31 Days, 31 Screams: Resurrection- Day 11 (The Haunting Of Hill House)

You knew I had to use it.

Good lord. I'm stepping into boots that might be too big for me here, in trying to tackle this book. There's a certain... richness to the whole thing, an endless swirling expanse of possibilities and uncertainties involving the analysis of it. You could teach it as part of a high school or college English class. It probably has been, come to think of it, but I never got to tackle anything quite so weighty in my English classes. (Okay, but high school did give me Macbeth, and college did give me Frankenstein, so it wasn't all bad.) I suppose, then, the best way to begin this is to talk about that uncertainty. No, a better word would be... unreliability. That's the main undercurrent I took from the whole affair when I finished it. Unreliability and confusion over what was going on. It all seemed to actively contradict itself, an ambiguous mess of mystery that ended in tragedy. As we follow our point of view character, Eleanor, through her extended stay at the titular (and supposedly) haunted Hill House... what exactly happened here? Weird shit seems to happen but it just as easily might not have happened. Characters alternate between being nice and charming to Eleanor, and passive-aggressive insulting assholes. Things just keep flip-flopping back and forth, and at first I thought it was just the situation getting worse... but then it all snapped back. And snapped again. Back and forth, in and out. What was going on here?


The way forward is to consider Eleanor, and consider Hill House in tandem with her. Stephen King (about whom you'll be hearing more regarding this story real soon, with luck), in his non-fiction horror analysis novel Danse Macabre, takes a bit of time to analyze the opening paragraph of Hill House. As a fellow writer, he finds it utterly fascinating and well-crafted, and goes into a bit of that. What's pertinent is his reading that says Hill House looks fine on the outside, but inside is a totally different story; a deadly place, a place that kills. He then makes an offhand reference to Norman Bates of Psycho fame "looking fine on the outside" as well, and that's the hook we need. Eleanor and Hill House, you see, are mirroring each other. On the outside, Hill House is fine. Ordinary and plain. Inside, it is a nightmare labyrinth of disorientating design, a house that is... well, to use a loaded term, atypical. (Jackson's use of atmosphere and lavish description of the interiors of Hill House is also well-noted here, and one of my main initial takeaways when I first put the book down.) Eleanor is the same. Ordinary on the outside. Inside... a nightmare labyrinth of disorientating intrusive thoughts, a person that is... yes, neuroatypical. The titular haunting, then, could just as easily be the hallucinations, anxieties, and lashings out of an unfortunately unwell woman. Nowhere does this become clearer than her relationship with the other main woman in the story, Theodora. Theodora is a darling, elegant and witty and classy... and, it has to be said, the energy given off between Eleanor and Theodora is absolutely peak lesbian energy. You can just about ship it, from a modern mindset... but then those passive-aggressive moments rear up again, and Theo snaps back and forth between doting and straight-up mean to Eleanor. How much of this is actually happening, though, and how much is Eleanor imagining? Is it anxiety making her assume the worst of Theo's tones and inclinations? Is it straight up imagining things that were never said? Who can say for sure? I imagine the real Theodora to be just as elegant and charming as she was in her happier moments, doing her best to help her new friend... but, sadly, failing to do so. This rich ambiguous relationship is shown, to lesser degrees, with the other players in the story. It's Eleanor and Theodora who show it in the greatest detail, though. There are so many little details that I can't begin to list them off, or we'll be writing a college paper. A short post will have to do.


And then, tragedy. When I first read it, knowing I was coming to the end, the sad end seemed abrupt. Now, knowing what I know? It only makes sense... and if you think about it, you can likely guess how it had to go for Eleanor. I don't want to spoil the book, not really (and if you're Canadian, it's actually in the public domain somehow so YOU CAN JUST READ IT FOR FREE HOT GODDAMN), but I do have to end this somewhere, so there will have to do. Even the very quick "happy ending" where we see where everyone made it in the end feels melancholy and bittersweet, and then the whole thing ends as it began, with Hill House standing silently against its rolling green hills. It ends the only way it could, and I end the post the only way I could; by telling you to grab this book, give it a read for the spooky season, and think real hard about what the hell is going on within the maze of twisty, lavishly described, passages that make up Hill House. It inspired a lot of people, people I respect greatly, and thinking of its implications inspires me too. One of those inspired people, as I said, was Stephen King. Now I wonder what he could have taken from it, beyond his praise for that opening paragraph...?

31 Days, 31 Screams: Resurrection- Day 10 (Doctor Who: The Seeds Of Doom)

Yeah, you knew I had to come back to this well. Doctor Who, in its 55 (and counting) year run, has made scaring the piss out of the children of England and everyone beyond into a form of art. They've done it in almost every way imaginable that's suitable for an all-ages audience, and tonight's story of focus is really pushing the envelope in regards to that suitability. We are once again back in the favorite stomping ground of spooky Doctor Who, the mid-to-late 70's. Tom Baker's on, Sarah Jane is here, we've got Phillip Hinchcliffe in the driver's seat and a shitload of horror tropes to dig through to find the most macabre teatime sci-fi entertainment. All of this is to say that The Seeds Of Doom, the final story of Season 13 and the one I viewed tonight for the blog, is hardcore pushing it. Let's dive in to Seeds Of Doom, just for a hot minute or so.


What immediately strikes me is how clever this set of scripts is with its six part structure. Doctor Who has a lot of six parters, and they tend to drag in places more often than not. You get the same setting, you run out of ways to delay the plot, so you have to spin your wheels for an episode or so just so the damn story doesn't end 50 minutes early. This can be as infuriatingly simple as having the guy in charge not believe the Doctor for four fucking episodes because if he did the plot would be over, or locking people up and separating them for an episode or so. By the Tom Baker era, they were getting better at monkeying around with the six-part structure to alleviate this sort of thing. Seeds Of Doom solves it by having a completely different setting for its first two parts, and the events that happen there dovetailing into the lavish mansion setting of the rest of the story. The first setting, for the record, is an Antarctic base where a weird new life form has been discovered that ends up infecting people and turns them into monsters. Oh, and it's plant-based. At first I thought this story was being prescient and emulating John Carpenter's The Thing a good half-decade before he did it. Then I remembered that movie was a remake, and wasn't the monster in Thing From Another World some kind of vegetable man? Hmm. I like these opening two episodes, quite a lot. The worldbuilding is on point, showing a globetrotting sense of scale, and then when shit hits the fan it really hits the fan. Episode Two even ends with the whole thing blowing up, which is usually the money shot of these episodes... and we're not even a third of the way through!


Well, things do kind of drag out in some way when we get to Harrison Chase's mansion. For its part, though, the show tries to make things as exciting as possible. The Doctor is far more in an action hero mode than usual this time; he's jumping off of tall things to tackle dudes, smashing through FUCKING WINDOWS, punching and stunning people, and he even waves a gun around for a bit. He also gets quite cross at times, something which is a rarity for Tom Baker, I feel. It all adds to the grim and visceral nature of this story. Things are especially more violent than your usual Doctor Who. We've got lots of guns, plants choking people to death, and the goddamned mulcher. At multiple points Harrison Chase tries to feed people to his compost mulcher, a gigantic fuckoff bladed grinder at the end of a conveyor belt. Oh and he does it while they're still alive. Oh and he does kill a guy with it, albeit offscreen. Oh and he ends up getting churned alive in his own mulcher at the end. Not a drop of blood is shown, but at the same time the power of the human imagination does all the work for you with only a sight of the blades and the actor's screams. Jesus Christ the poor kids of England. As I said, it's a story that's pushing the envelope, and a few stories later that envelope-pushing would lead to consequences. Here and now, though, we're at the height of visceral hubris. I haven't said too much about the story, but it's fine. It shifts from Thing pastiche to sort of an Avengers (the British one) story to a  movie with a giant plant monster, the effects of which sometimes work quite well actually! As far as Tom Baker tales go, it doesn't crack the top 10 or anything but it's no stinker by a long shot. It's fine, pretty grim in spots, and a good fit for the marathon. Well then. On with the show.
kaiju

31 Days, 31 Screams: Resurrection- Day 9 (Us)

And now you're mirroring us. Fuck.

Well, that sure is a movie I literally just finished not ten minutes ago. Listen. I had stuff to do today. Besides, if Douglas Adams could skirt deadlines and still put out legendary work from the crunch of it all? I think I can manage a couple hundred words on a horror movie as a quickie. Besides, tomorrow's subject has already been experienced, so I have a little buffer at work. All of this is to preamble before I talk about Jordan Peele's Us, which is a supremely fucked up little movie that plays with themes I have been known to enjoy. THAT'S RIGHT, MOTHERFUCKERS, STRAP YOURSELVES RIGHT THE FUCK IN BECAUSE IT'S ONCE AGAIN TIME FOR FREZNO TO TALK ABOUT SOME MOTHERFUCKIN' GODDAMNED MIRROR THEMES!!!

31 Days, 31 Screams: Resurrection- Day 8 (Unsolved Mysteries)

Probably a bit of a shorter one here, but I'm only looking to evoke a certain mood for the spooky month this time. For my nostalgic memories of the 90's, Unsolved Mysteries fits the bill nicely. I could just end this post here, having already linked the theme song that scared the piss out of my entire generation... but instead I actually went to watch some of the show. Lucky for me, a whole shitload of it is online and I went with two episodes from the second season. Here's where the approach got tricky, though. Unsolved Mysteries is, in a lot of ways, a true crime show. It also deals with aspects of the unexplained and paranormal, as well as some sweeter tales which we'll get to in a moment... but true crime is awkward. It's one thing for me to sit here and chronicle a review of some slasher movie where imaginary people played by actors get killed by someone. It's quite another for me to write out a real crime case where a real human being's life ended. 31 Screams has always been about exploring the fantastical, and just covering an actual fucking murder is a line I don't really want to cross. Lucky for me, the two I watched only had one actual unsolved murder mystery case between them. What's in between? Before we get to the spooky, here's the surprisingly heartfelt.


At this point I'm convinced that stories about hope and healing are haunting me; the first episode I loaded up, after a quick real crime update, told the story of a Vietnam vet named Jim looking for the nurse who helped him after he was wounded during the war. It's an unexpectedly sweet story, and one with the happy ending of the nurse and the patient meeting up again after 20-odd years. Now I'm skipping past more paranormal stuff, but I then loaded up a second episode from the second season. It began with the story of a Vietnam vet named Jim looking for the nurse who helped him after he was wounded during the war. I want you all to know that I lay there, downstairs, seriously wondering for a few moments if that Berenstein Bears/Mandela Effect bullshit had just happened to me, and I'd shifted between parallel universes in between episodes. It all ended up being a huge coincidence, though. At least, I think so. Still, for a show I decided to watch because it had a spooky theme song and dealt with like aliens and ghosts and shit sometimes, it was surprisingly poignant. It's like all those stories I get inspired by, your Sailor Moons and your Doctor Whos and your Zombie Lands and whatnot, but it's real. A real tangible connection between real people, shared for the world in the hopes that they can reconnect and heal the last scars of their wounds in Vietnam. The second vet even says as much, once he gets to meet his caring nurse from yesteryear. It's really quite lovely and I liked it.


And now for the SPOOKY SHIT! The two spooky cases I encountered were of the Roswell UFO crash of 1947, and the cryptid Ogopogo from British Columbia. Ogopogo is basically just Canada's Loch Ness Monster, for those not in the know. The Roswell case is presented in wild detail, and it's definitely a jumping off point that makes me want to read more into it. I mean, I have enough of a rational mind to know that it's probably all grasping at straws, but Unsolved Mysteries makes it feel real, especially when it gets into the details of leaked Army documents sent to UFO hunters. Which could just be people fucking around with UFO hunters, mind, but then you have a living eyewitness who supposedly handled the alien spaceship metal after his dad brought it home. There's always a rational way out of it all, of course, but when you've got that spooky mood and that spooky theme music it can be hard to forget that. That goes double for Ogopogo, a lake monster which actually has a bunch of blurry footage of it shot in the late 60's and the 80's. Unsolved Mysteries shows about four different bits of footage of Ogopogo, and in half of them you can't see shit. The ones from 1989 show something but it could easily be a big beaver or an otter. It makes me wonder if anyone with like, an actual HD camera in our day and age has captured Ogopogo footage. That's that for Unsolved Mysteries, I guess. It's definitely a spooky goddamned show, even if it has moments of true crime and sweetness peppered within.

31 Days, 31 Screams: Resurrection- Day 7 (Twelve Angels Weeping)

Okay, this one was a really fun read. Granted, it only gives me a little bit to work with for the thematic season... but there's just enough here to warrant a post's work of content. So, let's define what we have here. Twelve Angels Weeping is a short story collection featuring, well, 12 Doctor Who stories. Each of them is about a specific alien species/threat from the show's long history, and the whole thing has a "12 Days Of Christmas" vibe to it. It doesn't seem to fit spooky month at first, but if Tim Burton gets to make a movie that hugs the border between a Halloween movie and a Christmas movie, then this collection can as well. The stories are all really good and varied, but a lot of them aren't what I'd call "spooky". You get some wild things like Time Lord detective noir on Gallifrey, or aliens teaming up to pull a heist (but not like a time heist or anything), or an actual depiction of the whole Nightmare Child thing from the Time War. Sometimes we see the Doctor and pals, and sometimes we don't. Of the 12 stories in the collection, three of them have enough horrific attributes to them for me to want to cover today. As I say, though, all 12 stories are neat in their own right. Let's kick it off with the titular one.


"Grey Matter" is a Weeping Angel tale that definitely gives a strong start to the whole affair. Having the Doctor show up on a planet of Doctors during a quarantine is a neat concept, as is the idea of the futuristic plague masks they all wear. As a short story, it plays around the edges of the tale, focusing more on the POV of Chief Medical Officer Perinne as his planet and its mega-cities succumb to a mystery plague, one by one. Oops, the plague's not really a plague. It's a Weeping Angel infestation and they're doing that thing they did in the Byzantium two-parter, turning other people into Weeping Angels... and nobody can tell because they all have those future plague masks on and can't see people's faces properly. All of the scarier stories in this collection focus on a level of existential dread, and Grey Matter kicks it all off well enough as you realize what's happening while you're in Perinne's head and the corner of his eye keeps bugging him, along with a flicker on one of his monitors. It's not a situation that really gets resolved or anything, either. The Weeping Angels always were haunting, and they don't even seem hungry in this episode; they just keep propagating this planet and changing people into statues. Which fits well with the next story...


"Ghost In The Machine" is a Cyberman story told from the POV of a random Cyberman, who keeps heading into battle and hallucinating the image of a girl in the middle of the battlefield. There have definitely been Cyberman stories which play up the absolute conceptual horror of what it must be like to be converted into an emotionless robot, but they're few and far between. They mostly get used as big stampy robots who chortle about emotions sometimes. Kind of like the Borg in Star Trek, where the original point of them got lost in translation along the way. Ghost In The Machine plays that up with a simple but fucking morbid twist: the girl the Cyberman keeps seeing is her old self, the last bit of humanity still remaining that it cannot delete. Just thinking of the implications of that is supremely fucked up, and it adds a whole new dimension of conceptual nightmare to the Cybermen. It's great stuff, and so is the last spooky tale.


"Student Bodies" involves everyone's favorite cosmic fuckups, the Silence! The structure of this one is interesting, as it's sort of a found footage thing involving the audio logs of a student on a lunar university staying home over Christmas break... but, since this is the same university River Song studies at, it's crawling with the Silence. Their whole memory wipe thing causes... issues, as do the nature of those cracks in time they caused erasing planetoids that our protagonist discovered. We get little cameos from River Song and good old Madame Kovarian, and the paranoia and dread over these fucked-up memory wiping monsters nearly drives our poor protagonist mad. It's got that whole found footage charm to it, even in the form of just someone's audio logs. I don't know if it would work as a televised thing,, but what's on the page works very well. There's even an audiobook of the collection, if you want to hear this story (I stuck with the book for now, but I bet that would be worth checking out.) Those are just the three short stories I wanted to cover, but again the entire collection is worth checking out. That'll do it for now. What's next? I have no idea.

31 Days, 31 Screams: Resurrection- Day 6 (Zombie Land Saga)

Just undead gals being undead pals.

Hey hey, how about that? I am no longer a ghost writing these things in late September before I leave. I am actually writing in October, the day of, for once. I spent a week watching the subject of today's post and... well, have I got a mouthful. Let us start, then, with the concept of dissonance. Dissonance is used quite well in many a spooky production, showing a happy and cheerful situation completely at odds with the nightmares and terrors that await later on down the line. (An iconic example of this in the medium we chose for today is Higurashi, which you can read about here.) As good and chillingly effective as this can be... well, we've done it, haven't we? What if we did something different? What if we took an absolutely horrific premise, one which sends shivers down the spine... and made that into the happy cheerful heartwarming show? That's just what I spent a week in isolation experiencing, and what I'm eager to talk about today. Strap in, y'all. It's time to talk about Zombie Land Saga.

31 Days, 31 Screams: Resurrection- Day 5 (Goosebumps)

In the interests of brevity, I will spare telling most of the story involving my first encounter with these books. What I will talk about as a brief preamble, though, is how they really were my first tentative steps into horror. The fact that I graduated from Goosebumps in 1995 or so to somehow watching The Langoliers in 1998 is a bit much, but there's an entire personal history I can chart out there. Some of it you'll even see in this marathon! If Stephen King was the so-called "King" of horror, the nightmare master himself who filled my younger self with dread? R.L. Stine was the Prince of horror. A gateway that was tense, but tame. A gateway which allowed me to get interested in this spooky shit in the first place. It's almost 25 years later and I've come back to pay my dues. I collected every original Goosebumps book as a child, and I think all of them are still in my attic. I grabbed three random ones that I had interesting memories of, and read them for this post. Let's get into Goosebumps, y'all. Oh, and beware... because you may be in for a scare. Get it? I did the... the thing. Right. Book.