Mark McLaughlin's Blog: Revenge of the B-Movie Monster - Posts Tagged "beach-blanket-zombie"
"Your Turn" -- the Weirdest Story You May Ever Read
This story has been published in both the U.K. and America, and I think it may be my weirdest story yet. The character known as the Cat Man also appears in the story, "Melina Mavrodakis and the Five Something-or-Others of the Apocalypse" in my story collection, BEACH BLANKET ZOMBIE.
Your Turn
by Mark McLaughlin
She sweeps toward you, laughing, her lace-swathed arms outstretched. She is the Red Nurse and she is about to put her large hot hands on you.
So you run, because you know no one survives her brand of care. You see a small blue house with all the lights on and toys scattered in the front yard. The Red Nurse abhors children so you hurry up to the door and start knock-knock-knocking. Oh please, let all the horrible children be home.
The door glides open and a beautiful young Asian man with platinum hair takes you by the hand and wordlessly leads you inside. You slam the door behind you and command the young man to lock it. He shrugs and does as he is told.
In the kitchen, he makes you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. "Say something," you insist. "I'm being chased by the Red Nurse and I want you to take my mind off her."
"Well, let me think," he says. "How about this? My name is Peter. My mother is French and my father is Japanese but I never knew him. I'm making you a P, B & J because it has a lot of fat and sugar and protein in it and those are all good things to eat when you're scared. So here, eat this. Want some milk?"
You nod and take the sandwich. You watch as Peter picks up an empty glass from the counter and turns around. Time passes. He's just standing there doing something, but you can't see what. So you watch and eat and watch. Finally he turns around and hands you a full glass.
The glass is fridge-cold and filled with a bluish-gray liquid.
"What is this stuff?" you ask, eighty-five percent disgusted, ten percent amused, five percent intrigued.
"It's milk," Peter says.
"No it's not. It came out of you."
"Well, yeah. It's my milk."
You look him up and down. "What did it come out of?"
He brushes his fingers along your jawline. "If the Red Nurse catches you, you'll never have any milk ever again."
Something jumps up on the counter, startling you - you almost drop the milk. At first you think it's a cat, but it's too big, and it's a biped, and it's wearing a gold mask and a black rubber suit crisscrossed with zippers, and you suddenly realize it's the Cat Man, and you KNOW that the Cat Man is a very good friend of the Red Nurse, and you turn toward Peter and shout, "Is this a trap?"
He cradles your face in his hands and says, "No, no, no, calm down, the Cat Man is mad at the Red Nurse and he's staying with me. He's the one who put all the toys in the front yard. Pretty smart, huh?"
You face the Cat Man. "How do I know this isn't a double-cross? Why are you mad at the Red Nurse?"
"She lied to me." His soft little voice sounds like a big tree growing. "She promised me Australia and India and most of Africa and all I got was Hawaii. I mean, Hawaii is pretty and all, but I was expecting a lot more. We had a deal. Hey, if you're not going to finish that, can I have it?"
You let the little guy have the rest of your sandwich. He removes his mask to eat and you almost pass out because his face is so ugly (pale damp flesh, protruding blue-green veins, watery golden eyes). He eats like a frenzied boar-hog, grunting and heaving and gurgling as he chews.
Peter taps his chin thoughtfully. "So Cat Man. What's the plan? How you gonna get back at her? What sort of nasty trick do you have up your black rubber sleeve?"
The little guy flashes a slick grin. "Tell ya what. You two help me and I'll cut you in. Petey, you can have France and Japan and any ten of the fifty states of America. And you, Scaredy Pants: you can have Germany and Argentina and any ten states, too - but Petey gets first pick. Is it a deal?"
---
It takes days of cool persuasion and heated negotiation, but finally the Cat Man and Peter convince you to join in on the scheme. It takes so long because they won't tell you what the scheme actually is.
Peter leads the way down into the murky basement. At the Cat Man's command, he fills a laundry bag with things from a big wooden crate under the stairs. You aren't quite sure what the things are, but they look like black books or boxes.
The Cat Man hangs the Seal Of Wounds That Won't Heal on the handle of the old furnace's heavy metal door. He swings the door open and you find yourself looking into one of the ultra-white corridors of the House of the Ankh. In you all crawl, one, two, three.
"That was easy," you say.
The Cat Man waves a blacknailed hand dismissively. "Getting into trouble is always easy." He reaches back into the opening and pulls out the Seal, closing the way behind him.
"Why did you do that?" you whisper hotly into his damp triangular ear. "That was our escape hatch!"
Suddenly an Iguana Man guard rounds the corner of the hall. The Cat Man pulls a wee gun out of one of his many pockets and shoots the reptile between the eyes. The silencer is almost as big as the gun, so the shot only makes a tiny pfffft!
"Hatch schmatch," the Cat Man hisses. "What a big wetsy baby you are. Let's get moving."
You help Peter carry the sack as you follow the little guy through the winding halls. On both sides of you: walls dotted with framed certificates (there's one signed by the Marquis de Sade) and doors, doors, doors, hundreds of them, all white, some slightly ajar. Every now and then you peek into one of the rooms. In the various rooms you see: locusts feasting on exposed brains; looping, living guts stuck with glowing pins; orifices crammed with gardening implements; and you keep saying to yourself, Italy, they promised me Italy.
In all these rooms, set high up on the walls, are video monitors, all playing exotic, brightly-lit torture scenes. For ambiance, perhaps, like music in elevators.
At last you come to a door guarded by two Iguana Men. The Cat Man plugs them both with his tiny gun before they even have a chance to reach for their weapons. Dying, one of the guards fouls his pants, filling the hall with an eye-watering ammonia stench.
The room you now enter is huge, and filled with computer stations. Each station features a bluish-gray zombie, staring at a monitor and typing. A cable runs from the side of each monitor to the base of the spine of its zombie-typist.
"Here we are," the Cat Man says. "Took a little longer than I thought to find it. She changes the location of this room constantly."
"Is this the nerve-center of operations?" you ask. The little guy shakes his damp head. "Nah, this is just where they play the torture videos."
Each zombie is wearing a black burlap shirt. The Cat Man rips the shirt off the nearest zombie, revealing a square slot in the middle of its back. He presses a button by the slot and a video cassette pops out.
Peter opens the sack and takes out a video labeled SWEDISH HOT-TUB NIGHTS, which he slides into the zombie-slot. One by one, he replaces the torture videos in all the zombies with selections from his porn library.
"Is this the big plan?" you say, exasperated. "Why did you two even bother to get me involved? You didn't need me at all!"
The Cat Man takes your hand and tugs gently downward. You kneel to look him in the eye. "You, my friend," he says, "play a vital role in this curious enterprise. A starring role. Starting now."
He unzips one of his many zippers, reaches in and pulls out a sort of collar, studded with small gems and computer chips. You want to look at it more closely, but before you can, he snaps it around your neck.
From another of his pockets he pulls an oval device covered with buttons. He points the thing at you and presses a big red button.
---
And now you are a woman, or at least, female: the Green Nun.
Of course, the name is all part of the joke. After all, the Red Nurse isn't really a nurse. Most nurses like to cure people, not chop them into bits. And while nuns aren't supposed to like sex, you certainly don't have a problem with it.
Like the Cat Man, you wear a skintight, many-zippered rubber suit - yours is lime-green, with a yellow and blue swirly pattern over the breasts. You don't wear a mask, but you do cover your face with a bridal veil.
The revolution was a success: the energy from the torture rooms - the secret source of the Red Nurse's power - has been channeled away from her and into you. And you feel fantastic.
Your first order of business was to give the Cat Man a kiss and a big hug. Then you twisted off his smelly head. You confiscated the remote (as if he could ever control you), that tiny little gun, and of course, the Seal of Wounds That Won't Heal, along with the other goodies in those deceptively deep pockets of his. You commanded your new guards, the Tarantula Men, to seize and detain Peter. Then you shifted the location of the zombie room to a transdimensional bunker in Q Sector. There's no air in Q Sector, but the zombies won't mind.
In the Imperial Boudoir, you watch as the Tarantula Men strip off Peter's clothes. You raise an eyebrow at the sight of his convoluted, inhuman privates.
"You were supposed to save us!" Peter cries.
"I am saving you. For myself."
You press a green button on the nightstand and a silver communications monitor rises out of the floor. The screen lights up to reveal the bristly face of the Head Tarantula Man.
"Any word on the Red Nurse?" you roar.
His mandibles tremble. "She has escaped the grounds. Six-dozen death-squads are out searching. We think she has found her way into the Swamplands."
"The Swamplands! But - that's where the Resistance is headquartered!"
You grab a crystal torture device out of your curio cabinet and fling in at the screen. The monitor explodes in a shower of shards and sparks.
Out of the corner of your eye, you see Peter yawn. Yawn? How enraging! "Am I boring you?"
He smiles apologetically, then nods to the left and right at the Tarantula Men holding him. "Maybe we should talk. But first, get rid of your goons. You wouldn't want them to hear what I have to say."
You command the guards to chain him to the bed. They do as they are told and depart.
Peter stretches out on the mattress. For a prisoner, he seems awfully unconcerned. "I really envy you," he says. "You get so far into it, you can actually forget what's going on."
His words disturb you, and yet you say, "Continue."
"You. Me. Her. The three of us." He taps his chin. "I used to be the Purple Queen. You were the Brown Hunter. She was the Yellow Bishop. Then I was the White Dollmaker. You were the Blue Shaman. She -"
You turn away. "Enough! I don't have time for these games."
"No," he says, "that's the problem. We have too much time, and only for games."
You think about this for a moment. Then you sigh. "Say whatever else you've got to say."
"I love you. But I love her, too. Even though she doesn't care about me." He laughs softly. "She's still wild about you. And we're never sure how you feel about either of us! It's sad, really, and so very tedious. But at least we have our games! Tricks and terrors, puzzles and perversions. They make it all seem so glamorous."
You turn back to him, wiping at your eyes with the veil. "I think I liked it better when we were-" Were what? What? "-playing."
"Well, then," he says, "let's keep playing. But bring back the Cat Man. I made him the last time I was evil, and ... well, the game's more interesting when he's around. He's so deliciously treacherous."
You give him a small nod. Then you push another button on the night-stand and a new communications monitor rises out of the floor.
You square your shoulders. "Reanimate the Cat Man's corpse," you thunder, "and bring him to my antechamber."
Peter's reflection beams at you from the rounded silver edge of the monitor. How happy he looks. You open a door on the nightstand and bring out a corkscrew and a magnum of passionflower wine. Before long, you and your handsome prisoner are laughing and taking swigs from the big bottle.
There is a knock on the door. You purr, "Be back in a second," and then glide away from the bed. At one point, you glance back and give Peter a wink.
You enter your antechamber, where a Tarantula Man waits, holding the Cat Man in his arms. The little guy's head has been reattached, but he is still extremely groggy.
You open one of your zippers and take out a gold pill case and a shiny greenish-blue sliver of metal. The case holds a single hyperstrength super-energy pill, which you slip under the Cat Man's tongue. Then you slide the metal sliver - a cerebral implant - deep into his damp triangular ear.
These words you whisper into that ear: "Go into the next room, straight to the bed. There you will find a drunken man and a stainless steel corkscrew. Use the corkscrew to remove the man's brain, a little bit at a time."
You smile to yourself. Pretty, silly Peter. You still can't believe that your false tears fooled him. Bored? Soon he will be bored out of his skull! Serves him right for acting so damnably sincere, so real. Ordinarily you like that sort of thing, but not when it's your turn to be the evil one.
Your Turn
by Mark McLaughlin
She sweeps toward you, laughing, her lace-swathed arms outstretched. She is the Red Nurse and she is about to put her large hot hands on you.
So you run, because you know no one survives her brand of care. You see a small blue house with all the lights on and toys scattered in the front yard. The Red Nurse abhors children so you hurry up to the door and start knock-knock-knocking. Oh please, let all the horrible children be home.
The door glides open and a beautiful young Asian man with platinum hair takes you by the hand and wordlessly leads you inside. You slam the door behind you and command the young man to lock it. He shrugs and does as he is told.
In the kitchen, he makes you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. "Say something," you insist. "I'm being chased by the Red Nurse and I want you to take my mind off her."
"Well, let me think," he says. "How about this? My name is Peter. My mother is French and my father is Japanese but I never knew him. I'm making you a P, B & J because it has a lot of fat and sugar and protein in it and those are all good things to eat when you're scared. So here, eat this. Want some milk?"
You nod and take the sandwich. You watch as Peter picks up an empty glass from the counter and turns around. Time passes. He's just standing there doing something, but you can't see what. So you watch and eat and watch. Finally he turns around and hands you a full glass.
The glass is fridge-cold and filled with a bluish-gray liquid.
"What is this stuff?" you ask, eighty-five percent disgusted, ten percent amused, five percent intrigued.
"It's milk," Peter says.
"No it's not. It came out of you."
"Well, yeah. It's my milk."
You look him up and down. "What did it come out of?"
He brushes his fingers along your jawline. "If the Red Nurse catches you, you'll never have any milk ever again."
Something jumps up on the counter, startling you - you almost drop the milk. At first you think it's a cat, but it's too big, and it's a biped, and it's wearing a gold mask and a black rubber suit crisscrossed with zippers, and you suddenly realize it's the Cat Man, and you KNOW that the Cat Man is a very good friend of the Red Nurse, and you turn toward Peter and shout, "Is this a trap?"
He cradles your face in his hands and says, "No, no, no, calm down, the Cat Man is mad at the Red Nurse and he's staying with me. He's the one who put all the toys in the front yard. Pretty smart, huh?"
You face the Cat Man. "How do I know this isn't a double-cross? Why are you mad at the Red Nurse?"
"She lied to me." His soft little voice sounds like a big tree growing. "She promised me Australia and India and most of Africa and all I got was Hawaii. I mean, Hawaii is pretty and all, but I was expecting a lot more. We had a deal. Hey, if you're not going to finish that, can I have it?"
You let the little guy have the rest of your sandwich. He removes his mask to eat and you almost pass out because his face is so ugly (pale damp flesh, protruding blue-green veins, watery golden eyes). He eats like a frenzied boar-hog, grunting and heaving and gurgling as he chews.
Peter taps his chin thoughtfully. "So Cat Man. What's the plan? How you gonna get back at her? What sort of nasty trick do you have up your black rubber sleeve?"
The little guy flashes a slick grin. "Tell ya what. You two help me and I'll cut you in. Petey, you can have France and Japan and any ten of the fifty states of America. And you, Scaredy Pants: you can have Germany and Argentina and any ten states, too - but Petey gets first pick. Is it a deal?"
---
It takes days of cool persuasion and heated negotiation, but finally the Cat Man and Peter convince you to join in on the scheme. It takes so long because they won't tell you what the scheme actually is.
Peter leads the way down into the murky basement. At the Cat Man's command, he fills a laundry bag with things from a big wooden crate under the stairs. You aren't quite sure what the things are, but they look like black books or boxes.
The Cat Man hangs the Seal Of Wounds That Won't Heal on the handle of the old furnace's heavy metal door. He swings the door open and you find yourself looking into one of the ultra-white corridors of the House of the Ankh. In you all crawl, one, two, three.
"That was easy," you say.
The Cat Man waves a blacknailed hand dismissively. "Getting into trouble is always easy." He reaches back into the opening and pulls out the Seal, closing the way behind him.
"Why did you do that?" you whisper hotly into his damp triangular ear. "That was our escape hatch!"
Suddenly an Iguana Man guard rounds the corner of the hall. The Cat Man pulls a wee gun out of one of his many pockets and shoots the reptile between the eyes. The silencer is almost as big as the gun, so the shot only makes a tiny pfffft!
"Hatch schmatch," the Cat Man hisses. "What a big wetsy baby you are. Let's get moving."
You help Peter carry the sack as you follow the little guy through the winding halls. On both sides of you: walls dotted with framed certificates (there's one signed by the Marquis de Sade) and doors, doors, doors, hundreds of them, all white, some slightly ajar. Every now and then you peek into one of the rooms. In the various rooms you see: locusts feasting on exposed brains; looping, living guts stuck with glowing pins; orifices crammed with gardening implements; and you keep saying to yourself, Italy, they promised me Italy.
In all these rooms, set high up on the walls, are video monitors, all playing exotic, brightly-lit torture scenes. For ambiance, perhaps, like music in elevators.
At last you come to a door guarded by two Iguana Men. The Cat Man plugs them both with his tiny gun before they even have a chance to reach for their weapons. Dying, one of the guards fouls his pants, filling the hall with an eye-watering ammonia stench.
The room you now enter is huge, and filled with computer stations. Each station features a bluish-gray zombie, staring at a monitor and typing. A cable runs from the side of each monitor to the base of the spine of its zombie-typist.
"Here we are," the Cat Man says. "Took a little longer than I thought to find it. She changes the location of this room constantly."
"Is this the nerve-center of operations?" you ask. The little guy shakes his damp head. "Nah, this is just where they play the torture videos."
Each zombie is wearing a black burlap shirt. The Cat Man rips the shirt off the nearest zombie, revealing a square slot in the middle of its back. He presses a button by the slot and a video cassette pops out.
Peter opens the sack and takes out a video labeled SWEDISH HOT-TUB NIGHTS, which he slides into the zombie-slot. One by one, he replaces the torture videos in all the zombies with selections from his porn library.
"Is this the big plan?" you say, exasperated. "Why did you two even bother to get me involved? You didn't need me at all!"
The Cat Man takes your hand and tugs gently downward. You kneel to look him in the eye. "You, my friend," he says, "play a vital role in this curious enterprise. A starring role. Starting now."
He unzips one of his many zippers, reaches in and pulls out a sort of collar, studded with small gems and computer chips. You want to look at it more closely, but before you can, he snaps it around your neck.
From another of his pockets he pulls an oval device covered with buttons. He points the thing at you and presses a big red button.
---
And now you are a woman, or at least, female: the Green Nun.
Of course, the name is all part of the joke. After all, the Red Nurse isn't really a nurse. Most nurses like to cure people, not chop them into bits. And while nuns aren't supposed to like sex, you certainly don't have a problem with it.
Like the Cat Man, you wear a skintight, many-zippered rubber suit - yours is lime-green, with a yellow and blue swirly pattern over the breasts. You don't wear a mask, but you do cover your face with a bridal veil.
The revolution was a success: the energy from the torture rooms - the secret source of the Red Nurse's power - has been channeled away from her and into you. And you feel fantastic.
Your first order of business was to give the Cat Man a kiss and a big hug. Then you twisted off his smelly head. You confiscated the remote (as if he could ever control you), that tiny little gun, and of course, the Seal of Wounds That Won't Heal, along with the other goodies in those deceptively deep pockets of his. You commanded your new guards, the Tarantula Men, to seize and detain Peter. Then you shifted the location of the zombie room to a transdimensional bunker in Q Sector. There's no air in Q Sector, but the zombies won't mind.
In the Imperial Boudoir, you watch as the Tarantula Men strip off Peter's clothes. You raise an eyebrow at the sight of his convoluted, inhuman privates.
"You were supposed to save us!" Peter cries.
"I am saving you. For myself."
You press a green button on the nightstand and a silver communications monitor rises out of the floor. The screen lights up to reveal the bristly face of the Head Tarantula Man.
"Any word on the Red Nurse?" you roar.
His mandibles tremble. "She has escaped the grounds. Six-dozen death-squads are out searching. We think she has found her way into the Swamplands."
"The Swamplands! But - that's where the Resistance is headquartered!"
You grab a crystal torture device out of your curio cabinet and fling in at the screen. The monitor explodes in a shower of shards and sparks.
Out of the corner of your eye, you see Peter yawn. Yawn? How enraging! "Am I boring you?"
He smiles apologetically, then nods to the left and right at the Tarantula Men holding him. "Maybe we should talk. But first, get rid of your goons. You wouldn't want them to hear what I have to say."
You command the guards to chain him to the bed. They do as they are told and depart.
Peter stretches out on the mattress. For a prisoner, he seems awfully unconcerned. "I really envy you," he says. "You get so far into it, you can actually forget what's going on."
His words disturb you, and yet you say, "Continue."
"You. Me. Her. The three of us." He taps his chin. "I used to be the Purple Queen. You were the Brown Hunter. She was the Yellow Bishop. Then I was the White Dollmaker. You were the Blue Shaman. She -"
You turn away. "Enough! I don't have time for these games."
"No," he says, "that's the problem. We have too much time, and only for games."
You think about this for a moment. Then you sigh. "Say whatever else you've got to say."
"I love you. But I love her, too. Even though she doesn't care about me." He laughs softly. "She's still wild about you. And we're never sure how you feel about either of us! It's sad, really, and so very tedious. But at least we have our games! Tricks and terrors, puzzles and perversions. They make it all seem so glamorous."
You turn back to him, wiping at your eyes with the veil. "I think I liked it better when we were-" Were what? What? "-playing."
"Well, then," he says, "let's keep playing. But bring back the Cat Man. I made him the last time I was evil, and ... well, the game's more interesting when he's around. He's so deliciously treacherous."
You give him a small nod. Then you push another button on the night-stand and a new communications monitor rises out of the floor.
You square your shoulders. "Reanimate the Cat Man's corpse," you thunder, "and bring him to my antechamber."
Peter's reflection beams at you from the rounded silver edge of the monitor. How happy he looks. You open a door on the nightstand and bring out a corkscrew and a magnum of passionflower wine. Before long, you and your handsome prisoner are laughing and taking swigs from the big bottle.
There is a knock on the door. You purr, "Be back in a second," and then glide away from the bed. At one point, you glance back and give Peter a wink.
You enter your antechamber, where a Tarantula Man waits, holding the Cat Man in his arms. The little guy's head has been reattached, but he is still extremely groggy.
You open one of your zippers and take out a gold pill case and a shiny greenish-blue sliver of metal. The case holds a single hyperstrength super-energy pill, which you slip under the Cat Man's tongue. Then you slide the metal sliver - a cerebral implant - deep into his damp triangular ear.
These words you whisper into that ear: "Go into the next room, straight to the bed. There you will find a drunken man and a stainless steel corkscrew. Use the corkscrew to remove the man's brain, a little bit at a time."
You smile to yourself. Pretty, silly Peter. You still can't believe that your false tears fooled him. Bored? Soon he will be bored out of his skull! Serves him right for acting so damnably sincere, so real. Ordinarily you like that sort of thing, but not when it's your turn to be the evil one.
A Loving Look Back at '70s Horror Movies
Thinking back, it seems to me that horror movies stopped being scary back in the 1970s. Is it the movies, or is it me? I was younger then, so maybe it didn't take much to scare me. Or maybe the real world was less frightening back then, making cinematic terrors seem more intimidating by comparison.
Back then, nobody worried about terrorism or AIDS or mad-cow disease or flesh-eating bacteria or any of the other dozens of bugaboos plaguing society today. Yesteryear's shockers didn't have to compete with planes flying into skyscrapers or anthrax threats or beheadings in the Middle East.
What scared me back then? The hideous, charred face of "The Abominable Dr. Phibes" was pretty darned scary, but the stylish doctor was a sophisticated creampuff compared to the deep-South inbred maniacs of the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" gang. When I first saw that title, I thought it might be some kind of wacky dark comedy, a la "Little Shop of Horrors" – boy, was I wrong!
The grainy film quality, the herky-jerky camera action, all gave a jittery, realistic quality to the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" nightmares up on the screen. And the first time you see old Leatherface, revving up his chainsaw in that ramshackle house of madness – that's a sight you won't soon forget.
Not all movies of that era achieved that same degree of realism, but they were still plenty horrific. For example, the plot of "Sssssss" was utterly implausible, but that's okay – its sheer exuberance carried it through.
Strother Martin played a mad scientist bent on turning humanity into a race of super-intelligent king cobras, for all sorts of goofball reasons. And gee, he'd even invented the formula that would do the trick.
Soon his handsome young assistant's hair is falling out and his skin begins turning scaly. Now if I was working for a mad scientist who was cuckoo for reptiles and my skin suddenly began growing scales... I'd put two and two together. I'd figure out that little Scooby Doo mystery in no time.
But sadly, the assistant in this slithery potboiler never connects the dots. Before long he's the poster boy for the world's most effective slimming program. No arms, no legs, just a lanky serpentine abdomen – that's about as slender as you're gonna get.
"The Devil's Rain," with it's ghoulish cult of wax-blooded devil-worshippers, is a great example of the many Satanic horror movies of the Seventies. The Devil was scarier back then! William Shatner's super-exuberant acting style fit perfectly into this Mephistophelean drive-in shocker.
Even made-for-TV movies were scarier in those days. The old "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" TV movies, and the weekly series that followed, worked my young nerves into a frenzy with their cheesy chills and thrills.
Darren McGavin played a gonzo reporter in a cheap suit who was forever chasing vampires and werewolves and even Jack the Ripper around town in his continuing quest for the ultimate scoop. And he usually ended up vanquishing the monster – but gosh darn it, his camera film wouldn't develop, or the cops would lose the evidence, or some other exasperating inconvenience would foul the deal, so that Kolchak's crabby editor would have to axe the story.
They never showed more than a glimpse of the monsters, and that actually made it even scarier. You'd wait and wait for that choice moment when suddenly the creature would pop out of the shadows, ready to flay poor Kolchak to bits. Fortunately, he always did his research, so he'd have the necessary cross or wolfbane or whatever was needed to conquer the boogeyman du jour.
But I will admit, in recent years, I've seen a few movies that conveyed the same macabre mood as those '70s favorites of mine, so I guess it is still possible for me to be captivated by cinema horror. They aren't super-new releases, but you can find them in most stores that sell DVDs.
"Jeepers Creepers" and "Jeepers Creepers 2" tell the tale of a hideous creature that wakes every 23 years to feast for 23 days. If the Creeper needs to replace a hand or leg or other segment of his body, he'll just eat that bit off a tasty victim and presto! New replacement part. That's a pretty gonzo idea for a monster. "Cabin in the Woods" and "Dead Silence" are other, more recent movies that also hit the bull's-eye with plenty of exhilarating weirdness.
Weirdness -- that's what a lot of movies since the '70s have been missing. Many of today's movies seem to be retreads of earlier, better movies.
Plus, '70s horror movies had a lot more energy. The critters leaped into the horror arena with savage gusto. A lot of today's monsters either hover in the shadows or straggle across the screen like damp tomcats that have been left out in the rain all night.
So if you're looking for a creepy chiller and the new releases aren't cuttin' it for you, try hunting down some vintage '70s classics. You have nothing to lose – except your SANITY! Bwaaah-haaa-haaaa-haaaaaaah!
Back then, nobody worried about terrorism or AIDS or mad-cow disease or flesh-eating bacteria or any of the other dozens of bugaboos plaguing society today. Yesteryear's shockers didn't have to compete with planes flying into skyscrapers or anthrax threats or beheadings in the Middle East.
What scared me back then? The hideous, charred face of "The Abominable Dr. Phibes" was pretty darned scary, but the stylish doctor was a sophisticated creampuff compared to the deep-South inbred maniacs of the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" gang. When I first saw that title, I thought it might be some kind of wacky dark comedy, a la "Little Shop of Horrors" – boy, was I wrong!
The grainy film quality, the herky-jerky camera action, all gave a jittery, realistic quality to the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" nightmares up on the screen. And the first time you see old Leatherface, revving up his chainsaw in that ramshackle house of madness – that's a sight you won't soon forget.
Not all movies of that era achieved that same degree of realism, but they were still plenty horrific. For example, the plot of "Sssssss" was utterly implausible, but that's okay – its sheer exuberance carried it through.
Strother Martin played a mad scientist bent on turning humanity into a race of super-intelligent king cobras, for all sorts of goofball reasons. And gee, he'd even invented the formula that would do the trick.
Soon his handsome young assistant's hair is falling out and his skin begins turning scaly. Now if I was working for a mad scientist who was cuckoo for reptiles and my skin suddenly began growing scales... I'd put two and two together. I'd figure out that little Scooby Doo mystery in no time.
But sadly, the assistant in this slithery potboiler never connects the dots. Before long he's the poster boy for the world's most effective slimming program. No arms, no legs, just a lanky serpentine abdomen – that's about as slender as you're gonna get.
"The Devil's Rain," with it's ghoulish cult of wax-blooded devil-worshippers, is a great example of the many Satanic horror movies of the Seventies. The Devil was scarier back then! William Shatner's super-exuberant acting style fit perfectly into this Mephistophelean drive-in shocker.
Even made-for-TV movies were scarier in those days. The old "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" TV movies, and the weekly series that followed, worked my young nerves into a frenzy with their cheesy chills and thrills.
Darren McGavin played a gonzo reporter in a cheap suit who was forever chasing vampires and werewolves and even Jack the Ripper around town in his continuing quest for the ultimate scoop. And he usually ended up vanquishing the monster – but gosh darn it, his camera film wouldn't develop, or the cops would lose the evidence, or some other exasperating inconvenience would foul the deal, so that Kolchak's crabby editor would have to axe the story.
They never showed more than a glimpse of the monsters, and that actually made it even scarier. You'd wait and wait for that choice moment when suddenly the creature would pop out of the shadows, ready to flay poor Kolchak to bits. Fortunately, he always did his research, so he'd have the necessary cross or wolfbane or whatever was needed to conquer the boogeyman du jour.
But I will admit, in recent years, I've seen a few movies that conveyed the same macabre mood as those '70s favorites of mine, so I guess it is still possible for me to be captivated by cinema horror. They aren't super-new releases, but you can find them in most stores that sell DVDs.
"Jeepers Creepers" and "Jeepers Creepers 2" tell the tale of a hideous creature that wakes every 23 years to feast for 23 days. If the Creeper needs to replace a hand or leg or other segment of his body, he'll just eat that bit off a tasty victim and presto! New replacement part. That's a pretty gonzo idea for a monster. "Cabin in the Woods" and "Dead Silence" are other, more recent movies that also hit the bull's-eye with plenty of exhilarating weirdness.
Weirdness -- that's what a lot of movies since the '70s have been missing. Many of today's movies seem to be retreads of earlier, better movies.
Plus, '70s horror movies had a lot more energy. The critters leaped into the horror arena with savage gusto. A lot of today's monsters either hover in the shadows or straggle across the screen like damp tomcats that have been left out in the rain all night.
So if you're looking for a creepy chiller and the new releases aren't cuttin' it for you, try hunting down some vintage '70s classics. You have nothing to lose – except your SANITY! Bwaaah-haaa-haaaa-haaaaaaah!
My Trilogy of Horrors
I've always wanted to write a set of story collections addressing my three great loves: zombie stories, Lovecraftian stories, and seriously weird, dark horror tales. And here are those collections, released by Wildside Press:
HIDEOUS FACES, BEAUTIFUL SKULLS: http://www.amazon.com/Hideous-Faces-Beautiful-Skulls-McLaughlin/dp/1479401889/
GoodReads page: Hideous Faces, Beautiful Skulls
BEST LITTLE WITCH-HOUSE IN ARKHAM: http://www.amazon.com/Best-Little-Witch-House-Arkham-McLaughlin/dp/143444208X/
GoodReads page: Best Little Witch-House in Arkham
BEACH BLANKET ZOMBIE: http://www.amazon.com/Beach-Blanket-Zombie-Humanoid-Horrors/dp/1434440990/
GoodReads page: Beach Blanket Zombie: Weird Tales of the Undead and Other Humanoid Horrors
I also did the covers (I worked as a professional graphic designer for many years). Each book has a staring abomination on the cover: a one-eyed zombie, a two-eyed witch-creature, and a three-eyed cosmic beast. Each monster has a different source of celestial fire: sunlight, moonlight, and lightning. You'll also find plenty of additional monsters inside all of the books, too....
Memories of an Eldritch Childhood
When I was growing up and my family visited my grandmother, who lived in the city, she would give me money for buying books at a bookstore a few blocks down from her building. I bought a lot of wonderful old books, including horror anthologies with classic stories by H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, Donald Wandrei and others.
Also, on other occasions, my parents would leave me at a library when they went shopping (looking back, not very responsible parenting), and when they did, I would always read short horror stories at that library, since I never had time to read anything longer.
Short tales of horror were a big part of my boring rural childhood -- they allowed me to escape into exciting realms of the imagination. That's probably why I've written so many hundreds of short horror stories over the years for various magazines, anthologies, and of course, my own story collections.
If I had to say which of my stories was my favorite ... well, that would be like asking a parent with many kids to name their best child. But I suppose I could name my favorite story in each of my three most recent collections.
Hideous Faces, Beautiful SkullsIn HIDEOUS FACES, BEAUTIFUL SKULLS, my favorite story is "Adroitly Wrapped," which had previously been reprinted in YEAR'S BEST HORROR XXII. It's my favorite because I enjoyed writing about Athena Moth, the shape-shifting witch in the story.
Best Little Witch-House in ArkhamIn BEST LITTLE WITCH-HOUSE IN ARKHAM, my favorite story is "When We Was Flab," a Lovecraftian tale of a pop group called The Vittles. It's my favorite because I enjoyed writing about the tale's villain, Hekuuna, who brings the band closer together than ever before -- in a truly unexpected way.
Beach Blanket Zombie: Weird Tales of the Undead and Other Humanoid Horrors In BEACH BLANKET ZOMBIE, my favorite story is a science-fiction horror story called "Tell Your Secrets to the Slime," about a planet inhabited by a shapeless horror that can bring about a bizarre change in other life-forms. It's my favorite because that vile change, hideous though it may seem, proves beneficial to one of the more unsavory characters.
Of course, my favorite horror story *of all time* would have to be H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror," since it was in one of those early anthologies I read as a child, and it creeped me out in the best possible way. When I read it today, I do realize it's dated and a bit clunky in its dispersal of exposition, but who cares?! It's still a wonderfully weird tale, and Wilbur Whateley is a marvelous monster-man. Hey, ya gotta love a creature with rudimentary eyes deepset in its hips! The works of H.P. Lovecraft have provided me with so many hours of quality entertainment, and I will always be in awe of his feverishly bizarre imagination.
Revenge of the B-Movie Monster
Welcome to the GoodReads.com blog of author MARK McLAUGHLIN.
MARK McLAUGHLIN is a Bram Stoker Award-winning author of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and more. Many of his books fit within the literary tra ...more
MARK McLAUGHLIN is a Bram Stoker Award-winning author of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and more. Many of his books fit within the literary tra ...more
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