil’s Own, Rides Out leans on a denouement that must have been at the bidding of various decency groups in Britain. And that’s fine. We don’t mind the happy ending, even if it does seem to be the cinematic equivalent of handing out a tiny bible as we exit the theater.

Everything else in Rides Out reads like source material for the wave of heavy metal bands that were beginning to fire up their amps, sparking up doobs, and incanting the names of demons for shock effect in the decade that followed. Surely Angel Witch has a DVD of this movie on their tour bus.


Reference material: Occult/Satanism horror tends toward the ridiculous or gore-filled. But somewhere along an alternate scale of films such as The Believers, The 39 Steps, and House of the Devil is the right tone for these two Hammer films. And we didn't link to The Witches/Devil's Own on IMDB for this piece, because the stupid DVD art gives away the big twist.

So Much to See

Sometimes we see blogs, Tumblrs and other stops on the web and wonder why we even bother. Then we remember, we bother because if we weren't here to pass the links on to you, who would?

At least that's what we tell ourselves at night before drinking enough cough syrup to fall asleep while listening to old radio dramas.

Imagine some sort of brass fanfare here. Now look!

Can you even stand it?! Yeah, exclamation points. Journalism-degree-be-damned. If ever there was a still from a Disney cartoon that merited a freak-out, this certainly makes the grade.

This is just a smoked pepper corn amongst the bounty of spicy offerings at the Graves and Ghouls Tumblr.

It's run by a woman named Cat who has another Tumblr worth your time, Vintage Gal.

There are GIFs on both, which tend to bug our wonky eyes, but that's one broken match in the factory full of joy. And please know there are ladies in various states of undress on both blogs, so don't get fired on our watch, okay?

Monsters All the Time

Need near-daily doses of hideous horrors, creeping corpses and fantastic phantasms? [Who wrote this, Stan Lee? -- ed]

Get thee to Monster Crazy and Monster Brains.

Yeah, we talk about both blogs a lot, and link to them in the Monkey Love section. But that's because they are excellent portals to art both high and low, and all of it geared toward monsters. What are you even still doing here reading this?

Oh fine, here's a sample of one of many great things you'll see at Monster Crazy:

Now get going.

Sebastian's Voodoo

Joaquin Baldwin made this animated short in 2009, and it's presented here by the National Film Board of Canada. The Paraguay native now works for Disney. Let's hope the mouse doesn't squeeze the creativity from him.

Now, for our feature presentation:

French-Goth-Surf-Pop

The French band La Femme has a decidedly surf- and noir-influenced sound, with just the right shades of psychedelia, ye-ye, and first-generation goth (Banshees, Bauhaus, Specimen).

And lucky for us, they made a long-form video for their song "Hypsoline." A long form video. That's so ... Duran Duran.

The film creeps around as if a loose adaptation of an M.R. James or J. Sheridan Le Fanu story, finally wrapping around to a nightmare party that we'd still happily attend. (French girls!)

It's lightly spooky and a great exercise in matching song to visuals. Here, drink this ...

Quiz Time: Facial Expressions & Literature

Look at these pictures of Ray Bradbury:

The black and white image was taken in 1938, when the writer was a senior at high school in Waukegan, Illinois.

The color image was snapped in 1975 after he'd already published Farenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and The Halloween Tree.

One of these men can stare deep into the very core of your emotional brain and memories of childhood. He can mold your sensations like a sculptor with clay, causing you to feel weird surges of sweetness and regret, triggering great joy and exhilaration, suspense and fear, conjuring melancholy you want to wrap around yourself like a blanket against the cold.

Which of these men can do this?

[To see the answer, select this text: Dude, they're both Ray Bradbury. He is a crafty genius and you should read one of his stories as soon as you can.]

The Tinkelman Terrors

Monster Brains does it again (and again and again ...) with a Jan 8 posting of various covers and interior illustrations Murray Tinkelman did for H.P. Lovecraft (and Lovecraft-inspired) stories.

[Interior illustration -- duplicated on cover -- for "The Mask of Cthulhu" by August Derleth]

The cheerless cold and soggy dark of January is as good a time as any to read some Lovecraft. The Typing Monkey's only cracked one of his tales, and that was before the Clinton administration.

Just as we finally paid proper attention this past summer to Ray Bradbury, Howard Phillips Lovecraft is on the docket, via a lauded collection of shorts and novellas curated by Joyce Carol Oates. We're already scared.

With these Tinkelman works to inspire our eyes, the anticipation mounts. See more of Tinkelman's work here.

Happy Halloween, punkins

Ooh baby. This song gets a lot of play at TMI headquarters, but it's never more appropriate than on Halloween. The vintage radio-drama organ stabs and shocks, eerie sirens call in the distance as the drums clap thunder to keep you awake long after dark. And Mr. Cave spins a deep baritone tale of Southern Gothic dread, dropping Robert E. Howard horror into the modern age. Ice. Cold.

Movie Time!

Surely you have a three minutes to spare for some George Melies magic circa 1896?



Watch more like these at Silent Film House's Youtube channel.

Great Old Ones

Wanna read some H.P. Lovecraft but don't have any scratch to put toward buying new books? Or maybe your local library banned you after that unfortunate misunderstanding regarding the copy machine?

The H.P. Lovecraft Archive has you covered. A disturbingly generous selection of Howard Phillips' writings are available to you with just a couple clicks of the mouse. It's there, deep beneath the surface of the Web, undistrubed in its slumber, waiting, but still stirring a nagging feeling in the dark recesses of your mind ...

[Cthulhu image courtesy of The H.P. Lovecraft Wiki]

It's Them $@#% Goblins Again!

The animators at Screen Novelties do good work. And The Typing Monkey has swiped their content before to show you why we think that.

Here's another great piece of stop-motion and puppet animation work Screen Novelties crafted, inspired by Wladyslaw Starewicz's seminal work. It's both sweet and creepy, and that's not easy to achieve.

Check it:


You like? Here's a link to their Vimeo page for more, more, more.

The Monkey Reads: Roald Knows How to Pick 'Em

Roald Dahl’s Book of Ghost Stories
Various; Introduction by Roald Dahl
(Macmillan)
To curate this collection of haunted tales, Dahl read more than 700 short stories, which he admits with a wry “so you don’t have to” attitude in his superb introduction. Note, these are not stories written by Dahl, but rather stories he found to be of high quality and wanted to share.

 

His original intent was to adapt these stories for an American television program – an anthology show in the vein of The Twilight Zone and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. But after a pilot was produced, the show was nixed and Dahl was left with a stack of stories to share.

The best entry in Ghost Stories is Robert Aikman’s “Ringing the Changes.” This tale of a newlywed couple on their honeymoon in a quiet, nearly abandoned seaside village in England has its own strange rhythm that rewards greatly with sheer creativity as it builds a genuine sense of dread at what’s coming.

Edith Wharton and Cynthia Asquith contribute a story each, with Wharton’s “Afterward” burying the scares under an affecting sense of loss, confusion and grief, as a woman attempts to figure out what happened to her missing husband. Asquith’s “In the Corner Shop” has such descriptive prose that it works even though you know where she’s headed after a page or two.

Jaded, over-stimulated modern brains will recognize the plots of some of these stories, as they’ve been repurposed many times, and, as with “On the Brighton Road” by Richard Middleton, read like urban legends.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t still take pleasure in high quality writing of A.M. Burrage’s “Playmates” or F. Marion Crawford’s “The Upper Berth.”

Reference material: Own a copy of The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories? You may have already read some of these, but can likely find something new. And anyone who will stay up late to watch a favorite episode of The Twilight Zone should enjoy Dahl’s collection.

Jinkies!

Berberian Sound Studios looks interesting. We'd say super-awesome but we haven't seen it. Even though the lie of sound engineering/manipulation has been explored before in films, Berberian takes a novel approach and it stars Toby Jones. That's a winning combo. Let's hope the flick lives up to all this promise:


[courtesy of Artificial Eye Film]

Frankie Say: Mindless Rampage

Frankensteinia: The Frankenstein Blog. Must we explain futher? Yes, yes, nerd Frankenstein was the mad scientist's name, not the monster's. But in all fairness to popular perception, the monster IS Frankenstein. Just ask any kid. Then calm down and read this fantastic blog.

And if all that historical, cultural and sociological investigation into Frankenstein sets your brain ablaze, cool down at Frankensteinia's sister sites, Frankenstein Forever and Monster Crazy, Tumblr sites with page after glorious page of Frankensteins and other horrifying beasties, respectively.

[Image courtesy Frankensteinia]

The Only Way In

We turned you on to Andrew Monko's photography a while back. His preference for rural and urban decay, the ways in which nature takes back man made objects, and his penchant for experimenting with light all appeals deeply to The Typing Monkey aesthetic.

Check out the photographer's series Scary Dairy. With some solid historical framing, he takes the viewer on a brief tour of the defunct, decaying and possibly haunted remnants of an abandoned mental hospital in the vast farming valley of the northern Puget Sound region of Washington state.

We're particularly fond of "Murakami Silo" and you'll have a favorite too. Here's a detail from "In the Silence They Wait":

Cycling in the Dark

During Halloween Frenzies past, we've usually started the month off with a music video to prep the workspace, though not usually something seasonal.

Bat for Lashes' 2007 single "What's a Girl to Do?" doesn't tread into goth territory or have particularly gruesome lyrics. It does dissect (vivisect?) a dying love -- not the object of affection's death, rather the death of the feeling.

The video Bat for Lashes (aka Natasha Khan) made for the song does unleash some cartoon creepiness. It plays out like a dream, with a nighttime bike ride down the middle of a backwoods road, the forest hemming her in, and some surprises along the way.

If you've never seen it before, have fun. And if it's a rerun, it's not like you're doing anything more important right now.



[If the embed isn't rendering watch it here.]

From the Fortean News Desk: In the Dead of Night

Sometime before midnight on Dec 31, 2010, thousands of dead blackbirds fell from the sky above Beebe, Arkansas. As of Jan 3, 2011 workers were still collecting bodies to send for testing. Though preliminary tests show no signs of poisoning, and it appears the birds suffered some sort of physical trauma, it's easy to let the mind wander into conspiracy territory.

Especially because early in the week, some 125 miles north of the site of the blackbird deaths, thousands of dead drum fish washed ashore for a 20-mile stretch along the banks of the Arkansas River. Surely Charles Fort would have loved these news stories.

These people probably have a theory too.

"... when someone whistles"

The Tin Pan Alley/hot-jazz tune "Mysterious Mose" spins the ballad of a ghost who haunts the bandstand. Mose hangs around graveyards and deserted houses too -- he's pretty much responsible for that shiver you get when you're alone at night and have that strange feeling that you're. being. watched.

But it's all in the name of fun and er, doing the Charleston. Oh! And puppets and animation:

[courtesy of turbannedruffian]
That version uses the Radio All-Star Novelty Orchestra's recording from 1930, sometimes billed with bandleader Harry Reser's name above the orchestra.

Max Fleisher used "Mysterious Mose" as both a soundtrack and a basis for the "plot" of a Betty Boop cartoon, with Boop's sidekick Bimbo taking the role of Mose. [And yes, Ms. Boop has dog ears. This was 1930 when she was transitioning from her original canine self to the flapper temptress we all know.] Watch all six minutes of the cartoon here.

And if you're not tired of hearing the song yet, a marionette performer and "soft yard haunter" named Larry Schmidt did a puppet routine to another version of "Mysterious Mose."