Day 31 of Horror Month: BEING EATEN ALIVE BY CROCODILES

REALITY BITES

From Wikipedia

“The most deaths in a single crocodile attack incident may have occurred during the Battle of Ramree Island, on February 19, 1945, in Burma. Nine hundred soldiers of an Imperial Japanese Army unit, in an attempt to retreat from the Royal Navy and rejoin a larger battalion of the Japanese infantry, crossed through 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) of mangrove swamps which contained Saltwater Crocodiles. Twenty Japanese soldiers were captured alive by the British, and almost five hundred are known to have escaped Ramree. Many of the remainder may have been eaten by the crocodiles, although gunfire from the British troops was undoubtedly a contributory factor.”

READ THE STORY HERE

I am happy to end this month with the worst possible horror I can imagine. Thanks for reading.

Have a happy Halloween, blessed Samhain, or Sunday night.

Day 30 of Horror Month: Frankenstein, Illustrated by Bernie Wrightson

Sometimes works happen that are a result of being inspired by other works. This is one of them.

Wrightson was already considered a master of horror illustration, but his work on creating this is masterful and beyond description.

Honestly I haven't the words needed to praise this work. It is sublime.

Day 29 of Horror Month: Silent Hill, the video game

Killing monsters, solving a mystery of a cult trying to awaken a strange God, murder, intrigue, and monsters, and more monsters... Silent Hill has a number of volumes out and for a scary thrill ride, is pretty effective.

Day 28 of Horror Month: SLIPKNOT the band

A band composed of anonymous performers, wearing masks and bearing names that evoke something other than normal.

No need for me to describe more, their music will attest to the tone, sound and depth of the horror...

Click Here




Find The Band Website @

Day 27 of Horror Month: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The worst of humans kill other humans. The worst of their number also rape and abuse their victims. Ed Gein was a person abused by his mother, and trained for the acts he was about to commit by the world view she educated him to believe. He was a cannibal, a sexual deviant, and a murderer. And more...



A family of strange cannibals ambush and kill, and eat, lost travelers and others who come near their home. THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE is sold as a true story. It isn't but the lead character, affectionately called Leatherface, is based upon someone real. Ed Gein. Ed Gein made human clothing and wore it. Leatherface wears the face of a victim. This work is amazingly frightening, and the source it draws from is even worse.

It is too intense for me to have watched more than once, but it is worthwhile if you wish to be afraid.

Day 26 of Horror Month: Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield

This is a fact: The music TUBULAR BELLS by Mike Oldfield played at insanely loud volumes drives college students insane.*

It was also the music for the Exorcist.

Find out for yourself CLICK HERE
Buy it maybe HERE

* Bill Arachtingi in 1984 accomplished this at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Day 25 of Horror Month: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE

Sibling rivalry, jealous, violence, anger over unforgiven events... all conspire to bring the world of two sisters into the realm of horror. You can watch this as horror, it works as such being brutal. But, from a simple film making, this work is amazing as an example of getting two rivals and film stars to absorb and reflect their emotions, and aim them towards the other, on screen.

I am not a "fan" of this, it is too intense and mean for my tastes, but I think it is an absolutely amazing film.

Day 24 of Horror Month: FRANKENSTEIN featuring the work of Boris Karloff

Boris Karloff made the work FRANKENSTEIN both horror, and tragedy. His acting skills went beyond acting in all of his movies, he was a presence, a figure that required your attention. And so when you watch the Frankenstein movies from Universal, you should soak in the mastery of an actor... because the story itself is great, but what you are watching is a man turning a character into a symbol of fear, revulsion and strangely, pity.

Day 23 of October Horror Month: John Carpenter's The Fog

Ghosts that haunt, beings coming out of the fog to kill! John Carpenter's work, THE FOG was imperfect, but at that same time, far beyond similar films in quality that had come out at the same time. The victims of a shipwreck at a point along the coast awaken 100 years to the day to wreak havok amongst the present and the living.

Brilliantly done I say.

Day 22 of October Horror Month: Dracula, the novel by Bram Stoker

Whilst I believe this book to be great, I think people assume much about it due to the movie adaptations. As such I am suggesting people read it, because, amongst other things, I think it is better than the movies, and better than most assumptions about it. Every thing I could suggest about style or pace, or plot, we know it all from the various derivative works. But there is mastery of the language here that moves me, far beyond all the attempts to bring it to life on screen. The characters are perhaps cut from a more iconic cloth than modern works, but, I like that. I think in horror to make it horrific you have to set some boundaries and benchmarks so the reader can see where you are going.

I recommend this book especially to lovers of vampire stories. It is the source, the wellspring of all later works, even if the later authors haven't read it.

Day 21 of October Horror Month: Joe Monks, Horror Writer

Asked why I am a friend of Joe Monks, I'd tell you that he is bright, funny, and has a personal manner about him that is forthright and straight to the point. But that isn't why I am offering up this recommendation to you. It isn't because I am impressed with his directing a film, though blind although I am impressed. It isn't because of anything personal.

It is because he writes horror very well. And his works might not be as popular as Stephen King or Anne Rice, but there is something that I cannot exactly explain about his work that is both similar to both King and Rice, but totally unique. I will try though, I think the word is verisimilitude, and I think that like King and Rice he makes horror work because it isn't all splatter and screams, it is brutal, but there is so much more there if you do more than just read. The unique aspect is found in the work with his own personal touch and additions of his personal style. When you go through his stories there is a foreboding and reality that might make you not want to read it again. But you will.

About his writing @
About his movie work @

Day 20 of October Horror Month: The Works of Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His works have sold over 500 million units, they’ve been adapted in every creative medium, and as of 2010 he has written and published 49 novels and various works.

Little needs to be said to recommend the works of Stephen King. If he wrote in any genre save Horror I believe he’d be worshipped as a pop culture God, even more than he is right now. When his work Salem’s Lot was adapted to be shown on television, a family hour medium, I ended up scared enough to sleep with a light on in my room. Without splatter, without vulgarity, without excess violence or nudity, his story was still scary.

The Author Site @
Stephen King Book list @

Day 19 of October Horror Month: The Works of H.P. Lovecraft

“Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity.” H. P. Lovecraft

Howard Phillips "H. P." Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction. Before Lovecraft and since, there have been many authors of the genres he wrote in. But, of them, few reached into the cold, unfathomed logic of evil and the response of the human mind to that evil, like Lovecraft. As such, his work in this horror month is perfectly apt. No author but Lovecraft has ever scared me like his words were able.

“I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below. “ H.P. Lovecraft "Dagon" - Written Jul 1917; First published in The Vagrant, No. 11 (November 1919)



About H.P. Lovecraft @
About his work @

Day 18 of October Horror Month: CRIMINAL MACABRE by Steve Niles

I think Criminal Macabre is brilliant. Not so much the comic, which is forced as the medium is to rely upon the artist, but the novels by Steve Niles featuring Cal McDonald, who investigates and responds to horror events. Niles clearly knows his character here, writing stories that are vulgar, dark, funny and violent. The power of the story presented by Niles isn’t altogether that you like Cal McDonald, although I do, but rather, that he is faced with unspeakably horrible things, and you are with him for the spooky ride.

READ MORE AT:
The Author Site @
The Book Site @
The Publisher Site @

Day 17 of October Horror Month: FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND

I grew up with the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland, written and edited by Forrest J. Ackerman. It was funny, campy, sexy to a 12 year old boy, and filled with awesome pics from the monster movies I had to be damn lucky to be able to catch on television. As tastes changed, so did the audience for the magazine, falling out of favor and going into extended hiatus more than once. But now, IDW has stepped up and made me glad. Famous Monsters of Filmland returns, if only a wee bit different than the original. I recommend it.




Find more about this magazine @

Day 16 of October Horror Month: Michael Whelan's covers for H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft's works are brilliant. Filled with horror, madness, gore, and unimaginably terrible things. I recommend all his works to you. But what made my introduction to them special, were the covers of 6 Lovecraft books, done by Michael Whelan.

If you've ever seen a better collection of images that accompany madness, fear and more, I don't know what they'd be.

Day 15 of October Horror Month: Robert Wilson Dark Poet

I linked earlier to the work of Thom Olausson a Swedish poet who revels in the darkness. I know another poet just as dark but with less mysticism and less mythic content within his work. The work of Robert Wilson is as dark and hopeless as poetry can possibly be with making the reader go out and slit a wrist or slap an elderly person. The writer himself is not evil, he is bright and with a big heart, but, he writes about the world he sees before him.

And he does it well.

READ IT @

Day 14 of October Horror Month: Call of Cthulhu The Card Game

I had the opportunity to play Call of Cthulhu The Card Game and I was impressed. I had played the original by Chaosium and was not impressed, but still enjoyed aspects of it. But in this game, wholly new and different from the first, the game is wonderfully made, with reasons to appreciate it for the seasoned reader of H.P. Lovecraft, to those who've never turned a page. Fantasy Flight Games made sure that I'd be coming back to play this...


$39.95

Ancient, nameless horrors dwell in the darkness, writhing in the night sky and under the earth, just beyond our senses. In Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game, players take the roles of investigators, villains, and unspeakable horrors inspired by the dark mythos of H.P. Lovecraft. Agency detectives , Miskatonic University students and faculty, and the members of the mysterious Syndicate all join the fight against otherworldly beings including Cthluhu, Hastur, Yog-Sothoth, and Shub Niggurath.

Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game is 2-player, customizable card duel game in which players command both human and monster factions. As a Living Card Game, hundreds of additional Cards are available for all seven factions, allowing players to customize the contents of this set, or create their own original decks. Lovecraft's horrors live, in Call of Cthulhu: The Card game!

Day 13 of October Horror Month: NOSFERATU the silent film SCORE

CLICK THIS
To hear a portion of the brilliantly done recent scoring of NOSFERATU

Day 12 of October Horror Month: NOSFERATU the silent film

I am unaware of people who prefer the silent film Nosferatu to Dracula (with Bela Lugosi) but I mostly find myself in that lone number. The silent film aspect of this makes some of the scenes move more creepily, the story seems darker, the movements and frames are so odd and other worldly that the sounds I add to the film are pretty much those of fear.

The term Nosferatu seems to derive from the Greek Nosophoros which means disease bringer. And, that, to me also seems more apt. As you will note when you read future entries here, I am not sold into one version of a character or story, it doesn't matter to me, which one is my favorite, all that matters is the one that made me scared or whatever the reaction I was supposed to have.

I hope you enjoy this silent and dark film. It is a scary one.