Look out! He's got a knife!

Last year's love

I like outdated media. Radio plays or text-only computer games, that kind of thing.

Radio plays are particularly addictive to me, especially as a horror fan. An audio-only story has one big advantage over other media like print or film: you can turn all the lights out and listen to it in the dark. It makes the scary things scarier.

It was comedy that originally drew me to the medium though, in particular the brilliant British series The Goon Show - younger people are not exposed to this particular virus early enough. Written by Spike Milligan (who gets my vote as the greatest comedy genius of the 20th century and probably beyond) and starring Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe (early episodes also featured Michael Bentine, who left early, and jazz singer Ray Ellington often played a role as well as providing a song every episode), this was the greatest and most surreal of all radio comedy series.

Milligan took delight in exploding reality on a minute by minute basis, in ways that are impossible to describe. I'm probably preaching to the converted here, but if you've never heard of the Goons I'd highly recommend that next time you're at the public library you ransack their CD collection, there should be a few episodes available for hire.

My other favourite radio comedy is the hugely popular Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a wonderfully cynical science fiction satire that was spun off into books, computer games, towels, tv shows etc and a soon to be released big-budget movie. As good as most of those spin-offs were, the radio show is by far the best, largely because of Adams's deft touch with audio "sight gags".

In horror the best series I've found is the American show Quiet Please, created by Willis Cooper and starring radio announcer Ernest Chapel in his only acting roles. Chapel's steady voice was perfect for narrating these outlandish tales. The anthology show wasn't exclusively horror, but the lingering memories are of episodes like the unforgettably creepy The Thing On the Fourble Board.

Cooper had previously created the legendary Lights Out, before handing the reins to the talented and visionary, though undisciplined, Arch Obler. It was Obler who made the legenary Chicken Heart episode memorialized by an hilarious Bill Cosby routine in the '60s.

A lot of these shows have fallen through the cracks over the years, and probably wouldn't exist at all if it weren't for deranged enthusiasts archiving them. MP3 has made this hobby all the easier, and now many merchants sell CDs containing bulk lots of old-time radio shows in this format.

There have been some good recent audio-only dramas of various sorts. Dennis Etchison has been scripting Twilight Zone episodes for CD release; Doctor Who was kept alive in recent years partly through some very good audio adventures, which were able to use several previous incarnations of the Doctor because you couldn't see how much they'd aged; the Sci-Fi channel's sadly discontinued Seeing Ear Theatre produced some good ones.

Here's some places you can find radio-type drama online.

Seeing Ear Theatre offers some good recent-ish science fiction, fantasy & horror stories - everything from Neil Gaiman's Snow Glass Apples to adaptations of Tales from the Crypt comics. Unfortunately it's streaming only, in the evil Real format, but if you can bear that it's worth a listen. The anthology series City of Dreams is good.

The Mercury Theatre On the Air has most of the surviving shows from Orson Welles's groundbreaking series, including the legendary War of the Worlds show. Essential, though the file sizes are rather large.

Radio Lovers offers many free MP3 downloads of old-style radio shows.

Bwa ha ha

I'm still laughing about Bush getting himself invovled in that case of the woman in a coma whose husband had her taken off the feeding tubes. (link).

My imaginary perspective of Bush's reasoning: Human life is sacred, provided it's inactive and arguably non-sentient (coma patients, first-trimester foetuses). Any life that's able to walk and/or talk is fair game for being shot, bombed or sent to the gas chamber.

It's very funny indeed, because if I don't laugh I'll scream.

No longer a shiftless bum

I got 6 weeks work at IHC helping out in their payroll office during a transitory period. Seems nice so far.

Got a very nice reply from Blink apologising profusely for getting my name wrong. So now I feel all guilty for slamming him and shit. So it goes.

Google image meme thing

Not sure where this started. Last seen by me on Scott's blog (he apparently got it from Suraya). Copied & pasted from there:

Meme: Google image-search your answers to the following and take the first postable image for each.

- Place you grew up
- Place you live now
- Your school
- Your work
- Favourite food
- Favourite drink
- Favourite song
- Favourite smell
- Favourite shoes

My results below.

Place I grew up:

Place I live now:

My school:

My work: (well my last job)

Favourite food:

Favourite drink:

Favourite song:

Favourite smell:

Favourite shoes:

I also found these surprising Tom Petty song lyrics.

If anybody else does this test, can you explain question 6 to me? Specifically: Are they implying that tending towards being a criminal is a male or a female trait?

Well, DUH:

You are a Hippie. Wow.


What kind of Sixties Person are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

You're Dolemite!


What Blaxploitation Film Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

This made me laugh like a loon:

If you were attacked a gang of thugs, would you:

D) incite a police riot because its just a hallucination

Rage at being published

The new issue of A Low Hum came out. The leader is my article on the Dukes of Leisure. This should make me very happy.

However for some reason the name on the byline is "Duncan Pierce" - nice one. It seems really strange to me. I've never actually met Blink, only communicated with him by email. I sign off all my emails "Cheers, Pearce", and I put "Pearce Duncan, February 2005" at the bottom of the article.

A bare minimum of proof reading should pick up this error. Transposing my first & last name is a common enough mistake, although a fairly aggravating one. Also misspelling my name when it's been given to you in writing is all but unforgivable.

I didn't get paid for this gig. I didn't even get a contributor's copy. I figured what I'd get out of it is publication credit to add to my resume. But when the byline's completely wrong, the publication credit is worthless. No regrets for helping out the band - they are smashing people. But as far as I'm concerned I did A Low Hum a big favour in writing them an article gratis, and this (combined with other factors that I won't talk about here until I've heard back from Blink) have left me feeling that my contribution is not appreciated.

This all probably sounds like whinging, but hopefully other writers understand.

I was happy to buy my own copy of A Low Hum #16, but I'm not of a mind to pay for it in this circumstance. Even with all the good bands on the CD.

#

Say what the fuck you wanna say, just spell my name right
Yeahhhhhhhhhhhh, motherfucker!
- Onyx & Biohazard, Judgement Night

Last House on the Left

Last House on the Left was always one of those movies I heard of because it was impossible to see. An uncut version doesn't exist anymore, and it was banned in New Zealand for about thirty years. Now it's turned up on DVD, in a version that's as uncut as any we're likely to see and packed to the gills with commentary tracks, documentaries and those infamous trailers.

The movie was written & directed by Wes Craven and produced by Sean S. Cunningham; they went on to individually launch the biggest two horror franchises of the last thirty years (Craven with A Nightmare On Elm Street, Cunningham with Friday the 13th). The two of them and film student Steve Miner (who went on to direct every sort of pap from Friday the 13th Part 2 to Forever Young) formed the core crew, and the movie was made for a tiny amount of money.

In all the years I've been reading about it, it's ben mightily built up. Simply put, it's one of the most vilified movies ever made. The first time I saw it I was mighty anxious - afraid that it'd be unbearably disturbing, worried that it'd be unbearably inept. And do you know what? It was both. Parts of the movie were so savage that I could barely stand to look at the screen, and other parts were so embarrassingly bad that I nearly had to look away.

Yet I find myself wanting to praise it to the sky. It does what great art should always do: it stimulates the emotion and the intellect. I would wager that it's impossible not to have some kind of extreme reaction to the movie. In fact I'd be a little concerned about anyone who claimed to enjoy it.

The plot of the movie - which Craven admits to stealing from Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring - is extremely simple: two teenage girls on the way to a rock concert are waylaid by a group of escaped convicts who humiliate, torture, rape and murder them. By a staggering coincidence the killers wind up at the house of the parents of one of the girls; the parents figure out what is happend and humiliate, torture, castrate and kill them. The end.

The scenes where the two girls are tortured in the woods are very well done (in contrast to the rest of the movie, which is very amateurish) and extremely disturbing. There isn't a particularly high level of violence and gore, but the psychological nastiness is of a very high level.

Apparently most of these sequences were improvised and the story goes that one of the girls, despite having known the filmmakers and the other actors for years, managed to convince herself that the situation was real and tried to leave the set. I completely believe this. It feels very much like watching something happen for real, and Craven's decision to shot the movie documentary-style really pays off. Even the constant cutaways to two painfully unfunny comic relief country policemen can't break the tone.

The end of the movie, where the parents take revenge, doesn't have the same feeling of authenticity as the earlier sequences, though it certainly doesn't stint on savagery. Craven makes his points obviously enough - the violence degrades everybody involved, that retribution can be as bad as the inital crime - but the emotional involvement is not as high.

The local DVD has a documentary called Celluloid Crime of the Century, and reveals that the movie was originally intended as hardcore pornography. A very brief but very shocking passage from Craven's original screenplay is flashed on the screen- I won't describe it here, but I will say that it's no wonder the actors refused to go through with this stuff despite some of them being hardcore veterans.

I could not say that I enjoyed Last House on the Left. I could not in all conscience recommend it. But I believe it is a powerful and important piece of film, and that it occupies a vital place in world cinema history. It has certainly been influential, as have the careers of its principal crew. Watch it if you're intruiged, but not on a date. Yuck. Save that for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

Medicore blog entry

Last few days have been fun, partly due to NO WORK.

Caught up with Cal, back from Edinburgh. Went to Adrian's stag do where I caught a LOT of shit for not turning up to anything else. Hung out with Daryl & Scott & M-J all day today watching weirdo horror movies.

Been reading Blood on the Moon by James Ellroy, which is less experimental than his later books but still very good and quite twisted - murder mystery bordering on horror.

Been trying to sort out this children's horror novel. Figure I should write it first and make sure it's suitable for children second.

Watched a doco on the making of Last House on the Left, Wes Craven's infamous first movie, which was recently released in NZ for the first time. Figure I might celebrate by writing a screed of horror movie reviews & posting them here. At some point.

Watched a doco called Crisis, which followed JFK & Robert Kennedy around fly on the wall style while they were trying to foil Governor George Wallace's plan to physically stop two Black students from attending the University of Alabama. Imagined a documentary film crew being given the same kind of access to America's current administration. Laughed heartily.

Time for a fool change

Job finished Friday. Guess I'd better hurry up and secure a new one. Meantime: temping. Yuck.

As my work email was obviously going to be discontinued or at least unaccessible, I unsubscribed from a mailing list I've been a long-time member of. Within minutes got a message from the list owner asking if I was OK. I explained that I'm still subscribed at home, but I gotta say it's nice to be wanted.

Just for cheap thrills I posted on my livejournal, and Suraya's response got me thinking. How serious am I really about writing? The answer was probably only interesting to me, but hey that's what blogs are all about right?

Am I serious about writing? I think compulsive might be a better word. If I go without writing anything for more than a day or two, I feel weird. (I don't have a better word for it - it's not like being depressed or even unhappy, but it certainly isn't a nice feeling.) But I'm an incredibly undisciplined writer.

I can guess what you're thinking: "No kidding, you disorganized f**k. You're an undisciplined everything," and you're right. But I also have a very high opinion of my writing abilities - it's the only thing I'm 100% certain I can do well - and that kind of overconfidence can lend itself to laziness. If I reckon I can get an A without studying, why go for the A+?

I crave kudos for what I've written, and I reckon any writer who says they don't is a liar. But refer back to that "long-time mailing list" - it's not professional publishing, it's read by a very small and specialized audience, but I regularly get private emails saying things like "I always enjoy your posts" or even "I laughed out loud at what you wrote." I even got called "one of my favourite horror gurus" once. This is usually kudos enough. Naturally I want to rule the world with my stunning prose, but I'm not THAT over-confident, stupid or deluded.

So I guess I don't really "take writing seriously" so much as "compulsively write and then bask in the small amount of attention it gets me."

I like the idea of publishing proper fiction, but to be honest I've only ever had one story published and I dread the idea of people reading it. I like the idea of living off writing but I dread the idea of turning it into a job - and lets face it, the odds of hitting that jackpot are about the same as of... hitting a jackpot...