Wednesday, September 5, 2018

Total Skull: Blind Owl, Student Bodies, Last Final Girl, That Yellow Bastard

Things that brought me delight in August, 2018...

Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl
With The Blind Owl, Sadegh Hedayat positions himself as the Iranian Poe. Images of beauty and decay mix promiscuously, particularly in the form of a desired sister-wife who is at once an object of innocent attraction and misogynistic repulsion--and who is ultimately mastered by the neurotic protagonist only in a death that voids her of his misplaced idealization. The Blind Owl is a story that eats its own tail; the narrative obsessively returns to previously deployed images, but it revisits them as a form of continual revision--the rendering and refraction of a bleak palimpsest. 


Student Bodies
Student Bodies is a movie that I have a tremendous amount of nostalgia for; I remember watching it multiple times when it was broadcast on the Rhonda Shear-hosted USA Up All Night. Student Bodies is a spoof of the teenage slasher genre--if you're well-versed in horror you'll catch allusions to the Halloween, Friday the 13th, Carrie, and more obscure flicks like Carnival of Souls. I'm not sure if this really, truly counts as a good movie, but you can't fault a movie that flashes the current body count on screen after every death. Also, I continue to be haunted by horse-head bookends. 


Stephen Graham Jones, The Last Final Girl
The Last Final Girl was the perfect chaser to Student Bodies. The novel takes place in the wake of a final girl is left standing after a Michael Jackson-mask wearing killer (!!!) takes out a good chunk of her high school cohort...with the possibility of a murderous sequel falling on a new batch of adolescent women, to see who is the true final girl survivor. A lot of things could go wrong with this premise; meta-commentary about the slasher genre could easily become heavy handed or an excuse to show some nerd chops, and the use of camera direction as a structuring device runs the risk of artificiality or preciousness, but Stephen Graham Jones just cuts loose and delivers a fast-paced, rip-roaring, and clever take that is both a smart deconstruction of slasher horror and love letter to the genre in equal measure.


Frank Miller, Sin City vol. 4: That Yellow Bastard
Yellow will probably never be afforded the pride of place possessed by blue. Yellow journalism, The Yellow Book, yellow bellied, the King in Yellow; it just isn't royal or steadfast or disciplined or a period you could evolve into with confidence. I don't think that Maggie Nelson will write the equivalent of Bluets for the world encompassed by yellow. Maybe the best that yellow can hope for is Sin City: That Yellow Bastard. And, to be honest, that's not so bad.


Darkest Dungeon Art Book
The art from Darkest Dungeon is, obviously, incredible. But what I found particularly fascinating was the way that lead artist Chris Bourassa specifically developed the art style to fit with the game's feel and intended effect on the player. That kind of calculated effort gets me every time. I do think the book is a bit slim, however; of course, I'd love to have a big fat book with tons more of the art from the game included, but perhaps that's just me being greedy.


Vampire Hunter D and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust
I probably watch the original Vampire Hunter D at least once every couple years, but up until this recent viewing I had only seen Bloodlust once. It's pretty easy to figure out why the original is one of my favorite things; it draws from all the genres I obsess over: Gothic horror, post-apocalyptic sci-fi, and even a bit of Western thrown in for good measure. Bloodlust has all those hallmarks as well, but the trade-off there is updated (and sometimes quite striking) visuals versus voice acting that gets dodgy in places. (Why isn't there a Japanese language option on the US releases of Bloodlust?!)

Bram Stoker's Dracula miniatures
Generous homeslice Kreg send me these minis that somehow go along with the Bram Stoker's Dracula movie--I do kinda-sorta remember there being a tie-in rpg or something? Or is that a bad 90s hallucination? Either way, these minis are so fuckin fun. Harker's missing, but there's a mummy from somewhere else, which, if you ask me, is trading up. Sorry, Keanu.


Bathory, self-titled, Under the Black Mark, The Return, Blood Fire Death, Hammerheart, Twilight of the Gods
I've always enjoyed Bathory's foundational black metal-inspiring albums, but it wasn't until recently that I've pushed forward in their back catalog to give their "viking metal" albums a chance. I shouldn't have waited this long; both Hammerheart and Twilight of the Gods are really rewarding, ground-breaking records. I'm still not ready to explore their thrash metal phase, but I hear they come back around to the viking stuff at the end of their discography, so maybe I'll skip ahead over the rough chapters.

Honorable mentions
Richard Matheson, Hell House (listen to the Bad Books for Bad People episode on it here)
Huntress, Starbound Beast, Spell Eater, and Static
Morbid Angel, Formulas Fatal to the Flesh
Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron
An Adventurer's Guide to Eberron
Eberron: Secrets of Sarlona
Barbara Mor, Mother Tongue
Kentaro Miura, Berserk vol. 15 and 16