Vintage Horror Movie Review: Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (1973)

As a kid, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark scared the ever-loving crap out of me. I think. At least, that's how I remembered it. Actually, to be honest, all I really remember is Kim Darby being dragged by her feet and little scary things running around her house. So you can imagine how excited I was to watch it again last night.

Um.

To start with, the opening titles used the same font as "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." I half-expected one of the little goblin guys to throw a hat into the air and freeze-frame. I guess back in '73 that font was all the rage, but now...let's just say it hasn't aged well.

But anyway, the movie begins with creepy whispers and a gorgeous house and then Kim Darby and her husband, Jim Hutton move in (and immediately hire a hotsy-totsy decorator, because that lime-green rug and avocado-green fridge aren't going to magically appear by themselves!) The handyman/exposition guy (William Demarest, the original crotchety old man) immediately goes into his "You can't open up the mysteriously blocked fireplace in the creepy locked room" spiel, conveniently not realizing that women are curious, stubborn, silly little creatures who just won't take no for an answer. Yeah, so what if the ash gate is BOLTED SHUT--why bother to give her an explanation for it. Just tell the broad to keep her nosy nose out of it and leave it at that. It'll be fine.

Of course, Kim Darby is going to pout and poke around and eventually get that stupid old grate unbolted (because she is a liberated '70s woman--at least that's what her husband has told her), but she accepts the fact that her dream of a cozy little firelit dungeon is beyond her reach, la-dee-dah, let's go fix dinner for hubby.

Cue spooky avocado-green lights (seriously, people...did EVERYTHING have to be avocado green?) and glimpses of weirdness and Kim Darby is already on the tremulous edge. Jim Hutton, of course, is the no-nonsense man of the house who has no time or patience for his silly wife's histrionics. Even when she SEES a tiny little monster hand grabbing her dress, he dismisses it--because after all, they have a uber-important '70s dinner party to host so he can get his promotion and he can't have his boss finding out that his wife is secretly a witch! (Nope, sorry...wrong trope).

Long tv-movie short, the little things from the fireplace have a serious jones for Kim Darby for some reason, and they pretty much gaslight her until Jim Hutton is about to keel over from apoplexy over her silly panic attacks. What's a concerned husband to do but fly off for an overnight meeting, leaving her alone in the very house that is terrifying her? It's for a promotion, people! Priorities!

I won't give away the ending if you haven't seen it, but...man, I sure did remember it being scarier than that. Now, the scariest thing in the movie was how much of a dick her husband was to her. He treated her like a stupid child for pretty much all of the movie--even waggling his finger at her when she does something that ruins his precious dinner party. I think if I were Kim Darby, I would've cut a deal with those creatures to pay hubby-dearest a visit one night. Then we'd see who was paranoid.

I remembered the creatures as being scarier, too. Instead, we get a prune-headed dude in the gorilla-suit last seen in Robot Monster. Actually, we get three of them. Not exactly an overwhelming army of the damned. In fact, if she'd just put on her sensible pumps and did the Mexican Hat Dance, she would've solved all her problems and burned off a few calories at the same time.


I mean seriously...scared yet?

Del Toro's doing the remake, which is due in 2011, and I've gotta say...it looks pretty freakin' good. And it looks like he's going to supply some backstory, too--like where the goblins came from, what they want, why do they live in a fireplace. Seriously, I craved exposition like chocolate. Why did her grandmother leave her the damned house in the first place if she wasn't supposed to let the goblins out? Why not just raze the place and salt the ground or something?

Anyway...my memories of the original have been sullied by cruel, cruel reality. It's not a bad movie, just a very dated and imperfect one. Don't be afraid of the dark...be afraid of the mini, prune-headed monkey-men in it.

Sincere Thanks (and Apologies)

I am an idiot.

That's not a news flash. What IS a news flash (to me, at least) has been all the comments I've just found on this blog. Yes, I said JUST FOUND. You see, I've been under the impression that no one has been reading this blog and so I've drifted away from it due to the whole "life" thing. It's not an understatement to say I'm absolutely stunned by how many people have taken the time to post a comment.

So thank you. Thank you very much. And I'm very sorry I haven't thanked you all before now.

I hope you'll keep checking the blog for new posts every once in a while.

Now this is just ridiculous

Ok, I'll be the first to admit that I love vampires. Honestly, I do. BUT lately my love for them has been on the decline. Why?

Friggin' vampire romances, that's why.

I've got nothing against romances. They're fine. But go to Amazon and do a search for 'vampires' and the first zillion titles that pop up are friggin' vampire romances. Not just Twilight, either. It's like everybody and their mother has decided to jump on the vampire romance bandwagon and write a damn book (and self-publish it, of course). Hell, even I wrote a vampire romance back in the early '90s.

And that's fine for people who like those things. Honestly, the whole "vampire romance" subgenre reeks of necrophilia to me (after all, those guys are DEAD, as in ceased to be, pushing up daisies, singing with the choir invisible). And come on, how are sparkly vampires attractive? I mean, really? And how is touching (or...urk...BEING touched by) cold, dead flesh even remotely erotic? The whole idea of it just grosses the hell out of me. I mean, other than holding an "after-glow" conversation, you might as well fool around with a zombie.

I miss the days when vampires were actually BAD GUYS. When they were only concerned with drinking blood and killing, not being emotionally available. I like my vampires to be beastial and cruel, not sensitive and lovesick. Gag. Nowadays, the vampire has been defanged by romantic fantasy, and that's just not right people. It's just not right.

Bring back Nosferatu!

Triumph! I am offensive!

I think somebody bought my Kindle short story, "Snuffed," and returned it.

Yeah. RETURNED it. I wonder why...

I mean, it's only about a girl who can't be killed who starts doing hard-core snuff porn in order to make a living. What could possibly be offensive about that?

And yes, yes...I know there's an unkillable cheerleader on "Heroes," but c'mon, does anybody even watch that show anymore? It lost me after the second season. Actually, it lost me after the first episode of the second season. But I digress...

I'm just tickled purple that I might have written something offensive. Gosh. Who'da thunk it.

Book Tour 2009!

So recently I did my first-ever book tour for my freshly published novel, "The Giving Season" (available now at Amazon and Pearlsong Press, btw).

Yep. Three libraries in three days. I felt like a rock star.

I'm joking, of course. I was lucky enough to be asked to participate in a traveling "local author" book fair by Michael "Put my books between King and Koontz!" Knost (just kidding, Mike), who is the editor of the Legends of the Mountain State books and the Probably-Going-to-be-Nominated-for-a-Stoker-Award Writers Workshop of Horror. We went to the three libraries in my county (including the one at which I work) and did a few Q&A sessions with students and the public. I sold a few copies of my books. Gave a few autographs (and felt like a total douche--after all...who am I?)

It was fun to go to the libraries and talk about writing. I realized that I don't get to talk about it nearly as much as I'd like. Could it be that I've actually found something that I'm...wait for it...passionate about? Wow...and here I've been thinking I was pretty much numb.

The experience made me wonder how many well-known writers take that sort of thing for granted. "Oh, ho-hum...yet another book signing. How many hundreds of copies will I have to sign today?" Or how many writers take it for granted that people want to actually hear their opinions on their writing (or anything, for that matter). I'm so used to people tuning out me and my crazy talk that it astounds me to think that anyone would actually be interested in listening to me speak.

I joked around and said that I felt like a "real" writer with a "real" book...but to be honest, I wasn't really joking. For years and years and years and years (and a few more years) I wrote in total solitude. No one (but an unlucky few) read my stories. No one cared. I was in a vacuum. To suddenly be in an environment where people not only asked me questions about my writing but BOUGHT MY BOOKS felt like culture shock.

Even more so when I did a phone interview with Peggy Elam, my publisher at Pearlsong Press. I'm totally not used to talking about my writing (yet somehow I managed to blab for a whole hour) so it was brain-busting for me to be asked questions about it. I don't know if anyone has actually tuned into the podcast (it's here, by the way) but my mind is still blown.

Maybe I need to get out more.

A few words about Twilight

I'll come right out and admit it.

I like the Twilight books.

Go ahead and crucify me if you will. I've never been much for snottiness when it comes to books, and I'm seeing it in great big spades when it comes to Stephenie Meyer's writing. And it's pissing me off, to be quite honest about it.

Why? Because people are more than happy to criticize the books without taking the time to read them. Yeah, I know that's a groundbreaking concept: read the book first. I was like that at one time. I heard "glittery vampire" and tuned out. Vampires don't glitter. And who wants to read a vampire book written by someone who went to a Mormon college? I don't usually equate Mormons with great horror fiction. Yuck. Go peddle your teen romance elsewhere, lady.

I hate to admit that I was such a dick about it.

I watched the movie first ("Twilight") and was shocked that it was actually interesting. Maybe I was--gasp!--wrong. So I picked up the first novel in the series. And I liked it.

Me, the die-hard zombie/vampire/gorehound fan. I liked it.

I started noting all the criticism at about that time. Meyer wasn't a great writer. She didn't deserve all that success. People hated her and all she stood for. They'd hold book burnings of all the Twilight novels if they could get away with it. Even Stephen King said that Meyer "couldn't write worth a damn."

Wow. Talk about polarizing your audience.

My personal opinion about all the Meyer hate? Jealousy. Pure D jealousy. Yeah, that even goes for Stephen King.

Look at the facts: Twilight was Meyer's first novel. Her first shot out of the gate. And it got huge fast. She didn't toil in the salt mines of writing short stories for $.01 a word for years. She didn't "pay her dues" of writing novel after novel with no attention. You know...like the rest of us poor writing slobs.

She got lucky. Extraordinarily, terrifically, disgustingly lucky.

She had the right story at the right time, and found the right audience with the right characters. She was able to reach teenage girls (and a lot of grown women) with her romantic elements, as wild as they are. She. Got. Lucky.

That's not to take away from the work she's put into the books. Writing is difficult, and even if you have no respect for the writer herself, at least respect the work that goes into it. The Stephen King comments pissed me off, because he's been nailed hundreds of time by critics for the very thing he's accusing Meyer of: not being a good writer. And I like Stephen King, don't get me wrong. He's just not the greatest writer of all time. Neither is Meyer. And here's the secret: no one is.

Writing is a subjective thing. There are some wildly successful horror writers out there that I just absolutely can't stand. Does that mean they can't write? No. It just means I don't care for their stuff. Which is why it's wrong for anyone--especially fellow writers--to dismiss Stephenie Meyer so cavalierly. You know how hard it is to write and to try to get published, after all.

Will I catch hell for this? Probably not, because no one reads this blog and--even more than that--no one gives a particular damn about my opinion. But I'm coming out of the Twilight closet. I enjoy the books. I think Meyers has done a pretty good job with them. I congratulate her on her success.

And if you don't like it, then...well, bite me.

Yay! "Best of All Flesh" is a go!!

I'm really thrilled to announce that my story, "Night Shift," is going to be included in the upcoming zombie anthology, "The Best of All Flesh." It was originally published in "The Book of More Flesh," the second book in the trilogy (of sorts) based on the "All Flesh Must Be Eaten" RPG. I'm honestly surprised that it made the cut, because there were a ton of great writers and super stories in the three anthologies. No false modesty here...I'm really stunned.

It's available for pre-order at Amazon (just click on the cover over there on the right and you'll zip right to it) and should be out in December 2009.

Hopefully, my romance novel, "The Giving Season" will be out around that time too. Yes. Romance novels and zombie stories. I am a very complicated woman.