From Coven to Grave

The witch's mark is an intimate marker that warns of an unholy alliance. Very few will have opportunity to see that nipple from which the familiar suckles blood. Those who need to discover a witch before it is too late must look for more external signs. Some are very blatant and others more subtle. When the witch is discovered then he or she must be captured, a job best left to the witch hunters. That requires special equipment if the witch is very powerful, and sometimes even when not. After that there is the trial, which has its own equipment needs. The capture in many ways is the easy part thanks to the skill of the hunters. The confession is paramount but not easy to attain. These are the devotees of the Adversary (the Devil) after all--lies come to them naturally. The last step, passing sentence on a confessed witch has the simplest parts requirement.

In the dead of the night they gather. Travel out to the woods, away from prying eyes. Around the fire they dance and cavort. No special garments denote them for they must be skyclad, their nakedness full and complete beyond mere skin, their wicked souls fully on display. The nudity strips them of rank and importance; they are all supplicants to their evil Master. The rituals of which they partake are dark and ominous, many of them in stark contrast to proper behaviour, such as the Witch's Sabbath. Their vileness knows no bounds as exemplified by the Unholy Water--made in a hole in the ground from the urine of the Master and the members of the coven. They fornicate with all abandon at these gatherings. Yet by day their wantonness remains hidden just as the rest of their fiendishness. No, they must be caught in small lies and tiny sick acts.

The hunt begins once a witch is discovered. Oddly enough holy water doesn't play into our hunter's bag of tricks, due to these hunters not being Catholic--though they have their share of hunters--think instead Protestants, Quakers, or perhaps for a change of pace, Mormons. Other holy items are used. Some of them are not your run of the mill crosses. They include pieces of the cross from Calvary and in the same vein nails from the crucifixion, perhaps even the famed missing fourth nail. There may be other reliquary of more esoteric history. The equipment of the trial includes dunking devices, stocks and legs irons among other painful bindings, and different torture chairs such as the pyramidal Judas Cradle. In the field all it may take is a length of rope and a stream. When it's all done it's off to the stake to burn in the soul cleansing fire.

Mood: judgemental.

Music: One by Metallica and Let Me Hear You Scream by Ozzy Osbourne.

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13 Nights of Hallowe'en 2009: Night #8 Xtro

This is likely the first real horror movie that I ever saw. I mean that wasn't on TV during the day. I don't remember seeing any at night by then. However I don't clearly remember any of the movies I must have seen during the day on weekends. When I first saw Xtro the format was videodiscs. They were before real laser discs, and before VHS, though Betamax had come on the scene and the store was renting a few of those too. For me Xtro is an infamous movie. I wasn't the only one my age to see it, but really, that said, we were all too young. I remember wanting to see Halloween 3 but being denied by my parents so a scary movie masquerading as science fiction was a good choice. That they never saw the nudity or gore was a small miracle given the number of times I watched it.

As much as I'm against spoilers, sometimes if a scene is early enough in the film I will let things slip. Xtro contains one of these things you need to let slip so that people will know just what kind of movie it is. For Xtro that scene is where a woman is attacked by an alien and within minutes violently gives birth to a full-grown man. To this day the movie still remains one of my favourites. It took what seemed like forever for it come out on DVD, finally doing so in 2005--at least in North America. Xtro was of course one of the British video nasties, though this time actually from Britain. Despite its origins the film bore credit screens with the old New Line Cinema logo and was one of the Smart Egg pictures; a pair of company names that stood for horror even before New Line hit it super huge.

Mood: fine.

Music: Distant Skies by Stratovarius off of Fourth Dimension.