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Stop Saying That

By
Johnny Compton
– January 4, 2012Posted in: frontpage, Outside Thoughts
  During the recent flap over Kelly Clarkson’s endorsement of Ron Paul (possibly a racist and homophobic conspiracy theorist; more likely just an unscrupulous opportunist like roughly 99% of politicians), Kelly responded to her detractors on...

 

During the recent flap over Kelly Clarkson’s endorsement of Ron Paul (possibly a racist and homophobic conspiracy theorist; more likely just an unscrupulous opportunist like roughly 99% of politicians), Kelly responded to her detractors on Twitter by mentioning that she supports:

“gay rights, straight rights, women’s rights, men’s rights, white/black/purple/orange rights”

Dear Everybody in the World: Stop saying that shit.

When you throw out imaginary colors that human beings don’t naturally come in, it belies any notion that you’ve given serious thought to the subject of prejudice. I’m not concerned with the rights of purple people, primarily because I’m more concerned with giving them the Heimlich as they’re obviously choking to death. Likewise, an orange person’s rights to remain radioactive and / or continue using cheap ass spray-tans don’t really concern me.

I know the idea behind the statement is to come across as caring about all of God’s skittle-colored children equally, but it just makes you sound ridiculous. So stop saying that. Saying that you support “gay rights, straight rights, women’s rights, men’s rights, white/black/Asian/Latino/etc.” rights works much better and takes 0.5 seconds longer to type.

Also, everybody on Earth, I’m also issuing a moratorium on usage of the phrase “I don’t see color,” or any similar sentiments, unless you’re actually in a doctor’s office explaining your vision impairment. Yes, you damn do see color. If someone robbed your ass the first thing out of your mouth when you reported it to the police would be the color of the assailant’s skin. And rightfully so. It’s a freaking observable feature on their body.

Again, I know that the intended meaning of the statement is “I don’t care what color you are,” but if that’s what you really mean to say, go ahead and say that. Don’t get cute; you come off as silly or naive at best. At worst, if you genuinely try to treat color and other differences as though they’re invisible then you’re limiting your ability to see the world from anyone else’s perspective. So if someone was legitimately being discriminated against for whatever difference they may have, you wouldn’t be able to even try to identify with what they were talking about and support them because you allegedly can’t see what they’re talking about. It’d be like having a friend come up to me and say, “One of my co-workers keeps harassing me because of the giant angel wings sprouting out of my back.” I wouldn’t know where to begin addressing that since I wouldn’t be able to see the non-existent wings; of course, in that analogy I’d also be the sane one, given that I’m not seeing imaginary wings coming out of my friend’s back, as opposed to the oddball with perfect vision who still insists they can’t see skin color.

While we’re here…

Stop prefacing offensive phrases with “I don’t mean to sound racist / sexist / homophobic / xenophobic / but…”

Stop using the term “politcal correctness” in a derogatory fashion when what you’re really taking issue with is tact and civility, you asshole.

Stop referencing / bemoaning the degradation of the First Amendment in regard to things that actually have absolutely nothing to do with the First Amendment.

Stop hating on Tim Tebow. Stop over-praising Tim Tebow. Stop calling “kneeling down in reverence to something” Tebowing. It’s kneeling, aka genuflection, aka something that’s been around for thousands of years already. 

Stop believing it when movies say that they are “based on true events.” It’s a meaningless phrase used for marketing purposes. The Devil Inside is based on some dude’s idea for a profitable horror movie. That is all.

I’ll be back with more at a later date, I’m sure. In the meantime… you know… just stop, already.

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Confessions of a Fear Junkie: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

By
Johnny Compton
– August 11, 2011Posted in: CFJ, frontpage
The scariest children's horror anthology of the 80's! Hands down...

It still sort of surprises me whenever I find out that any of my peers not only did not read the Scary Stories series in their youth, but never even heard of it. What the hell were you doing with your childhood? Sleeping well without having to fend off ghastly black-and-white illustrations that waited within the darkness of your dreams? Bah! No fun to be had in that…

Among the many things that the Scary Stories series has offered me is a reminder that personal experience is indeed personal and not necessarily universal. Based on my relationship with Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series I would have believed every American child reared in the 80′s would have at least been aware of these tiny tomes of terror. I can still remember seeing the original cover to the first volume sitting on the shelf at the Book Fair, and can likewise remember every kid in my elementary school class being instantly fascinated and appalled all at once. Stephen Gammell’s infamously freaky illustrations made you feel anxious about even flipping through the pages.

This is from one of the "humorous" stories. Obviously...

Only a relative handful of my classmates actually purchased the books, and I could not count myself among their fortunate ranks. I hadn’t even bothered to ask my parents if I could buy it, in fact–I already knew how my folks would react to grim content. So instead I was one of those who borrowed the books to read during recess or whenever we had some free time towards the end of the school day. I remember the books staying in remarkable condition despite passing through many hands over the course of multiple school years. I would not say that we held the books with any particular reverence so much as we knew how precious they were to the owners. Accidentally rip part of the page to someone’s forgettable Spider-Man comic (“Aw man, this is the one where Spider-Man appears to have been killed by Magma–a villain and event that will surely remain relevant for years to come!”) and they might be mad at you for a week before you’re friends again.  Fold the corner of one of the appendix pages of someone’s Scary Stories book and they might not speak to you for the duration of the semester.

The books are, of course, remembered mostly for the remarkable, inexplicably nightmarish illustrations, but I hold Alvin Schwartz’s retellings of classic and modern ghost-lore dear as well. These were the first books I had ever encountered that not only told the reader a story, but also told the reader how to tell the story. Being written specifcally for recounting around campfires and at sleepovers gives the tales a fairly unique leanness that adds an invisible layer of perturbation to the stories. In “The Big Toe” we are spared any explanation as to why the boy’s parents would nonchalantly decide to cook and eat the giant toe he violently yanked from some unseen creature in a garden. Is the family that poor and desperate for food? Do they regularly forage for monstrous appendages?

"Another big toe growing in the garden? You'd think it was June already."

We’re not given so much as a sentence addressing these questions. The father just cuts the toe into thirds, the family dines, and then they do the dishes and go to bed. It’s treated as a perfectly normal evening and the setup to impending horror when it could stand on its own as a profoundly disturbing story.

My favorite story in the series, “The Drum,” also makes great (and perhaps more deliberate) use of creepy ambiguity and quiet peculiarity. In it, two young sisters living in a small village happen upon a toy drum owned by a gypsy girl. It’s a hell of a drum with animatronic figurines that come out of it, and the sisters ask the gypsy girl if they could have it. The gypsy girl promises to give it to them only if they misbehave their asses off, which they immediately agree to do, believing that temporarily transforming into a pair of mini-miscreants won’t lead to any dire consequences.

Instead of disciplining her children, their mother makes a sorrowful plea for the sisters to behave, while warning the girls that if they continue to misbehave she and their baby brother will have to leave them, and she will be replaced by a new mother with “glass eyes and a wooden tail.” Had my mom told me something like that when I was a kid I would have developed some sort of mannerly superpowers. I would have instantly turned into Behavior Boy.

The drum and even the gypsy girl are essentially MacGuffins as the short story briskly progresses to its inevitable conclusion. And again there are multiple questions that get brushed aside. Why do the girls feel they have to actually misbehave instead of just lying to the gypsy girl? Do they believe she can somehow see them when they get home? What is the gypsy girl’s motivation? Sport? Something more nefarious? Why does the mother say she does not want to leave but will have to if the girls continue raising hell at home? Is some outside force compelling her? And “glass eyes and a wooden tail”? Just… why?

I remember “The Drum” in particular as the story that most haunted me due to its unexplained elements. I’m pretty sure it’s the story that first made me conscious of the value of leaving some questions not only unanswered, but unasked. While most of the people I personally know never read these books–much less gleaned early storytelling lessons from them–the internet, as only it can, provides ample evidence that the books have a wealth of admirers. I’m tempted to make the bold, oddly specific declaration that this is the best and most beloved children’s horror anthology series ever. There really isn’t much more for me to say about it, at least for now, so in closing I’ll just leave you with this “scary-for-no-damn-reason” picture from the tale “Oh Susanna” that has absolutely nothing to do with the story.

Sleep well!

Confessions of a Fear Junkie is a series of reflections on the books, stories, movies, images, and lore that have managed to creep me right the hell out.

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Good and Terrible: 8 Movies Featuring Exorcisms

By
Johnny Compton
– August 30, 2010Posted in: Featured, Flicks, frontpage
In a blatant, shameless attempt to garner more hits, I’m  making a topical post referencing the recently released film The Last Exorcism. And so I present to you an entirely subjective...

In a blatant, shameless attempt to garner more hits, I’m  making a topical post referencing the recently released film The Last Exorcism. And so I present to you an entirely subjective list of 4 good (and 4 terrible) movies featuring exorcisms.

Exorcisms would seem to be a pretty popular topic in the horror genre, and yet it’s not explored  as frequently as other common horror tropes such as vampires, haunted houses or zombies. I think it’s a bit harder to make demonic possession fun or sexy–too many people take it quite seriously. I’ve never met anyone who believes in the walking dead, but I have met a couple of ardently religious folk who swear they know someone who was possessed and think any fictional “entertainment” employing the subject is appalling. The good news is that this means demons are still a long way off from becoming de-fanged and romanticized. You won’t be seeing “Team Pazuzu” t-shirts in Walmart anytime soon, I’d wager.

On to the lists…

I could easily overpopulate the entire “Terrible” list with Exorcist knock-offs from the 70′s and no-budget DTV flicks, but what’s the fun in that? At the same time, it would be remiss of me to completely ignore these movies, so we’ll kick off the list with…

4. Beyond the Door


A common complaint leveled at Hollywood in the 21st Century is that they’re constantly producing inferior remakes of great foreign flicks–often horror movies. But there was a time when foreign directors were the primary purveyors of hot, steamy cash-in remake action. And they often didn’t even bother with little details like “rights” and “permission” when making pseudo-sequels and Asylum studio style knock-offs. Beyond the Door was the movie that got sued by the creators of The Exorcist for jacking such signature signs of demonic possession as projectile vomiting and head-spinning. It’s about as bad as you’d expect it to be, but it’s also a 70′s Italian horror flick, so at least it has ridiculous audacity going for it.

3. Exorcist II


Warner Bros. did not decide to sue themselves for screwing up their own film property after releasing a sequel to The Exorcist in 1977. It would have been stupid, bizarre and self-defeating… kind of like the plot to Exorcist II: The Heretic. For this sequel the filmmakers decided that what a movie about demonic possession needs to spice it up are subplots about ESP, pseudo-science, collective consciousness and psychically telling swarms of locusts to stop devouring crops. The film’s aspirations are somewhere between laudable and laughable. It has some moments of visual flair but the story makes zero sense. Anti-sense, even. I’m tempted to go so far as to say the plot of this movie is a hate crime against sense itself.

2. Stigmata

Nobody likes a preachy ass movie, but a preachy movie preaching against someone else’s preachings disguised as a horror flick… that’s the kind of movie that especially deserved to be punched right in the credits. Stigmata, released in 1999, is ostensibly a religious thriller but reveals itself to be one of those movies with a “message.” A message borrowed from an apocryphal scripture, the Gospel of Thomas. The basic gist is that you don’t need to go to church to get closer to God. I’m not here to disparage any such argument or speak on defense of any churches, but I am going to say that if you’re going to make a “serious” movie about how the Catholic church might be a less-than-holy organization with a sordid past that is more than willing to allow innocent people to be harmed or even killed if it serves their own agenda… make and market that movie. Don’t give me a “horror” flick that is actually a plodding bit of unconvincing propaganda interspersed with moments of supernatural hi-jinks to keep audiences awake.

1. The Unborn

Fabulous fanservice poster. Terrible movie...

“Do you think it’s possible to be haunted by someone whose never even been born?” In the deceptively promising trailer for The Unborn, that one bit of quoted dialogue told me that despite a reasonably impressive supporting cast (Goldman, Idris Elba), an okay premise and an ostensibly good screenwriter in the director’s chair, this movie would ultimately drown in its own stupidity. Why would you offer a qualifying addendum to a situation most people would already believe is impossible? No, I don’t believe you can be haunted by someone. Whether or not they were born is pretty much irrelevant. You might as well ask if you think it’s possible to move objects with your mind even if you have a mild headache, or if it’s possible to run faster than the speed of sound even if your shoelaces are untied.

Sure enough the movie is up to its crown in stupidity, with stereotypically bad dialogue (“The door is open…” Yeah kid, we just saw the door opening, thanks for blatantly pointing out the symbolism), predictable jump scares and PG-13 level pseudo-gore (“Hey, this dog’s head is upside down! This lady just bloodlessly bent in half! This corpse is gooey and has big teeth! Please tell us we’re being creepy… please?”). But at least the climax provides a decent set up for a joke: So a priest and a rabbi are trying to perform an exorcism…

Honorable Mention: Repossessed – the current crop of spoof movies are flat out horrible, but at least they’re not 17 years late in satirizing their primary target.

4. Beetlejuice

Ya know, it’s a bit difficult finding really good movies that prominently feature exorcisms. Beetlejuice on the surface is a bit of a stretch. So the titular ghost claims to be a “bio-exorcist” who gets rid of the living. Does that really qualify?

Yes. Yes it does. But even if it didn’t, there is also the film’s climax where the new homeowners are essentially exorcising the ghosts played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis not only out of the house, but clean out of existence. What’s interesting about this is that both forms of “exorcism” are played for screwball laughs but, if it had been given the “serious horror” treatment, they would be absolutely horrifying. A specter who makes it his business to remove living people from the premises by any means necessary (imagine if a flick like The Others had introduced that angle)? An exorcism that completely destroys the soul? Within the context of a grimmer film this could be a source of abject terror.

But it’s Beetlejuice, so instead we got Michael Keaton dancing toward some sort of brothel full of female ghouls. Not that I’m complaining. The movie is hilarious.

3. [REC]

Hmmm… ummm… spoiler alert?

At the end of [REC] comes the revelation that the catalyst for all of the mayhem that has transpired is the apparently botched exorcism of a “possessed” little girl by a Vatican official . In a relatively clever twist on the subject matter, the “demonic possession” is actually the result of a virus which has spread to everyone else in the apartment building and turned them into ravenous “zombies.” The sequel (seriously people, there are spoilers about) shows that the “virus” is some sort of demonic, sentient organism and while the execution is a bit clumsy, the idea is intriguing. A second sequel and prequel promise to expand on the idea and more than likely ruin the hell out of it with some half-assed explanation of what’s going on shrouded by pseudo-scientific / pseudo-theological technobabble.

2. The Exorcist

I’ll readily admit, I’m probably getting cute here by not putting this at number one. Then again, I’m not really assigning much value to these “rankings” anyway. Besides, if I made The Exorcist the number one flick featuring exorcisms what could I write about it that hasn’t already been covered more than The Beatles? The Exorcist is the grandaddy of ‘em all, the Rose Bowl of supernatural horror flicks. So what other movie could I possibly have listed ahead of it?

1. Requiem

“Oh for the love of… really Compton? Really? You’re putting some foreign mocku-drama 99% of the people reading this haven’t heard of at the top of your list? You are such a hipster, elitist d-bag.”

Woah, woah, hipster? I just made a college football reference and quoted Keith Jackson a couple of paragraphs ago. Pretty sure that absolves me of any hipster accusations at least through the rest of the year.

Requiem is based on the same true events that inspired The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Whereas Emily Rose played up the supernatural bits to make it ambiguous as to whether or not the possession was real, Requiem emphasizes the mental illness that the actual victim was probably suffering from. As the most–nay, only–realistic film on this list it provides the most unique approach to the topic, and its exorcism scenes manage to be unsettling without special effects. The possibility of a foreign, nigh-invulnerable force of super-nature taking over your body and mind is indeed disturbing, but in my view, not quite as scary as the reality that your mind can up and betray you to obsession and insanity.

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