The Corona Diaries Vol. 113 - Prelude: Summer Camp

(Now read entry #113.)

Abigail

I went out last night to see the new horror flick Abigail.

Not really my cup of tea but there were some funny parts. I know it was totally puerile but I still laughed at one character waking up after another one had drawn a cock and balls on his cheek in permanent marker.

Beyond that, the sets for the spooky mansion were just perfect. Victorian looking with stuffed animals, tons of bookshelves, dark wood, and the like. The characters, however, were one dimensional cliches but the 14 year-old actress who played Abigail, one Alisha Weir, did a very fine job. Frank sported some classic 70s cop glasses. I also enjoyed Melissa Barrera's generous cleavage which was shown in some well-crafted high angle shots.

I simply got tired of the jump scares and the hissy screams.

572 Days Later

 

I think I read that Skinamarink was supposed to be like Paranormal Activity but with an even lower budget. As it turns out, it is less Paranormal Activity and more Inland Empire. Walking out of the theater, I was shocked that Skinamarink was being shown at a multiplex and that it had achieved word of mouth success beyond David Lynch aficionados.

The story concerns two children who are in the 4-5 year range. The year is 1995. The pair wake up in the middle of the night and strange things start happening. For instance, doors, windows, and even a commode are disappearing and leaving blank walls and floors. Eventually their parents mysteriously vanish as well. They retreat downstairs to the comforting glow of the television which is tuned to a cartoon marathon. A creepy voice is heard and things start getting rearranged. For example, a chair becomes affixed to the dining room ceiling and VHS tapes suddenly appear on the living room wall. And all of this happens in underlit sets on very grainy video footage.

There's nothing very Lynchian about the general plot but it is rather the style that evokes that director of the surreal. There are very few faces shown here and instead we see their feet and legs, often on the far side of a chair. On the other hand, we get many (sometimes rather lengthy) low angle shots of the tops of walls and ceilings, shots of the TV or a pile of Legos, and low angle shots of dark hallways. I suspect that these are meant to mimic the viewpoints of the kids. We hear them talking but see them very little. Sometimes their speech is not understandable and we get subtitles. Other times we get no subtitles.

I suspect Skinamarinks is trying to emulate basic childhood fears - of the dark, of being alone, and whatnot. While there's a lot of interesting and very creepy material here, the effect is dulled by the long, static shots of walls. The scene where one or both of the kids go into their parents' bedroom is a creepfest of the highest order. And I loved how a cut to the dining room offhandedly reveals a chair on the ceiling. But those shots of ceiling/walls just took me out of the moment.

I tried to find a pattern but failed. Did I miss subtle changes in those shots? We kept returning to the upstairs hallway - the one with the round light fixture - but I couldn't find anything really new. Maybe more or less light, I suppose. I just really wanted to find some kind of pattern, some kind of change with each successive return to that hallway but found nothing.

Like I said, there's some great horror elements here, including a jump scare or 2, and I really liked the ending - very Lynchian - as the house turns into the one in House of Leaves with is non-Euclidian geometry some 572 days later. Those poor kids. But I felt it either needed to be shortened or to have had the long glances down dark hallways joined by other scenes of a less static, but no less creepy, nature. Just a little something more.

Now is the time the old gods return

Woodlands Dark And Days Bewitched: A History Of Folk Horror is a wonderful documentary that begins with the Unholy Trinity from the late 1960s-early 70s and then heads across the ocean to the United States. From there it's a trip around the globe. Aztec mummy movies! Who knew?

It's 3 hours long but it goes by quickly with lots of clips. I really enjoyed the interviews with filmmakers. Also, some really nice commentary on how these movies reflect the social anxieties of their times. I think some commentators went overboard or made unproven assertions and I rolled my eyes at any and all Freudian explanations. The word "sublimate" was overused, in my opinion.

Still, a great look at the genre and now my To Watch list has grown considerably.

The Horror at the Upper East Side

The first directorial effort by Dasha Nekrasova is a nice slab of Rosemary's Baby-esque psychological horror with nods to exploitation flicks as well. Nekrasova co-wrote the screenplay with Madeline Quinn and the pair star in the film along with Betsey Brown. Shot on real film - 16mm!! - it really has late 60s/early 70s horror movie vibes.

Addie and Noelle move into an apartment in New York City. We see early on how their friendship is strained with Noelle doing a mean girl routine. One night a mysterious woman shows up. Ignored at first, she returns and finds a confidant in Noelle after revealing that she is investigating Jeffrey Epstein and suspects that Noelle's apartment was the site of some of Epstein's sex trafficking activities.

Noelle and the woman, who is never named, fall into a conspiracy rabbit hole of QAnon proportions while Addie descends into madness in a way that brings Anna from Possession to mind.

A couple scenes stand out as being particularly disturbing. The first is when Noelle and the woman test a theory about the apartment's, shall we say, suitability for erotic asphyxiation. Second is the scene where Addie is having sex with her boyfriend and suddenly discovers that she has a predilection for ageplay. I am so used to seeing men perpetrate horrors and demand things of women in bed but that is not the case here. This is a movie that stars 3 women and, while men may have a presence that lingers in the background or help out from behind the scenes, it remains gynocentric.

While I suppose there is a lot to be had here about women, men in power, abuse, and whatnot, I found it enjoyable as a piece of horror.

"The Black Stone" audio play

The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society has a new Dark Adventure Radio Theatre story out - The Black Stone.

It is an adaptation of the Robert E. Howard short story of the same name. I have never read it but it comes with the warning "This episode features a bit more sex and violence than is typical of Dark Adventure, including one scene of unusual horror."

Sounds good to me.

The Corona Diaries Vol 40: Autumnal Fun and Games

(November 2021)

With the change of seasons there's colorful leaves, cooler temperatures, and Piper hanging out underneath the bathroom sink.

It's all warm and cozy down there as a heat duct runs underneath it.

********

Let's start with food because who doesn't like food? Wisconsin leads the nation in cranberry production. I believe we grow more than half of the national cranberry crop and wouldn't be surprised if there was a national strategic cranberry reserve somewhere up north. I bought a bag of the fresh stuff and made pork chops.

Beer, stock, onions, cranberries – it was tasty! Oh, and some rosemary too.

Regarding those changing leaves, there are two maples a block over that turn a brilliant red every year. They're really nice to see on my walk home from the bus stop in the evening.

I spent Halloween down in Chicago visiting my mother. We went out to eat at Psistaria Greek Taverna before trekking across the street to New York Bagel & Bialy. There was a line out the door of the bagel joint when we got to the restaurant and when we left it. They do a brisk business. After that we made a quick stop at a liquor store so I could get some Chicago beer that's not available in Madison.

The scariest thing of the whole trip was the traffic on Touhy Avenue where it seemed like half the city was trying to get to the Edens in record time and wanted to let everyone know they were in a hurry by frequently honking their horn.

Speaking of scary things, I got in a scary read this Halloween season – Spiral by Japanese horror author Koji Suzuki.

It's the second book in the Ring series. The first book, Ring/Ringu, was made into a Japanese film of the same name and remade here in the States as The Ring by Gore Verbinski and starring Naomi Watts. Back in the late 90s and early 2000s I watched a lot of Japanese horror films, which were in vogue at that time. They were all total creepfests punctuated by moments of sheer terror and Ringu was the first of them that I watched so it has a special place in my horror-filled heart.

Spiral was good. It picks up the day after the events of the first novel. Knowing the events of Ring, this one lacked the novelty of its predecessor but it was still spooky and there were a couple spots in the story where I was genuinely frightened but couldn't stop reading because I just had to know that the protagonist survived.

All in all, a good fright.

If you dare dip your toes into contemporary Japanese horror, Ringu is a good place to start. I recall watching Dark Water and Juon and being scared s*itless by both. One of them has an elevator scene that scared my Frau and I so much that we simultaneously reached for each other to cling for our dear lives.

********

Last month a couple friends and I took a trip to Milwaukee to see The Hu, a hard rock band from Mongolia that we'd been wanting to see for some time now. They're not just a hard rock band who happens to hail from Mongolia; they are a Mongolian hard rock band that incorporates some traditional instrumentation from their homeland.

You get your bass, electric guitar, and drums but also the morin khuur, a 2-string bowed instrument, a tovshuur which is a 3-string Mongolian lute thingy, and some kind of woodwind that looked and sounded like an oversized recorder. Plus they sometimes throw in some Tuvan throat singing which, to best of the knowledge of this non-singer type, involves singing more than one note at a time.

While they played a lot of hard rock, there were also a few songs that were gentler and more folky where the electric guitar added color instead of big chords. They sang in their native tongue but it didn't make a difference. Their performance was full of energy, great melodies, and big, thumping beats so we didn't really need to know what was being sung.

Our next goal is to see the German-Nordic experimental folk band Heilung in concert. They like their primitive beats, to dress in (faux?) animal skins, and to don antlers. They draw inspiration from runes and the paganism of their ancestors that royally kicked some Roman butt in 9 C.E. at Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. Hopefully they'll make their way to the Midwest sometime soon.

********

Last month I attended Gamehole Con, a tabletop gaming convention held annually here in Madison. It's always a great time. Friends from Chicagoland come up for the occasion to join my Cheesehead comrades and me in 4 days of gaming gluttony.

Most of the time we played boardgames. A group from Milwaukee brings their games library over – we're talking hundreds and hundreds of games – and you can check them out for free and play them to your heart's content. We generally play a mix of games new and familiar.

I played Raiders of the North Seas for the first time.

As you can imagine, it involves taking the role of Vikings and attacking various harbors, monasteries, etc. But instead of slaughtering monks like at poor Lindisfarne, you roll a couple dice and take pieces off of the board.

We also played a game called Red Cathedral which involves – quelle surprise! – building onion domed churches.

I found that the pictures in that circle looked very familiar. While it took me a while, I eventually figured out why. They were done in a style that was just like that of the illustrations in a book of Russian fairy tales that were drawn by Ivan somebody or other.

Take a look at the game board:

Now here's a picture of Vasilisa whom I presume had a run-in with Baba Yaga seeing as her hut is in the background. I am unsure, though, as I woefully ignorant of Russian folklore.

Another highlight of the weekend was the last game of the convention that we played on Sunday before the remaining Chicago folks headed home – 1775: Rebellion.

It's pretty neat as it involves cooperative play as well as competitive.

A friend and I were the Continental Army and Patriot Militia, respectively. We were teamed up against  a couple of our pals who took on the roles of the British Regulars and the Loyalist Militia. The French and the Hessians made guest appearances as did the Native Americans.

The situation was looking very dire for us rebels as the game entered the last round of play. Miraculously, though, we fought the British scum to a draw.

When I wasn't involved with a boardgame, I was playing or running a role-playing game. Friends from Chicago run Call of Cthulhu games – horror role-playing based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft as the Cthulhu Masters Tournament. The game they ran this year took place at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. As rock music played in the distance, we were tracing ley lines, being kidnapped by cultists, and had our sanity strained to the breaking point by unearthly beings hell bent on unleashing havoc upon our world.

In other words, your usual Call of Cthulhu stuff.

I ran a Trail of Cthulhu game. Trail is very similar to Call but with some different game mechanics. My scenario took place in northern Wisconsin in the fictional town of Four Pines in April 1934. The players/investigators head north from Chicago and enter a town that sends one of its own out into the woods when the Northern Lights appear to appease a mysterious creature. They discover that the creature is the Wendigo of Native American lore which haunts the forests of the north and eats people. Only it's not really the Wendigo, but the Great Old One Ithaqua!

I made sure that the town tavern had some folks playing Hardanger fiddle (a Norwegian violin with 8 strings) tunes as well as some lumberjack songs on accordion for that authentic feel. I took the songs from Folksongs of Another America:Field Recordings from the Upper Midwest, 1937–1946 compiled by UW-Madison folklorist Jim Leary. As the players hung out at the tavern, I had the locals telling lumberjack as well as Ole and Lena (i.e. – Norwegian) jokes. E.g. –

Ole went to the doctor for a physical. After Ole was dressed the doctor came in and said "I am sorry Ole, but you are very sick and have only a few weeks to live".

Ole went home with a heavy heart to tell Lena the news. After Ole told Lena he sat in his easy chair and Lena went to the kitchen. Soon a heavenly aroma came from the kitchen. Lena was making his favorite cookies! "Lena must really love me" he thought. Ole went into the kitchen and started to take a cookie. Lena slapped his hand away and said "Get avay! Dese cookies aren't for you, der for da funeral!"

Unfortunately, I didn't keep things on track and we weren't able to finish the game in our 4 hour time slot. Still the players enjoyed themselves as did I which is the whole point.

********

Bonus photo time. Here's my father-in-law in warmer times showing off a sail he painted for a regatta.

The Terror To Be Adapted for Television

Dan Simmons fictional account of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition, The Terror, is being adapted for television as a series by AMC. I don't know how I missed the news for the past year and a half. I absolutely love the book - my review is here - and am looking forward to seeing how it makes the leap to the small screen.

I am hoping that the TV adaptation retains the pacing of the book which is a slow burn. My paperback copy is 760+ pages with Simmons in no hurry at all. Instead he is happy to let the reader wallow as the crew's slow, gruesome fate unfolds one death at a time. There's the thing out on the ice that is picking off crewmembers one by one which provides a terror that is constantly lurking in the background. But the real terror is the struggle of crew to simply survive. In addition to the something out there in the dark, they have to contend with extreme cold, food stocks that are running out, and scurvy taking hold. Expedition members were out on the Arctic ice for two years or so and Simmons documents their struggles in excruciating detail.

Simmons' book is one of the best and most rewarding literary slogs there is so hopefully the TV adaptation won't push the story along too quickly. I can imagine the TV version throwing in more attempts to capture the thing to make the story more action-oriented. Plus Crozier's clairvoyance and Lady Silence can be used less sparingly to add variety for viewers. Should be interesting.

Just in Time for Halloween: The Woman in Black at the Bartell

It's not often I attend a live theatrical performance, especially in Madison. And so the folks at Strollers and OUT!Cast should take it as a great compliment that they lured me in with their take on The Woman in Black.

I've not read the book by Susan Hill which is the basis of this play but have seen the film by James Watkins which was released last year. (It was a Hammer film!) With the movie in mind, I was struck at just how different the play was. Adapted for the stage in the late 80s by Stephen Malatratt, The Woman in Black has been a fixture on London stages ever since.

It takes place in London "somewhere in the past century..." (note the foreboding ellipsis) and begins in a theatre where an aging Arthur Kipps (played by Sam White) has come to present his eldritch and woeful tale to the proprietor, a younger man referred to only as "The Actor" (Pete Ammel), so that it may admonish audiences and, presumably, serve to assuage some of his guilt. Kipps' story goes back decades when he was a young solicitor (i.e. - lawyer) who was tasked with going to a small town called Crythin Gifford where he would attend the funeral of one Alice Drablow and get the deceased woman's estate in order.

The conceit here is that Kipps' tale is told as a play with the play. Lighting cues switch us back and forth between the time when the older Kipps is relating his story and the harrowing events from his younger days. Since the performance features only two main actors, Ammel becomes the younger Kipps while White takes on everyone else. This is remarkably effective and abetted by only costume changes, a minimal set, and judicious use of a fog machine.

Kipps first sees the titular character at Mrs. Drablow's funeral but she becomes a more frequent sight as Kipps investigates Drablow's house which, funnily enough, becomes inaccessible when the tides roll in. The secret of why the woman in black haunts Crythin Gifford is slowly unveiled as Kipps reads through letters and teases details from the locals who suffer her presence. Like Kipps at the beginning of the play, this restless spirit is haunted by guilt.

Most of the set consists of a large trunk and a couple of chairs but off to one side is a door. The last of these sits unused until Kipps begins investigating the house and, thanks to some skillful lighting and a well-timed scream, eventually it becomes the most ominous door I've ever witnessed on a stage.

Both Ammel and White put in wonderful performances but White deserves to be singled out as he was required to take on several roles changing accents as he goes. The acting, lighting, set, and sound all combined perfectly for a great bit of gothic horror.

Hopefully Madison theatre troupes will come to their senses and realize that they are welcome to put on tales of horror during months other than October.

Haunted UW