October 11, International Day of the Girl Child

It's been a tough year for girls and young women all over the globe. Just this week, a 14-year-old girl became a target for speaking out against the aliban's attempts to limit education for young women. (Read the story here.) Even in the U.S. young women have been branded "sluts" for demanding their reproductive rights. Female mutilation is still practiced in numerous countries. If you're a girl, or used to be a girl or have a daughter or know a young woman, celebrate the International Day of the Girl Child by thinking about what can be done to help girls throughout the world achieve their goals and dreams. If you want to do something concrete, click over to Raise Your Hand.

Halloween Movie Marathon: Changeling

This is another haunted house story. I seem to be fond of haunted house stories. The centerpiece of this movie is a scene that sounds totally laughable when you try to describe it to anyone who hasn't seen it. 
It involves a wet ball bouncing down a flight of steps.
If you've seen the movie, you know the moment I mean.
And you know how scary it was.
George C. Scott starred in The Changeling and when you realized how scared his character was by that wet ball, you lost all shame about being scared yourself.
Because you know, George C. Scott was scared so you'd better believe that it was scary.
The movie co-starred Melvyn Douglas, a two-time Oscar winner who also had an Emmy and a Tony on his mantle. Douglas' last movie was Ghost Story, based on  Peter Straub's novel of the same name. I wasn't a huge fan of Ghost Story, but it was a chance to see Douglas, Fred Astaire, John Houseman and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in the same movie. The movie also co-starred Trish Van Devere, Scott's fifth wife, who also co-starred with him in Day of the Dolphin.(Scott actually married Colleen Dewhurst twice.)
The movie was directed by a man named Peter Medak who is the hardest working man in show business. Born in 1937 in Hungary, he fled to the UK when he was 21. He's directed 60 movies (and has one coming out next year). His resume includes a lot of television (like Breaking Bad) but an eclectic list of features too, from Zorro the Gay Blade to The Krays.
The movie was the second feature for screenwriter William Gray, who also wrote The Philadelphia Experiment and a terrific genre movie called Black Moon Rising with Tommy Lee Jones and Linda Hamilton. Mostly since then he's worked in TV, writing episodes of everything from Dark Shadows to the Killer Wave miniseries that ran in 2007.
The Changeling is another "classy" horror story of the kind that's been out of vogue for awhile.  Pair it with Nicole Kidman's The Others for a Halloween double feature.

Halloween Movie Marathon: The Uninvited

The Uninvited (starring Ray Milland) is one of those black and white movies I saw on a local TV channel in Richmond when I was in high school. I consumed movies pretty uncritically back then and as a result, I can keep up my end of the conversation whenever talk turns to vintage films, as it often does in my circle of friends. (I know. We all need a life.)
My father loved movies more than any video store geek I ever met, but he preferred westerns to horror, so most nights when the creature-feature came on, I was left alone in the living room to watch while the rest of the family slept upstairs.
The living room had two French doors that opened onto a porch, and at night, they reflected ghostly images that could really freak you out after a while. And the house was old, with creepy creaky noises every time the furnace kicked on or the radiators heated up or someone got up and went to the bathroom.
But the living room also had a very comfy couch, just right for sharing with the family cat, an aloof black puffball who fed the anti-cat fervor of all who met him. (The cat tolerated the family but only loved my sister, but when it was chilly, he was a slut and would cozy up to the nearest warm body.)
The first time I saw Nightmare on Elm Street, I was lying on the couch in the living room, with the family's phone on an end table by my feet. I think if the phone had rung, I'd have jumped out of my skin. (BTW, I never saw the remake with Jackie Earle Haley, an actor I really like. Did anyone? How was it?)
The Uninvited is a ghost story and has a classic setup. A composer and his sister discover that the reason the gothic seaside manor they've just bought was so cheap is that it's haunted.  I remember being impressed with the special effects, which were probably state of the art for 1944. The ghosts looked real to me.
Alan Napier, who is fondly remembered by baby boomers as Alfred the butler on the Batman television series was in the cast; as was Cornelia Otis Skinner, an actress, playwright and humorist whose first novel, Our Hearts Were Young and Gay is an absolutely hilarious account of two girlfriends on a grand tour of Europe after their graduation from college.
The movie was written by Dodie Smith, who was also a novelist. She wrote the children's book 101 Dalmations that formed the basis of the wildly successful Disney movie of the same name.
The movie was directed by Lewis Allen who, the next year, directed Unseen from a screenplay by Raymond Chandler. He went on to direct a lot of episodic television (Bonanza, Big Valley, Little House on the Prairie.)
This movie is low-key and would make a perfect pairing for the more intense Haunting.

Weird Noir

Cover by S.L. Johnson

Weird Noir, edited by Kate Laity, is coming soon from Fox Spirit and I'm very happy to report that my story, "Identity Crisis" will be in it.  I'm looking forward to reading the stories in it, especially one called "Wonder Woman Walks Into a Bar" by Leeyanne Moore and "Charred Kraken with Plum Butter" by Christopher L. Irvin.

Halloween Movie Marathon--Fright Night

I liked the reboot of Fright Night with Anton Yelchin and Colin Farrell but I liked the original, 1985 version with Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale and Roddy McDowall even more. In the remake, Peter Vincent is kind of a rock star/Mind Freak kind of guy (and that's a really interesting idea) but in the original, as played by Roddy McDowall, he was a beloved local monster movie host of the sort beloved of movie geeks everywhere.
Fright Night was written and directed by Tom Holland, who has also worked as an actor in a lot of genre movies, including Stephen King's The Stand and Langoliers. He's got a movie called The Ten O'Clock People coming out in 2013.
William Ragsdale, the young male lead, was kind of the Shia LeBeouf of his day. Fright Night was only his second movie (in his first, his character was called "the kid") and he's since gone on to a career that mixes television and feature films. He's also got a film coming out next year, the noir-ish Broken City.
Chris Sarandon as the vampire Ragsdale's character runs across, is smooth and seductive and quite scary. He doesn't have quite the feral ferocity of Colin Farrell's vampire, but you would not want to run into him in a dark alley. (Or maybe you would if you're inclined to fantasize about tall, dark and handsome vampires.)
I liked he way Fright Night played with the vampire mythos. This is another movie that's suitable for family viewing but still scary.

A spooky gig

I occasionally work catering gigs with my friend Alex of Word of Mouth Catering. Last night we catered a party for 200 that took place in a mausoleum in Pasadena. It was a gorgeous space--all stained glass and marble, and spooky as all get out because outside of the lighted area where the event was being held, there were no lights anywhere. I'm on record as being afraid of the dark until I was an adult, and there's nothing that'll bring back childhood fears faster than taking the wrong turn down a corridor filled with crypts.
The party--a fund-raiser for a group of artists--was a big success and a good time was had by all, but we were really surprised that the hit of the evening was a little appetizer we put together on the fly.

Olive Tapenade and Cream Cheese on Crackers...

We bought a big tub of cream cheese at Costco.
We bought jars of olive tapenade at Costco.
We bought boxes of crackers at Costco.
At the event we slathered about an inch of cream cheese on a dish and then poured the tapenade over it. We put out knives to spread the mixture on crackers.
We refilled that platter four times before we ran out (and believe me when I tell you we NEVER run out of goodies at events). We saw people just eating it with a fork.

I highly recommend the combination if you're planning a party during the upcoming holiday season. It was a real crowd pleaser.  If you want to make your own tapenade, there are a bazillion recipes on the Internet. I like this one from allrecipes.com

the Zombie Apocalypse comes in on the high tide

Photo by Chris Pallister Gulf Keepers of Alaska

I have been haunted by the images of tsunami debris floating across the Pacific for more than a year. Now it's starting to come ashore in Canada and Washington and Oregon. It's only a matter of time before it arrives here in So. Cal.
All those bits of metal that used to be cars ad bits of wood that used to be boats and also black gunk that might have been anything...
That's the visual fertilizer that nourished my story "Tourist Visa." You can read onChristopher Grant's  Eaten Alive site, here.