13 Nights of Hallowe'en: Night #7 Body Parts

Wow, what can I say about tonight’s movie? It’s called
“Body Parts” and it stars a bunch of people I love to watch. This movie is a personal favourite. Up first is Jeff Fahey who is stupendous and I dig all his work. I have to tout another of his movies “The Lawnmowerman”. I just have to tout it. Okay, done. Fahey plays criminal psychologist Bill Crushank. Crushank consults on a convict named Ray, played by the coolest man with three first names, Paul Ben-Victor, who is like Super Guest-Star-Man on TV. Later Crushank runs into a man in his unique situation played by Brad Dourif. Dourif of course is most famous for all of the “Child’s Play” movies as Chucky’s voice but I must also tout “Death Machine”! Dourif won a Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Best Supporting Actor in “Body Parts”.

One last cast comment: Crushank also gets help from Detective Sawchuck played by Zakes Mokae who should be remembered from “The Serpent and the Rainbow”. Now for the director, Eric Red. Red is the director for “Body Parts” and did some of the writing. He was also a writer on the 1986 and 2007 versions of “The Hitcher” and on “Near Dark”. Now, “Body Parts” is one of those movies that the audience has to go with. Some call it cheesy, and laugh at the dialogue, but that’s mostly a matter of the philosophical questions given flesh (pun intended) in the film. Does that fall flat? Honestly, kind of, but the pacing is good, it has great excitement, and I enjoyed Red’s handling of things. After all, the film was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Horror Film and won one for Best Music.

Mood: contemplative.
Music: Haunted by Type O Negative off of October Rust.

Anatomy of a Horror Setting #2-20: The Final Conjurations

Let’s continue with our specific spells of horror. The first comes from a self-proclaimed Demon Lord of Pestilence. The spell was always unleashed upon one victim who was initially unaware of the dark magic worked upon them. A lone nomad with no home or tribe was the first victim. The nomad travelled far and wide. All that came in contact with the nomad would fall to the pestilence laid upon him by the spell. Three days after contact, with no warning signs, the disease would strike. It was a deadly wasting. The virulent contagion spread via contact as well as contaminating the water. Animals were not immune to it either. Wherever the nomad went, even taking to a life of hermitage, he killed off all the local game, forcing him to move on and spread it even further.

Spells to raise the dead as a zombie are easy to find. A nasty twist already lighted upon is to tie someone’s consciousness to his or her corpse. A searcher of ancient lore can find something more sinister in dusty forgotten tomes with pages that barely resist crumbling. There is a spell said to come from Mictlantecutli himself. The last to use the spell was a Death cultist. The victim was a traitor to the cult. The traitor was fed to a starving jaguar. The spell brought the traitor to the brink of death and then the traitor was healed within an instant, and given a short reprieve before he began to be eaten again, without the presence of the jaguar. The spell causes its victim’s murder to repeat over and over again in every excruciating detail for seven days and nights.

Blood feuds are as old as people. There is a spell that tries to bring them to an end. This spell curses anyone who kills or murders. The spell attracts non-corporeal entities to the murderer. The entities appear as the slain and are visible only to their killer. Much like a poltergeists these entities throw things, break things, violently--but not deadly--assault the killer, assault those who associate with the murderer, and create a terrible noise and ruckus. The entities cannot affect the physical world constantly and often have to build up to a good tantrum. The true power of this spell is that going forward the killer’s descendents who kill anyone accidentally, on purpose, or even in self-defence will suffer the wrath of a new entity as well as all of his or ancestor’s spectres.

Mood: exhausted.
Music: Day Job by Gin Blossoms and Department Of Youth by Alice Cooper.

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The Ghosts and Me

I don’t think that I've blogged about this before specifically. I believe in ghostly phenomena. Thusly I believe in apparitions. I don't mind the word ghost. I do draw the line at spirits though. I don't believe that people get to wander around after death. It's not that I'm unreligious and don't believe in the soul. I just don't think that you get the chance to fix your life after it's over. It's against my personal religion within my regular religion. I think you're up the creek if you haven't done the things you needed to do. Likewise I don't think the matter of your death matters either. There's only one judgement. If someone is killed that judgement will come when the killer is likewise dead.

Maybe I have touched on this overall subject before. Certainly I coloured my blog about the fear of ghosts with my opinions. I certainly made reference to what I believe back when I talked about investigators of hauntings. Of course what I said there dealt also with more grounded "mythology" of hauntings. For example, going to a cemetery looking for ghosts is almost pointlessly stupid. Everyone in the cemetery is supposed to be laid to rest. They're not to be hanging around. It goes against the grain. It flies in the face of ghost logic. Go look for an accident scene or a crime scene or a hospital. Though of course for safety I advise against hanging around abandoned hospitals.

Over at Artzone I have a new picture in my gallery. It is a ghost, inexplicably enough given what I've said above, in a cemetery. The title of the piece is "I Don't Belong Here". The title has two meanings. If you don't know anything about the whys and wherefores of the picture then the title can be what the ghost is thinking. He doesn't believe he should be a ghost, he believes he should still be alive. Knowing what you know after reading this blog reveals the second meaning of the title. Ghosts don't belong in cemeteries. There can however be a reason for a ghost in a cemetery. Those reasons include murders committed in the cemetery and improper/illegal burials.

Mood: relaxed.
Music: Soul Intruders by Bruce Dickinson and Are We Waiting by Green Day.

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