"Jay North as He Stands in Relation to Rage and the Tragedy Margin" - Will Bernardara Jr.

Jay North, everybody

The highlight of the July 2019 issue of the Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles (LAROLA, to its familiars) is Will Bernardara Jr.'s "Jay North as He Stands in Relation to Rage and the Tragedy Margin." This short fiction provides a snippet from the life of Jay North, the actor who played Dennis the Menace, as a grown man in 1980s Burbank. In Bernadara Jr.'s imagining, North has been reduced to a shut-in's life, and spends his days watching slasher films on VHS and eating constant junk food (e.g. Dingdongs and Tostitos). Bernardara Jr.'s fiction aptly captures the emptiness of child stardom post-childhood and, more generally, that of the 1980s in the United States. The prose is evocative from start to finish, though Bernardara Jr. occasionally goes heavy-handed when representing Jay North's addled thoughts, leaning heavily on all-caps descriptions and psychotic-for-the-sake-of-psychotic visions. Sentences such as "BABYLON BABIES [...] BURN YOUR FACES OFF WITH A BLOWTORCH" abound. While more than a little bit silly, these images have a somewhat jarring effect, which ultimately serve the atmosphere of the piece, and so I make mention of these authorial decisions not as a measure of critique. Towards a more pointed critique, I would bring up the notion of the slasher film as the go-to, presumptive "totally nihilistic" genre of cinema. Indeed, as Bernardara Jr. writes, "now those relatively tame pictures don’t satisfy him [Jay North] the way the slasher movies do. He needs the grungy viscerals, the spurting blood, the savagery of ‘80s basement-horror to feed whatever elemental thing rages inside him." Slasher films aren't necessarily the optimal shorthand for nihilistic violence. By contrast, many 80s slashers rely on the quick, stylized, and almost bloodless kill, where murder is a hit-and-run affair. Indeed, the movies Bernardara Jr. puts in North's regular rotation include The Prowler, Visiting Hours, and Sweet Sixteen, all of which follow from this formula. All are competent slashers (or, in the case of Visiting Hours, the psychological-profile sort of pseudo-slasher), but none are particularly mean-spirited. By contrast, I personally would have had North watching exploitation films: Cannibal Holocaust, Nightmares in a Damaged Brain, and perhaps even Salome. In these films, torture, death, and brutality do not pass by the viewer's eyes hastily. The murder scenes are almost meditative, and this, I would imagine, would even better suit the subjectivity of a former child star. True-to-form early-80s slashers films just don't deliver the unexpurgated savagery that these pure exploitation films do. The violent exploitation flick, then, is a better signifier for filmic nihilism than the slasher. The only classically exploitative slasher Bernardara Jr. includes in Jay North's lineup is Pieces (though we might consider The Mutilator among these as well). With all that being said, I would concede that exploitation films are more 42nd Street New York than Burbank, California, and so Bernardara Jr. is all-in-all justified in his choice of the slasher. Certainly, my quibble stems from a minor peccadillo at best—Bernardara's fiction delivers solidly, and his vision of Jay North's life is a recommended read from an author to look out for in the future.

Black Cloud

The first time I read Juliet Escoria's Black Cloud was just after its release in 2014. At first blush, I was dazzled by Escoria's punky, sexy goth-girl aura. It was as if a Suicide Girl had written a novel(la). Certainly, Escoria's online profile, which featured the author splayed in all manner of suggestive poses, contributed to this vibe. Even more appealing was Escoria's sparse prose tinctured with an almost exultant hurt, not to mention the ease with which she could intersperse disaffected sex scenes in her narratives. Straddling New York and L.A. cityscapes, she conjured (for me, at least) the portrait of a young woman enigmatically capering in bob-cuts and chokers between cosmopolitan mis-en-scenes. She was, in 2014, the kind of girl I wanted to connect with in mutual ennui, and in my first read-through, I felt as if this was happening. In short, Juliet Escoria was a fantasy.

The second time I read Black Cloud by Juliet Escoria (that is, Juliet Scum, for non-Spanish speakers) was just last week. This time around, I saw the book more clearly for what it is: the stark, uncompromising account of an addict and her personal undoing(s). It is not sexy at all. Why would we expect it to be? On the contrary, Black Cloud catalogues a deep lack of fulfillment with relationships on levels sexual, emotional, and existential. It is about being jerked around by fellow addicts, finding only bottomless hollows in boyfriends, girlfriends, family, and everyone in between. "Connecting" with anyone is, as per Escoria's work, all but impossible; sex, drugs and, hell, even wholesome pursuits all lead to dead-ends. 

Juliet Escoria is no fantasy. Her capacity for tracing the emptiness of addiction (and the wider world outside it) is about as real as it gets. Hopefully other readers will get that on their first read-through. I suppose my recent re-reading is inflected with post-#MeToo sensibilities. More palpably, I think it indexes my own growth--or my own giving up--and the solace that comes with it. I don't know if Juliet Escoria has grown up or given up or what, but I hope she's found some kind of solace, too.

I Spit on Your Grave (2010)

I was rooting through the “Spooky Halloween” DVD bin at my local Wal-Mart, tossing aside predictable Casper the Friendly Ghost and Friday the 13th fare, when I came across something unexpected: the 2010 version of I Spit on Your Grave. This is, of course, the remake of the 1978 film of the same name (a.k.a. Day of the Woman) wherein Buster Keaton’s granddaughter plays a progressive, NYC-based writer who has probably read her fair share of Susan Brownmiller. She goes to a rural area to get some solitude, but instead gets the full Brownmiller treatment from four feral local men. After the ordeal, she takes merciless revenge on all four of her assailants. The director of the original, Meir Zarchi, compared his talents to those of Fellini.

The 2010 version recapitulates the 1978 plot, though it expands the rapist count to five. It also adds a few interstitial scenes between the rape and the revenge, allowing for some minimal characterization (i.e. that one of the assaulters has a wife and child) that makes the whole undertaking that much more vexingly ambivalent. The rape scene is even more unnecessarily long than in the original. Afterward, you empathize with the main character, even if you didn’t before. The pert, twenty-something leading actress, Sarah Butler, is not exactly convincing in her portrayal of a writer. Personally, I don’t know many colleagues in the craft with CrossFit bodies befitting of skimpy swimwear, and so, for suspension-of-disbelief purposes, the female lead might have been better framed as “pre-med” or “a scientist” rather than as a “novelist.” The rapists, however, have changed from random local yokels to hard-bitten sons of the soil—that is, expressly redneck—and so the remake leans more heavily on city vs. country tropes than did the original. This makes the female lead even more sympathetic and her protracted, torture-porn revenge more satisfying. The original film messed with the viewer in a deeply problematic way, in that you started to feel minimally sorry for the unwitting rapists as they were systematically brutalized. In the newer version, the revenge feels more eugenic than anything else. In the end, there are five less future Trump voters left standing. As such, you are willing to forgive the implausible, Saw-level complexity of the kills. 

All told, the remake isn’t exactly Fellini, but it is probably a better film than its namesake. Still, there’s something lost between eras. The original, after all, was meant to be viewed in the grainiest of prints in the dingiest of the NYC (or outer-borough) grindhouses, sitting in the dark alongside hustlers, Nam Vets, and other assorted degenerates—the kind of people who cheer during the revenge and the rape. The 2010 version is something you end up watching with your vaguely emo girlfriend while she intermittently massages her iPhone 11. Sure, you’re reminded of the horrific potentialities that perpetually lurk between men and women, even in the twenty-first century, but it’s just not as ghastly this time around. 

Perhaps the real horror is that you can find a rape movie like I Spit on Your Grave stacked atop Casper the Friendly Ghost at your local Wal-Mart. This is another jarring reminder of the amoral aesthetic juxtapositions wrought by late-capitalist sensibilities. Of course, Casper was the ghost of a child, suggesting undertones as dark—or conceivably darker—than the timeless, gendered violence of I Spit on Your Grave in its 2010 or 1978 iterations.

NFR - Lana Del Rey

To this point, the songs constituting the Lana Del Rey oeuvre can be divided into two major categories: the “bangers” and the “stinkers” (as well as third category of unremarkable songs in between). The “bangers” are the signature hits: “Summertime Sadness,” “Cola,” “West Coast,” “High by the Beach,” and the list goes on and on. The “stinkers” are the songs that didn’t work, and they are much less frequent.

Del Rey’s previous record, Lust for Life, had a few true bangers, including “Love" and "White Mustang,” but it also had more than a few stinkers (viz. anything with A$AP Rocky or Shaun Lennon in it). Moreover, Lust for Life was marred by a lawsuit that deemed the song “Get Free” had plagiarized Radiohead’s “Creep.” The plagiarism is debatable; the real travesty of justice is how lifeless British tripe like Radiohead remains relevant.

Del Rey’s latest offering, titled NFR (or Norman Fucking Rockwell in full) is something of a bounce-back record. Or perhaps it is a finale. The songs are darker and longer, the lyrics elegiac and rambling. This is not a negative, however. While there are no real bangers on the album, there aren’t really any stinkers either. The album is eminently listenable from start to finish, even if it isn't built around patent singles. There certainly are some standouts on this album, perhaps most notably "Venice Bitch," a 9-plus minute track premised on a pun paralleling that of LMFAO’s 2008 offering “I’m in Miami Bitch” (although in a considerably maturated iteration). Nonetheless, the album is best appreciated as a single, cohesive whole. Its rambling verses are integral to the artistry, as they read like poetry. 

Quite fittingly, given the nature of the lyrical compositions, there are several Sylvia Plath references. Often, Del Rey speaks in finalizing terms. “The culture is lit, I guess this is it, and I had a ball/I guess that I’m burned out after all,” she offers on “The Greatest,” a resigned, poignant, but ultimately self-satisfied eleventh track that could have aptly closed the album.

Will this be Lana Del Rey's last kick at the Pepsi Cola can? Probably—hopefully—not. This haunting, wandering album leaves us wanting more. It doesn’t feel like an ending, exactly, but rather like the ushering in of a new dispensation—a Lana Del Rey who has fully evolved out of her poppy past, and is now in full-on poet mode, very much like the bearded, pot-bellied Jim Morrison who lends his voice to An American Prayer. With Del Rey, it seems as if it is not going to be about “bangers” and “stinkers” anymore. It’s going to be about poetry and melody over protracted instrumentation.

If it wasn’t obvious before, it's clear in listening to NFR that, apart from her trademark murdered ennui, there is now a palpable frustration in Lana Del Rey. Perhaps she’s feeling a futilitarian exasperation from a career of being variously characterized as a plagiarist, an anti-feminist, and an oversexed Lolita, among other things, when she is not really any of these. Perhaps contemporary critics got so singularly fixated on “getting” and subsequently labelling Lana Del Rey that they missed that she is ineludibly so much more—a poetess of vision so profoundly abysmal that it’s almost ineffable. Had the aesthetics of the era not been so obsessed with commercial popularity and political correctness, Lana Del Rey would be the Cobain or Morrison of her time; instead, incorrigibly poppy divas like Lady Gaga or Beyoncé inexorably occupy those stations. As such, Del Rey has been consigned—or has consigned herself—to the role of a Sylvia Plath: overwrought and underappreciated.

Sylvia Plath deserved a better ending, and so too does Lana Del Rey. Hopefully she will get the appreciative finale that she deserves, but not for decades.

What Philosophy Can Do

The late Gary Gutting used to be the big swinging dick of matters ontological and epistemic. I remember seeing him stand toe-to-toe with Basil van Fraassen, constructive empiricist extraordinaire, in an epic heavyweight dust-up in the pages of Monist back in '82. With his 2015 book What Philosophy Can Do, Gutting has attempted to go mainstream. He argues that philosophy can be useful in, say, potentially polarized political debates, as it can identify the convictions behind (and the limitations within) any given liberal or conservative position. This all smacks of the optimism of the pre-post-Truth era, and that seems to be the dustbin to which Gutting's book has been consigned. Just the other day, I saw more than a few copies marked down to $2 at my local paper peddler. Apparently, philosophy can't do much for anyone anymore. Thorough, well-researched, and well-considered arguments don't fly in this day and age of Trump and trigger-warnings. Nice try, Mr. Gutting, but everybody just goes with their gut now. If psychiatric drugs can't help these people, do you think philosophy has any hope? May peace be upon you, because we certainly won't have it here on earth.

AEW Fight for the Fallen

“This is great pro wrestling, because the fans are loving this.” These were the words of All Elite Wrestling commentator Jim Ross and, though the man possesses at least some bias in that he works for the company, they adequately characterized AEW’s July super-card Fight for the Fallen. In spite of a few hiccups, Fight for the Fallen reclaimed some dignity for professional wrestling, both in the ring and out.

Most of the matches impressed, especially the tag team contests. Early on in the card, a three-way tag match featuring the Dark Order (Evil Uno and Stu Grayson), Anjelico and Jack Evans, and the team of Luchasaurus and Jungle Boy, set a sizzling, spot-happy pace. It was hard to keep up with the innovative offense, which featured, among other maneuvers, a choke suplex, a Black Tiger turnbuckle bomb, and a double-team Gory Special into a Diamond Cutter. This latter maneuver won the match for the Dark Order. A more conventional tag match between the Lucha Brothers and SoCal Uncensored (Frankie Kazarian and Scorpio Sky) also offered up moves far too adept for WWE programming. The Lucha Brothers successfully executed a top-rope Canadian Destroyer, a rapid, rope-aided solebutt, and a stomp-capped double-team package piledriver (for the win).

Portrait of the artist as a young (Omega) man

Singles action did not disappoint, either. AEW Championship contender Hangman Page pounded Kip Sabian with, among other super-moves, a bridging pump-handle suplex, a backdrop onto the apron, and a powerbomb onto the ramp before pinning him with an Ax Guillotine Driver. Nonetheless, the highlight of the match came when Sabian silenced an elderly, ornery fan at ringside by kissing him on the lips. The matchup between Kenny Omega and CIMA started off deceptively slow, but then all at once accelerated, getting very intense, very quickly. CIMA answered Omega’s precision strikes with a Schwein (“White Noise” to WWE fans) onto the apron that occasioned the chant of “You killed Kenny!” throughout the building. This was not WWE “wrestling”, and these were not WWE fans. The strong-style stallions went on to exchange very stiff blows in NJPW fashion, before Omega summoned the One-Winged Angel to score the pinfall.

The main event was a tag team contest between two fraternally predicated teams: the Young Bucks and the Rhodes brothers, Dustin and Cody. The match didn’t reach the fever pitch of the evening’s previous tag contests, as could be expected given the inclusion of the fifty-year-old Dustin Rhodes. Nonetheless, the former Goldust hung in there with the former Stardust, even pulling off a Canadian Destroyer/Styles Clash combo. The Rhodes boys also victimized the Bucks with simultaneous turnbuckle groin kicks, formerly known as the “Shattered Dreams” in the days when WWE was still compelling (that is to say, the days of the WWF). Nonetheless, the Young Bucks fought back by taking a page from wrestling video games and employing the ever-demoralizing stolen move tactic, hitting a Crossroads on Cody. In due course, they perpetrated the unfailingly gaudy Meltzer Driver to secure the pinfall. Afterward, the Bucks attempted to apologize to Cody and Dustin for the gamesmanship tactics they had employed in the lead-up to the match, but they were unfortunately cut off when several key members of the AEW roster processed themselves out to the ring. This interruption did not happen for purposes of storyline, but rather for time considerations. In cringe-worthy fashion, numerous AEW mainstays took the mic and made reference to having gone over time, with some even questioning whether or not they were “still on the air.” They were, and thankfully, before signing off, the cameras were able to capture the presentation of a $150,000 check to the Victim Assistance Advisory Council. This group aids people who have suffered on account of gun violence in America; these individuals were the “Fallen” referenced in the title of the super-card.

Aside from the inventive maneuvers, this social conscience was perhaps the most refreshing aspect of AEW’s Fight for the Fallen. WWE has, of course, traditionally kept its cause-themed super-cards military-centric, as is best exemplified by their annual Tribute to the Troops shows. Military personnel make incalculable sacrifices and undertake unfathomable risks, and so supporting them is a laudable endeavor. But Vince McMahon and his underlings have rarely if ever made a business decision that wasn’t calculated, and so anything bearing the WWE logo is inherently exploitative. Thus, Tribute to the Troops has always smacked of easy positive publicity or, in wrestling terms, a cheap, patriotic pop. Moreover, such an event aligns itself fairly squarely with the American military-industrial complex, situating capitalist interest in close proximity to martial might. As such, Tribute to the Troops clearly courts the more conservative elements of WWE’s fan base. Fight for the Fallen was altogether different. Rather than proffering the predictable plaudits for the people of the American Armed Forces, AEW has been brave enough to identity an egregiously overlooked (and ever-burgeoning) group—the victims of gun violence. Here AEW has displayed the corporate cojones to call out a distressing problem in the United States, one that much of mainline America (and certainly the WWE) have determinedly chosen to disregard: the fact that it’s a risk just to go out in public. AEW is willing to label gun violence as the blight on America that it is, rather than tacitly accepting it as an ignorable downside to sacrosanct Second Amendment freedoms. In acknowledging that America is far from perfect, AEW has demonstrated a moral maturity that the WWE simply does not have. Believe it or not, professional wrestling can (and does) have a socially responsible side, and by cultivating this at Fight for the Fallen, AEW defined itself in marked contrast to the amoral late-capitalist jingoism of WWE.

The Writer's Guide to Weapons

If you’re going to be writing any story set in the United States, you’re going to need a working knowledge of a variety of firearms. That’s where Benjamin Sobieck’s Writer’s Guide to Weapons comes in. Sobieck writes with an obvious passion for firing guns and neutralizing targets, taking aim at writers who write poorly about weapons. He shoots down a lot of misconceptions in the process. Did you think the AR in AR-15 stands for “Assault Rifle”? Nope. It doesn’t stand for “Alt-Right”, either. It means Armalite, you ignoramus. In the presence of a gun nut, a faux pas of this magnitude could prove fatal, and Sobieck’s book makes sure you won’t end up a target of an NRA lifer’s ire. Sure, the skeptical may be saying, “hey, gun nuts don’t actually read.” True though that may be, do you want to be the writer who pisses them off when and if they learn how? In the meantime, reading The Writer's Guide to Weapons can at the very least help when you’re passing through rural areas—now you just might have an easier time making small-talk with sons of the soil.

Game Over

Game Over by journalists Bill Moushey and Bob Dvorchak provides a serviceable chronicle of linebacker coach-cum-pedophile Jerry Sandusky’s abuse of adolescent boys, and the listless efforts of Penn State higher-ups—none higher than college coaching legend Joe Paterno (right)—to put a stop to it. While the book is dated, going to print just before legal proceedings had begun against Sandusky, and also prone to repeating itself vis-à-vis some of the developments, it is still a worthwhile read. Its value endures on the grounds that the book is a repository of Sandusky-related public discourses that, quite frankly, reverberate with perversion, and affirm the man’s guiltiness in an intuitive way that transcends the mere verdict put forward by a jury of his peers.

Consider these examples, all of which are compiled throughout the course of Game Over. Early on, there is a quote from a former Penn State linebacker Gary Gray, who describes Sandusky as “always touchy feely” (p. 27). When Sandusky himself retired abruptly and unceremoniously in 1999, he issued a statement about how he wanted to dedicate more time to the Second Mile, the charitable organization through which Sandusky harvested many of his victims: “As the organization has grown,” he explained, “the demands for my hands-on involvement have increased dramatically” (p. 30). Upon the news of Sandusky’s retirement, Penn State athletic director Tim Curley, who would later plead guilty to child endangerment charges for failing to report the abuses, offered the following: “His achievement as a human being is splendidly demonstrated by the thousands of youngsters he touches annually through the Second Mile” (p. 31). A couple years after stepping aside, Sandusky would put out his autobiography, ghost-written by Kip Richeal and published via a vanity press. Its title, you ask? Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story.

You don’t need a Ph.D. in discourse analysis to read between the lines here. With the emphasis on “touching” in descriptions provided of and by Sandusky, how could anyone say they were “surprised” at the allegations? It seems like everyone who spoke of Sandusky knew on some unconscious level (verging on the surface consciousness) that the man was a pervert. Everything that Sandusky was involved with (I don’t want to say “had a hand in”) became steeped in perversion via the very fabric of the words that characterized his activities. 

Even when Sandusky’s attorney, Joseph Amendola, publicly went on the defensive in front of the media, the all-pervading perversity of his client managed to seep into the lawyer’s words. Amendola was incredulous that so many onlookers believed that Penn State higher-ups like Tim Curley would not, as men of immense character and responsibility, take seriously alleged child abuse and carry it forward to law enforcement. As such, he issued a challenge: “If you believe that, I suggest you dial 1-800-REALITY.” That number, the authors of Game Over inform us matter-of-factly, was at the time a “phone service offering gay and bisexual pornography” (p. 145).

The quintessential telos of Jerry Sandusky, then, is salacious sodomy.* Once again, we see how the perverse and pornographic permeates the entire sphere of Sandusky. Sandusky’s substrate is grimy, illicit sex. So deep is the level of synchronicity between Sandusky and indiscriminate, amoral sexuality that the entire thought-universe generated around him inevitably thrums and vibrates with lasciviousness. And for that reason, I’m going to end this attempt at reviewing this book, before Sandusky’s inhering stain seeps into me now inexorably on account of having tried myself to frame the man in words and paragraphs. In fact, Sandusky’s monstrous Midas touch, where everything he handled turned savagely and unlawfully sodomic, might be reason enough not to get your hands on a copy of Moushey and Dvorchak’s book.

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*Now, I want to be clear here that I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with gay sex. However, commodified, commercialized sex of any orientation is, I think we would all agree, at least a bit seedy. So what I’m saying here (following from Moushey and Dvorchak) is that there is something profoundly off when the lawyer representing an outwardly Christian man like Sandusky unintentionally references gay phone sex. The synchronicities are just too profound.

Epistemology Bloody Epistemology

Charles Norwood's Epistemology Bloody Epistemology is a novel(la) beyond comparison. Its body consists of six interconnected stories which trace the activities of philosophy students at a fictional university wherein preferences for different schools of thought have essentially degraded into gang affiliations. What follows is pure mayhem interspersed with thoughtful philosophical debate—imagine, if you will, that the script for Mad Max had been written by Bertrand Russell. The result is not always for the faint-of-heart, as the brutality gradually escalates throughout the piece, allowing for some truly demented—but unfailingly thought-provoking—scenes of hyperbolic carnage. Norwood delivers the narrative(s) in accessible prose, which occasionally proves artful, certainly surpassing that of your average e-book. And while Norwood may not solve the perennial debates of philosophy, he certainly lampoons the folly of embodying any given perspective in said debates too righteously. The "solipsist community" section is especially brilliant, reminiscent of something in a David Foster Wallace novel, and probably warrants a purchase for anyone who fancies extended literary elaborations of philosophical thought experiments. A few minor peccadilloes had this assessor considering a four-star review rather than a five. Norwood employs, for instance, more than a few overly conventional similes. Additionally, some passages are a bit didactic, but that may actually be the book's beauty. Altogether, the various interwoven stories converge upon something that resembles a structuring narrative for western philosophy as a whole, and the grisly scenes may even prove to be a useful mnemonic device for helping make the rudiments of various schools of thought stick. Thus, the book is of particular interest for students of philosophy, both undergraduate and graduate. Given the originality of the content, I am left with little choice but to give it my highest recommendation. EBE is well worth the low cover price, and perhaps even the psychological toll it may take on the reader.

Bloody Murder (2000)

It is customary for a review of the 2000 slasher Bloody Murder to start by decrying the film as a “Friday the 13th ripoff”. There are, of course, many Friday the 13th ripoffs (see the Burning, Madman, Sleepaway Camp, and even the later Halloween films), but the designation is especially fitting for Bloody Murder, not just because it is set at a summer camp and hearkens back to a gruesome legend, but most obviously because the main antagonist and subject of said legend, Trevor Moorehouse, wears a hockey mask, as did Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th Part 3 onward. It also doesn't help Bloody Murder's case that it features a character named Jason who (mild spoiler alert here) is suspected of the killings throughout a good portion of the film. But this “ripoff” designation requires some qualification. First, it should be noted that Jason Voorhees wears an early-80s style hockey mask, while Trevor Moorehouse wears a newer model street-hockey mask, more in the style of Lord Humungus from the Road Warrior. Moreover, Trevor Moorehouse is pictured on the poster art carrying a chainsaw, which he brandishes at certain junctures in the movie. In this aspect, he is more akin to Leatherface of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In addition, Moorehouse's chosen attire is a dark blue mechanic's suit, reminiscent of Halloween's Michael Myers. Hence, Moorehouse is more accurately characterized as a synthesis of the holy trinity of slasher baddies. Such a grand synthesis is, to be sure, worthy of a better movie than Bloody Murder.

Directing duties on Bloody Murder are credited to one Ralph Portillo. Ralph Portillo claims an assortment of directorial and production credits, among them the Corey Haim vehicle Fear Lake. In the early to mid-90s, the name Ralph Portillo also appears on a number of straight-to-video erotic features, including the Hollywood Dreams duology, Stolen Hearts, and Prelude to Love. If one does their research on IMDb, these softcore films redirect to the page for one Rafe M. Portilo, while Bloody Murder, Fear Lake and other forgettable fare are credited to Ralph E. Portillo. Though Portilo and Portillo appear to be different people by IMDb's reckoning, Bloody Murder's cinematography bears a striking resemblance to the aforementioned erotic fare. The scenes are brightly lit, even at night, and tend toward rubicund coloration. The shots are predominantly mid-range and overbearingly procedural. The blocking, meanwhile, is wooden, all the characters gathering around to recite their dialogue with a certain clipped emptiness. A lot of the female characters stand with hands on hips. Whether or not Ralph E. Portillo is Rafe M. Portillo, these similarities give Bloody Murder a distinct softcore porn vibe, even though there is no simulated sex or nudity in the film. This is a major flaw for a film purporting to be a slasher, as is the paucity of blood. All told, Bloody Murder can just as readily be described as a whodunnit suspense film, which is precisely how Ralph E. Portillo characterizes it in more recent self-penned bios (which also mention nothing of the softcore oeuvre).

The future of hockey-masked horror

should look to the past

Derivative flop of not, Bloody Murder poses crucial questions about the slasher genre. For instance, is the hockey mask absolutely off-limits for all non-Friday the 13th films? This reviewer would argue that the hockey mask is still rife with possibility. We've seen the 80s and street-hockey styles, but why not hearken back even further? A mask in the style of Boston Bruins stalwart Gerry Cheevers, painted with stitches in places where pucks would have done serious damage had they hit the flesh, would make for an especially dastardly pursuer, would they not? Or perhaps directors could go back even further to the original goalie mask donned by Jacques Plante after he took one too many hunks of vulcanized rubber to the face. The Plante mask almost has a Hannibal Lecter vibe to it. And then there is the cage-style mask donned by none better than "The Dominator" Dominic Hasek, the greatest goalie to ever play the game. Finally, if a budding Ralph Portillo wanted to go more contemporary, he (or she) could have their villain wear the modern-day goalie helmet, which would allow much-improved sight-lines for stalking and slashing teen counsellors. In short, the possibilities for hockey-masked killers are legion, and so this sub-sub-genre of the slasher flick needn't be put on ice.

The Town that Dreaded Sundown (2014)

In 1976, director Charles B. Pierce brought us The Town that Dreaded Sundown, a quasi-true crime film in the spirit of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The film reimagined, sometimes quite liberally, the so-called "Phantom Killings" that racked the twin border-towns of Texarkana, Texas and Texarkana, Arkansas in the early 1940s. Pierce took details of the events—for instance, the hood that "The Phantom" allegedly wore—and created from them an exploitation proto-slasher that somehow managed a PG-13 rating. The film has its moments, but it is only as good as you would imagine a PG-13 slasher could be. Moreover, historically-minded types have panned the film for its factual inaccuracies (see, for instance, James Presley's meticulously researched 2016 book The Phantom Killer). Regardless, the film maintains a cult following, and is still publicly screened in Texarkana at certain junctures, including Halloween.

In 2014, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon directed a film also bearing the title The Town that Dreaded Sundown. Gomez-Rejon is perhaps best known for directing episodes of American Horror Story, and, true to 1) that series, 2) the era, and 3) the nature of horror remakes in general, his take on the Texarkana tragedy is unapologetically meta. The 2014 Sundown is not exactly a remake, however, nor can it properly be called a sequel, even though it has aspects of each. The film takes place more-or-less within our continuity, that is, real-world 2013, where the Phantom murders took place in the 1940s and the 1976 version of The Town that Dreaded Sundown is just a movie. In fact, the opening scene takes place at a Halloween public screening of Sundown '76 in Texarkana. Furthermore, it becomes clear early on that the antagonizing force in the 2014 film is intent on re-creating the murders depicted in the 1976 film. As could be expected, the 2014 film is full of set-pieces in which the director, writer, and producers show the audience how well they know the original movie, the history of the events, and the conventions of the genre and the medium as a whole. How meta did they go? Suffice it to say that Charles B. Pierce's son is a character in the movie. So heavy is the meta-commentary that, in the scene where the sheriff character played by Gary Cole is receiving fellatio from a haggard Texarkana bar-star, you half-expect him to utter a "yeaaaaaaah" and then start talking about TPS reports. But the repeated all-knowing nods are, on the whole, only mildly annoying, and no more obtrusive than in any other post-2000 horror remake. In fact, the 2014 Sundown handles the meta elements more deftly than most other horror films of its ilk, where the writers lean heavily on in-jokes to address an obvious paucity in original content (see, for instance, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil). Sundown 2014's meta approach comes to a head at the climax, which —and I offer the mildest of spoiler alerts here—quite cleverly plays on the split identity of Texarkana itself (as a border-town). On the whole, the film is well-realized, and Texarkana proves to be as convincing a hellscape as Arkham or Derry or Amityville. I have no problem recommending 2014's The Town that Dreaded Sundown, though the 1976 version is a necessary prerequisite for viewing.

Even though I'll advocate for the past and current versions of the film, I nonetheless have trepidations about the future. Meta-storytelling is not just a fad in mainstream horror; rather, it has become a crutch. Given that this brand of genre auto-commentary has been going strong since 1996's Scream, it raises the question: what will The Town that Dreaded Sundown (2052) look like? Will it be a meta-meta-commentary on the subject matter? Will it be the story of a killer recreating the 2013 film's re-creation of the 1976 film (itself a re-creation of the narrative surrounding the ur-murders)? Perhaps the real question is when will the meta-commentary stop in contemporary horror? When will writers and producers start generating new ideas? When will the idea that there's nothing new under the sun see its much-needed sundown? For now, this reviewer is left feeling like a lot of the residents of Texarkana, fearing the return of the Phantom. He might come back sooner rather than later. In this sense, it's The Town that Dreaded Sundown (2024) that I find truly dreadful.

Resisting the Urge to Resist Tom Brady

I'm cheering for Tom Brady in Super Bowl 53, even though I might not want to.

Tom Brady is, after all, far removed from anything I embody. He is handsome; I am haggard. He is successful beyond precedent; I am mediocre on my best imaginable day. He is wedded to a comely woman; I avoid relationships. He is a Trump supporter; I am a non-voter. He is worth millions; I am a writer. I am literate, and desperately so; with his physical and technical prowess, Tom Brady has transcended language.

But these kinds of contrasts are not a reason to boo Tom Brady. Rather,  in the contrast itself lies the reason why the author (and the reader) of this blog should cheer for Tom Brady.

Tom Brady has, after all, bestowed a remarkable gift upon us all. He has so far given us the opportunity to spectate unparalleled greatness—that is, to view a quarterback winning five Super Bowls. This in itself is a once-in-all-existence type of accomplishment. To see him win a sixth (in high definition, no less) would be to witness eminence of otherworldly proportions, far beyond the imagination of the average spectator.

Contemplating greatness of this magnitude, then, you are faced with a choice. You can choose the path of the hater, besmirching the names of Brady-esque luminaries in many an online forum. Or you can acknowledge the superlative talent of any given luminary, and bow down before him or her or them as your superior. 

The more mature option is the latter. There comes a time when you can no longer deny that humans are not created equal, and that our world is, in reality, the domain of but a few ascendant superiors. The vast underclass can only be enlightened when its members acknowledge the supremacy of the true elite—athletes, capitalists, and most celebrities—and genuflect before them. In apprehending their acumen and accepting their dominance over us, we are able to make an even more crucial realization about ourselves: that we are slaves, and we work our menial jobs to consume products issued by this extremely select few—our telegenic masters who perform highly abstracted, commercially viable tasks at the highest level.

For this reason, all those who have been cheering for Tom Brady and the Patriots for the past decade-plus should not be passed off as mere bandwagon jumpers. Rather, Patriots fans are the enlightened vassals who have realized their individual inferiority and slavery and given themselves wholly to Brady's team and its licensed apparel, getting blissfully lost in that huddled mass of fandom clad in silver and blue New England merchandise. Their own haggard, lonely, Trump-voting lives are rendered infinitely more meaningful for it.

"Tom Brady is master, and I am slave." This is the mantra of the Pats fan. So this year, I will fight the urge to hate or to cheer for the underdog, and I, too, will repeat this mantra. I, too, will choose the path of the peon, and the profound self-awakening that comes with it. Rather than cheering against Brady, I will not just cheer for him, but actually supplicate before his matchless glory as it graces my television. At the pinnacle of underclass destiny—submitting to the broadcast of dominance—there is pure rapture. I will learn to love my inferiority, and to celebrate it. As Tom Brady moves the chains, I will come to adore my own shackles.

Also, I put all the money I ever made writing on New England. Thirty dollars on the Pats. 

About the Blogger

Tameless piston of the American Dream

John Adam Gosham was born in Adams, North Dakota on November 4, 1980, the day Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States of America. His father was a raging but affable alcoholic, his mother a high-functioning astrologer. A rebellious child, little Johnny Gosham excelled in the sciences, and was an avid reader therein. From a  young age he spurned all fictions, though he'd make exceptions for the occasional creature feature. He received a full scholarship to a local cow college and moved away with intentions of doing science for a living. The dream didn't last long -- only two weeks, in fact. John Adam made an abrupt about-face when he accidentally read Kurt Vonnegut's "Welcome to the Monkey House", mistaking it for non-fiction. He promptly gave up science in favor of literature, embarking on a quest to write the perfect story to carry on Vonnegut's legacy. Within days, he'd dropped out of college, realizing at age seventeen that he was smarter than all his professors. He spent the better part of the next two decades couch-surfing, taking his entertainment exclusively from slasher flicks and erotic thrillers on VHS. In 2014, he wrote and self-published the novel The Stink Ape: An Erotic Ensemble. In the years to follow, he placed stories in relatively mainstream anthologies such as Goathanger's Done to Death: the Last Zombie Anthology Ever, Hellbound Books' Schlock! Horror!, the Econoclash Review's Trump Fiction special issue (with co-collaborator Charles Norwood), and Colp's pro-wrestling themed Suplex collection.

But enough with the third-person façade. My name's John Adam Gosham, and this is my pissy little personal blog. Call me a schlockmeister, a pornographer, or even a goddamn comedian. It doesn't matter. All I care about is getting paid and maybe making some part of you hitch, hiccup or harden in the process. Welcome to the monkey house.