This will be my third attempt to get a fun podcast off the ground. You can hear it at
Updates
Alright. I haven’t dear-diaried in a while. Here goes.
Magic
I enjoy stage magic a lot more. I still suck at (some card stuff), but I can do one well enough. More importantly, I can pull one off (sometimes). But that’s not what’s important.
I really finally feel like I’m making friends through the magic (community). I’m edging closer to the things I loved watching as a kid. I’m happier this way, too.
Music
This site used to be a showcase for my music ! Well, here goes!
The above was conceived, composed, and filmed in a 24 hour span. Some of it sucks. I’m strangely proud of the rest.
Fiction
Every time I finish a story, the market for that genre closes due to an overabundance of submissions. That’s alright. I’ll just stockpile the finished pieces and submit when the chances open up again.
Perversions of Reason
I like tarot cards. I don’t believe in any forces behind them. To me, they are 78 or so beautifully crafted pieces of pasteboard given really vague adjectives. I like to use those adjectives to pick my own brain when writer’s block strikes.
Tarot cards also seem to make some happy balance between my vices. Magic (cards). Fantasy (divination). Creativity (writing tools).
In summary
I don’t even remember the last time I tasted a drop of alcohol. The only TV I watch is boxed sets of Friday the 13th: The Series to help me fall asleep. It’s not that I don’t have any vices. Mine just happen to be very productive vices.
Nightly Update April 29, 2010
Well, I’m writing about these William Malone movies. It’s becoming clear to me that I know nearly nothing about writing a readable review.
Learning how to do it properly can simply be the next great adventure. That is, I mean, between the family, job, magic practice, and writing fiction.
William Malone Love Fest – The Fair Haired Child
The Fair Haired Child
Malone Strikes Gold Again. Once again, the director, cast, and crew all put in an excellent effort.
A brief synopsis, then I’ll just shovel some praise.
Based on a story by Matt Greenberg. A socially awkward girl is kidnapped on her way home from her prep school. She is cast into the basement of her kidnappers. There she finds both Johnny and many warnings to beware the Fair Haired Child.
Now the praise.
Lindsay Pulsipher is about as perfect of a teenage heroine as any horror film could hope for. Her performance as “Tar” brings back a glory day in horror, when teenagers actually looked like teenagers. Awkward, less than glamorous, and charming as all hell. I hope the right people have seen this episode, and it leads to more work.
Jesse Haddock performs brilliantly with all of the same grace. “Johnny” is awkward, wide-eyed, and again looks like an honest teenager. I’d like to hope the right people for Jesse are watching this, too.
Horror fans are almost as starved for teenagers portrayed by teenagers as they are for good horror. Even the extras in Tara’s classroom look like they are still young enough to be in a classroom.
The longer these two characters remain in the dirt, the dirtier they get. Both of the younger actors endure this very well. As the story unfolds and becomes more intense, their performances make that transition from awkward to desperate with fluid precision.
Lori Petty practically pulls double duty as the “before” and “after” mother. The transformation is violent, sudden, and final. William Samples portrays the cowardly father Anton with terrific grace and honesty. The dream sequence style of Anton’s memories were so well put together that they truly do resonate more fright into the rest of the story.
This set is absolutely amazing. The various props and decorations are no doubt even more of a treat to anyone who ever lugged their band equipment to and from school several times a week.
William Malone mainstays that are welcome in the Fair Haired Child:
Camera Tricks. Yes, yes, and yes. These movies are proof that although there is a time and place for the computer to do the heavy lifting, there is still very much a time and a place to let the camera do it as well.
Piano Quartet in G Minor, Opus 25, Movement IV, composed by Johannes Brahms. First heard in House on Haunted Hill, the same tune finds a bigger role in Fair-Haired Child. Despite this one excerpt lending itself so well to creepy moments in horror, the entire piece is very soothing. Crying kids, angry co-workers, even your own road rage. Everyone needs this on their mp3 player.
Gore where it’s needed. Not excessive. Not cowardly. Logically, fifty gallons of blood don’t spray out of a violently attacked corpse. Neither do five milliliters. The Fair-Haired Child gets it just right.
Evil Nurses. I don’t know what any nurse ever did to this man, but I suspect she did it (if indeed there was a she to have done it, and if the it in question was truly done) some time between 1985 and 1999.
Sound. Our eyes are not our only sense. Everything from the monster breathing to the tense score is spot-on.
I’m honestly trying to think of any complaints. I honestly can not.
One final note, to segue naturally into the next review. William Malone has stated that the inspiration for Parasomnia struck him while working on the Fair Haired Child. Some of the art for Parasomnia was also developed in this period.
Up next: Parasomnia.
William Malone Episode of Freddy’s Nightmares on April 30
Any cable or satellite subscribers out there who get Chiller might be interested in knowing on principal that they are running a Freddy’s Nightmares marathon on April 30.
I have the DVR set to record two episodes. One was favorite from when it first aired (It’s My Party and You’ll Die if I Want You To). The other has William Malone in the director’s seat (Easy Come, Easy Go).
William Malone Love Fest – FearDotCom
Alright, let’s jump in with both fists.
The girl ghost in the white dress who seeks revenge through technology was already kind of a genre of its own by the time the film came out. The casual horror observer said “Oh, the Ring.” The more interested horror fan raised his nose at the casual observer and said, “No, Ringu!” The seasoned horror fan was too busy shouting curse words followed by, “Not another angry ghost in a white dress!”
Let’s face it. What Lies Beneath was pretty much the same kind of movie, but without anything to make it genuinely frightening or even interesting.
Me, being off in my own world, grinned. “Yes! That’s the guy who did House on Haunted Hill!” Then, with that kind of silly anticipation you can only get when about to pay someone with real currency to scare you senseless, I talked the woman who eventually became my wife into going to see FearDotCom together.
Malone comes back with his visual style as well. The film is built around nightmarish hallucinations, which is visual style Malone seems to sincerely enjoy working with.
Did the movie deliver? At its best, absolutely.
When the U.S. Release of Parasomnia comes out…
I’m going to hold the blue U.S. package up next to the red U.K packaging, and stare at them with 3-D glasses on.
Make no mistake — my pre-order was in from day one.
Now, I’m being a bit of a fanboy. And the poster was pretty damned awesome. But there are two qualities about the movie that just have my heart in it. I’m saving that for the review.
Now it’s time to shop for some quality 3-D glasses.
I bought some tarot cards
And I plan to use it.
Friends who have seen me grow over the last ten years might have some interesting reactions to this.
I write best with a little bit of chaos in the mix. Random ingredients that have no immediate connection to the story. In fact, I love working that way.
Creation is magic to me. Better than magic, creation is an absolute and knowable force.
William Malone Love Fest – House on Haunted Hill (1999)
House on Haunted Hill
1999. The end of a terrible decade for horror. Scream had inspired an endless legion of copycats and pale copies of the copycat movies. “Horror” had been primarily reduced to PG-13 movies that inexplicably ended with a female floating ethereally in a white dress, or to R-rated comedies with a rare spray of blood. Clive Barker had a couple of great movies early in the decade, when I was too young to see them in a theater. Wes Craven managed about 5 good minutes in Wishmaster. The rest was pure, unadulterated garbage.
Enter William Malone.
One can only guess that after 15 years between movies, Malone had something to prove.
Point proven.
I had to leave the theater during the Saturation Chamber scene. I tried to close my eyes, but the sounds just made the movie even scarier. I had to take a break. Ten years of garbage – I wasn’t expecting anything at the theater to ever be scary again.
I remember buying a large Mountain Dew. I preached to the bored girl behind the counter that there was finally a truly scary film playing, right under her nose. She had blond hair like a straight-A cheerleader. Not the big poof. The conservative blond cheerleader. She looked at me like I was an idiot. I paced for a couple more minutes, sipped on the watered-down three dollar Mountain Dew, then went back inside. Then I found a seat way in the back where I could close my eyes a little easier.
All of us walked out of the theater making a slight laughing sound that you only ever hear from people who have just gotten off of a really good thrill ride, or cheated death in a fiery plane crash without a scratch.
It was at the Kraft 8 in Port Huron, Michigan.
It has been over ten years, and I remember all of these details with absurd clarity. I didn’t know the name William Malone. I didn’t even know anyone who was in the movie except for Lisa Loeb, and I was glad she did not sing. She is really talented when not being fashionably sad.
I bought the dvd the day it was released. I now have the movie nearly memorized, and can usually watch the saturation chamber scene without turning away. There really isn’t any point of “thoughts as I watch” as I have done with his earlier films.
I also took this chance to re-acquaint myself with the director’s commentary.
Everyone pulled it together to make House on Haunted Hill a great horror film.
Geoffrey Rush puts in a wonderful job as a central character. His character “Stephen Price” sets up the movie for exactly what it is: a terrifying thrill ride. This is a man who is used to being in control, to the point that he can snatch it right out from under anyone or any twist of fate. Of course, he loses it all by the end of this film.
Famke Jannsen – Lord of Illusions, House on Haunted Hill, three X-Men movies. Here she plays a woman who has elevated herself to nearly being a Queen by pure force of will. Stephen Price takes swift control – Evelyn demands it. The two performances play off each other with absolute synergy. Famke herself has a considerable deal of range and undeniable grace – both of which serve her performance.
Chris Kattan – If you would have told me that anyone from Saturday Night Live could do comedy right in any horror movie, especially back in 1999, I would not have believed it. I was thus shocked to find his roots on that show. The character of Watson Pritchett should be held up high as the right way to put comedy in a horror film. Kattan’s comedy serves to add nervous tension to the film – not degrade the movie for a quick laugh.
Jeffrey Combs looks extremely natural as the movie’s primary villain, even beneath Malone’s experiments with the camera. Or perhaps, especially being a part of those experiments.
Ali Larter, Taye Diggs and Peter Gallagher had all been making impressive names for themselves, and would all three go on to have roles in some of the most notable television shows of this last decade (Heroes, Ally McBeal, and The O.C., respectively).
Even the apparently forgotten Bridgette Wilson played her part as an over-enthusiastic personality with wonderfully shameless exuberance.
Don Davis, probably most well known for the Matrix movies, gave the film a wonderful score. The theme – if not the whole cd – makes my annual Halloween mix without fail every year. The organ music in that theme is as iconic to me as Freddy Krueger’s theme.
We also hear Brahms’s Piano Quartet in G Minor, Op. 25 for the first time. Malone would use it once more in a different project. If done right, this could make a really amazing Director’s Trade Mark. Malone may be only one more use of the piece away from such an honor.
Ah yes, back to Malone. Someone had to be at the center of this movie, pulling the strings and making it all happen. Not only that, but he was fighting the flu through several weeks of the ten week shoot. An interesting note in the commentary was that Geoffrey Rush took great enjoyment in helping Malone issue commands.
Even the effects crew did amazing work. Many of the visual effects were added afterward to footage that was constantly in motion, which took a lot more work to accomplish eleven years ago.
I can’t call this the best overall horror movie I have ever seen. There are classics that pushed the limits of the genre to make movies such as House on Haunted Hill possible.
This IS the best experience I have ever had watching a modern horror movie, and the best experience seeing a horror film at the movie theater. I say this having watched Freddy vs Jason in the same audience as Robert Englund himself. That still pales next to having a movie deliver on this level.
Well, my word processor is just now ending page two, and I haven’t even touched on the movie.
House on Haunted Hill is one of the few gems of the 90s, ranking with Lord of Illusions and Candyman in intensity. The true beauty of House on Haunted Hill is twofold:
The movie works as a horror movie. The characters are well defined adults with their own goals and ambitions. These goals and ambitions go far beyond intoxication and cheap sex. Claustrophobia is used nearly to its fullest effect. The basement sets all depict a place that no sane person would want to enter willingly. And the sound.. that blessed, beautiful sound. I can not think of any movie that has ever utilized sound with such expertise.
The movie works as a thrill ride. With so many elements of a great horror movie in place, the filmmakers remembered to entertain their audience in the process. Most adult horror feels compelled to trap itself as an ambient piece dependent on mood plus or more little kids in trouble. There was no time for such tropes in this flick.
House on Haunted Hill is a movie that is seeing more appreciation as time goes on. It certainly wasn’t a game-changer, but that may be to the determent of the horror genre. With any luck, more horror fans will give this movie a second look – along with all of its cast and crew.
Everyone did a wonderful job.
I Have Not Forgotten the Malone Movies
I am wrapping up the first draft of House on Haunted Hill, and preparing for FearDotCom.
House on Haunted Hill is something I want to cover the right way – the movie deserves a lot of respect.