Back in 1989 a Marvel property called The Punisher was made into a low-budget movie starring Dolph Lundgren. This Punisher is a lot closer to something starring Sylvester Styallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Chuck Norris than what we now think of as the MCU. In fact, good old Dolph seemed like he was channeling Stallone in Cobra.

I liked The Punsher quite a bit back when I rented the videotape. It’s been all these years since I watched it, but I figured I’d go back and see where comic movies and my head were nearly forty years ago.

Things were beginning to change. Eighty-nine also saw the release of Tim Burton’s Batman, and comic movies would never be the same. Comics were no longer considered trash for delinquent kids. They could be big money properties.

The Punisher is a fun little exploitation movie. I don’t see why Lundgren didn’t make it bigger in Hollywood. He’s at least as bad as Jason Stratham.

This is a vigilante story, rather like something Charles Bronson might have made had he been younger. The Punisher is busy ridding the world of criminal scum and he winds up embroiled in a war between an American mob and the Japanese Yakuza.

Oh, it’s plenty violent. There are innumerable shootings, stabbings, hangings, explosions. The Punisher is like something I’d have seen in the final gasping breaths of our last local drive-in theater. It’s cheap, fast, and entertaining. If you have a taste for this kind of thing.

I like The Punisher precisely because it’s an outsider movie. I largely avoid the mainstream and spent my movie time vigorously pursuing art films and exploitation fare.

The Punisher was directed by Mark Goldblatt, whose previous picture was the middling zombie cop farce, Dead Heat. He started in the biz like so many others, working for Roger Corman. Goldblatt did editorial work on a number of New World Pictures classics, including Hollywood Boulevard. Later, Goldbaltt became one of the most sought-after editors in the industry.

It was a simpler time. Batman and Terminator 2, the latter of which Mark Goldblatt co-edited, changed everything.

It all grew too big for my liking. The movies, the comics industry, and the world of fandom.

The same thing is happening in the horror fiction field. I’ve never seen so much popularity, which is cool in some ways, but growth also breeds opportunists and corruption. I was happier when the scene was smaller. Back when it meant something to be a fan. Before quasi-experts started showing up like a flea infestation on a mangy dog. Look no further than the plethora of controversies currently surrounding the Horror Writers Association and you’ll see my point.

Written by Mark Sieber

Looking at the cover to Under the Falls made me think it’s a nostalgic look at the boys of summer in a small town. As I got into the novel, I realized it’s something far different than that. Even the cover began to look more like a boy falling, or having been pushed off a rock wall, rather than a fun back-flip dive.

Indeed, Under the Falls is more like a thriller than a mainstream novel. Don’t expect a formulaic, paint-by-numbers piece of fast food fiction like you’ll get from Jeneva Rose or Riley Sager. This book is smart, sad, reflective, and more about emotion and regret than crime and punishment.

Stone Mountain is a small town in upper New York, not far from the Canadian border. It hasn’t yet been touched by developers, even though there is a lot of beautiful waterfront property. It’s nearly a dead town, with an abandoned amusement park haunting the lives of people who are stuck there.

Stone Mountain is also the name of a successful music group. Tyler escaped the town when he was a young man and never looked back, even though it permeates his songwriting. Trying to get back to the swing of life after the Covid-19 pandemic, the group’s manager arranges the first live show to be at the band’s namesake town.

Tyler is filled with dread about going home. He returns to open wounds, hostility, and unanswered questions from his past. His fate is inexorably entwined with the town and its inhabitants. There are buried secrets, resentment, but also surprising loyalties.

The disastrous concert sparks a series of desperate events and opens a lot of unhealed wounds. The specter of Stone Mountain might claim Tyler’s soul, or perhaps it will save him from the emotional bonds that imprisoned him.

Under the Falls is written in multi-viewpoint chapters, which seems to bother a lot of readers. I always liked the approach to fiction. Russo portrays various members of his cast in vivid detail. We intimately learn about their hopes, fears, desperation, and the hopelessness that so many of us experienced following the pandemic.

It’s more than that. America is a haunted country, filled with anxiety, frustration, anger, resentment, and burgeoning violence. Covid merely gave us time to focus on it. Under the Falls gives a microscopic look into a small group of people trying to escape cages they’ve made for themselves.

This is a stunning book, by far my favorite of the three Richard Russo novels I’ve thus far read. I think my next one will be Empire Falls, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Written by Mark Sieber

Several established directors flirted with independent film. The Coens, David Lynch, John Sayles. Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Stranger Than Paradise, She’s Gotta Have It, and Slacker paved the way for a new type of movie and hip audiences were hungry for it.

Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction was one of the most influential releases of all time. Suddenly, indie films were in and we waved goodbye to the excesses of eighties movies.

Horror was way out and I was skipping issues of Fangoria. Film Threat and Film Threat Video Guide were my bibles of anti-mainstream film. I went deeper into the realms of the underground than most, but audiences were raving about releases from Miramax, Fineline, and Sony Pictures Classics.

Fans and pros flocked to Sundance, Slamdance, Cannes, and the Chicago Underground Film Festival, hoping to see the future hits. If I had the money, I’d have been right there with them.

The nineties were a fabulous time for movies and in some ways it was my favorite era as a fan.

Tom DiCillo’s Living in Oblivion came just a year after Pulp Fiction, but the independent film world was already ripe with cliches.

Living in Oblivion is a satire of low-budget filmmaking, but I think it’s almost a documentary.

Having shot early Jim Jarmusch films, DiCillo was already well-versed in the subject. Indie film poster boy Steve Buscemi is at his frenzied best as a beleaguered director desperately trying to get his low-budget masterpiece in the can. He certainly has his hands full.

James LeGros is the egotistic star. His leading lady, played by the ever-likeable Catherine Keener, is riddled with self-doubt and anxiety. Dermot Mulroney is the cinematographer. pretentious beret well placed on his head.

Living in Oblivion is Peter Dinklage’s debut, because if David Lynch taught us nothing else, you’ve got to have a dwarf in a surreal dream sequence. I’m not even sure dwarf is the accepted woke (formerly politically correct) term, but that’s the word they used in the movie, so I’m going with it.

This movie is so tense it’s almost like something from the Safdie brothers. Everything goes wrong and Buscemi is boiling over in frustrated rage. It’s funny, in a sadistic way, but Living in Oblivion mostly skewers the myth that filmmaking is glamorous and fun.

Living in Oblivion was the perfect movie at the perfect time. It didn’t make a lot of money, but like most of these little movies, Living in Oblivion was made so cheaply it didn’t need to rake in the big bucks.

Tom DiCillo already had a minor indie hit before Living in Oblivion with Johnny Suede. He went on to make very cool pictures like Box of Moonlight, The Real Blonde, and Delirious. There were some good documentaries, but not much in recent years. I wish he were still directing feature films. I saw DiCillo released an album of music, and I considered ordering the record, but it’s a bit too Nick Cave for me.

Looking back through the soft focus of time and nostalgia, Living in Oblivion perfectly recalls a period before pervasive technology spoiled everything. It all started to go bad, I think, when we became able to carry the internet with us everywhere we went. Thankfully, we have movies like this to help us remember. Get the old DVDs or Blu-ray re-issues and don’t let the streaming demons ruin them, too.

Written by Mark Sieber

The Driller Killer is more like a punk rock allegory. It’s a time capsule, a portrait of downtown New York when it was dangerous and decrepit. Critics compare the movie to Taxi Driver, and I see some of that, but I see The Driller Killer more along the lines of No Wave movies like Amos Poe’s Blank Generation and the films of Beth and Scott B. Nick Zedd’s debut, They Eat Scum came out in the same year, 1979, but The Driller Killer is a far better film. Nearly everything is.

This movie, like the films of Beth and Scott B are forerunners for the grimy New York Underground/Cinema of Transgression wave that came along in a few years. The Driller Killer depicts a time and place where disenfranchised people lived in poverty. Aspiring artists were everywhere, filmmakers, painters, poets, musicians, graffiti artists, journalists, and novelists. A few broke out of the squalor and became professionals. The vast majority did not.

The Driller Killer is the first film from acclaimed director Abel Ferrara. Unless you count his porno, Nine Lives of Wet Pussycat. He plays the lead character under the pseudonym Jimmy Laine.

Ferrara is Reno Miller, a temperamental artiste, living in a shabby apartment with his whining lesbian roomate.. He’s working on his masterpiece, but distractions keep getting in the way. A truly wretched punk band called the Roosters practice in a neighboring apartment and the local homeless population are getting him down. How does he deal with all the pressure?

Reno gets a power drill with a battery pack and begins to ventilate the local derelicts. There are some squeamish moments, but The Driller Killer is not so much a gore movie as it is a character study. It’s a look at a New York that no longer exists. No more desperate artists sharing cheap walkup apartments with rats and cockroaches.

The downtown New York scene has been romanticized. People picture wild nights at CGBG, streetwise Rimbauds, and noble anarchists. I picture junkies and thieves and unhealthy situations. I like watching movies about the scene, especially honest ones like The Driller Killer, but I’m happy to do so from the comfort of my living room.

Punk rebelled against a lot of things. One was the embarrassingly indulgent rock opuses by wealthy bands like The Who and Yes. Thirty minutes songs about fairies and mysticism grow old very quickly. It’s the same with movies. I understand that Ferrara needed to make a feature-length movie to get any kind of real distribution, but seventy-five minutes is a marketable length. The Driller Killer runs a little long at ninety-six long minutes.

Most of the best punk songs are short and fast as a punch. I find punk filmmaking is more effective in the short form. Richard Kern’s Goodbye 42nd St. and The Manhattan Love Suicides hit like a needle full of adrenelin to the bloodsystem. The Driller Killer grows a bit tedious by the end.

Despite that, I really like the movie. It received the Video Nasty badge of honor in England and it paved the way for better things to come. Abel Ferrara’s next movie, Ms .45, is a near-masterpiece. From there he went on to a long and distinguished career. Ferrara saw great success, but he did so without losing his streetwise edge. It was great seeing him show up, in a sizable role, in last year’s best movie, Marty Supreme.

Written by Mark Sieber

Barker followed up his landmark collections with a novel called The Damnation Game, perfectly making the transition from short story author to novelist. The future was indeed here.

If that wasn’t enough, Clive Barker entered the world of motion pictures when he wrote and directed the mind-blowing Hellraisor in 1987. Barker was on top of the world of horror and like Stephen King he was breaking away from the hermetic world of the genre.

Barker showed little regard for conventions of taste or restraint. However, unlike many writers of explicit horror fiction who’ve come along since those days, he displayed dazzling literary merit. Clive Barker was like a baroque figure from another time and place than the rest of the world.

At some point, in the early nineties I believe, Charles L. Grant was interviewed in the pages of Fangoria. Clive Barker came up and Grant stated that Clive was spreading himself out too thin and that he needed to rein himself in or take the chance of burning out.

I laughed. I was all about hard-hitting horror in those days, and I was reading a lot fewer books by Grant and Ramsey Campbell. I bet someone told Leonardo da Vinci to restrain himself! Phooey on Charles Grant and his quiet horror doldrums.

Now I read more Charles Grant than the extreme writers. In retrospect it seems like Grant was correct.

Clive Barker was on a roll for a while. He unleashed book after book on the public and they were enormously successful. Even while my interest began to wane.

I never made it through Weaveworld. I struggled through The Great and Secret Show and Everville. I even made my way through the laborious Imajica.

Barker’s language was always rich and beautiful, but the stories were too drawn out for me.

As for the movies, I liked Nightbreed, even if it was slightly disappointing after Hellraiser. I never took to Lord of Illusions, despite a lot of wonderful material in the film.

At some point I lost all interest in Clive Barker. It made me sad. I started but didn’t finish Coldheart Canyon, Mr. B. Gone, and The Scarlet Gospels. I felt that Clive had spent his creativity and was flailing along with books that were sad reflections of his former dark glory.

Then there were the rumors about his personal life and health. No, I’m not passing any of them along here. I try to avoid spreading speculation and half-truths about the lives of celebrities. That stuff isn’t my business, but the books I bought with my hard-won money were my business.

I spoke up about my dissatisfaction with the material Clive was publishing. Some agreed, some vehemently disagreed. It certainly wasn’t like the early days of unanimous praise for Barker and his writing.

There were tastes of the old Clive here and there. I liked “Haeckel’s Tale,” from the Dark Delicacies anthology, which was made into an episode of Masters of Horror.

I maintained fond feelings about Clive Barker, but I felt his day was done. It was one hell of a day, but each day must pass on to a new one.

There were some proclamations of a return to publishing for Clive Barker, but I held out little hope. If something were to come out, I’d surely get the book from the library.

Now we have a new announcement of a big return for Clive Barker, but I won’t be able to borrow the books from any library.

Three new books were just announced. The kicker? They are being released exclusively through Kickstarter. That’s certainly disconcerting.

I initially liked the idea of Kickstarter. Let the fans fund projects and leave the money suits out of the equation. The reality of the situation is less than satisfying.

I am currently waiting for a few Kickstarter drives to deliver. They are late, very late. One cannot help but wonder if the creators would be more diligent if they were waiting to be paid. It’s like the first rule when you hire a contractor: Do not pay in advance.

Plus the deals usually suck. Back this project and sign up for a DVD or Blu-ray at the eighty dollar tier. Or, wait until it comes out through conventional circuits and pay twenty or thirty for it.

Plus, I get it when it comes to filmmaking. Movies cost a lot of money. Anyone can write a book. Few can write a good one, but it doesn’t take financial backing.

Plus, if Clive Barker wrote something, pretty much anything, most major publishers would be thrilled to put it out.

It’s called Library of the Dead and there will be three volumes. Fear Eternal, Pyres of Bedlam, and Dark Descents. Three books consisting of new material, old rarities, poems, and illustrations.

I fear it could be some nice editions with a lot of filler and inferior writing. Perhaps, hopefully, I am wrong.

I have to say no to this endeavor. I’m not paying $120.00 plus shipping to find out I don’t care for the books. I’m still wincing over The Scarlet Gospels, which was heralded as a return to the delirious heights, or perhaps depths, of Hellraiser.

All that said, I wish the greatest success for Clive Barker. He doesn’t need my blessings. The drive is already well above the pledge goal.

I also wish success for the fans who are signing up for it. I hope they are all happy and satisfied with their investment. My guess is, if nothing else the books will be collector’s items. I’d participate for that reason alone, but I simply do not have the capital for that sort of thing these days.

I was reading, or trying to read Christopher Buhlman’s popular Between Two Fires recently. People love this book, but I cannot count myself as one of its fans. The whole time I was reading it, my thoughts went to Clive Barker. If only this were written by Clive, especially in his most fertile years. How much better, more authentic, more penetrating the book would be.

Written by Mark Sieber

I wonder how many of the free-speech advocates are even aware of Barney Rosset. If they don’t, they damned well should. Rosset’s face should be on posters, flags and zines. He was a civil rights leader who may have stayed out of politics as much as possible, but he was not only a soldier in the war against censorship, he gave everything he had to help ensure you and I had the freedom of choice.

Rosset was born into an affluent family in 1922. He was a photographer in World War II. Barney’s father was in the banking industry, but that held no interest for him. Barney Rosset’s passion was for the arts.

His initial interest was in filmmaking, but Rosset loved literature. While in New York, Barney Rosset purchased a small publishing company called Grove Press. They were located on Grove Street, in Greenwich Village. Grove only did three books before Barney bought the company for three thousand dollars in 1951. His aim was to be an alternative to mainstream publishing.

Grove Press did controversial works by Jean Genet, Samuel Becket, and the Marquis de Sade. Most of these books went under the legal radar, but trouble began when they published D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1959. Copies were seized by the United States Post Office, who didn’t want obscene materials sent through their system. Rosset sued and won, but it was at no small cost.

The next legal battle was with Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. Censors finally agreed that the Lawrence book had literary value, but Henry Miller was nothing but filth. Booksellers were sued for selling the book. Once again Rosset won the battle, but the battles were expensive and extraordinarily stressful.

Lady Chatterlay’s Lover and Tropic of Cancer were finally accepted, but then Grove Press dropped a literary bomb on the world. There was no precedent to William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. I don’t think any book, before or since, raised such a furor. More legal struggles, more strife.

Meanwhile, Barney Rosset started a magazine called Evergreen Review. Allen Ginsberg’s incendiary poem, “Howl”, was first published in its pages. Which got him in more trouble. The magazine featured gay-themed fiction, stories and articles about race, communism, sex. Gay men were on the cover, angry black people, feminists, radicals, confrontational artists.

Russet felt that racism and sexual oppression were nearly the same thing. Both denied freedom and civil rights to citizens. He was the only publisher willing to touch The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Grove did a book of Che Guevara’s diaries, which resulted in their offices being bombed.

Grove published nearly all the beat writers, Hubert Selby Jr.’s Last Exit to Brooklyn, Bukowski, Albert Camusk, Timothy Leary, and dozens of other well-known as well as forgotten authors.

Rosset also reprinted vintage Victorian erotica, much of which dealt with naughty spankings. These books not only brought in revenue, Barney personally enjoyed them.

Bit by bit Barney Rosset’s money dwindled. He inherited a lot of land that he loved, but sold it off an acre or two at a time to cover his legal troubles.

Rosset even had trouble with the left. Misguided feminists protested the office, claiming he published sexist materials. Grove never had a lot of employees, but they demanded to be unionized, which was infeasible for such a small, largely unprofitable venture.

After years and years of troubled but distinguished work in publishing, Rosset sold Grove Press to a British publishing firm. Not a shrewd businessman, Barney was fired within a year.

I sort of get it. Any business, book publishing or anything else, must be profitable. Barney Rosset didn’t give much thought about what might sell. He published the things he liked and that he felt were important. I don’t understand, however, why anyone would buy Grove Press and get rid of the one thing that made it Grove Press: Barney Rosset. There wasn’t much room for a guy like him in the capitalistic eighties.

Obscene: A Portrait of Barney Russot and Grove Press tells his story. It’s an exhilarating ride through the country’s past of free speech heroes and dark censorship. Barney is shown toward the end of his life, living in poverty. His sense of humor seemed to be intact, but there’s a cloud of sadness upon him.

Barney Rosset shook the pillars of culture, he hobbed and nobbed with the brilliant, the profane, and the notorious, and he went up against powerful censors and bigots. Rosset rode the wild wind, he made history, and while he lost it all in the end, no one could take away his accomplishments.

Grove Press exists today, as a subsidiary of Atlantic Books. I’m sure they are doing great work and publishing worthwhile authors. It’s hard, though, to forget the way Barney Rosset was ousted from the company. Even if it was done well before the current employees were even hired.

Barney Rosset and his work should be taught in schools, but the same kind of oppressors he struggled against in his life would reject the idea of it. Hopefully intelligent, inquisitive young people will seek out the works Barney dedicated his life to.

Barney Rosset, scholar, freedom fighter, pornographer, radical, publisher, died in 2012. He was ninety years old. More importantly, he lived. He fought for what he loved, and for the freedoms we take for granted today.

Yet still the battles continue. Things are better now, thanks to courageous individuals like Barney Rosset, but the censors are like cockroaches. No matter how many we exterminate, they never seem to become extinct.

Written by Mark Sieber

We’d remove the protective covers and ease off the stickers, but the stamps on the outer edges of the pages were more difficult. He and I would sit in the garage and use sandpaper to get rid of them.

I feel bad about it now. The Statute of Limitations are long past, but maybe I’ll burn forever in Library Hell.

Our mother found the books in a closet, freaked out, and ordered us to return the books. That presented another problem. How would we do that? They were already altered. We both figured we’d only get in further trouble if we gave them back.

I ended up passing books along to my best friend. He kept most of them, while I lost all my boyhood possessions in my turbulent life.

My friend Dennis died a few years ago, and his family eventually contacted me and asked if I wanted his books and movies. Of course the answer was yes.

I got a bunch of great movies and some cool books. About fifty Doc Savage titles, some SF, and other odds and ends. There were a lot of conspiracy theories and flaky pseudo-science books by people like Zecharah Sitchin. The latter ones went to a thrift store. Dolphin Island was among the books he held on to for half a century.

I liked Arthur C. Clarke, especially Childhood’s End, Rendezvous With Rama, and his short stories. I never, however, read Dolphin Island. It appeared to be more of a boy’s adventure story than a science fiction novel.

In a way, it is a boy’s book. We called them juveniles back then. I guess young adult sounds less condescending.

It’s a classic setup. A boy sees a landed hovership in a nearby body of water and manages to sneak aboard and stowaway for an adventure. He gets exactly that. The ship was already having troubles, but it completely breaks down over the ocean and is destroyed.

The boy, Johnny, escapes the sinking ship and floats away on a piece of flotsam. He nearly perishes from sunstroke and thirst but is rescued by the people of the sea.

By that I mean dolphins. They push Johnny along to an island where scientists are conducting research on dolphins and their natural enemies, killer whales. The idea is to find a way to prevent the whales from eating dolphins while making sure enough fish are left for both species as well as the local fishermen.

Johnny fits in well and sees a future for himself on Dolphin Island. The novel culminates in a dramatic hurricane which leaves members of the team in dire medical need. Radios are broken and the nearest island is a hundred miles away.

Johnny turns to his new best friends, the people of the sea, for help.

Dolphin Island is a quick, easy read. Written in the early nineteen sixties, it seems like an obvious attempt to follow in the very successful footsteps of Robert A. Heinlein’s juvenile books. Clarke doesn’t quite fill those shoes, but Dolphin Island is a lot better than other books of its type. Isaac Asimov’s clunky “Lucky Starr” series of juvenile science fiction books come painfully to mind.

Arthur C. Clarke was a scientist, a futurist, and an oceanographer. He loved diving and vivid depictions of barrier reefs are the most potent parts of Dolphin Island. I wouldn’t call this a mandatory book, but I enjoyed this belated reading.

The research and development of the dolphins and whales are done with electronic impulses. In an afterword, Clarke says that experiments in Electrically Controlled Behavior began in the nineteen thirties, and there were enormous advances by the sixties. He says the process is terrifying, but the doctors in Dolphin Island have benevolent motivations.

That was sixty-five years ago. How advanced is the science now? What means are used to control others? Are the motivations benevolent? I think about how ninety-nine percent of us carry electronic devices everywhere we go. I think about how many people use headphones or earbuds. I’m not the only one to wonder about what smart phones are doing to our brains. How much of our behavior is being manipulated?

Pah. That’s nonsense. Science fiction crap dreamed up by egghead writers a long time ago. Forget I brought it up.

Written by Mark Sieber

Bloody 13 originally saw print in 2020, in a magazine with the odd name of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. It’s a timely piece of fiction that was obviously inspired by the events of that tumultuous year.

It’s the near future and the world is undergoing a massive pandemic. Unlike Covid-19, this one only affects men. The afflicted ones develop a terminal condition where their skin rots off their body. Women are merely carriers of the disease. The infectious condition begins when they begin to menstruate.

Our narrator is Cathy, a twelve-year-old attending a prestigious private school. The academy largely ignores the practice of wearing masks. New laws are being written that will require all women to wear them to prevent the spread of the disease.

As in our own 2020 timeline, there’s speculation about conspiracies and oppression. Cathy and her friends vow to remain maskless and to skip the bizarre birthday practice of Bloody 13.

On their thirteenth birthday girls undergo a ritual, live-streamed of course, where they are initiated into a life of hiding behind a mask.

The girls’ rebellion will come at great price. Cathy’s life spirals out of control, but then the entire world has gone mad.

It’s easy to interpret, at a cursory glance, Bloody 13 an anti-mask polemic. That was a popular stance among rabidly conservative people during our own pandemic. I don’t see it that way at all.

I think Bloody 13 is more of a feminist statement. So many men, again, usually from the right side of the spectrum, seem to see women as weapons of their downfall. They should be bound and gagged, preventing their participation in affairs befitting the stronger men. Cathy’s Mom is fired from her job for refusing to wear a mask. This was before laws were even in place. Her father is employed at the same company and is promoted.

In a relatively short number of pages Langan puts a microscope on the entangled social order of young girls. It’s a fickle environment where one can go from popular to bullied in a minute’s time. Failure to conform is punishable by ostracisation and harassment.

Bloody 13 depicts a world that’s hopeless regardless of which path one takes. Joining the masses is spiritual suicide while rebellion invites vicious persecution.

It’s not so different from the world in which we all grew up. Perhaps standing up for ourselves and our beliefs is futile, but we take our victories where we can and we compromise our convictions when we must.

I always liked Sarah Langan, but with Good Neighbors she became one of my very favorite contemporary writers. I’m still processing the effects of Bloody 13 on my brain, but this might be my favorite work she’s done to date. Then again, I think I need to re-read Good Neighbors and A Better World. It’s all so powerful. This one happens to be the freshest in my mind.

The Pink Beam book is a wispy thing, perhaps too scrunched up for me. I wish the font size was a bit larger. Other than that, it’s a cool little edition.

Written by Mark Sieber

Small press publishers came and went. Some did nice work, produced some lovely editions, and bowed out of the scene with few problems. Others got in over their heads and fled the scene, leaving hostility and owed money in their wake.

The biggest fiasco of them all was a startup company named Full Moon Press. Full Moon began with a lot of promise. In fact, there was too much promise.

Full Moon announced a completely preposterous list of titles to be published. Now, we’re talking about an untested publisher, with no track record. Dozens of books were announced. It was sheer lunacy.

I’ve never been directly involved in publishing, but all I’ve heard about is a whole lot of problems they face along the way. And Full Moon wasn’t simply submitting a file to Amazon. I know that can be problematic, but not like trying to do it all on your own.

People were understandably dubious. Doubt was cast upon the publisher, but Full Moon responded with utter confidence. They’d done the research, had the proper resources. This was a can’t-miss venture.

People were laughing. Most of us didn’t think Full Moon had a chance in hell of honoring all the commitments it was making. Subterranean Press is the very model of how a small publisher should be run. The owner practically begged Full Moon to do a book and let the dust settle, then move on to one more. No, they were ready to go and failure was not an option.

Worse yet, Full Moon offered Lifetime Subscriptions to their books. These kinds of deals sound unbeatable, but there’s always been a lot of controversy surrounding them. Take one called Delirium Books. They were one of the most popular presses in the horror field. Delirium started up a side imprint called Dark Fuse. Many felt it was a way to avoid sending free books to all the Lifetime Subscribers.

Now, I don’t believe for a minute Full Moon or Delirium set out to screw people. I think their intentions were absolutely honorable. Things got out of hand and, in Delirium’s case, I think they did what they felt they had to do in order to survive. The Lifetime Subscribers felt differently about it. And who could blame them?

I don’t know how many Lifetime Subs Full Moon sold, but I gather it was a lot. It should have been a nice bankroll to get on their feet. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but they went under fairly quickly.

It was a huge stink and, in some ways, a signpost for the downfall of the deluxe edition boom that occurred in the two-thousands.

I’m not sure how many books Full Moon actually delivered, but Hautala’s The Wildman was the first. All the books they had contracted were cancelled. I’m not sure how the legal chips fell, but it was a debacle.

It started off so well. The Wildman is as nice an edition as I ever saw in the small press arena. There were more elaborate productions, but The Wildman didn’t cost an arm and two legs. The book has a beautiful Alan M. Clark cover, textured endpapers, smyth-sewn binding, a tip-in sheet with signatures, and interior illustrations. In addition to the signed and limited edition, Full Moon offered a trade hardcover as well.

I bought The Wildman when it came out and I liked it well enough. I am trying to cut down on my collection, so I figured I’d read the book again, then sell it at one of my dealer tables.

The Wildman is exactly like a survival slasher movie, but instead of a sexy group of young adults partying and fighting off a slasher, it’s a group of nerdy middle aged guys.

They get together on an island off the coast of Maine for a reunion. It was once the site of a summer camp the boys stayed at every year. But you know the deal: A tragedy occurred in the past and now someone is killing the adult campers.

The Wildman isn’t a bad book, and it’s as good as anything Hautala ever published. Better than most of them, in fact. It’s still not much more than a decent little novel.

I’ve pledged to be absolutely honest in my writing. I’m forced to come to the unhappy conclusion that I’ve been loyal to the memory of Rick Hautala and to my unsophisticated past. Hautala was never a favorite, but I liked his books. I still feel a tremendous amount of affection toward them, but I don’t think I’ll be reading him again.

Decent little books can be enjoyable, but there I have more excellent ones on hand than I have time for.

I met Rick Huatala one time. He was a nice guy, and I’ll always be grateful to him for his part in the development of horror fiction. He was an important writer in the field. For a while, a decade or so, Hautala did well enough, selling mostly big, fat books to the shoddy little publishers. He never made the leap into the big time, and I honestly see why he didn’t. After the horror bust of the nineties, he seemed to have a hard time. He did some books here and there, and thanks to the small press he made some money. He was with Leisure Books for a little while, but I heard his collection, Bedbugs, was one of their biggest losers and they dropped him.

Rick Hautala struggled on, as I understand it, and he prematurely died in 2013. It would have been preventable if he had health insurance.

It’s a goddamn shame. Just like with Richard Laymon and Night in the Lonesome October, Hautala was showing greater promise with The Wildman and The Big Tree. Rick was one year younger than I am right now. He should have had fifteen or twenty good years to continue to improve his craft.

As they say, never say never. Perhaps one day I’ll be in the mood to revisit the past. I’ll want to take a walk through the Maine woods, not with Mr. King, but with Rick Hautala. I’ll be slowing down too and maybe his uncomplicated, boyish, sentimental fiction will be exactly what I need on a nostalgic day.

Written by Mark Sieber

I’ve been hard on various movies and books in my time as a critic, but I would decline any invitation to a physical duel. My body got beat up enough in my jobs in the industrial world. It’s like these people who went to shows to push and shove each other. I always thought they must have very easy lives.

The critics accepted Boll’s challenge and it was a media circus. Boll kicked all their asses. Joe Swanberg did the same thing, only with one critic, in 2012.

I heard Boll got better, but I still wasn’t particularly interested in watching any of his movies. That is, until I heard about Assault on Wall Street. Word had it that the movie is really good and completely outrageous. I wasn’t about to buy it for full price, but I found an ex-Blockbuster DVD at a thrift store and made it my own.

Assault on Wall Street is completely watchable and even compelling. The first half details the tragic downfall of an average American working guy.

Jim is a former soldier working, ironically, as a security guard for a financial firm. He risks his life to protect rich men’s money. The banking crisis hit a lot of people, but Jim got it worse than most. He lost all his money in a bank scandal. His wife, already critically ill, commits suicide. Jim loses his job. His house is foreclosed. If that isn’t enough, he owes the bank sixty thousand dollars.

Meanwhile, you guessed it, the stockbrokers write themselves bonuses and move on with their privileged lives.

It’s hard to watch and easy to imagine. Anyone’s life could tumble down like a game of dominos.

Jim did everything right. Exactly as he was supposed to do it. He served his country, he worked a good job, he invested in his future. In return he got raped by the financial oppressors.

With nothing to live for and nowhere to go. What else is there to do but take revenge?

Assault on Wall Street walks a thin line between funny and horrifying. I couldn’t help but sympathize with him, and watching the button-up rich scum get mowed down was satisfying. I never never suffered the losses Jim does, but I feel like I’ve been screwed every step of the way in my adult life.

On the other hand, an active shooter isn’t very funny.

I can laugh at a movie and not wish death upon anyone. Just like I can watch a movie where a dog or cat is killed, and not go into a seizure about it.

Assault on Wall Street was made following the Occupy Wall Street era. People protested big finance, mostly in New York City, for months. Just as in the movie, millions of people suffered while the rich grew wealthier. As usual, it died down, people went back to their devices, and nothing much changed.

I don’t know why Assault on Wall Street isn’t embraced by the new TikTok anarchists who rant and rave about economic inequality. It seems like a perfect movie for them.

Maybe it’s because Hollywood and the motion picture distributors don’t mind a little anarchy. As long as it isn’t too inciting. Very few people seem to know about this movie.

I enjoyed Assault on Wall Street, but I certainly do not sympathize with any real active shooter. Maybe drastic measures will be necessary to enact changes in the system. If it’s even possible. If so I won’t gloat about it or cheer for bloodshed.

Damn. Ewe Boll actually made a pretty good movie. This is exactly the kind of thing Charles Bronson might have made. I was unfamiliar with beefcake Dominic Purcell, who plays Jim, but the Assault on Wall Street also has Keith David, Edward Furlong, John Heard, Eric Roberts, and Michael Paré in the cast.

Written by Mark Sieber

It, ah, hasn’t worked out so well.

I have never, and I mean never, seen such virulent animosity toward a movie in my life. People were upset and let the world know how much they disapproved of the Dawn of the Dead remake, but the hostility about Ice Cream Man has to be come kind of record breaker.

Much of it comes from the admitted use of AI in the movie. Yeah, I don’t like it either, but I’m not joining the ranks of people shaking their fists at each other from the sidelines. That does no one any good.

Maybe I am a hypocrite, but few issues are truly black and white, good or bad. I don’t see a place for AI in writing. I can write, you can write, anyone can write. Ah, but how many can write well?

As tempers flared about AI in Ice Cream Man, a scandal about AI in the horror fiction community ignited. Same thing: name-calling, cheap shots, refusal to give an inch. Nothing solved, nothing gained.

I believe AI is in more movies than we know about. Netflix admits to using it in approximately three-hundred of their productions. How many of the self-righteous fans calling for an Ice Cream Man boycott are canceling their subscriptions? Precious few, is my guess. I’m sure this is merely the beginning.

People simply don’t like Eli Roth. For the very life of me, I don’t understand why. Roth is one of us, a real fan. Well, he’s one of me. I don’t know what some of these rabid dogs are, but they don’t seem like genuine fans to me.

They all seem to be saying nearly the exact same things. Are they really even people? You just don’t know what to think or believe these days.

I don’t like Rob Zombie movies, but you don’t see me cursing him, wishing him dead, begging the movie gods for him to go away and disappear forever. If people like him, good. I don’t have to watch the movies. As far as I’m concerned, what’s good for one movie is good for all of horror.

We’re supposed to be family. I wish we could put down the politics and anger and celebrate the genre we supposedly love. Too many people are unwilling to compromise their self-righteous attitudes and their passion for drama for that to happen.

Eli Roth is bringing gory, unrated movies to theaters. Yes, I wish he hired an animator for the offending bits of AI, but most of the effects are practical. Why can’t we celebrate that?

Why? What kind of thrill do people get by hating Eli Roth? It seems like mass hysteria to me.

Like it or not, Ice Cream Man is here, in a wide release. I saw an early morning screening today.

Well, you know, I wasn’t exactly expecting The Innocents. This is hardly anyone’s idea of elevated horror. Ice Cream Man is a wild ride, quite a bit like a goofy old paperback from hell horror novel.

Eli’s been around and the movie mostly looks good. There’s a nice small town American atmosphere in Ice Cream Man. Don’t go expecting originality or social significance here. This is a gory thrillride, and one that’s quite funny at times.

It’s good to see Jordan Peele in a role and Snoop contributes to the soundtrack.

Ice Cream Man clocks in under ninety minutes, which is a relief. Honestly, the welcome was wearing off a little by then.

Ice Cream Man is exactly what I expected it to be. I liked it in the same way I enjoyed last year’s Toxic Avenger remake. It’s stupid, but intentionally so.

I’ve seen some people upset about kids inflicting violence on adults, but they looked to be having a fine old time. From everything I’ve heard, the young actors totally got into the idea of slaughtering grown-ups.

The story is thin, but the dialogue is disturbingly accurate. I think a lot of kids in real like talk like the foul-mouthed little monsters in the movie.

They say no publicity is bad publicity. We’ll see about that. There were a handful of people at the 8:45 screening I attended. I hope, hell, I pray people, real horror fans, get out and see for themselves.

I say that not merely to get my investment back. I didn’t contribute in order to make a profit. I did it for horror. I honestly think Eli Roth is in it for the love of the genre too.

Do what you will. See Ice Cream Man or don’t see it. I’d just like to see the hysteria die down. I’m losing my faith in not only the horror community, but in all of humanity.

Written by Mark Sieber

I've seen ‘fans’ wishing for Eli's death. How did we get to such a place? Why are some people so hateful?

I wrote a while back about the inevitability of AI in movie production. The genie is out of the bottle, the rabbit out of the hat. I don’t like it, but there’s no closing the door.

I always hated CGI, so you know I can’t stand AI. Like my writing or hate it, it's all me. I'd never forget a second consider using AI to help with it. I don't even like spellcheckers.

A few defenders said the same things: AI is here to stay whether we like it or not. The Pavlovian response was immediate: “Well, with that attitude it is! We can stop it!”

No, we can’t. I don’t think we can, anyway. Gradually people will stop crying about it and AI will be accepted.

It’s not like people are screaming that hard about Netflix. I heard some flack about A24, but not like the apoplectic rage against Eli Roth. How many people on the I-hate-Eli bandwagon are canceling their Netflix subscriptions?

People always hated him. I wonder why? Hostel was part of it, to be sure.

Hostel was the prime suspect in the whole Torture Porn controversy. But mostly, people were angry that the movie appeared to be homophobic. Roth’s characters casually drop slurs and engage in assholish behavior in the movie. So, obviously, Eli Roth is a homophobe.

I see it differently. The European travelers in Hostel are classic examples of what was once known as Ugly Americans. The Ugly American was a 1958 novel about brash, rude, abrasive American tourists.

To me, at least, the guys in Hostel are supremely unlikable. I certainly wouldn’t hang out with them. I think that’s part of the point in Hostel. Foreigners hate Americans and sometimes they do so for good reasons.

“But the main character becomes the hero by the end!”

Yes. Of course he does. He was a dick, but he didn’t deserve to be tortured and killed for his behavior. Just like people who talk a bunch of dumb crap do not deserve to lose their livelihoods here in the States. It doesn’t matter if they are left or right wing. Too many people have vicious attitudes and not nearly enough compassion.

Getting back to Ice Cream Man, we’ll see what happens. I think this is a decisive moment for horror. Regardless of whether the movie succeeds, I still say AI isn’t going anywhere. Sadly, I've become cynical.

Think about this: How many filmmakers are using AI and won’t admit it? At least Eli Roth had the stones to tell the truth. Not that many are thanking him for it.

You can’t stop the future, though I often wish I could.

I rejected modern filmmaking for a long time, but now I am on board and watching new movies again. I’m mostly having a good time with it. I think I’ll stick around and see where all this goes, and I will pay my money and sit in the dark to see if the results are worthwhile. You never know. I may be surprised. Maybe we all will.

Written by Mark Sieber

I’m one of the few in the community who isn’t a fan of Paperbacks from Hell. I was hoping for a serious history of the field, but to me it is shallow and largely focused on the worst the genre had to offer. I think the book played a huge part in lowering the level of taste in horror fans. People loooove their William Johnsons and J.N. Williamsons, but I have trouble selling Peter Straub or Dennis Etchison at my dealer tables.

I was hesitant to try one of Grady’s novels, but upon hearing so many good things about My Best Friend’s Exorcism, I gave it a chance. I was delighted at how much I loved the book.

I’ve enjoyed everything Grady Hendrix has published since then. He has a way of presenting genre cliches in funny, sometimes ironic new ways, upping the gore and violence, but also bringing emotional depth in ways few other writers can even approach.

Also, I’ve met Grady and I like him a lot. I’ve sold him bad horror novels. His live presentation of Paperbacks from Hell is marvelously entertaining and more satisfying than the book.

I was surprised to hear about The Rednexorcist. It seemed to drop right out of the sky. The title brings his SF opus, Badasstronauts to mind. I liked that one quite a bit, even if I didn’t feel that it measured up with his other novels. Being an old-time science fiction fan surely helped.

The Rednexorcist was published in England and I ordered a copy right away. It came with a stiff overseas shipping fee. Shortly after I made my order Grady informed his readers of a company that ships to America for free. Thanks again, Grady.

The book is a small edition and its two-hundred page length goes by pretty quickly. As always with Grady, The Rednexorcist is fast-paced and entertaining. The emotional depth I mentioned above is. However, lacking in this one.

A rough-and-tumble priest is released from prison and is met by his very reluctant daughter. Immediately things go awry. He gets slambang drunk on the first night, and the next day they encounter some startling phenomena. She begins seeing dead people just like in the movie. That’s just the beginning of a twisted tale of theological insanity and horrific violence.

I liked The Rednexorcist, but it honestly feels more than a little disjointed. The end, which Grady generally excels at, is a big disappointment.

I could well be wrong, but it seems like The Rednexorcist was an attempt at a major novel that didn’t work out the way the author hoped. Pieces of the story are quite good, and it contains some of the squirmiest scenes he’s ever written, but as a whole The Rednexorcist falls short of the mark. It’s amusing, but I didn’t care one whit about the characters or their fates.

If you love the fiction of Grady Hendrix as much as I do, absolutely, buy the book. If you’re so-so on him, I recommend a hard pass. If you haven’t tried anything by him, The Rednexorcist is not the place to start.

Written by Mark Sieber

Categories:

Both might be considered literary authors. I don’t stoop to the self-congratulatory term, usually used in derision, elevated horror. They’re simply great writers.

These guys could blindside you. Straub is a stuffy, professorial writer? Read “A Special Place: The Heart of A Dark Matter.” This novella will freeze your soul, if it doesn’t actively make you sick. Same with a short story called The Juniper Tree.”

Tessier was the same way. Take Fogheart as a point of reference.

Fogheart begins like a classical story of spiritualism and occult activity. A modern example of a Victorian approach to horror. Ah, but this novel has dark secrets. Ugly, terrible, filthy surprises.

Two couples are separately experiencing occult phenomena. Both men are snobby shits with little respect for anything but their own appetites. One, an academic bore, has contempt for most people either in or out of his studious circles. The other is a wealthy, world-traveling fabric merchant. Both regard women as objects to be manipulated and used at will.

Their wives are slightly better individuals, but it’s hard to like people who willingly accept oppression as they do.

Strange things are happening and both couples are advised to seek out a spiritualist. She is a tortured soul who curses her supposed gift and longs to leave the land of the living. She isn’t in the seance business for the money. Instead, she wishes to help others who are suffering.

The couples are warned that they may not be happy with the results of the investigations, but in desperation, they proceed.

Ghastly revelations come forth. Buried secrets are unearthed, and also hideous behavior of the present. Tessier takes his readers to depths of depravity that would have fit in well in the transgressive novels released by Dell/Abyss in the subversive nineties.

Fogheart culminates in a kaleidoscopic finale that conjures up powers of the elements and of other worlds just outside our reach. Getting there is a grim but rewarding experience. It’s brilliant and terrifying and utterly harrowing.

Thomas Tessier took leave of this plane last year. He is sorely missed. Tessier wasn’t the type to crank out a serviceable book every year. He started his career off that way, but as the field changed and his work matured, his output slowed. I’ll wait as long as it takes to be able to get books as good as Fogheart , Shock Waves, Phantom, or really, anything he ever published.

I said that Tessier was a big genre secret, but that changed in recent years. Rapture, Finishing Touches, and The Nightwalker were published as part of Valancourt Books Paperbacks from Hell line of retro horror titles. That’s great, and I applaud them for it, but the term, Paperbacks from Hell, brings forth images of pulpy dreck. Tessier’s work is anything but that.

Thomas Tessier is gone. Peter Straub is dead. The old masters are taking their leave, and we don’t have spiritualists to let them know how much we appreciated what they gave us. It’s a potent lesson. Thank a living writer today for the work we love so much.

Written by Mark Sieber

It reminds me of a guy I used to work with. He was getting into audiobooks and asked for recommendations. A ‘sci-fi’ fan, his favorite movie was Star Wars and he wanted some science fiction. I was telling him about various books and writers, and I came to Harlan Ellison and his best short story, “Jefty is Five”. I explained the story and his question was similar.

“Why did he stay at age five?”

“He just did. Why doesn’t matter.”

“There has to be a reason! Why didn’t he get any older?!?”

Metaphor is wasted on blockheads.

So, why? Why couldn’t those people leave the house in The Exterminating Angel?

Luis Buñuel is known as the great surrealist of cinema. His work isn’t as shocking today as it was when he was alive. Not since we’ve had Lynch and Jodorowsky and Waters.

In fact, shock value is dead. We’ve seen it all. Blasphemy has gotten tedious, sex is demystified, and gore is simply boring. Despite what the independent writer edgelords would have you believe. One of the few truly shocking things anymore is how stupid so many movies and shows are.

Buñuel worked with Dali. He smashed barriers. His film, Viridiana, with scenes that mocked the Last Supper, was denounced and banned in Spain. It won the Palme d’Or award at Cannes in 1961. His next film, The Exterminating Angel, is perhaps his best.

A group of wealthy aristocrats gather for a dinner party. As the gathering approached, the hired help was compelled to leave. Even at the risk of their jobs, they inexplicably could not stay in the manor.

The dinner is a success, but when it’s time to leave the guests simply don’t. It seems natural to them that they go to sleep in the living room. The next day it begins to dawn on them. They cannot leave.

There is no barrier. No locked door, no secret force field. No logical reason why they cannot simply walk out the door.

Days pass. Despair begins to overtake the party. Rage, savagery, suicide. It’s a living nightmare. They are trapped inside their own cocoon of privilege.

Police gather outside. They can’t enter the building. They don’t know why, but no one can bring themselves to walk through the doorway.

Inside, food runs out. The water turns foul. A man dies. They find a cache of opiate drugs and greedily imbibe. Luckily a bear and some sheep are wandering around and the people slaughter and kill one of them.

Why indeed.

All films are open to interpretation. This one seems obvious to me. The Exterminating Angel is a parable about the invisible but impenetrable social-economic barrier that divides the classes. We, the average people, cannot enter the sanctity of privilege. The ruling class are imprisoned by their own pampered excesses. Even while their souls are eroding from the empty lives they are living.

A final scene where a line of sheep are running into a church may seem like something out of a cartoon in the current climate, but 1962 audiences were scandalized. It’s still a potent depiction of hapless followers.

There’s a handful of foreign classics every movie fan needs to see. The Seventh Seal. Wings of Desire. La Dolce Vita. the 400 Blows. Seven Samurai. Grand Illusion. Breathless. Aguirre, the Wrath of God. The Marriage of Maria Braun. There are more, but this is a good start. The Exterminating Angel belongs on the list.

I urge people to give these movies a chance. It’s not like doing tedious homework. They are beautiful, entertaining, inspiring, important. You will be a richer person if you watch them.

Written by Mark Sieber

Some of the interviewees are excellent. There’s Lisa Petrucci, who along with the late Mike Vraney, was behind Something Weird Video and its successor, AGFA. There’s also Chris Alexander, Lizzy Borden, David Blyth, and Scooter McCrae.

A lot of attention is devoted to Something Weird and especially to Vinegar Syndrome. I loved these parts. The Criterion Collection is discussed at length.

I wish Boutique had been a lot longer. At seventy-two minutes it seems like a lot of important subjects were whisked over too quickly. Or completely ignored.

Anchor Bay Entertainment was a pioneer in home video and deserved more than a cursory mention. How could Tim Lucas and the essential Video Watchdog magazine be omitted? Tim and his mag were the conscience of the industry.

How about Don May, Jr. and Synapse? They were prototypes of the specialty movie releasing field. Or Grindhouse Releasing and the visionary work and tragedy of Sage Stallone?

I know they didn’t want to merely focus on the horror film, but let’s face it: Horror people are collectors. They are the most fanatical group in the world about these things.

I don’t object to any of the material covered in Boutique, but the subject is a big one. We still need a more comprehensive look at it. A monster of a documentary along the lines of Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy or Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th. Horror people don’t fuck around when it comes to this sort of thing.

I do like that Boutique shined a light on queer cinema and how porn was a driving force in the inception and development of home video.

Should you get Boutique: To Preserve and Collect? If you’ve got the movie collecting bug, of course you should buy it. Is it worth thirty dollars? Uh, maybe try to catch it on a Vin Syn Sale.

Collecting the pricy blu-rays has been a lot of fun, rather like being in a club. I’m afraid, however, my flirtation with the boutiques is drawing to a close. It’s like the old days of buying so many limited-edition books. It was fun and we love to support our favorites, but in the end, it is devastating to a budget. Besides, how often do I think I’m going to watch most of the movies? It’s time to rein myself in and rearrange my priorities. Again.

Written by Mark Sieber