Dawsferatu's House of Horrors

 1. “Your existence is a mistake!” That Cold Dead Look in Your Eyes   That Cold Dead Look in Your Eyes / Tes Yeux Mourants is a black-and-white existential horror film from visionary painter, actor, and filmmaker Onur Tukel. The film follows Andy (Max Casella) as his personal life descends into chaos against a backdrop of mind bending WiFi signal boosters and grim promises of a coming plague. It’s topical, but That Cold Dead Look in Your Eyes manages to transcend its contrivances to deliver a story that’s as timeless as it is bleak. That Cold Dead Look in Your Eyes opens--in color--on a happy couple in the process of furnishing their apartment. Andy jokes that his girlfriend (Nora Arnezender) is obsessed with her father Dennis (Alan Ceppos), a world-renowned photographer whose pictures cover nearly every wall of their shared residence. But by the opening credits, the couple’s relationship has soured and reality itself has seemingly begun to decay as well. Everything is blac...

In an effort to make my corpus more legible to future biographers, I’ve decided to distill/recycle some of my Twitter threads into long(er) form blog posts. What follows is an attempt to do just that. Here’s hoping I was successful. Robert E. Howard’s Conan cycle is fantasy as only an American--and more specifically, a Texan --could conceive of it. Here are tales of degenerate wizards and brave warriors; of monsters and other, less nameable, things lurking in dank dungeons. The crenellated walls of Castle Camelot are as far from the decadent cities of Hyboria as the verdant forests of Wales are from the desolate oil fields of Texas, as are Arthur’s high minded notions of noble chivalry and Christian honor from the titular barbarian’s ethos of rugged individuality and brute strength. Indeed, Howard inaugurated an entirely new sub-genre with the Conan stories; Sword and Sorcery. Robert E. Howard Described by Fritz Leiber in the late 1960s as “an earthier sort of fantasy,” Sword and Sorce...

“You are mad, boy, absolutely mad! Vidocq--Rocambole! You mix up legend and history, bracket murderers with detectives, and make no distinction between right and wrong! You would not hesitate to set the heroes of crime and the heroes of law and order on one and the same pedestal!” --President Bonnet chastising Charles Rambert in the opening pages of Fantȏmas New York City It is my contention that the urban fantasy novel ought not simply drop orcs, goblins, wizards, and the like into, say, New York City or Los Angeles and call it a day, but rather that it should work toward making the urban fantastic . The pulp literature of the 1910s, 20s, 30s, and 40s is far closer to my vision of what urban fantasy could be than something like Shadowrun or even Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files . Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre’s Fantȏmas , Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer novels, and Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op stories all elevate cops and criminals to the level of epic heroes-- this is what urba...

1. Meiji Japan Emperor Kōmei succumbed to smallpox on January 30th, 1867. The Edo period died with him. His fourteen year old son Prince Mutsuhito assumed the Chrysanthemum Throne on October 23, 1868 and was re-christened “Emperor Meiji.” Too young to govern at the time of his ascension, the child emperor’s advisors assumed control of Japan and quickly set about modernizing the island nation: old systems of feudal hierarchy were abolished, the so-called “evil customs” of the past were broken off, and thus were the foundations of imperial rule laid. Emperor Meiji Early Meiji reformers believed such reforms were necessary for achieving diplomatic equality and military strength. The motto of the era was “Enrich the Country and Strengthen the Military.” Emperor Meiji embodied these efforts. He wore Western-style military clothing, styled his hair after the Western fashion, and grew a kaiser mustache all in an effort to appear more “civilized” to the outside world. 2. Lady Snowblood Toshiya...

The name Jackson Pollock is synonymous with drip painting, a technique that involves flinging and dripping thinned enamel paint onto an outstretched canvas laid on the floor of a studio. His body of work is less about the ultimate product than it is about the process . Number 17A is the record of a performance. This was a revelation for the coastal gallerists of 1950-whatever. Number 17A was art as artifact: it was bold; it was daring; it was, they thought, new . But, as is often the case, roadside hucksters were ahead of the art world by a good ten or fifteen years. Number 17A On May 23, 1934, a cadre of brave policemen ambushed Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow as the couple drove down a back road somewhere in rural Louisiana. Bonnie was eating a sandwich in the passenger seat when a Texan rifleman appeared and shot Clyde in the head. Clyde’s mind was blown into the back seat. He died instantly. Bonnie had just enough time to get off one last bone-chilling scream b...

     Magic relies on misdirection. Watch my left hand as my right adds another ace to the deck. Focus on my voice while I stuff this rabbit into my hat. Look at this buxom blonde “assistant” I picked up outside as I sneak off backstage and “disappear.” Etc., etc.. James Cameron achieves a similar effect in this iconic scene from Terminator .      The insert shots of the cop filling out paperwork are there to distract you until it’s too late and Schwarzenegger’s driving a car through the front window--a pyrotechnic prelude to the massacre to come. Cameron deprives the audience of crucial information, making it nearly impossible for you, the viewer, to accurately anticipate what is going to happen next.      The nearly five minute long nurse station scene from The Exorcist III operates on the exact opposite principle. William Peter Blatty provides you with altogether too much information. Will the Gemini Killer jump out from behind that desk...

     Long before I became a Z-list internet personality, I had it in my head I was gonna be a paleontologist. I was the quintessential dinosaur kid. I spent hours of my childhood leafing through Gurney’s Dinotopia books, The Ultimate Dinosaur , and later, as my childhood obsession grew into something slightly more scholarly, Greg Paul’s The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs and Anthony J. Martin’s Dinosaurs Without Bones . So of course I’ve seen Jurassic Park more times than I can count.      It would probably be more dramatic if I said I remember the first time I saw Jurassic Park like it was yesterday, but the simple truth is I don’t. In all honesty, I can’t remember a time when I hadn’t seen it--images from the film are so embedded in my psyche it’s like they were there before me, waiting. When I’m on my deathbed and my life is flashing before my eyes, the chances that stills from Jurassic Park will be interspersed between memories of my beloved w...