horror – Page 4

Book Review: Wrestle Maniacs

January 9, 2018 by David Dubrow 2 Comments

More a treat for horror/dark crime fans than true devotees of professional wrestling, Wrestle Maniacs, unlike the sport it’s based upon, pulls no punches in its all-out brutality. Funny, disgusting, and over the top, when it hits it mirrors its subject matter in a way few short story anthologies can hope to emulate, and when it misses you’re left with the sweaty, sticky spectacle of a Montreal Screwjob.

The book begins with a foreword by Jeff Strand that’s blessedly brief and leads into Tom Leins’s terrific Real Americans, a hard-core tale of drugs, crime, and former wrestling professionals with names like Gringo Starr and Fingerfuck Flanagan. This story really sets the tone for the remainder of the book.

Nick Bullman, the protagonist of James Newman’s Ugly as Sin, returns in the offering A Fiend in Need, though you don’t have to have read the former to be entertained by the latter. This theme of returning characters continues with Joseph Hirsch’s Three Finger Bolo, a gut-wrenching tale of dirty, bloody fighting featuring “Bam-Bam” Abruzzi, the father of Hirsch’s Ritchie “Redrum” Abruzzi in the novel My Tired Shadow.

Fans of lucha libre aren’t left out of the wrestling spectrum with Hector Acosta’s From Parts Unknown, an arresting, bizarre tale of homecoming, and Gabino Iglesias’s revenge story El Nuevo Santo’s Last Fight. You might be forgiven if you thought that David James Keaton’s El Kabong was also a story of luchadores, but it’s not: it starts with the unforgettable line, “While I was still stumbling around trying to figure out why my pants suddenly didn’t seem to have any leg holes, police officers were pounding on my door eager to tell me my wife was found dead in a guitar case.”

Eryk Pruitt twists up the reader like a fish in a Boston Crab in his Last of the High-Flying Van Alstynes, a tale of loss, family, and mental illness. We travel back to pro wrestling’s pre-television days in Ed Kurtz’s Duluth, and Duncan P. Bradshaw’s Glassjaw, another story with a single word as a title, takes place in dialogue rather than action.

Patrick Lacey’s Kill to Be You is not only out there, but way on the other side of the galaxy. The universe, even. And you’ll definitely want to skip lunch before reading Jason Parent’s Canadian Donkey Punch. Just…just trust me on that.

The editor of the anthology, Adam Howe, has the funniest offering in the book (natch) with a Reggie Levine Clusterfuck (sic) titled Rassle Hassle. This time, Reggie finds himself in the wild and wacky world of wrestling, where his unique willingness to do almost anything to help a friend (or a casual acquaintance calling himself a friend) comes in quite handy. I only threw up once reading it, so that’s good.

You don’t have to like professional wrestling to enjoy this collection, particularly if you’re a pseudo-intellectual like me who looks down his nose at such low-brow fare. All you have to remember is the words of wrestling great Ric Flair: “Whether you like it or not, learn to love it, because it’s the best thing going. Woooooo!”

Stranger Things Season 2: Review

January 3, 2018 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

In this piece I’ll be spoiling the hell out of Stranger Things season 2, so if you haven’t seen it yet and plan to, now would be the time to read one of the other articles on this site, or, better yet, read a good book written by a fine writer.

This was the season where nothing happened. None of the principal characters changed in any significant way, and many of the same events from the first season repeated themselves in this one. Just like in season one, a new girl (Max) enters the friend group and causes chaos among the pre-adolescent protagonists. Will Byers is once again held prisoner by a horrific, otherworldly force, and is freed only at the very end. Once again Will’s mom trashes the whole house to solve Will’s terrible mystery. Nobody died except for characters introduced in this season, so it was a wash (I was kind of hoping that Bob Newby would turn out to be Soviet spy, but that didn’t happen). We learned very little about the main monster, the smoke-thing looming menacingly over the town like a post-Christmas credit card statement. Apparently it’s referred to by the writers as The Sentient, which is about as silly a name for something as The Situation.

It took an entire plot-miring episode, The Lost Sister, to give Eleven a badly-needed makeover. Why does Eleven’s left nostril bleed when she uses her powers? Because both nostrils bleed when she really, really uses her powers, that’s why. John Byers and Nancy Wheeler finally hook up despite a lack of chemistry that I can’t believe isn’t deliberate. The introduction of Max (a diversity pick? I ask, you decide) diluted the friend group (“the party”) such that Mike Wheeler ended up becoming entirely unnecessary the entire season, which was a shame: the show needed his vulnerability and childish stubbornness. Mr. Clarke, one of the only grown-ups in the show who wasn’t full of shit, was pretty much written out of the season, replaced by moderately-amusing conspiracy nut Murray Bauman.

Steve Harrington stepped up as a decent, even heroic character, even if he had to be saved by a little girl from being beaten to death by Billy, the unnecessary antagonist. (Note that Billy is the only human bad guy in the show; Paul Reiser’s ineffectual, uninteresting replacement of Matthew Modine eliminated all major human antagonists.) Dustin turned out a bit more likable than expected. Lucas wasn’t tested enough in this season to make him interesting, though his little sister was hysterical.

So what’s next for season 3? More teenage psychics, no doubt. #8’s Shadow-like powers were very neat, if not terribly well thought-out. What is the Upside-Down, anyway? It can’t just be a whole other universe that just happens to have its own rules and ecosystem; it’s clearly a horrific reflection of our own. What does The Sentient/Situation want? Will Hopper and Dustin suffer ill effects from breathing in the demonic farts of the disgusting tunnel-anuses? Will the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers who this show is clearly aimed at get their fill of 80’s nostalgia in depictions of old-style candy bar wrappers and coin-op arcade games?

We’ll find out late this year, I suspect. I’ll be there. Will you?

2017 in Review: Top Five Books

December 21, 2017 by David Dubrow 1 Comment

Despite my writing proclivities I read across genres, and not just because I occasionally intend to review what I read. Most of what I’ve read this year I haven’t reviewed. Pleasantly, this year I’ve mostly figured out the trick of being a book author and a book reviewer: it’s reviewing the stuff you like and not reviewing the stuff you don’t like. Make no promises and you’ll alienate no one. Win-win.

Here are the top five books I’ve read this year.

5: Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons and Dragons by Gary Witwer: One of the most transformative moments of my younger days was joining the high school’s D&D club and playing the RPGs I’d collected since age ten. There will always be a special place in my heart for Dungeons and Dragons, and this biography of Gary Gygax, D&D’s creator, unveils so much I didn’t know about the early days of the game. It gets a bit silly in parts with the dramatizations of moments in Gygax’s life, but overall it’s a must-read for D&D fans.
4: The Assyrian by Nicholas Guild: Not dissimilar to Mika Waltari’s The Egyptian and Gary Jennings’s Aztec, Guild’s two novels about the life and times of Tiglath Ashur are riveting reading. Published in 1987, they’re as relevant today as when they were written, focusing on universal themes and unforgettable characters.
3: My Tired Shadow by Joseph Hirsch: What can I say about this book that I haven’t already said in my review? The rise and fall and further descent of Ritchie “Redrum” Abruzzi is a classic story, well told. Full of brutal ugliness and intense pathos, it’s the kind of book you don’t see coming, like a shovel hook to the liver.
2: Night of the Furies by David Angsten: The sequel to Angsten’s amazing Dark Gold, it continues the adventures of Jack Duran, who is once again plunged into terrifying adventures by his scholarly but irresponsible brother Dan. This time the action moves to the Greek isles, where the old gods are still in charge. Once I got to the last third, the titular Night, I could not put the book down. Fast-reading and mind-ripping, it rekindled that sense of Hellenic magic and danger I remember from Mary Renault’s The King Must Die.
1: Tough Guys by Adrian Cole: I wasn’t half-finished reading Tough Guys when I knew that it was likely going to be my favorite book of the year. In every story in the collection the writing is sharp, the plotting is tight, and every scene builds on the next, tightening the nerves until the conclusion. Characters like Oil-Gun Eddy and Razorjack echo in the imagination long after the book’s done. I can only compare Cole’s work to writers like Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock with the highest respect and admiration. If you read nothing else this or any other year, read Tough Guys. I can’t believe Cole isn’t a household name in every fantasy/horror fan’s lexicon.

Only one horror book in the favorites pack this year, though it was the top one. What surprises does 2018 have in store?

2017 in Review: Top Five Movies

December 19, 2017 by David Dubrow 1 Comment

I’ve watched fewer movies this year than in previous; between writing, spending time with family, and the occasional television program, there hasn’t been time for it. Also, my overall discontent with Hollywood and its emphasis on empty, worthless franchise projects makes finding a movie worth seeing a difficult prospect at best.

And yet I did see stuff I liked. Here are my top five movies of 2017:

5: The Theta Girl: Trippy and bizarre in all the right ways, The Theta Girl proved that a low budget doesn’t automatically equal low quality in filmmaking. When it wasn’t funny it was grotesque, and despite the uneven acting it had some unforgettable scenes. If you have the opportunity to see it, pop some Lemonheads and put your peepers on the screen.
4: Wichita: A movie I dug despite a draggy middle section, it was full of pleasant surprises. Trevor Peterson as Jeb was the stand-out, and if you’re going to hang your movie on a single actor’s performance, he was the perfect pick. Creepy but vulnerable, he made the film.
3: They Call Me Jeeg: This year I’ve made my disgust with superhero films crystal clear, but They Call Me Jeeg turns the entire genre inside-out, making it fresh and worth paying attention to. Enzo, the protagonist, goes from being kind of disgusting to sympathetic to heroic, which is movie magic the likes of which James Cameron has never achieved. Check it out.
2: Burn: It’s a short film, and in the interest of full disclosure was written and produced by Chris Barnes, proprietor of The Slaughtered Bird. Putting aside my biases, I really liked this movie. Punchy, disquieting, and extremely well-done despite the minimal budget, it takes Michael Keaton’s My Life and eviscerates it with a meat hook.
1: Deep in the Wood: When considering my favorite films of the year, there was never any question that Deep in the Wood was going to sit at the top of the list. We use terms like “affecting” and “unforgettable” a lot in movie reviewing, but this one takes the cake for intensity. Every scene is meticulously planned, portrayed, and produced for maximum effect. I loved it.

Next year, I may switch from movies to Top Five TV Shows of 2017, but we’ll see.

New Review of Beneath the Ziggurat

October 23, 2017 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

Typically I don’t link to reviews of my work any longer; I appreciate every review, but I just don’t read them anymore. However, Nev Murray, proprietor of Confessions of a Reviewer, wrote such a detailed review of Beneath the Ziggurat that I have to link to it:

I’m a sucker for horror stories set way back in our past that include references to ancient evils that guard certain places or certain people and the oft talked about consequences of going against that evil.

That is exactly what you get in this tale. Add into the mix a little bit of eerie Lovecraftian style monsters and demons, and this story ticks all the boxes for me.

This is totally different from anything I have read from Mr Dubrow previously. His novels can be very in-depth, with huge back stories and complicated patchworks of interconnecting storylines that all merge into one for the finale.

You should definitely read the whole thing. And, once you’re done, pick up a copy of Beneath the Ziggurat. It’s inexpensive (free if you’re on Kindle Unlimited), entertaining, and includes an excerpt of my novella Dreadedin Chronicles: The Nameless City. Such a deal!

Book Review: Red Room Issue #1

October 19, 2017 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

Comet Press’s latest venture, issue #1 of the magazine Red Room, is very much like a cocktail party: you meet a number of interesting people, some of whom you might’ve heard of before; you eat a few hors d’oeuvres, some of which you like more than others; and you go home after a couple hours, hoping you get invited again. Despite the title and description, Red Room isn’t terribly heavy or challenging, and yet it’s still a lot of fun.

The horror stories range from the mildly amusing to the thought-provoking. Nick Manzolillo’s Phantom Video Stream makes it to the latter category, though it doesn’t go quite as far as one would like in a magazine of “extreme horror.” Are You Crazy? by Tim Waggoner uses the 2nd-person present perspective to bring the scares, which is a bit gimmicky, but works until it doesn’t. Larry Hinkle’s Meat Cute is a flash fiction piece that you might find funny. Josh Scott Wilson’s Sick Jokes lives up to its title and more, particularly if you’ve got a hard-on for the wealthy.

Those of you who believe that there are more than two genders, as well as anyone who views The Handmaid’s Tale as a cautionary tale of America’s terrible slide into a repressive, misogynistic theocracy, will appreciate Randy Chandler’s interview with Meg Elison, who has a story in Red Room titled The Middle Child.

For dark crime fans, there’s Tom Barlow’s disturbing, hilarious Selfie, which is arguably the best story in the magazine. David James Keaton’s The Flowery feels like a long wind-up to a slow pitch. Megan’s Law by Jack Ketchum is the story that stays with you long after you put the magazine down to get some fresh air.

The interview with Gil Valle, the so-called Cannibal Cop, is a disquieting piece that tells a tale of injustice and biased journalism; if you’re not a little bit upset after reading it, there’s probably something wrong with you. Of course, if you’re reading Red Room, let alone reviews of Red Room, you’re likely a little bit off anyway. There’s also an excerpt of Valle’s first novel, A Gathering of Evil.

Other non-fiction pieces include Duane Bradley’s article To Deprave & Corrupt, which one-sidedly describes the arrival of extreme horror in VHS form to England in the 1980’s, and efforts to suppress it. Ben Arzate reviews Ken Greenhall’s 1977 novel Hell Hound, which put the book on my must-read list right there and then. For movie reviews, Patrick King takes a closer look at the independent horror film A Dark Song (yup, gonna have to see that one). Barfly Bob’s Highballs and Lowballs describes drinks that you’d have to be nuts to want to be in the same bar with, let alone pour down your gullet. Brian J. McCarthy, who I assume is being paid by the comma, takes a satirical trip to Comet Press’s nonexistent west coast office in The Rogue Report, with bizarre results.

Across the board, Red Room is a fine piece of work, a welcome addition to the horror/dark crime genre. I doubt it’s a coincidence that the bound fellow on the cover resembles Comet’s Randy Chandler, and if it is him, I pray they let him down for issue #2.