Justin Robinson's Blog

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City of Devils fans! I have a new story for you! Your favorite goblin gangster tells the sad story of what happened to him after the events of WOLFMAN CONFIDENTIAL! Pull up a barstool and listen to The Song of Sawbones.

Massive, massive WOLFMAN CONFIDENTIAL spoilers herein. And they rhyme.

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For a brand new free short story. This is the tragic tale of Mira Mirra the Doppelganger and her brush with stardom.

What's Thanksgiving without your favorite blob? Nothing! So grab a drumstick, pull up a chair, and check out this free CITY OF DEVILS story featuring Mr. Gelatin Keyes!

Who wants a new City of Devils short story? Well, you're getting one! This is "All Wet," the story of the crew of the Merry Celestial!

I’m planning to spend most of this week drinking, and frankly, that gets in the way of long, rambling, and expletive-filled reviews.  Fortunately, in the seven years Now Fear This has been alive and well, I’ve written a lot of long, rambling, and expletive-filled reviews.  So this Thanksgiving, if you’re looking for something terrifying to watch that maybe you haven’t heard of, browse through this list of (mostly) horror gems.

28 Weeks Later : A lesser film than its predecessor, though it still has plenty to recommend it.

All Cheerleaders Die : A funny and strange take on zombie love.

Angel Heart : A better film than its notorious reputation suggests.

Attack the Block : Aliens attack a London slum, and it’s up to an embryonic street gang to save the day.

The Bay : The ‘80s meets the ‘10s in this disturbing found footage gem.

Bad Milo! : A touching horror comedy featuring a butt monster.

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon : A mockumentary on the making of a supernatural serial killer in the tradition of Jason, Freddy, and Michael.

Bone Tomahawk : A great horror-western.

Breakdown : Kurt Russell vs. JT Walsh.  Nuff said.

The Brood : Having kids never seemed so fun and easy in this Cronenberg classic!

Brotherhood of the Wolf : Possibly the finest horror romance period piece kung fu action flick ever made.

Bubba Ho-Tep : Elvis and JFK fight a mummy in a Texas rest home.

Cast a Deadly Spell : Los Angeles, 1948. Everyone uses magic.

Cellular : A fun thriller featuring Captain America and the Transporter.

Centurion : Extremely sexy people battle it out in Iron Age Scotland.

Changeling : A baroque docudrama about the nature of corruption.

The Changeling : A truly creepy and atmospheric ghost story.

Chillerama : Highly offensive and extremely funny horror comedy anthology.

The Company of Wolves : Neil Jordan’s fairy tale phantasmagoria that’s probably his way of dealing with sexual abuse.

Cube : Six people trapped in the world’s strangest prison.

Dark City: Director’s Cut : A new edit transforms a good film into a great one.

Dawn of the Dead : Zach Snyder’s best film.

Death Machine : What we thought the future would be in the ‘90s.

Deep Rising : A creature feature in the tradition of the best b-movies.

The Descent : A modern classic of survival horror so scary it barely even needs its monsters.

Dick : A comedy about Dick (Nixon).

Dog Soldiers : Werewolves hunt British soldiers through the Scottish highlands.

Doomsday : Neil Marshall plays Mad Libs with every ‘80s movie ever.

Drop Dead Gorgeous : A pitch black comedy finally getting its cult due.

Feast : A postmodern creature feature.

Fido : The story of a utopia or dystopia. Or zomtopia.

Frailty : A creepy Southern Gothic tale about God.

Freddy vs. Jason : Two horror icons duke it out.

From the Dark : A simple horror story in the dark.

The Ghost and the Darkness : Building a bridge is tough when you’re dealing with two of the worst serial killers in history who also happen to be lions.

The Gift : A creepy Southern Gothic gem from the minds of Sam Raimi and Billy Bob Thornton.

Ginger Snaps : Lycanthrophy serves as a metaphor for puberty for a pair of gothy Irish twins.

Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed : A symbol-happy sequel with a stunning twist.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch : The anarchic sequel/parody of the horror blockbuster.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters : So much better than it looks.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II : An underrated sequel ramps up the worldbuilding.

High Tension : A French extremism homage to classic horror of the ‘70s

The Hitcher : A stark cat-and-mouse story in the unforgiving desert.

The House of the Devil : An ‘80s homage so loving it’s a wonder I didn’t dream it.

The Innkeepers : A slow and moody film that accurately captures the realities of the workplace.

Ironclad : A group of badasses defend a castle.

Insidious : An eerie gore-free ghost story from the guys behind Saw.

Insidious Chapter 2 : An effective sequel to a true horror gem.

Joe Versus the Volcano : A sweet romantic fantasy about the importance of dreaming big.

Josie and the Pussycats : A fun musical comedy.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space : A cable mainstay with great creature FX.

Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau : A great documentary about a terrible film.

May : An indie dramedy gone horribly awry.

The Midnight Meat Train : A solid Clive Barker adaptation.

The Missing : An Apache sorcerer kidnaps a girl to sell her into slavery, Cate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones to the rescue.

The Mist : Though adapted from a Stephen King novella, this is one of the best Lovecraft movies ever made.

Mute Witness : Hitchcockian yarn about a mute girl targeted for death by Russian snuff film makers.

My Boyfriend’s Back : It’s a one joke picture, but you gotta admit the joke is pretty funny.

Nightbreed: The Director’s Cut : A curiosity becomes a classic.

Outlander : Alien Jesus + Vikings vs. Dragon.

Pontypool : A truly original take on zombies.

Predators : Basically an episode of Deadliest Warrior with fucking Predators.

Pumpkinhead : A Stan Winston film.

The Purge: Anarchy : A sequel that finally fulfills the squandered promise of the original.

Rare Exports : A truly original Christmas horror film.

Ravenous : You are who you eat.

Raze : A bone-crunching exploitation riff on the male gaze.

The Sacrament : A disturbing fictionalized account of Jonestown.

Series 7: The Contenders : An early satire of reality television.

Session 9 : This whole goddamn movie is haunted.

Splice : Why you should never use metaphor with your mutant.

Stake Land : A survival horror movie with indie cred.

Stir of Echoes : An underrated ghost story.

The Strangers : Lock the doors, bar the windows. Doesn’t matter. They’re already in the house.

Streets of Fire : A rock and roll fable.

The Stuff : Are you eating it, or is it eating you?

Teeth : A young woman makes friends with her mutation. Say cheese!

Them! : ‘50s atomic horror classic about giant ants.

The Thin Blue Line : An Errol Morris classic that doubles as a terrifying horror story.

Trollhunter : The best found footage movie ever made.

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil : Ingenious hicksploitation parody that gives us The Texas Chain Saw Massacre from Leatherface’s point of view.

What We Do in the Shadows : A hilarious mockumentary about vampires.

The Witch : A primary sourced horror tale.

You’re Next : An inversion of the classic home invasion horror thriller.

Enjoy your terror!

Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion Tagged: 28 Weeks Later, All Cheerleaders Die, Angel Heart, Attack the Block, Bad Milo!, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, Bone Tomahawk, Breakdown, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Bubba Ho-Tep, cast a deadly spell, Cellular, Centurion, Changeling, Chillerama, Cube, Dark City, Dawn of the Dead, Death Machine, Deep Rising, Dick, Dog Soldiers, Doomsday, Drop Dead Gorgeous, Feast, Fido, Frailty, Freddy vs. Jason, From the Dark, Ginger Snaps, Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Insidious, Insidious Chapter 2, Ironclad, Joe Versus the Volcano, Josie and the Pussycats, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau, May, Mute Witness, My Boyfriend's Back, Nightbreed: The Director's Cut, Now Fear This, Outlander, Pontypool, Predators, Pumpkinhead, Rare Exports, Ravenous, Raze, Series 7: The Contenders, Session 9, Splice, Stake Land, Stir of Echoes, Streets of Fire, Teeth, The Bay, The Brood, The Changeling, The Company of Wolves, The Descent, The Ghost and the Darkness, The Gift, The Hitcher, The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers, The Midnight Meat Train, The Missing, The Mist, The Purge: Anarchy, The Sacrament, The Strangers, The Stuff, The Thin Blue Line, The Witch, Them!, Trollhunter, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, What We Do in the Shadows, You're Next

Hi, I’m a shark!

The original Jaws is a better movie than Mother Theresa is a person. That’s either the most or least controversial thing I’ve ever said, depending on who you are, but I’ll stand by it. The sequels, though, range from pointless to a garbage fire in an open sewer filled with skunks who all have exploding bowel syndrome. Let’s talk about the bowel explodiest of all the franchise with Jaws: The Revenge, shall we?

Tagline: This time it’s personal.

More Accurate Tagline: This time it’s nonsensical.

Guilty Party: Whatever dead-eyed mid-level executive who, like a shark, could smell the few droplets of blood clinging to the franchise and decided to wring that shit out over the baby birds’ nest of the American viewing public.

Synopsis: Roy Scheider had enough sense to call it quits after the first two movies, so Chief Brody is dead. His wife, Ellen (Lorraine Gary in her final role) still lives on Amity Island with her son Sean, who has become a cop like his dad. She’s also convinced that, despite the fact that Chief Brody died of a heart attack, the shark got him. With those kinds of critical thinking skills, I’m thinking Ellen’s later life is filled with a lot of reposting Breitbart articles on Facebook.

Sean gets eaten by a shark, because at this pint, there’s a shark mafia with a hit out on the Brody family. The other son, Michael (Lance Guest, a.k.a. The Last Starfighter), now a marine biologist in the Bahamas, returns for the funeral and convinces Ellen to spend Christmas with him and his family. He points out that the water in the Bahamas is too warm for great whites, which ironically marks the one time this series said anything accurate about sharks.

But, you know, this is a Jaws movie, and it would be perverse if the next hour was devoted to, say, counting snails and watching the elderly date. Which is why that’s exactly the plot of the next hour of the movie. Yep, Ellen starts romancing local pilot Hoagie (Michael Caine), who is also a degenerate gambler and is heavily implied to be a cocaine smuggler. Which… seriously, movie? Also, Michael and his partner Jake (Mario van Peebles) count conchs for their graduate work. It’s riveting stuff.

Then, finally, the goddamn shark shows up. Jake is psyched because fuck snails. He wants to study the giant monster shark who shouldn’t even be living there. Michael agrees, but doesn’t want Ellen to find out the shark literally stalked her on vacation. That’d be super awkward if they ran into each other at a social gathering, though, right?

…which is exactly what happens. The shark shows up at a big beach party and eats a lady. Then Michael has to come clean that oh, yeah, there’s totally a monster shark in the water. Uh, Merry Christmas, mom?

Ellen predictably freaks out, steals Jake’s boat, and decides to fight the shark. Somehow. I really don’t know what she has planned here. Michael and Jake pile into Hoagie’s plane to find her, and when they do, Hoagie radios in for a rescue, then crashes the plane in the water.

All three of them manage to make the short swim onto the boat (despite the killer shark in the water), and have to MacGyver together a solution. This involves using strobe lights to make the shark jump out of the water, and then Lorraine spears it through the neck with the bowsprit. Yay! Christmas is saved!

Life-Changing Subtext: Wildlife is at the core of most marital and health problems.

Defining Quote: Michael: “I’ve always wanted to make love to an angry welder.”

Gonna leave that one delightfully free of context.

Standout Performance: The shark is incredible. Somehow managing to look worse than the famously phony shark puppet in the first movie, this thing wobbles through the water on a clearly visible rail, and looks like the kind of great white whose chromosomes are only working about half the time. But that’s not the best part. The best part is this fucking thing can roar like a lion. Underwater.

What’s Wrong: Okay, you know how every Jaws movie ends? The shark gets killed. Despite this, Ellen Brody is somehow convinced that the same shark has been hunting her family. How is this even possible? The writer of the novelization figured this out and attempted to patch the plot hole.

…by making a voodoo priest mad at Michael and cursing him with a shark. Yeah. That’s a thing that happened. Somehow it never made it to the screen. We’re clearly not meant to be happy.

Also, avoiding sharks might be the easiest thing ever. I’m doing it right now and I’m not even trying.

Flash of Competence: A couple times the movie shows scenes from the original, in an effort to capture that magic. Those flashbacks are competent. Everything else, not so much.

Best Scenes: There’s no easy way to put this, so I’ll come right out and say it: Ellen Brody is an X-Man. She has a psychic connection to the shark. Yep, she can sense the monster like it’s her long-lost sister on Endor or something. Maybe that’s why she stole the boat in the final bit. She was looking for a tearful reunion before facing Darth Vader together.

She also has a flashback to when Chief Brody killed the shark (you know, the one she thinks she’s fighting now) in the first movie. Remember how Ellen was there? No, you don’t, because Brody was alone on a sinking ship at the time. So yeah, Ellen Brody is an X-Man.

My favorite thread in the movie might be the fact that whatever the shark bites, or wherever it goes, there’s blood in the water. There’s blood before it attacks anyone. After biting a plank of wood on the side of a boat, there’s blood everywhere like someone sacrificed a fatted calf. The only way this makes sense is if the shark is Bleeding Gums Murphy.

Transcendent Moment: In one cut of the movie, the shark explodes, marking the exact moment Michael Bay sprang into existence like Athena from the head of Zeus.

See?

Jaws: The Revenge is a classic of bad cinema for a reason. Just don’t let it ruin the excellent first movie for you.

Filed under: Projected Pixels and Emulsion Tagged: exploding shark, jaws, Jaws: The Revenge, shark stalking on vacation, voodoo shark, What are you doing here shark?, Yakmala!

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It makes sense in context.

My first attempt at a League of Magi comic book story was a globe-trotting affair starring some of the characters that have already played a part in Coldheart. It was terrible. Like, unreadably bad. Characters reciting “as you know” exposition at each other, battles with fuzzy stakes and even fuzzier parameters, and worldbuilding hurled at the reader like a Nolan Ryan fastball. The one thing it did do was introduce the world all at once, so that the reader could understand the sandbox I’d made for myself. I’d call it a case of good intentions and abominable execution.

Then I decided to pull back and introduce the world as a human being might stumble into it, as detailed in the aforementioned Coldheart. The next story would span most of the other organizations, and be entirely different from my first, abortive attempt. This story, called Clay Soldiers, was more of an action tale starring the cannon fodder of the League on a desperate mission. I liked it. I thought it was pretty darn good. But it needed more foundation. It needed a story to bridge the gap for it to make sense in the larger construct.

The Daughter Gambit is that bridge. League of Magi as a project is all about how every character is the protagonist of their own story, so that a single individual can be the hero of one story, a supporting character in another, and the villain in the third. Chris Black, our own Coldheart, needed that entire transition. I also wanted to introduce the hero of Clay Soldiers and provide a bit of the backstory for why he is how he is. In addition, the villain of Clay Soldiers needed time in the limelight, so that his motivation in that novella would make sense. Lastly, Teotl needed a story of her own. She’s one of the more interesting presences in that first novella (to me anyway) in that she’s an antagonist, but it’s also clear that she’s not evil. There’s a strong argument to be made that she’s the nicest person Chris meets on his journey. Their connection interested me, and so I wrote a story to explore it a bit more.

That’s the fun part about being a writer. Find something interesting? You get to make up more stuff about it.

Because Clay Soldiers had already been planned out at this point (half-written as comic scripts and the rest outlined), I already had my players. My “hero” organization would the Butterfly’s, so they would be the antagonists in The Daughter Gambit. I’d shown off the Diabolists with the Twins and Sorcerers with the Priestess in the League, and now it was time to introduce the Necromancers.

As appropriate for a power based in the Far East, I drew on some of the folklore, traditions, and pop culture to build out the mythology of the Butterfly. Most obvious is probably the appearance of her ghost Servitors, who look like they stepped out of a J-horror flick. They basically did. What can I say? I like those movies, and they’re a fun take on ghosts, which in western traditions, have been a bit hidebound.

Necromancy is fundamentally about the soul. Theurgy, the Art of Rose Cross, is about the mind. So I needed to draw a distinction between the two. Pure soul is about desire and emotion. That’s why ghosts are so unbalanced and weird. They can’t really think rationally so they’re in the constant grip of intense feelings. When I was puzzling out how the Necromancers compelled their service, I came up with the idea of Masu Stations (I got the term “masu” for a samurai’s pay). Allowing the ghosts to indulge their biggest passion gave them an interesting hook, and created these houses of horror the Butterfly has to operate in order to keep some of her most dangerous troops in line.

There’s a hierarchy in the Underworld, which is apparent in the person of the Pale Lords. These are ghosts, usually older though not necessarily, who have accumulated great power by resolving their torments in life, and creating a sense of resonance with the “real” world. (Don’t worry, this will be explained more in subsequent stories.) As a ghost grows in power they begin to manifest more individuality. Their features begin to look more like them, and they show some kind of evidence on their bodies of what caused their deaths.

In the novella, I introduced the idea of Prodigals and Scions, so each would get a short story about them. “Children of the Snake” was a way to look at how Scions (though super, crazy illegal by the laws of the League) do exist and can function in their way. It also gives Shahmeran a little bit of depth and an interesting way to get her in trouble and a potential secret weapon against her enemies. “Conservation of Light” talks about the Prodigals a bit more and gives some contrast. We saw how the Twins deal with at least one example, now we see what the Priestess does.

“Forever for a Moment” and “Until There’s Nothing Left” are love stories, and those are difficult for me to write. They’re not my wheelhouse, but they need to be there in the fabric of the world. Love is a strong motivator, maybe the strongest one of all, and the members of the League are human beings or close to it. Logically, they would crave some kind of contact. I wanted to show that it’s nearly impossible for them to experience love the way normal humanity would. Any romance would be tied up inexorably in the Art through which they manipulate the world. I thought it was a nice bit of symmetry to use both Apprentices featured in “Wait,” so we can see what their lives are like when they’re not being diplomatic with each other.

“Playback” continues the theme of having one espionage story per book. I thought it would be fun to contrast the high magic of some of the world with what amounts to almost a crushingly mundane office situation. This also establishes an example of what a League intelligence bureau looks like.

Of all the stories I did for this collection, “Wooden Faith” caused me the most trouble. I decided partway through that the bakru can’t actually see the way we do since they don’t have, by a strict definition, eyes.. While this doesn’t matter for their introduction (one has a brief role in “The Menagerie), when you’re doing a story from their point of view, it informs literally everything you write. That one had to be torn down multiple times before it arrived in its present state. It was supposed to be an easy one too, just showing what it’s like when one organization has a replacement on hand for its bitterest enemy. Santa Orisha has been driven a little insane, but she’s not paranoid. She knows the Twins wouldn’t mind her dead.

The Daughter Gambit started as a simple bridge, but it gained outsized importance in my head and for the future of the stories. Teotl is far closer to a traditional protagonist than Coldheart can be, and she has concrete goals and complex motivations now. At least, that was my attempt. I ended up being quite proud of this story and plan to return to her frequently.

Don’t worry. The rest of the world gets introduced in the third book.

Filed under: Level Up, Puffery Tagged: Coldheart, League of Magi, Liner notes, The Daughter Gambit