Odd Tales of Wonder #3 Is Here!!

Yes, it's true! The third issue of Odd Tales of Wonder is here, and it's the biggest and most exciting ever. If you haven't checked out the first and second issues, I definitely recommend it, so you can be caught up our serialization of Zachary Rouse's play Nestled in the Shade of the Jackalberry Tree, as well as my series of tales detailing the adventures of supernatural heroine Bloody Mary. Rounding out the volume are excellent tales from Chris Gielsing, Matthew Hoemke, and Jonathan Huisman, and an astonishing comic strip from reclusive artist Diseased Rat! If you like stories of murder, virtual reality, ghosts, and creepy towns, you can't afford to miss it. Check it out in print and on Kindle.

The Monogram Monograph: Part VI

Dr. Brewster, as the tall, strong man had called himself, didn't wait for Kessler to answer his question. He hurled Kessler backwards and through the pain of impact, Kessler heard the sound of breaking glass. He hated broken glass, and the thought of it in his back now was making him panic. It didn't help that now he sprawled directly next to the mutilated body of Dr. Dexter, which Dr. Brewster had evidently retrieved. Kessler was positive that Dexter had not been here when he had first awoken in the house. He was struck with an image of the massive Brewster hounding Dexter through the night like an animal.

So Kessler couldn't stop his voice from splitting as he called out: “Don't kill me! For the love of God!”

“I won't kill you quite yet. First I have to prepare you.”

Kessler blinked now, and Brewster's words became distant. Long ago, he had heard that Dr. Dexter had used his experiments to transform himself into an ape. But it seemed as though Brewster, who was identical to Dexter, was the true subject of the legend—though it was still clear that he was a twin to Dexter, Kessler now saw in better light his arms were stretched out long beyond his sleeves, and were covered with thick swampy hair. The thumbs were simplified but the fingers wider and stronger. And what seemed to be a weird or grown-out hair was actually swatches of fur beginning to overtake his face.

Kessler couldn't speak, a too-often occurrence. He couldn't fight back as Brewster picked up and slung him over his shoulder, carrying him with little regard to the blockage in his way. At once, they were in Dexter's sanctum, or rather, what was a clear counterpart of it. There had been much in the space Kessler had only just visited, but he would have noticed if a man-sized steel cage had been among them. He was impressed that with his hands warped as they were, Brewster could still operate the key that locked him inside.

“I need you to tell me,” Dr. Brewster said, in an oddly gentle voice, “why all the people of this world disappeared when you arrived.”

Kessler still couldn't talk. He wanted to, but he was terrified. He knew he would screw up what he needed to say when he spoke, and Brewster would then kill him.

“I should have suspected, after making my findings, that there would someone out there like me, with my talents, who would cross the threshold with a Gateway,” Brewster mused. “The Divide couldn't last forever. The Walls had to come down; the sleepers had to awake. But now that they have...what terror have they wrought?”

Kessler's mind conjured up the notion that Brewster's slow transformation into a simian form was an agonizing process. His bone structure was shifting, his muscles and skin distorting—plus the mental effects, if there were any. The voice was human, but only just. It strained. Everything about him was straining.

But he was in control for now. “Forgive me. If you don't know why you have devastated my world, I will determine it for myself, after I extract your spinal fluid as to ease my transformation.” He looked around, as if expecting to find something in a familiar place. “Embarrassingly, however, I seem to have mislaid the tool that allows me to do this. Do not worry—I'll be back, and the act will be quick. Lethal, of course, but quick.”

“How does one extract spinal fluid, exactly?” Now Kessler was able to talk. And he had said the exactly wrong thing.

But Brewster was assuredly amused. “With a long needle, of course,” he said, with a slight grin.

Then he left, and for the first time Kessler realized how cold it was on this world.

“On this world.” Ridiculous. He was still on Earth. Another planet couldn't sustain life, nor could it imitate his memories of Earth so perfectly. Unless it wasn't a planet, the conclusion of a scientific analysis—maybe it was another plane of existence, like that which was said to house ghosts. Dreams, too, were sometimes said to take place in a separate realm.

He couldn't even tell if this was a dream anymore, even though he knew that that was often the commonly the case with dreams. Maybe if he tried to analyze the situation at hand through dream-logic, he could discern what was happening. Months of reviewing his dreams with Dr. Dran had given him good skill at interpreting dream-symbols. Even if they hadn't figured out what the Monogram was.

Assuming that Brewster was his dream, then. Men and apes had an interesting relationship in the popular mind—even if humans didn't descend directly from what most people would call “gorillas,” there was still the belief as circulated by folks who didn't like the idea of evolution that that was what the theory said. So maybe deep down he was afraid of regressing into some sort of atavism—a thing turned backwards on evolution. That could mean he was afraid of losing skills, like being able to manage his life. Well, he'd lacked those skills since childhood, so that was an obvious enough fear. Perhaps the fear was racial, too. He was loath to consider it but there were many people who referred to non-whites as “apes”—perhaps this was his mind's way of manifesting that way of thinking. A fear of evolution by way of the so-called scientific racism. He thought back to the Black Dragon Society from his dream where he was known as Colomb: a group of insidious Asians right out of those foully bigoted Sax Rohmer booklets. That hardly painted a comfortable picture of his psyche to himself.

Uncomfortably scraping to away from these thoughts, he thought also of Jekyll and his brutish, simian Hyde. Hyde was sometimes said to be Jekyll's evolutionary or racial fears, too, in the mind of the 19^th Century person. He was also said to represent Hyde's fear of “libertine thinking” or homosexuality. Kessler was pretty sure that he was attracted to women. And he knew despite what a lot of the people he read about or talked to said, there were such things as bisexuals. Somehow that did not fill him with as much dread or guilt as his thoughts about race. He had to admit that he knew few non-white people...⁷

Gaining a little strength, he strained against the bars and shook them hard. No, this was meant to contain the sort of creature that Brewster was apparently becoming. There was no way out without the key, and the key was most certainly not within reaching distance. For many long minutes, perhaps hours, Kessler waited.

Eventually, however, Brewster returned. Kessler squeezed his eyes tight when he heard the footsteps. The doctor made no noise as he worked at the cage, evidently having his long syringe close at hand. He heard the cage door yawn open, but the expected hand seizing him did not come. Several long moments passed, and the cage door hung open wide with nothing outside.

Kessler opened his eyes. No, it wasn't nothing outside. The man who'd unlocked the cage was still standing there. It was Mr. Marvel.

Once more, Kessler found himself unable to ask, “What are you doing here?” It came out as: “Who are you?”

Marvel was grinning. He had likely grinned when he had walked in the room, and when he'd unlocked the cage, too, even though it was the dead of the night in a madman's house. He leaned close to Kessler's face.

“I'm the author of this story. Screwy idea, wasn't it?”

Kessler looked over Marvel's shoulder. Behind him was freedom. He took his chances with freedom rather than with the lunatic.

He was out in the night once again, and Marvel was only a faraway memory. There was no Virginia leading him into the night, but there was a desire to end this madness. He was soberer this time when he reached the city, but that sobriety only drove home how direly empty the streets still were. Nonetheless, he wanted to go home, even if it wasn't his home but a pale facsimile duplicated on another world.

He came into the apartment quickly, and by the time they laid eyes on each other, it was too late for either to react properly. The furniture arrangement of this apartment was different here even if it was the same room; a table caught his ankle and threw him down onto the couch. The man who staggered away with surprise was the murderous Dr. Melcher.

<< Part V                                                                                                                             Part VII >>

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7. Mr. Kessler's examination of the various ways in which ape symbols are interpreted in dream-psychology are notably astute (albeit unfocused) for someone of his apparent educational level. Indeed, it is clear that he absorbed much while working with Dr. Dran.

At the Institute, as I said, a trinity made of Dr. Dran, Vivian, and myself often got into adventures of some variety. A man very similar to Mr. Kessler in a lot of ways whom we all mutually befriended was Dr. George Zabor. He was originally a member of that comedy club that Oliver and Vivian insisted on attending led by Professor Ritz. Ritz and Zabor worked together to make fun of amateur films they had collected or created over the years, utilizing the Institute's theater on a regular basis to this end. I came to one meeting and found the way that the audience was overwhelmed by the feeblest of jokes to be an embarrassment, especially as it caused Vivian and Oliver to cringe into one another as their bodies rocked from joviality.

Zabor—I never felt comfortable calling him George—was also working on this second doctorate in veterinary medicine. For all the disciplines that were linked and created at Old Spooky I never understood trying to weld film studies and veterinarian work. Zabor, however, evidently stumbled upon some discovery while tinkering on the imaginal energies that come with any sort of multi-dimensional experimentation on media. These energies are unpredictable but we never suspected that they would bestow upon him the same sort of transformation that Kessler's figment-fictional “Brewster” apparently endured. That is to say that he became a gorilla.

Vivian and I were the first to learn of it. We were leaving the library late one night with a romantic full-moon over us, her hand holding the outer edge of mine as we walked back to the dormitories. Vivian squinted as she looked across the spring lawn. “Is that a gorilla wearing Dr. Zabor's class tie?” she asked.

I, in turn, strained my eyes. There was indeed a simian figure galloping towards us, with the only thing between he and us being a strolling figure who I recognized as a robotics professor that Oliver had last semester named Von Housen. A bit weak in the head, according to Oliver. All the same, not someone whom one would wish death or horror upon. Poor Zabor—in that moment, he lost his position with the Institute, and I doubt he ever worked in an academic setting again. He and his rotten club were disbanded even with Professor Ritz. Professor Von Housen, however, lost his life. The ape wearing Zabor's tie seized Von Housen and snapped his neck. We would only learn later that Von Housen had slighted Zabor on some essay or another a few years prior. Poor Zabor had a whole list of staff whom he wanted to annihilate for some reason or another. It had been no lab accident that had changed him into what became that day.

The list was never fully published, however, so I have no idea why Zabor tried to kill Vivian. She was, after all, my girlfriend, and the lonely Zabor viewed me as a true friend, for all that meant. When she saw that he quickened his pace in his charge for her, she screamed, and we began to sprint to the nearest building, the cafeteria.

Here, Oliver worked as a janitor—or janitorial supervisor, more properly—to pay his tuition. He was surprised to see us come in this late even though he was fond of leaving the doors unlocked for us to sneak in and see him. I released my grip on Vivian to let her cry on the shoulder of Oliver, who cradled her in a brotherly fashion as I desperately explained what was going on. Oliver was evidently closer to Zabor than the two of us and was able to confirm that something involving gorillas and turning people into them. As he spoke this, the emptiness of the mess hall clattered as the beast tore open the aging wooden doors. It was a large space, enough for us to hide in, but there was also no one to help us...and an escape attempt could attract Zabor's attention.

We decided to duck behind one of the far counters in the back of the kitchen. We heard the heavy weight of Zabor's body as he first searched the obvious hiding spots, climbing between the different floors and knocking over tables. Vivian was still pulled close to Oliver. “Are any of your boys still around?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Closing was done. I was just doing the last manager tasks for the close.”

At this, Vivian pulled closer to him. Above me, I heard Zabor pause his steps, only to let out a loud and horrible yell. I lost some of my nerve in that yell, and I began trembling, wishing weirdly for some to pull me close and take away my fear. It was strange because the love of my life was right there beside me. As Zabor came back down—apparently having remembered the existence of the cafeteria's kitchen—I reached out to Vivian, to touch her shoulder. I had no issue with she and Oliver being personal with one another, and this was the first time I tried to break their contact.

When I touched her shoulder she pulled away.

It's odd to write that. Sure she didn't, and I'm misrememberi

In any case, it was not long before we were cornered by Zabor. We tried to hold our breath but to no avail. Gorillas are creatures of the forest, and they can hear heartbeats if they try. His panting form had nearly dragged itself to our counter when we heard another set of slow, heavy footprints. The pace of these steps quickened, and with a single gesture implied only by shadow and a loud thwacking sound, Zabor dropped to the ground, unconscious. We all nearly fainted, and laughed with relief.

Our savior was one of Professor Von Housen's robots. He had programmed the ones he had successfully completed to identify his killer, were he ever to be murdered, and track them down to lay revenge on them. The awkwardly-standing boxy metal thing seemed to have pride on its crude face of dials and welded-on bits of angled steel; even though the one who had brought it into this world was on the campus lawn, with his neck broken.

Zabor, as I implied previously, was discharged from the Institute after his treatment was reversed (it took four Dean-Clerics from the College of Imaginal Studies to counteract Zabor's treatment from his notes, which I was able to assist with). Vivian was traumatized by the experience, and I was unable to visit her during her stay in the infirmary due to my upcoming finals. During that time, Oliver must have been busy too, for I saw little of him.

The Unknown (1927), by Tod Browning

Much like Noah, The Unknown is a well-received film made for a decent amount of money that appears to have been successful at the box office, made by an established director and featuring famous and beloved actors. And like Noah, The Unknown has made it onto this site because its premise and presentation are too strange for me to exclude it. As I've said before, I'm glad to know that this stuff has always existed. That it was sometimes the big institutions that manufactured it fascinates me. If you like movies, you should know their history, including the weird bits. And The Unknown, starting with and extending far beyond its non sequitur of a title, is one of the strangest films of the silent period, hands down.

We've kind of talked about silent films before: Sins of the Fleshapoids basically functions as one, even emulating the particular acting style required for the silent medium. But this is one of the original silent films, from before it could have sound, and we're in luck, because it stars Lon Chaney! The original Lon Chaney, that is--the Phantom of the Opera, rather than The Wolf Man. While Lon Chaney Jr. had a...wide mix of performances throughout his occasionally depressing career, Lon Chaney Sr. was almost equally depressing, but for the opposite reasons. Simply put, Chaney the elder had more talent than any of us will ever be blessed with. From what I understand, if a skill was required of his character for a movie, he would learn it without messing up the film's schedule. In the 1923 Hunchback of Notre Dame he crawled along an insanely tall wall with hundreds of pounds of prosthetics on his back; for The Unholy Three in 1925 (and its 1930 remake) he taught himself ventriloquism; and for almost all of his movies, he did his own makeup in ways that combined stunning simplicity with shocking effect. Really, if you look at what he did for his trademark Phantom of the Opera appearance, you can see that he predicted how it would look on camera and then let the camera do a lot of the work. He pinned his nose back (some saying he also pinned his eyelids open), painted dark circles around his eyes and nostrils, put in some false teeth and messed up his lips with a dark color, emphasized his wrinkles, and found an appropriate wig. That sounds like a lot, but I've seen people convincingly imitate it, and I could do a lot of the raw makeup work with what I've got in my purse. Of course, that's where the acting comes in, and Chaney thrived in the silent era because, just as he knew how to maximize makeup effects with the lighting of the camera, he knew how to convey emotions completely without audible dialogue. Silent acting always looks really hammy at first, but when you recognize that the only thing you'll be hearing is a classical score, these sorts of ultra-physical performances really help you hear the dialogue in your mind. If you want to see this at its best, there's a scene in The Unknown to look forward to. You'll know it when you see it.

About that weird plot I promised, then. Well, Lon Chaney plays circus performer Alonzo the Armless, who predictably lacks arms, and does tricks based around that. With the exception of throwing knives with his feet, all the feet-for-hands tricks are ones that Chaney actually picked up for the movie. Alonzo is in love with the circus owner's daughter Nanon, and as such is jealous of the seemingly-brutish Malabar, the strongman, who alternatively abuses and loves Nanon--there's a special emphasis put on how he's jealous of his "strength" (I'm sure that doesn't have a second meaning to it or anything, especially because...well, I'll get to it). Nanon has spent her life being groped by men like Malabar, and as such is repelled by the sight of men's hands. Because Alonzo doesn't have arms, she lets herself get close to him. Except...Alonzo does have arms, and hands at the ends of 'em. What's more, he has this weird double-thumb on one hand that can identify him to the police, which is of serious concern because in addition to being a circus performer, Alonzo really likes killing people! Not like he does a great job of hiding it. First he has this weird Emperor Palpatine moment where he straight up tells Nanon that people with arms are evil and she should absolutely hate them. Then, he kills her father, and while she sees him do it, she doesn't see his face, just his double-thumb. Because of his meddling she begins to fall in love with him, but his little person assistance Cojo points out that if he ever gets nekkid around her (as we assume he intends), she'll not only see that he has arms and hands, but that he is the mutant killer of her father. But he also points out that he has forgotten he has arms, even when they're not pinned to his body with a straightjacket. Too late does Cojo realize what he's suggested to Alonzo, and suddenly it seems as though Alonzo's lust for Nanon exceeds even his desire to continue having arms. One blackmail letter to an illicit surgeon later, and soon Alonzo's title of the Armless is finally cemented. Of course, during this time, Nanon has found true love with Malabar, who finally understands her hand-based trauma and becomes a changed man for her. When Alonzo returns, it leads to some of the most stinging dialogue set to film, when Nanon says:

"I'm so glad you're back, Alonzo--now we can be married!"

See, previously, we saw that Nanon wanted to wait till Alonzo was back before she could marry Malabar. You know shit has truly hit the fan when Nanon adds, "Remember how I used to be afraid of his hands? I love them now!" As those hands run all over her body...and as she virtually makes out with them. I don't want to spoil this moment for you: it's the best in the film, and honestly one of the best in film history. And it doesn't let up from there--every remaining second to the end is just as entertaining as what came before. This is a wonderful 50 minutes, a virtual dream come true...

I don't know what to say aside from "read that premise again." This is about a serial killer who becomes so obsessed with a woman that he literally chops off his own arms. Take that, van Gogh! Not only can people pronounce Alonzo's name correctly, but Alonzo didn't do something weak like just taking off an ear. Sure, Alonzo didn't exactly present his severed arms to Nanon, but what if though. That is honestly the only way this movie could get better. Too often do studio films with weird concepts have tendencies fall on their faces in ways that are completely non-entertaining, but The Unknown was made during the silent era, which was a Wild West of a time. Before the Hays Code stepped in and forced us to swallow neutered crap like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, we got some truly bizarre and disturbing shit. Remember, exploitation cinema got its start as early as 1919, with movies like Wild Oats, which shows closeups of venereal disease, and the birth reel subgenre, which offered a personal look at the act of childbirth. When the unfettered limits of silent cinema was put in the hands of a studio and given a plot, miracles could happen--sick, bizarre miracles. The Unknown is one such miracle.

I have nothing else to add aside from the hope that I find other silent films with the same power as this one. If I do, I'm sure I'll talk about them on here at some point. I've heard that another Browning production, 1928's West of Zanzibar, features Lon Chaney in the role of a killer who doesn't have functioning legs! My bar is high now. As for you--if you can't fit this movie into 50 minutes of your day, I have no words for you. The Unknown is full of magic and surprises.

The Monogram Monograph: Part V

Emil Nardo was not real.

At least, as far as Karl Kessler was concerned, he was not supposed to be real. Like war or nuclear bombs, however, much which was not supposed to be real ended up real nonetheless. Even in the context in which he was a part of reality, however, Nardo was only a disguise, an “alter ego” for the insidious Dr. Melcher. Presumably the figure Kessler saw in the corridor was the disguise, and he was genuinely in the presence of Dr. Melcher, his alternate dream-self who was probably linked to his dreams of killing people. As he contemplated too often, Emil Nardo was ostensibly a former stage magician who turned to crime and Nazi allegiance when he fell on hard times. In two of Kessler's dreams, which his waking mind called Spooks Run Wild and Ghosts on the Loose, Nardo was aided on occasion by the man who accompanied him, his dwarf assistant Luigi.

Because Kessler was Melcher and Melcher was Nardo, Kessler remembered what it had been like to cut a throat, or crush one between his fingers; Melcher did that just as Nardo did. Every time he saw his Virginia's face, then, they would try to force their essence into his mind on the other side of waking, convincing him that he was they or they were he. They would put energy into his wrists, a hateful energy.

Karl sat on the front steps of the apartment building which ordinarily housed the New York office of Dr. Oliver Dran, his now-former therapist. He wanted to run, but the several-mile-hike he had just made into the depths of the city had now caught up with him. He was sure that Nardo and Luigi hadn't taken notice of him. But he still felt like screaming.

New York City was completely empty. No man, woman, child, or beast roamed its streets. Save for the murderer and his accomplice, Kessler was alone. It seemed Virginia, his wife, was once more just a phantom. And yet he couldn't help but feel that this world was a phantom, a once-sturdy ship now drifting without anchor. But he had to stop and let out a humored sigh. Maybe it was the memory of the fact that these steps, or a version of them, had once been a symbol of security to him, even if he honestly didn't care for Dr. Dran that much. He was using too many metaphors, being too poetic. Overdramatic ravings and madness didn't go well together—just ask Poe. Metaphors and hyperbole cut a person off from reality, and if he was going to get away from what was now clearly and certainly a dream—albeit one altered as to be given added dimension and depth—he would need to calm down. That meant taking his mind off Virginia. He loved her in a poetic sense, or what he thought was one as per streams of radio and TV shows, and movies, that he took in. He had to admit that even though love was something that stepped beyond the hormonal rush of crushes and dates, he didn't entirely have a real concept of love.⁶ He didn't really have a concept of much of anything. He could attend to his errands and go to work, of course, but other than that, he still limited himself in his walks out compared to most normal people.

It was good staying indoors, though, when he was feeling weak, and now the street was just as good with its lack of people. As time passed he found himself caring less and less about Nardo, believing that it had to have just been a hallucination—a culmination and climax to all the stuff he'd been through. Probably.

He considered heading home, but he couldn't shake the alarm of seeing the streets empty. Breaking that aspect of this vast dream would require a more complicated psychiatric mechanism, he figured. Presumably that was what “the Gateway” had been: his mind's warning of his crossing, which he would need to return to if he was going to come back to what he left behind.

He was cotton-mouthed as he made the labored journey back to Dexter's house. The road that led from Dran's apartment to his own tugged at him, but something told him not to go home yet. There, in what was supposed to be his inner sanctum, would probably be the nest of the worst part of this other-world, which seemed to shimmer around him like faerie-magic. He had heard stories once that Death Himself was said to be a faerie, and that was merely one of the reasons why the Folk were to be feared. In this story, Death's incarnation was referred to as “Kurq'wes.”

His mind was drifting now, back to “poetic” things. The things that would distract him from getting better. His knees hurt, and so did his lungs, but soon he was back at the Dexter estate.

He had no energy left for fear when the place he left behind yawned up before him. The doors were still punched out: a consistency in a dream, he knew, meant that there was significance to that which was consistent. The junk, also, was still there. Maybe this was a reference to his mind being cluttered. That left disturbing implications, though, if the house was his mind: it meant that something from the outside had forced its way into his mind. That was something to ponder...

No time for pondering.

Time for throwing up.

He stumbled over backwards—absentmindedly, he had recorded that something was lying in the junk now. It wasn't something: it was someone. It was Dr. Dexter, and something had torn his throat out.

Blood was still fresh. Had to get up. Get up and get out of—

He hadn't had any luck with Nardo, so it stood to reason he'd get none here. Towering over him at once was a large shape that once more had that gleam of familiarity to it. For a second, Karl was sure his brain was stumbling, reporting things incorrectly. The figure standing over him looked to be identical to Dr. Dexter.

And yet he was so similar to Karl himself—

It didn't matter. With a quick motion, Dexter's presumed killer pulled Kessler up by the neck like a dog. “My name is Dr. James Brewster. What are you doing in my home?”

<< Part IV                                                                                                                            Part VI >>

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6. I read a good deal of psychiatric papers written on the subject of love during my time at Suki Institute. A surprising number of them were written by Oliver Dran.

That may seem like a euphemistic introduction into the tale of how I was seduced by Dran, but I assure you that he and I had no such relations, despite the possibility for such in the hallowed halls of Suki. Oliver joined our clique after his humility for the aforementioned incident. As he relaxed he began to focus on more practical work, though the Institute certainly did not require it of him at the time. The hormonal mechanisms for love are well-known and his elaborations on those studies was minute, but showed potential. Oliver was often the “third wheel” as it were when Vivian and I would go out together. He never seemed to mind and we were not tremendously affectionate in the open in any case. We would share ideas but Vivian—and the few others who accompanied us, like Anderson or some such other Delta Iota dropout—would always insist on changing the subject to something more bland or useless. I think I determined then how true of a companion Vivian was, because she was always the one to vent to when a perfectly reasonable conversation was thrown out the window for something frivolous, even though, as I've said, she often caused the pitching to happen herself. In any case, the awkward social situation the Institute instilled in us would have been unbearable if it wasn't for her.

I keep saying this, it seems, but I should stop for tonight.

Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966), by Hal P. Warren

Sometime soon I want to do a feature where I review movies that I think are actual contenders for the worst ever made. Previously I was under the impression that the list wasn't long enough for it to justify its own column. I see now I was wrong.

Manos: The Hands of Fate is pretty good, though. I say that as if it isn't the movie I've watched more than any other. Even more than Don't Go in the Woods! I have seen Manos...forty times? Fifty? Does it matter? The only other movies I've watched more are probably some old Winnie the Pooh episodes or Yellow Submarine or the 1966 Batman movie or the various things I forced my parents to rewind countless times when I was a kid. Manos has a special place in my heart, as the quintessential "bad" movie--thanks as always, MST3K. I even had a chance to see it on the big screen, after a fashion--thanks as always, RiffTrax! Manos has entered trash's closest thing to a mainstream canon alongside Troll 2 and Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 and Birdemic and all the rest. The only reason why I've hesitated on reviewing it so far is because I wanted to wait till I could get the HD remastered version, which, ironically, I can't get screencaps from because my computer is as cheap as Manos itself was. You can read about the backstory of this so-called "worst film ever made" on your own time--its birth from a bet with Stirling Silliphant, its director's humble origins as a manure salesman, its collapse into thirty-year obscurity after a disastrous one-night showing in El Paso. A Wikipedia or TV Tropes page could sate your thirst for knowledge. Done? Okay! Let's begin our road trip to the place called the Lodge of Sins...

A man named Mike (played by director Hal Warren), with his wife Margaret, daughter Debbie, and dog Peppy, are on a trip to the vacation locale called Valley Lodge. They get lost after a long driving sequence and one of several jarring narrative detours into the exploits of some cops who continually chase a pair of necking "teenagers." They eventually find a mysterious house where an incredibly strange twitchy man named Torgo lives. Torgo warns them that "the Master" wouldn't approve of their presence, nor of their suggestion to spend the night when it becomes clear that they won't find Valley Lodge before nightfall. All the same he relents when Mike keeps pushing the issue, escorting them into the house, where they are greeted by a portrait of the Master himself, a mustachioed man wearing black robes with red hands on them. He is accompanied by a devilish-looking dog, and worsening things is the fact that Torgo insists the Master is "not dead the way you know it." It isn't long before the Master's dog brings about the death of Peppy, and the family finds the Master's outdoor tomb, where the Master lies not dead but dreaming with his six thin-gowned wives. Torgo begins to desire Margaret for his own, despite the Master feeling she'd fit in better as his seventh wife. When the Master awakens, he invokes Manos, "God of Primal Darkness," to wake up his wives also. When his wives do end their slumber, they begin fighting over whether or not they should spare Debbie, because while she is a child she will one day grow up to be a woman, and "Manos love women" (despite the fact that his cult is headed by a man). All of this culminates in the bizarre massage-torture of Torgo, who gets his hand burned off, and an archetypical downer ending.

For twenty years, the grungy print of Manos that showed up on MST3K was the definitive version, and let me tell you, there is a massive difference between the two editions. The first and simplest matter is that of tone. Manos: The Original looks like a snuff film. Manos: The Remaster is a bright, sunny, floral masterpiece, with people sporting entirely different hair colors, clothes, and facial blemishes from what they had before. I was hoping that this general brightening would help reveal a lot more about the world we're seeing, and it most assuredly does. While it can't make the movie good--Manos will eternally be too awkward for that--it's interesting to see how these improvements can change your perception of Warren's vision.

First of all, there's the matter of Torgo's appearance. Torgo is defined by his beaten-up fedora, his greasy beard, his gray coats, and his enormous knees. Some sources say that his shoes had cloven grooves in them to make them look like hooves, because he was supposed to be a satyr (which is why he has his trademark oversized knees). Other people have speculated to me that his clothes are supposed to look like a Confederate uniform, and Torgo has been forced to serve the Master for over a hundred years. Well, nix to both of those. Torgo is not a satyr even if he was intended to be one. His shoes don't look like hooves and they never did. Similarly, his "Confederate uniform" is a lot cheaper and weirder than that. He's actually wearing some sort of auto garage jumpsuit--you can even see the white label under his shirt pocket which may or may not read "Jiffy Lube"--and the coat draped around this is just an old oversized sport coat left over from a garage sale. So...Torgo's a grease monkey who borrowed his dad's clothes for prom, then? Torgo is easily the most interesting part of the movie, but now his role and our sense of how Warren came up with the idea for him is made even odder. Which is saying something.

Torgo is made simultaneously more and less repulsive. Fans of the MST3K version will know that Torgo is one of the show's top tier uglies, but in some of the early shots of him, you can clearly see that John Reynolds, his actor, was not a bad looking guy. He has nice eyes and his beard is remarkably well-groomed (for Torgo, or what we expect of Torgo). Sometimes it can be seen that they did put dirt or some light makeup on his face to make him look grungier but it's inconsistent. We also get a glimpse of that room which I assume is supposed to be his living quarters, and we can see that he keeps a number of suspicious items there. One of the wives' gowns is hanging on the wall, probably off the real article, and the table he sleeps next to seems to have both a bottle of beer and some porno mags on it (we can't see the covers, and it probably really isn't porn, but what sort of magazines do you think Torgo keeps?). But most importantly, we can now see that the man literally sleeps in dirt. Seriously, there are trails on the floor from where they carried it in. Torgo's bed is an actual pile of dirt. That is amazing.

People like to harp on the "Lodge of Sins" itself. It does look like a real shithole in the original version, but here, it's actually pretty clean! Since most of the idols and fetishes dedicated to Manos are basically just pop art sculptures of hands, and the painting of the Master isn't that bad, this would be a pretty chill place to hang out. The couch looks ratty, but I've been through college. I've seen worse. I just wish I knew what books Warren used for the ones kept in the two rooms of the Lodge. I'm sure they're just only dictionaries or encyclopedias. Hal P. Warren doesn't seem like he was the most interesting fellow, but man, maybe he had the one real copy of the Necronomicon or something. Just imagine.

The brightness of the Lodge, contrasting with its tightness and imposing decorations, make it seem even more like an otherworldly place. Hell, it even seems strange in a weird meta sort of way. They keep talking about "the kitchen" but we never see it. Can the characters see the kitchen? Do they remember it when they leave it? Similarly, how or why is the Master's "tomb" outside? Why haven't more people noticed this weird Mario-lookalike sleeping on a wooden block in the middle of the desert? There's just one throwaway line ("Where'd this place came from? It wasn't here a minute ago!") that suggests that the Master's lair is in a different world from ours, but when Mike fires gunshots in the proximity of the Lodge, the police in what should be the outside world hear them. Unlike the Torgo stuff these questions come from laziness (and my over-watching the film), rather than an unnecessarily withheld mythology.

The shot we see that best sums up the fun of watching the newer edition is that following the Master's severance of Torgo's hand. There's blood dripping down from the hand! Bright red H.G. Lewis paint blood! Incredible. And there's continuity with it, too: the Master's hands stay covered in blood in all the shots he appears in for the rest of the movie! This is a minor thing but it blew me away. That hand-blowing-off scene doesn't look at all realistic, but the burning hand looks cool, and now is even cooler with that blood dripping off it.

The best part of the Synapse Films Blu Ray is that it includes what they deem the original "grindhouse" edition, so you can see the differences back to back. If you haven't seen Manos: The Hands of Fate by 2017 Current Era, you're missing out. It is as essential to film history as Citizen Kane and The Shawshank Redemption. Now, you get a chance to see it as it was intended, in all its shambling, worst-movie-ever glory.

The Monogram Monograph: Part IV

Karl C. Kessler strained against his bonds, trying not to roar like the madman he was. Dr. Dexter, the dream-hypnotist, had placed the metal helmet over his head, without explaining what it was. Karl's eyes locked on those of the doctor. “If this is meant to torture me, I can't tell you more about that Marvel guy,” he said. “I don't know who he is, or was, or if he was even real.”

“He wasn't real, Mr. Kessler, that's what makes him so dangerous,” Dr. Dexter said in his light voice. “But don't worry. The helmet isn't here to induce pain. Quite the opposite. It's going to start hitting your brain with electrical waves that—”

“What?”

“—that are meant to emulate the bioelectric signature of Cannabis indica. It will be pleasurable, albeit overwhelming at some times.”

“You're filling me with dope? Maybe that explains...”—and Kessler was finding it hard to speak now—“those reports of you turning into an ape man...you had a pipe-dream and believed you turned into a monkey!”

“You have an impudent tongue, Kessler,” Dr. Dexter said. As the weird feeling, that crackling blissful feeling, filtered into Kessler's head, he saw Dr. Dexter's head become the weird warbling balloon-visage of Oliver Dran—so similar, like his voice, to his own. This was all coming over him so quickly, but the odd feeling changed time's rhythm, and slowly the light of the comfortable room grew familiar if not friendly, and warm if not trustworthy. “Soon you will be entering a dream-state—very much like the hypnotic trances that Dr. Dran doubtlessly subjected you to.⁵ In this state, your mind's own bioelectric signature will feed back into my Gateway. Your arrival was well-timed, even if we have to employ this as an escape method.”

“What do you mean?”

Kessler grinned, remembering something lovely that happened to him once. His question was forgotten in an instant, replaced instead with the appearance of a face he remembered only in unconsciousness. Her hair was long and made of something that ordinary hair wasn't made of, a slippery and unknowable thing that was like black water. Just as he was realizing what this face represented, there was a scream that split the air, that he thought at first came from the woman he was hallucinating. Instead, a distant shout from Dexter—“The butler!”—clarified who produced it. He gestured to his driver, Albert, who had helped restrain Kessler to the psychiatric couch.

“Go and help him, Albert!”

Kessler tried to sit up. “Let me up. I need to know what's going on, damn it!”

“Albert will hold him off, for a time. In that time, we will find our way out of here. You and that helmet are going to be our escape, Mr. Kessler, so please just relax.”

“Who are you?” That was what Kessler wanted to ask, at any rate. He couldn't recall if he had or not. He was positive now that the thrum of energy he felt was not merely in his head—there was also a current of energy in the helmet, at first running parallel to the electricity in him, and then connecting with it. He was part of a vast conduit, which snaked by cable back into the laboratory. That was all he could ascertain before he plunged into unconsciousness.

However, he seemed only to sleep a minute. He'd heard a noise before he'd slipped away, but it seemed to just be another scream.

When he woke up, there was a seam in his consciousness. A creased or folded line across his brain, and it took him awhile to understand where it came from. When the brain is confronted with something horrible, it folds over itself to protect itself against damage—at least, Kessler's brain did. If he were to be confronted by something like, say, a medical professional restraining him and gibbering about conspiracies and marihuana, he would make a “jump cut,” like he'd heard about with film scripts. Not even a proper fade-to-black—just a jump. Now he'd jumped to the floor, next to the couch with the helmet. The helmet was gone, along with Dr. Dexter, to say nothing of his personal sense of security. He had virtually no memory of what seemed to be the last few moments, and that they only seemed to be such was alarming to him. He sucked air in deep, and let thirty heartbeats pass.

First question: had that happened?

Yes. He had lost sense of himself immediately before entering the room but he knew the difference between dissociation, insobriety, and clarity. He was clear-headed, not dissociating, and was only reduced to insobriety later. By that helmet.

If the helmet did somehow emulate the feeling of the plant Cannabis indica, it wouldn't work over a distance. It was a helmet, it needed to encircle his head. So the helmet had to be real. The drugged feeling hadn't altered his memories, as far as he knew. He was sure the vision of Virginia had actually appeared in the moment at the very least. As he realized that, a whisper in his ear told him that he would soon feel the crackle in his hands, and he would begin craving a throat to wrap those hands around. But the remarkable circumstances seemed to quiet the voice for a moment, and he was infinitely grateful for that. (He was already glad for the marked casualness he had towards his pain at this point; it was an unhealthy and small mercy but a mercy all the same.)

The screams and other noises he'd heard he could rule out as hallucinations, but Dexter and Albert were nowhere to be seen. They had presumably left in response to what they had heard. That something, it seemed, was some sort of intruder. One who had provoked a shriek from the butler.

Karl was proud of his ability to deduce the truth. That it only increased his anxiety wasn't inspiring.

He had to get out of here. When he stood up, he saw that the helmet was missing, and that the door was still closed. It was dark and completely silent. As he wandered to the door and tried the knob he found that it was locked.

There was a note taped to the door. It was brief: “Kessler – You're locked in for your own good. I'll be back. If not back soon...get out and/or call police.”

When he sighed, it was so loud that he nearly jumped. Paranoia or not, there was a chance of someone or something hearing him. He'd lost none of his determination to escape, though, and so when his eyes locked onto the air vent high on the wall opposite the door, he knew he would have to make a gamble.

Ordinarily, he hated gambling—in the more metaphorical sense, rather than the gaming sense, though he hated that too. But that was usually because people were there to watch him if he screwed up. He wouldn't screw now that no one was expecting him to. He would merely die if he screwed up, at the hands of the murderer who had killed Dr. Dexter and his chauffeur.

Now there was deducing, he reasoned, and there was wild leaps. Wild leaps were also akin to gambles, but they weren't good counterparts to either taking chances or deductions. Dr. Dexter had evidently found time to take his weird marihuana-energy helmet with him before investigating the disturbance. There was probably nothing to worry about in the vent save for tightness—and even then, he was not claustrophobic (at least at this moment he wasn't), and it was an unnaturally large vent anyway.

“For your own good,” Dexter had written. Another crease was keeping that thought from catching up with him too. (Why couldn't the human consciousness process everything at once? Why did it have biological limits?) There were two meanings to that: the first was the one he was already considering, that someone had broken in. The second was that he could've been locked up to keep others safe. This wasn't an idle thing. His dreams involved him killing people, after all. Maybe this had all been a trap, a collaboration between Dran and Dexter to finally contain him. But then why should he urge him to call the police?

Couldn't be an armchair detective forever. Those guys were stupid, because they didn't understand that real-life experience is needed to be brilliant. Kessler knew he wasn't brilliant. He could hardly write correctly, in all fairness. But he knew the value of real-life experience. Best to know the world than to be trapped in it.

There was an incline to the vent, which he followed for some distance. Eventually, he saw an orange candle-light below a slatted opening. Looking down, he saw that it was indeed from a candle; a brazier on the wall, next to a Dexter family portrait. A firm kick downward, and he was out of the vent, into a hallway on the upper floor of the Dexter house. Straight ahead of him was a staircase that he felt led back down to the entrance hall of the house. There was only one issue—there was a door between he and this staircase, and it was partially open.

His heart began to accelerate. He was tempted to look inside the crack of the door, and he was unable to resist that temptation. But he didn't want to make any sort of disturbance—he couldn't open the door, nor could he look for lights. He wasn't even letting himself breathe.

There was something sitting in the darkness. He wondered if it could be a man. It rather looked to be one, slumped against a wall but slightly obscured from Kessler's perspective by a dresser. He wondered about the pants on the could-be person, if those were legs he saw, and he wondered if they were (as they seemed to be) the same worn by Albert the driver. He wanted to get closer, to tell if it was a man or a doll or a loose pair of pants or none of those things. But he decided it would be better to go downstairs instead.

His assertion was correct, and he was once more at the front of the house, standing over a now further-disturbed collection of smashed junk. The front door was as junked as everything else; it was broken from the inside out, oddly enough, but it could have been torn out, he figured. A cool evening wind blew through the door, and he considered taking himself out into that wind. For a moment the night was suddenly more imposing than anything that could be in this house. Even the prospect of “the Gateway”; even the prospect of monsters.

But love destroys apprehension, and for a brief moment, something caught Kessler's eye. It would always catch his eye, and she was not something but someone. Her eyes were staring at him, and it was a flicker through his spirit—he remembered her sitting on the front steps of the apartment building, reading a book, in that green dress they could barely afford. She wasn't wearing that now, she had on something white; he kept the green dress, though he didn't know where it was. He remembered cool summer nights where they left the window open listening to the radio, when it worked. He'd lost that radio, too...

The night melted away, or at least the fear of it did. She'd never looked so real before, and now that he was seeing her awake—for now he knew he was awake—he had to try something he hadn't tried in a long time. He tried to reach her.

As he stepped towards her, though, she grinned and turned. He began to run, and so did she—she kept his pace perfectly. Anytime he sped up, she sped up, and when he lost wind, she did the same. He could only think of how before they'd been perfected synchronized, too, finishing each other's thoughts or sentences, and ordering the same things at restaurants. He just wished that for once they would lose that connection, so that she would slow down. He hardly noticed as the city came up around him, the titanic spires blurring as they had in the limousine into a watery tapestry that he took for granted. He hardly noticed when he was following a familiar path, through streets entirely absent of people, past neon lights for shops staffed by no one and alleys devoid even of cats. She rounded a corner that he knew well, and when he did, she was gone.

He couldn't give up—not now. Another crease: it had seemed to take only minutes, but he had traveled several miles. At least, he should've had to in order to get to where he was now. He blinked as his eyes regarded the door of the apartment complex. All the same, he felt he saw the door vibrate somewhat, as if it had just been closed. Maybe she had gone in there—she was quick, after all, much more in shape than he.

He followed, and when the staircase met his eyes, barely lit (the bulbs were almost burnt out), he saw a split-second trace of her clothes trailing upstairs behind her. Knowing that there was no one there to sign him in, he went up the stairs, until he came to the sixth floor. He was wheezing even as he finally assembled all of it again in his mind—undoing another crease.

Not far ahead of him was the door to Dr. Dran's office, or where it was supposed to be—it was open, a figure was emerging. Two figures, one led by the other: one short, the height of a child, the other tall and bony. Kessler was back down the stairs even as the shorter man, the dwarf, turned to look at him. This dwarf's name was Luigi, and his taller companion, floating with a bulging Halloween pumpkin face, was the magician and murderer Emil Nardo.

This time there was no crease. No neat jump cut. Now it was just a fade to black.

<< Part III                                                                                                                              Part V >>

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5. I have been scant with providing details on Dr. Oliver Dran. Dran was indeed a dream-hypnotist, a practitioner of the method perfected by Dr. Gavin Otis, Sr. It was through the writings of Dran that the dream-hypnotism school of psychiatric practice became so widespread throughout the United States in the last few decades. It is, of course, a branch of Freudian thinking, but given a pseudo-mystical air abetted by the fact that both Drs. Dran and Otis were also attendees of the Suki Institute. Dran's experience in Imaginal Manipulations led to the aforementioned incident wherein he summoned an ectoplasmic Gorgosaurus (see the “reptilian creature” above). He was spared from humiliation and expulsion over this incident by several other students and from there on out was more conservative in his aspirations. For a time he was more interested in investigating interuniversal interactions, even discovering a hitherto undiscovered universe in the form of Earth-3133.

Drums O' Voodoo (1934), by Arthur Hoerl

Let me start at the beginning.

I don't know why I became obsessed with Drums O' Voodoo (alias Louisiana alias She Devil). It surely must have cropped up in my research when I commenced this long '30s/'40s horror kick I've been on lately, but I have no idea how that's possible, given that this is one of the least-written about titles I've ever come across, which, trust me, is saying something at this point. There's my answer, I think: when I find rare movies with interesting details about them, which no one else has seen or reviewed in a generation or three, I want to track it down. The title already had me; its status as a '30s race film perpetuated things. (A desire to watch an all-black horror movie from the early days of film while tracking down a copy of Drums O' Voodoo spurred my watching of Son of Ingagi.) Slowly, I learned more and more about it, including that: 1) it was based off of a stage play by J. Augustus Smith, who also acts in the film; 2) after one week, that play was either pulled for censorship reasons or booed offstage, not sure which; 3) the director of the film was the writer of Reefer Madness; 4) this is considered to be the first all-black horror film.

That last bit, though! How am I only the--to the best of my knowledge--second critic to write about this movie on the Internet? I really can't find anything to contradict the idea that Drums O' Voodoo is the first black horror movie, even if its horror elements are relatively toned down...from what I know, if there was any predecessor, its identity is lost to history. And I say that with the knowledge that many of the movies made by black people, or even involving black people, are similarly lost to time. The best alternative to Drums being the first that I could find is this: in 1924 the black auteur Oscar Micheaux made A Son of Satan, about a man forced by a bet to spend the night in a haunted mansion, a la Ghosts of Hanley House. This however was apparently more of a crime movie, with long sequences of domestic violence and nightclub degeneracy. It may have been a remake or rerelease of a 1922 film called The Ghost of Tolson's Manor, which definitely sounds like a horror film, but about which even less is known. Both films are lost and contemporary reviews don't specify if they feature real supernatural elements. Whatever the case, I am simply glad that Drums O' Voodoo is not among the roll call of Movies Lost. Indeed, a lot of sources will even say that this movie doesn't exist anymore, but it most assuredly does! Even with some lost films, where there's a will, there's a way...especially if "way" means "unlisted VHS tape." So here we are!

Myrtle and Ebenezer want to get married, but the whole world's against them. You see, a sleazy mobster type named Tom Catt--yes, really--rolls into a small Louisiana town and opens up a juke joint which as his base of criminal operations. He quickly fixes his eye on Myrtle and intends to make into one of his girls whether she likes it or not. Meanwhile, Ebenezer's grandmother Aunt Hagar (Laura Bowman, who played Dr. Jackson in Son of Ingagi) is a voodoo priestess, who warns the couple that Myrtle's mother had a curse on her that kills the bearer when they have children; hence why her mother died bringing Myrtle into this world. This curse is hereditary and so Myrtle's marriage to Ebenezer would be her death sentence. Myrtle's uncle Amos Berry, the local minister, wants to keep his niece safe from Tom Catt, but is unable to do so because Catt has some good ol' blackmail to hang over him--years ago, Amos spent four years on a chain-gang for murder. In spite of this, Father Berry is willing to go to any distance to get Catt out of his town, and that includes joining forces with Aunt Hagar and her voodoo cult.

It is the last sentence of that synopsis which provides the most intriguing detail about the plot of Drums O' Voodoo: voodoo is presented almost entirely as a positive force. A mysterious and ancient force, with secrets that are unknown and perhaps unknowable to the generally public, but a positive one all the same. Aunt Hagar, and, it seems, her cult, are an accepted part of the community, and she's free to come and go from the church to meet with Father Berry whenever she likes. And that's the thing about it, too: this is a movie where the clergyman protagonist is in league with a voodoo sorceress! But then you think about Sugar Hill, which also portrayed voodoo in a positive light (albeit one of revenge), and it makes sense. To people who practice voodoo, and people who know people who practice voodoo, or live in places with strong relationships with voodoo like Haiti or New Orleans, voodoo is certainly the religion of evil the movies usually make it out to be. Additionally, a lot of branches of voodoo have incorporated Christian beliefs, so relationships between Christian and voodoo communities are often better where voodoo is comparatively common. Amos still condemns voodoo in some way now and again, but one major theme of the film concerns how the "White God" (as the film's narration calls Them) exists concurrently with the "Black Gods," the "jungle gods." There's even a scene where Father Berry tells Aunt Hagar something about "Jesus told us to forgive our enemies." Hagar replies: "Yeah, well, Jesus didn't know Tom Catt!" A '30s film where a voodoo practitioner gets away with sassing off Jesus Christ himself--yeah, this was worth it.

Actually, this movie has a lot going for it where it would have probably been heinous in its time, proclivity for polytheism aside. Our first introduction to Myrtle is her in the juke joint dancing to jazz in, horror of horrors, a miniskirt! Hell, it was a big deal to show off someone dancing in a miniskirt in a movie in the mid '60s, much less the mid '30s. While there's definitely a lot in the script to add credence to the "booed offstage" theory regarding the short life of the play version, this stuff, plus some other stuff I'll get to, is enough to suggest that someone set up an obscenity charge. Maybe that was a total shitstorm. I wish I knew more.

And I wish I knew more about this movie in general--about its production details, yes, but also about the plot. You see, unlike a lot of my reviews, I haven't spoiled the ending of this one, and there's a reason for that. The ending of Drums O' Voodoo may be impossible to spoil, ever, because there is clearly much footage lost, which seems to include the proper conclusion. Now maybe the producers of my VHS copy had access to a faulty print, but Turner Classic Movies says that footage was cut. And how--IMDB and TCM alike list the movie as 70 minutes, and my copy doesn't even make it to 50! While this leads to one of the most hilariously jarring conclusions of all time, the idea of this movie missing over twenty minutes of footage is disheartening to say the least. The fact that we don't know how much was lost to censorship and how much was lost to film decay is almost worse than not knowing what was on those missing frames. TCM helpfully fills in the blanks, revealing that what's missing is only an extrapolation of what we already see (it's not like there were going to be hidden zombies or anything), but still. That's why I'm especially disappointed that no one else has talked about this movie. If the missing footage is still out there, no one is looking for it, and even if it was found by accident no one would care.

I can understand why even people who have seen this wouldn't care. Drums O' Voodoo has plenty o' faults, with the biggest one being one which afflicts so many old horror movies based off of stage plays: it's essentially a filmed version of the play, with no strong use of the effects that film can offer. There are times where you will find it merciful for a shot of two characters talking to be suddenly interrupted by the dynamic change of showing one of the characters in close-up instead. And when all the characters are hugged together on the cramped "backyard" scene with its terrible, obvious matte painting background, you will suddenly feel like you're sitting in front of a stage. Adding to the tedium this induces is the fact that a lot of the movie is dedicated to a church scene. In fact, the church scene, wherein characters sing, dance, quote scripture, and accuse each other, is arguably the primary scene of the movie, just because of how much time it eats up. That's upsetting, because this scene, once the gospel music stops, draaags. I do not enjoy listening to Biblical sermons even if I find a movie's religious themes interesting. It was a mistake for the filmmakers to spend so much time watching the characters at church when they could have been developing them as people or doling out voodoo vengeance instead.

And yet there is a lot to love. There are fun performances, interesting backstories, and that voodoo cave set has some actual atmosphere to it. There are also some fun trash qualities, like the fact that the movie has a weird humorous approach to naming its characters. It's hard not to fall for a slick, sleazy crook type from the city with a groovy name like "Tom Catt," and I can't believe that the insistence on calling Amos Berry "Elder," or more specifically "Elder Berry," was an accident. It's not fully played for laughs but it kinda sets a tone in your mind. Similarly odd is a character named Brother Zero who we meet during that lengthy sermon sequence. Brother Zero may have the highest-pitched voice I've ever heard in an adult man, and I don't know if this is supposed to be funny or not. The first time he spoke, I had to take a break just to give myself time to "...what?" IMDB tells me that Brother Zero's actor, Fred Bonny, had a lengthy and successful career in vaudeville prior to this, so it probably is supposed to be comedic. Finally, there is the scene where the town lays a trap for Tom Catt and get ready to hang him, so he doesn't whisk away any more girls. Aunt Hagar stops them so that they aren't tainted with unjustly-spilled blood, but not without going on a verbal beatdown against Catt, basically saying that the townsfolk should hang him for how worthless his soul is, and how even though she saves him today, the voodoo spirits will catch up with him eventually for his crimes. She doesn't spare a breath in letting this guy know that she hates his guts. Aunt Hagar is awesome all the way through, and I am officially a Laura Bowman fan for life.

More people should know about Drums O' Voodoo, for all its drawbacks. It's not a great movie, but I am glad to have seen it. It is available from Sinister Cinema even if it's not on their website. (Don't order it from Loving the Classics, the only other source I've found to ostensibly sell it, as the Better Business Bureau and others list them as having scammed a lot of people.) It's a forgotten piece of history, and it has stuff to offer even besides having that distinction. Check it out!

The Monogram Monograph: Part III

Karl Kessler rarely bought books—he had no taste for reading and he knew there were a lot of folks in this city who would look down on someone like him, with his background, for such a thing. He was either at work or in therapy; there was no spare time. Circumstances squeezed and pressed him like clay, and whenever he found a book it was something cheap and easy from a newsstand. But he had about two hours to kill at this library, and he wanted to try something more challenging. So he grabbed the first big, baggy, complex thing he saw and plunked down with it.

Unfortunately, he chose the Codex de Novem Milia Spectris Malum, which was apparently a famous enough book in some circles and that it didn't deserve having its English title printed. The book all the way through was in English, mercifully, but that didn't mean it was any semblance of readable. As the hours went by he found himself stuck on two pages: the first described something called “Tzaa.” The portrait of Tzaa showed it to be a series of levitating lamps in a weird hovering cluster. Below its enormous mass, a number of small figures retreated in horror.

“Yee art pozzessed of a certaine madnesse if yee art not afrayd of TZAA. TZAA is thee night-mare of night-mares, a beaste of disease and plague; he spreades his influence like the rats of Hamelin, bloomeing in and oute of life whenever he feeles he muste feede uponne the dreames of mortals. In perversioune of the GARDENE of the LORD, he has taken for himselfe the realme of PLANTES, and in it is in the twisted beautie of roses and orchides that he tempts his victimes. He can move in time, into bothe FUTURE and PAST, as we do on the space of the LORD'S Earthe, and thus is perhappes of the order of fallen Angels who art in the service of grimme LUCIFER. He is meante to be trapped withyn a star in the LORD'S aethyr, bounde for all time, and yette he abscondes too oftenne.”

It went on from there, even if his eyes couldn't. On the opposite page was something more distinct. It seemed to be a humanoid figure composed of dark vines. Though it was the size of a man as well as the shape, the humans standing beside it fled from it all the same.

“And even so TZAA has spawne beyonde the plantes that he groues. In the wordes of the Incomputare wytches, a Son of TZAA is called THRÜN, and the THRÜN of TZAA is dredde indeede. Verilie, he is sayde to be even darker than his fore-bear, having beene exiled not to a star, but to somewhere beyonde the LORD'S Creation. He...”³

He couldn't go on any further. It was a slow two hours, but it was nearly silent in here. The sound of pages turning was soothing to him somehow. Pretending to read, he dreamed with his eyes open, and for once in a long, long while, his dreams were ones of peace.

When 6:30 rolled around, he wandered out to the steps and looked for a car, not knowing what model to expect. That was the thing with healthy people, they were often vague, and never understood that vagueness was at the seat of mental unhealthiness. It was easy to get confused. It was easy to disbelieve that one was ever bound for a life that involved riding in a limousine.

There was a limousine waiting for him. The driver stood outside, bowed low, briefly introducing himself as Albert in a French accent. Kessler barely heard him, and by the time he realized he'd been rude by not replying, he was inside and sitting on the plush seats. “I'm sorry...” he whispered, as an old compulsion, but Albert didn't hear him.

Kessler rested his fingertips against his temple as he sat. To anyone who could somehow see through the limo's tinted windows, he would look to be an ordinary if shabbily-dressed playboy, slouching bored on an armrest. He wasn't bored. He was the farthest from bored one could be. He rode the bus, a bike when he had one, but not since the days of the truck on the farm since he'd been in a proper car. It was exhilarating to see the tall straight buildings become wavering lines as the car took them to the outskirts of the city. Order cracking and slipping into chaos.

Even as the white lights passed into the dull blue of the night, filling the air with a familiar chill, Kessler knew that chaos was the one that was really alive. It was active, constantly full of energy, lacking the entropic humility of order's rigid pillars. He owed this city a victory over its intrinsic order, and he had that now. It was like a dream, and similarly dreamy was the large house they pulled up to. It was so much more formal than the building with Dr. Dran's office, even if it was still one of the simple post-war suburbs. Through the tall gate the car went, into the long driveway. Kessler was out of the care before Albert could go around to let him out.

“Dr. Dexter is expecting you.”

“Amazing.”

“Yes, Mr. Kessler, sir, I must confess that it is amazing. Rarely, these days, does Dr. Dexter keep his appointments, even his impromptu ones. Those are the ones in his most recent memory, and indeed, the problem is that he forgets them.”

He began to walk Kessler to the front door of the house. “Why is the doctor so absentminded? If I can ask?” Kessler said.

“You must understand, sir, that Dr. Dexter is a polymath. He is not merely interested in psychology, but electronics as well. His mind is not like those of other men.”

“Did at any point he transform himself into an ape?”

“Not to my knowledge, Mr. Kessler, sir, though I would not be surprised. After an absinthe or two Dr. Dexter weaves odd tales about his days as a student of the Suki Institute.”

Kessler had heard tell of the so-called “Spooky Institute.” Some ugly lumps took the name to refer to the fact that it was a racially integrated school. Others said that it was called such because it was the center of preternatural and paranormal incidents due to its trademark insistence on encouraging the unusual welding of different fields. Folks these days didn't trust science, and maybe they never would, but Kessler did, and even he was astonished by some of the stuff he heard coming out of that university. It was said to be the source of much cinematic material on the so-called “mad science”; the vast and terrifying accomplishments that enabled a man to build not only an earthquake machine but hordes of mutated killer animals as well, framed on shaky black-and-white. The mad scientist was a symbol, Kessler knew, of science rendered through poetry—visual lines of verse that defied the decades of backbreaking work that would go into mastering as many fields as these tyrants of the silver screen put under their belts. All Suki did was give such characters flesh.⁴

For the rest of his days, Kessler's only memory of the Dexter house was the clutter throughout it. It was a little crushing to see such a large estate crammed full of broken and useless scientific equipment. Through several tight doors and narrow hallways, they eventually found their way in what appeared to be Dr. Dexter's legitimate research center. What Kessler noticed in the course of all this was that the broken bits of machinery and apparatus became more complicated the closer one grew to Dr. Dexter. It was like traveling through time, in a way, seeing the progress of the sciences from the last two or three decades age to dust and be replaced with fresh youngsters. That which lay scattered around Dexter's desk was beyond Kessler's understanding.

Dexter hardly looked up when Kessler entered, but he smiled all the same. He turned his head, but didn't make eye contact. “Mr. Kessler!” he said, in the voice the phone had only distorted a little. “Welcome. Please excuse the mess. I am merely working on my Gateway—the office we'll be working in will be much tidier.”

“Dr. Dexter...” Kessler paused as he spoke the name, waiting for the kindly doctor to fill in a first name, to no avail. “I do hope you can help.”

“I plan to have such an ability, boy. Dr. Dran was brief, as he is in all things, but he told me of your other selves, of your invisible ghost Virginia, of the odd A-B Monogram. I think we can figure this out plainly enough.”

Kessler looked around. An uneasy feeling swept over him. Beyond his senses, Dr. Dexter moved to the door where his true office was, to where a stylish green-walled office was waiting, with a comfortable couch to lay on this time upon which some money had actually been spent. Albert the driver had entered the room, but Kessler didn't know why and didn't care why. Dr. Dexter was patient. He didn't rush Kessler, as he studied the moment; but he did study him. When at last Karl crossed the threshold, he asked, “Forgive me for such a strange question, but were you followed here?”

“I don't think so,” Karl said then. He snapped loose of whatever took hold of him—he was used to whiplash like that. “The last person I was personal with besides your driver was a hot dog vendor.”

“And before that?” There was a sudden urgency to Dexter's high voice. Maybe even a stutter.

Karl frowned. “Just Dr. Dran.”

He glanced at the door, even as Dexter slammed it loudly. “You're lying,” came the doctor's high voice. “I can see it in your face. Hold him, Albert.”

“Wait, it's not necessary!” But evidently, it was. Soon Kessler was restrained by a pair of gentle but firm hands. “What do you want?!”

“I need to know if Marvel is behind you.” And in some sort of fit, he flinched, and lowered his voice: “Do you know that name? Marvel?”

“Y-yes. I was confronted by a man named Marvel after my last appointment. He said he was a Hollywood screenwriter.”

“He has been stalking me for some time, Mr. Kessler. I know that sounds like paranoia, but I can assure you it's not.” He snapped his fingers, and Albert set him on that medium-priced couch, and from somewhere below found restraints for him. Dr. Dexter looped behind Kessler, to where he couldn't see him, and he began to rummage through something. Kessler flashed back to his dreams—to Dr. Melcher and his kit of plastic surgery tools for cutting, clipping, and rearranging faces. It didn't help that Dr. Melcher was also Kessler.

“There is something else I need from you, Kessler,” Dexter said. “It will work out for you. Perhaps you will get to see your Virginia.” Metal slid over Kessler's scalp, ears, temples. “I need you to wear this helmet for me.”

<< Part II                                                                                                                              Part IV >>

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3. There is no New York City library holding a book by this name.

4. It was an intriguing coincidence that Kessler's Dr. Dexter was also an alumnus of my alma mater. Both Dr. MacCarron and I attended university there—in fact, that was where we met. We were some of the older students of our graduating class. Many in there had gained their Bachelor's degrees at sixteen—she and I had to wait till nineteen. (I think I lied. I think I was twenty.) We met in Introduction to Imaginal Manipulations, which, if you did not go to Old Spooky, you may not know as the general idea of using magical thinking to alter reality. In particular, it involves using literature as an incantation through which one's inherent psionic field begins to manipulate physical matter. Truth be told, I hardly remember the class, because I was only in it to satisfy my literature credit. Once Vivian and I commenced our relationship we found ourselves distracted by everything but that class. Certainly we were among the many who learned the truth behind the nickname for the college, like when we saved the Junior Varsity Badminton Team from the reptilian crea—I digress. None of this will be relevant to the final draft of this monograph. I just wanted to think about Vivian. Such a strong-willed and independent woman, a true pioneer of her age. She is many years gone now, and too often I can't remember if I had the dreams when she was here. I think I did. I must have.