Pulp Appeal: Black Christmas

Cameron talks about BLACK CHRISTMAS and it’s continuing influence on the slasher genre.

Broadswords and Blasters

Bob Clark’s^[1]Black Christmas is a 1974 slasher flick widely considered to be one of the inspirations for John Carpenter’s masterpiece Halloween. While it is not the first of the slasher flicks, it is early enough to have had a profound impact on the slasher films that came after it.

Black Christmas’ Final Girl Olivia Hussey as Jess

The movie stars Olivia Hussey,^[2] who was already famous from her role as Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s great interpretation of Romeo and Juliet, which I consider to be one of Shakespeare’s worst plays (with the exception of the character Mercutio, who I love). Notable supporting actors include Margot Kidder, Keir Dullea, and John Saxon, all of whom reached their biggest mainstream successes in genre films. Kidder was, of course, Lois Lane in Richard Donner’s Superman. Dullea’s most famous role is David Bowman (Dave) in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space…

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Pulp Appeal: Switchblade #5

Switchblade 4 was good… but I liked Switchblade #5 just a bit better. Interested in seeing what’s going on in indie crime fiction? You owe it to yourself to pick this bad mother up.

Broadswords and Blasters

If you want to read some of the best crime fiction being written today, you owe it to yourself to pick up this issue of SWITCHBLADE magazine. More than good time girls and hard luck guys, the stories in SWITCHBLADE shows humanity at its most desperate but stops short of being voyeuristic. Each of the broken souls in the stories remains, at the end of the day, human, and to their credit, each of the authors featured zoom in on that characteristic and challenges the reader to not sympathize but definitely empathize with the characters contained within. There are stories of rotten luck and worse choices, of unintended consequences and occasional moments of grace.

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Pulp Appeal: Switchblade #4

Today I talk about Switchblade #4, a great issue from anhot new indie mag.

Broadswords and Blasters

If you are looking for a magazine publishing the best in underground crime fiction, you would be sadly remiss passing on SWITCHBLADE. Edited by Scotch Rutherford, SWITCHBLADE fills a much needed gap in publishing hardboiled, stripped down crime fiction. Some of the shorter pieces are more vignettes than true stories, but each packs a punch like a bullet in the dark, or a knife twisting in the small of your back. Each story highlights the bad choices and worse luck that happens to those on the wrong side of the law, and there are few happy stories to be found within and even less redemption. These are stories that have you reaching for rot-gut whisky and unfiltered cigarettes, and might just have you thinking “There but for the Grace of God go I.” The magazine itself is smartly put together, with illustrations and photographs that set the tone well…

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Book Review: THE NETWORK PEOPLE by Bob Freville

The Network People
by Bob Freville
Psychedelic Horror Press

I recently had the chance to read  digital ARC of this book. My review follows, but the book could be triggering as it does depict child abuse.

Bob Freville’s writing hits like a baseball bat to the back of the skull… in the best possible sense. THE NETWORK PEOPLE collects three separate stories, all separate and disconnected but for the common thread of holding a mirror up to the worst of human behavior. The writing is sharp and powerful and pulls no proverbial punches. At times it’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion… beauty in the wreckage.

WE BUY SOULS

What do you do when everything around you is fake, when everything is a simulation of the real world around you and everything is plastic? What do you do when you are fresh out of jail and feeling more exposed than your first night behind bars? Who’s going to want to hire a felon anyway? Less a story and more a reflection on how cheap modern life can be, and the dangers of walking into a store with a sign that says “Hiring?”

THE NETWORK PEOPLE

“First they taunt you, then they haunt you.” A fortyish actor travels to LaLa Land, pursuing his dreams of making it to the big time. But he doesn’t count on the swift erosion of his soul at the hands of the titular Network People. Part cult, part conspiracy and utterly inhuman and uncaring, the Network chews up the young and spits out the old in a mechanical basis. As the poor actor finds out, it doesn’t take much for it to get its hooks into you, and you’ll end up pulling yourself a part trying to get free. The only other thing I’ll say is the human sacrifice bit doesn’t even top the most disturbing part of this particular story.

SEX TOY

A Clive Barker-esque body horror bad trip in the spirit of THE BOOKS OF BLOOD. When a suburban couple has done everything that they can with each other, what do they do when ennui sets in? What other sensations can they pursue together, and what happens when one of them decides to continue on a journey of sexual exploration without the other? It would be too easy to dismiss this as lurid horror, but buried beneath the grotesque is a moral about communication in relationships, and maybe coming to terms that you can never truly know what another person finds attractive.

THE NETWORK PEOPLE is currently available for preorder directly from Psychedelic Horror Press.