Monday, October 31, 2016

Microreview [video game]: Shadow Warrior 2 by Flying Wild Hog

You've (Almost) Got The Touch


Shadow Warrior (2013) was an enormously successful remake of the original Shadow Warrior, in that it retained the fast action, gave it a modern look and feel, and ditched most of the obnoxious racism. It was a lot of fun, even if the enemies could absorb an amazing amount of ammunition before they died violently. The memories I had of Shadow Warrior made Shadow Warrior 2 a must-buy for me, and I love the game, but I'm not certain it's all that great.

After the events of Shadow Warrior, demons now live in the real world. Lo Wang no longer works for Orochi Zilla, but he's got some new friends and he's sent to rescue the daughter of a Yakuza boss. After he finds that Zilla is experimenting on her, her soul is transferred into Wang's head, and they're off on a mission to get her out. 

Shadow Warrior 2 is still a FPS with great graphics and fast paced action. However, it ditches the linear progression of Shadow Warrior for a quest system, loot, and a structure closer to Diablo. There are story quests and side quests, with some story quests closing off unfinished side quests until your next playthrough. The loot system generates a steady flow of enhancements you can apply to your weapons. Some will modify the simple stats on the weapon, others will apply elemental damage, and some will even change the function such as allowing you to drop it as a turret or dual wield. Appropriately, enemies come in multiple variations on a form, increasing in toughness and having different weaknesses and resistances. Most non-standard enemies and bosses will be weak to only one type of damage, so you have to switch up to a weapon that deals damage of that elemental type. Most weapons will let you freely change its elemental damage. I spent most of the game with a melee and ranged weapon of each of the four damage types. On top of all of this, the game still has an experience point based progression, unlocking some chi powers through quests and some through purchasing them from shops. On normal difficulty, I rarely used chi powers except for the self heal. 

Despite the extensive customization options, I found myself relying on a relatively small number of old faithfuls. I'd find a weapon I liked and use it for just about everything. Even with the changes in resistance and weakness, few of them seemed insurmountable even if they're being resisted given enough hits. I dumped a ton of my early experience points into self healing because I was dying a lot. Often, enemies dropped health when they died, but it wasn't so frequent that I felt like I could rely on it. I could've put more points into an ability that increased that health drop chance, but I felt it was more effective to build up my self healing skill. The problem with that was that I spent a lot of the game hacking and slashing with the same weapons until I was low on health, then I run away and self heal, then I jump back in and keep whacking away with the same weapons. Despite the enemy variety and options, I fell back on the same tactics over and over because it was the most efficient way to play for me. 

There are other, less structural weaknesses in the game. The story is incomprehensible nonsense. This is no change from Shadow Warrior, as I learned when I had to remind myself with Wikipedia who all of these characters were and what happened in that game. Shadow Warrior 2 also doesn't set up its world very well. You're dropped face first into it, and I had to look up the Shadow Warrior 2 official website to find out what the hell was going on. Other annoyances included some misspelled words in load screens and subtitles, and instances of some quirky animation. Anything with Ameonna had an awful lot of polygon clipping, and Kyokagami twins often looked unnaturally posed.

This is the rough part of an enthusiast's life. I had a lot of fun with Shadow Warrior 2, but I don't know if I can call it a great video game. Shadow Warrior 2 succeeds at being worth playing despite an awful lot of problems. Some of them are easier to fix than others, but recommending Shadow Warrior 2 requires a number of qualifications. Come for the fun, but don't think too hard about any of it.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 6/10

Bonuses: +1 fast, beautiful action, +1 tons of unique weapons, +1 some of the best video game dismemberment, +1 great at making you feel like a bad ass ninja

Penalties: -1 lots of minor annoyances, -2 gameplay loop doesn't really promote variety of action

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10 (an enjoyable experience, but not without its flaws)

***

POSTED BY: brian, sci-fi/fantasy/video game dork and contributor since 2014

Reference: Flying Wild Hog. Shadow Warrior 2 [Devolver Digital, 2016] 

Friday, October 28, 2016

The Six Best Horror Movies (if you're a weenie)

I don't mind Halloween, in and of itself. There are costumes, booze, it's fall. All great things. But then every show and movie list is a non-stop gore fest and, folks, I do not do gore. Event Horizon might be a great movie, but I watched it from behind a pillow.

That's how I spend most horror movies (also out: GoT, Walking Dead, etc), and thus, most of October. So, in the event you are a weenie like me who does want to watch something creepy, I give you: The Six Best Horror Movies for Weenies.

A quick note, though: This isn't a joke list, where I just pick crappy horror movies. I am going for legitimate creep factor here, just without gore.

1. Psycho (1960). Sometimes the obvious answer is the right one. While it gets credit for essentially jump-starting the gore-splattered slasher genre, Psycho is so much more than that. It s layers of creepiness, with one of the all-time great twists and, of course, brilliant directing from the master.

2. Alien (1979). Chloe has already written the definitive piece on why Alien is one of the best movies of all time. It relies on feelings of isolation and fear of the unseen to keep you on the edge of your seat, and your head spinning after the credits roll. It's okay, though, Aliens is also the best sequel ever, so you can keep the party going.

3. Predator (1987). Like Alien, Predator relies more on the feeling of being stalked by, well, a predator than sheer shock value. Gorier than the other on this list, what with flayed corpses here and there, it ends up being Arnie at his best vs on ugly mother... Also, Predators is vastly underrated, if more of an action movie than horror.

4. Sunshine (2007). If this belongs on a horror movie list is justifiably up for debate, but this isn't that horror movie list, so here we are. And just like its place on this list, there are people who love this movie, and those that hate it. It is certainly flawed, but the whole thing is beautifully nihilistic and claustrophobic. It is a movie that traps you right along with the crew and makes you feel completely hemmed in and hopeless. For that, I give it a spot on this list and almost forgive its stupid third act.

5. The Silence of the Lambs (1991). The best thing a horror movie can do, for my money, is stick with you and haunt you. This is that movie. A stunning film by any standard, with brilliant directing, acting and score, this movie haunts your dreams in ways Freddy can only wish for. There are no supernatural, immortal monsters or demons here, no inbred barely-human murder families, just a movie informed by real serial killers, and performances given by actors who studied the monsters they were imitating, and every bit of those shows and it's scarier than any made-up monster.

6. Les Diaboliques (1955) Editors note: This comes courtesy friend o' the blog E. Catherine Tobler, who told me about this movie, but I haven't seen it yet, but sounds too good to omit. Her words: I first saw Les Diaboliques when I was in junior high--every year, our art class was rewarded with a film we would probably otherwise never see. We knew nothing about it, so as the black and white images began to unfold, we could only imagine where we might go.

The story, set at boarding school on the outskirts of Paris, is one of horror, obsession, and revenge, the perfect thing to show junior high art students, right? Simone Signoret is flawless and cold, Vera Clouzot timid and hard. Wife and mistress conspire to kill the man who has overwhelmed their lives--but everyone is a devil and who may you trust in such a conspiracy? (Three may keep a secret if two are dead, thank you Ben Franklin.)

This film never shows you a thing all the way--the pool that shimmers in the school yard is a haze of sunlight, or a tangle of weeds and trash, never revealing what lurks beneath the water. That's always more frightening than seeing the monster, right--or is it? Because the monster in this film... Well. That'd be saying too much, and the film itself cautions viewers to not tell others what they have seen. A note: the 1996 remake is terrible, erasing all the wonder of the 1955 original. More Editors notes: remakes of good movies are always terrible.

Feel free to chime in with your favorite horror movies, gory or otherwise! And have a safe and happy Halloween, everyone.

-DESR
Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories (which should be on YOUR summer reading list). You can read his other ramblings and musings on a variety of topics (mostly writing) on his blog. When not holed up in his office
tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore.


Thursday, October 27, 2016

Thursday Morning Superhero: Halloween Comic Fest Edition



Halloween is next Monday and it can only mean one thing.  Candy!!  Well, that and free comic books!  This Saturday is Halloween Comic Fest and participating comic book stores will be holding costume contests, passing out free mini comics, and some will even have mini comic packs you can purchase to hand out on Halloween.  Handing out comics has become a tradition in my house and I look forward to it every year.  To find a participating location try the store finder here.  Per usual when Halloween Comic Fest rolls around, I am forgoing my normal comic book wrap-up and will highlight some of the great titles you can get for free this weekend.   Just know that Saga remains a must purchase and it would have likely been my pick of the week.


Johnny Boo and the Pumpkin Tiger - We love James Kolchaka in our household and Johnny Boo has been a staple in my kids' lives for the past 7 years!  I am so happy that we get a new Johnny Boo story just in time for Halloween.  Johnny Boo is the coolest ghost in town and goes on wacky adventures with his pet ghost Squiggle.  This title will be fun for the whole family.  Some stores will be selling this in packs of 25 and it is a great title to hand out on Halloween.





Grumpy Cat and Pokey - Grumpy Cat and her brother Pokey have different attitudes when it comes to Halloween.  Pokey is quite excited, but it comes as no surprise that Grumpy isn't too excited about the upcoming holiday.  Having read a few of the Grumpy Cat comics before, you know that you will get hit with a heavy dose of sarcasm and cuteness, in another great all-ages title.  This is one you should be proud to hand out to trick-or-treaters!






Pokemon Pocket Comics XY - While not really keeping in the spirit of the holiday, it is hard to have a more timely comic than this one.  I can only imagine that trick-or-treaters will be trying to catch a Ghastly or two and other spooky Pokemon on Pokemon Go as they trek across the neighborhood collecting actual candy and transferring caught Pokemon into virtual candy.  Imagine how excited they will be to see this title hit their plastic bucket or pillowcase on Halloween night.  You will have the coolest house on the block!





Archie's Madhouse - We all get trick-or-treaters that are a bit too old to be going from house to house collecting candy.  For a reference point see the amazing Freaks and Geeks Halloween episode.  One of the best.  Anyhoo, Archie is a classic and one that will be appropriate to hand out to the older kids who ring your doorbell.  Archie has seen a resurgence as of late and this title collects a variety of stories that are sure to entertain.







In addition to these titles there are other mini-comics and even a handful of full-size comics.  For a full list of comics click here and don't forget to dress up, have fun, and read more comics.  Happy Halloween!

POSTED BY MIKE N. aka Victor Domashev -- comic guy, proudly raising nerdy kids, and Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2012. 




Wednesday, October 26, 2016

WHY THIS MATTERS: 28 Days Later

Slow or Fast...

                                     
Do you remember slow zombies? If so, you remember the long stretch of time before 28 Days Later—a movie which arguably did some of the most lasting work for zombies in pop culture, next to only Night of the Living Dead. So, yes, you guessed it, it’s time to analyze one of my favorite films of all time. This continues The Why This Matters series, begun last time with Alien. A note on these posts: because I’ll be analyzing these works from a variety of angles and contexts, there will most likely be spoilers within for the pieces that I am talking about. If you haven’t seen/read them and wish to, avoid the post and come back later.

First, I’ll start off by saying this, if you’re one of those people who prefers 28 Weeks Later, then leave now because I refuse to even acknowledge it (and this is coming from someone who loved Intacto—by the same director as 28 Weeks Later, and had to come to the conclusion that she’d just pretend Weeks didn’t exist so as not to taint the other film). 

28 Days Later begins with Jim (Cillian Murphy) waking up from a coma, inside a now abandoned hospital (sorry Rick Grimes, you got beat to the punch). Jim than wanders an abandoned seeming London, picking up scattered money, seeing signs of devastation but not knowing the cause. He soon learns that the apocalypse has happened--and zombies now run rampage over the city. Jim soon meets with other survivors, including the badass Selena (Naomie Harris) who warns him that in this new life, one can't hesitate before making decisions.

28 Days Later hit screens in 2002. It starred Cillian Murphy, who at the time was relatively unknown but went on to be one of our best actors ever (sorry, but he’s awesome) and who was the only redeemable thing about Batman Begins, and was directed by Danny Boyle—who was known for dark films, but not at this point horror—who had made Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, and The Beach among others. The latter of these films remains the only Boyle film I staunchly say “NO!” to. However, The Beach led to 28 Days Later. How, you ask, innocently? Well, The Beach is based on Alex Garland’s first novel (a novel that I’ve read so many times that I self-redact the number because I fear people would find it unsettling) and Garland went on to write the screenplay for 28. Garland’s name you may recognize, for reasons beyond his novels (but you should also go read his novels and strange novelette The Coma). He made his directorial debut recently with Ex Machina, also wrote the screenplay for Sunshine, adapted Never Let Me Go, and made Judge Dredd into something that is not only watchable but is also good. Let’s get this out of the way: I am a Garland fangirl and I don’t care what you say. He’s perfect.

So what, beyond this pedigree, makes this is an important film? Well, number one, it pretty much single-handedly revived the zombie genre—not only because of the decision to make fast zombies (which is where it gets the most credit) but also in its loving adherence to, and sincere rebuttal, of so many of the zombie film (and, really, horror films in general) tropes. From the way that the idea of what it is to be good/do right is twisted within the film (yet, still ultimately upheld) to the clever take on the mansion overrun (see the Resident Evil videogame series for ideas on how this imagery was probably conceived) to the subversion of what weakness is (or hesitation, in this case). It also features one of the strongest horror movie third acts of all time: where the use of music and lighting amplifies everything in the scene to the point that the pacing feels sinked with one’s own, trying to keep it together, breathing.

A second point to consider is not only how this changed the face of zombie films (which, digression time: an interesting thing to note about zombie films and their place in Monster Theory is how the idea of conclusion or peace for a survivor in a zombie film is the idea that one essentially has to escape from humanity itself, seek isolation, find a place untouched by humans who might be infected. Now think of how many zombie films there are and try not to wonder at what that might be saying about how people currently feel), but how it changed the face of the apocalypse genre. The Rage in the film is something as indistinct as so many diseases in apocalypse stories, and yet there’s a specificity there as well. Systems put in place fall down (we have our church scene—god has abandoned us, we have our soldiers—the military can’t help us, we have our emptied out hospitals—no one can heal us), but it is the most primal system that remains—Family. In this case, a wholly created family of Selena, Jim, and Hannah.

This is one reason why I argue against the alternative ending that Boyle and Garland prefer (in which Jim dies). That ending is certainly cyclical and works in a narrative way. However, the ending of the theatrical release—which sees the infected dying out and our protagonist “family” living at peace, waiting to be rescued one day or not, is the one that goes the most clearly against the apocalypse genre—opening it up in a beautiful way. What better way to fight against Rage than with hope?

Monday, October 24, 2016

Microreview [book]: Blade of the Destroyer by Andy Peloquin

A Dulled Blade


Blade of the Destroyer is pure video game material, from beginning to end. As a huge fan of video games, you would think I'd enjoy that. You would be wrong. 

The Hunter is an immortal assassin. He moves among the populace of Voramis with dozens of disguises and kills for contracts. He's also motivated to murder by a supernatural dagger in his possession that whispers in his head to kill. However, a couple of contracts put him in the path of forces even he can't handle alone and he suddenly finds himself as one of the hunted.

Within the first couple chapters, I could tell that I was not going to enjoy Blade of the Destroyer. It was really hard to place at first, but it didn't take me too long to figure it out. It's a really clumsily written novel. The dialog is written in a way that no person would ever speak out loud. The world it's in is an array of basic fantasy tropes. Everything about it is predictable. 

A lot of my problems with the book is with The Hunter himself. Of course, this character that murders without recourse is a dark, brooding sort that lives with the homeless population. And he can't be killed because all of his wounds regenerate, except for a single particular weakness. He can't remember his history, so the reader doesn't need to know anything about him except that he's essentially invulnerable, kills a lot of people, and has some moral code in that there are some people he won't kill and ladies he won't bed. 

Speaking of ladies, the number of women in this story who aren't nameless whores could be counted on one hand. One is a child, another is an old woman, none of them could be described as well-developed characters, and nearly all of them die violently and it's often in support of pushing The Hunter to action. I don't expect every novel I read to be particularly progressive, but Blade of the Destroyer is exceptionally unkind to women. 

The best I could compare Blade of the Destroyer to is a video game. The Hunter murders his way through a predictable story to a violent conclusion, complete with huge lore dumps in the middle chapters to fill in the details of the world that should be woven throughout. This novel inherits one of the video game media's weaknesses in that it's a poorly written story. In video games, this is often easy to overlook because the game can have more going for it like engaging gameplay or beautifully rendered art. A poorly written novel isn't worth much at all, and Blade of the Destroyer is poorly written.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 3/10

Bonuses: Nada

Penalties: -1 it's yet another story of male violence that fridges a woman to motivate its protagonist

Nerd Coefficient: 2/10 (really really bad)

***

POSTED BY: brian, sci-fi/fantasy/video game dork and contributor since 2014

Reference: Peloquin, Andy. Blade of the Destroyer [J. Ellington Ashton Press, 2015] 

Friday, October 21, 2016

Interview: Matthew Irvine on Carnival of Souls

Matthew Irvine is a film professor, producer, and director. He is also the rights-holder to one of my all-time favorite cult films, Carnival of Souls. The movie was made in 1962 by a team of filmmakers in Kansas who worked together making industrial and educational films for their day-jobs, and decided to make a feature film after director Herk Harvey found an abandoned amusement park in Utah. It had a quiet reputation as a gem of truly independent horror films, but for years, collective wisdom held that the film was in the public domain, so terrible copies of it proliferated. But now there's an unbelievably gorgeous version out from the Criterion Collection that just arrived in stores. I got to talk with Matthew about how he got involved with the movie, and some of the backstory behind how we got here.

NF: What's your connection to Carnival of Souls? What drew you to it?

MI: I got involved in the film a long time ago when I got out of film school. A few people including my manager, thought my MFA Thesis film had a tone to it similar to this old cult film called Carnival of Souls. I had never seen the film until my Thesis film was screened at the Tokyo International Student Film Festival. While there, a few audience members, usually older folks, wanted to talk with me about my film as it gave them the same feelings that this old film did back in the early 1960’s, Carnival of Souls. The funny thing was that the non-Japanese people at the fest didn’t really respond to my film, so I guess you could say I was “big in Japan” for a short time. When I got back to the states I made sure I got a hold of CoS (on VHS I believe) and finally watched it. At the same time that was happening, I was stating to work with Peter Soby, Jr. who was at Shoreline Pictures, I believe. He saw my film and the two of us connected right away. As fate would have it, he was involved in getting a sequel to CoS made. So, my connection all kind of came from that. I wrote what I thought was a damn good and faithful sequel and it eventually landed at Trimark Pictures. Well, at least the concept of doing a sequel did. My understanding was that Trimark got Wes Craven interested in lending his name to the making of a sequel and when that happened, well...it’s a common story of how people get their first entry into the business. My friends Steve Jones and John McNaughton told me that you have one choice on how you enter the film business and that is to either bend over or lay down because either way, you’re gonna get screwed. Being from Chicago though, I didn’t take kindly to that so I pursued obtaining all rights to the film as the Trimark pictures sequel was a one-off. Peter Soby and I hired an attorney to do a chain of title on the film to make sure the film was not in public domain, as many people falsely believe it is. The chain came back totally clean and we went directly to Herk Harvey and John Clifford and offered to purchase the negative and all rights to the film.

NF: At that time, did CoS already have the reputation of being a public domain film?

MI: I made sure it was NOT in public domain before I pursued the rights. The film has been floating around for some time with the belief that it is Public Domain but that is just not the case. We have done cease and desist actions over the years because people think it is in Public Domain. There are still those that could care less whether it is in Public Domain or not, they are going to do what they want with what they have to make a buck. Most every dvd, even the “colorized” version are from crappy prints that are not worth watching, IMHO. Peter and I just expected that there are people that will never be convinced that the film is not in Public Domain. Not everyone thinks that way though. A lot of people have approached us over the years asking if they could screen the film at festivals here and there and we almost always grant the request as long as no money is involved because I like to know the film is still being shown and appreciated. It screened at the Louvre a couple years ago and they contacted me before they included the film in their film retrospective. Of course I said yes. I think Herk would be pretty proud to know that his film screened at the most famous art museum in the world.

NF: Do you know where the public domain assumption came from? How did you go about finding the chain of title and verifying it was still protected?

MI: There was a bankruptcy thing that occurred where the distributor closed shop and it was assumed that CoS was part of their library, which it was not. But Herk and John had real jobs and did not have the time to pursue anything legally until interest in the film was revived in the late 90’s. They then did a director’s cut of the film and re-established copyright ownership on the film and story. The negative was being stored at the Eastman House in New York and all other elements to the film were with Herk and John in Kansas.
Herk Harvey, director and head spook in Carnival of Souls

NF: There are a number of other DVD releases — including at least one colorized one you mentioned — from video distributors that specialize in Public Domain films. When Criterion initially released the film on DVD, were they aware that it was still under copyright protection?

MI: Yes. We made that deal with them originally, but through MPI Media as an intermediary. MPI made an agreement with Peter and myself, and then made a deal with Criterion for a remastered DVD. I provided all the elements for that release and it was done with my full cooperation. Unfortunately I didn’t see a dime from that but I didn’t get involved in CoS to get rich, I got involved because it was a film worth saving and treating with respect and care.

NF: What went into creating this blu-ray release? What was the process like for restoring the film and working with Criterion?

MI: The Academy Archives did the remastering of the negative. And I believe Criterion worked with them on the Blu-Ray. I know the people who did the restoration and they love the film and treated every frame as though it were Citizen Kane.

NF: It's the rare totally independent horror film that rises to the status of curation alongside Bergman and Kurosawa movies. I mean, it's definitely rough around the edges, but the movie seems to sort of rise above. What do you think it is about Carnival of Souls that makes it a standout when so many films of similar pedigree were only at their best when they were fodder for Mystery Science Theater 3000 (RiffTrax has tackled CoS but the movie stands alone - ed)?

MI: I think it was the way it was shot. Herk wanted to make a different film. Different from what most “Hollywood” films were like. I think this helped influence the way it was shot. It really has a weird tone to it. Yes, it is cheesy in spots but it only adds to the overall surreal quality to the movie, in my opinion.

NF: When can we expect Herk Harvey action figures in the Entertainment Earth catalog? Or, what's next for the film?

MI: We have been talking about doing a straight-remake of the movie for some time now. We actually have a couple producers interested. But at this point, I’m like I don’t care to make a schlocky remake for a fast buck; that already happened (Wes Craven allowed his name to be put over the title in a 1999 re-imagining of the movie that should be avoided at all costs. - ed.). If we do a remake it will be something worthy of the original film. Something that is different, weird, creepy, original. Something that would make Herk proud. I don’t have “Fuck You” money but I do have “Fuck You” time. I have been involved in CoS for so long that I won’t do anything with it until the right people come along and want to treat it seriously, like Criterion and the Blu-Ray. We had other offers for a Blu-Ray release but went with Criterion because, they’re like the Cadillac of that particular film market.

Posted by Vance K - cult film reviewer and co-editor of nerds of a feather, flock together since 2012, musician, and Emmy-winning producer.

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Thursday Morning Superhero

We just wrapped up the third and final debate and don't know either of the candidates' stance on comic books.  Marvel has re-imagined Donald Trump as a super villain, but the Marvel CEO has made campaign contributions to the Donald.  That leads me to believe that Trump is a Marvel fan and is looking forward to Guardians of the Galaxy 2 this next summer.  Did you see that trailer?   Hopefully we can have some additional insight on this crucial topic in the next few weeks so I can make an informed decision.



Pick of the Week:
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #13 - Sometimes when you are home sick with the flu you just want a simple book about a superhero who can talk to squirrels, a villain who splits in two every time he is hit, and a kidnapped Ant-Man for undisclosed purposes.  While I am still relatively new to this series, I know what title I am going to go back and read on Marvel Unlimited.  This issue was a lot of smart and chaotic fun that I can't recommend enough.  One of my buddies has been telling me this for over a year and I have picked up an issue or two, but I think it is time to add this series to my pull-list.  Bring on the Squirrel Girl movie!!!

The Rest:
Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency: The Salmon of Doubt #1 - I had no idea of what to expect from this title, other than it seemed like a quirky detective series that I believe was recently picked up for a television show.  Based on Douglas Adams' character created after the end of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, this series promises to be a whole lot of fun.  After reading the first issue, I feel like I have be transported back in time to an old Lupin III manga.  Dirk's style and attitude remind me of the famous detective, but the addition of the supernatural provides a unique spin for it.  I wanted more to happen in this series, but had my interest piqued enough to return for the second issue.  Arvind Ethan David definitely has developed some unique characters that could make this book something special.

Dept H #7 - Matt and Sharlene Kindt's underwater mystery continues with an intense issue that still doesn't get to the bottom of who may have killed Mia's father.  Due to sabotage, the crew is in grave danger as many compartments of their facility are filling with water.  In addition to the malfunctions the crew is dealing with, there is a virus on the loose that could kill thousands, if not millions, if it is brought to the surface.  Despite this, the Kindts managed to put together a serene issue that shed valuable insight into one of the crew members who seems on the up and up.  Learning more about about Mia's father and his studies has been one of the most rewarding aspects of this series.




POSTED BY MIKE N. aka Victor Domashev -- comic guy, proudly raising nerdy kids, and Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2012. 

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

PERSPECTIVES V: Voices in Science Fiction & Fantasy

Welcome to Perspectives V!

Here’s how it works: an editoral, opinion piece, or critical essay written by an external blogger, critic, journalist, or creative person is presented by a regular contributor to nerds of a feather, flock together; it is then answered by other regular 'nerds of a feather, flock together' contributors. Crucially, each respondent will also respond to each preceding respondent. This time around, for a change of pace we use a new collection, not another article, as our jumping-off point. This episode's cast o' characters:


Vance K (Respondent #1)


Vance is the co-editor and usually cult-film reviewer for ‘nerds of a feather, flock together.’ He records loud folk songs under the name Sci-Fi Romance, and writes and directs things for a living.

Charles Payseur (Respondent #2)



Charles is an avid reader, reviewer, and writer of speculative fiction and poetry. Most of his time and energy goes into maintaining Quick Sip Reviews and being a general nuisance on Twitter as @ClowderofTwo. He's contributed to Nerds of a Feather since 2014.

The G (Respondent #3)


The G is founder and co-editor of 'nerds of a feather, flock together.' In his spare time, he makes synthwave music. Find him on twitter @nerds_feather.

EPISODE 5: In which three nerds tackle the battle over the direction of today's sci-fi and fantasy with the help of some historical perspective

This month, The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund published a new collection called She Changed Comics (link here), which profiles 60 female comics creators from the dawn of the medium until the present day. Coming out as the book does in the current social atmosphere, telling the long story of the impact a marginalized group of creators had on a medium and the ways in which their voices helped shape and re-define the kinds of stories that are told and the ways in which they are told has tremendous resonance for the present day. With the Hugo Awards embroiled in a years-long struggle between individuals with different views of what science fiction and fantasy should look like now and in the future, and the raging inferno of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and one candidate's appeal to reject out-of-control political correctness, this is a conversation that has huge ramifications both inside and outside of genre circles.


Vance K

I reject the notion of "the good old days."

I think that pretty much any period of history people can point at and say "those were the good old days," either socially or in media like comic books or elsewhere, can be pointed to by another group of people who could say "those were the darkest days of my life." Like Louis C.K. said, time travel only works if you're white. If you're a black time traveler, you can't really go back to any time before 1980.



The gifted short story author James Tiptree Jr. counted Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, and other fixtures in the sci-fi pantheon as contemporaries. But James Tiptree Jr. was in actuality Alice Bradley Sheldon, and she had to use a male pseudonym because publishers wouldn't even consider science fiction written by women. Sheldon was a fantastic writer, and another of her contemporaries, Shirley Jackson, remains one of my favorite authors. But there were undoubtedly female writers who were just as gifted and yet were never published. Or budding writers who were told that girls didn't write that kind of thing...or write at all. And selfishly, as a fan, I'm really sad about the stories that stayed in those pens and that I'll never get to read.

But I get it — I understand the pull of that kind of "good old days" thinking. Somewhere, usually in childhood, something struck sparks in that place in our hearts lined with kindling, and we chase after that feeling for the rest of our lives. That's normal. Back in May, NPR did an interview with former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan where he said that he wanted "an America like the country I grew up in, which was a pretty good country." It was a pretty good country for him, I'm sure, and one in which he felt safe and protected. But take a look at the pictures by Swiss photographer Robert Frank, who crisscrossed the United States in the 1950s and documented what he saw. Collected in his book The Americans, which was brutally panned at the time, shows a much less rosy picture of the "idyllic" 1950s, where "everybody" lived in nice suburban homes and respected their elders and lived like Leave it to Beaver.

For me, what it comes down to is "Who gets to tell their story?" The 1950s zeitgeist prized homogeneity; that's why the houses all looked the same, and there were rigid social roles that people were expected to keep up or else. I was talking to an old police lieutenant a few weeks ago, and he told me that when he started with his force about thirty years ago, the guys with as many years on then as he has now all started working in the 50s, and they went to so, so, so many suicide calls. And I think that's because it takes an unreal toll on someone to pretend to be something they're not. It's only now that we're beginning to crack the lid on that box and get a glimmer of all the ways people and their experiences can be different, and all the ways that they've had to contort over the years to pretend they were just like everybody else. The people that looked the same, acted the same, thought the same, they were the ones that got to tell their stories. But that left a lot of voices out.

People like Nalo Hopkinson and N.K. Jemisin, who are writing some of the most compelling SF/F today, they didn't get to tell their stories then. But now they can. And it's still an uphill climb for too, too many people, but as a reader, my experience of the world has always been broadened and enriched by what I've read. I feel like getting to hear stories from more and different voices helps scrub away some of my ignorance of the world and its many, many facets, and I feel like that's a gift. So I for one am excited that we can read Raina Telgemeier's and Marjane Satrapi's comics, despite people who want to silence them. I think a broader understanding of the world and the people in it is only to our benefit, and I'm personally excited about the broader direction that genre fiction seems to be heading.



Charles Payseur

I come to the discussion about the "State of SFF" from a strange place. Well, not really. I come to the discussion from a place that a great, great many people do. From the outside. Not because I haven't been a fan of SFF my entire life. I have. Not because I don't participate in SFF fandom. I do. Not because I don't create SFF. I am a SFF fiction writer, a SFF poet, and a SFF reviewer and nonfiction writer. That said, I do not come to this discussion from within SFF. Despite my participation in SFF and my engagement with it, I hold very little power in SFF. And when I talk about SFF, when I write it and when I read it, I'm doing so from the outside looking in. Because I do not get to define what SFF is. Because I do not get to choose what SFF gets published. Because at times I cannot even pay to have access to the stories that I want to read, much less get paid for the stories I want to tell.

I am queer. I write SFF romance and erotica and poetry as well as more "mainstream" stories. I argue that the SFF canon needs to be thrown out the window. I hate institutional genre distinction and segregation. I somewhat recently read Melissa Scott's Trouble and Her Friends for the first time. I love how that novel shows what difference can do within groups of people. In the novel, Trouble is part of a group of queer hackers who find themselves hated by the larger hacker community because they are "political." Political meaning because they are queer and because they cannot separate their queerness from their hacking. Likewise, the most pervasive complaints I hear when people talk about the "State of SFF" (and the state of the country, the world, and probably beyond) is the terror of political correctness. But what does it mean to be political? Are you political if you vote? Well, not for the swaths of the country that talk about political correctness like it's some new form of terrorism. They can just vote. Is it being passionate about something, about SFF? Again, not for those who bemoan the SJWs in their SFF. They can just be passionate. So then, being "political" has nothing to do with what you do. It has to do with who you are.

And let me say this. Political correctness, as some call it, hurts no one. It does the opposite of hurt people. The only claim I have seen as to the harm done by political correctness is that it stops certain stories from being written. That people are, essentially, censored. People tell me I get worked up about things, which I suppose is a big step up from being told I'm hysterical. Because calling someone hysterical is a threat. It pulls from a history where a man could have a woman institutionalized for being too political. Too passionate. It's a reminder of that, a sort of wistful "back in the good old days" sort of thing. Ah, back in the good old days when slavery was legal, when women could not own property, when being queer was a crime. Evoking the good old days before we got all uppity and politically correct is a threat. Maybe you don't hear it when the words leave your mouth. But you can be damn sure that other people do.

But sorry, back to censorship. Back to the evils of political correctness. Back to the "State of SFF." Those stories, those victims of the PC police…they should not be written. Stopping them, far from being the greatest crime of humanity, is actually a good being done. Just like someone deciding not to tell a racist joke because it "might not go over well" is a good thing. Not engaging in "locker room talk" is a good thing. Not writing stories that will hurt people, that perpetuate the continued oppression, exploitation, and violence against marginalized groups…is a good fucking thing. The "real victims" are not those who suddenly have to consider their words. The real victims, as always, are the people being murdered for who they are. Are the people being reminded at every turn that they should be grateful for being alive and so should be quiet. Should stop being so political.

What is the state of SFF? It needs work. It needs to sit down and examine its past, present, and future. To see the good there, yes, definitely. To recognize the harm, though, as well. And to do something about it. People are already engaged in so much amazing work toward just that. Un-erasing those who have been pushed out of the SFF narrative, just as this work seems to be seeking to un-erase the women instrumental to comic book history. Crafting new and affirming and incredibly imaginative stories. Holding people responsible for their words and actions. Creating a field, a fandom, and a profession that I aspire to be a part of. And if that bothers you—if you weep for the stories that might not be told because we're "too politically correct" but don't weep for the stories that were not told because we were and are too racist, misogynist, ableist, queerphobic, and otherwisely terrible…then you are part of the problem.



The G
Around the time I took driver’s ed, Wendy’s introduced a new burger called the Cheddar Melt, which featured grilled onions, cheese sauce and mayo. Since there was a Wendy’s right by the driver’s ed school, I basically ate that thing every day for a week. And to sixteen-year-old me, the cheddar melt was pretty much the best thing ever invented, even if it was actually just an industrially produced meat patty smothered in an unnaturally liquefied substance with a passing resemblance to cheese. Oh, and it wasn’t even original; McDonald’s had made the same exact burger famous a decade prior. And people ten years older than me remember it in pretty much the same terms.

You may be wondering what this has to do with anything, but check it: the way we remember the science fiction and fantasy of our youth is not unlike the way we remember those discontinued fast-food items, like the Wendy’s Cheddar Melt. They excited us then because they were new, and because we were new to making our own choices, and because our tastes and understandings of the world were not sophisticated or jaded by experience and disenchantment.

And then when it’s gone and you are also gone from that place and time, you remember it in terms of how it felt, always wonder if you can get that feeling back. Like with Heinlein, who took you places—important places, even—when you were still young and unformed. Even though he’s the proverbial McRib of genre fiction.


Don’t get me wrong—I’m not trying to be a snob here, or pooh-pooh that youthful sense of wonder. I was really into Isaac Asimov and David Eddings as a 12-15 year-old, and while neither is much of a writer, both authors played important roles in shaping me as a reader. And because of that, I’ll always remember those reading experiences fondly.

But you know what? The last time I was in Indonesia, I saw that Wendy’s had the Cheddar Melt back on the local menu, so I bought one. And it tasted like what it was: an industrially produced meat patty smothered in an unnaturally liquefied substance with a passing resemblance to cheese.

...which is a roundabout way of saying that you can’t go back, and even if you could, you probably wouldn’t feel the same way about things as you did then. Even nostalgic movements—and I am an active participant in one such movement—are at their best when they use the toolkit of the past to create something new. That has meaning and value, but it has meaning and value in large part because it is something new, and responsive to new conditions. By contrast, it’s just not possible to turn back the clock and return to the lost golden age, which never existed as such anyway.

That being said, I don’t idealize the present state of genre either. In fact I share the grievance that genre and popular genre awards have become insular and overly predicable affairs; it’s just that pups n' co. completely misdiagnose the problem.

As I see it, long- and short-form SF/F suffer from quite different problems. The novel field strikes me as overly risk-averse (with notable exceptions). Predictable series—many of which are just rehashes of or sequels to earlier series—rule over self-contained novels, a problem that afflicts other media as well. And while literary genre does exist, there isn’t very much of it—a consequence of publishing’s economic structure, which does not reward risk-taking, but rather risk-avoidance.

Notably, incentives for risk-avoidance benefit the exact kind of novel the puppies claim are being pushed off-stage. Light, action-oriented summer blockbuster-type fare dominates bookstore shelves, Amazon rankings and popular award lists alike. Not that there’s anything wrong with that—it’s what people want, after all. And some of it is quite good (Old Man’s War, for example).

But what about the Hugo Awards? Don’t they reward literary over popular works?
No, disembodied rhetorical voice. They do not.

As Chaos Horizon notes, during the period 2001-2014, literary SF/F accounted for a mere 5.56% of nominations in the novel category. Big selling, in-genre novels that innovate along the margins are the order of the day, far more often than not. If you don’t write that kind of novel, you are unlikely to make a Hugo shortlist, and that goes for literary SF/F as much or more as blockbuster-style space opera.

Short fiction suffers from a very different kind of problem. The market for short SF/F is much smaller, and a far greater proportion of readers are also writers. At the same time, the prestige magazines and websites that publish the bulk of shortlisted stories increasingly resemble one another in terms of what they publish, and increasingly publish the same group of writers. And this, in turn, creates incentives for new writers to produce the same kinds of stories, resulting in an abiding sameness across the field.

Here pups n' co. approach a legitimate point, which is to say that there is form of “literary” gatekeeping potentially crowding out other modes of storytelling. Yet once again, they misdiagnose the problem, this time as political conspiracy when the problem is institutional. And the gatekeeping mechanism is form and approach not the identity or politics of the writer. (See: Jonathan McCalmont's writing on this issue). Meanwhile, the alternative they present, of bang-bang futureman action stories, is as uninspiring as it is regressive.

As I wrote last year:

Genre needs more outlets that eschew formulas, or at least try new ones. More to the point, it needs more outlets that don’t give a shit about conventions or consensus.

But that’s a way forward, not backwards. The same cannot be said for entitled whining about women and minorities gaining visibility as authors, critics and consumers. The broadening of perspectives on SF/F to include previously marginalized or underrepresented voices, is, in my opinion, the one unequivocal marker of progress in the field. If that's "PC," then, well, let's hear it for PC.
***


Tuesday, October 18, 2016

ESSENTIALS: 24 Cult Films for Late, Late Nights

I feel like I should preface any list of "Best" cult films or "Most Important" cult films with the disclaimer that there is no list. The thing that makes cult films memorable is that they are a representation of a unique voice, and different voices appeal to different people. Plus, there are just so, so many movies out there, nobody can see them all. If you've got a film that you (or you and your friends) love and quote and everybody else thinks you're nuts, I think you're doing the thing right, and it doesn't matter if that movie's on a list anywhere or not.

The other key thing about cult films is that they are usually produced outside of the mainstream, so a lot of lists of "Best Cult Films" that I see online are rehashes of movies like The Big Lebowski or Office Space, which were box office flops, but gained a second life through word-of-mouth after their disappointing theatrical runs. I love both of those movies, and they certainly have cult followings — Office Space prompted Swingline to actually make a red stapler, and The Big Lebowski started a religion — but now they're so well-known I don't need to invoke them here.

Since I get to make this list, I wanted to focus on movies that didn't show up on the other lists. I also wanted to stay away from "The Worst Movie Ever" kinds of films (plus, I already covered that ground), and try to share movies that I think are legitimately good, or moving, or compelling, even if you can see their seams sometimes.

These are in no particular order, but they are all perfect for late nights or rainy days:

1. Carnival of Souls

After a traumatic accident, a woman becomes drawn to a mysterious abandoned carnival. - IMDb

Mistakenly thought to be in the public domain for decades and widely available in grainy, garbled versions, Carnival of Souls has a new blu-ray release from Criterion with restored picture and sound that really shows off this movie for what it is. It's a legitimately eerie movie, beautifully shot, full of evocative imagery and intelligent subtext. This movie also has special significance for me, because seeing the original Criterion Collection release of this movie alongside films by Renoir, Godard, Kurosawa, and Bergman was the first time I really understood that cult films didn't have to be a guilty pleasure. That release made me realize that there were other people like me who loved both art house cinema and outsider cinema and took them equally seriously.

2. Chimes at Midnight

The career of Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff as roistering companion to young Prince Hal, circa 1400-1413. - IMDb

For many years, the crown jewel of my DVD collection has been a DVD-R of this movie, which was only briefly released on VHS and was extremely difficult to find and even more difficult to own. But this is another movie that Criterion has recently rescued from the pit of abysmal picture and sound quality. And good thing, too. This movie and the never-completed Don Quixote were Orson Welles' dream projects. Constructed from texts pulled from four Shakespeare plays, Welles made John Falstaff, who has more lines than any other character in Shakespeare, the tragic hero of his own movie. The larger-than-life Welles plays the larger than life mentor to Prince Hal, later King Henry, and the thread of wasted talent and unbridled excess that runs through the film cannot help but reflect on the former boy-wonder of Welles himself. It is a movie that was financially and logistically hard to make and it shows, but it is full of stunning images, and a truly heart-rending conclusion.


3. A Bucket of Blood

A frustrated and talentless artist finds acclaim for a plaster covered dead cat that is mistaken as a skillful statuette. Soon the desire for more praise leads to an increasingly deadly series of works. - IMDb

I will go to the mat with anybody who says Roger Corman isn't a good director. He's certainly known as a producer of exploitation films and for launching the careers of people who went on to be iconic directors, but his directorial work (which he pretty much stopped doing in the late-1970s) was extremely sharp, both in terms of visual style and intelligence. A Bucket of Blood is one of the best satirical take-downs of the art scene I think I've ever watched, and it wraps it inside the costume of a schlocky horror movie. It's funny, full of gentle social commentary, and has just enough of an "ick" factor to create some intentionally cringe-worthy moments. If you've ever wanted to see the Beat Generation get some comeuppance, this one's for you.

4. Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill

Three go-go dancers holding a young girl hostage come across a crippled old man living with his two sons in the desert. After learning he's hiding a sum of cash around, the women start scheming on him. - IMDb

I'm much more of a Corman guy than a Russ Meyer guy, but when it comes to exploitation films, you have to give Russ Meyer his due. Meyer is most closely associated with busty women with quick tops, but there's actually no nudity in this, his best-known movie. Busty women, sure, and car races, and inexplicable danger aplenty. This movie is also notable for being the source of most of the movie dialogue samples used in White Zombie's breakout album La Sexorcisto: Devil Music, Vol. 1. That's actually what got me to watch this movie in the first place.



5. Blacula

An ancient African prince, turned into a vampire by Dracula himself, finds himself in modern Los Angeles. - IMDb

There are a lot of 1970s blaxploitation movies you can watch and have a pretty great time with, but the thing I love about Blacula is how William Marshall's performance really elevates this movie way past what you think it would be from the amazingly schlocky title. He was primarily a Shakespearean actor, plays the character of Prince Mamuwalde totally straight, and sells it. This movie is at its heart a love story, and despite some *ahem* lines that ring out particularly jarringly to modern sensibilities, the performances in this movie should earn it far more prominence among horror fans than I think it currently has.



6. Killer of Sheep

Stan works in drudgery at a slaughterhouse. His personal life is drab. Dissatisfaction and ennui keep him unresponsive to the needs of his adoring wife, and he must struggle against influences which would dishonor and endanger him and his family. - IMDb

This underground film shot in south Los Angeles in the early 1970s is not to be confused with a blaxploitation film. This is a poetic and deeply touching movie that went unseen for over two decades because of rights clearance issues with the music in the film. The picture of daily life in Watts that it shows is both stifling but also affirming and moving. When it was added to the National Film Registry in 1990, that helped raise awareness for the movie, and ultimately led to a limited theatrical release in 2007. It is now available on DVD.


7. I Bury the Living

Cemetery director Robert Kraft discovers that by arbitrarily changing the status of plots from empty to occupied on the planogram causes the death of the plots' owners. - IMDb

I came across this one on a Public Domain movies site years ago, and I was pleasantly surprised. What the description here doesn't include is that the director doesn't want to be killing people, and begins thinking that he's descending into madness. As this starts to happen, there are a couple of visual effects sequences that are really striking, and take on the air of a twisted re-imagining of Fitzgerald's "eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckelburg." The film suffers a little from a Scooby-Doo ending, but there are rumors that there was a different ending originally shot. That's going to have to be one for the angels, though, because in 1958 nobody was keeping alternate endings of B-pictures around for archivists to find later.

8. Billy the Kid vs. Dracula

Dracula travels to the American West, intent on making a beautiful ranch owner his next victim. Her fiance, outlaw Billy the Kid, finds out about it and rushes to save her. - IMDb

I reviewed this movie before, and you can read that at your leisure, but for our purposes here I will simply quote one line of that review: "At some point in 1965 or '66, some actual human being must have had this thought: 'Let's get John Carradine to play a vampire again, but this time we'll stick him in the Old West, name the movie after two characters not actually appearing in the movie, and shoot the thing for a nickel in, say, my back yard in Encino!'" The IMDb description is actually not correct: Carradine is never identified as Dracula because they didn't want Universal suing them, and "Billy" in the film did not have a previous career as a notorious outlaw. So if this sounds like it's up your alley, it probably is. If it doesn't, man, you've been warned.

9. Plan 9 from Outer Space

Aliens resurrect dead humans as zombies and vampires to stop humanity from creating the Solaranite (a sort of sun-driven bomb). - IMDb

This is also an objectively bad movie, but Edward D. Wood Jr. deserves a place on this list if for no other reason than that Ed Wood is maybe the greatest movie ever made about movies. Plan 9 is also, and I don't know anybody who would argue with me on this, the closest Ed Wood ever got to making a decent movie. The idea of a bomb made out of the sun's rays is not the worst sci-fi idea ever, and the story is more or less coherent. As opposed to, say, Glen, or Glenda?. Plus, the reach of this movie has been remarkable, from the Tim Burton biopic to the name of Glenn Danzig's record label, so it's worth watching if you haven't actually seen it. May I recommend watching Ed Wood and then Plan 9 as a double-feature?


10. Primer

Four friends/fledgling entrepreneurs, knowing that there's something bigger and more innovative than the different error-checking devices they've built, wrestle over their new invention. - IMDb

Of course, if you'd actually like to see a good sci-fi movie made for no money, you might want to skip ahead a few decades to Primer. This movie has a reputation for being quite a mind-bender of a time-travel movie, and it does not disappoint. I would argue that only with (many) multiple viewings and some graph paper could you actually untangle what's happening in all the different timelines, but at a certain point, it doesn't matter. The storytelling is dizzyingly complex, but you get the impression director Shane Carruth knows what's going on, and that he's going to take you somewhere worthwhile, so you go along. It's a tense and confusing ride, but I'm not aware of another movie like it. I actually prefer Carruth's poetic, disjointed follow-up Upstream Color, but start here.

11. It's Such a Beautiful Day

Bill struggles to put together his shattered psyche, in this new feature film version of Don Hertzfeldt's animated short film trilogy. - IMDb

As long as we're talking about bending minds, let's also dip our toes into the animation end of the pool. Don Hertzfeldt bends minds with the best of them, and I am truly at a loss as to how he is able to tell such elliptical stories with stick figures and still elicit powerful emotional responses from me. I am a big fan of Don Hertzfeldt, and this re-packaged collection of three of his related short films is a perfect example of why. Bill seems to be emotionally falling apart, but then it seems like he's actually mentally falling apart. His journey yo-yo'ing closer to and farther away from "sanity" and "reality" is both tremendously imaginative and tremendously moving. Hertzfeldt's World of Tomorrow short film was absolutely robbed of an Oscar, too, for whatever that's worth.

12. Sita Sings the Blues

An animated version of the epic Indian tale of Ramayana set to the 1920s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw. - IMDb

Animator Nina Paley made this animated feature film on her own. By herself. Alone. Feature film. Bill Plympton does the same kind of thing, and I am simply in awe of these artists. Paley's movie tells the story of Sita and her lover Rama from the Hindu epic Ramayana, and intertwines that tale with the story of the dissolution of Paley's own marriage. It's simply a beautiful, enthralling piece of work that not only explodes with imagination, but is full of beautiful visual design, too. It blurs the line between myth, fiction, and documentary, and is set entirely to torch songs. What's not to love?


13. The Beaver Trilogy

It begins in 1979 with the chance meeting in a Salt Lake City parking lot where filmmaker Trent Harris is approached by an earnest small-town dreamer from Beaver, Utah. - IMDb

And speaking of blurring lines...man, this one's something. As quick as I can tell it: Trent Harris was working at a TV station in Utah when they got their first video camera, and he was testing it in the parking lot when a guy called "Groovin' Gary" spotted him and came over.Gary always wanted to be on TV, and had his car adorned with images of Olivia Newton-John. He invited Harris back to Beaver for a talent show that Gary wanted recorded. In it, Gary dressed in drag and performed *as* Olivia Newton-John, to the befuddlement and ridicule of the small, conservative town. That really happened. A couple of years later, Harris moved to LA, and fictionalized the story a bit, and shot it as a short film with a pre-Fast Times Sean Penn. A couple of years later, while at USC film school, he made another go at the same story with a pre-Back to the Future Crispin Glover. If you can't find this amazing, unique gem, track down the new documentary The Beaver Trilogy, Part IV, which tells the whole story in stunning fashion.

14. The Sid Saga

Spurred by house guests Bob Sandstrom and Karlene Sandstrom leafing through his scrap book and asking about photographs in it, Sid Laverents begins to tell his life story. - IMDb

This is simply one of the crown jewels of amateur cinema. I don't know how to find it, except UCLA shows it sometimes and it occasionally airs as part of the sporadic TCM Underground series. But it is truly unforgettable, with Sid Laverents taking viewers through a stunning, three-part filmic biography that not only tells the story of Laverents, but of 20th Century America, too. It begins in poverty and vaudeville, goes through World War II, the 1950s and Cold War, the aerospace boom and introduction of the space program, and finally the rise of amateur film and videography that put storytelling tools into the hands of everyday people. And it's all told first-hand from Laverents, who lived it all. I reviewed this film a couple of years ago, and it is absolutely worth tracking down.

15. Head

The Monkees are tossed about in a psychedelic, surrealist, plotless, circular bit of fun fluff. - IMDb

Whoever wrote this IMDb summary can suck it. This is anything but "fan fluff." This is the weirdest damn thing, and as far from the Monkees TV show as I can really imagine. It's a smart, self-indulgent, self-reflexive piece of meta-storytelling made by Jack Nicholson and Bob Rafelson, who would immediately after this project go on to collaborate on Five Easy Pieces, with Nicholson exploding into the mainstream world in Easy Rider in between. The Monkees got a bad rap at the time, and I think it persists, that they were just a slapped-together attempt by a record company to make an American version of the Beatles. That may have been their genesis, but their songs are great, the guys were interested in things beyond the show, which came through in songs like "Randy Souse Git" and this film, which was reportedly the first time Americans had seen the now-famous footage of  the South Vietnamese Chief of Police executing a handcuffed Viet Cong prisoner. Fan fluff, right? This was Tor Johnson's final film, and also, in a restroom, Peter Tork gives Davy Jones the advice that, "Nobody ever lends money to a man with a sense of humor."

16. The X from Outer Space

The spaceship AAB-Gamma is dispatched from FAFC headquarters in Japan to make a landing on the planet Mars and investigate reports of UFOs in the area. - IMDb

In the 1960s, the Shochiku studio in Japan, which was known for more serious, art-house films like those of Yashujiro Ozu, decided it wanted to get in on some of that sweet Godzilla money that Toho was pulling down, and this film was their attempt. In it, some swinging astronauts jet back and forth between Earth, the moon, and Mars for reasons that are clear, but don't make any logical sense. While exploring, they get some goo on the ship, which hatches into a giant space chicken called Guilala. The English dub of this movie is legitimately terrible, but the original Japanese version, subtitled, is wonderful. It is everything I love about silly, 1960s monster movies, and may even exceed some of the Godzilla movies with shady aliens in them.

17. Suspiria

A newcomer to a fancy ballet academy gradually comes to realize that the school is a front for something far more sinister and supernatural amidst a series of grisly murders. - IMDb

This movie, by Italian horror icon Dario Argento (who also co-wrote the unmatched Once Upon a Time in the West), is the real deal. It's creepy, scary, grisly, bloody, mysterious, and atmospheric. It hits all of my favorite notes of horror movies, and has an ending that is serious nightmare fuel. Emerging from the giallo scene in Italy, it took things a step farther, and is really not for the faint of heart. But man, this is such a great horror movie. I've written before about the line that connects certain films between the 1950s and early 60s, ultimately resulting in Rosemary's Baby, and I think Rosemary in turn made Suspiria possible.


18. Bay of Blood

An elderly heiress is killed by her husband who wants control of her fortunes. What ensues is an all-out murder spree as relatives and friends attempt to reduce the inheritance playing field, complicated by some teenagers who decide to camp out in a dilapidated building on the estate. - IMDb

Staying in Italy with a giallo contemporary of Argento's, we have Mario Bava's Bay of Blood. Bava was making his mark a decade before Argento hit the scene, so a lot of what Argento would build on came from Bava. And it goes way beyond that. Because Bay of Blood is not a "proto-slasher" movie, it is a full-bore, perfect example of a slasher movie, made almost a decade before slasher movies were a thing. You could pretty much take the cliched rules laid out in Scream that govern slasher movies and apply them one-for-one to this movie, but if that's the case, that means this movie invented those rules. I don't know if American filmmakers in the early 1980s looked at this movie and drew inspiration, or if Bava was simply ahead of his time, but this movie is about as good as straight slashers get, and it accomplished that while creating the lexicon, so I think that's one hell of an achievement.

19. The Wicker Man

A police sergeant is sent to a Scottish island village in search of a missing girl whom the townsfolk claim never existed. Stranger still are the rites that take place there. - IMDb

When I was in college and found 1) the Internet and 2) a pair of amazing video stores near my dorm, I spent some time combing a bunch of lists to find movies to rent. The Wicker Man consistently showed up on lists of "the scariest movies ever made" and that sort. So I rented it and I thought it was stupid. But I just sort of missed it — there's something sticky about this movie. Even though I didn't think I liked it, something made me want to revisit it, and when I did, a switch flipped and I fell in love with this movie about the collision of modern life, Christianity, and very, very old pagan beliefs that have still never really gone away. It's a movie with a lot going on under the surface, and which was also plagued for decades with a "the movie that could've been" legend that told the tale of how we never got to see the director's real vision of the movie. That has since been solved, despite the original camera negatives being used as fill underneath the M1 motorway connecting London to Leeds. And for what it's worth, my copy of The Wicker Man DVD actually came in a wicker box.

20. Equinox

Four friends are attacked by a demon while on a picnic, due to possession of a tome of mystic information. Told in flashbacks by the sole survivor. - IMDb

To be honest, this movie is mostly remarkable because of the people that worked on it. As a film on its own, it's only ok, and the present-day framing device of a police detective interviewing a survivor of all that went down is...clumsy at best. So you've really got to have some patience to get to where the movie begins to cook. This film was created by friends who met through Forest J. Ackerman (Uncle Forry), who founded Famous Monsters of Filmland in Los Angeles, and decided to make their own film. These friends, including Jack Woods and Dennis Muren, went on to become transformational figures in Hollywood through their contribution to sound and visual effects. It's truly remarkable to see their first film, knowing that they went on to redefine the modern cinematic language. No hyperbole. There are entire passages of The Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 that are cribbed directly from this film, and while the humans-talking-to-each-other portion of the movie is clunky, the finale, made from stop-motion, rotoscoping, and glass mattes, is legitimately badass.

21. Incubus

On a strange island inhabited by demons and spirits, a man battles the forces of evil. - IMDb

You notice how vague the plot summary for this movie is? That's about right. I mean, what I remember from this movie is William Shatner and some girl hiding in a barn, and then I think they ran for a bit...and maybe one of them was briefly possessed, but I couldn't swear to that. This movie is totally forgettable except for one kinda important thing: it was spoken entirely in Esperanto. You know what Esperanto is, right? It's an invented language that blends elements of the Romance languages, English, and probably a few other languages into what was hoped to be a universal language. Created in the 1880s, it took almost 100 years to make a movie in the language, and that was Incubus. So if you want to watch a movie where Bill Shatner speaks a made-up language, this is your only option, folks. Who gives a shit if it is entirely, and utterly, forgettable otherwise? But look: I have friends who have learned Swedish to watch Bergman movies in the native language, and friends who have learned Japanese to watch anime in its native language (I have undeniably awesome friends), so if you want to be able to turn the subtitles off in Incubus, you can currently learn Esperanto in the free language-learning app Duolingo on your phone.

22. Venus in Furs

A musician finds the corpse of a beautiful woman on the beach. The woman returns from the dead to take revenge on the group of wealthy sadists responsible for her death. - IMDb

This is definitely an outsider kind of film. I haven't seen any other of Jesus "Jess" Franco's films, but from what I know, a number of his films have veered into the more hardcore elements of mixing sex and cinema. Venus in Furs certainly has sex and nudity, but what it has more of, and in spades, is atmosphere and intrigue. The story is told through the eyes of Jimmy, a jazz musician, who sees a beautiful girl at a swanky party, then finds her merdered body on the beach, then sees her again, walking around. There's a wonderful current of I Spit on Your Grave-style cosmic retribution for sexual violence that runs through the movie, but mainly it's just sort of out-there and entrancing. Like the jazz musician at the center of the movie, you're never quite sure what's going on, and you're kind of ok with that because it's a unique ride you want to get to the end of.

23. The Masque of the Red Death

A European prince terrorizes the local peasantry while using his castle as a refuge against the "Red Death" plague that stalks the land. - IMDb

To be honest, I didn't realize this was my favorite of the Roger Corman/Vincent Price/Edgar Allan Poe movies until I wrote songs about a bunch of horror movies, and the one I wrote for this one turned out to be my favorite. Like in Bucket of Blood above where Roger Corman is a good director, and in Blacula where performances can elevate an otherwise straight exploitation film, for me Hazel Court makes this movie. There are a number of wonderful things in this one, from the dwarf circus performer who murders a friend of Prince Prospero (Vincent Price) to avenge an insult to a girl he loves, to the amazing set design that was the apotheosis of the Corman/Price/Poe look, that if I have to let this one movie stand in for all the wonderful films in this series of movies, I'm happy to do so. If you can only watch one Roger Corman movie this Halloween season, I recommend this one.

24. Perversion for Profit

This anti-porn short film shows a flood tide of filth engulfing the country in the form of newsstand obscenity. - IMDb

This is maybe a bit of a cheat. This isn't a narrative film or documentary, but I guess you could say it's a sort of outsider cinema. This instructional film was created in 1965 to warn America of the dangers of the secret filth hiding in the newsstands in the form of comics, men's, and women's magazines. This film is amazing in many ways. There's the slice-of-life sense of giving the modern-day viewer a picture of what life was like in the mid-1960s, and what people could see walking into the corner drug for a magazine, but mainly it's a totally un-self aware look at the hypocrisy of the morality police. The fact is that this movie is a half-hour of words talking about how terrible the "smut" problem is in America, while showing the "smut" in question in full detail. There are very tiny black bars over nipples or eyes, but it's clear to see that this film became, in a sense, exactly what it beheld. By damning pictures of nude women while showing pictures of nude women, today this seems like a way to get soft-core porn into the hands of moral crusaders who could only enjoy nude bodies if they felt they were also condemning them. This movie is a really interesting artifact that says a lot more about the people who made and watched it than it does about they people they were trying to denigrate. It's a fascinating time-capsule that conveys a very different message these days than it was originally meant to.

Posted by Vance K — Emmy-winning producer, folk musician, and cult film reviewer and co-editor of nerds of a feather, flock together since 2012.