Armagideon Time

…and so we’ve reached the end of another Halloween Countdown. The plastic pumpkins and sexy Clone Trooper costumes have already been marked down and dumped in the clearance bin and the long, retail-driven deathmarch to Yuletide is poised to begin in earnest. For now, though, there is a Halloween-anniversary-birthday cake in need of baking and a hellish list of chores that needs completing prior to tonight’s festivities.

Before I depart to stoke the fires of Hotpoint and dust off my trusty broomstick (because the stairs and hardwood floors need a serious going-over), I shall leave you with this most worthy of spooky season tracks — an instrumental number which I included in my very first Halloween Countdown, but is well worth revisiting.

The children of The Damned…what beautiful music they make.

Dave Vanian – Tenterhooks

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Taken from The Whip, a 1983 gothic rock compilation whose tracklist has mutated with each subsequent reissue.

Now that my grim work here is done, all that remains is for me to dim the lights, close the curtain, and cue the closing music — in this case an exercise in hilarious morbidity recommended by DJ Empirical.

Nosferatu – Farewell My Little Earth (from The Prophecy, 1994)

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Five years.*

Recommended listening:   Echo & The Bunnymen – The Killing Moon (from Ocean Rain, 1984)

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Mr. Echo’s finest moment, straight from our wedding reception playlist. The wife is more partial to “Seven Seas,” which is a fine song, but one that lacks the required seasonal je ne sais quoi. We both agree, however, that “Crown of Thorns” is a regrettable blemish on an otherwise perfect pop album.

*Preceded by thirteen years of dating.

The Wikipedia page for Captain Marvel states that Fawcett Publications attempted to stave off the decline of its flagship superhero properties in the early 1950s by incorporating story elements from the successful horror comics of the era. While this assertion might technically be true, it is an incomplete and misleading truth.

There were a siginificant number of “spooky” tales (or what passed for such in the imperfectly “wholesome” parameters of Marvel Family fare), but the overall tone of the last few years of Captain Marvel Adventures was more notably defined by the wave of racially insensitive Korean War agitprop stories that appeared in the series during that period.*

Nor were the more macabre elements limited to the twilight years of CMA‘s run. At its peak, Captain Marvel Adventures was one of the best-selling comics of all time. The format of the series — typically three short tales featuring the title character, plus a large dollop of filler material — required a steady steam of story ideas to keep the money train chugging along. As a result, the 150 issues of Captain Marvel Adventures have the Big Red Cheese squaring off against not only aliens, criminals, and mad scientists, but surrealist imps, absent-mindedness, and a pissed-off Planet Earth as well.

In comparison, the various ghosts, ghoulies, and other supernatural creatures encountered by the World’s Mightiest Mortal were among his more mundane opponents…as the following tale from Captain Marvel Adventures #82 (March 1948) demonstrates.

The title of the tale is “Captain Marvel and the Medieval Demon,” the temporal specificity of the demon in question being either a means of distinguishing the creature from contemporary abyssal dwellers or, more likely, writer Otto Binder (who later went on to craft these masterpieces of the form) didn’t want to rule out the possibility of stories featuring “Bronze Age” or “Restoration Era” demons when up against a tough deadline at some future date. In any case, the story begins with the financial woes of one Horace Stoker, a master of the dark arts whose livelihood has been ruined by the hyper-rationality of the Truman Era.

Not content with extorting pennies from his unusually tolerant and understanding neighbors, Stoker decides to stimulate the necromantic market through a spectacular (and vulgar) display of power. He dusts off his little black book of diabolic entities and summons a rather goofy-looking demon which he then instructs to kill Captain Marvel. Though the rather Boston Terrierish demon feels pretty confident about his chances, his long years of semi-retirement in a South Archeron planned golf community have hampered his game.

Even worse, the mortal world had vastly changed since the days when he used to taunt ingorant peasants with his barbed phallus. Not only is this brave new atomic age populated with such horrifying things like traffic lights and light rail transit systems, but its residents refuse to give a manifestation of demonic evil its proper due. (If he truly wanted to inflict massive panic in 1948, he should have assumed the guise of a non-white family and attempted to buy a home in the suburbs.)

The vile beast manages to escape both Captain Marvel and the local constabulary, only to fall afoul of an evil force which far outstrips his own prodigious powers….

…the inherent cruelty of children.

By this point, the harried creature desires nothing more than to return to Soulrender Estates and do a quick nine with Pazuzu on the fairway, but the terms of the summoning require that he must take a life before being allowed to depart this plane. (Demons tend to be sticklers about contract law, mostly because they invented — and still hold sway over — the process.)

With Marvel within his reach, and no turn-only lights to distract him, the demon figures all that’s required is a little hypnotic transfixion, a quick snap of the neck, and maybe a parting chortle for maximum effect…

…or maybe not.

Unable to harm Marvel and locked into an ironclad agreement, the demon is forced to do the unthinkable — record an album so self-indulgent and unlistenable that his label fall over itself to release him from his legal obligations.

No, wait. That was Joe Strummer.

He instead goes back to Stoker’s house and crushes the unfortunate sorcerer’s windpipe…

…before heading back to the underworld for a few quick brews before tee-off time and a request to be taken off the Legion of Hell’s ready-reserve list. Hey, he’s as evil as the next pit fiend, but he’s already done enough for his Circle.

Recommended listening:  Danzig – Am I Demon (from Danzig, 1988)

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It’s not that long a fall from retro 60s b-movie punk to retro 70s metal cliches.  I reckon we’re due for a gangsta rap album (with tracks about Dr. Giggles and Witchboard) featuring the Devilocked One’s unmistakable basso voice any day now.

*Not that Fawcett was above some hot two-way pandering in those days.

Today is the birthday of Trina Trioxin, otherwise known as Maura, Queen of Animals.  The occasion is usually commemorated with some Chinese take-out and a cake baked by yours truly. The last practice of NHRD‘s 2009 season may have interfered with those plans, but we have agreed to postpone the celebration until All Hallow’s Eve, which is quite appropriate for such a true child of the spooky season.

In honor of this momentous day, I have picked a pair of appropriately atmospheric tracks from Maura’s half of our shared music library — the opening theme to one of the few PS1 games still worth playing and a rare moment of brilliance from a “punk rock supergroup” that never really lived up to its true potential….

Recommended listening: 

Shimomura Youko – Introduction ‘Primal Eyes’ (from the Parasite Eve OST, 1998)

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Lords of the New Church – Dance With Me (from Is Nothing Sacred? 1983)

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I bought my first issue of Twilight Zone Magazine (cover date May 1982) at the convenience store across from Ferullo Field in North Woburn. The initial allure was the prospect of reading some horror fiction with a little more bite than what could be found in the children’s section of the Woburn Public Library or through the Scholastic Book Club, but I ended up taking away far more than childhood nightmare fodder from the roughly three years I followed TZM.

Essentially a horror/dark fantasy counterpart to Omni (another geeky spin-off venture from a purveyor of nudie mags), TZM attempted, however imperfectly, to offer a more sophisticated and literary take on the genre than the more splatter-centric content found in Fangoria and the like. The magazine gave me my first exposure to the writing of Lewis Shiner, Joe R. Lansdale, T. Coraghessan Boyle, and Stephen King (through his short story “The Raft” and a review of Different Seasons that compelled me to purchase the book), not to mention a host of other contemporary and classic works of horror fiction.

It was Twilight Zone Magazine that first sparked my realization that literary and film criticism amounted to more than “thumbs up, thumbs down” simplifications that tended to dismiss spooky fare out of hand. Both Thomas Disch (on books) and Gahan Wilson (on movies) managed to combine a strong love of genre material with sharp critical insight and the willingness to call out crap when they encountered it. Even if a lot of the specifics were lost on my younger self, the notion that fandom does not have to equal a suspension of judgement managed to stick with me over the years since.

The featured interviews with various authors and directors offered invaluable and influential glimpses into the creative process and the mechanics of the industry as a whole, whether they involved Roald Dahl blasting current trends in fiction, Richard Donner discussing the creative conflicts involved in making the first two Superman movies, or Phillip K. Dick (in his last interview) lamenting the paradox of being labeled a visionary yet being pigeonholed into a genre ghetto by publishers. TZM‘s interview with director John Landis — conducted just prior to the fatal helicopter tragedy on the Twilight Zone: The Movie set and published shortly after — was my favorite of the lot, featuring some fascinating behind-the-scenes dirt about The Blues Brothers and An American Werewolf in London as well as some kvetching about the critical response to the two films. (When my wife went to meet Landis at a con a few months back, I wrestled with having him autograph the interview issue for me…but held off out of fear of offending the man.)

Even when the material referenced in TZM was lost on me, as it often was, it didn’t put me off as much as pique my curiosity, offering a syllabus of the spooky just begging to be explored further. I parted company with the publication in the summer of 1985, around the time it had begun to push harder into the lifestyle and gadgets territory associated with Omni, but I left with a wider perspective of what ghoulish treats were out there than what I would have gotten from perusing the low-grade pulp fare at the bookstore in the local mall.

I started to reassemble my old run of Twilight Zone Magazine a few years back, after discovering my comic shop had a small selection of issues from those early days. It was a relatively painless and inexpensive endeavor, marked only by one fierce eBay bidding war over my most fondly remembered issue of the magazine — the November 1982 “Halloween” special, featuring a review of Evil Deadby Stephen King (in which the author laments the lack of an American distributor for the fim), the Sunshine State apocalypse of John Alfred Talyor’s “Hell Is Murky,” and Jeffery Goddin’s brilliant ghost story “The Smell of Cherries.”

Great stuff, but I really paid the premium of cash and aggravation for a chance to re-read Al Sarrantonio’s “The Spook Man,” a seasonal parable about kids who adore scary things. My adult self might realize that the story is a tad too precious in hindsight, but such criticisms are muted by the memory of reading the tale in the back seat of my parents’ Cordoba while en route to the Topsfield Fair, the autumn leaves swirling past the window as Joan Jett’s cover of “Crimson and Clover” played on the car stereo.

Recommended listening:  The Ventures – Twilight Zone (from The Ventures in Space, 1964)

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Golden Earring what, now? Like I’d stoop to such an obvious level.

It is fairly easy to assess a given superhero’s worthiness as candidate for Nobody’s Favorites. Picking supervillains for consideration is a trickier process, as such characters function in an antagonistic support role. Someone might have a favorite Spider-Man villain, but such preferences are defined in relation to the affection that one has for the overall franchise.

There are only a handful of supervillains — Dr. Doom, Magneto, the Joker, Darkseid, King Oblivion Ph.D – who have fan followings in their own right. The rest simply aren’t considered with the same kind of fan passion associated with their heroic nemeses, and the utter absence of said passion is one of the principal criteria used to determine Nobody’s Favorite status.

It takes a rare kind of supervillian to qualify for that honor, and they don’t come rarer, or riper, than Crucifer…

Crucifer made his debut in JLA #94 (May 2004), the beginning of the “Tenth Circle” story arc crafted by Chris Claremont and John Byrne. If this sounds awesome to you, then you’re either a time traveller from 1979 or ought to get that concussion checked out by a doctor.  (Jerry Ordway handled the inks, presumably because Terry Austin changed his phone number when he got wind of the project.)

Grant Morrison’s relaunch of the JLA might have been hit or miss for me, but there’s no denying that he managed to bring DC’s preeminent team franchise out of the wilderness of fan apathy and transform it into an insanely popular top-seller. He did so by indulging in some of the most balls-out, over the top superheroic storytelling since Jack Kirby’s heyday.

Though the ever-escalating concepts had started to sag under their own weight by the time the Wild Scotsman left the title, DC editorial was reluctant to change up the formula for one of their few critical and financial success at the time. Unfortunately for all involved, none of the rotating roster of creative teams that came in Morrison’s wake were able to pull off that style of storytelling with the same level of intelligence or charm.

Those who thought the JLA series had hit its nadir with the painfully protracted and completely unreadable “Obsidian Age” story arc were treated to a whole ‘nother magnitude of awfulness when the exercise in creative stunt casting known as “The Tenth Circle” hit the stands. (Hey, look! It’s the two dudes who did that incredible X-Men run a few decades ago…before they both pancaked into the side of their respective creative peaks!)

The story is essentially a game of Five Card Nancy played out across five issues of haphazardly stacked plot points. Vampires! Super teens! Microverses! Paradise Island! Elder gods! The hamfisted set up for John Byrne’s inexplicable reboot of the Doom Patrol! The sad proof of how far the mighty have fallen!

(Seriously. I am capable of reciting verbatim passages of dialogue from an issue of All-Star Squadron I read once when I was ten, yet I reread the “Tenth Circle” arc twice last night and still have no idea what exactly is supposed to be going in the story.)

At the center of this three-ring circus of crap is Crucifer, a vampric arch-baddie who resembles the bastard offspring of Adolph Hitler and Crispin Hellion Glover. While one might reasonably assume that his name is a play on “crucifx” (or “crucible”) and “Lucifier,” it is actually a shout-out to the Crucifucks, as he happens to be a huge fan of the Michigan-based punk rock outfit.

When he isn’t gadding about being GENERICALLY EVIL or, more likely, TALKING ABOUT BEING GENERICALLY EVIL, Crucifer spends his time chowing on his acolytes while honoring some contract he made with EVIL BEINGS OF GREAT POWER which somehow involves turning superhumans into vampires. (Not Superman though, who gets enslaved but not vampirized as Crucifer is kryptose intolerant.)

And, hey, look! Topical references! Wooooo!

Because, see, there was a JLA member named “Faith” which was also the name of a character on that show about the teenage vampire slayer and I think I need lie down for a bit before I lash out and punch someone…

The Cru-Monster’s main gimmick is that he managed to get some microscopic aliens to remove his heart and store it inside a fancy crystal carafe. This renders the vampire immune to his species’ traditional weakness against coronary transfixion, and allows him to indulge in some scenery-chewing mega-gloat action when the heroes attempt to run him through with a pointy object.

I suppose it would have been a clever tweak to the formula if:

- the vampire immune to staking trope hadn’t already been used in a billion other places before.
- it hadn’t been used several times in this one story arc.

Crucifer does get his comeuppance once Atom and the Doom Patrol’s Elasti-Girl locate the heart and free it from its crystal container, thus allowing Superman to use an heirloom Crucifix as some improvised brass knuckles and punch a hole through the vampire’s chest.

(That might sound really cool in summary, but I assure you that the actual sequence isn’t in the least.)

Crucifer’s sojourn in the DC Universe may have been mercifully brief, but his aura of unremitting banality, inexcusably stupid name, and association with one of the worst comic stories published in recent memory have earned him the distinction of being the first supervillain to be classified as Nobody’s Favorite.

Recommended listening:  The Crucifucks – You Give Me the Creeps (from a 1985 emponymous LP; collected on Our Will Be Done, 1992)

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The Cru-Man may have been a shitty excuse for an archvillain, but I can’t fault his taste in music.

I’m not sure what to make of the fact that the two best non-performance “punk rock” movies of the 1980s — Repo Man and The Return of the Living Dead — were genre films that premiered as the scene had begun to wane.

They’re both great films (with exceptional soundtracks), but while I’ve never had any problems with making time for Repo Man, my viewings of The Return of the Living Dead were limited to once every five years or so. It’s easy to digest apocalyptic themes when wrapped in absurdity, less so when they’re in service to a comedy of miscalculations blacker than a coal miner’s lung.

As such, The Return of the Living Dead is the most effective portrayal of doomsday in an era filled with (largely bombastic and self-important) apocalyptic scenarios. Once that first gear slips, that initial fuck-up occurs, neither good intentions nor bold action can halt the downward spiral. In fact, they only make things worse.

That’s where the true terror of the film lies, not in the fairly honky-tonk and low-budget visual scares, but in the realization that the final kiss-off has been determined by circumstances beyond anyone’s control.

This is how the world ends. Not with a bang, but a nervous giggle…and a pretty incredible punk soundtrack.

Recommended listening:  The Damned – Dead Beat Dance (from The Return Of The Living Dead OST, 1985)

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I try to avoid using tracks that have been featured in previous Halloween Countdowns, but:

- It’s a fantastic song by fantastic band.
- The Cramps and 45 Grave have already been spotlighted this month.
- While it amuses me to no end that Stacey Q (as a member of SSQ) has two contributions on the soundtrack, I’m not cruel enough to inflict either of them upon you.

The generation that grew up with the likes of Mortal Kombat and Doom tend to take graphic violence in videogames as a given, for good or ill. Certain titles may, with a little help from the chattering classes, trigger a short-lived moral panic, but by-and-large we live in a world where a high-profile game in which players assume the role of a sociopathic cannibal can hit the stands without generating so much as a blip on the media outrage radar.

Despite the primitive blood-and-giblet rendering technology of the time, the Atari Age was not without it own controversies regarding violent content. The 2600′s small and terrible library of “X-Rated” titles is fairly well known in retrogaming circles, but there were also a couple of games released in 1983 by Wizard Video where the “adult” content was of the more visceral variety.

Wizard’s main line of business lay in the distribution of videocassettes, mainly of the low-budget horror variety, and both of their attempts to ride the 2600 gravy train were hastily coded jobs based on well-known ‘slasher’ flicks.

Halloween is the better of the pair, as it does make a nominal effort to reflect its cinematic source material and the programmer(s) even found a way to incorporate a crude chiptune version of the movie’s unforgettable theme music into the game.

Navigate two floors of a sparsely furnished home, lead some kids to safety, and avoid or delay the relentless pursuit of the sinister Shape.

And if you fail?

Well, you’ll get your head chopped off and your decapitated torso will run off the far side of the screen while the killer makes short work of the kids…all accompanied by quaint showers of pixelated blood.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre, on the other hand, puts the player inside the dead skin mask of Leatherface. The game is a fixed-point side-scrolling affair (the character stays put against a moving background) in which the proud carnivorous son of the Lone Star State must navigate a rudimentary series of obstacles in order to bag as much human prey before his trusty McCulloch runs out of gas.

At least, that’s what the developers intended…

…because what gamers got was an indecipherable mess where Leatherface’s signature power tool was rendered as a warty blue phallus that turns its victims into slices of French toast instead of dismembering them, which isn’t so much Tobe Hooper as it is Luis Buñuel.

Maybe Wizard would have been better of licensing a game based on The Exterminating Angel instead. (Atari’s Swordquest series of adventure games was an unofficial adaptation of the Buñuel/Alatriste/Pinal film trilogy.)

Recommended listening: John Carpenter – Halloween Theme (from the Halloween OST, 1978)

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One of the most effective horror film themes ever composed, right up there with Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” and “Once Bitten” by 3-Speed.

This year’s Halloween Countdown has entered the home stretch and it occured to me this morning that I’ve accented the frivolous and goofy this time around at the expense of truly horrific content. With that in mind, I offer you this hastily assembled atrocity in order to balance the scales a little….

Oh, no, you don’t have to thank me. The expressions on your faces are reward enough.

Recommended listening:  The Danse Society – Heaven Is Waiting (from Heaven Is Waiting, 1983)

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Trouser Press didn’t think much of the Danse Society, but if I based my listening decisions on Trouser Press’s recommendations, I’d have likely swallowed a Glock before my twenty-fifth birthday…while a Sonic Youth LP droned on somewhere in the background. I’ll take this synth-heavy slice of gothic goodness over that alternative any day.

While Maura is a frequent attendee of fandom conventions, I make no secret of my loathing for such pungent gatherings. This difference in temperment actually works out pretty well for us, as it means that the wife can go on geek holiday with the knowledge that our menagerie is being looked after by someone of borderline competence.

Back before we lived together, this process involved my staying over Maura’s place while she was off hobnobing with friends at Anime Expo or RoboCon. Once I had deciphered her detailed instructions for the feeding and caring of her stable of critters, I was left in semi-solitude with some fifty-four hours to kill before her return.

In retrospect, there was no reason I couldn’t have went into town during the idle hours, but I never felt the itch to do so. I’d listen to videogame soundtracks, browse the Psychotronic guides to film, play Red Baron and the AD&D “gold box” games on Maura’s old Packard Bell 386, snack on food warehouse biscotti and ginger ale, and watch more TV in a weekend than I usually did in an entire year.

Maura had cable, which was a novelty to someone like me who used his television for playing videogames and watching videocassettes. Her package included the lower-tier of premium movie channels — Encore, Starz, TCM, FMC — which meant that there was something remotely watchable on at any given hour. Wake up to Willow, lunch to Bringing Up Baby, nod off for an afternoon nap to Real Genius, and wake up in the wee hours to Pirhana II: The Spawning.

It’s the type of small-screen immersion that I try to avoid under normal circumstances, but works just fine when confined to a small space for an entire weekend. It wasn’t wasting hours that could be put to better use; it was a means of passing the time not spent checking the rabbits for gut issues or making sure the chinchillas has enough water. It also made it easy to justify sitting through cinematic turds without being overcome by the usual feelings of self-loathing, which is how, one Sunday afternoon, I found myself watching Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers in its entirety.

I passed on seeing the film upon its original 1992 release much as I passed on nearly every horror flick from the era. The gross-out genre had reached its silly, sad nadir after two decades of increasingly derivative permutations, and attaching King’s name to the project (as it was “based” on an unpublished work of his) was a kiss of death. (Yeah, the film version of Misery was pretty good, but nothing about Sleepwalkers‘ promotional efforts suggested a similar nod toward competent cinema.)

The film tells the story of a mother-and-son pair of incestuous shapeshifting werecats (Alice Krige, Brian Krause) who live in a creepy bungalow at the edge of Anytown, USA. When not inhibiting the genetic diversity of their lycanthropic species, they plot to prolong their creepy existence by sucking the soul out of sweetly innocent Tanya (Mädchen Amick), a high schooler who has a crush on the hunky, Camaro-driving Werecat Junior.

Junior underestimates Tanya’s spunk, however, and ends up getting fatally wounded for his efforts at mouth-to-mouth soul-siphoning. Mama Werecat vents her Terminatoresque rage on the Tanya’s family and the local constabulary, and abducts the poor girl in hopes of using her lifeforce to resurrect Junior (though the ritual power of slow dancing to old rock and roll 45′s).

The plans come to naught, however, when the local non-lycanthropic feline population storms the bungalow. It turns out that cats, being the fickle and spiteful creatures they are, have little love for humanoid pretenders to felinehood. (I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:  Cat politics suck.)

This culminates in a scene which outdoes the ‘Odessa Staircase’ sequence in The Battleship Potemkin by sole virtue of the fact that Eisenstein never hit upon the idea of having his production assistants throw dozens of terrified cats on top of a stuntperson in a unconvincing rubber monster suit.

While a slow lingering death from untreated infection caused by cat scratches might be excruciatingly painful, it doesn’t lend itself to the kind of climactic spectacle jaded horror fans have come to expect. No worries though, as the filmmakers took the time out of their busy schedule of crafting lame post-kill zingers and nonsensical cameo roles for their friends in the horror scene to establish that werecats have a fatal allergy to feline-induced injuries which cause them to dramatically combust into a gel-suited mass of flames.

I wouldn’t dare to suggest Sleepwalkers is a good movie, but I have no reservations about stating that it is the best movie to combine Mädchen Amick’s radiant beauty and a future Borg Queen getting incinerated by an army of lobbed housecats. And, really, shouldn’t that be enough?

Recommended listening:  1919 – Dream (from a 1984 cassette compliation; collected on The Complete Collection, 2001)

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To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub. For in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil? Better to pull out some classic gothic rock tracks and nap for a bit in hopes that things turn around in the meantime. It beats getting poisoned by some vengeful punk, that’s for frickin’ sure.