Tag: Horror

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Archives Renfield's Resurrection

“Where Do You Get Your Ideas?” or “You Really Should Talk to Someone”

 

Have you ever read a book or watched a movie and thought “Now that was original! Who thinks this shit up?” Re-imaginings (as Hollyweird would prefer you to call them) are fun but an original idea is what gets people off. These days everything has been done before, heard before, remade before and an original thought is few and far between. It is a challenge to shock or scare someone.

 

Here is what I think goes on in the film industry. There are probably six or eight executives sitting around a table smoking cigarettes in a dark room, with a single uncovered light bulb hanging down in the center. Then one brainiac says “I got it! There’s this house right? And it’s haunted. Now these teens go into it because…uh…fuck….anyone want to help me out here?” Then a second guy pipes up “Because they are getting out of the rain?” Then the first guy says “Yes! There you go! It’s raining! Fact is, make it a storm! So there is this escaped teenager killer inside because it was his childhood home.” A third guy tries to intervene “Uh, sir. Hasn’t this been done before? I think you are thinking of Halloween and every other horror movie ever made.” Then the first one retaliates “Fuck you Phillips! I’ve been asking for ideas all day and the only thing you can add is ‘Hasn’t this been done before?’ I haven’t heard shit from you until now! Screw it. Let’s just remake some shit. The younger kids will never know.”

 

If and when I do that, please put a stake through my heart (remember to use either Ash or Hawthorne wood only kids) and close the casket on me.

 

When you are starting a story, start writing about a location you know. Anne Rice is great about that. I learned about detail from her. Her locations are so detailed in her stories that you can spot them when you walk down the street! It adds realism to your story. Stephen King has Maine, Anne Rice has New Orleans, Lovecraft had Massachusetts and I have Texas.

 

One thing is for certain, and that is Texas can be a very creepy place. With a history of cannibal Indians, Bigfoot, ghostly lights, UFOs, chain saw murderers, pirate ghosts, the chupacabra, grave robbers, the first and only recorded case of poisoned Halloween candy, the Kennedy assassination, the Branch Davidians, Bonnie and Clyde, the UT clock tower shootings, the only known funeral museum in existence, Mexican satanic kidnapping cults, (great place to raise a family, don’t you think?) there are plenty of weird things for a goth kid to have a field day.   Did I forget to mention that King Diamond chose Dallas to call home? That alone should speak volumes.

 

Next, write about something that scares you. You want to know what scares me? The 5 o’clock news! There is nothing more frightening than listening to your local news report. If the one story about the home invasion doesn’t scare you, join it with the next couple of stories. I bet the story about how the police chase down the freeway where the suspect jumped out and invaded a home before going upstairs where he finds the family dog eating the remains of two corpses wrapped in plastic, will. (See how I did that right there kids?) If that doesn’t work you’re going to have to just watch reruns of Charles in Charge and wait till shit comes to mind.

 

Lastly, if nothing else is working, think about giving the Phantom a new opera house. What I mean by that is, don’t rewrite something, reinvent something! That is the reason that shitty stories like Twilight have done so well. Everyone has seen countless vampires sleeping in coffins and walking around at night, but we’ve never seen them walk around during the daytime, hold down relationships, and drive BMWs. (Don’t hate because you didn’t think of it and you’re not cashing in. Everyone can come up with a bad idea and sell it for the right amount. Remember, “You can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter!”)

 

Join me next time when I preview my newest tale that CNN inspired; “Lesbian nazi biker zombies with unlimited calling plans rallying for tougher immigration laws and prefer eating pancreas to brains”. Chilling!

 

This week’s album I’m jamming to is the Cold Blue Rebels’ “Love of the Undead” , and movie is “The Conjuring” (not independent, not entirely original, but a decent flick). SUPPORT INDEPENDENT HORROR!

 

Until next week, rest in pieces.

 

Renfield Rasputin

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Archives Renfield's Resurrection

“Why Do You Write Horror?”

 

The short answer to this bullshit question is “Have you ever seen what I look like? I’m not exactly a male model. You would have to be bat-shit crazy to read a self help book from someone who looks like me.”

 

I didn’t set out to write horror, hell I didn’t set out to write. When I started writing, horror was the only natural choice for me. When I first started exploring my creative side, I was originally a musician. Music allowed for me to transform my thoughts and feelings into an emotionally electrical form that would be conducted (pardon the pun) to other people. After all, song lyrics are nothing more than POEtry. (See where this is going my fiends?)

 

Years later I was on a haunted tour in New Orleans when I heard the legend of Delphine Lalaurie. If you are not familiar with her now is a good time to Google her. (Who says horror isn’t educational?) I didn’t think much of the story at the time but years later I heard it again and I could not get it out of my head.

 

One part of the story really stood out to me and I thought “That would be a mother of a scene if it was in a movie!” I later found out that a movie has never been made about it, but in my opinion there needed to be. Well you know what they say, “If you want something done right…”

 

I started writing the screenplay “LaLaurie” but each kill scene brewed up other sinister idea for more stories. Only these ideas didn’t fit into the legend but like hell if I was going to let these be forgotten! Maybe they would make for a good song…or short story.

 

And that is how my cerebral sewage that I call short stories began.

 

Someone was interviewing me over a few drinks once about this topic (okay actually, I was just drunk and thought the dog was asking me rather deep and reflective questions) and I realized something. Horror is the only literary genre that is named after the human feeling that it provokes when it is read. Think about it. Sci-Fi/Fantasy? Nope. Fiction? Never felt it. Romance? A noun yes, but not an emotion. (While I’m on this topic please allow me clear something up right now. I’m probably going to get my man card pulled for exposing this but here it goes. Ladies, men like reading romance novels and watching chick flicks too. We just call it “Penthouse Forum” and “porn”.)

 

Horror when done right has always elicited an emotion in me that I appreciated more than any other. It cannot be a cheap pop, done with transparent blood, and God forbid CGI effects that are used to drive the whole story (insert a potshot at any recent action/paranormal movie here). I take horror seriously. The horror genre has the most exclusive fans. Not everything is allowed to get by because we know what we like and we don’t like is people screwing with it (insert most opinions on horror remakes here). Ask any horror fan and they will tell you “I like this, but I can’t stand that. That is scary, but this is not! That book/film sucks but this one is great and I can tell you why!” Who wouldn’t be proud to be in a group that can rationalize intelligently, amid dialogue pertaining to their own delectations? And if you didn’t follow that, you can Google that while you’re there also.

 

So that is the long answer to as of why I write horror. It is what I’m qualified for, it’s what comes natural, and most importantly, it’s what I enjoy. But now that I think about it… Actually I am rather damn good looking. Well, at least compared to Little Wayne.

 

This week Renfield’s choice of movies is “JON” by William Instone, the album “Walk Through Exits Only” by Phil Anselmo. SUPPORT INDEPENDENT HORROR!

 

Until next time, rest in pieces my little ghouls.

 

Renfield Rasputin

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Archives What Comes Next

What Comes Next

I have long been fascinated with the idea of what happens after a slasher movie ends. Not all slasher movies, of course. With some of them, I like to sit quietly and wonder what decisions in my life have led me to suffer through what I have just seen.

But the good ones leave me wondering what comes next. What comes after the horror?

Very few films seem to deal with this. Sure, there are sequels, but those don’t necessarily show the aftermath of the horror. In some cases (like 1981’s Halloween 2), they pick up exactly where the first movie left off. But the killer is still on the loose. Lori is in the hospital, but she has no time to process what has just happened to her, as she is currently in the process of trying to survive once again.
In a lot of other cases, we don’t see the characters from the first film at all. Our killer is off to terrorize another group of diverse, sexy co-eds. We’re never told what happened to the survivors of the previous film, likely because we’re not tuning into a sequel to see those characters. We’re there to see the killer.
In others (Friday the 13th Part II, Nightmare on Elm Street 4), we see our survivors from the previous film, only to watch them die this time around. Sadly, even a Final Girl can’t survive forever.
And finally, in others (Nightmare on Elm Street 5), we see the survivor, but it doesn’t look like anything has changed. The horror of the previous film seems to have been forgotten. “All of my friends were killed. Whatever. I totally got a boyfriend out of it.”

I find myself thinking about horror movies in real-life terms. If the events of this movie actually happened, what would the repercussions be? Would the dead be so easily forgotten? Or would their loss – as well as the terror they had to endure – leave a lasting scar?
I’m a firm believer it would be the latter.

Of all the slashers I have watched, I haven’t seen a series that captures this quite as well as Rob Zombie’s Halloween. I know they are not widely loved (personally, I liked them pretty well, but I can’t say that I love them. I find them interesting. More than anything, they just make me feel kind of dirty), but Zombie certainly tackles the psychological ramifications of surviving a slasher film in Halloween II better than any film I’ve ever seen.
When we first meet Laurie Strode in Halloween, she seems to be a normal high school girl. By the time the movie has ended, one of her best friends is dead (Laurie came across her dead body in the Myers house), and another was attacked and sliced up.
Both of their boyfriends were killed.
Laurie’s parents were murdered.
The end of the movie finds Laurie trying to escape from the Myers house as Michael is relentlessly pursuing her and stabbing at her.
That ends with Laurie sitting on Michael’s chest and shooting him – point blank – in the head.

Personally, I have never shot a human being in the head at point-blank range, but I imagine it’s not all sunshine and roses (Maniac tells me that it’s particularly gruesome, and I tend to trust Savini most of the time). And none of the other stuff Laurie endured that night sounds like a whole lot of fun, either.

Halloween II picks up a year later. Gone is the happy-go-lucky Laurie Strode from the previous film. She is an emotional wreck, trying to deal with these past events through therapy, drinking and pill-popping. Needless to say, it’s not working. She has pushed away everyone who cares about her.
About halfway through the movie, she finds out that she is Michael Myers’ sister. Already in an emotional state, this pushes her further to the edge of her sanity. By the time the movie ends with Laurie in a mental institution, we’re not the least bit surprised.

Seeing it all written out over a couple paragraphs, the journey from “normal girl” to “psych ward” seems pretty sudden. But, when watching these films, I don’t know where else it could’ve ended.

We see a little bit of this in the original Halloween series as well, but not quite as extreme, and not quite as brutal. Laurie survives the two initial attacks, and we don’t see her again until H20 (20 years after those events). We’re not sure the exact path she took, but she has changed her name (to Keri Tate), moved to California, and is the dean of a private school. She has not told anyone about who she was or where she came from. Even 20 years later, she is still haunted by the events, to the point where she thinks she sees Michael stalking her on a regular basis. (Then again, she’s dating Theo Tonin, so we can’t expect her to be very well-adjusted.)

After surviving yet another Myers attack in that film (and chopping off the head of an innocent paramedic), we find Laurie in a mental institution at the beginning of Halloween: Resurrection (a film I hesitate to even mention, because the mere thought of acknowledging its existence makes me gag a little, Starbuck or no Starbuck).

And that is where I believe most slashers would leave the survivors. Even the strongest, most well-adjusted person would be irrevocably scarred. The deaths of those who didn’t survive would not be soon forgotten. The survivors would not recover for a long time, if ever.

I thought it would be really interesting to follow up a slasher with a drama, but that would end up being box office suicide.

It is because of this odd obsession that I came up with this series, which is really more of a thought exercise than anything. I decided to name this series “What Comes Next?”, and my first post was on Mama. I’d like to thank Horror-Writers.net for picking this series up and running it on their website. If I stay true to schedule, I’ll be releasing a new article every Wednesday.

Thanks for joining me. If you have any thoughts on these (or if you have any movies you’d like to see me cover), leave comments. I’d like for these to be conversation starters.

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How I Got My Start In Horror

I need you to think about this for a moment. To get the idea just right, picture first the early 80’s and a little shaggy haired kid in corduroy pants. He is around the age of five and wearing a Ben Cooper clown Halloween mask. Now let’s put him in the house of his strict Southern Baptist grandparents that do not appreciate Halloween, rock music, or horror movies. There was no hope in hell that he was getting to go trick or treating. He could be dressed up in a stupid cheap ass Mickey Mouse costume while he watches “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”, but anything past that…not a chance in hell. Besides, his grandparents told him that “They poison Halloween candy anyway.”

 

Well that was Wednesday, and on Friday that little kid gets to go to his single mom’s house. She didn’t really have time for shit so she’s going to plant his ass in front of the television, unlike his grandparent’s house and thanks to the lack of parental supervision he gets to watch whatever in the hell he wants for a change. But lucky for him it is October and John Carpenter’s “The Fog” is on following the Exorcist, so this should be a good weekend. He can wear the Ben Cooper clown mask if he chooses, because in his head he was a “killer clown”. However one could expect his mom to think it is a little weird and she doesn’t know the proper way to tell him other than to just say “Normal kids wouldn’t act like you.”

 

Yeah, that happened. This was my life. Now settle down, there’s more.

 

Thank God mom drank. That just gave me the chance to watch more TV the next morning while she slept her hangover off. Now the Muppet Show is on and it is not the usual guest. This guest is some guy with long black hair, black face paint around his eyes, cobwebs all over the set, and he’s singing to Muppet monsters! But what I can’t figure out is why is HIS name Alice?  Who the hell cares? This shit is cool!

 

“Did he just get out of a coffin? Welcome to his nightmare? I’ve never heard such songs on Mom’s John Denver nor Grandma’s Tennessee Ernie Ford albums. He’s scaring the shit out of me and…and…I think I like it!”

 

A few hours later I’m still watching TV. Now there is a movie on about these four evil looking clowns in a band with superpowers chasing a phantom around an amusement park. I’m digging the one called “The Demon”. He’s got the coolest makeup. I wonder if I could get into my Mom’s makeup and paint my face like that while she’s laid out.

 

Well my mom and Jack Daniels had a date that night and this was my chance to find that black pencil thingy to paint my face into the scariest creature I could think of and deliver that fantastic emotion of fear to someone else that I most recently fell in love with.

 

Well that shit didn’t happen.

 

My mom got up and found me in the bathroom drawing black lines all over my face and commenced her bitchfest. This in turn resulted in a call to my Baptist grandparents. This in turn landed my ass in the counselor’s office at school talking about “what angers me”, “do I ever hear voices”, and “boys don’t wear makeup”.

 

Skip ahead a few years. I’m reading above my age level (thank you Reading Rainbow), and I take up an Edgar Allen Poe collection. My grandparents were elated. “Oh that’s good! He wrote a poem about a bird!” (Yeah, that’s it.)  Then there was my mom’s response. “Well who the fuck is that?”

 

Nevermind those stories that everyone else knew about, I wanted to read the ones with titles like “Never Bet the Devil Your Head”, or “Bats in the Belfry”.  Sign my ass up! I wanted the shit scared out of me. And that it did.

 

As a teen, metal music didn’t exactly help my horror hunger either. Seeing covers like AC/DC’s “If You Want Blood”, Ozzy’s “Diary of a Madman”, Iron Maiden’s “Piece of Mind” just added to the strife in my household between myself and the parental units. The neighbors got used to seeing albums and cassettes flying out my bedroom window and breaking on the street below. But I think the song that wrapped it up nicely for me was by a little Texas band called Dangerous Toys. The song was called “Scared” and it was dedicated to my hero, Alice Cooper. If you ever get a chance check the song out. I think you’ll feel the same way that I do about it even today.

 

That my little boils and ghouls is how your buddy Renfield found his way into the wonderful world of horror. I was told “You can’t watch that” and “You aren’t going to listen to that shit” as well as “We doesn’t celebrate that devil shit in this house.” And that drove me closer to horror and Halloween every time I heard it. I moved into “The Last House on the Left”, it’s “The House by the Cemetery”, at “1313 Mockingbird Lane” ever since and don’t foresee myself ever moving out.

 

I was engaged on Halloween. My pets are all named after horror movie villains. My man cave is decked out like a gothic dungeon filled with screen used horror props and original pressing autographed movie posters. But the best thrill comes when my neighbors volunteer to help out with crowd control at my door every Halloween. Every year a handful of parents will tell me “We come from two neighborhoods over to see you. My kids ask to drive past your house every year to see what you are doing this year.”

 

Today, since I did not choose a career as a mass murderer, the family doesn’t say much to me about my choices of music, movies, and literature. I’m sure it would still make them cringe, the same way “Rocky Mountain High” makes me cringe.

 

Grandma is now in a rest home and thinks it is great that her once blonde haired, blue eyed little man is now a long raven haired author and musician. And my mom, well she’s been on the wagon for 15 years.