Why Horror?

I have a complicated relationship with The Shining.  It's no secret that I had a fucked up childhood.  We all did. Trauma is relative, I get that.  For me, personally, my trauma involved having a dad who repeatedly tried to kill me and my mom.  He was a Vietnam veteran, so I'm sure he had lots of trauma of his own.  I can't imagine.

As a little boy, my trauma manifested in a stutter.  After my father broke down the door to our house and went around chasing mom with a butcher knife, I stuttered for a few months. Mom proceeded to file for divorce and take night classes, but then things escalated.  Violence at home became somewhat routine. There was the time he had all my Easter eggs lead up to his bedroom where there was a shotgun waiting for me as he calmly explained how he was going to use that gun to kill my mom.  Then there was the time he tried to run me and my nana off the highway and  I jumped in the space between the back and front seats until Nana drove us to the police station.  I probably got a Howard Johnson milkshake after that.  Worth it.

As a result of this violence, we moved a lot.  He'd always find us. Mom got restraining orders, but those don't really mean anything.  I slept with a bat next to my bed for about a year after he followed us into a screening of Ferris Bueller's Day Off and we had to be escorted home by the police.  

At six years old, I didn't really get that this wasn't normal.

In the years that followed, I read lots of books.  I watched movies.  I lost myself in stories.  I never lingered on what happened with my dad because that was the past.  I had a mom and we had some laughs.  That was alright by me.  Why would I want a dad if he was going to be such an asshole all the time?  So, aside from a couple close calls where he threatened to show up - somehow knowing where we lived,  I never gave it much thought. I had no time to stew in my trauma. I had enough on my plate trying to get myself to New York before The Fantasticks closed!

My love of horror movies was how I processed this stuff, safely detached from my own personal experience.

Watching a movie, you get scared and your imagination is triggered, but then you go home and eat pizza.  No muss, no fuss.  Horror movies were how I dealt with bullying in elementary and middle school, where I made friends with the people who ran the Gloucester movie theatre so they would let me see R-rated movies by myself.  Horror movies were there with me in high school when I finally came into myself socially and would invite my friends over to eat cheese and watch the latest VHS trash I procured from Videosmith.  And horror movies were certainly there with me in undergrad, where it became routine for me to watch a scary movie to fall asleep at night. 

But there were hiccups along the way.  There was a period in undergrad when I watched The Shining - a lot.  Like, every day.  I didn't question why.  I just liked it.  It wasn't until my roommate said "you watch this movie every night because your dad tried to kill you" that it clicked.  Oh!
I stopped watching The Shining and got a therapist.

That was twenty years ago.  In that time, I've continued to watch scary movies and I've continued to pay no mind to the brief moment in time where my real life mirrored that of a Stephen King story.  I'm forty now.  My father is dead.  He drank himself to death and was eaten by dogs (again, it is not my intention to have my life mirror a King story, if I could be the hero of a story, it would involve a summer camp and an older counselor in impossibly short shorts who wants to help teach me how to swim).  Mom died too.  Now my ghosts are all ghosts.

Maybe that's why I was so gut-punched by Doctor Sleep.

From the shaggy hair, to the big-wheel and the Mom who's barely holding on, it's hard not to see myself in little Danny Torrance.  I was him.  So much of being a grown up is stifling that little kid you once were, assuring yourself that "it's not a big deal" when you're legitimately scared or sad - leaving the past behind to be in the present.  That doesn't always work and it's not always healthy.

This is probably why I lost my mind seeing Doctor Sleep.  I cried, I laughed, I punched at the air like a crazy person.  It's a really special movie and it reminded me why horror matters.   Horror is how we can deal with the real anguish we all face every day.  You don't have to live through a haunted house or campground massacre to be a survivor.  Whether you're queer or bullied or just had a really bad breakfast burrito, we're all survivors.

I liked Mike Flanagan's Haunting of Hill House because it was the first populist entertainment to really address that ghosts are the monsters that we carry with us inside - they're the past traumas that won't go away until we confront them.  Our experiences are the real horror.  Hill House was a genre parable about wellness - the importance taking care of yourself and the people you love.

This Flanagan world-view is very much carried over into his adaptation of Doctor Sleep.  People take care of each other in this movie.  Much like The Stand, this movie posits, without passing judgement or moralizing, that humanity can be good.  The power of kindness in the face of unspeakable horror.  Can you imagine?

Awful things will always happen, they happen to us all but we still have to wake up in the morning.  Just because we each go through hell getting here, it doesn't mean we have to be miserable to people or carry that baggage as a burden.  We can move past it.  We don't have to repeat the past.

Who needs a therapist when I can process all this in the comfort of my local AMC?  Thirty plus years after sleeping with a bat, I no longer have all my curtains pulled shut.  I don't double lock the doors and windows every night and I have the luxury or revisiting my trauma in the safety of a movie theatre, stuffed with red vines and a can of beer that I snuck in.

beep, beep

How many home-of-sexuals are in the new It movie?

That's certainly more than I was expecting so...

Cheat Day

It's still summer.  To make matters worse, I finally finished reading The Stand so now I'm left hollow and empty in the manner that inevitably follows reading a three-thousand page book.

Deadline broke that WB is considering everyone's favorite mess, Matthew McConaughey for Randall Flagg.  That's something.  I've been highly skeptical that the movie would even get made.  Moreover, I've been skeptical whether or not the movie should get made.

The fact of the matter is, we've seen it before.  Whether Outbreak or Contagion or even Walking Dead and The Strain, we're all pretty immune to the apocalypse.  The Stand has lost a lot of the bite it had in 1990.

I was very excited by the prospect of the Harry Potter team tackling this adaptation, but then they fell out over money.  I was happy when Scott Cooper was directing and writing the adaptation because he would really capture the weird, dusty Americana that Stephen King lives for.   But he left too.

Now it's being made by the guy who made the movie where Shailene Dumptruck went to the Anne Frank house.  Meh.  But like Madonna said in 1995, "don't judge the movie 'til you see it."

So, for what it's worth, here is my dream cast list for the unnecessary film adaptation of The Stand.

Mother Abigail
Ms Cicely Tyson.  As if there's another option.













Nick Andros.
The Boy from Boyhood.

Dayna Jurgens.
Emma Stone.

The Dog.  Meryl Streep (in a role that might surprise you).












Joe/Leo
Shortround.















Nadine Cross.
One word: Lohan.

Larry Underwood should be someone heartbreaking.
I don't care about Stu Redman and Molly Ringwald is the only Fran Goldsmith.

This all said, I'd still MUCH rather see a big-budget film adaptation of IT.  The world would much rather see a big budget film adaptation of IT.  How about we cancel The Stand entirely and just make IT?

xoxo
Jeffrey George

Tasha Yar is a terrible mother.

"He probably went out for a hamburger or a chicken dinner...you know how men are when they're alone."

Since the ancient Greeks wrote about Medea, it has been a well chronicled fact that actresses are monsters*. We all know Gwenyth Paltrow is a bloody nightmare, but did you know that even lesser known, D-list actresses can fall prey to the trappings of stardom? Take, for instance, Tasha Yar

Tasha Yar was on a hit television series in national syndication. She was paid handsomely to wear custom-made costumes and to work tête-à-tête with some of the greatest living actors of a generation. But this wasn't enough for Tasha Yar. In her fevered actress mind, she decided that she was better than the hit-series with banker’s hours in a set location that nearly made her a household name. 

So Tasha packed up her two kids and her doctor husband and moved to a country house, Pet Sematary (1989) adjacent.

Ever the narcissist, Tasha commissioned a documentary crew to follow her and her dippy husband around as they acclimated to life in rural Maine. Much like Paula Abdul and her reality show, Hey Paula!, Tasha had no idea that the finished product would be a vitriolic exposé of a woman gone mad.

Watching Pet Sematary, we learn that Tasha Yar once had a sister with spinal meningitis who she let starve to death. We see firsthand her complete lack of mothering skills, as she rarely ever looks at her children, let alone feed them their Eggos. 

Her family may be falling apart, but heaven forbid she wear the same outfit twice. Despite having worked her maid to death, Tasha's still too preoccupied with organizing her collection of skorts to stop her baby son from running into traffic... and you thought Cybill Shepherd was a nightmare!

The years of having to deal with Tasha's ego, coupled with the death of their only son, sends her husband into a tailspin. He can't take it anymore. He's having a nervous breakdown. He tries to seek counsel from former TV-star, Fred Gwynne - who just so happens to be their next door neighbor. 

Fred had been through the Hollywood mill with his series, The Munsters, and Tasha's husband thought he could help put things in perspective. No such luck. There are no happy endings when you're married to an actress - just botox and personal trainers and life coaches and half-empty spray bottles of  I Can't Believe It's Not Butter all over the bathroom.

Pet Sematary is groundbreaking in that its principal performers are completely unconcerned with acting or line delivery or putting any energy whatsoever into the proceedings. Nonetheless, there are valuable lessons to be learned:

1. Do not quit a series in its first season because you'll just wind up begging them to have you back and wind up acting as producer on a series of fair to middling documentaries.
2. Do not bury your dead children in spoiled ground.
3. Do not marry an actress unless you want a world of heartache in the years ahead.

*(The exception to this rule being Miss Sandra Bullock who is a lovely person and can do no wrong.)

Jellicle songs for Jellicle cats

"Stop looking at me you fucking cat!"

I found an old Matthew Sweet CD under my bed last week along with a bottle of CKone and it's made me downright nostalgic.  This time of year, as the weather gets warmer and the days grow longer, has me longing for the simple pleasures of high school!

Picture it:  shaggy hair tucked behind my ear, converse shoes and perfectly weathered jeans.  The first blooms of springtime making it entirely impossible to concentrate on class.  I'd take my sketchbook and charcoal pencils to the graveyard to rub out a quick still-life.  Could it be that I was simply enacting my favorite scenes from Stephen King's unfairly-maligned Sleepwalkers (1992)?  Let's see...

After two years in the public eye, Shelly the waitress had enough of Twin Peaks.  With all that cherry pie and the incessant rantings and lamps being thrown from Lara Flynn Boyle's trailer, it was no wonder that she fled to rural Indiana as fast as the Greyhound could take her!  She got herself a nice job at the local movie house, cleaning up and making popcorn for the locals. She moved in with Ferris Bueller's parents. She was wearing lots of flats. Things were going great.  Unfortunately, Shelly's shitty taste in men didn't change with her zip code.  

Charlie Brady is the new boy in town.  He is attractive. He has a cherry 1977 Trans-Am.  Charlie is very close to his mother. Ostensibly, Charlie is a catch.  It seems everyone in town wants a piece of him. On his very first day of class, his creepy english teacher follows him home and tries to cop a feel!  Can you imagine? I can. Suddenly, we can see the cracks in Charlie's porcelain veneer. Charlie hates gay people. He hates gay people so much that he proceeds to tear his english teacher to bits in the forest with his bare hands!  How rude.

This is where Sleepwalkers gets really delicious!  Charlie's hatred is not delegated exclusively to gay people. He hates cats too!

When the first national tour of Cats came to Boston, I was completely enchanted by the commercials.  I begged my mother to take me night after night. But my mother hates cats almost as much as she hates interactive musical theatre. My yearning was dismissed with, "You don't want to see that, they come right out at you."  Charlie's mom is a lot like my mom. She stays in all day, fretting about with candles lit all over the house in nothing but a silk nightgown. Just like my mom, her moods range from lovingly touching Charlie's face and holding him close, to slashing at him with her razor-sharp talons.  Maybe they sleep with each other, maybe they're monstrous shape-shifters, but who am I to judge the red states?

Shelly needs a little romance, even if she has to will it into being herself.  She packs a lovely picnic lunch for Charlie, complete with those delicious Whole Foods olives and her Nikon camera in tow.  Next thing you know, Charlie is smacking her to the ground and trying to devour her soul! I'm sensing a pattern here. What is it about Shelly the waitress that makes everyone want to hit her so much??

A lot of years have passed since high school and I ‘ve learned a thing or two.  I have my skin care regime down pat. I know which colors and sizes compliment my figure.  And I know that you shouldn't go on a first date to the cemetery unless you've known the boy for at least a month prior. I can also attest that Sleepwalkers is just as good as it was eighteen years ago.  No other movie offers the Borg Queen acting opposite a sofa in a town run by crime-solving cats.  I was once at a party with Mick Garris. Without flinching, I told him how much I adore this movie.  He responded with equal sincerity, "There's no accounting for taste."

My mom was right, Cats was a pass - they really do come right out at you.

(Horror Nerd Alert: Aside from Stephen King, who wrote this mess, keep a look out for cameos from the likes of Luke Skywalker and the undisputed Queen of Horror himself, Clive Barker!)

come sail away

"I'm pre-med.  I know about these things."

I don't know about you, but this has been a lousy week.  I could really use a retreat.  A Saturday in the country.  I was thinking this would be the perfect weekend to take my 1978 Camaro to the lake house and swim out to the raft.

Of course, all my plans halted the second I remembered Creepshow 2 (1987), a movie that proves it doesn't matter how cute your boyfriend looks in his bathing suit or how fabulous your slutty friend, Laverne, may be after a couple Bud Light Limes - when you go swimming in lakes off-season, you are going to get eaten by the lake monster.  So much for finally having a minute to read The Secret!

There was a nifty moment in time when there was an audience for horror anthologies.  George Romero and Stephen King kicked off the trend with Creepshow (1982), which featured A-list talent coming together for the common good of macabre storytelling.  Twilight Zone: the Movie (1983) piggybacked off of this, adding an all-star alignment of directors to tackle each short and, in 1989, HBO capitalized on this moment to great success by launching Tales From the Crypt.  

By the time Tales from the Darkside (1990) got Debbie Harry out of rehab to play a child-eating witch and launched Julianne Moore's film career, the bloom was definitely off the anthology rose.  Falling someplace in the middle of this trend was Creepshow 2.  Michael Gornick (director of photography on Dawn of the Dead) directed all of the shorts.  It's fine. It doesn’t have the all star horror lineup and it doesn’t have a unifying tone, but it does have The Raft. 

I had a Dominican nanny once.  I was playing with her purse and she was watching The Ten Commandments when, in a moment of sincere passion, she said, "That miss Anne Baxter is the Queen of the Nile."  I think anyone who would suggest that The Raft is not a gay film is like Anne Baxter -  in denial! 

The Raft is about Deke and his boyfriend, Randy.  They’re finally getting a weekend away. Unfortunately, Deke's cousin and her co-worker tagged along.  

It's not that Deke and Randy hate women, it's just that they've been there before.  A weekend away between boyfriends is never fun for girls. They can't keep up with the Drag Race memes or the competitive swimming.  They get cold so easily. Girls love their gay best friends until they start making out with each other and leave them without a ride home at the club.  It’s exhausting for everyone.

Deke is a white gym gay, so obviously he gets angry and lashes out in all directions whenever the wind blows.  Randy grew up in New England and hates conflict, so he gets passive aggressive. The girls didn’t sign up for any of this and they want to go home.  It's a mess.

There's nothing like a lake monster to show you a gay's true colors.  The second things get slippery, Deke and Randy waste no time throwing the women overboard to save themselves.  Tacky, but real.  

Let this be a lesson to all you girls who cling to your gays for dear life.  If you avoid forming relationships with men who actually may want to make-out with you, you can’t get mad when they leave you at the club or when they feed your bikini-clad ass to a lake monster!  

Next time your best gays are having a romantic weekend at the lake house, stay home.

Jesus Camp

"Go forth, you, and bring me the husband!"

I’m one of those funny bunnies who has only lived in or immediate to major cities (Boston, NYC, and Los Angeles, respectively). 

Well, thanks to Stephen King, I never need to leave my urban bubble to know all about our country.  For instance, I know that Colorado is a state where people get snowed-in and go crazy, chasing their families through expansive hotel suites with axes. Maine is where inattentive mothers allow their toddlers to roam into traffic, if only to resurrect them in ancient Indian burial grounds. 

In a country populated with killer clowns, sycophantic obese women, and tween vampires, the scariest place may be the most unassuming - Nebraska. A state where religious zealots ban National Public Radio and the use of contraceptives. Where gay children run wild and unattended, channeling all of their confusion and whimsy into misreading bible verses (much like their adult contemporaries, Ted Haggard et al.). 

Nebraska is home to the Children of the Corn (1984). 

If I may, please allow me to turn your attention to a few of the most precious gems waiting to be unearthed upon a closer inspection of this horror classic.

1. Peter Horton get sexually violated by a cornfield.

2. There's an evil preacher/perpetual man-child named Isaac and he looks like this:

3. At one point, Peter Horton asks Linda Hamilton for a rag. Linda proceeds to grab the nearest child, rips off half of his cardigan, then hand it to Peter.

4. This bitch.

5. Isaac.

6. Watch for the contempt Peter Horton for Linda Hamilton. Aside from being openly disdainful of her throughout, he never looks in her eyes.  I love watching straight couples who hate each other but stay together because society says they only have value as part of a set.

7. Malachai has beautiful hair.

8. Peter and Linda run over a little gay boy with their Oldsmobile. They put his body in the trunk, then walk away and leave the car behind.

9. Isaac. 

His may be the gayest performance in the populist horror canon. Even though I love a boycot, this film is best enjoyed with a vanilla milkshake from the Jack in the Box. Please note that the o-x in "box" make the shape of one of those Jesus fish. Think about it!