Spooky Reads and Branded Shoes because I'm extra...

SPOOKY READS OF 2018 (so far)

For the past two years I have failed my reading goal for the year and this year I am determined to surpass it. I went with a reasonable 80 books, instead of the usual 100, and am so far ahead of schedule by three books!

I wanted to share with you some of the great horror books I've read so far this year. None of these are brand new or ground breaking, but I've thoroughly enjoyed them and wanted to share!

I've been reading a lot of horror short story collections because it's such a great way to find new horror authors that you might not have heard from. Also my library put together a short story section which has been really helpful in finding some great anthologies.

 

The Best Horror of the Year - Volume One

These are great collections that ran from 2009 until 2016 and were edited by Ellen Datlow. Datlow would choose the best stories from that current year and compile them into a pretty lengthy book. I started with Volume One and there's some incredible stories in this one! There weren't many that I didn't enjoy. Some of the standouts for me from the year 2009 were "Cargo" written by E. Michael Lewis which is about the plane that carried the dead bodies back from Jonestown. "When the Gentlemen Go By" written by Margaret Ronald was very Buffy the Vampire Slayer "Hush". "Beach Head" by Daniel LeMoal was like Breaking Bad meets HP Lovecraft.

Overall I loved this collection and have already picked up Volume Two to peruse this weekend!

We Eat Our Own - Kea Wilson

This was FASCINATING. It's like Wilson took every rumor ever made about Cannibal Holocaust and put it into a fucked up novel. There's various storylines that you follow including that of an unnamed actor who was given the lead in this movie with no script or concept, a bunch of rebellion teens doing gorilla warfare in the jungle, and the ambitious, rambunctious female co-star who is willing to do anything for the spotlight.

I will admit, parts of this book I found very boring, the gorilla warfare stuff especially, but that's a personal prerogative. I also found myself getting confused a lot with the different characters and the storylines jumping around. Every couple of chapters it cuts to a court scene in the future where the director is speaking for his crimes and at the beginning it's frustrating as you have no idea what's going on but as the novel progresses you look forward to those parts.

It's brutal, it's honest, and it's a must read for any fan of that low budget filming on the fly type horror.

Night Visions 8

Another short story collection, Night Visions ran from 1984 to 1991. #8 features three horror authors - Joe R. Lansdale, Stephen Gallagher, and John Farris with a wrap up done by Robert Mccammon. There was a lot more in here that I didn't enjoy over those I did. But that's the risk you play when there's only three authors included - if you don't like the style of one author, you're kind of out of luck. There are some INCREDIBLE illustrations in this book though.

My absolute favorite tale was "Incident on and off a Mountain Road" by Lansdale which started out like a slasher final girl situation and ended up with an incredible twist that you couldn't see coming. I would love to see this made into a movie.

I'll pick up some other Night Vision collections to take a peek through but to be honest, this wasn't a great pick for me.

Stalking Jack the Ripper - Kerri Maniscalco

I am a sucker for anything Jack the Ripper, and a sucker for YA novels. So I'm fully aware this book won't be for everyone. For me however, it was a lot of fun to read. The lead is Audrey Rose Wadsworth who is a Lord's daughter forced to wear fancy gowns and be presentable to society. But at night she works secretly in her Uncle's laboratory helping him with his forensic work and autopsies. As bodies of prostitutes come in, torn apart by Jack the Ripper, Audrey finds herself wrapped up in trying to solve the mystery. And the killer is closer to home than she realizes.

The story isn't ground breaking or anything but it was a really quick and fun read. Audrey can be quite annoying at times but also pretty realistic for a young girl in that day and age. The mystery of who Jack the Ripper really is could probably be solved a lot faster than someone smarter than me, but I was kept guessing until the very end. The book has really cool period piece photos in it too, some are pretty gory!

This is also a series, next up is Hunting Prince Dracula which I have picked up from the library, and following that is Escaping from Houdini which I am SO ONBOARD FOR.

Congo - Michael Crichton

Before you yell at me - I know Crichton is usually shelved under science fiction or general fiction, but his novels ALWAYS have some horror type elements in them. Congo was an incredibly fun read and while the majority of it would be more adventure fiction, there's also abandoned ruins in the middle of the jungle where something ominous is killing anyone who makes their way there.

Crichton is not for everyone - he gets very technical and scientific and I find myself skipping giant passages of technical speak only to find I haven't really missed anything. I find that with all his books though. But I'm a sucker for his stories and am slowly trying to read them all.

Congo has a gorilla that can speak through sign language, an intrepid group of scientists and biologists all with ulterior motives, a creepy, violent jungle and a group of rebels causing violence across the country.

It's a quick, delicious read that kept me turning pages as fast as possible until the end. There was also a movie made of it that I watched after and while it's very questionable and 90's, it was a super fun watch after finishing the book. Also Bruce Campbell and Tim Curry are in it!!

Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice

I read this when I was a teenager and remember loving all the angsty vampire love, gazing into each others eyes, pressing bodies up against the wall, heaving chests etc etc. And I adored the movie as well. Reading it as a 28 year old was a different experience.

This book draaaaaags on. It is very long winded and Louis uses allllll his words. But the scenery was so fun to absorb yourself into and the history of the vampires was great to delve into. Claudia....I don't know man, reading the relationships between Claudia, Louis and Lestat felt so wrong. Claudia's just this little girl and there's so much petting and brushing of hair and inappropriate snuggling. It made me a little uncomfortable.

But I'm glad I read it again, and I'm fully aware this was Anne Rice's first novel so of course there will be flaws. We can't all be Stephen King. I delved into The Vampire Lestat briefly to see what it would be like and I read about 50 pages and realized I already loved it a lot more. So I'm looking forward to reading that properly and going further into the series.
 

In other news - for an early birthday gift my parents surprised me with custom made branded shoes and I am LOSING IT. These are seriously incredible and now I can rep my site wherever I walk:

So that's it! For now!
Currently I'm reading the Blumhouse anthology which I'm enjoying a lot so I'll report back on that.

I've also been binge watching older horror films these last few days like Bodybags and Hatchet, so I'll be back with those soon!

Stay spooky!

(and as always, thank you for bearing with me as I sort out my shit and get this site back up and running)

The Haunting in Connecticut and the "true story" it's based on...

Re-visiting my favorites from when I was young is always interesting. I can't remember what age I was when I first watched The Haunting in Connecticut but I'm assuming it was the year it came out because me and Oprah would grab anything and everything off the horror new releases shelf at Blockbuster. So 2009....I would've been 19/20-ish. What a year....mainly because Blockbuster still existed. There would've been booze involved, there would've been cheetos, and it would've been watched at 11pm or later because that was when Oprah's Mom went to bed and we had free reign of the flat screen TV and the lazyboys.

I remember being terrified the first time I saw it, because I was young and drunk, and I remember also really enjoying it. I also remember thinking it was very similar to The Amityville Horror.

Last night I re-watched it because a few days ago I suddenly remember it existed. And my stomach was trying to murder me with acid like it normally does, so I needed a distraction.

Re-watching Haunting in Connecticut was actually super fun! And I even jumped in a few different scenes. Granted, that's because it has a lot of jump scares. Like A LOT. And not all of them work but some do and that's pretty great. There's also A LOT of plot holes. There was quite a few moments where I was taken out of the story because I was trying to wrap my mind around how something worked. And in the final scenes SPOILER ALERT when Matthew and Sara are hiding under a table while the room burns around them and all I can think is, why haven't they died from smoke inhalation yet? They've been in there for like 20 minutes just sobbing and coughing.

But I enjoyed it and it holds up. The performances are very strong, from Virginia Madsen especially and Elias Koteas who plays the priest. The effects haven't succumbed to CGI hell yet which was nice and honestly it really is just a creepy ass movie. There's lots of spooky images and I'll always remember when they find a box of eyelids, even if I don't always remember what movie it's from, and sometimes panic because I think it's my own memory.

What I wanted to talk about today, other than the actual movie, is the "based on a true story" aspect of it all. I've actually never looked into the "true story" behind this movie, and not surprisingly it is very loosely based and the original story is not as gruesome or as intense. Although, I'm still holding out hopes that one day I'll move into a house and discover my basement was actually a funeral home and then I get all crazy and try and kill everyone with an axe. I'll cross my fingers.

1986 - the world is much cooler as shown by TV nowadays, the reactor at Chernobyl exploded causing a nuclear disaster, Halley's comet swung by to say hi, Hands Across America accomplished nothing, and the Snedeker family moved into a white duplex rental home in Southington. It had originally been a funeral home and the family found a bunch of free mortuary stuff in their basement like a medical gurney and toe tags. Unfortunately, the family were not as stoked as I would be and soon started experiencing evil attacks and violent personality changes. Which is mostly just me when my medication stops working. Their oldest son was undergoing treatment for Hodgkin's disease and he seemed to suffer the worst of them all. 

Ed and Lorraine Warren were called, as they always were back in the day, they were very much like the ghostbusters, and officially claimed the house as possessed and capitalized on it much like they did with Amityville. But alas, remember that son who was suffering worst of all? Turns out he had a pesky drug habit and was schizophrenic. And not because of demons. 

The upstairs neighbor, because this was a duplex, lived a pretty chill life - seemingly untouched by the violent demons that clearly understood that bothering your upstairs neighbors is rude. So while there was maybe nothing sensational going on demon wise, the family still lived in a pretty creepy home complete with old mortuary tools.

And so in 2009, The Haunting in Connecticut was released, "based on a true story".

The original house

Overall I'd still give The Haunting in Connecticut a solid 7/10 - it can still scare, and its imagery hasn't ruined its spookiness over time. The performances are great, the house is super spooky, and while the family seemed to live in a house filled with dead bodies in the walls and not smell a single thing, it's a really fun ride.

What do you think of The Haunting in Connecticut? Do you have a funeral home in your basement? Can I live there? Let me know in the comments.

Drag me back from hell aka hey guys I'm back?

 Okay...so here's what happened...

Horror movies have been a massive part of my life since I was very young. They keep my anxiety at bay, they inspire me to be creative, they relax me, and I very much enjoy them. Last year started out great - lots of good stuff. Got a promotion at work which set me on path to start the career I've been wanting for years. I started making more money and was able to pull myself out of debt and take care of myself, my dogs, and Mitch.

But I also started writing more, writing about horror movies, horror news etc. You guys remember. It was all done on this blog. I was asked to write for two different horror movie sites which was an absolute dream come true for me. I was given screeners to watch and review. It was fucking incredible. Over the past almost 6 years of writing this blog, people always asked me why I kept writing it and reviewing and celebrating horror, what was the end goal? I always joked it was to get free horror movies. And that started happening.

October hit - I had surgery on my face, had some pretty horrific dental surgery, and work was getting insane. I released my new site out into the world after working on it for months. And I jumped into my 31 days of horror. Somewhere near the middle of October I broke. Mentally and physically. My illness got out of control, I was sick every day. Work was so incredibly busy and stressful and then I would come home and try to write 5 different articles, watch 3 horror movies, and scroll through the hundreds of new horror articles that had come out. I had multiple deadlines to reach and I needed to keep up - I HAD to keep up. Because this was what I'd always wanted. This was it. I was living my dream.

But in reality my dream was ultimately a second job that I didn't get paid for. And as my health deteriorated and I became more and more miserable, I had to take a step back.

I stopped everything. No more horror movies, no more reviews, no more articles, no more screeners. My website sat dying on the internet. And I felt like a complete failure when people asked me about what was going on. Because for months I had been that girl that could have it all and successfully pull it off. I don't fail a lot - and I don't mean that it in a cocky way - I mean that in an anxiety ridden way where I refuse to let myself fail. But I had failed.

Granted, my regular day job was going better than ever and I was doing better than I ever thought I would. But there was this bitter, dead part of me that resented my day job because it had taken away my horror movies. It was like I had a resentful sibling inside of me who was jealous that the other sibling got all the attention. And I had to think - what am I really going to do forever? I have to have income, money is a big drive for me professionally. While I do consider myself a creative person, I'm not the kind of person that can chase my creative dreams and get all "live your dreams and money will come second". 

Nah, I want money now. I want to live a good comfy life and retire without panic. Writing horror movie reviews will not get me that.

October was also the time that Hollywood exploded with sexual abuse. I watched as people I looked up to in the industry came out and told their own devastating stories of abuse and misogyny. It was too much. I had to take a step back. Why was I hoping to rise up in an industry like that? I felt the hate all the time for simply being a woman with an opinion in the horror world. And I wanted to do that full time?!

SO....why all of this now? Because I felt the need to explain why I disappeared out of the horror community seemingly over night. And the answer is because life is fucking tough. And it's tough dealing with an illness you don't fully understand and it's tough dealing with anxiety and it's tough dealing with giving up something you love, to ultimately feel better.

But after almost 5 months I have started to dip my toe back into the horror waters because honestly I fucking miss horror movies. And really it's not horror movies that broke me, it's everything around them. It's the need to be relevant, and for people to look at you like you know what's going on, that you're in the loop. To get likes and hits on social media, to have your reader count go up every week, to have people you respect in the community reach out and congratulate you on a well written review. BUT THAT STUFF DOESN'T MATTER!

Horror movies matter - because horror movies have always been there for me through thick and thin. Horror movies have broken my heart, made me laugh, made me cry, made me so scared I had to sleep with the lights on, made me almost throw up, made me scream, yell, call my best friend to yell at her to WATCH THIS RIGHT NOW HOLY FUCKKKK.

I watched Scream 2 and something just woke up in me - it was like coming home again. I was like...oh yeah...this is what it feels like to lose myself for an hour and a half and not stress about anything and just have a great fucking time. And I don't have to take notes and analyze it because it's Scream 2 and I've seen this movie 1000 times. And no one cares that I'm watching it except me.

So, I'm here to say I'm back. And it's not for you. It's for me. I won't be watching the latest horror movies and following the news so I can keep everyone updated and be "in the know". I'm going to fall back in love with horror movies again. And you can come along with me, or I can go it alone. But going forward this is my love letter to horror movies.

Just one woman, with a lot of mental problems and some serious food issues, and a lot of health problems, being myself, watching horror movies, and having a great fucking time.

Welcome back to horror bound...where I fucking love horror movies.