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Articles:

• Cover
• Contents
• A Sort of Editorial
• Nastassja Kinski, Sex Goddess: Part 1
• A Small Encyclopedia of Trash
• Hellbound: Hellraiser II
• The Amazing Herschell Gordon Lewis
• Black Medicine
• Trash Pop
• Controversy Corner
• 10 moments from film history guaranteed to make me squirm or jump
• Trash Literature (and literature about trash)
• Ten Comics Worthy of Your Attention
• The Incredibly Bad Film Show: Passion Flower Hotel
• It Must Be True…
• C*ns*rsh*p
• Classic Splatter
• Nightmares in a Damaged Brain
• Best of 1988
• Contributions
• Future Schlock
• Back cover

I won’t be voting today. I didn’t vote in 2012, 2008 or 2004 either. I can’t vote, not being an American citizen. But I am perfectly fine with that. Sixteen years of not voting has had absolutely no impact on my life, and has helped convince me that it’s vastly over-rated. Indeed, from the sidelines, I’ve grown increasingly convinced that voting is much more the problem, rather than the solution. Or, at least, the problem is a system under which voting is a “right”, rather than a responsibility or a privilege. It’s an issue about which a number the founding fathers, particularly John Adams, were concerned. In 1776, he wrote:

Very few men, who have no property, have any judgment of their own. They talk and vote as they are directed by some man of property, who has attached their minds to his interest.

240 years later, that’s exactly what we see. In the 18th century, voting was limited largely to rich, white men. And it made sense. Not because they were rich, or white or men. But because they were, by far, likely to be the best educated and so best able to make informed decisions. Since then, the bar has been set ever lower, and now, you need little more than to be 18 with a pulse. And that’s a problem, because as Isaac Asimov once said, it leads to “the false notion democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” In the modern voting booth, it’s absolutely the case, and to quote Winston Churchill, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”

It leads, inexorably, to the situation we have today, both parties ending up with the worst candidate available. Because when all votes count the same, it’s much easier to go for the bottom 51%, who can be easily manipulated through appeals to personal interest, fearmongering and tribalism [which we see equally from both sides]. The only way out is to end, or at least limit, the universal franchise. What I want is a quiz in the voting booth. Say, ten questions, nothing too taxing, basic stuff like “Locate Iraq on this world map,” [though in 2006, that was apparently too much for 63% of young Americans] If you don’t get 7/10, your vote is still recorded – just quietly ignored. You don’t deserve to have a say for, as I said, voting is a responsibility, not a right, and an uninformed electorate is worse than no electorate at all. Case in point: Hitler would likely be no more than a historical footnote, save for the power he gained through the universal franchise.

tl;dr? Can’t vote, have never voted, and it’s a terrible system, which has brought us to the awful choice we see today.

But if forced to choose, who would I pick? It’s not easy. In some areas, my views are Democratic; in others, Republican. I’m strongly pro-choice, for example; but I also favor enforcement of immigration law, that doesn’t effectively stop at the border. Even on the Clinton/Trump axis, both candidates have good ideas. I agree with Hillary that education is vital. But I also agree with Donald that the current foreign policy of nation-building and regime change has caused far more problems than it has solved. Voting for one side would inevitably mean compromising my beliefs in a significant number of areas. If I have any particular affiliation, I’d identify with the “Republican Party Reptile” group, described by writer P.J. O’Rourke as follows:

We are in favor of: guns, drugs, fast cars, free love (if our wives don’t find out), a sound dollar, and a strong military with spiffy uniforms. There are thousands of people in America who feel this way, especially after three or four drinks. If all of us would unite and work together, we could give this country. . . well, a real bad hangover.

Sadly, Mr. O’Rourke is not standing for election. Nor is anyone for whom I would actually want to vote. If Bernie Sanders had made it through, I’d have been more than happy with that, but the Democratic party machine appears to have done everything in their power to prevent this. Hell, right now, I (and I suspect the majority of the population) would likely be perfectly happy if President Obama said, “Look, people: it’s for the best” and passed an executive order, declaring himself Emperor for life. There is, literally, no good option in this election. They should install showers in the voting booths, because it’ll save you time afterward.

Donald Trump is an intemperate, arrogant blowhard, with a highly-dubious track record, in both his personal and business life. I wouldn’t accept a check from him, and wouldn’t recommend our daughter hang around Trump after dark.

However, he’s still preferable to Hillary Clinton.

Because Clinton is the epitome of everything I despise about the current system. A career politician, completely beholden to special interest groups and lobbyists (not least through the Clinton Foundation and its donors), who rode Bill’s coat-tails to the White House, then used it as a jumping-off point for her own political ambitions. She is absolutely entrenched with the political establishment, which brought us such joys as the dot.com bubble, the worst depression since the Great one, in which we lost our house, and has spent literally trillions of dollars on pointless foreign wars that benefit no-one save the military industrial complex. Make no mistake: a vote for Clinton is a vote for a continuation of this current, failed system.

If Hillary wins, it will mean the last five Presidents have been Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Clinton (and I’m not betting against Jeb Bush making another run in 2016). Congratulations, America: 240 years after winning your freedom from Great Britain, you’ll have instituted your own hereditary monarchy. For this is disturbingly like the approach used to determine the throne of England in the mid-16th century, except with Republicans and Democrats instead of Protestants and Catholics. And, guess what? That didn’t do much to benefit the population as a whole either.

It is bizarre to see a billionaire businessman as “alternative”, but these are certainly bizarre times. Trump is the most radical candidate with an actual chance of winning in my lifetime [maybe since JFK in 1960?]. Term limits, ethics reform, against the TPP. It’s kinda astonishing to see a Republican candidate espouse these beliefs. Whether he’ll be able to put them into action if elected, I’m less sure: I remember the hope for change when Obama won. Whatever happened to that? It may depend on who wins the Senate, just as a Clinton victory with a Republican Senate would lead to further deadlock. But even if the Reps win, this was a party that never wanted Trump – it just couldn’t figure out who they did want. How much would they co-operate with him?

That’s an undeniable part of his popular appeal. To quote one supporter, “The fact that Wall Street hates Trump and love Hillary, the fact that the career politicians hate Trump, the fact that the media is almost entirely promoting Hillary and bashing Trump, should tell you everything.” He’s got a point. You’d think in an election where the two candidates are separated by a couple of percentage clicks, that would be reflected in the media. Not so: 243 daily newspapers have endorsed Hilary Clinton. Just 19, Donald Trump. A staggering 96% of campaign contributions made by journalists have been in favor of Clinton. If you believe they aren’t skewing their reporting similarly, I’ve a bridge in Brooklyn for sale.

I mean, you really think the release of an 11-year-old tape by a Comcast-owned NBC show was purely coincidental? Yet I find the Access Hollywood tape largely irrelevant to the matter at hand. John F. Kennedy (Democrat) pretty much banged everything that came through the White House, up to and including Marilyn Monroe, and is still regarded as among the greatest of all Presidents. And if the sexual escapades of Mr. Hillary Clinton (another Democrat) didn’t matter when he was actually the sitting President, why the hell should Trump’s? This is more a salutary lesson as to why Americans’ trust in the media is at an all-time low. Because, for so many, the storylines being pushed are utterly out of sync with what people feel matters.

If Trump wins, it certainly won’t be the same old world. In some ways it may well be worse. But it’s a risk I’ll take, because over the past 16 years since I moved out to Arizona, I certainly haven’t seen the country get better overall. The system as it stands isn’t working, and seems only to benefit the few at the top. Despite his undeniable and numerous flaws, Trump represents the best bet for the necessary radical overhaul of that system in a very long while; his opponent its insipid continuation. I suspect it won’t work out (though I think the margin will be less than predicted; people are keeping their Trump support quiet, after six months of relentlessly being told it makes you a racist hatemonger), but the mere fact someone so despised by the establishment can go into Election Day with even an outside shot, gives me hope for the future. #Sanders2020?

Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts,
Scottsdale, AZ
April 20, 2016

I don’t go to see plays. Which is kinda odd, given both my interest in other dramatic arts, such as film, and that back in my school days, I was a devoted member of the drama club, both writing and acting (the former was, truth be told, rather too informed by a devotion to the works of Douglas Adams, but since hardly anyone else was, I largely got away with it). However, that ended when I went to college, my storytelling and performing skills were used for D&D instead. In the 30-plus years since then, the number of plays (rather than musicals) I’ve attended can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand. But Chris got us tickets to see this for my birthday, not least because it was a touring production by the National Theatre of Scotland which was coming through Phoenix. Certainly, it was an intriguing premise, and had a nice gimmick – but would that translate into actual entertainment, or would I be reduced to surreptitiously checking my phone every 10 minutes?

Well, the latter turned out not to be an option, because inside the Virginia Piper Theater is a complete dead-zone: I’m filing that one away for a future horror script. But I needn’t have worried, as the evening turned out to be thoroughly entertaining. The plot concerned a lifelong devotee of folk music, specifically the Border ballads from the South of Scotland. After attending a conference in Kelso, she’s trapped there by a blizzard, and the B&B where she ends up spending the night, turns out to be run by a very special proprietor: the Devil himself. How she gets there, and her subsequent struggle to escape from the very specific hell in which she finds herself trapped, is the core of the story.

That’s the premise. As for the gimmick? The audience was on the stage, alongside the performers, with the set being the pub in which Prudencia’s adventures begin. the aim being to recreate a ceilidh night. So, rather than sitting in rows of chairs facing the state, we were all sitting at tables, with (be still, my British heart) complete strangers, the actors making their way in and around the spectators. I can’t say it was a faultless depiction of a Scottish pub, not least because the gastronomic choices included Brie with grapes, as well as strawberries & chocolate sauce. Most Celtic venues I’ve been too, the selection goes no further than whether your crisps should be salt & vinegar or cheese ‘n’ onion. But since this was Scottsdale – the most affluent part of Phoenix – some accommodations clearly had to be made for the natives. Would have been nice if the cast had come back out after the show to hang with the audience in the “pub” – I guess lines of demarcation must still be drawn.

This unusual approach wasn’t without its downside. Our seats were facing away from the great bulk of the action, which led to a great deal of twisting and neck-turning, especially when coupled with the actors’ movements through the “pub”. At the interval, they did re-arrange the seating into the round, for the shift of location to the B&B, and that was considerably more comfortable. Also, it took a while before I realized the vacuum-cleaner like wheezing coming from one direction was actually an audience member with a very loud respiratory ailment, not a sardonic comment from another player. [Is it wrong of me to think some people are unsuited for live art?] One unexpected bonus: free whisky, for the tour was sponsored by Benromach distillery, which is particularly cool, since that was the distillery on the outskirts of Forres at which my father worked in the eighties. They now apparently make something called “organic whisky”, which one imagines would have to be preferable to the inorganic kind. Sorry, chemistry joke slipped in there somehow. Won’t let it happen again.

It was certainly very interactive: we were instructed to spend the time before the show began by tearing up paper napkins, which provided the “snow” for the blizzard, and were chided mildly when the request for “desultory applause” was met somewhat too enthusiastically. The cast were often, literally, right in your face – or at one point, right in one poor spectator’s lap – and there can’t be many plays where the audience is ordered to chant, football style, “Wan Colin Syme! Thair’s only wan Colin Syme!” The relevance of this may have gone over the heads of the locals, since chants don’t typically play much part at sporting events here. I did notice that, in this script, hell overlooks a CostCo carpark, and suspect this was changed for the American audience – but from what? Somerfield? Waitrose? On the other hand, I was likely the only person present, who would have understood the “1977 Tartan Army” reference, likely untranslatable [“1980 Miracle on Ice” might be close]

The small cast was a bit of a mixed blessing. They certainly were a multi-talented bunch, all capable not only of acting, but singing and playing musical instruments too, with no small degree of competence (don’t you just hate the multi-talented?). While mostly folk music, it was made clear early on that this wasn’t the “finger in the ear” brand of folk, and was all the better for it – there was also a cover of I Kissed a Girl, and Kylie Minogue played a significant part in proceedings too. On the other hand, the many parts required were occasionally a step too much. For example, there was one point where what was supposed to be four drunken lassies, were actually being played by three men and one woman. I didn’t quite realize the intent at the time, figuring instead that in the 15 years since I left Scotland, Kelso had perhaps become some kind of hotbed of transvestite culture.

However, when it worked, it was remarkably effective and the lack of Hollywood-style special effects [our paper napkin “snow” being about the pinnacle] mattered not one iota. The concept of the Devil owning a B&B is a glorious one, and the two actors used to portray Lucifer both nailed their aspects of the character. Even as the play moves from philosophical musings and debate over the nature and purpose of border ballads, to slapstick comedy, and a grandstanding finale (shown in the picture above) where Satan and the hero struggle for Prudencia, it still managed to retain a consistent tone, treading the thin line between taking itself too seriously and not seriously enough, with great agility. I could perhaps have done without the interpretive dance, but there’s a raw intensity to “live” theatre that you don’t get in other media, and being up close and personal to the action here, intensified that aspect.

The Scot in me feels obliged to say that the tickets weren’t cheap in comparison to other forms of entertainment, and that is likely to limit future attendance. I’ll risk $10 on a movie, book or band that may or may not be good, but for $39 a head, I generally want a bit more certainty. In this case, however, I didn’t feel in the least short-changed: it was a genuine “experience,” not just a gimmick, and one which will be remembered for a long time.

 

I watched a lot of films last year. The final tally was 371 – I’ve no intention of even attempting to match that goal in 2016, and to make sure I’m not even tempted, January was largely spent falling behind, through a carefully staged process of slacking off and watching TV series instead.  Despite that volume, I think fewer qualify for this article, mostly due to age. Without a Phoenix FearCon this year (we still took submissions, but stockpiled them for the 2016 fest), I was certainly not up on contemporary indie horror, which provided the backbone of last year’s list. Did actually go to the cinema more often, though this was simply a reflection of more “big” films being out which felt that they justified the expense and the effort [both of which continue to weigh heavily in our decision].

Here’s the top 10. As usual, I have a fairly loose definition of “this year”, so if some of these actually appeared somewhere in 2014, I don’t care.

10. Bone Tomahawk. There have been a good number of “revisionist” Westerns of late, but this was the one that’ll stick in our mind – less for the Western aspects, than the sudden shift into Italian cannibal territory that occupies the final reel. That was not expected, and was all the more impactful for it. As noted above, we didn’t see as much horror this year as previously, yet there was one sequence here which was the match of anything in more traditional genre entries.

9. Sicario. Somewhat enhanced by the local interest of being largely set in “Arizona” [quotes used advisedly, since it was filmed in New Mexico], this made an interesting companion piece to Cartel Land, which we’ll get to shortly. If a little bit derailed by the suddewn shift in focus to Guillermo Del Toro’s character during the second half, this still contained tension in buckets, not least during an extended sequence depicting a masterfully constructed cross-border “extradition raid”.

8. Victoria. Yeah, sure. It’s a gimmick, shooting an entire film in a single, unbroken take. But actually having the guts, and no small degree of technical skill, to pull it off? This would likely be a fairly decent film, shot in a “normal” fashion, though the first quarter is rather sluggish. However, the more it goes on, the greater the impact, as you become trapped, right alongside the heroine, without any apparent way out. Not something we necessarily want every film to adapt, yet it works well in this case.

7. Lila & Eve. What feels like it might be a Lifetime TVM from the outside, actually delivers much greater depth. This is mostly thanks to the great performance of Viola Davis at its heart, as a woman who suffers unimaginable loss, and reacts by vowing to take out those responsible. In other hands, this could have been Death Wish Mom [which, actually, might have been fun]; instead, it’s rather more nuanced, and the fact the “twist” is obvious a mile off doesn’t harm the film significantly.

6. Cartel Land. I don’t really review documentaries, but this one packs an enormous wallop. It covers both sides of the US-Mexico frontier and the groups on each side trying to stop the criminal activity which drives much of the economy south of the border. Particularly chilling are the Mexican “vigilantes”, who start out with good intentions, to defend their communities from the predations of organized crime. Yet it doesn’t stay that way for long. Oscar-nominated, and for good reason.

5. Let Us Prey (above). As noted, we didn’t see as much true horror this year, but this was the best, and still thoroughly worthy of inclusion. Anchored in a pair of excellent performances from Liam Cunningham and Pollyanna McIntosh, it succeeds in being disconcerting from the opening sequence, and builds an escalating sense of tension and claustrophobia out what’s close to a single location. Despite my own lack of religion, I’m a big fan of religious horror, and this is among the best in recent year.

4. Mad Max: Fury Road. It was thirty years ago that Beyond Thunderdome came out; must be close to the biggest gap ever between franchise entries. But it was just like yesterday, George Miller bringing the same spectacular carnage to the screen. Sure, Tom Hardy was hardly Mel Gibson; fortunate, therefore, that this turned out to be more about Imperator Furiosa and her journey. The biggest bad-ass of the year, even though her count of functioning limbs failed to pass three.

3. Spy. The year’s biggest surprise: I’d always though of Melissa McCarthy as a one-joke actress. Yeah: she’s fat. So what? But this proved she can be a lot more, in an affectionate yet pointed riff on the “secret agent” film genre, with Jason Statham also deadpanning his way to stealing all his scenes. Need I say more than, underground poison-ingesting crime ring? I laughed, way more than expected, and also more than any other movie of 2015, and find myself genuinely anticipating the Ghostbusters reboot.

2. Spooks: The Greater Good. Sometimes, you can go back. That seems to be the moral here, as once again, Sir Harry Pearce and his crew take on the worst threats Britain can face. It’s just like 24! Only with more cups of tea! But you didn’t need to have seen the TV series (full disclaimer: one our favourites) to appreciate a rather less gung-ho and ambivalent approach to counter-terrorism. Appropriate, given its London setting, that there was an awful lot of grey, in both characters and storyline.

1. The Martian. Yeah, it’s another “hard” science fiction story, marking the third year in a row that one of those has topped our list. I think it’s just a genre that is a perfect match for cinema and feeds into my life-long fondness for space: I almost studied astronomy at university, and films like this make me wonder what path my life might have taken if I had. Yet, as ever, it doesn’t ignore the essential human aspect, with Matt Damon a smart and thoroughly sympathetic hero. If this doesn’t make you want to be an astronaut, you’ve got no soul!

Top 10s: 1998-2015

“Even a glance at the whole record will show, first, that person for person, American freethinkers and agnostics and atheists come out best.”

As anyone who knows me can attest, I am far from religious. The only times I have been in a church have been either for touristic reasons or some pre-scheduled event, such as a wedding (my own or someone else’s). I am no fan of religion, particularly the kind that causes its adherents to look down the noses at those of other beliefs or outside the faith, and especially when believers try to inflict their code on others. That said, I don’t have a particular problem with religion either. You want to believe in God (or god)? Go ahead. I’d rather judge people on actions, not ideas. If you do charitable works because the flying spaghetti monster told you, that’s certainly a lot better than not doing them at all. What you do counts. Why? Not so much.

And that’s where I part ways with devout atheist Hitchens, whose book here proves that smug superiority is, by no means, the exclusive realm of the devout. There were large chunks where the badgering and supercilious tone actually worked as a brilliant counter-point to his own argument. If this is what atheists are like, I found myself thinking, I sure as hell don’t want to be one. It’s a remarkably selective portrayal of “how religion poisons everything.” A better argument could be made that “humanity poisons everything,” since the 20th century, as religion’s importance has gradually been pushed back, has hardly resulting in a new golden era of peace and prosperity. If you look at the greatest villains in the past hundred years – Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot – they managed to wipe out millions apiece without the use of religion (whatever their personal beliefs may have been). Hitchens has to acknowledge this, and can only bleat about, for example, the Catholic church not being sufficiently opposed to Hitler.

Indeed, even when religion is invoked in conflicts, this is often more an excuse than a reason. The conflict in Northern Ireland, for example, while nominally between Protestants and Catholics, had very little to do with faith: it was more of a tribal conflict, with one group seeking to remain part of the United Kingdom, and the other wanting unity with the Irish Republic. And even that, when it wasn’t a turf war between opposing gangs of organized crime. Certainly, there are cases where religion has held back humanity’s progress, not least its steadfast reluctance to accept scientific advances, going back at least to Galileo. But blaming religion for “everything”, is like blaming baseball for all crimes carried out by someone wearing a cap. [Hitchens, I note, died of throat cancer likely caused by a lifetime smoking. God’s way, I suspect, of proving to him there are other poisons available beside faith]

Religion was – and, to some extent, still is – necessary, because of its provision of a moral glue, which helped hold society together. A belief in eternal damnation is a strong incentive that thou shalt not kill, which one tends to suspect is a good thing in general, regardless of the reason you may choose to lay off murder. Sometimes the laws supposedly laid down by the divine overlord are a product of the specific time and space in which they were created, and it’s certainly fair comment that religion’s inflexible nature causes problems. But its these religious laws which undeniably founded the basis of the modern judicial system, and again, the alternative of a world without this is not one in which Hitchens would want (or if my reaction is indicative, be allowed) to live

I’ve really got no idea to whom this book is aimed, because it’s not exactly an example of how to win friends and influence people. If you’re not already in Hitchens’ camp, you are a stupid poopy-head – I may be paraphrasing him somewhat. For anyone on the fence, as I am, the hectoring tone is incredibly off-putting, and when I had finished the book, I was left with a strong urge to seek out the nearest religious establishment and join up, just to piss the author off. That’s the result of self-congratulatory lines such as, “Perhaps you have read Anthony Powell’s tremendous twelve-volume novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time.” Of all the possible ways to incorporate a quote, could Hitchens possibly have chosen one more conceited than that?

That’s when he’s not flat-out making shit up, for example, claiming, “Nothing optional — from homosexuality to adultery — is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishment) have a repressed desire to participate.” Citation needed, as they say on Wikipedia. Or describing circumcision as the “mutilation of a powerless infant with the aim of ruining its future sex life”. I guess it’s not just the religious who are likely to engage in hysterical, fact-averse myth-making. For as someone circumcized [by thoroughly non-Jewish parents, entirely for health reasons], I can conclusively state my sex life was not, in any way, “ruined.”

The sad thing is, Hitchens does have some good points, particularly in regard to religion’s place in the modern world. I wouldn’t argue that it makes much less sense now, when we have, for example, a scientific explanation for thunder and lightning. As the quote below suggests, the book is on more solid and convincing ground here, than on tedious chapter after chapter of poring through old religious texts, looking for contradictions at which the author can yell “Ah-ha! Gotcha!” Such low hanging fruit seems particularly inappropriate for someone so outspokenly intellectual as to, perhaps, have read Anthony Powell’s tremendous twelve-volume novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time. It’s wholly unconvincing, and proves nothing more than that atheists can be every bit as annoyingly dogmatic as the preachers of established faiths.

“The study of literature and poetry, both for its own sake and the eternal ethical questions with which it deals, can now easily depose the scrutiny of sacred texts that have been found to be corrupt and confected. The pursuit of unfettered scientific inquiry, and the availability of new findings to masses of people by easy electronic means, will revolutionize our concepts of research and development.”