Why it Kicks Ass: Attic Clowns by Jeremy C. Shipp!

Clowns never really were
funny, weren't they?

Keeping in touch with my horror roots, I decided some time ago to rekindle my fondness of evil clowns. The original obsession with this type of monster had nothing to do with Stephen King's iconic translation of the theme; I just don't like clowns. I don't get them. Honestly, why would anyone think that children would like to see some guy in oversized dungarees with a parody of a human face... for a face! How can this be anything BUT horrifying to any kid? Therefore, in my view all clowns are evil, even the ones that cry.

So, coming back to my original point. Lately I've been seeing a lot about this writer who apparently ran off four (4!) volumes of clown horror stories. Not wanting to run the chance of encountering a 'too much of a good thing' sort of situation, I just ordered the first volume from RedRumHorror (again with the Stephen King, see?)

The book contains 13 stories (of course) of varying lengths, but all of them deal with clowns and/or attics, although the whole gamma of horror creatures makes an appearance (living soap men, for example). Now, here's the kicker: none of them actually deal with clowns in the traditional sense! AND THAT'S JUST WHAT'S SO GREAT ABOUT THEM!

At this point I'd like to remind you that the 'Why it Kicks Ass' section of Floating Robes is NOT a review section. I'd just like to explain why I think this book kicks the proverbial ass.

Having said that, none of the stories are actually horror, none will give you nightmares unless you're like me and have an inborn fear of going crazy. The clowns in the stories are often representations of fears, personas, complexes or other psychological phenomana in the mind of the protagonist. Jeremy C. Shipp created with this a map, if you will, of the dark side of the human mind! With evil clowns!

For example, take the story of the man stuck in the attic with a dead clown (called A Quivering Gray Fog). There's a hole in the floor which leads to Hell. And there are a bunch of photographs on the desk which depict the same photograph. Every night, our protagonist takes a photo of the photo. On the original we'll probably see why he's here and what is going on, but by now the photo of the photo of the photo is so far removed from the original that it's hard to figure out. Well, without giving away the plot, the solution involves an underling demon who feasts on human feet.

Without getting to pretentious (or maybe it's too late) the man obviously feels guilty about something and the dead body probably has something to do with it. He feels he's halfway down to Hell and furiously tries to find out what he did wrong and why he's there. The story eminates an array of loneliness, guilt and confusion with not only redemption at the end, but also an overwhelming sense of human foolishness.

As you can tell, the stories are mostly bizarre and weird and certainly not for people who like to hang on to horror in the traditional sense. There'll be a lot of people who 'just don't get it'. But to anyone with an interest in psychology (like all horror writers should have, I'm sure), the stories are just great!

Mr. Shipp's style is terse and almost without any adjectives which makes the stories even more tense and gloomy than they would be otherwise. An ironic sense of humour surrounds most of the stories although I never found myself laughing out loud. Reading the book puts the reader in a strange mood, though, and I found it hard to shake the type of thinking that this kind of writing instills in the reader. Even now, long after I've read the book, I still think about it, much like I do with some of the classics I used to read when I was younger. I guess that means that Mr. Shipp has created some sort of post-modern clown punk horror classic or something!

Okay, so now he's got me rambling about it. If you haven't read the book and are into some weird stuff, go buy it. If you like your vampires sparkling, please forego this one. If you've read the book and 'just didn't get it', re-read it and remember 'It's all in your head!'

Marcel

Mr. Shipp's Blog
To the Book!

WTF Movie of the Week: Attack the Block!

Intergalactic tooth-paste had some unforeseen drawbacks...

So, well, here we are... I'm going to come straight out and say it: I LIKED IT. I know it's not the most popular opinion (I'll explain why later), but I did. Usually I would now go on and give you an insightful overview of the development of the characters, the intellectual merits or the wonderful photography, BUT this movie has none of that. It doesn't seem to bother with all that jazz, or at the very least, it plays it down to the point it's easily ignored. And maybe that's for the best.

The story opens with a couple of hoodlums mugging a young nurse on her way home. These are not nice guys, the writers are telling us, and they're right. Now, if you think these hoodlums will, in the course of the movie, will experience some Joycean epiphany which will redeem them for the rest of their lives, it ain't going to happen.

Soon after the mugging they find a strange, hound-like creature, kill it, and take it with them to the block where they live. We soon learn that the group is into low-level dealing of marihuana and especially the leader, Moses (John Boyega), wants to work his way up in this sleazy world.
But pretty soon the block is under siege from strange, dark aliens with glowing teeth. All sounds pretty corny, eh?

What follows is an 80-minute slugfest in which the hoodlums try to defend their block of appartment buildings from the besieging aliens with mostly humourous results. We get to know a lot of the other tenants of this building and the associations they keep. Nick Frost and the rick kid hooked on pot, the screaming girls and the nurse they mugged earlier who somehow ended up in the same block. And although there is the obvious tension between them, they all have to work together to beat the aliens.

So, here goes. What most people would expect is that the hoodlums, faced with this horrible new enemy, will mend their wicked ways and lead productive lives from now on. But instead, they attack the aliens with the same arrogance and ferocity they do everything else. There is no message here and maybe that's just as well. It's just enjoyable fun with a slight throw-back to the 80's monster movies. The fact that the aliens are not visible except for horrific, glowing teeth, is a great move by the director. It is an hommage to movies from a time when monsters could not be made so realistic (Cat People, anyone?).

The big question that dawns on me as I read the bad reviews is why people would expect an epiphany or a message from a movie that is clearly made for entertainment purposes and not for it's Oscar potential. Because the heroes are not obvious heroes like we see nowadays? Because it deals with problem kids in a problem area of London? I found it more refreshing than disturbing, but that's just me.

The same goes for the comparison between this and Shaun of the Dead. Why would you compare the two? Because they're both English? Because both have Nick Frost in it? If you want more of the charismatic duo of Frost and Pegg please watch Hot Fuzz and Paul and be done with it. Both are excellent!

Leave Attack the Block for what it is, a wonderfully written action-sci/fi-horror movie with good performances and some funny bits.

Marcel

WTF Movie of the Week: Prometheus

To continue my journey into sci-fi/horror I decided to go and watch Prometheus with my darling wife and some friends. It was directed by Ridley Scott and supposed to be the 'spiritual prequel to Alien'. What could go wrong, one wonders. Well, Charlize Theron should've alerted me sooner, but I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt.

The movie opens mysteriously enough with some strange humanoid standing on the edge of a lake ingesting a pill. This was a bad idea, since the man promptly disintegrates. What is this pill, one wonders. Well, rest assured, you'll not find out in the coming toe-curling, teeth-grinding, hair-pulling hour-and-a-half.

The movie revolves around this group of astronauts going over to a planet where theoretically, supposedly, possibly, maybe there could be sentient life and the explanation of where humans came from. This is indicated by some prehistoric scribbles on the walls of caves found all over the world. Reason enough for an excentric businessman to spend $100.000.000.000 (and change) on a space mission. So we open on a scene where an android is preparing the crew for their awakening from hyperspace sleep. All goes well and the crew quickly gets the low-down on why they're there. Scepticism and macho behaviour abound, of course, but the crew goes on their merry way. But instead of finding the origins of human life, they find odd orbs which quickly turn out to harbor all kinds of very distasteful looking creatures. Suffice it to say, these creatures are not very welcoming of their new guests. For the team, all goes awry from that point on. Unfortunately, this is also where the story goes down the proverbial drain.

I cannot express enough the irritation this movie brought to me. A long time fan of Alien and Aliens (not the rest), this was as bad as a root canal by a myoptic dentist. The characters are totally taken from any horror-movie textbook (pregnant with a monster baby?), the plots twists itself in so many strange ways that the writers probably confused the hell out of themselves (Alien came from human DNA?) and the overall message the film seems to want to convey is: "Give it up! All is bad and horrible in the universe and we should all just curl up and die!"

Charlize Theron's character wakes first from the hyperspace sleep and is shaping up to be the next Ripley. Okay, fair enough. But then she has about three lines in the whole movie, has sex, freaks out when things go wrong and dies stupidly by being squashed under a spaceship. The real heroin (Noomi Rapace) of the movie is such a whiny, unstabile and miserable whench that I really could not believe that she was going to take on Alien. Speaking of which, he only shows up in the last 30 seconds when he's born in the typical stomach-churning style (pardon the pun). Guess they had to squeeze that one in...

Is there nothing right about the movie? Well, I got to say something for the effort made by Michael Fassbender who does a good job of delivering a believeable eerie android with a double agenda. He's a good actor in my book, but with what he has to work with in this mastodontic dud of a movie is beyond the powers of any actor.

The only thing that could possibly redeem this movie is a 3-hour director's cut that shows what Mr. Scott really wanted to achieve.

For now I'll dust off my old Aliens-collection and wash the bad taste from my mouth.
Go Ripley!

Marcel

WTF Movie of the Week: Pandorum

At the Elysium, shower privileges were hard to come by...

Okay, okay, so lately I've been emerging myself more into science fiction (I realized I hardly know anything about the genre) than horror, but don't hold that against me. It's how I came around to this wonderful pic by German director Christian Alvart. Never heard of him? Neither had I, but man...!

Starring Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster, this sci-fi is actually more of a horror in the spirit of Alien or Event Horizon and certainly no Star Trek. Two crew members wake up from their hyperspace sleep which has gone on way too long, leaving them with no recollection of their mission or who they are. Matters soon become worse when they can't access any of the other rooms on the ship except through a hatch in the wall. Ben Foster's character Bower decides to crawl down the narrow space to find out what's wrong with the ship. Pretty soon they find out they're not alone, and even worse, the others are not human. But they love the taste of humans.

The suspense of this, especially in the beginning is on a par with Alien. Tight, claustrofobic spaces, dark close-ups, panting and far-off screams are plentiful and even a body or two springing out of nowhere sets the tone for the rest of the movie.

This is not to say, though, that this leans on cheap scares alone. Not by a long shot. Right after the first act is over and the director is content that people are now on the edge of their seats, he makes sure that there is an actual plot we can sink our teeth in. Without giving away too much, suffice it to say that during their hyperspace sleep, the personnel on the bridge (the ones supposed to stay awake), underwent a horrible psychological disease called Pandorum which endangered the whole mission and put the crew in the mess they are in now. The whole storyline reminded me very much of old pirate movies dealing with cabin fever and exploring new and strange territory. Except this is space and not the Caribbean.

The acting is wonderful for a film like this. It could easily have slipped off into a shoot-when-it-moves action flick with Ben Foster's character emerging heroically with a smoking gun, a smoking cigar and cracking a few funny lines. But instead it focuses on team work and psychological drama to deal that final punch. Dennis Quaid delivers, of course. It's hard for him to really mess up a role. I don't think he ever did a bad role, although he starred in some pretty poor productions (Day after Tomorrow, anyone?). This one is no exception. His Lt. Payton is wonderful as he slides slowly down into insanity. There are plenty of 'better' actors who cannot pull off a deeply dark role like this one.

If you get a chance to see this hidden gem, please do so, especially if you like dark sci-fi without the shiny perfection of Star Trek. It's nitty, it's gritty, it's bloody and insane. I'm starting to develop a taste for movies like these...

I'll keep you posted.

Marcel

Why it Kicks Ass: The Vertical Ladder by William Sansom

Painting done by W. Kozak,
inspired by The Vertical Ladder
(William Sansom)

Welcome, welcome, welcome everybody, to a new section of the Floating Robes Blog! It's called Why it Kicks Ass and will be running alongside the WTF Movie-section, the Story Submissions and the other general hogwash I publish on here.

The inspiration to this wonderful new section and a general inspiration to me as a short story writer, is the great, but little known short story The Vertical Ladder by William Sansom.

Let me give you the low-down (some spoilers, beware):

There's this kid, called Flegg, who is with a couple of other kids around the ages 13-14. As kids do, they hang around an old abandoned factory (glassworks, in this case) with a huge tower. The group consists of some boys and two girls. The boys, as boys do, are daring each other to climb all the way to the top of the storage tower using the vertical ladder that is suspended from the side of the tower. Flegg, not the most eloquent or most boisterous of the group, is singled out as the victim. Not wanting to seem a wuss in front of the girls (as boys do) he grudgingly accepts the challenge.


Long story short, he climbs up the ladder, feeling ever more fearful that he will fall. At one point in the story, the other kids cannot even be heard, so far up he is. His heart pounding, his throat dry, he forces himself up rung by rung. And just when he thinks he can't climb any higher, he witnesses the other boys taking away the wooden ladder, leaving him three meters or so above the ground even if he does decide to climb down.


The other kids leave, arguing with the girls who thought this was an unnecesarily cruel deed. Flegg is trapped on the ladder and decides to climb to the top where he can rest his arms and wait for help. And then the real horror begins for as he finally reaches the top a nasty surprise is waiting for him.

I first came across this in the great Pan Books of Horror Stories (read them now!). And although nothing supernatural happens at any point in the story (no, there is no crazed psychopath waiting for him at the top), it evokes such feelings of dread and fear in the reader that it really classes as a horror story.

And this, my friends, is the sign of the great horror writer. Although, a long time fan of filthy monsters stalking mist-covered swamps, I immediately recognized the truth is Douglas Winter's quote: "Horror is not a genre, it's an emotion." Horror transcends mundane limitations to a 'genre' (it has to have a monster, it has to have faeries, it has to have ...). It can be found in sci-fi settings (Alien, Event Horizon), in fantasy settings (Solomon Kane, some Lovecraft-stories) or, in this case, in the everyday world.

To invent a horrific situation barring any and all supernatural carry-on and still being able to send shivers up and down a reader's spine is, in my book, a tremendous feat! Especially since the horror comes from such a normal situation. I, having been a boy myself at one time, immediately identified with Flegg as I'm sure the bulk of adult males will. This is what they're talking about when they say there are no definite borders between genres. This story could as easily been published in an anthology of general fiction as it did in the horror anthology I found it in.

It is simply, a great story on many levels.

Although not very well known among the general public, Sansom's carreer spanned over 30 years. Starting to write notes while working as London firefighter during the Second World War, he went on to write 15 novels, 9 short story collections, 7 non-fiction works and 2 children's books.  Besides the above-mentioned short story, his best known work is a supernatural horror story called 'A woman seldom found' which keeps appearing in anthologies to this date.

Got curious? Find the story here on Google Books. Or hop over to your local bookstore.

Marcel