Author: LobaBlanca

BookBin2014: The Cuckoo’s Calling

~ LobaBlanca

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My experience earlier this year with J.K. Rowling’s first foray into non-Potter fiction was decent enough that I decided that if I could find her second offering at the local library, then I would give it a go. So it was with delight and a little trepidation that I borrowed The Cuckoo’s Calling.

First, I really wish that I hadn’t known that “Robert Galbraith” was Rowling writing under a pseudonym. I wish I’d been able to experience this novel thinking that it was someone other than an already established author trying to break into another genre after a somewhat mixed first attempt. However, truthfully, I probably would have never read this book if I hadn’t known that Rowling was the actual writer. See, I have learned through repeated trials that detective stories simply are not my cuppa. I do keep trying (because I just don’t know when to quit sometimes), but I’ve yet to find one that makes me go “YES! THAT’S IT! THAT’S THE BOOK FOR ME!”

Totally strange, I know, considering that so many of my favorite shows have been crime procedurals…including that one three-lettered series that I simply can’t quit. But I digress.

Still, I have to say that The Cuckoo’s Calling came pretty close to finally pulling me into the detective genre all the way. Close. But not quite all the way. True to Rowling’s form, she did a fantastic job of setting up compelling characters and situations that kept drawing me along for whatever fantastically bumpy ride she had in mind. Plus, Rowling has an enviable skill for planning things out to the very last detail. I honestly could not fault the conclusion of this story, even when I sat and pondered it far more deeply than I think I’ve ever pondered one of these stories.

I think, though, that this was part of the problem I had with the novel. It was so well-planned that the reveal felt…anticlimactic. I don’t know how else to put it. I felt that the whole novel preceding the part leading into and finally giving the big reveal was so solid and enjoyable that…I don’t know. The ending should have been more…more.

Great use of words there, right? I’m trying not to give away anything about the ending, though, because I don’t want to ruin anything for those of you who might not have read this book. And even though I wish that the ending hadn’t been quite as neat and polished and sedate as it was, I do think this book is worth reading. Rowling is gloriously talented to the point that, even when I don’t completely love every bit of every story she writes, I can still love her for her abilities and her obvious devotion to language and literature. To put it in her own vernacular, I think she’s brilliant.

Final Verdict: As well written and mostly enjoyable as this book was, I kind of feel at this moment that I don’t need to add this to my collection. However, I found Rowling’s detective Cormoran Strike an interesting enough character that I have already added myself to the wait list at our local library for his next adventure, The Silk Worm (the library hasn’t even received any copies yet and already I’m 384th in line!).

Flashback Friday: Volcano Girls

~ LobaBlanca

Remember the era of 90s Alt-Rock Power Grrl Music? I miss those days. Apparently, my iPod understands this, because the next song that came up during the shuffle session that pulled up last week’s post brought me this, my only Veruca Salt song (because I want to rock out now, now, now!).

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyVSKydUxKk&w=640&h=480]

I’ve listened to some of their other music, but nothing else by the group ever struck my fancy quite like this song (even if they do all look like they’re trying to hang themselves in the video). Of course, listening to this song always puts me in the proper frame of mind to listen to more Power Grrl music, which means that I might be continuing this particular thread for a little while longer. You don’t mind though, right?

Ladies of Horror May-hem: Debra Hill

~ LobaBlanca

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Last call for Ladies, denizens, and just as my first draw this month was perfect (as has been every other draw, quite frankly), so too is this final draw.

In some ways, I guess you could say that I’ve broken my own rules…or at least bent them in twisty-like-a-pretzel ways. See, Debra Hill isn’t a character from a horror movie. Instead she was one of the originators of some of the greatest characters to grace the genre in modern times. While any casual horror fan knows that John Carpenter was behind bringing Michael Myers to the genre, what most people forget (or don’t know) is that Debra Hill both co-wrote Halloween with him and then produced it. And worked behind the scenes, doing everything from setting up equipment to bagging and unbagging leaves to help make a sunny, summery California neighborhood look like Haddonfield, Illinois in late October. Oh, and Haddonfield? That’s where she was born…only it’s really in New Jersey.

Hill went on to work with Carpenter on scripts for Halloween II, The Fog (which is another brilliant film that doesn’t seem to catch quite as much love from genre fans as that babysitter stalker movie does), and Escape From L.A., among other significant writing credits. She also was a proliferate and successful producer, thanks to the totally unexpected success of her first gig (again with that babysitter stalker movie!). Beyond producing a string of fantastic Carpenter movies or Carpenter-inspired movies like The Fog, Halloween II and III, Escape from New York, and Escape from L.A., she also produced The Dead Zone as well as the decidedly non-horror but still important to Loba, Adventures in Babysitting and Clue.

Not bad for a woman whom no one in the business took seriously when she first came to Hollywood a mere four years before hitting the right chord with that…yeah, you guessed it…that babysitter stalker movie. She once even noted, “Back when I started in 1974, there were very few women in the industry, and everybody called me ‘Honey.’ I was assumed to be the makeup and hair person, or the script person. I was never assumed to be the writer or producer. I took a look around and realized there weren’t many women, so I had to carve a niche for myself.”

Not only did she succeed in carving that niche, she carved her name into the very foundation of a genre that is decidedly not known for its overall welcoming nature toward women. True, by helping to co-write Halloween, she did help establish that somewhat patronizing “virginal final girl” trope, but holistically, Hill’s was a career of trailblazing brilliance (plus, I do cut her some slack since she did get Jamie Lee Curtis laid in The Fog…and let her survive [spoilers]).

Sadly, Hill died of cancer in 2005, at the horrifyingly young age of 54. Obituaries noted that she was one of Hollywood’s first female producers, that she was a pioneer in the industry, an inspiration to women. Jamie Lee Curtis described her as “the most influential woman in my professional life.” John Carpenter said his relationship with Hill was “one of the greatest experiences of my life

Ladies of Horror May-hem: Amanda Young

~ LobaBlanca

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Time to get back to putting the mayhem in this month’s theme.

[Loba Tangent: Oh, yes, there will be spoilers, denizens.]

I’m willing to bet some of you are a little gobsmacked by today’s Lady. While I admittedly was surprised that the original Saw was nothing like I expected it to be (read: pointlessly violent and disgusting), I only made it through two of the sequels before throwing in the towel on the rest of the (pointlessly violent and disgusting) franchise.

All that being said, I was able to make it through the portion of Amanda Young’s living presence in the franchise (see? SPOILERZ), and, I have to admit, even though I didn’t really like her character, I was intrigued by her. More precisely, I was intrigued by the fact that, even though the antagonist of the original movie was male, writers Leigh Whannell and Darren Lynn Bousman opted to have him choose a female as his successor (or one of his successors, as I believe another was hinted at in the third film), thus making Amanda Young one of the first recurring lady slasher villains I can recall ever seeing. Even more interesting is the fact that she comes from one of the most successful horror franchises to hit the genre in a long time.

Now, I know that there are horror movies out there with female villains helming them (Voorhees, party of EEK!), but Amanda Young was more than just a one-time thing. She was chosen. She was groomed. She was tested. She could have been a contender. If only those screws hadn’t come quite so loose. I’m even willing to admit that, had she not gone so off-the-rails mentally and not died as a result, I might have been tempted to watch the fourth movie, just to see which psychotic killer off-ramp she’d fly down next.

And just as Kevin Williamson gave glorious feminist twists to his final girl dynamic duo, Whannell and Bousman give an equally intriguing feminist twist by changing the typical horror dynamic, especially for these types of movies. After all, why do you think there are so many final girls? It’s because horror has for too long embraced the violence against women trope. Again, I love the genre, but I acknowledge that it’s got a long history of awful when it comes to things like this. The final girl exists in some ways almost as a placation. “Yeah, we killed a bunch of girls in horrible, exploitative ways…but some of their boyfriends died, too (usually in really fast, less-than-graphic ways)! AND LOOK! We let a girl defeat the bad guy and survive! That makes it all better!”

Does it? I’m not so sure. Does a movie like Saw make it any better than the final girl alternative? Now, it’s not the male antagonist against the young female protagonist. It’s the young female antagonist against…everyone.

EOV. Equal-Opportunity Villainess.

Still, however I might feel about the character or the franchise from which she sprung, I give credit where it is earned. By becoming one of the slasher elite (and doing it with insane style), Amanda Young has earned her place as a Lady of Horror May-hem.

Oh and by the way, no you aren’t seeing double, denizens. Amanda Young does look remarkably similar to Meg Penny.

Ladies of Horror May-hem: Nancy Thompson

~ LobaBlanca

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Ah, Freddy Krueger. The man, the myth, the legend…who had his fire-scarred ass handed to him four times by two of the lovely ladies to grace this month of May-hem (five times if you count New Nightmare). While our intrepid Alice Johnson was able to defeat Freddy through the powers she gained each time he killed one of her friends and family, the original final girl of Elm Street did it all with nothing more than her wits and sheer determination to survive.

[Loba Tangent: Spoilers ahoy, denizens.]

Nancy Thompson, as played by Heather Langenkamp, starts out in director Wes Craven’s slasher classic A Nightmare on Elm Street as the average all-American teen, with a best friend, a boyfriend who looks like Johnny Depp, and an idyllic suburban life with a broken home and an alcoholic mother. And the dreams in which she is haunted by a horribly scarred man with knives for fingers.

Soon she learns that she’s not the only one dreaming this hideous nightmare. Everyone in her little clique is dreaming the same guy, the same dream, every night. I’ve heard of group psychosis before, but group nightmares? Something’s rotten on Elm Street, Horatio.

All that was once, perhaps not perfect, but at least manageable…understandable leaps out the uppermost window as Nancy finds herself faced with a horrible truth about why this crazy striped-sweater freak is offing all the Elm Street kids and she starts losing everything. But once that happens, that’s when young Nancy proves herself to be a worthy final girl, as she takes into her own hands a one-woman rescue mission in which she’s either going to prove herself right about what’s been happening to her and her friends, or prove she’s gone completely around the bend.

What makes Nancy so remarkable is that she came across as believable. I believed that she was a confused high school student being faced with some incredibly unbelievable events. Her mother thought she was going crazy and her father was at a total loss as to how even as the sheriff of the town, he was failing to protect her from something he couldn’t even believe in.

Regardless, Nancy has faith in herself…and in the booby traps she learned to make thanks to a book she finds at the library. Come on, of course I’m going to love her! She’s a book nerd commando! And you know what? She gets her man. Literally. This is what makes Nancy the most bad-ass teen in town. She rips the villain right out of her dreams so that he has to face her in reality rather than where he is most powerful. And she then proceeds to make demands of him and tell him that she’s taking back all the power that he’s stolen from her and her friends. AND THEN SHE TURNS HER BACK ON HIM AND WALKS AWAY.

It doesn’t get much more bad-ass than that, denizens.

Ladies of Horror May-hem: Theodora

~ LobaBlanca

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Here we have another grand dame of the horror genre who can rightfully get away with one name, thank you. Meet Theodora…just Theodora, the avant-garde clairvoyant portrayed by Claire Bloom in director Robert Wise’s 1963 haunted house classic The Haunting.

[Loba Tangent: I know that I have rarely made reference to remakes of many of the movies mentioned in this month’s series, but I’m going to make an explicit exception with this movie. Please, please, please, for the love of everything holy in this horror-loving world, do not watch the remake of this film. It is so terrible that calling it an abomination would be a compliment. Saying that it sucked would be kind. Please. I beg of you. Don’t watch it.]

Again, many lists of horror heroines will include the primary female from this film

Ladies of Horror May-hem: Diane Freeling

~ LobaBlanca

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What an interesting counterpoint draw to yesterday! Add another mother to the mix with Diane Freeling, JoBeth Williams’s matriarch in Tobe Hooper’s paranormal classic Poltergeist. This time, however, rather than unleashing a franchise of mayhem, our Lady stands against the onslaught of mayhem, unflinching in her resolve (for the most part…but she definitely deserved some of those flinches).

Strangely enough, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Diane Freeling on any list of greatest women in horror. I’m honestly stunned by this oversight. Never mind the fact that Poltergeist holds a special place in my heart as being the first modern horror movie I ever saw all the way through, Diane deserves recognition for being the ultimate defender and protector of her family.

After all, she is the one who bears witness to most of the increasing inexplicable activity and the first adult ultimately to believe that there is something happening that needs to be addressed. Even more importantly, she is the one who enters the other dimension to save her youngest child, Carol Anne, from horrors so fierce that she exits covered in unspeakably disgusting goo and marked with Bride of Frankenstein streaks of gray through her hair. Even with the fraction of horror we and the others in the movie witness coming through that portal, we can never truly fathom what she must have witnessed, all to save her child.

And, of course, it didn’t end there. Diane must fight to save her children once more, this time by herself. Surviving near violation and physical abuse, rescuing her children from a second abduction attempt by the spirit world, and ultimately coming face to face with the rotting corpses of bodies left behind by entrepreneurial assholes, Diane stands tall throughout it all, keeping her wits through the most atrocious encounters and altercations, and keeping her family together and alive through it all.

Ladies of Horror May-hem: Miriam Blaylock

~ LobaBlanca

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I shall never cease in my sentiment about what I want in a vampire: I either want them to be cold and cruel or campy and cruel. They can be sexy and desirous with a purpose, but they must be predatory. They must be brutal, primal, invoking the ancient survival instinct that has flowed from the violating infection of each to its prey since the invocation of the species.

Miriam Blaylock is just such a creature, and one of the characters who helped form my formative ideas concerning what a vampire should be. Portrayed by the impeccably gorgeous Catherine Deneuve in director Tony Scott’s movie The Hunger, Miriam is beautiful, detached, desirous, and, to my recollection, the very first female vampire I ever saw (and remains one of the few female vampires to find her way to the silver screen).

More than that, I remember being fascinated by the fluidity of her sexuality. This immortal creature, to whom time has granted the luxury of experimentation and examination concerning things like companionship and desire. She does not allow societal taboos to constrain her. She has lived long enough to know that external expectations mean nothing in comparison to the internal needs and wants that accompany her throughout the centuries.

Even after all the years that have passed since my introduction to the Lady Miriam, I continue to see her as the quintessential example of one of my favorite iterations of vampire…more so even than her male counterparts. She personifies danger, elegance, and beauty, with a sensuality that hides the unquenchable hunger of her kind.

Ladies of Horror May-hem: Kirsty Cotton

~ LobaBlanca

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I waffled a bit about adding Kirsty Cotton to the pot. After all, she’s sort of an accidental final girl, stumbling upon the whole sordid ordeal between her stepmother and her Uncle Frank and defeating the Cenobites with the Lemarchand’s box more by sheer luck than anything else.

It’s her second appearance in the Hellraiser franchise, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, that ultimately convinced me that she deserved a place in the running, for proving that sometimes an “accidental” final girl can become a right and proper bad-ass final girl when presented a redo.

Actress Ashley Laurence proved to be an interesting choice to bring to life the character of Kirsty. I honestly found her quite forgettable in the first movie (note: this is the second Clive Barker movie to appear this month; he and Stephen King apparently rock my socks when it comes to horrific ladies). It’s not that she was bad in the first movie; she simply wasn’t quite as interesting as the incredibly disturbing things taking place around her. I think this actually played well in her favor, making Kirsty’s survival and return both surprising and a bit exciting. So often, characters fail to make it from one movie to the next when a movie goes franchise, either because they inevitably die or the next movie’s handlers decide to go in a different direction (which is exactly what happens with the third installment of this series).

However, by bringing back Kirsty, the keepers of Pinhead and his Cenobite cronies not only create a logical bridge between the movies (rather than skewing off into a completely bizarre direction like, say, the second Nightmare on Elm Street or the third Halloween), but they also allow this formerly bland character a better chance to shine.

And do things with skin that could have gotten her cast in Silence of the Lambs. Eek.

I know that Laurence returns as Kirsty once more in the franchise. However, I’ve yet to see that movie. I haven’t made it past the third sequel…although once you see Jadzia Dax face off against a Cenobite with a video camera shoved into his head and another that pukes fire…well, there’s not really any reason to keep going. Still, I’d like to see what Pinhead has in store for our intrepid survivor. It must puzzle him to no end that she keeps escaping his attempts to box her in.

Oh, go ahead. Groan. Even I admit that was quite the tortured pun. It’s suffering was legendary, though, even in hell.

All right. I’ll stop now. No more teasing. It’s time to play. Right, Kirsty?

Ladies of Horror May-hem: Jane Hudson

~ LobaBlanca

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Remove the patina of camp that coats What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, thanks in great part to the over-the-top onscreen performances by and even more over-the-top behind-the-scenes battles between leading ladies Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, and what you have is one of the most disturbing psychological breakdowns ever put to screen. You also have one of cinema’s most tragic characters in the form of “Baby” Jane Hudson.

I feel torn as to how much I want to write here about Jane. I’ve been a bit more lenient when it comes to revealing certain things about older movies, but to really get into the nitty gritty of why I think she deserves to be lauded as a Lady of Horror May-hem would require significant revelations about this movie, including one that I’m not that keen to give away here. I’d hate to deny anyone the joy of discovering this movie in all its twisted, tortuous glory.

Let it be known, though, that I think Jane Hudson’s downward spiraling is one of the most upsetting and heartbreaking cinematic presentations of mental instability. Baby Jane trumps even that “number one fan” for her inability to process reality in socially acceptable ways. Jane’s unhinged “care” of her sister Blanche, in fact, is quite the precursory permutation of Annie Wilkes’s treatment of Paul Sheldon. Jane believes that she cannot escape her past, either mentally or physically, thanks to the total dependence of Blanche upon her. Theirs is a codependency of chaotically epic proportions, and Jane’s resentment and guilt are equally palpable and poisonous to her already fragile mental state.

Watching Baby Jane’s story the first time might make you laugh. Okay, watching her story the first time will make you laugh. But watch her again. Watch her as you would watch a real person behaving in these ways. Watch her knowing how it all ends. Just watch her.