“A Day in the Life” by F. Paul Wilson

“Repairman Jack” is one of the coolest continuing characters in fiction, plain and simple. His actions in books like The Tomb, Legacies, Conspiracies, and all the others that chronicle his adventures are fun to read and often leave one wishing their life was just as exciting. His refusal to join the system and to live off the grid is also incredibly appealing, though something most will never experience outside of the fictional world, which is probably a good thing because it seems pretty complicated and somewhat dangerous. Add in his ability to realistically defend himself in a fight, even if outnumbered, and yeah, one gets every man’s secret self image.

Now, in most of the novels featuring “Repairman Jack” there is a supernatural element involved, which is why I often will describe the works as a cross between a private investigator story and an X-Files episode. “A Day in the Life”, however, doesn’t have that X-Files side to it and focuses more on the normal ‘fix it’ jobs Jack often find himself involved in, alas, one that ends up being incredibly dangerous and worthy of the novella length it spans. It also does a nice job of showing the ‘bad ass’ side to Jack that we all secretly love, the side that will always do one of two things when used to put down an adversary: either make them back off for good and wish they never heard the name Jack, or make them crazy with rage and demand revenge at any cost. Most of the characters in this story fall in the latter category even though they should have stuck with the first if they knew what was good for them.

Written many years ago when the only novel featuring “Repairman Jack” was The Tomb, “A Day in the Life” was one of the reasons F. Paul Wilson decided to continue the “Repairman Jack” character and dedicate a series of books to him, something which he never planned on doing after finishing The Tomb. Starting off shortly after the events of The Tomb, the story opens with Jack in a motel room flicking shuriken throwing stars at a cockroach crawling across the wall (something that his friend and arms dealer Abe always grows upset about) while waiting for a call from a diner owner who is being harassed by a gang of thugs who expect protection money from him. While waiting for the call someone starts taking shots at Jack through the window, which opens up a mystery on who would know he was there, especially once he realizes that it wasn’t one of the thugs in the diner, thugs who think he is another guy extorting protection money from the diner owner, one who wants to get them off his newfound turf. From there things get more and more frightening as several attempts are made upon Jack’s life to the point where he has to act quickly and harshly to put a stop to it, while also continuing with several ‘fix it’ cases he has been hired for.

Found in the anthology The Barrens and Others, one which contains many other amazing tales, “A Day in the Life” is a must read for any Repairman Jack fan. Hell, even if one has never heard of “Repairman Jack” or read anything by F. Paul Wilson these stories are a must read, especially if a fan of well written unique tales of terror.

Return of the Living Dead Part 3 (1993)

Once a series starts tumbling downhill it is hard for it to regain it balance and begin its climb back toward the top, yet this is exactly what happened with Return of the Living Dead Part 3. After the disaster that was Return of the Living Dead Part 2 it seemed like the brilliance that had brought us the first movie had been laid to rest and that horror fans all across the globe would once again watch as countless directors rehashed the same story over and over again. Thankfully the third movie didn’t go this route and instead of giving us another story in a graveyard where a canister is released, we get an interesting love story, one which sees a female zombie trying hard to hold onto her humanity while suppressing her hunger with pain, all while her boyfriend frantically tries to find a place for them to live -- a doomed, yet noble quest. Puppy love at is finest.

I first saw this installment many years ago on Joe Bob Brigg’s Monster Vision (I think) and remember falling asleep during it several times due to the lateness of the viewing, and therefore wasn’t really sure what to expect when renting the DVD the other day, my mind only able to conjure up a few images of a military lab experiment gone wrong and then scenes of the girl zombie mutilating herself in a sewer. Of course, even if I hadn’t fallen asleep I wouldn’t have gotten the full effect of the movie because I’m sure TNT edited a lot out, especially the scenes where the female zombie has completed her own self body modifications and starts attacking the Mexican punks that are after them -- modifications that made it look like she could take part in an intensely hardcore bondage / fetish film during her breaks, especially with the way her mutilated breasts and nipples were displayed.

Now I haven’t seen any more of the movies in the Return of the Living Dead series so I don’t know if they continued to try and experiment with their stories of if they just went back to the graveyard -- something that isn’t bad as long as it isn’t the same story over and over again. From everything I’ve read, however, people say that the following part 3 this series gets really good and that some of the movies actually are better than the first, though I find this a bit hard to swallow. I do know that both my brother and I enjoyed this movie and will certainly add the DVD to our collection. At the same time I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t any type of barricaded standoff, which is something I always enjoy with movies like this. I also found it hard to believe that the kid in the film would be able to maneuver himself through a military base so easily, especially one that is conducting top secret experiments on the dead. Then again all the military bases I have visited have been in the post September eleventh years so maybe the security wasn’t as intense back in the early nineties, who knows.

One thing that did upset me about this movie was the look of the zombies from within the containers. The zombies that come out of the containers in the first two movies -- the “tarmen” -- looked great and were even a bit scary, but the ones that came out during this movie just looked like stupid monster models that had layers of paint and fake blood added to them. Many people may disagree with me here and say they looked good, and that at least they were CGI (which I would agree with), but I still would have liked having the tarmen instead. From what I gather from the forums about this movie, I am not alone in this opinion.

So, what do you think? Was this a good direction to take this series in or would you have preferred another army of dead zombies coming out of their graves and attacking a handful of characters who barricade themselves into a building of some kind? Also, do you agree that the series only gets better and better from this point on, or that the people who wrote that on the forums and in reviews don’t know what they are talking about?

SHELL PETROLEUM DEVELOPMENT COMPANY - Another Email Scam

Wow, I am so lucky. First I get that great business deal from a guy in Asia and now I'm the winner of a contest I never signed up for or even heard about, one that will only cost me $200 to get my million dollar prize. Happy days.

Here is the email.

SHELL PETROLEUM DEVELOPMENT COMPANY,
PRIZE DISTRIBUTION DEPARTMENT,
JOB CODE: 3EALO
REFERENCE NUMBER #: 96ATYAP0

This is to inform you that we concluded our lucky draw yesterday and your email was the email which won the third prize of USD$1,200,000.00 in cash.We request you to fill in the below information and forward us ASAP as we have to dispatch your HIGH VALUE WINNING CHEQUE immediately.NOTE: The only fees you have to pay is the courier charges for your shipment.

Contact: Shell Petroleum Company
Email: (Removed by Me)

FULL NAME=
DELIVERY ADDRESS=
PHONE NUMBER=
FAX NUMBER(IF ANY)=
COUNTRY=
OCCUPATION=
SEX=
AGE=
ANNUAL INCOME=
REFERENCE NUMBER [VERY IMPORTANT]=

CONGRATULATIONS ONCE AGAIN

We also advise that you keep your winning information very confidential as our security policy demands to avoid double claims/impersonation and unwarranted abuse of this program by some individuals.

SHELL PETROLEUM DEVELOPMENT COMPANY
JIS [JUSTIN INSER STEWARD].

NOTE: I'm not sure if I will reply to this one like I did the last one with all those crazy answers, but if I do I will be sure to post what I write and the replies I get (if any).

Quarantine (2008)

To start, I should say that I have never been a fan of hand held camera movies like The Blair Witch Project (1999) or Cloverfield (2008) because I get nauseous from them, but strangely do enjoy shows like Cops and other professional held camera shows that still have that ‘not really planned out’ feeling to them, which don’t make me nauseous. I think all of this is because of the type of camera being used. Hand held home movie cameras are easily bounced around and just don’t capture things the way professional cameras do. With professional cameras one still gets a nice wide view even if the cameraman is forced to move around, and they always seem to do a nice job of keeping the shot steady even though they are running. Because of this I enjoyed Quarantine more than Cloverfield or The Blair Witch Project simply because it didn’t make me nauseous, though I must say, The Blair Witch Project did scare the living daylights out of me when I saw it in theaters ten years ago, mostly because I thought it was the real footage from those unfortunate victims.

I got Quarantine as a Christmas gift from my brother, along with a few other items that were pretty cool, one being a DVD called Space Mutiny (1988) which everyone says is the worst science fiction movie since Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), and was voted the funniest episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 when presented -- a show the two of us also loved while growing up. More on that in another post, though.

Quarantine was a decent movie, one which brings a real life fear to the forefront of our minds and once again makes us realize that the greatest terrors in this world are not of the supernatural kind and that nothing make-believe will ever compare to things that nature and man can produce. Add in the fact that many governments and terrorist organizations have tried to make a biological weapon from rabies, and that one day such weapons may be used on soldiers like my little brother as a IED, or released upon the general population, and you get presented with an idea that should scare the shit out of everyone. That said, many people didn’t like this movie, something which I can understand if they went and saw it in the theater because I wouldn’t want to pay premium prices for something like this either. Thankfully I saw it at home, so nothing but the film mattered, and the only thing I had to think about while watching it was how in the hell are these people going to get out of that building alive without being bitten or infected. I also had to hold my breath a lot because most of the scares in this movie came out of nowhere, even when such scares were expected because we never could see behind the camera, or beyond the little bit of light the camera offered.

Now, as just stated above, I can understand why people didn’t like this movie, though given that most of the criticism for it was based on the fact that it was another point-of-view movie, something that was made obvious from the previews, I have to ask why these people went to see it in the first place? Also, many are calling this just another stupid zombie film, which it isn’t and makes me wonder how distracted people are when going to see these films or if they are just idiots to begin with and can’t grasp what the movie is showing them, because the reason for these characters acting the way there are in the movie is clearly presented. Further, many people are shouting that rabies doesn’t act this quickly, which again makes me wonder what they were doing during the movie, because that was clearly stated as well by the veterinarian character. Another reviewer said that rabies can’t be engineered to act this quickly, but they obviously haven’t done any reading on the subject, something which a simple Google search would fix. In fact, I think everyone should do a nice little search on this just to see how many different biological programs the Soviets once had, some of which involved rabies and how many of their programs left stuff like this lying around after their collapse, stuff that individuals can easily acquire and can continue to develop with a homemade lab, which then could either result in a planned out biological attack, or a accidental release.

All in all this was a nice little flick that I would recommend to people if they like these point of view films and want a gross, in your face thriller. If you don’t like point of view films, however, then just stay away from this and wait for something else to come out, because no matter what you won’t like it, so why spend money on it?

NOTE: I would have preferred to read this as a story than see it on the screen because I think it would have been really good as a novel (if it was a novel first let me know so I can read it), because it would have allowed for more character development and a more clear understanding of how this biological agent was created, how it worked (especially if they found a notebook full of test results), and what those outside who had them quarantined were planning to do about it. I also would have liked to know why it quickly infected some people like the firefighter and those that were bitten but seemed to take a long time with the little girl.

X-Files: How The Ghost Stole Christmas (12/17/98)

Many families have Christmas traditions, most of which are sentimental and an attempt to bring past holiday moments to the front of the mind to be relieved over and over again, often with a small sense of nostalgia. My family is no different. We have many little holiday traditions, some of which involve actual holiday activities like decorating the tree the day after Thanksgiving to opening gifts at six o’clock in the morning on Christmas. Others aren’t so ‘holiday’ like my brother and I playing Goldeneye for Nintendo 64 on Christmas morning while waiting for six o’clock to arrive, and my family watching the only X-Files Christmas episode: How the Ghost Stole Christmas every year on December 23 (Christmas Eve was booked).

Telling the story of an abandoned house that supposedly contains the spirits of two star crossed-lovers that committed suicide in 1917 so that they could spend an eternity together, How the Ghost Stole Christmas is one of the more atmospheric episodes that seemed to define Season Six of this great show. The episode begins with Mulder and Scully outside the house on Christmas Eve, Mulder wanting to go in and see if the ghosts will appear, Scully wanting to get home and wrap gifts. In an attempt to convince Scully to go inside with him Mulder tells the chilling tale of the house, one which in itself is gripping and something one would expect to read within the pages of a book (for all we know Mulder may have recited it from a book he owned about the house). Unfortunately this is not enough to get Scully inside with him, however, the suspicion that he took her keys when he went in by himself is, and eventually the two do end up in the house together, one which does seem to be haunted by ghosts who want another pair of lonely souls to join them in the afterlife.

Great scenery, dialogue and special effects make this episode one of the best, though one that is a bit more lighthearted than most, which may drive the casual viewer toward a more horrifically grotesque episode like Agua Mala or Detour. For those of us who love the interaction of Mulder and Scully however, especially when the writers and actors are at the top of their game, this one is a must see and will have you cracking up with laughter as the two go back and forth. Add in the two ghosts which are well written as well and have several very entertaining moments with our two main characters, and you end up with a classic stand alone X-Files episode, one which is perfectly suited for the holidays.

NOTE: I read that this episode also has the distinction of being the episode with the fewest amount of characters and therefore actors, though I don’t know if this is true. Does anyone know if this is true? I can't picture any episode with less than four.

New 2012 Prophecy (???)

Look what was waiting in my email inbox the other day -- sent from someone calling themselves The Keeper of the Key (???) who apparently thinks this prophecy (the origin unknown of course) is talking about 2012, though in a new refreshing way.

The prophecy:

"the great red and blue cloth shall tear,
when Venus his belt she admires.
Paladan her name they cry,
wrestle power from the great red sky."

What it means:

the great red and blue cloth shall tear - this is talking about the upcoming election, red and blue states tearing themselves apart.

when Venus his belt she admires - in 2012 Venus will circle O'Ryan's belt in our night sky, almost as if admiring it.

Paladan her name they cry - stands for Sarah Palin, just mistranslated.

wrestle power from the great red sky - stands for Obama and the socialism he eventually brings down upon our country (or just the fear of it, which Sarah Palin breaks us free from)

So, what do you think? A real prophecy? I tried looking it up just because I was curious but couldn’t find it anywhere, then again, maybe the book it comes from has only gone through one printing and is owned by The Keeper of the Key, who is revealing information slowly?

Hum . . .

PS: The Keeper of the Key: Please send more!

Note: The interpretations of these lines were part of the email, not something I came up with. I just thought it would be fun to post this, I didn’t realize it would cause my inbox to get slammed with people telling me that I have misinterpreted stuff? I didn’t interpret anything. I just posted what was sent to me, and will continue to post whatever is sent to me as long as the person sending the email gives me permission too.

Was Jesus an Alien - A Very Entertaining Forum Topic

As some of you know I love looking at forums because I enjoy seeing how many different branches can develop from a single idea or statement, and how many passionate arguments can be born from them. For a long time my focus has been on 2012 and other ‘end of the world’ ideas because they always seem to spark the most entertaining debates (you know, the kind where you can just picture people getting so fed up with each other they want to force their opponent’s gonads down a garbage disposal just to make them agree, but only being able to vent their anger through their sloppy use of the keyboard). After a while though these arguments got pretty boring because they were all the same, so I tried moving on to political forums, but that wasn’t entertaining, just aggravating, so I moved again to things like Bigfoot and the Lockness Monster and Atlantis, but again, not as good as the 2012 ones had been, and nothing all that passionate. Now, however, I’ve found what I was looking for, and really, I can’t believe it has taken me so long to think of it, especially since I used to purposely start debates like this in classes just to see what happened -- I once told a kid that he couldn’t quote anything Jesus said because he never wrote anything down, and further added that God didn’t Fedex us the Bible from heaven so we had to accept that it was probably full of human errors . . . needless to say that college class didn’t go in the direction the teacher had planned (oh yeah, the kid was using the Jesus quote to preach against homosexuality, so don’t think I did it just to be a jerk, there was some merit to it).

Anyway, the idea came while watching a show about the Nativity and how some of the things that happened like the Star of Bethlehem can be explained through science, something which I have always felt doesn’t in away make the miracles any less miraculous or mean God didn’t have a hand in it, just that we now understand how his hand did it -- sort of like a magician with the smoke and mirrors. So, realizing that religion could spark some interesting arguments, especially since it is one of the only areas of our lives where all rational thought is allowed to leave -- people who don’t believe in ghosts or other supernatural phenomenon will argue themselves to death over the existence of angels or the ability to walk on water -- I decided to type ‘Was Jesus an Alien’ into Google and see if any forum discussions came up. Sure enough this topic has been asked many times on forums all across the web and sparked some of the most ridiculous, yet entertaining debates I have ever seen, ones that make the 2012 threads seem like minor scuffles. It also has created many branches, some which lead to people talking about information they got from movies, to things they’ve learned about personally from an angle that visits them, to why Satan wants us to believe in UFOs, to how Obama is of the same bloodline as Jesus and wants to eliminate Dan Brown because he is in the process of uncovering their conspiracy. The best one though was a circular argument about being born again, and how Satan doesn’t want humans to know he exists, yet still wants his presence to be known (???), all of which was written from a guy who claims Satan has been trying to kill him his entire life -- I was tempted to post the question how does he knows its Satan, what if God is trying to erase an error in the gene pool? The best thing about these topics is they can’t end because there is no proof either way, and there is no way any of them will agree with each other. Furthermore, there are some real religious idiots on the forum who think the thread is the perfect spot to preach the world of God, ones who believe the moderator is trying to silence them due to the corruption of his soul, which makes them post even more.

Of course there is a bit of a downside to stumbling upon this forum, and that downside is that I have only managed to write five pages of my latest novel, which is only a third of what I like to accomplish during the day. I can’t help it though, and already have a new search topic in mind, one that is sure to really spark some debate, one that deals with Jesus again and why there never seemed to be any significant women in his life.

Is it True . . .

. . . that hospitals make money from selling the umbilical cords after delivering babies? I just read this on the Unsolved Mysteries website after typing in Disturbing Facts into Google. It said that the cords are used in vein transplant surgeries. There were many other interesting ‘facts’ on this page, some of which I heard before, others which I hadn’t, but this one was the most bizarre of them all. In reality though, I’m sure many interesting things happen in hospitals. I know after my surgery I asked if I could keep the intestine they cut out. I wanted to put it in a jar on my desk (I am a horror writer after all). They said no. I even went as far as to tell them that I was getting married to a Jewish girl later that summer (true) and that she believed I needed the intestine for my future burial (not true). They laughed and said God would understand that they couldn’t send a bio-hazard home with me, especially since I would be marrying a girl that was waiting for a lung transplant. Anyway, I wonder if the intestine was really destroyed. Maybe they sold that as well and it got used for something . . .

Furthermore, if the above is true, do you think maybe the mother of the child being born should get some of that money, if not all of it. After all, it is a part of her body they are selling. The same question is often raised about transplants. Maybe more people would make their organs available if the families got compensated for it. Just a thought.

Black Christmas (1974) - OLD REVIEW

NOTE: This is an old review that I really don't like but will leave up because it still has some interesting thoughts in it. For my new better written review please follow this link.

Black Christmas (1974) New Review

Old Crappy Revew . . .

For many years I thought I had seen it all when it came to classic horror movies, and therefore was often feeling a bit depressed because nothing new was ever coming out. Then one day I saw a preview for a movie titled Black Christmas and wondered if this was something new or a remake of a movie I had never heard of before, and quickly googled it. Sure enough I had missed a classic (actually many now that I’ve put the Internet to good use and don’t just rely on what I see on the video store shelf), one which for some reason isn’t recognized by the mainstream movie world as a great horror film like Halloween or Friday the 13th. Note: I’m not saying it isn’t a great horror film (I actually think it is one of the best I have ever seen), just that no one outside of the horror world really knows about it. Everyone, even if they aren’t fans of horror movies, knows about Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (just to name a few), but Black Christmas, well, even horror fans seem to frequently miss this one. Needless to say I really wanted to watch it, but, unfortunately, never was able to find it, and had no idea about the DVD by mail systems that were being set up (my wife was waiting for a transplant at the time so I was missing out on many things like this while living from hospital room to hospital room for nearly two years, both in Chicago and St. Louis). Then it happened, a moment that has completely changed my horror movie viewing capabilities; I was at my parent’s house, visiting my Mother when I saw a little envelope from Blockbuster, one that contained a DVD, and asked what it was. She explained to me how she now rented movies through the Internet from Blockbuster.com because many of the movies she wanted to see weren’t available at the brick and mortar Blockbuster down the street, and how for a fixed monthly fee she could take out three DVDs at a time with no late fees and simply mail them back for a new one, something which I signed up for right away and started putting to good use.

One of the first movies I checked off on my list was Black Christmas, but unfortunately it had a long wait attached to it, so I filled up my checklist with many other movies (about a hundred or so, some good, most bad), my fingers pretty much checking off everything I saw in the horror section. Then, a few weeks ago, I remembered Black Christmas and decided to move it to the first spot on my list even though it still had a wait attached to it just so I at least had a chance to see it during the holidays -- hopefully with my brother who would be back in town after spending nearly two years in Iraq.

Truthfully, I didn’t think we would get to see it, because I figured it would be booked all the way through the holiday season, but then earlier this week I got an email saying it had been shipped and sure enough it was in the mailbox the very next day. Even better, my brother had arrived in town the day before, so we were able to watch it together. Unfortunately there had been a mix-up, and even though the DVD sleeve said Black Christmas 1974, the disk was the remake, which, I have to say, was one of the worst horror movies ever (I’d gladly watch Rob Zombie’s Halloween a hundred times before popping the new Black Christmas back into the DVD player). Thankfully the mistake was corrected and yesterday I received the 1974 version, which, again, my brother and I sat down to watch.

From the start we knew this was going to be good. In fact, I was upstairs in the kitchen making popcorn when he shouted up to me that the movie already looked really good just from the scene depicted in the menu. Popcorn popping, I headed down to see what he meant, and sure enough there was a creepy little picture of a brightly lit house surrounded by a winter wonderland, the image grainy in the way most movies from the 70’s and 80’s were, something which we have come to love from old horror movies and see as a sign of great frights ahead.

Now, having seen the remake first, we kind of expected the movie to take the same route showing the insane asylum (one that hands out hard objects like candy canes that can be sucked to a lethal point - yeah, right) that Billy escapes from, but that isn’t how this movie goes and frankly, we were glad because Billy is much more frightening when you know nothing about him. We also liked how the girls in the sorority house seemed real rather than stereotypical sorority girls, and how the police actually tried to help rather than giving a BS answer about being too backed up and cut off from the snow. Also, the kills seemed much more realistic and therefore more frightening, as did the lunatic shouting through the phone. Finally, without revealing too much, the ending was much better, one which I could respect and didn’t seem like an extra fifteen minutes slapped onto the film just to lengthen the feature.

All this said, I am amazed that this movie is still so unknown. Anyone have any thoughts on why this is? Could it be a lack of sequels (or once again am I totally unaware of them)? Speaking of sequels, I’ve read some statements that say Halloween was originally supposed to be this movies sequel? Anyone else ever hear that? I never had, and really am not sure if it is something I believe, but thought I would share it anyway.

Darkfall by Dean Koontz

Tiny demons with silver eyes coming out of the heating ducts to enact a violent revenge on a rich drug dealer and anyone else that should get between the them and their prey -- just the type of cheerful story you would read to put your young children to bed one snowy December night, right? Well, if you were my Mother, then the answer would be yes. The prologue to Darkfall by Dean Koontz ended up being a bedtime story for my little brother and I shortly before Christmas while we were in grade school and scared the shit out of us. For days afterward I couldn’t go near or even look at the heating duct coverings anywhere in the house, even if the lights were on, and anytime I saw Christmas lights glowing in the dark through a window they became the silver eyes of the demonic creatures from Hell. Even worse, I never was able to find out what happened to these little demonic creatures because the book was considered too adult for us to read in its entirety, and therefore had to wait several years until I was old enough to buy it myself -- something that happened when I was sixteen. Buy it I did, however, and read it in about three days, my eyes going from page to page as if on a quest, one that had been snagged up years earlier, but was now moving smoothly.

Originally intended as one of his ‘Owen West’ novels, but then published under his own name due to the success of Phantoms and other genera works, Dean Koontz’s Darkfall is a splendid little horror novel that is perfectly suited for someone in need of a fast scary read over the holidays (or any time of year really). Set during a cold New York December, the story tells the tale of single parent police detective Jack Dawson who is working a series of bizarre murders with his partner Rebecca Chandler. The murders are targeting a specific crime family and are incredibly brutal, often looking as if angry rodents had been unleashed upon the victims. Making the situation even more disturbing is that some of the victims were under police surveillance at the time of their murders, yet no record of anyone going in or out of the houses was recorded. Because of this Jack Dawson starts thinking there is more at work here than meets the eye, something which causes him to get very close to the man responsible for the crimes. From there things get really bad as the man responsible decides to target Jack’s children, which sets the stage for an incredibly scary chase scene through the blizzard choked streets of New York City.

It has been a long time since I read this book, even longer since my mother read us the prologue, yet I still sometimes catch myself growing weary of the heating ducts around the house and worrying that something might be watching from within, which is why I highly recommend this one. Anything that has the ability to stick with someone this long, especially someone who has read so many novels since, has to be good and shouldn’t be missed. What is even more astonishing is that Darkfall wasn’t the only book Dean Koontz published that year. The Servants of Twilight (originally titled Twilight), which many fans considers to be another one of his bests (me included), was published under the pseudonym Leigh Nichols, which just goes to show how talented Koontz was back. NOTE: The Servants of Twilight was another book my Mother used to scare us to sleep with.

Black Christmas DVD Screw Up

Anyone else ever have their DVD by Mail screw up on them, and if so, did it happen with something you’ve been waiting a long time to see? Yesterday it happened to me. For a long time now I have been waiting to see the original Black Christmas, which I have never had the opportunity to watch, yet always hear great things about. Until Monday the DVD had been listed as a long wait, but then, that afternoon, I got an email confirmation that the DVD had been shipped. Even better, it arrived the very next day, on a night where my brother was over and able to watch it with me, something which seemed so cool given the holiday atmosphere. So, there we were watching the film, our minds thinking it sort of looked a little bright and clean for a movie from the 70s, yet thinking maybe this was because it had been digitally re-mastered (according to the box it was the special edition of the 1974 classic), when all of the sudden a cell phone rang within the film. Needless to say we instantly knew this wasn’t the original, something I had started to suspect when I saw the title ‘Remaking Black Christmas’ within the special features while looking for the trailer since I’ve never seen that either and thought it would be a nice lead-in to watching the film -- yet, upon a second examination of the package sent to me, I again read ‘Black Christmas - the 1974 classic’. After reading that I went and double checked my account online and looked at the DVD and it too said Black Christmas 1974, and listed it as one I had at home. So, what happened . . . well I guess they must have put the wrong DVD into the little sleeve, or maybe someone rented both DVDs at some point and mixed them up when sending them back, something which no one has complained about. Unfortunately I’m guessing this will mean that I won’t get to see Black Christmas during the Christmas season because I doubt the mix up with be fixed in time.

Oh, and by the way, I think the remake sucked and kind of wish I hadn’t watched it once I realized it was the remake, because now I wonder if it revealed anything that would have been a surprise in the original. None of the girls in the film were really that likable and the storyline seemed incredibly slow and predictable.

NOTE: I may write a better review for this movie once I see the original, but it probably won't be anytime soon.

X-Files: Leonard Betts (1/26/97)

“Leonard Betts” is a classic stand alone X-Files episode, yet one that does connect to the conspiracy themed shows since it paved the way toward the Scully Cancer episodes that followed. Like many other episodes from Season Four, this was one that I did see a long time ago as a kid before becoming a diehard X-Files fan, but since it wasn’t all that scary it kind of drifted away from my memory until my brother and I watched it the other day during our unofficial X-Files Marathon -- one that has seen us watching two to three episodes a night rather than the agreed upon one, which is why I have fallen behind on these reviews: too many episodes all jumbling together. Note: I’m not complaining. Having watched it again, though, I now realize that is one of the better episodes of the series, not just because it has the Scully Cancer link, but because it once again shows how well developed the characters of Mulder and Scully had become, and how their interactions drove the show forward. Anyone can tell a story about a paramedic that looses his head in an accident while racing toward the hospital who then gets up from the morgue and walks away, but it take special talent to make that story more than an uninteresting shock fest, one that almost seems plausible by the end credits. This is exactly what the show did, however, week after week, for nearly nine years. It took unbelievable situations and made them believable.

The question being asked in this episode is a good one, and does make one wonder if in the future cancer cells will be a more permanent feature within our DNA makeup, one that evolves into a helpful tool in the body’s fight against nature rather than a destructive force that withers one into a nearly lifeless bedridden skeleton.

The episode also contained a good deal of humor, which, as I’ve said before, is often something that is overlooked when talking about the show, and pretty much unknown to those that weren’t fans. In the case of this episode the best of the humor came when Scully had no problems digging around in the surgical waste area, but then asked for Mulder’s help. His vocal objections followed by the look on his face once he finally starts to dig in the waste alongside Scully were classic.

Lastly, we got to see Scully kicking ass, which is always great and makes you realize that behind the properly dressed innocent looking woman is a girl that can take care of herself, one who will not hesitate to clean the floor with your face, if, that is, she doesn’t shoot you full of holes first.

All is all a great episode, one which I will watch many times in the future and would recommend to people who have never before seen the show and want a good jumping in point, one, because it doesn’t require a detailed past knowledge of the show to get into, and second, while a bit grotesque at times, this one is pretty tame when compared to some of the other episodes like Host or Home.

"Foet" by F. Paul Wilson

Have you ever been in an argument with someone about how inhuman it is to wear fur? I have, though I guess I’m probably not as passionate about it as some people since I’ve never run around throwing blood on those wearing the coats and or gone out on mass protests. Still, I will say something to someone if I see such items being worn, not to humiliate them or make them feel bad (though if this occurs it is fine with me), but just to make sure they understand what happened to the animal so they could have that product. It is the detachment from the actual killing process that gets to me. Most of the people that wear fur and who eat meat (me included in this second one) don’t have to take part in the actual slaughter and therefore can kind of forget that it happens. It has gotten so bad that I once actually listened to a fellow student angrily tell a guy how cruel it was for him to go hunting over the weekend while she was sitting there eating a ham sandwich. Watching her take a bite I said, ‘It is kind of funny that you’re mad at him for hunting while you’re eating a ham sandwich,’ which is when she said, ‘Yeah, but these animals don’t feel pain when they’re killed.’ Don’t feel pain? Honey, I’ve seen what goes on in a slaughter house and heard the screams as pigs were hooked by their ankles and then have their throats sliced open with an electric carver all while alive and trying to jerked away, blood splattering everywhere -- believe me, they feel pain. Further, the life they live before that pain isn’t what one sees in movies like Babe or read about in Charlotte’s Web.

Apparently F. Paul Wilson feels the same when it comes to things like this, but rather than arguing with the people involved (what’s the point, they will never think like him anyway -- something which I’m starting to learn as well about many topics) he decided to write a story, one which takes the idea of wearing fur one step further. The tale is title “Foet” and was originally published in Borderlands 2, and now can be found in his recently published collection Aftershock & Others: 19 Oddities.

What happens within the pages of this story is shocking, yet not beyond the realm of possibility. I can also almost see people standing up for it, their mindset being that it is better to make something useful from the skin than to just throw it away with the rest of the body. I especially liked the rating system, something which I probably wouldn’t have even thought about if I had written the tale, but which makes sense. After all, certain groups of people may not have as many abortions as other groups, so having something made from the discarded skin of that color would be more expensive.

Anyone else ever read this story? What did you think of it? F. Paul Wilson says it is almost a companion piece to his tale “Pelts” which is one I haven’t been able to get my hands on yet, but want to read. “Pelts” was also made into a movie for the Masters of Horror series which I haven’t seen yet, but have on my Blockbuster list. Having just read a review of it I guess it was pretty good.

Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker

Of all the authors I read, no one seems to better understand the ‘no boundaries’ rule of the horror genera better than Clive Barker. Best known for the Hellraiser movies of which his story “The Hellbound Heart” was the inspiration, Clive Barker is a writer that holds nothing back when it comes to writing and doesn’t seem to worry about offending people, which, given the stories he has created, I can see happening on a regular basis. Because of this one never knows what his stories will be like or where they will take us, the only guarantee being that it will probably be unique and at some point will spit in the face of mainstream religious and conservative beliefs. It will also give us a great look into the interesting worlds of homosexuality, bdsm, S&M, fetish, and any other alternative sexual lifestyle or perversion that is out there, something which most people truly are curious about yet afraid to admit for fear of being branded with a giant P for ‘pervert’ (if I were ever branded I would ask them to put two Ps on me for ‘proud pervert’ - ha!). Mister B. Gone is no exception.

The story is about a young demon named Jakabok Botch (Mister B.) who is trapped within the pages of the book. While begging for the reader to burn the book that imprisons him Jakabok tells his tragic life story, one that begins with him living in the garbage heaps in the ninth circle of Hell, and then on Earth after he is caught by a group of medieval men who had lowered a net through a crack in the Earth with slabs of meat as the bait. Having escaped the men, who were disappointed at his size and the fact that he was just a minor demon (they had wanted a giant), he befriends another demon living on the earth named Quitoon. Together the two cause mayhem and destruction all across the medieval landscape (in one particularly grisly scene Jakabok take a bath in a tube filled with the blood of infants, one which took a long time to fill given the size of the infants). Eventually this path of destruction leads Jakabok and Quitoon to the home of Gutenberg (inventor of the printing press) where an epic battle between angel and demon is being waged, one which ends with an interesting look at both sides and who they really are and why they are fighting.

A great read, yet somewhat repetitive when it comes to the narrator Jakabok begging for the book to be burned, Mister B. Gone is a nice story for someone who doesn’t have a lot of time to sit with a novel like Coldheart Canyon or The Great and Secret Show or Imajica, but still needs a Clive Barker fix. That said, I think this story would have been more appropriate inside a collection of similar length tales like The Books of Blood, or Cabal, or The Inhuman Condition, one which offered up a few more tales for those of us that are used to large, five to six hundred page books, ones which have several different characters, all who lead very interesting and bizarre lives.

Holy Night (Short Story)

“I said no!” Tom snapped. His voice was loud enough to turn heads in the crowded mall and earned him several dirty looks from concerned mothers.

Guilt raced through him and he quickly apologized to his son Shawn. Tears glistened in the boy’s eyes, which only added to Tom’s guilt. However, he wasn’t going to change his mind. The guilt wasn’t enough to overturn the fear. Nothing ever would be. Just seeing the man in red from afar was enough to send shivers racing through his body. Making it worse was the fact that parents were actually letting their children sit on the fat red man’s lap. How could they be so ignorant? Didn’t they know what that costumed man represented? How had the truth gotten so distorted over the years?

“Come on, we’re running late. Your mother might be home before we get back.” Under his arm was a large bag of gifts the two had bought. He still couldn’t believe he was actually taking part in this absurd misrepresentation of Christmas. How had she talked him into it?

“But I wanna sit on Santa’s lap,” Shawn whined. “Please Daddy. Mommy would let me.”

His anger almost boiled over. Alison knew how he felt about Christmas, yet she still encouraged it. Why? Didn’t she realize how much harm it did him?

This time Tom did not snap. Instead he took hold of Shawn’s small arm and forcefully led him away from the Santa Claus display.

* * *

Alison wasn’t back by the time they reached the house, and Tom was successful in wrapping and hiding the gifts he and Shawn had purchased for her. Tomorrow it would be Alison’s turn to take Shawn, and the two would shop for him. However, he would gladly go without gifts if it meant forgoing the holiday celebrations.

“Daddy, is Santa really gonna bring me an X-Box?” Shawn asked. The boy was sitting down by the tree, looking at a few of the gifts Tom and Alison had put out early. It, of course, had been Alison’s idea to do such a thing. Hell, it had been her idea to start celebrating Christmas this year.

“I don’t know Shawn. You’ll just have to wait and see.” It took all the control he could muster not to tell his son the truth about Christmas, and in his mind he saw himself running through the cold night air one Christmas Eve, the man in red coming after him.

* * *

“Daddy wouldn’t let me sit on Santa’s lap,” Shawn whined once dinner had been served.

Alison gave Tom a look. He returned the scowl. She then looked at Shawn and said, “It was probably too busy. Tomorrow I’ll let you sit on his lap.”

“No,” Tom said.

Alison jerked toward him. “Tom.” It was all she said, yet that one word spoke volumes. She turned back to Shawn. “Tomorrow we’ll get there nice and early so there isn’t a long line and you can tell Santa want you want.”

Tom remained silent.

“Do you think he got my list?” Shawn asked.

“Of course. But tomorrow you might want to remind him of the things you really really want just incase he got confused.”

Shawn smiled. “Santa doesn’t get confused.

No. He doesn’t, Tom said to himself. Santa knows exactly what he’s doing each and every time he enters a house.

* * *

“Tom, I thought we agreed that this Santa thing was behind you and that it was time we started celebrating the holidays again, for Shawn’s sake,” Alison said that night once Shawn went to bed. The two were sitting by the fireplace, drinking tea, and reading--though now it looked like the reading was coming to an end.

Tom didn’t reply. Instead he thought back to the years before when Alison and he had skipped the Christmas celebrations. No tree, no lights, no music, no gifts. It had been wonderful. They had even done so once Shawn was born, but now that he was getting older, and because kids had talked about it in school, Alison had decided it was time they start celebrating again.

“Tom. It was fifteen years ago. Why can’t you let it go?” Alison asked. The concern in her voice was genuine, yet still did not help. Let it go. She had no idea what she was asking. “Don’t you think it’s time?”

“No,” Tom said. “It’s not time.”

“Why?”

“Because--“ he’s going to come back again. Tom kept this part to himself. Alison knew his family had been murdered. However, she didn’t know the exact circumstances of that murder, nor did she realize that the murderer wasn’t human and would be coming for him eventually. Santa wouldn’t care how many years had passed. Time had no meaning to him. Fifteen years was nothing. To make it worse, Santa knew exactly where he was, and one of these years he would strike. It was only a matter of time.

“Because why?” Alison asked.

Tom didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Even if he could share what had happened Alison wouldn’t believe him. No one ever would. That’s how warped the Christmas holiday had become.

* * *

Tom sat before the fire long after Alison went to bed. The fireplace was gas with ceramic logs, therefore it did not require him to get up and feed it every ten minutes or so. Had this been the case the flames would have been long gone, the logs nothing but ash.

He had been fifteen years old when he crept downstairs one Christmas Eve to see Santa. Most kids his age didn’t believe in the man from the North Pole, but Tom’s family had been different. They did not celebrate Christmas the way most did. Instead they were one of the few families that knew the true story (the entire true story) and celebrated accordingly.

The silence as he descended the stairs toward the family room had been overwhelming, and several times he almost convinced himself to turn back. It wasn’t until he was on the bottom step, getting ready to actually enter the family room, when he heard the muffled cry. This, however, did not startle him. It was just his family’s gift to Santa. In return Santa would give them presents, the amount determined by how beautiful their gift to him actually was.

Several years earlier he had seen one of his family’s gifts to Santa. She had been a pretty teenage girl who had been taken from the street the previous Halloween and kept in the cellar until Christmas Eve. Tom had been home alone while his parents went to a teacher conference at school, and had ventured down into the cellar to see the girl. Despite the bars that separated him from her, and the darkness of the cellar, Tom had been surprised by the girl’s beauty, and instantly grew excited. Not sexually excited, but excited due to the fact that Santa would probably give them a record breaking amount of gifts that year.

Now, this year, Tom wasn’t really that interested in the family gift, but instead wanted to see what Santa looked like. He had asked his parents about this a few days earlier, but they had just shook their heads and told him that no one they knew had ever seen him. This had made him even more curious.

A soft glow from the fireplace was the only light in the living room, which made it difficult to see. However, the lack of light didn’t keep his eyes from seeing the girl on the floor, her arms and legs linked together behind her back by a single strand of yellow rope.

Her struggles ceased as he entered the room, and she looked up at him. Light from the fireplace illuminated her face. Tom’s breath caught in his throat. He could not believe his eyes. It was Jenny.

Without much thought he bent down and pulled away the gray tape that secured her lips. “Tom,” she groaned after a terrible gasp. Her voice was barely audible.

“Shhh,” he said as he went over to untie the ropes. Anger fuelled his fingers. How could his parents do this to him? She was his best friend--the only girl who had ever kissed him. At school they always hung out, and then afterwards they would walk home together. Once, while walking home, she had let him touch her in places he had only ever dreamt of touching before. It had been wonderful.

Without warning the large grandfather clock in the corner of the room struck midnight and began its count of twelve. It was officially Christmas morning, which wasn’t good.

“Tom, your parents . . . they told me--“

A terrible red glow suddenly erupted from the fireplace. At the same moment Tom finished with the last knot. Jenny nearly kicked him as her legs snapped back toward the ground.

NO, Tom though loudly. Then to Jenny, “Get up.”

Jenny struggled to stand. Unfortunately, her legs were cramped from being bent for so long and she collapsed back to the floor. “I can’t,” she groaned. Her eyes realized the glow was not coming from the fire, but something else. “Tom, what’s going on?”

“GET UP!” he shouted and pulled her to her feet. This time her legs managed to support her weight. “GO.” He rushed her from the family room.

“Where do ya think your going?” a horrible voice asked.

The two looked back. Jenny gasped while Tom remained silent. He had heard stories about how terrible Santa was, but never in a million years imagined this. What stood in his family room was beyond description.

Santa took a step toward them. Withering maggots fell from his body and slithered away. Thousands more clung to his flesh. His black eyes were the only visible feature on his face, and the only evidence of a beard was the fact that maggots seemed to dangle below his chin. They were everywhere.

Pain flared up in his right arm. Tom looked down and realized Jenny’s fingernails were digging into his skin. She never realized this, but it was those fingernails that saved his life. Unfortunately she was unable to follow him from the house.

* * *

What is he waiting for? Tom asked himself while staring at the fireplace. In his mind he pictured Santa as he knew him. The red coat was still there; only it wasn’t bright and clean like the imposters at the mall. Instead it was singed from flames and wiggling with maggots.

Maggots. The police didn’t tell him directly, but Tom later found out that his home had been crawling with the small disgusting insects. They had been everywhere, many feeding on the remains of his parents who had been butchered while they slept.

Of course they never found any evidence of Jenny, which meant Santa had still claimed his gift. What had he done to her? Before Jenny, Tom had never asked this question. In fact, he hadn’t really cared what Santa did with the girls they gave him. All that mattered was the piles of presents he would leave. Now he felt guilty and wished his family had never celebrated the true form of Christmas.

“Honey, you still awake?” Alison asked.

Tom turned around. Alison stood several feet behind him, her body once again wrapped up in a warm bathrobe.

She came over and put a hand on the back of his neck. “What’s wrong--you still thinking about Christmas?”

Tom nodded.

“Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen.”

That was easy for her to say because she thought he was worried about a killer coming in from off the street. The chances of that happening were slim to none. One coming from the fireplace was a different story.

“Come on back to bed.”

Tom did.

* * *

Christmas morning came a few days later. For some of the night Tom sat by the fireplace, but then Alison had told him she did not want Shawn waking up and seeing him there because it would ruin the magic of Christmas.

That had been around three o’clock Christmas morning. At six Shawn came in and dragged them out of bed, excitement flooding his system.

Relief swept over Tom as he entered the family room. Everything was as they had left it the night before--almost.

Tom didn’t notice the strange small gift sitting in the corner until almost all the other presents were unwrapped. Of course it was Shawn who found the gift and went over to see if it was for him.

“Daddy, I found one for you,” Shawn said, disappointment staining his words. He wanted more gifts.

“Oh,” Tom said and took the gift from Shawn. He looked down at the small gift tag and read, “TO: TOM. FROM: SANTA.” He looked at Alison. “Very funny.”

“Nope, not from me,” she said.

Tom looked at Shawn. All his gifts had had been very distinct due to the huge DADDY scribbled on them. This one was not from him.

An uneasy feeling settled in his bowels. What if the gift really was from Santa? Had he been there last night?

“Well go on, open it,” Alison urged.

Tom shook his head.

“Why not?” she asked.

“I don’t want to,” he said. Tossing it into the fireplace seemed like a much better option. Even then, it might not destroy whatever horror was inside.

“Oh, for crying out loud.” Alison snatched the small gift away from him. “This Santa thing is getting real old.” She quickly tore off the paper and then opened the lid. In his mind Tom pictured thousands of maggots squirming out. Instead Alison pulled out a Borders gift card and flung it to him. “I just thought it would help you get over this stupid fear.”

Tom stared at her in disbelief. Who the hell did she think she was? He wasn’t just going to forget--

“MOMMY,” Shawn cried.

Tom and Alison turned.

Shawn was backing away from his stocking, which lay on the floor where he had dropped it.

“Oh my God!” Alison shouted.

Maggots were crawling out by the hundreds.

Under the Dome by Stephen King

I must say, I was quite surprised by the new Stephen King novel Under the Dome. Not surprised by how good it was, because that is almost a given for anything he writes, but by how big it was, something I hadn’t realized until I went to pick the book up from the shelf at the bookstore and subsequently dropped on my toe due to the weight, which hurt even through my shoe (though it wasn’t as bad as the time an entire jar of mayonnaise fell from the fridge and shattered on my bare foot -- that still holds the top spot). Normally I have a pretty good idea of what to expect when going to buy a book that I have been eagerly anticipating, especially when the author is Stephen King, but this time around I just had no idea, mostly because it seemed like there wasn’t that much publicity for it and because my computer doesn’t seem to like the new Stephen King website so I wasn’t able to read much about it. Also, when stocking the book on the shelf, the store had decided to put them facing out so one could see the cover, which hid the fact that I was about to pick up a cinder block. Of course, this little misshape didn’t stop me from buying the book, and after reassuring the cute college age female employee who had been standing next to me that I was okay -- physically okay, my pride had taken a direct hit, one that would make Hiroshima seem tame (yeah, I’ll probably get emails for that one . . . oh well, they started it) -- I took the book to the counter, bought it, and then hurried home, my mind eagerly wanting to know what the hell this giant dome over the town of Chester's Mill was, why it was there, and what would happen to those trapped within it.

Wait, back up, the story is about a town that has a dome trapping everyone inside? Didn’t I see that in the Simpson’s movie? Well, yes you saw a similar premise, but let me assure you that the two stories are completely different, and that comparing them is like linking together two movies because they share a vampire like creature, or have an alien encounter, or a war (I actually have heard people say that Saving Private Ryan was a rip off of The Longest Day due to the beach landing scenes, which, of course left me speechless). Unfortunately this coincidental similarity will bring criticism, of this I’m sure, and for the most part it will be directed at Stephen King because for some reason celebrities of his stature seem a natural target when things like this happen, almost as if people are just waiting and ready. The fact that he started writing the book back in the seventies while working on The Stand won’t matter either, because most of those doing the ranting won’t know much beyond the sensationalistic bit of gossip they hear and will toss the comments his way before doing any research.

Speaking of The Stand, this new novel reminded me of it given how well developed the characters were and how they made the story move along rather than the dome itself, something which Stephen King is an expert at, but which, unfortunately, non-readers never get to experience because this element is almost always lost when the story is translated to film. Further, I think it is this ability to create memorable characters that keep people coming back time and time again to his stories. Most people think it is because we love horror and disturbing situations, and while that is true, there is something else present within a King book, something that one can’t really find with too many other authors and which can’t really be explained because one has to experience it.

So, if you are looking for something to read now that winter has arrived (and boy has it here in Chicago), then go grab Under the Dome. You’ll be glad you did -- unless of course you are on a budget that won’t allow you to buy anymore of his books, because believe me, once you’ve sampled the goods you’ll be wanting all you can get.

Tick Tock by Dean Koontz

Ten years. That’s how long it’s been since I read my first Dean Koontz book and thus started this dark disturbing horror filled journey. Okay, that’s a little dramatic, but I’ll leave it in because it is kind of true. Dean Koontz was the writer responsible for me becoming a horror writer and therefore picking up the book Tick Tock while in Borders all those years ago was, in a way, one of the first steps on this interesting quest -- the segments from his and Stephen King’s books that my Mother used to read to me and my brother when we were little could also be considered steps as well.

Despite the time that has passed I can still clearly picture the day I bought the book. My Mom and I had gone to Borders because I wanted a new novel to read and didn’t yet have a car (I was sixteen at the time but hadn’t yet finished Drivers Ed). Like most trips to the bookstore I headed right to the horror section, but unlike most trips I had decided it was time to actually buy a book from this area rather than looking for a while and then heading to the mystery section. Of course, my Mother was not aware of this decision, but for some reason I didn’t think she would object (years earlier she hadn’t allowed me to read Dean Koontz, only listen to the parts she deemed suitable for my me and my brother), because for the last year I had been gorging myself on Robin Cook and Michael Crichton books, both of whom had occasionally included adult situations in their stories, ones which I sometimes had to read three or four times just to get the full effect, and which my Mother was aware of since she had read all the books as well. So, Tick Tock in hand, I went up to my Mother and told her I had found a book to read and was ready to go, at which point she looked down to see what I had picked out and said, “That’s a scary one,” and left it at that. I had been right. The horror section was no longer off limits.

I started reading Tick Tock that night while in bed. It was Christmas time so my room had an interesting array of colors to read by, first the lamp, which gave off normal light, and then the small Christmas tree I used every year, one which still had most of the colors in the light strand that had seen several years worth of use, all of which combined to make a pretty spooky basement room (am I the only one that finds Christmas lights on a dark snowy night somewhat spooky as well as festive?). Now, most who have read this book know that it is more of a comedy than a horror story, but that comedy doesn’t really begin until after the first chapter, which, in my opinion, is still one of the scariest first chapters of any book ever written, one which terrified me to the point of being unable to do anything but continue reading until I reached a point where Tommy Phan (the main character) was momentarily safe, allowing me to close the book and try to sleep. Unfortunately the terror continued after I put the book away, because back then I liked to listen to Christmas music while going to sleep at Christmas time and hit play on my tape player. Normally such a situation wouldn’t add to the terror, but that night the tape player chewed up the cassette I wanted to listen too, thus creating a scene that was similar to one I had just read where Tommy Phan hears nothing but static on his radio and then voices calling his name. Needless to say I shut the tape player off before my name echoed from it, something that probably wouldn’t have happened, but didn’t want to chance.

For those that haven’t read it, Tick Tock is the story of Tommy Phan, a Vietnamese American who writes detective stories for a living, something which his mother thinks is making him too ‘American’. One night he arrives home to find a homemade rag doll sitting on his front steps (this is after he hears his name called on the radio by screaming voices from some dark abysses), and proceeds to bring it inside. Needless to say the doll is more than it seems and soon Tommy Phan is on the run from a supernatural creature that is hell bent on killing him. Thankfully he is not alone in this terrifying attempt at escape. At his side is a waitress who isn’t quite normal, one who adds most of the comedy this story possesses, one who just might be able to help fight off this horrible creature.

Once finished with Tick Tock I read Twilight Eyes which my Mother happened to already have on the bookshelf in the laundry room (don’t ask me why they were kept there or why I didn’t just start with it when needing a new book) and then the Bad Place, both of which made it clear to me that I had to read everything this author wrote, my wallet staying pretty empty for the rest of the year as I bought his books three at a time, often buying more and more even though I had several to read already, my mind always wanting to finish the books as quickly as possible just so I could get started on another one. Obviously, reading at this rate, it didn’t take long before all his books had been consumed and I needed to find another author, one who just happened to be Stephen King.

NOTE: I’ve heard people say they haven’t read this book yet because it sounds too much like Child’s Play given that a doll is chasing people. My advice, read the book. It isn’t anything like Child’s Play, but to say anything else would give too much away.

X-Files: Small Potatoes (4/20/97)

When people discuss the show X-Files they usually use words like terrifying, disturbing, and disgusting, all of which fit, yet often overlook one of the great strengths of the show, that being is comedic element, especially with some of the interactions between Mulder and Scully, or even just the expressions on their faces during some crazy situations (Mulder having to dig around in the surgical disposal container in the episode Leonard Betts instantly comes to mind). Most of the time these elements are mixed in with horrific situations, which is probably why they are easily overlooked, but every now and then entire scenes are devoted to the comedy side of the show, the later half of the episode Small Potatoes being a good example of this as a Mulder impersonator tries to seduce Scully. The beginning of the episode had a hilarious moment as well as Mulder and Scully were interviewing a lady who had been impregnated by an alien, one who just happened to be Luke Skywalker (you have to see the scene to get the full effect, and trust me, even if you are not a fan of the show it will be time well spent).

The episode Small Potatoes is the story of a man who is able to shape shift due to an extra layer of muscles under his skin (I think, the explanation for this wasn’t really fully developed in my opinion), who impregnates four women while posing as their husbands, and a fifth while taking on the image of Luke Skywalker. Mulder and Scully are sent to the town to investigate due to an odd birth defect that affected the babies of these five women, their initial theory being that something sinister is going on with the fertility doctor four of the women were using. Not long into the episode, however, Mulder realizes that something else is going on, especially when the suspect they arrest is able to walk out of his interrogation room of the police station, everyone seeing a well known police officer rather than the suspect. Before Mulder can prove his theory, he is knocked out by the suspect and locked up in a janitor closet -- something which would have been discovered quickly if the suspect wasn’t then able to take on the image of Mulder. From there things grow incredibly hilarious as the not-so-bright impersonator tries to live the life of Mulder, one which he decides to spice up by taking the relationship Mulder and Scully share to the next level.

Well written and incredibly funny, this is one of those stand alone episodes that everyone can enjoy, one which shows just how versatile the X-Files series was.

X-Files: Home (10/11/96) aka The Peacock Family Episode.

For many years my family didn’t believe me about this episode because it was never amongst the reruns we all watched religiously, all of them thinking I was making everything up, the arguments growing so heated that I once was grounded for lying, though the sentence wasn’t actually carried out and I think it was only imposed to end the fight. Since then my family has realized this episode does exist, and the reasons for them never being able to see it in reruns in the years following my viewing of it was due to it being banned from TV, something which many X-Files fans now talk about with pride, and which I like to bring up from time to time with my family to show them that they should always believe what I tell them.

I first saw this episode the night it aired while at a friend’s house a few weeks before Halloween while in the seventh grade. At that point I wasn’t an avid X-Files fan, but did watch the show if I stumbled upon it, which is what happened that night, my friend’s finger guiding us through the channels in an attempt to find something scary to watch. Our timing couldn’t have been more perfect. The episode started out with a family burying a baby in the pouring rain, one which was then discovered the next day by a bunch of neighborhood kids playing baseball, their home plate just happening to be set upon the shallow grave. Too big of a crime for such a small Pennsylvania town, Mulder and Scully are brought in to investigate, something which infuriates the family of inbreeds living in the old rundown house where the baby was born, a house which I would never have played baseball by as a kid, especially given all the other areas of open land that seemed to surround the town. Thinking the sheriff is to blame the family sets out to kill him in the middle of the night, their weapons nasty homemade clubs, ones which pretty much destroy the bodies of the sheriff and his wife, all while a cheery love song is echoing from the speakers of the old car the family drove -- something which is still being talked about by fans of the show as one of the greatest moments in X-Files history. Unfortunately for me this is where my first viewing of the episode ended because my friends Dad thought it was a little intense for us. Instead we got to watch Stargate, which was good as well, but just wasn’t the same (I wanted scary - more important, I wanted to make sure that family of freaks had their heads blown off by the end of show so that I wouldn’t have to fear them coming to my town).

A few years later this episode did air again on Halloween night, an advertisement for it stating that it had been banned from TV after its first airing; warnings about its subject matter flashing all over the place every time the show returned from commercial. Being the X-Files fans we were, my family sat down and watched it, all of us pretty shocked by what happened, my mind finally old enough to understand what inbreeding was and why the three boys looked the way they did.

Since then I have only watched this episode a handful of times because there is just something about it that doesn’t sit well with me (I know, pretty funny given the stories I have published), and even though it is one of my all time favorites, if given the choice between this one and one of the standard ones, I will pick a standard one (unless of course someone in our group hasn’t seen this episode yet, then the sadistic bastard in me comes out and makes them watch it).

NOTE: Most of the talk online about this episode is pretty positive but there is one person that seems to think it was a rip off of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes. Anyone else think this? I can understand where they find the similarities, but the storylines are all pretty different in my opinion.

X-Files: Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man (11/17/96)

Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man is an interesting episode, especially since most X-Files fans claim it as one of their all time favorites even though it is pretty much absent of Mulder and Scully, something which killed the final season of the show, yet worked really well with this episode. Why? I have no idea, but have a feeling it has something to do with the aura of mystery the show had created around the smoking man, and then the sad, completely lonely portrayal they gave him in this episode, one which showed a human side one would never have expected from such a villain, yet one that seemed to make perfect sense. The fact that he is a struggling writer is a great addition to his character as well, one which goes a long way in showing how isolated he has become. It also seems to be his only outlet of happiness (though the success of Mulder may, in a strange way, be a source as well -- one that other fans may argue but I will always think is true).

I first saw this episode a few years ago with my Mother who also had never seen it (actually, since buying Season 4 on DVD we have learned that most of these episodes are new to us, which is a wonderful surprise). I’m not sure when we saw it exactly, or why I was at my parent’s house, but have a feeling it was one of those nights when Jen was in the hospital, and I didn’t want to go home to an empty apartment (she might have even been in St. Louis at that point, waiting for her transplant -- I don’t remember). Anyway, the two of watched this episode with our mouths hanging open, our minds having never known the story behind the smoking man, both of us hoping he would eventually get a publication after all those years of hard work, and nearly clapping with joy when that acceptance letter finally arrived and seeing the smile that overwhelmed his face. Of course that happiness was not to be, something which we should have expected given his continuation in the series, but it was sad nonetheless.

Anyone else out there like this episode? Before writing this short review (an X-Files Quickie you might say) I went and looked to see what people were saying about it on The Internet Movie Database and was pleasantly surprised to see that out of the twelve reviews, eleven were positive. I also discovered that this episode will be on SYFY (I have no idea what channel that is) at 2:00 AM on Thursday December 3, so if anyone has that channel and is interested in watching it early tomorrow morning, I encourage you to do so.