What is the werewolf, if not a metaphor for the worst in human nature, our inner beasts freed and asserting their dominance? And those beasts are sneaky. They will, like compressed air in a tire, take advantage of ANY excuse, any opening, to escape. Even if the human in question is able to reassure himself…
Month: October 2015
Explore our (Un)natural national heritage!
Regular readers already know that I frequently post articles relating to the wilderness, or to humankind’s primitive past, the theme of human isolation in nature. I do it because it is from this dark domain that the werewolf was birthed; it is there where the beast still dwells, whether one is peaking of a metaphorical…
Is it or isn’t it?
A remake, that is. I’m talking about the new THE HOWLING movie, subtitled REBORN, the happening of which has already been announced on this site. Since it’s subtitled, one might assume that this new flick is NOT a remake, and I have seen it repeatedly referred to as a re-BOOT than a re-MAKE. That’s good.…
Gone Wild
I’m a country boy, born and bred; I grew up living right at the edge of the woods, where we frequently had deer and coyotes traipsing through our yard. My mother told stories of the night—I was too young at that time to remember it—when a bear got into the chickenhouse, and a neighbor once…
My Son, the Monster
Actress Tilda Swinton (who will forevermore be the White Witch from THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA to me) gives an anguished performance as the parent of a psychopath in the chilling WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN. What must it be like to be mother or father to one of these fiends, these two-legged predators in…
There’s Something Out There
It’s a common rule of monster movies, the kind aiming for genuine scares. Don’t show your monster too much, or it stops being scary. Details the imagination can provide are far more terrifying than even the most elaborate makeup or FX. Nothing is scarier, either in the movies or in real life, than being alone,…
NCIS: Necrophiliac Cannibalistic Incestuous Siblings
If they are STEP siblings, then they aren’t really guilty of incest. I mean, there’s depraved and then there is depraved, am I right? And these two are plenty depraved enough without the incest angle. Then again, they DID commit incest, and necrophilia at the same time. They just didn’t commit it with EACH OTHER.…
You Are What You Eat
Are you familiar with the term “long pig?” It’s a reference to human flesh, specifically human flesh intended for consumption by other humans. I’m not sure of the origins of the phrase. It might go back to some backwoods native tribe somewhere. Supposedly it first appeared in a book by Fredrick O’Brien, a travelogue of…
Werewolves and the Blood Moon
Did you see the recent super “blood moon?” If so, I’m jealous. I wanted to see it but the part of the country where I reside was blanketed by clouds. I had to settle for looking at some admittedly sharp photos online. Oh, well. Such is life. Anyway, the eclipse got me to thinking. Since…
Give that head a hand!
It’s a veritable treasure trove of archaeological oddities, that Lagoa Santa (“holy lake”) in Brazil. There are signs of human habitation dating back 12.000 years, such as stone tools, campfire remains, and animal bones. More impressively, there is 9000-year-old graffiti, the oldest rock art ever discovered in the New World, in the form of a…