Irish Jesus in Fairview completion and five fabulous HorrorFest 2022 reviews pn Monday Morning Diary (October 17)

by Sam Juliano

Jim Clark published a superlative essay on Ingmar Bergman’s Thirst, this past week at the site.  The Greatest Films of All-Time ballots continue to be submitted and will be accepted till early November.  Thanks to all who have responded!

After responding to numerous private messages over the past months, I am thrilled and proud to announce that today, October 11, 2022, I have completed my second novel, which is tentatively titled, IRISH JESUS IN FAIRVIEW. (The title could change, but perhaps it won’t; I will sort that out moving forward). The new novel continues the story of Adam Sean Furano, his wife Sarah and his family, and the trials and tribulations they face from late 1972 (when the first novel left off) up until 1980, when this lengthy work ends. IRISH JESUS IN FAIRVIEW is considerably longer than PARADISE ATOP THE HUDSON, and the final projection after the proof-reading and connecting passages are figured in is estimated to be nearly 150,000 words. (55 chapters, compared to the 41 for PARADISE)

New characters are introduced, including a major one, a militantly-devout Polish-American Catholic teenager from Wallington, New Jersey, who is met in Wildwood, New Jersey in the summer of 1974, and soon after becomes a major player in the lives of the Furano family. The boy, Andrzej Wiesnewski, shares some distinct similarities with Adam, and has sustained a tragic past. The behavioral tendencies of young people growing up in the 1970’s are showcased, including the obsession with music, movies, sports, local eateries, drinking, smoking as well as bullying, homophobia, and a trio of controlling women, who each bring varying degrees of that propensity to the men they are connected to. The book’s main character has developed a physical disability from his 1971 accident in Palisades Amusement Park, which adversely affects his self-confidence, and within the Furano family there is a power-play for favoritism that results in unspeakable corruption. The real-life priest of St. John’s, Father Charles McTague plays a major role in this story, and some of his history is woven into the fictional narrative. Also, the authentic arrival of Father Peter Sticco at OLG in 1978 is likewise documented. Once again, local establishments, real people who lived in Fairview and Cliffside Park, the area’s geography, schools, churches, and community events are incorporated in a scene-specific way, but IRISH JESUS is a deeper exploration of the themes that defined the first book, and it disavows the notion that the way one feels early in life will carry over into the future. I’d like to think this is a more polished, intricate and intense work than the first book, but those who read it will have to make that determination. There are some major surprises in this book, but I will leave it at that.

Because the first book sold way better than expected, and continues to sell copies weekly to the very present, I am planning to publish through Amazon once again. It will take two more weeks to write some “connecting” passages, and to painstakingly proofread, and then the book will be sent off to my FIRST STAGE editor. My artist already is preparing his cover work, and then my friend and final-stage editor will commence with his examination. (I have already written three chapters of the THIRD BOOK in this trilogy, tentatively titled ROSES FOR SAOIRSE, but I must now focus on IRISH JESUS before resuming with ROSES. Many thanks to all those who have offered love, support and encouragement.

Jamie Uhler has written five (5) more stupendous reviews for Horrorfest 2022:

The Black Phone (S. Derrickson… 2021) supernatural/serial killer

Getting back into theaters since COVID vaccinations became wildly available has been one of life’s small returns to normalcy, a grasping at things us cinephiles mourned and wondered if they’d ever return (perhaps a bit silly and over-stated in retrospect). Getting back into theater-going, I recalled that I hadn’t yet seen a Horror flick since returning. A fact that a return trip to Ohio where I grew up checked off when a few great old friends decided we take in the much ballyhooed Black Phone, Scott Derrickson’s first film since Doctor Strange, the sequel to Kubrick’s spell-binding Horror masterpiece The Shining (somehow, yeah, it attempts to be). Penned from a short story by Joe Hill, the son of famous scribe Stephen King, the film has attracted real buzz, a height nearly equal to the online love Doctor Strange saw as well.

Taking place in the late summer of 1978, the story examines a series of suburban Denver abductions of middle-school boys at the hands of local magician/pedo ‘The Grabber’, a vigilante that wears an assortment of silly V For Vendetta meets Cesar Romero-as-the-Joker masks as he grabs the children into his black windowless van as they walk home from school or ball games. There the boys are brought down into this basement and made to play a psychological game, a game that when they’re broken and attempt to escape it’s implied that they’re raped, beaten and eventually murdered. The film screams from its short story origin, nothing of these characters implies anything beyond what would fill a few short pages in a book, and we’re left wondering just how good Ethan Hawke’s villain could have been if he’d been given something beyond mere costuming to chew on (the best bit, undeniably, is the unintentionally hilarious image of him waiting for Finny seated in a kitchen chair alone, with the mask on and shirt fully open). Similar thoughts abound about Finny (the young boy whose kidnapping fills the story as he ‘talks’ to past killings via a no-longer-working titular black phone next to his mattress) and his sister Gwen’s abusive father, a clear enough metaphor to a slightly more harmful acts The Grabber is dishing up. Beyond showing that abuse is occurring in the home, nothing much happens to this plot arc, and we imagine even if something could, our truly blundering Keystone Cop detectives would be totally inept to do anything about it. Kids are getting abducted here and no one has thought to perhaps inquire on the driver inside a black windowless van with ‘Abracadabra’ painted on its side that prowls around town? Oh well, cops blundering about does wash away the period nature of it and place audiences safely (pun intended) in a contemporary world. A later event near the film’s climax between Finny and The Grabber renders taking the film even partially serious entirely shot, I won’t state it to adhere to a more spoilers free piece, but needless to say I don’t imagine anyone would lose what I’m talking about after watching this thoroughly middle of the road movie, which is very clearly styled and modeled on the mainstream appeal of Netflix’s tv series Stranger Things, itself a show that merely pinched and pulled from a collection of vehicles of the 1980’s (E.T., Goonies, Stand By Me, Halloween, Poltergeist, The Things, etc). But, like Stranger Things, both are closer to the already pale imitations of those works from that very era (Explorers, Little Monsters, Ghoulies, Frog Dreaming) that immediately we slink back in your comfortable air conditioned seats at what we’re getting subjected too. All these things are fine of course, they’ll no doubt lead many of the teens and pre-teens that screen them towards the more original sources birthing lifetimes of fandom. But in the end, in a sub-genre so reliant on bonding with friends and protective (often older) siblings, I just wish all these kiddos could get a wise sage’s guiding hand and cut out the middle man and place Scanners or The Fly (or if we must have kids, why not A Nightmare on Elm Street a film a rare male babysitter let me watch at an incredibly impressionable age) in their hands and get them hooked on the good stuff right from the jump. It’s how I started more or less, the bonding camaraderie of genre with friends howling at the backs of tapes and blurred images flickering past. Hell, I even saw The Black Phone with two such dear friends and the constant back and forth jeering and jokes in the theater has me fondly recalling the evening. What did I start this discussion with, ‘the small returns to normalcy’? Indeed. Sometimes the badness of this stuff just doesn’t really matter, or it is all that really matters.

Demonoid (aka Demonoid: Messenger of Death) (A. Zacarías… 1981) supernatural horror

I’d set out this year to watch a bunch of Horror movies throughout the year, rather than the 6 or 8 weeks that precede Halloween like the last few years, and write about only ones that where either artistically great or peak schlock entertainment. In other words, high recommends. This has held, for the most part, but I have covered a few now that are by no means necessary watches and, if I can spoil some surprises, there will be a few more stinkers coming. I say this partially because I’m looking at how many days are left in the month, coupled with my personal vow to not bombard you readers with emails on the weekend, and seeing that the pieces written throughout the year might cover the rest of the month. This means good things for me—my work is done for another year and who knows if I’ll do this next year—but it does threaten the idea that I could watch a few movies this month that I’d want to offer my thoughts on and wouldn’t. Solving that conundrum, I’ve shoving a recent, highly entertain watch in today feeling it follows a recent piece of Don’t Panic, another great piece of Mexican cinematic hokum.

Where Don’t Panic (1987) was truly outrageous, great cheese, Demonoid is a bit different. It’s more in line with The Manitou (1978), meaning they’re seriously silly, outrageous movies, but they’re employed by real veteran professional actors delivering everything completely straight. The Manitou had Tony Curtis and especially Burgess Meredith and I used their straight style as a key difference with the recent Malignant, films that are similar except for their actors willingness to sell high camp without irony. Demonoid is similar, here Samantha Eggar is put through the ringer that most actors couldn’t bare to take as seriously as she does here, and in the end, sells the bill of goods—which is a movie where a demon moves from severed hands and kills with extreme precedence and gore over several centuries—as if it’s a classic Hollywood A-lister. It’s all helped my Amazon Prime and Tubi (where I watched the film) that offer the film up in a glorious high definition transfer. Every penny spent is seen—for a Mexican Horror film of this era someone spent a pretty penny here and Zacarías is a legitimately good director—and I can’t prod a watch of this more. Especially if one has a pizza on the way and a few cold beers chilling in the fridge. Eggar, as a last point, should be seen as a genre heavyweight; The Collector, Demonoid, The Brood, Curtains and The Exterminator show a pretty sparkling filmography for us trash aficionados.

I’d had this movie bumped back onto my radar by the glowing review of it by Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avery via their new highly entertaining podcast The Video Archives, a show where they discuss three films each episode—generally one mainstream, one foreign and one exploitation—that used to be housed in the movie rental business they both used to work and first met (and whose inventory Tarantino bought when it was going under). Now lifelong friends, it’s as fun to listen to for the film banter as it is two people (three when Avery’s fun daughter joins them for a new perspective) who very clearly love each other. I suppose that’s a theme unto itself, the point of these emails at their start more than 15 years ago. Talking films with friends, but perhaps I’ll have a lot more to say on that tomorrow… (and then yes, we can really get back to quality).

Brainscan (J. Flynn… 1994) sci-fi horror/slasher

Speaking of Nightmare on Elm Street rip offs, the passing reference to director John Flynn’s 1994 Brainscan found in yesterday’s piece had piqued my interest enough to a full fledged revisit, the first watch of the film since checking out the VHS sometime in the mid 1990’s. Foggy memories of it aside, I more or less felt the same as I had before, it’s an interesting premise—the story of Micheal (Edward Furlong, at the peak of his short career), a teen that’s lost his mother to a car accident (that is shown in memory to be near-hilariously graphic) and found his father constantly away at work deals with his isolation by turning to horror films and hard rock (hell yeah) with best friend Kyle. The pair stumbles upon a virtual reality CD-rom game in a recent issue of Fangoria (hell yeah, again) to only be terrorized by The Trickster, a character in the game come to real life that apparently leads Micheal’s in game alter-ego on/to murderous rampages. The film becomes as much a comment on violent or scary media warping impressionable minds when early scenes in which Micheal’s Horror Club’s (again, hell yeah for doing such a thing at school at that age) existence is threatened by an overbearing teacher who objects to their exposure to Horror as a gateway towards rape, dismemberment and general anti-social behavior. These were, of course, hot button issues in the 80’s and 90’s for parents and the PMRC both here and the world over, where such artifacts were labeled with the ‘Video Nasties’ moniker among others, and censored across the British Isles and elsewhere. Sadly, after most school shootings we have to revisit these claims, showing that no matter how the world changes, violent movies and video games will always be cited as the sole source of the problem for large parts of our political populace (however foolish that idea actually is). The actual film is mostly uneven though, it lacks the real gravitas it aspires towards, and much of the staged chills leave you wanting for just a little bit more. But, given the clear teenage target audience, what can you really say, it’s pretty average for the type and does offer a surprisingly uplifting conclusion, a fate many such films wouldn’t dream (nightmare?) of.

Oddly enough the film has recently seen something of a curious cult* build around it, not really based on quality, but more for the idea that it’s a film that explores enough themes that could probably warrant future additions or actual remake properties. Plus, it also got a blu-ray release, now paired with (the slightly better, mostly for the gore) Mindwarp (1992), essentially two films that could qualify for such a designation. As Hollywood continues to show it’s barren of new ideas and wanting to legacy sequel or remake everything, instead of touching the classics, why not go after the interesting (sometimes huge) misfires? Oh, because no one outside Horror hounds and Furlong fans (how many of those exist?) give two licks about Brainscan.

*And I’d be missing a huge point of this films appeal by not mentioning another of its true signifiers to its release era: the soundtrack. Back then such films were paired with a selection of new tunes by record labels to sell their new artists, now sadly a lost art in the steaming age. This is to say Brainscan has a top notch soundtrack; grunge and groove metal employed to equal measure, from peak tunes from Butthole Surfers (‘Leave Me Alone’), Mudhoney (‘Make It Now’), and White Zombie (‘Thunder Kiss ’65’) I’d have loved to have heard this at 14 or 15 and had my mind forever warped by Tad (‘Grease Box’, one of my favorite grunge bands, now often forgotten by the mainstream), Primus (‘Welcome To This World’), Pitchshifter (the grinding ‘Triad’), and Dandelion’s ‘Under My Skin’, which is a bit of a ripoff of Nirvana’s ‘Aneurysm’ played a few beats slower but would my impressionable young mind have known this? Probably not, and it’d have been glorious.

Don’t Panic (R. Galindo Jr.… 1987) psychological thriller/slasher

The end of last season’s Horror binge produced a watch of Grave Robbers, a 1989 slasher that I came away buzzing as ‘perhaps the greatest Mexican slasher of all time’. It was a statement I assumed would produce the expected, also assumed caveat: a teenage slasher from the dying days of the original era is something to be taken with a grain of salt. It’s a cheesy genre mostly for Horror fiends only, so a lobbing over the fence with ‘greatest’ attached to it is a mere statement on the attractiveness of such a film for a ‘beer and pizza’ night, my usual failsafe descriptor for the low-grade, very fun times pieces of pure schlock deliver with friends in tow. This isn’t High Art, but it is high entertainment, an idea I feel the need to convey to describe the film Galindo made right before Grave Robbers. Reason being, Don’t Panic is even less serious somehow; being it’s one of the more ludicrously cheesy films I’ve ever seen, but man, was it a real laugh-riot blast.

Its humor mostly comes from the conceit at what it’s trying to ape; it wants to be a fun, gory teenage Horror movie that can make a boatload of money across the US. It was an era where this happened relatively regularly so this is understandable, but in the copies you get the twist: this is a Mexican film trying to capture what American teens like, so everything is a little strange and hackneyed. Coca-Cola and Marlboro signage is everywhere, there is hilarious stock Pop music and dress straining to create an environment that looks like a California school and, most importantly, is in the crosshairs of Nightmare on Elm Street, the great, iconic film this attempts to capture. It’s not a new idea, can you think of all the blatant Nightmare on Elm Street ripoffs? It’d make a Horror movie festival unto itself; Bad Dreams (1988), Night Killer (a hilariously bad Italian one), Mahakaal and Khooni Murdaa (ditto, but this time both from India), Satan’s Bed, The Fear (1995, a wooden doll becomes Freddy and it’s so close it even gives Wes Craven a brief cameo), Sleepstalker, Brainscan (love this bad one) and Craven’s very own Shocker (it was in merchandising too, who can forget the early days of the internet that built a cult around unearthing a cheap toy made in the late 1980’s to rip off Freddy called ‘Sharp Hand Joe’?). This one is a little different, rather than reenacting a recently dead madman/pedophile, this film creates its ghoul from a birthday party OUIJA board game where one of our teens eventually becomes an appearing/reappearing decrepit Freddy faced being that kills with a bejeweled dagger. Only recent birthday boy Michael can spot it, and we know when because his eyes turn red and he sort of moves like he’s very drunk as well as, at times, totally blind (lol). The eyes and overall visions are actually sort of creepy (a person’s face extending from a TV screen ala Videodrome is another nice ripoff effect), but it’s hard to go the next step as he does look like Zack Morris mixed with AC Slater’s hair, only uglier (should I have just said Steve Sanders from Beverly Hill’s 90210?). He also, for some reason, spends a good portion of the movie trying to curb the madness on the run while wearing dinosaur pajama’s that a 6 year old boy would normally wear to bed. He’s supposed to be nearing the end of high school, or given how old he looks this could very easily also be early college, so, mixed with the clear English dub on much of the dialogue, the puppy love interest, and the eventual brandishing of firearms (what can excite an American audience more than that?) our story careens hilariously ahead. Michael must try to grab that dagger and plunge it into the supernatural murderer stalking Mexico City, err Southern California’s many denizens as it’s the only way to end the bloodbath. You can imagine how all very funny this is, so I turn to what remains in Galindo Jr.’s largely forgotten (if ever really known) Horror career that I still need to see with now two positive, fun reviews down? It seems that last one I truly need to get to is his earliest, Cemetery of Terror (1985), which from cursory research sounds like a Grave Robbers and Don’t Panic hybrid. So, yeah, I’m all in!

The Amusement Park (G. A. Romero… 1975/2019) psychological thriller

Talking a few days ago about George A. Romero’s debut I thought it’d be interesting to review one of his recent efforts, a film strangely appropriate to me recently in a number of ways. First, I’d been thinking a little about Tobe Hooper after a friend’s screening of Lifeforce, his gonzo big budget vampire alien picture, recalling that I’d prioritized it, and a number of additional Hooper’s around his passing in 2017. As much a shoring up of my Horror bonafides, as a genuine desire to explore just went wrong with a director who, almost right out of the gate had delivered such a titanic, masterfully scary work with 1974’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but then just released more or less worse and worse films the rest of his life. It’s something of catching lighting in the bottle, but also a few unfairly forgotten (Spontaneous Combustion is fantastic and could be played as a bizarro superhero movie). But it was a realization that why wasn’t such an exercise also done when George A. Romero passed the exact same year? I’d revisited Martin, what I feel to be his best work and then, not much else. I believed this to be a combination of both being pretty well-versed in his filmography already and a lack of actually wanting to see anything there that I previously hadn’t (pretty much anything—and including—2000’s Bruiser which I’d started around its initial release and ditched). But then I realized I’d never seen the film so appropriate for a man that’d made his calling card the zombie movie: a film coming out, or rather rediscovered, remaster and re-released 2 years after his death. Appearing at the Pittsburgh Film Festival Romero the filmmaker reawakened from the death with a ‘new’ film.

Of course, The Amusement Park had been made some 44 years prior, a commissioned film for the Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania as an educational film for the mistreatment and care for the elderly only to be quickly shelved after initial screenings left people, like I was after completion tonight, depressingly sad and pretty terrified. You wonder what the Society imagined they’d get from the man behind Night of the Living Dead, but still, the film, a highly surrealistic work where actor Lincoln Maazel sees his badly beaten and disheveled double recoil at the thought of reentering the world (here, represented by as the titular Amusement Park) that does nothing but prey on the elderly. Eventually his double does enter, and not only recounts his suffering, but the suffering of most seen over the aged of 65 he encounters. Small moments of hope are immediately crushed just as young adults glimpse terrifying futures in their own dotage via crystal ball and the coming of a death marked by the grim reaper the three horseman of the apocalypse (seen here as three black leather clad bikers sporting chains and billy clubs).

The film is bookended with an opening introduction by Lincoln Maazel himself as well as a closing that pleads to, in paraphrased Jarvis Cocker from his great Pulp song, “help the aged”, and you almost feel the film, as education, could’ve worked. It certainly is grim and scary, definitely the work of a revered Horror master, while also being an endlessly inventive piece of powerful film storytelling on a relatively small budget. As a swansong after his death, it revealed a real tenderness to his frights. Perhaps that was the other reason I’d neglected it, at least over the past few days (as I did want to follow up my previous piece quicker than I have). I’d opened with a few reasons why I’d questioned my allegiance to his work after passing, but a work about aging, caring for the elderly in a compassionate and tender way, so close to around his death, seemed the scariest proposition of all. I still feel this way, but would urge all to eventually screen it, it’s another of his masterworks. Long live the Zombie King.