The King of Horror, nightmares sold separately

I knew they released figures for every single one of the 15,000 original characters that ever appeared on screen in The Simpsons, so they had to run out of toys eventually, right? Apparently not...

When I first saw that they were releasing figures based on the show's celebrity guest stars, my reaction was a little bit like "Jesus Christ, they've reached 3,000 miles beneath the bottom of the barrel." And then I saw they did one for Stephen King and was like "Stephen King has an action figure. That's kind of awesome." So, I knew I had to buy one. Unfortunately, it seems that horror fans all thought the same thing, because it's been a bit of a bugger to track down. It goes pretty much instantly out of stock whenever a store gets it and scalpers on eBay are charging about four times its retail price.

If you're a horror fan of a certain age, I think Stephen King and his works hold a bit of meaning to you. The '80s were filled with adaptations of his books, on the big screen and small, so they were kind of hard to ignore. I also remember my horror loving aunt's place being littered with his books and how I'd go to the library with her and get some of his stuff. (I think the first thing I read of his in its entirety was the story that Silver Bullet was based off of, Cycle of the Werewolf. I know that's a short story, but, hey, I was a kid.) Stephen King's a giant of horror, so I wanted this figure as part of my collection of horror figures.

It depressed me a little to hear stories of people getting to meet King at book signings, though. He's such a giant that so many people are waiting to meet him that it sounds like they're just all rushed through on a conveyor belt. One story I read was reminiscent of Ralphie meeting Santa in A Christmas Story -- like the person is placed in front of King, and before they were even able to say "hello," he's done scribbling an autograph while a couple of assistants/guards just kept pulling them along, shoving them down that slide, dashing their hopes of getting that Red Ryder air rifle.

The figure was released just in time for Encore's month-long Stephen King marathon, which has been fun. The thing doesn't really have the right yellow coloring of the Simpsons characters, though -- it looks more like one of those creepy butter sculptures. Still, it's cool to have a Stephen King figure...

NECA's Tater Sack Jason arrives

There are some of the old Cult Classics, Movie Maniacs and Sideshow figures that I regret not buying when they came out, because a lot of them go for high prices now. NECA's release(s) of Jason from Friday the 13th Part 2 -- the so-called "Tater Sack Jason" aka "Hillbilly Jason" -- is one of the figures I regret not buying. (Especially the box set that had Jason, Pamela and Jason's shrine for Pamela's decapitated head.) So, when I saw that NECA was releasing a retro-styled Part 2 figure, I wanted to buy it, even though I felt like I was just settling for that style of figure after missing out on the others. I'm not a big fan of the retro-styled dolls -- I can understand why people would like them, if that's the style of toys they grew up with. Me? I'm an '80s, Kenner kid, so I get a kick out of Funko's ReAction line more than the cloth dolls.

I had bought the Part 5 Jason/Roy retro-styled figure a few months ago basically because I'm one of the few fans of A New Beginning, and it was the first figure to represent that movie. It looked alright, but it didn't make me want to rush out and buy the other retro-styled horror figures NECA's done. But the newly released Part 2 figure, man...it's pretty nice. It kind of makes sense to have this look of Jason's be in the *clothed* retro style: the layered hillbilly get-up, the tater sack head... It's a nice looking figure, with neat little details like the dirtied sack. I'm very surprised by it and very pleased with the purchase. In my opinion, it definitely looks better and more screen accurate than the Sideshow version of Part 2 Jason and the molded action figure versions previously released by NECA. The look just really pops and comes across nicely in the retro style.

I'm a nerd, so I didn't want to open the packaging, so I'm curious how Jason looks under that hood. I'm assuming he has rooted hair and not molded hair, due to the way the sack is a little misshapen. Even if I opened it, I'd be afraid that I wouldn't get the sack tied on the same way and that would bug the heck out of me.

Jason's look in Part 2 is unique; his ordinary clothes, simple sack over his head and the way his make-up looks -- along with the way Steve Dash portrayed him -- made Part 2's Jason the most human seeming. The long haired Jason, the beard -- he certainly looked like someone who was presumed to have died and raised himself in a forest. (Someone also recently pointed out to me the way Part 2's Jason looks like a scarecrow. That's a neat idea, like Jason is a scarecrow scaring people away from his turf at Crystal Lake.) It's not a look that would have worked out for the entire series -- the popularity of the hockey mask proves that -- but I appreciate this different Jason look.

A neat figure, I recommend it. If you've been on the fence about these retro styled, clothed figures like I've been, I think this one will surprise you.

Horror comes to GSN's Skin Wars

The Game Show Network has a new series, a body art competition show called Skin Wars. The competing body artists are given themes to work with each week and the last episode challenged the artists to make themselves up as one of their big fears. (They usually paint models, but an extra part of this challenge was for them to apply the make-up on themselves.) Some of the artists did things like aging and arachnids, but artist Felle chose horror movies and came up with...

I just got a kick out of this. Part Freddy, part Pinhead. (There's also Heath Ledger's Joker and...I don't really recognize the other part below Pinhead.) Hellraiser always seemed to me like it's not on the radar as much as a Freddy or Jason, so I always like when it gets referenced somewhere. (As it did on a Community episode last season.) The artists on Skin Wars are given a couple of hours to complete their projects, so I think Felle's Pinhead and the Freddy burns turned out nicely. (These pics I took don't do it justice.)

The Hell Tale Heart

Since toy companies like to ignore the majority of non-monster characters from horror movies -- especially the heroines -- I've once again taken it upon myself to make another custom figure in my Horror Heroines line. This time it's Hellraiser's Kirsty Cotton. For a while there, I considered Kirsty to be my favorite Horror Heroine. (I'll get to the reasons why that changed.)

I got into the Hellraiser movies big time in 2003. I just wasn't into Hellraiser much when I was younger, and hadn't watched a movie beyond the third one -- and it's memories of that third one that negatively influenced what I thought of the series until I decided to give them another chance. I was pretty damn surprised at how much I ended up liking the first one after revisiting it; it's a smaller scale horror movie, about adult characters and for adult fans.

Monstrous human characters are the movie's major villains -- the over-the-top Cenobites are just supporting players. On one side, you have Frank Cotton -- a walking embodiment of the seven deadly sins -- and Julia Cotton, his sister-in-law who's rotted from an unhappy marriage and is blindly manipulated by Frank into becoming a monster for him; killing for him to get him back seemingly resuscitates her and makes her more alive than she's seemed for quite a while. On the other side, you have Larry Cotton, who's just a poor, but well-intentioned schlub, and his daughter Kirsty, who wants the best for her father. (She has pretty much seen through Julia all along.) Larry ain't stupid: he senses Julia's unhappiness which is why he decides to move to her "home turf" in England, which is a strange city in England that can't quite tell if it's English or American. (Other than Julia, accents come and go, and cops have guns in the sequel!) I feel there's a definitively clear black and white, good versus evil represented by both duos. I know Clive Barker's more interested in shades of gray, and I think Julia is a bit more complicated than being a flat-out villain (she begins her descent into madness out of a misplaced sense of love). And she definitely has shades of gray, but Frank is total scum. There's *nothing* likable or redeemable about him.

Kirsty benefits from being an older character than typical horror heroines -- she's obviously around college age, at least in her early 20s and not mid-teens like the norm. She joins her dad in England, probably to keep touch with him. (And keep an eye on Julia?) Right away, it seems like something is after her: she begins to dream premonitions and is followed by the homeless man, who is later revealed to be a watcher of the puzzle box. It's checking up on Julia that gets her pulled into the web -- she hears screams come from the house, but she doesn't flee, she investigates. She finally, finally is about to get confirmation on all she's probably suspected about Julia, and she finds...Frank. She's justifiably terrified, but she stands her ground and fights Frank back. Kirsty's courageous and in a believable way, I find. There's a lot of horror movies that are trying to portray such a positive image that the protagonist is nearly superhuman in their strength and resolve. For example, I think the Scream movies are pretty bad about that. Sidney goes through and does stuff that would probably kill Wile E. Coyote, but will be on her feet in the next frame, her senses sharp as only a screenwriter could make them. Sidney should be with the Teen Titans, you know? Kirsty can fight and keep her senses, but not to a cartoonish degree like that.

You get the sense that she's the first person to even think of talking to and trying to deal with the Cenobites. Well, she at least seems to be the first person that tried that with Pinhead. She puts it all together, realizing Frank escaped them, and promises to lead them to him in her place. When the Cenobites seem to go back on their word, after dealing with Frank? By that point, she's through with this shit. She sends 'em back like *that*. (Watch for that funny scene when the Engineer enters the front door and Kirsty's milksop, Larry Appleton-looking love interest tries to take the box from her and she just punches him out of the way. It's hilarious.)

Kirsty really shines in Hellraiser 2, though. Her goodness, her pureness of heart leads her to...willingly walk into hell to save her father! And not only does it end up being a trick by Frank to lure her to him, but she has to contend with a more powerful Julia and the even more powerful Channard Cenobite (who's so powerful, he disposes of the four Cenobites in no time), while racing to prevent the dimensions opened by the puzzle boxes from merging with Earth. Not only that, but she has to play guardian to Tiffany. And not only that, but she tricks Channard and saves Tiffany...BY PUTTING ON JULIA'S SKIN! That's dedication, man. Meanwhile, Ginny's practically dry-heaving at putting on Jason's mother's moldy sweater in Friday the 13th Part 2. Amateur!

Hellraiser 2 saw Kirsty and Tiffany exiting the asylum, maybe finally free and clear of trauma, but ready to go kick some Cenobite ass in future installments, right? Not really. Kirsty's reduced to a lame VHS cameo in Part 3 and then forgotten about until the sixth movie, Hellseeker, a lame and lazy rewrite of another script that decides to shoehorn a character named "Kirsty Cotton" into the script, only the character isn't Kirsty Cotton. The Kirsty Cotton I know wouldn't be some petty sneak who opens the box just to get back at her shitbag husband, then talking Pinhead into letting her kill her husband and his mistresses for him instead of the Cenobites taking her. This is Kirsty, who attempted to pull her dad out of hell. This is Kirsty, who wore another woman's skin to save someone.

Look, it's bad enough that Hellseeker is an abysmal movie that feels three hours longer than it is -- did they really need to make Kirsty into a villain? Into someone more like Julia, a person she despised? And while one of the things I find interesting about Pinhead is that he's willing to LISTEN to people, he doesn't just hack and slash them, do you even buy that he'd go for Kirsty's insane deal? At that point his "good friend" (as Captain Elliot Spencer referred to Kirsty in Part 3) had shown signs of being no better than someone like Julia -- I think the Cenobites would have taken her. I'm sure the Hellseeker writers are under the belief they made Kirsty "real," "flawed," or "complicated," or like they had a great twist, but they were way off the mark -- it wasn't Kirsty.

That's the last the movies saw of Kirsty, or the so-called Kirsty. But wait! There's hope yet -- Clive Barker decided to write comics from the BOOM company that ignored every movie after Part 2. It was going to be the definitive showdown of Kirsty versus Pinhead. Great, ignore the sequels. Please; a lot of them are bad. Surely -- surely! -- Clive could somewhat save Kirsty's image, right? (I say "somewhat" because, in the back of my head, comic spin-offs don't count as much as a movie installment.) Clive has supposedly said he liked Hellseeker, which I don't understand, so I shouldn't have been surprised to see that he didn't quite save Kirsty's image. In the comics -- which probably make more sense if you read them while on acid and cocaine and Hawaiian Punch and Holy Fuckin' Shit from 21 Jump Street -- Kirsty has this insane anti-logic where she thinks if she becomes a Cenobite, she can reunite with her dead loved ones, so...she willingly switches places with Pinhead, who pretends as if he wants to be human again, but really has some bonkers Dr. Doom scheme secretly planned.

So, Kirsty becomes a female version of Pinhead and, since the comics make no sense and seem like they were written on the go, she forgets all that junk about her loved ones and instead decides to let people summon her with the box and she uses that to weed out sickies and/or variations of the Lament Configuration. In the meantime, she also finds out that Cenobitin' ain't easy. And she's repeatedly tricked by a variety of different characters. And she ends up just doing nothing much but seeming stupid -- she gets trapped in a box and the day has to be saved by the Female Cenobite, Harry D'Amour, and Elliot Spencer's handicapped, octogenarian, born-of-incest daughter...or some crazy shit like that. What...the...fuck. Even Takashi Miike would find these comics weird. Long story short: Kirsty's image is still marred.

Where's the brave heroine? The one who fearlessly fought off Frank. The smart heroine, who put together just what all of that crazy Cenobite stuff was, who solved the mystery of Pinhead's identity? Barker's novel from which Hellraiser is based is called The Hellbound Heart; while the film makes some changes from the novel, it's essentially the same. (One wise decision: making Kirsty Larry's daughter; it involved her in the story more, made her more important. In the novel, she's just a mousy co-worker of Larry's who's interested in him and snoops around the house when Julia's doing her killing.) Kirsty in the book and first film is pure of heart. It's all motivations of the heart. The two with the poisoned hearts get what they deserve. Kirsty, with the pure heart, looking out for the best interest of others, is who wins.

I think actress Ashley Laurence really kicks ass and does a great job as Kirsty. (And even though I think the "Kirsty" in Hellseeker is some character from a bad Silk Stalkings episode wearing the skin of Kirsty Cotton, Laurence is still good in that movie.) Laurence seems like a strong, take-no-crap kinda woman in real-life, and that really comes through in moments where Kirsty's standing up to these hellish monsters. Laurence also didn't mind getting dirty for the role, really having maggots dumped onto her in that scene in the first movie and being covered with blood at the end of Part 2.

Since I think Hellraiser 1 and 2 go nicely together, I wanted the figure to represent both movies. Her outfit's based on her look in the first movie, but accessories pertain more to 2 -- the Spencer photograph and...Julia's skin! I just knew that had to be part of the set. And here's the result:

Front and back of packaging.

RIP, FEARnet

I was awaiting FEARnet's monthly update only to find it missing from my On Demand listing. Apparently, FEARnet is no more. My local cable provider only ever got the On Demand portion of FEARnet and not the actual channel, but I've enjoyed and discovered plenty of horror movies on there, so I'm sad to see it go. (Comcast is merging it with the Chiller channel, supposedly -- another channel my crummy cable company doesn't offer.)

FEARnet's selection kind of dwindled over time, but it was still nice to have a monthly dose of horror. And, like I said, I got into some obscure slasher movies through it, and enjoyed some of their original programming, like the miniseries Fear Clinic, Tom Holland's Twisted Tales anthology and Mick Garris' interview program Post Mortem. Most of all, I always got a kick out of their comedically tinged, often WTFucky movie descriptions. Someone over there had a goofy sense of humor.

RIP FEARnet!

The Pain of Viewer's Guilt

I try not to think of things in terms of being a "guilty pleasure" or whatnot. If you like something, like it. But there are some things that you can't help feel embarrassed for liking, or just a deep shame for liking. I'm not talking about something that's cheesy or "so bad it's good" or whatever, but a movie or show with legitimately disturbing subject matter that people would probably think you're a monster for liking, so you don't want to advertise it. People already like to make horror fans feel ashamed for liking the genre, there's such a discrimination against the genre and its fans, so we don't need movies to come along and make you wonder "Is something wrong with me for liking this?"

One movie I feel guilty and ashamed for liking is Takashi Miike's Ichi the Killer -- the movie should be rated V, for violence, vileness and vulgarity. I'm aware that this movie is thirteen years old and not exactly a horror movie, though I've seen it classified as horror. Miike HAS made a few horror movies, but American genre fans know him mainly for Audition and Ichi the Killer, neither of which *I* really consider horror. Audition has only one legitimate scare scene, in my opinion. (#renosugiinabag) Otherwise, it's just a mystery/thriller. Ichi the Killer is more of an outlandish yakuza movie to me, not even a thriller or horror as it's often been called.

Ichi the Killer is notorious for its violence, and a lot about it *does* make for a pretty disgusting movie. But since it's based on a comic and since most of the gore is computer generated, I think it has a kind of an over-the-top and cartoon quality to it. It's not quite the Saw movies, where it's two hours of terrible things happening to people. A lot of vile things happen in Ichi the Killer, but when you keep in mind its comic book origins, it begins to look more like a deranged, warped superhero movie, as a lot of people say.

A lot has been made of how misogynistic the movie is in its brutal treatment of women, and that is one part of the movie that makes me uncomfortable and makes me hesitant to ever say I like the movie. However, a lot of what happens to the women characters in this movie is really the norm for yakuza movies, and that's something nobody will really be aware of unless they've watched a lot of those movies. I'm not saying it's right, but yakuza movies only really ever have two or three types of roles for women -- victims, mistresses and prostitutes. The cast will be largely male, mainly immoral characters who vastly outnumber what's usually limited to two or three women in the cast. The limited number of women in these movies and the limitations put upon their roles will really highlight just how brutal these kinds of movies handle women. Filmmakers will probably claim they're trying to realistically depict the criminal underworld, but these are still movies -- I think there's many ways to have better characters for women in these works of fiction. But Japanese moviemakers are obviously not going to think like that, especially when mobsters movies are meant to be rough and gritty guys' movies.

While a lot of people are drawn to this movie for the outrageous gore and kill scenes, what I like most about the movie is the character of Masao Kakihara. (Or, as the film refers to him as, "the number one bad guy.") When Kakihara, a high ranking gangster, learns that someone is unleashing the sadistic serial killer Ichi on all of the local mobsters, the masochistic Kakihara becomes obsessed with Ichi's brutality and anticipates the idea of facing off against him. He's looking forward to being killed by the film's killer! That's one nutty character. The closer Ichi gets to crossing Kakihara off of his kill list, the more excited Kakihara becomes. Kakihara builds up the idea of having a really intense encounter culminating in a glorious, legendary death that will take him to new levels of pain, and the movie does a good job of building up to their crossing paths in the last act and milking that encounter for all it's worth. For maybe the first time, Kakihara feels fear as Ichi approaches him. But what's funny is that when Kakihara finally does square off against Ichi, who he's imagined is this stone-cold monster, he's ultimately let down to find out that Ichi, despite his vaguely superhero-esque costume and dangerous razor-heeled boots, is really just an average serial killer, an awkward, easily distracted, weepy young man. Kakihara has to resort to imagining the great duel and glorious death he had been anticipating.

Kakihara wouldn't work as well without actor Tadanobu Asano. What initially caught my attention about his performance is how subdued he is. In pretty much every Japanese gangster movie I've seen, the actors will often go over-the-top and start yelling like nuts, but Asano never raises his voice. He barely ever speaks above a low tone, and often has a bemused smile upon his face, which gives Kakihara's enjoyment for inflicting pain (and having pain inflicted upon him) another edge of creepiness. He's really understated, and it's a style that I think has become more common since for these types of characters since, but I think when this movie came out in 2001, Asano was doing something fresher. The Kakihara from the original manga was a bit different, prone to emotional outbursts and being overly expressive, but I prefer Asano's quiet, inscrutable take on the character.

I'm not the first to make a connection between this movie and the world of Hellraiser, but I've always thought about the idea of Kakihara facing off against Pinhead. I think Kakihara would probably become a high-ranking Cenobite, one even worse and more powerful than Dr. Channard. He'd certainly give Pinhead a run for his money; I can't imagine Kakihara Cenobite being one who would revert to his humanity after being shown a publicity photo. (I wonder if Clive Barker has seen this movie or read the comic and what he thinks about it.)

Ichi is obviously Miike's favorite of his works and its twisted world is one he clearly felt at home in; it has such a different atmosphere from his other movies and is unlike most yakuza movies, including other ones made by Miike himself. Credit goes to the source material, which is unique to say the least. (Seriously, what's wrong with creator Hideo Yamamoto?) But a lot of credit goes to the interesting cast Miike rounded up. (The weak link is Nao Omori as Ichi. For as monstrous as Ichi's actions are, as twisted as he is, I think you're meant to feel a bit more sympathy for him than Omori, a big old creep, manages to eke out. Is he the monster, or is Shinya Tsukamoto's Jijii the bad guy for manipulating Ichi into doing all of the killing? There aren't exactly any characters to root for in this movie, but Jijii initially seems like he's as close as this movie gets to having someone with morals or redeemable qualities. He controls the murderous Ichi, setting Ichi's bloodthirsty desire on only criminals, Dexter Morgan style. But there's that question mark about Jijii -- just how much did he falsely plant into Ichi's memory in order to control him? What's Jijii's motivation, does it come from a place of warped justice? The movie hints at Jijii being a bit of an unreliable character, and the casting of the shifty Tsukamoto gives the character a further shade of untrustworthiness.) You can at least say this about Miike: he certainly doesn't glamorize mob life.

There are quite a few interesting ideas running throughout this movie, and I think it's a bit of a shame that it gets buried and overtaken by Miike's penchant for perversity and the movie's notorious gore. Although the purpose of the film and its comic book source's brutality and outrageousness was to bring attention to itself, if they could have managed to show a bit more restraint, if the movie could have cleaned up its act a bit, I think it would be taken a bit more seriously instead of being seen as a nasty, gimmicky exploitation movie that leaves most viewers feeling grossed out by the time credits roll.

So, with all that said, part of me still feels like it's not right to like this movie. Society does like to shame people like horror and genre fans, doesn't it? And there's such a hypocrisy -- people who are quick to dismiss horror or a movie like Ichi and wag their finger at horror fans probably sing the praises of a character like cold-blooded killer Walter White or obsess over the excessively violent and cruel Game of Thrones. The monsters aren't meant to be the stars of horror movies, but all of the accepted and critically-acclaimed, "highbrow" drama shows are centered on characters who are horrible human beings. I know of people who model parts of their lives after Don Draper or Hank Moody, two of TV's foulest people, "because they're cool!" It's hard to imagine horror fans wanting to model their lives after Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger or Ichi the Killer. Horror viewers yell at the screen for the victims to outrun and escape the monster; viewers clamored for Tony Soprano to whack certain characters, they rooted for Walter White to escape his crimes (including the poisoning of a kid), "because they're bad-ass!" Also: look at how exploitational a lot of those supposed highfalutin HBO shows are. Why do horror fans get singled out and picked on, the genre dismissed? Hypocrisy is a horror.

King of the Drive-in

I don't remember how I ever came across MonsterVision, but I'm glad I did. While I usually don't like watching movies that have been edited on network television, one thing made MonsterVision worthwhile: host Joe Bob Briggs. You always read of horror fans who talk about growing up watching monster movies on television, usually on a weekend block hosted by a character -- an idea put to use in the 1985 movie Fright Night, where a teen horror fan enlists his favorite horror host to help him kill a vampire. Joe Bob Briggs is the Peter Vincent for horror fans in my age range.

On the surface, Joe Bob's humor might seem simple or absurdist, but he has a bullseye delivery, a sharpness and wit. He can provide spot-on critiques of movies or defend its flaws and make you appreciate or enjoy the movie anyway. He has such a giddiness about horror and genre movies that doesn't seem artificial or doesn't seem to condescend to the material or its fans. You never get the sense from Joe Bob that he thinks he's above everything, looking down on these movies from a distance of snobby irony; the persona is used to point out the hypocrisy of film critics who dismiss movies like these or movies that are made to entertain the moviegoing public. His enthusiasm is genuine and he made MonsterVision a blast to watch, even if the horror movies were butchered for TV or something sucky like Wishmaster 15. (I'm still bummed out about not winning a MonsterVision shirt.)

While TNT did everything it could to chip away MonsterVision's identity, forcing on barely-qualifying movies like Malice (even if it produced the memorable Drive-In Total "fire-extinguisher fu"), Joe Bob still delivered. He still delivered even when TNT, after a shopping spree at the DVD bargain bin at Wal-Mart, turned MonsterVision into "Joe Bob's Saturday Night," where he was stuck hosting a night of movies from every genre BUT horror. (Movies like Adventures in Babysitting.) But it didn't matter -- Joe Bob was still hilarious and still provided fun facts about the movies. And that's something that should be appreciated -- Joe Bob's massive knowledge about these movies. Before DVD featurettes, before Google, before Wikipedia, horror fans had Joe Bob Briggs. (Joe Bob's a trouper when it comes to the fans, because God knows I've pestered him with a bunch of emails.)

One of Joe Bob's greatest recurring bits is the Drive-In Totals, the tallying of all of the various outrageousness found in a movie. I still try to come up with Drive-In Totals for ANY movie I watch, and I still often think of a lot of Joe Bob's bits when watching horror movies. (Check out the special features of Jason X for some great Friday the 13th stuff by Joe Bob. I think Joe Bob should be an interviewee for every DVD release.) Joe Bob's a superstar of horror, and the name of this blog is in honor of him and his always great Drive-in Totals.

Now, why can't AMC get him to host their Halloween horror marathons -- or even a new variation of MonsterVision?