This beautiful girl and I made quite the connection at the DC zoo. Everywhere I went around the pen, she followed me with her stare. I left and came back after 20 minutes, just to test a theory. There she was, in the same spot, sensing my approach and turning her head specifically to me, again smiling so wondrously. The other lionesses kept to themselves. Not this one. I didn’t feel like her next potential dinner. I felt the divine glowing all around her and channeling to me. Happiness is.
What a day at Horror on Main in Harrisburg, PA. Getting to rep Bringing in the Creeps at a reading with Kim Pinzon and Dead Talk slot, getting to meet one of my absolute favorite people in horror, Mick Garris, one of the most down-to-earth cats out there.
Also special meeting Friday the 13th film series composer, Harry Manfredini, but even more rad hanging with my man, John Boden and seeing musician-author Dee Calhoun again. Networking and making new friends. It’s what it’s all about. Thank you, Kelli, for giving me this tremendous opportunity and also to my publisher, Tony Anuci, for a clutch last-minute delivery to make this moment happen. Grateful all around.
Yesterday I wrote one of the most satisfying pieces I have in a long while. A 40-year retrospective piece that put me back into an old school happy zone and back where I was 20 years ago starting a journalism journey that defined me for life. Announcement whenever it’s live.
Sixteen years covering metal, punk and horror with a layoff, I’m now honored to have been invited as a contributing writer for the Metal Hall of Fame. Does my heart seriously good.
It’s easy to take a 50-year-old film for granted, especially before streaming took over our t.v. viewing culture. For a long time, Jaws was running interminably any and everywhere on cable networks, same as the National Treasure and Pirates of the Caribbean movies are today, played ad nauseum alongside The Day After Tomorrow and Armageddon. The groundbreaking (er, water breaking) Jaws from 1975 is being celebrated hard this year with a new retrospective documentary in honor of the horror classic’s five decades of supremacy. Yes, folks, skip the futile debate as to whether the original Jaws is a horror movie or not. It is. It simply is. For taking place on a beach called Amity Island alone, I’m just sayin’.
It’s slicker and more methodic than your typical horror fare, but no matter how many times you may have seen Jaws, there’s no denying the primal urgency when Stephen Spielberg locks in and makes us all piss ourselves with the threat of a great white shark tearing us to shreds on a beach getaway. Aided by John Williams’ halcyon score and that iconic opening piano and string death march (you’re bom-bomming it in your head right now, I can tell), no movie sent a palpable fear factor into an entire nation back in 1975 better than this one. Just the eminent artwork of our razor-toothed boy (on the set, a robot shark Spielberg and company loving called “Bruce”) is one of the most horrific concepts in cinematic history. I can only imagine Jaws author Peter Benchley’s savage delight to see his vision come to such visceral life.
I was five when my folks took me to see Jaws at Edmondson Drive-In on the outskirts of Baltimore City. I recall being awake for the opening sequence, wide-eyed, at Chrissie Watkins’ (Susan Backlinie) nighttime skinny-dip run afoul and shutting my eyes in fear of it. That shuddery reaction put me to sleep briefly, of all things, and when I woke next, it was the scene of the gored victim being rolled on the gurney. Talk about a memorable intro to a lifetime of horror addiction!
To this day, I marvel at Stephen Spielberg’s shrewd and attentive capture of the fishing village as much as I do the slow, painful sinking of Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw with the omnipresent threat of ol’ Brucie gnawing them into chum. No spoiler threats as we know Shaw’s grizzled sea captain Quint not only goes down with the ship but down the shark’s gullet, and his was one of the few onscreen deaths you feel genuine loss and remorse. More impactful after broing down scenes before with a nerd boy marine biologist and the overwrought, do-gooder town sheriff to the sloshed rendition of “Show Me the Way Home.” It’s a song my mom is fond of singing with friends over wine and generations later, it’s still a freaking hoot. Jaws fans get it. Nobody else does.
You gotta love it when a mechanical monster shark readily took down a mechanical monster ape, the ill-fated 1976 edition of King Kong, in special engagement re-releases. Those hapless sequels? Let’s not go there, even if Jaws 2 has a few tense moments and yeah, I was guilty of collecting that film’s trading cards back in the day. Ten years ago, I was fortunate to catch a 40th anniversary re-release of Jaws at a local Cinemark on its biggest screen and believe me, the wide-encompassing engagement through adult eyes made it a bigger, more awesome spectacle. Same as getting to see an anniversary reissue of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining from 1982 in the same movie house. An entirely new experience in both cases. You can get your chance to see Jaws on the big screen this year for its 50th birthday. No doubt this will be a 4th of July where the theaters possibly run wilder than the fireworks outdoors.
Today is my book birthday for Bringing in the Creeps!
From the morbid mind of Ray Van Horn, Jr. comes the sequel to his horror compilation, Behind the Shadows. Van Horn dares you to step inside the degenerate crevices and chasms of Bringing in the Creeps. 11 more tales of decade-spanning delirium housing monstrosities, murder and assorted depravity. Where the unholy returns from the dead for another run, where murder is raised beneath the neon glow of an 80s arcade, where the Evil Dead raids a punk rock show, where an unimaginable abomination rises from a reservoir and where a persecuted teenager finds gory revenge delivered him from the stars. Witness a vehicular game of death from beyond circa the 1950s. These are the grotesque misdeeds of ghouls, monsters, freaks, werewolves and repulsive death dealers. Ray Van Horn, Jr. is bringing in the creeps. Going forth with the weeping and the sowing of carnage on high.
Available at Anuci Press, Amazon, Barnes and Noble.com, Walmart.com, Kindle, Nook and Kobo and many other retailer outlets.
Brazilian thrashers Sepultura have a long and storied past, and I’ve had the privilege of interviewing many of their members, including the Cavalera brothers, Max and Iggor and the matriarch of the Cavalera tribe, Gloria. A beautiful family, and collectively with my time spent chatting with Andreas Kisser and second stint vocalist Derrick Green, all being some of the finest hours I spent in the music industry.
The classic and confrontational Chaos A.D. album from 1993 saw Sepultura slowing down a bit from their steady stream of speed metal, but the changeup in attack plan was to the better. The dialed-back, steadier grooves allowed the band to better shove their war protests and hostile sociopolitical condemnations with such seething anger it wouldn’t have resonated as much playing at breakneck. Sadly, 32 years ago, the themes Sepultura were balking at (political corruption, racism, corporate greed, countries tearing each apart on battlefields manipulated by dictators) have reared their ugly heads again in modern times.
The anarchic lead song, “Refuse/Resist” needs no further preamble, other than it’s a blistering stomp anthem kicking off one of metal’s most important records of all-time. By the time this bombastic march spills into the ferocious and skulking “Territory” thereafter, if you’ve never heard the entire Chaos A.D. album, you’ll know in a hurry you’ve been put on the front lines of a brutal world that needs even more change today than it did in 1993.
Roads Lesser Traveled 