[Insert Health Care Crisis Pun Here]: Doctor Death

1973's Doctor Death: Seeker of Souls is the text book definition of 70s cheese. Although the film is directed and produced by Eddie Saeta, nevermind the auteur theory because it is star John Considine who owns this film. Considine plays the titular Doctor,a mystic who uses his “secret formula” to transfer the souls of the dead into the bodies of the recently deceased. Although he's been using this method to stay alive for hundreds of years he also rents out his talents to the highest bidder.

Enter our protagonist: Fred, who, to put it lightly, is a bit of a goober. His wife has recently died and he'll do anything to get her back. He contracts the good Doctor to revive his wife's body (easily glossing over the morality involved). When the procedure doesn't “take” and Fred's wife remains dead, the Doc (ever the over-achiever) goes on a violent killing spree trying to find the right soul for the body of Fred's wife.

Considine (who reveals in the commentary that he studied acting under Lee Strasberg) plays Dr. Death with pomp and enthusiasm. Turning the Doc (who has some incredibly over-written dialogue) into an odd mixture of talk show host, carnival barker and Las Vegas magician. He may not give an Oscar worthy turn, but he transforms ho-hum dialogue into pure entertainment which is quite an achievement.

Doctor Death is such a hard movie to discuss without sounding like I'm over selling it. It's a film for a very specific type of person. In many ways it's a wonderful film, it's purposefully over-the-top without being overly winking, has a great villain, a cameo from Moe Howard (of Three Stooges fame) and some really gonzo kills (at one point Dr. Death shoots black acid blood out of a wound in his stomach and MELTS HIS ATTACKER'S FACE). On the other hand, it has an abundance of wooden dialogue, heroes that you don't give a crap about, and tends to drag when Considine isn't on screen.

The film was just recently released on DVD by Scorpion Releasing (I scooped it up as a birthday present from me to me) and I believe that they are somewhat newcomers to the cult DVD market. If this release is any indication, they know their stuff. The disc comes with a nice transfer (the gaudy colors of the Doctor's flamboyant costumes really pop), two ten minute interviews (one with Considine and the other with Saeta's son) and a commentary with Considine (where he talks about his impressive career and expands on some of the ideas touched on in the interview).

Nice Place to Visit But You Wouldn't Want to Live There: City Infernal By Edward Lee

I've read tragically little of Edward Lee's work. A smattering of short stories, his novella The Cyesolagniac and his segment of Triage (which is a collection of three novellas by Lee, Jack Ketchum and Richard Laymon). Everything I've read, I have enjoyed.

Then why have I been into horror for so long and mostly shied away from one of today's big authors? I don't have a good answer for you. It's probably not his reputation for writing "extreme horror," as Laymon and Ketchum are pretty extreme and are regular staples in my literary diet. Whatever the explanation I planed on rectifying the problem when I bought City Infernal.

City Infernal is the first book of Lee's popular "Infernal Mythos." I like to know very little about books before I dive in (you've seen how neurotic about spoilers I can get), but because Lee is known in the horror community for his stomach-churning gore (everything I had read prior to this confirms this) I figured that I was in for a sick, if a bit guilty, pleasure. In truth what I got was something much stranger and, in my opinion, much more interesting. Lee's book is less Takashi Miike's Ichi the Killer and more Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials.

You read that right. I compared Lee's ultra-violent trip through hell to a children's book. I do so favorably.

Like The Golden Compass (or similar, lesser books) Lee builds a world that is both strange, but familiar. It is a setting that is clearly fantasy but still very much reflective of the place we live. Also, like Pullman's novel, the parallels between Mephistopolis (Lee's Hell) and our current society are not always in the most flattering.

The plot concerns Cassie, a young woman who finds herself in Hell, literally, after moving into her new house and making some new (dead) friends. Not only that but hell isn't all fire and brimstone, it's a thriving city that runs on despair an carnage. Cassie decides to plunge deeper into the metropolis to find her twin sister, who died of a suicide. But wait, there's more, because Cassie is a mortal in Hell she has crazy mystical powers that would give Satan the ability to manifest on Earth, thus she becomes a target of his demonic constabulary. It's not as exhausting as it sounds.

I really love the way everything about Lee's version of Hell "adds up." There is a clever and nicely explained piece of exposition for almost every economic, political and social facet of Hell. It's an odd novel in that the explanatory passages are the most interesting. The wildlife and social strata of Hell is captivating and disgusting. Lee masterfully mixes the thoughtful with the repugnant.

No book is without its minor faults and Lee's is no exception. The biggest problem I found is somewhat symptomatic of the fantasy genre itself, so Lee can't much be blamed. There are a number of times where Cassie and friends are helped out of a bind by some archane hell magic that the reader (and Cassie) has not been previously introduced to. These moments all feel a bit too deus ex machina, but are not really that distracting and like I said, are native to this kind of story telling.

City Infernal has been optioned for film in the past, I don't know if it still is. Any filmic translation, however unlikely, would have to be big budget and thus way toned-down, but I can't help feeling that in the right hands (Guillermo del Toro?) City Infernal would make a really fun movie.

City Infernal is a brisk read and should have cross genre appeal, anyone who wants some horror in their fantasy or fantasy in their horror should pick up a copy (some of you probably already have, seeing how it was first published a decade ago: I'm way late to the party, as usual). I have already purchased the next part of the series on Kindle and I am very interested to see what else Lee has in store.


On a bit of a negative final note: What a fugly cover. Leisure: I love the books you put out, you make horror affordable and give great authors massive exposure, but why the covers? They're tacky without being the awesome kind of tacky. They were never high art, but paperbacks used to have some pretty cool covers.

Crossbows, Coffee and Cigarettes: Daybreakers

Michael and Peter Spierig (henceforth the Spierig Brothers) made quite a splash in the horror community with their 2003 low-budget zombie flick Undead. Unlike the majority of horror fans I didn't really like Undead. I thought it was a well made, but entirely too derivative film. It had all the hallmarks of early Peter Jackson and Raimi's Evil Dead films, but it was never going to replace those classics because it lacked most of the charm that came with revisiting films like Braindead.

I did, however, think that Undead made a bit of a promise, a premonition of good things to come. If the Spierig brothers could harness their obvious talent, were afforded a bit more cash (okay...a lot more cash), and the professionalism that accompanied said cash: they could make a GREAT genre film.

It's been a few years but Daybreakers fulfills that promise.

In a near future, where vampirism has spread like a plague, turning most of the world's population. Humanity is on the ropes, and the vampires ain't doing much better. Without a blood substitute they're beginning to starve and regress into dangerous monsters (the makeups for which look a ton like the "bat" Dracula from Francis Ford Coppola's version). Ethan Hawke (who's a dynamite stage actor and has done some great work recently, but never in horror pictures) plays the chief scientist leading the team trying to crack the code and invent Tru Blood for his evil capitalist pig boss (Sam Neil). It gets more complex from there, but I won't spoil it, the twists are part of the fun.

The abundance of set-pieces and relatively low scare-factor is more akin to a traditional scifi/action film, but rest assured this puppy blows away the lackluster Underworld films (a series whose aesthetic the ad-men behind Daybreakers are trying to ape in its advertising material). The plot suffers some minor pacing hiccups and the dialogue isn't always as sharp as it could have been (Willem Dafoe's character, in particular, seems like a missed opportunity) but it is the quality craftsmanship of the world-building and the brothers' visual inventiveness that keep these problems so small that they barely register once the credits roll. Likewise the allegory at work ("Blood for oil!" is now: "Blood for Blood!") is mostly heavy handed, but delivered in a way so plausible (once you swallow the main, silly conceit) that it works beautifully.

Smart without being pompous, goofy without having to wink at itself every time it passes a mirror, and with a cast that most A-list "mainstream" films would be envious of: Daybreakers is a literate and fun breath of fresh air.

Soul Draining, but in a good way: Feast by R. Scott McCoy

R. Scott McCoy's Feast has been compared to a superhero story akin to Darkman or Spawn. Rightfully so, but these comparisons only do McCoy's novel a disservice. Nick Ambrose, Feast's superhero in-training, ditches the over-the-top splat-shtick of Sam Raimi's titular hero but at the same time never delves into the mid-90s uber-melancholy of Todd McFarland's red-caped meal ticket. If you have no idea what the comparisons were I just made, you obviously didn't watch movies or read comic books in the 90s.

Feast concerns Nick, a police officer who acquires superpowers while tracking down a deranged (and supernatural) killer with his brother,Pete. His main power is that he can look into souls and see how clean their karmic aura is, he also gains super strength, healing, and no longer needs to sleep. The catch being that he has to periodically feed on the lifeforce of others to stay alive. It is this moral quandary (plus the fact that Nick has some new residents in his noggin) that form the crux of Feast.

Why Feast works so well is that Nick's world has a certain "heightened reality" about it (there are blood thirsty serial killers and mob bosses around every corner), but Nick remains a very realistic character. He's very human, he makes mistakes, enjoys Chinese food, is a dope around women and sometimes lets his new-found urges get the better of him. His moral compass is always pointed in generally the right direction, though, which makes watching him grapple with some frightening obstacles all the more compelling.

Feast suffers the same problem that is endemic to all origin stories: you get all the characters put in place, lay the ground rules of their powers, have them embark on their first "mission" in the third act and then you have to leave the reader thirsty for further adventures.

Feast is great, McCoy's style is direct, fast paced, and sometimes just a hint humorous. Nick is a character I actually care about. I can't wait to see what the future holds for him. Hopefully the wait won't be too long. Highly recommended.

*For those of you who think I'm just kissing ass because McCoy runs Necrotic Tissue: Ha! He isn't even the head editor for this upcoming issue.

Serves you right. Jerks.

Good Dog: Cujo on both page and screen

Before this week, I had never read Stephen King's Cujo nor seen the 1983 film adaptation. Now I've done both. It's against my nature and I will not reveal the ending to either the book or the adaptation, but for this writeup will contain minor spoilers. You other late comers have been warned. (Gimme a break I know it's thirty years old.)


Now, don't let the fact that I've never read Cujo before shake your faith in me. I've read plenty of King, both the classics and his newer stuff. I've loved some of them and I've not-so-loved some of them. The first school project I can remember doing was on the man (it was for a third grade project where we had to read a biography and then make a book report in the shape of a wire hanger mobile) and my first 'real' term paper (boy, was I wrong in thinking that rinky-dink thing in high school was a term paper). If I were asked as a senior in high school what my favorite King Novel was, I would have said: The Stand. Hands down. In fact, in high school, I probably would have answered The Stand if you asked me what my favorite book was. Period. I still love it, but these days maybe the cornucopia of allegory is a little too much for me.

Enter King's 1981 novel Cujo. King claims in On Writing, which is great, that there are one or two novels that he can't remember writing at all due to drugs and alcohol. If Cujo is the result of drug abuse: where do I sign up for my flour sack full of coke? Yes it's a sick joke, but you get the point.

Cujo is dark bordering on nihilist (I say bordering, not nihilist). It's the kind of book that has you tied in knots over what's going to happen and has you cursing the author when it finally does. It is bloody and grimy. The character list is long and they are all fully fleshed out. The most remarkable thing for me about Cujo is its structure. There are no chapter stops, only scene breaks where the story switched perspectives. We see inside each characters head, are privy to their decision making processes and the way they feel about others, then just like that we are whisked to a different character. Cujo is not a short book, but the lack of chapters makes it a breathless one. It isn't exactly a book you can't put down, but a book you feel rotten about having to put down. There is just no "good" place to stop. It's as claustrophobic as a blue Ford Pinto on a sunny day ( I can't resist sometimes).

I won't say that Cujo is my favorite King work, but I will say it is my favorite King work for this time in my life. (for example, I can see early high school me really digging a few of the Bachman books, The Long Walk especially).

I don't mean to sound hyperbolic and gushy, it's just true. Our tastes and attitudes are constantly in flux. Outside of its brilliant structure and crisp prose ( beyond the cliche of "crisp" I would also describe it as possessing that great "late-early period" restraint that King never quite uses now) there is something about the darkness and frustrating honesty of this novel that appeals to me on an almost primitive level. Maybe one day when I have a wife and kids, my favorite King novel will change again to suit the times. Maybe it will be Cell... Got ya!

If the novel isn't really 'about' a killer dog, it's not, then what is it about? Well (says pretentious professor Adam), it's about the way people reason and make decisions. How sometimes even when those decisions are the most natural and level-headed they can still result in absolute disaster when life throws a monkey wrench into the equation and goes veering impossibly off-script. It may sound like a mouthful, but I think this idea of chaos is the very core of the novel.

So the movie must be about the same thing right? Wrong, silly, the movie is about a killer dog.

On the special features for the recent 25th anniversary re-issue of the film director Lewis Teague says that the initial script from the film had been penned by King himself, but was rewritten because it "strayed too far from the book." D'oh. What I wouldn't give to see that version of the film.

Cujo isn't a bad film at all. It has first rate cinematography, great production value and effects and one of the most believably frightened child actor ever put on screen(what the hell did they do to that kid?). The script is serviceable and is faithful almost in its entirety. The broad themes from the novel all make at least a small appearance: Donna's fear of losing her spark, Vic's pressure at work, the remarkable abilities for a child's subconscious to attune itself to the problems around him, and the idea that one shouldn't "sweat the small stuff" because you never know when reality might turn and bite your face off.

The problem is that all these themes are so watered down in the film. In actuality this is probably a good thing, there is no easy way to cue an audience in on every thought that enters a character's mind. To translate that whole idea of "decision making" i rambled about a few paragraphs ago, Teague would have had to use narration. Which would make the film unwatchable in its obviousness and corniness. The end result is that the film is probably the best direct adaptation of the book that can possibly have been made.

Maybe in some far-flung future, when there are no more copies of the book in print, the film will be a worthy piece of art to be analyzed without the stigma of the novel. As it stands now it is only an interesting way to open up discussion of the novel, a well made genre film with a modest budget, some neat dog tricks, and a great performance by one of horror's perennial matriarchs: Dee Wallace.

It's no substitute for the book: but what film is? It's a fun monster movie with all the schmaltzy parts and fake-out scares you've come to expect from passable Stephen King adaptations. Hey, it's a helluva lot better than that miniseries they made of The Stand.*


*I've heard some people actually like that thing. Other than the cast, why? I'm not being a jerk, I genuinely want someone to explain what I'm missing.