Link proliferation: The secret lives of horror-themed cereal mascots, sleep paralysis, and making psychopaths.

A Boo-Berry Shaped Hole in His Heart

My vocation as a bon vivant man of leisure requires I commit a certain portion of my day engaged in the aimless wanderings of the amateur flâneur. During yesterday's existential tinged meandering, I came across Artez'n, an Atlantic Avenue shop that sells creative products from Brooklyn-based creative types.

The shop's full of nifty stuff, but the following horror-themed postcards from Ghastly Greetings caught my eye.

Here's "Rise and Shine," by Mister Reusch.

Here's "Boo Hoo," by Bradford Scobie.

Not in Brooklyn? Das cool. You can snag Ghastly Greetings products over their webby site. You dig?

"It’s going to drag me down into an abyss . . ."

In the August issue of The Psychologist, Julia Santomauro and Christopher C. French survey the state of knowledge regarding sleep paralysis: a temporary an consciously experienced state of paralysis, occurring while going to sleep or starting to wake, often accompanied by elaborate and multi-sensory hallucinations.

The article author mention the most common forms of hallucination:

- Proprioceptive hallucinations: sensations of floating, flying, out-of-body experiences; feelings of being lifted up, of spinning and turning; and sensations similar to those felt when going up or down in a lift.

- Tactile hallucinations: sensations of pressure; touching or pulling on the chest, limbs or head; pressure on the bed; feeling the bedclothes moving; and feelings of tingling, vibrating, shaking, pain, smothering or choking.

- Auditory hallucinations: hearing footsteps, knocking, shuffling, breathing, talking, indecipherable whispering, mechanical sounds
(e.g. humming) and other noises.

- Visual hallucinations: seeing wisp of cloud or smoke-like substances or areas of intense darkness; seeing a human, animal or monster and possibly interacting with them.

- Olfactory or gustatory hallucinations.

The authors also run down various historical and cultural non-scientific explanations for the phenomenon. Here's a sample:

For example, in Newfoundland sleep paralysis is called the ‘Old Hag’. This is described as suddenly being awake but paralysed, usually just after having fallen asleep, and often feeling a weight on the chest and sometimes seeing a grotesque human or animal astride the chest (Ness, 1978). Newfoundlanders think it might be caused by either working too hard, the blood stagnating when they lie on their back, or hostile feelings from another person.

In Hong Kong a condition that seems identical to sleep paralysis is termed ‘ghost oppression’ (Wing et al., 1994). Chinese people have often thought that ‘the soul of a person is vulnerable to the influence of spirits during sleep’ (Wing et al., 1994, p.609) and, in a dream classification book written around 403–221bc, there are six types of dreams described. Wing and colleagues suggest that e-meng, dreams of surprise, are actually sleep paralysis and are distinct from ju-meng, fearful dreams.

Amongst the Inuit of Canada sleep paralysis is interpreted as attacks from ‘shaman or malevolent spirits’ (Law & Kirmayer, 2005). In Japan sleep paralysis is called kanashibari and is related to the magic of one of the Buddhist gods, Fudoh-Myohoh. Historically, it was believed that monks could use this magic to paralyse people in their sleep; more recently it is often believed that evil spirits cause the phenomenon (Fukuda et al., 1987). In St Lucia, sleep paralysis is termed kokma and is alleged to be caused by the spirits of unbaptised babies who haunt the area (Ness, 1978). In Korea, it is termed ha-wi-nulita which can be translated as being squeezed by scissors (Dahlitz & Parkes, 1993). Many other cultures have their own interpretation of sleep paralysis and often the cause is attributed to some supernatural force.

Throughout Europe, from the 1500s until the 1700s, sleep paralysis experiences were often considered to be the work of witches who were accused of using their witchcraft to terrorise sleepers who had offended them in some way. Such episodes were sometimes termed as being ‘witch-ridden’. In 1747, a woman testified at a witch trial that she found her husband in bed ‘lying there stiff, barely drawing breath’, and when he woke up he said, ‘My Lord Jesus help me! Oh! Fiery witches took me to Máramaros and they put six hundredweight of salt on me’(Davies, 2003, p.186)

Recipe for a Serial Killer

Jim Fallon is the Professor Emeritus of Neuroscience at the University of California Irvine. He's been studying the brains of psychopathic killers and believes that he's discovered some shared traits. The following is his TED talk on his studies in which he ponders the question "How do you make a psychopathic killer?"

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Movies: [REC]'s-n-Effect.

Let's get the comparison issue out of the way. Though I'm fairly sure that this will brand me as a boorish Philistine, I have to say that Quarantine, the 2008 American remake of [REC], the Spanish 2007 outbreak horror flick, is generally superior to the original.

No doubt my decision is partially influenced by the fact that I saw them in reverse order. I saw the remake first. Both films hit so many of the same notes, with almost exactly the same inflection, that the impact of whichever flick you see second is going to be muted. But, honestly, that only partially explains my disappointment with the original. More than a perhaps unfair sense of over-familiarity, what struck me about the original is how slight it is.

To explain this, a plot summary and a comparison between the two flicks might be helpful.

[REC] begins with a young Barcelona news reporter, Angela, and her cameraman, Pablo, doing the latest installment of the human-interest series: While You Sleep. This series follows around folks whose jobs drag them through the midnight hours the rest of us blissfully sleep through. This particular episode covers a firehouse. The reporter is assigned to tagged along with firemen, Manu and Alex.

After some "life-at-the-firehouse" footage, a call comes into the station. Manu and Alex are dispatched to a nearby apartment building to help an elderly woman who is, according to dispatch, trapped in her apartment. Angela and Pablo dutifully follow. Once they arrive, they find the residents of the building in a fit. The shrieking of the trapped woman has freaked them all out. Two police officers, who arrived before the fire truck, has tried to scope out the scene, but have been unable to enter the apartment.

The emergency personnel bust down the door and find the "trapped" woman. She's pale and dazed and, as soon as one of the cops gets close to her, she bites a big ol' hunk out of the officer's neck.

And everything starts going downhill from there.

The old woman suffers from an unknown strain of crazy-people disease that turns folks in 28 Days Later style violent madmen. Because the government can't risk the spread of the infection (as our prtogs were figuring out the disease inside the house, the health officials were following the evidence trail from an infected dog that was wigging out at a vet's office) the house is sealed off. Trapped inside, the uninfected must fight to stay alive until either help comes or they find a way to secret slip under the government quarantine.

For those who have only seen one version or the other, here's some of the bigger plot differences betwixt the original and the remake. Be warned, here be spoilers.

1. The cast of the Spanish version is smaller. There are fewer residents. Most notably, the gay resident who runs the attached textile business has, in the American version been broken up into two roles: the landlord and the gay opera instructor. The opera student from the American film has no Spanish equivalent. Max, the infected doggie, is mentioned in the Spanish film, but he's present and a threat in the American version.

2. The relationship between Angela and Manu is less involved then relationship between the lead firefighter and the reporter in the American flick. In the American flick, they start off playfully flirtatious and develop into a sort of cooperative team. Not so much in the Spanish flick.

3. In [REC], the government appears more plodding and incompetent that sinister. In the American film, the government ruthlessly threatens and then executes some of the film's victims as they try to bust out of the apartment building.

4. There are fewer "escape" attempts in the Spanish film. In the American version, the trapped protags cook up two or three different schemes to get out of the building. In the Spanish film, only one of these plans – escape by sewer drain – ever features as a plot point.

5. In the American film, the fact that the government cuts the building's power and communications is a big deal. Part of the plot involves the prtoags puzzling out for themselves what exactly is going on. In contrast, the government acts as an explication device in the Spanish film, communicating needed information through the cop.

6. The doomsday cult responsible for the creation of the super-rabies plague in the American film is replaced with a vague Vatican cover-up plot. Some have suggested that the infection in Spanish flick is supernatural in origin, a theory that tenuously supported by news clippings that suggest the disease's "Patient Zero" was initially thought to be demonically possessed. I personally don't see it. Rather, I think the implication is that the Vatican stumbled across a girl who became a kind of religious celebrity. They found out she wasn't a miracle, but just hinkied up with some weirdo disease (which the screenwriters repeatedly call an enzyme in defiance of germ theory). Fearing fallout, they hid her away for study. If the doomsday cult of Quarantine didn't satisfy you, the ending of [REC] is even less sensible.

Visually, the films are curious in that both make compromises with their loyalty to the first person/real time horror concept, but the makers of each version decided to make distinctly different sacrifices. The Spanish film has the matte, flat look of a real local television show. By relying on natural lighting, on-location filming, and muted digital colors, and keeping their shot set ups shallow with a steady focus on the close and mid-range, the Spanish film was really made as if it was intended to be shown on the small screen. In contrast, the cameraman in the American film seems to be working with a film camera on a set. The American film combines the lush lighting design, evocative and clever sets, and a deep color palate for a look that, while pleasing to the eye, couldn't be mistaken for found footage. Though, oddly, when it comes to staying true to the first person shtick, the Spanish flick barely bothers while the American flick busted its hump to maintain the illusion. By the 20-minute mark, the Spanish flick is throwing in montages, cutting out footage to keep the pacing tight, and otherwise throwing out the conceit that "you are there." (Frustratingly, the Spanish flick seems undecided on whether or not the camera is indeed digital or tape – like the magical devices that littered Diary of the Dead, it behaves like both when the filmmakers needs a certain effect.) In contrast, the American version works extensively with disguised cuts and swipes to avoid the sense of that anything beyond the most basic "editing in camera" is going on. The American version is also less fond of inexplicable sonic artifacts. The Spanish film plays pretty fast and loose with the aspect of first-person sound, including several incidents where the camera is recording sound even though it appears otherwise to be off. When the Spanish film loses sound, it seems like a nakedly "artistic" move; when the American movie plays with sound, there's almost always some obvious diegetic reason. Indeed, one of the main reasons for American film's extended flirtation and background scenes in the firehouse is set up ground rules for the camera's behavior, visually and sonically.

Though, honestly, the plot differences and differing visual approach aren't what win me over to the American film. Instead, it's the narrow intensity of the Spanish original that goes beyond narrative efficiency into a brutal reductionism.

The directors of the Spanish original, Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, claim that their film was built to be "pure adrenaline." To achieve this effect, Balagueró and Plaza keep their story lean and plot-driven. The fashion a rollercoaster ride of a flick at the cost of characterization and thematic richness. Their movie is very much a movie about placing the viewer into the middle of an event. That event, and not the people in it, is the central focus of the movie. The results are not all the dissimilar from a video game. The American film, which adds just 11 minutes to the overall screen time, efficiently adds gravity to characters we meet. They have friendships and blondspots, flaws and surprising strengths. We don't want them to escape because that would "win" the movie. Rather, we don't want to see real people suffer. With out bloating the film unnecessarily, the American version teases out themes about cooperation, the meaning of family, and even achieves minor hints of tragedy.

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Stuff: The Victorian vampire blood cult of Kansas City. True story, swear to God.

Yesterday, out of random curiosity, I went poking through the digital archives of the old Brooklyn Eagle - the paper Walt Whitman used to work for - to see if I could find early reviews of Bram Stoker's Dracula. I did find an early and very laudatory review of Stoker's vampire novel, but I also stumbled across this bizarre story of a "vampire cult" near Kansas City in the late 19th Century. Here's the story from the January 27th, 1890 edition of the Brooklyn Eagle, scanned directly from the archives:

The same story appeared a few days later in the Dallas Weekly Times Herald under the more colorful headline: "Nest of Bloodsuckers. The Horrible Orgies of a New Sect at Kansas City." That's how you do journalism, Screamers and Screamettes!

Other than these two appearances, I can't find any other evidence of the cult. There are online records of a Wrinkle family in the Kansas City area at the time of the story, the patriarch of which was named "John H." However, there's no record that he had two sons or that he suffered from and most likely died of tuberculosis ("consumption").

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Stuff: Choose and perish.

Slate contributor Josh Levin surveys 144 scenarios for the collapse of the United States of America. From his article intro:

If and when America expires, we probably won't agree on the cause of death. For proof that autopsies of empires are inconclusive, consider the case of Alexander Demandt, the German historian who set out in the 1980s to collect every theory ever given for why Rome fell. The final tally: 210, including attacks by nomads on horseback, blood poisoning, decline of Nordic character, homosexuality, outflow of gold, and vaingloriousness.

In tribute to Demandt, I've gone looking for every possible reason why America could fall. I've paged through the work of scholars who have studied the characteristics of declining and failed societies. I also collected theories from futurists, doomsayers, separatists, economists, political scientists, national security experts, climatologists, geologists, astronomers, and a few miscellaneous crazy people. The result: a collection of 144 potential causes of America's future death.

Levin's list of calamities includes such trendy new apocalypses as doom-by-EMP-device, rightwing-nutjob faves like a demographic death spiral caused by the legalization of gay marriage, and leftwing workhorses like a theocratic takeover.

I'm especially please that Johnny-come-lately doomsdays, such as the 2012 dealie, haven't replaced long time personal favorites such as robot uprisings or "gray goo" nanotech-driven death.

You can even select five favorite doomsday scenarios as and track progress towards midnight using Slate's "Choose Your Own Apocalypse" Tool!

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Movies: Let's get ready to fumble, or "This place better get ready for some good, hardcore, crotch-on-crotch action!"

Bad movies are like vampires: You have to invite them in.

I put writer/director Jesse Baget's 2006 Wrestlemaniac (a.k.a. El Mascarado Massacre, a.k.a. The Mexican Porn Massacre) in my Netflix queue. I did this while sober and in full knowledge of its "plot." I knew exactly what I was getting. And now, in fairness to the flick, I think it would be dishonest to pretend I was disappointed.

I do have a bit of an excuse for this one. The core premise of Wrestlemaniac touches on one of my worst critical blindspots. The film is essentially a comedic slasher in which the titular maniac is a homicidal lucha libre wrestler. I was doomed. Them masked wrasslers make me the worst kind of dumb. I can't help it.

In the "making of" featurette that accompanies Coppola's Dracula, the famed director states that the secret to his success is to "steal from the best." Sadly, Baget's major influence seems to have been the 1972 z-grade flick Ghost Gunfighter, with, believe it or not, nods to the 2005 remake of House of Wax and the second Jeepers Creepers film. The results fully reflect the quality of those influences.

The flick starts with a sextet of folks going to Cabo, looking for an exotic backdrop for their amateur porn flick.

One often hears the complaint that the victims of slashers are too unlikable. Baget seems to have taken that as a challenge and set out to create the most disposable cast of killer-fodder ever gathered. In the trio of men, only chunky camera jockey and exposition-provider Steve is likeable. The director, Alphonse, is a sleazy, self-aggrandizing, sexist, racist jackass and stoner Jimbo is a non-entity. The women fare even worse. Despite a slight edge of post-Buffy badassness, final girl Dallas is abrasive and her presence in the porno cast, given her comments about the sexism of the undertaking, is somewhat nonsensical. Her bi-curious blonde friend Debbie is there to flash tit and scream. Finally, and worst of all, is poor, sad Daisy, whose spends most of the movie passed out, face down, with her bare ass sticking out from under her nightie (which is her entire wardrobe). When Daisy is eventually revived, she gets a single line delivery, a boob flash, a puke scene, and a death scene, in that order and one right after another. Its such a crap role that one wonders if dancer/actress Catherine Wreford took the role as part of some court mandated public service requirement. Mercifully, the actors seem to have been in on the joke and everybody approaches their role with over-the-top gusto. The actors gesticulate as if they're in a silent film, every line delivery is given the sing-songy emphasis of porn actors trying to act their way through the fill-scenes, and one more than one occasion the actors visibly corpse and break character with a short attack of the giggles.

This wink wink, nudge nudge approach is a blessing, otherwise the actors would have to deliver some of the most wooden dialogue I've ever had the pleasure of hearing in a horror flick, with the winner going to the line that gives this post its title:

This place better get ready for some good, hardcore, crotch-on-crotch action!

Just reading the line off the screen doesn't do the line justice. To get the proper sense of the line, you've got to use it on an audience. Stand up. Put on some sunglasses. Walk towards the nearest occupied cubical. Sawgger so that your arms swing at your sides. Start the line, but make the commas full stops, with half stops between syllables. "Good." Stop. "Hard, core." Stop. "Crotch, on, crotch." Stop. "Action." When you've got your coworker's attention, whip off your sunglasses. Optimally, this should coincide with the second crotch.

Where were we?

Oh. The plot.

So the porn crew gets lost. They stop at one of those miserable, filth-incrusted gas stations that dot the byways of America in the horrorverse. There they are told about a nearby ghost town, now legendary as the home of El Mascarado – a mass murdering Frankenstein luchadore created by the Mexican government out of the bodies of the country's top wrestlers in a failed bid to created the ultimate Olympic wrestler. (I kid not. That's the backstory.)

The porn auteur and his chubby sidekick decide that, logically speaking, if the town turns out to be real, then the rest of the story must necessarily be false. The two quickly rethink their porn flick to set it the ghost town.

The rest of the story you can guess. They find town. El Mascarado (played by lucha legend Rey Misterio Sr. at an all-time career low) finds them. Killing ensues. To add an extra level of gross out, El Mascarado "unmasks his opponents" by ripping the faces off his victims. Good times.

One of the chase scenes also features the first time I've seen a victim snag her denim shorts on something and lose them. This happens to shirts all the time, but jean shorts? That must count as some sort of innovation.

In his defense, Baget manages to wring several effective scenes out the fairly predictable plot. Most notably, there's a nice scene in which El Mascarado traps Steve and Debbie in his "kill room," a bloodsplattered, windowless room with a jerry-rigged wrestling ring and a display of his many victims "masks" nailed to the wall. Steve decides that, following the rules of lucha that El Masc has hardwired into him, if he can unmask the mad luchadore, the killer will give up. He decides to make up himself and fight. The scene starts with a shot through the door. Through that frame we see Steve charge. The door slowly closes. We hear fight sounds and screams. The door bursts open and a blood-soaked Debbie comes crawling out of the room on all fours. She's crying. Then, suddenly, she's grabbed by the legs and dragged back into the room. The surprising restraint of the scene makes it a genuinely grim moment in what is otherwise light and laughably cheesy.

Still, despite such occasional moments, most of the flick is too silly to involve the viewer, but not clever enough to ride on the strength of its comedy elements. I suspect that cast and crew had a blast making the flick, but that doesn't carry over to the viewer in a sustained way. I can't hate on the flick, cause I'm powerless to hate anything with masked wrestlers in it. You, however, most likely do not suffer from this same condition.

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Stuff: Dario trio.

S'up, Screamers and Screamettes?

Quick news bit: The newest calendars for the Brooklyn Academy of Music's cinema have come out and horror fans might want take a gander at the first week in September. Starting on Friday, September 4, BAMcinématek is running what they're calling a "mini-retro" of Italio-horror master Dario Argento.

Friday, there will be two showings of his 1971 thriller 4 Flies on Grey Velvet. Then, on Saturday, there are three showings of the magnificent Suspiria. Finally, Sunday afternoon and evening, there are two showings of the second flick in the "Three Mother's" trilogy, the utterly inexplicable Inferno.

While Inferno is barely worth the celluloid it's printed on, the opportunity to see Suspiria on the big screen makes this a notable event for Brooklyn horror fanciers.

I'll probably be giving 4 Flies a pass too, but Dario-philes might find reason to make time. Long considered a "lost" film due to its unavailability on Region 1 DVD, an uncut and remastered version of 4 Flies has been making the rounds since Mya Communication Company issued there admirable R1 DVD in February. I can't imagine there will be tons of opportunities to see it on the big screen.

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Stuff: "And that, in a sentence, is why your horror sucks."

When it comes to obsessively policing the "correctness" of works within their chosen genre, nobody beats horror fans.

Sure, sci-fi readers may have us matched when it comes self-defensive knee-jerk reactions to what we perceive as anti-genre bias in the mainstream. But nobody can get as hot when proposing what should and should not be considered as a valid addition to our pet genre. You couldn't find a mystery fan who, even if their tastes ran towards the hardest of hardboiled crime fic, would not recognize the elegant classics of Elizabeth Daly, the juvenile Nancy Drew series, and the aw-shucks slapstick of Kinky Friedman as all belonging legitimately to the genre. Sci-fi guys regularly lay down definitions RE the scientific rigor of the romances they read, but they know it's bullshit: Not a one of them wouldn't count Philip K. Dick among their number and his works are about as scientifically rigorous as The Great Space Coaster. I can't imagine you hear many romance novel readers say, "I don't consider romances between nurses and doctors to be real romance. It's either lusty pirates with good hearts and the clever, but sheltered - don't forget sheltered, sheltered is the whole thing! - daughters of wealthy shipping magnates or nothing!"

But horror fandom, with rare exceptions, seems to exist in a constant state of self-induced appreciation pogromitude, a constant ferreting out of "not REAL horror," with bloggers, forums, and twitter feeds acting as a million little horror-centric HUACs. While few in the sci-fi ghetto would rail on about Artemis Fowl or The Hunger Game, the fact that tween girls enjoy the Twilight series is apparently a source of unending and obsessive focus for horror fans who, at their age, should really be minimally obsessed with monitoring and evaluating the behavoirs of tween girls. Seriously, boys and girls, it's a wee bit creepy.

The constant clash between horror's self-appointed purity police is lightly spoofed in the latest issue of Vertigo's Unwritten. (You can stop reading now Tucker, it's going to involve words and an inauspicious lack of female nudity; blame writer Mike Carey and artist Peter Gross.) The new ish features a cabal of horror writers who gather at the Villa Diodati, the Swiss timeshare at which Mary Shelly first conceived of Frankenstein and his monster, to discuss the importance of Frankenstein and argue about the genre. For fans, the clichéd creators and the works they describe are funny.

Here's the group giving introductions. Give it the ol' clickety click to embiggen.

Later, the Torture Porn guy and the Laurell K. Hamilton analog mix it up a bit. Again, the clicking's the trick.

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