Maniac!

Move over Travis Bickle, there’s another cinematic psycho roaming the streets of New York City, and his name is Frank Zito. Joe Spinell co-writes and stars in this 1980 horror film that coalesces the essence of the desolate and paranoid streets of late 70’s New York, and the maniacs who stalk them. As viewers, we are immediately plunged into Frank's demented, isolated life, and see through the eyes of this misogynistic, knife wielding maniac, who’s disdain for woman stems from an abusive childhood. Frank’s creepy apartment is scattered full of dolls, a shrine of his mother, and mannequins, which he nails the scalps of his victims to. It seems he is trying to surround himself with his victims, not just as trophies, but to preserve the beauty of woman in the inanimate, which can never wrong him as his mother had. Joe Spinell is utterly believable as an extremely disturbed psycho, switching from a rueful man-child with mother issues, to an unapologetic murderer.

Frank is accompanied by a myriad of weapons to wreak havoc among the streets of New York including knives, straight razors, scalpels, daggers, and a shotgun concealed in a violin case. Effects master Tom Savini gives us some of his best work, which include numerous stabbings, throat cutting, scalpings, and an infamous scene of Tom Savini getting his head blown off via shotgun blast. At times Frank seems reluctant, and knows what he’s doing is wrong, having inner monologues between himself, and his mother, exacerbating his already questionable sanity. Later in the film he crosses paths with a woman photographer, and we see a glint of humanity in him, due to her amiable disposition. Will his murderous tendencies come full circle again, or can he connect with a woman, finally get over his mother problems, and bury his misogynistic brutality? Take a look for yourself, in this callous, gritty little gem of a horror flick. Also, word of advice…if you‘re a woman, I suggest not walking the streets of New York alone, for Frank Zito may be waiting in the shadows to add your pretty little scalp to his collection.

Lamberto Bava's 'Demons'

For me, the 80’s was one of the most boisterous and fun times for horror films. One of my favorites, hailing  from 1985, is Lamberto Bava’s ‘Demons.’ Italian horror maestro Dario Argento, attached as producer, wanted to bring a hit to the states. He worked as producer on Dawn of the Dead a few years earlier, and got a taste for success in the U.S, but wanted a full fledged Italian production to do the same. Since it’s release, Demons has become a cult horror favorite packed full of everything the genre nerd lusts after. Cheesy acting, simple but entertaining plot, demons with sharp teeth, and claws that ooze green slime from their mouths, and plenty of gore in the midst of a blaring 80’s metal soundtrack. In my eyes, the plot is a predecessor to Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn, except instead of taking place in a strip club, it’s in a movie theatre, and obviously, instead of vampires, we get demons.

It begins with a girl who gets a ticket for a mysterious new movie coming out by a masked stranger. Curious, she cuts class, makes her way to the theater with a friend, and we are introduced to a number of characters. These include a trash talking pimp, his two ‘hoes,’ a blind man and his daughter, and a surly man with an inept wife. One of the prostitutes places a prop mask over her face in the lobby, and cuts herself with it, foreboding the madness to come. The movie starts, and we begin to notice it’s a parallel to the reality we see going on in the theater. A man is cut on the face in the film, and we see the prostitute’s face start to bleed as well. The demonic possession ensues and the hysteria begins.

The plot sounds as atrocious as the acting is, but who needs a good plot or acting if you’re a genre fan and are just looking for an entertaining ride. And entertaining it is…this is a fun film, period. We have a trash talking pimp, coked out Berlin street punks, bursting, oozing green boils, a horrid demon transformation scene with growing teeth and claws, a demon baby ripping through a woman’s back, and a final scene that has to do with a samurai sword and a dirt bike that's sure to leave you smiling. What more could you ask for from a genre that has turned the banal, insipid films such as Paranormal Activity, and Saw onto the mainstream; over the quondam, nostalgic horror films such as ‘Demons.’ If you’ve been searching for an entertaining, gory, boil bursting ride, search no further, for ’Demons’ is a horror movie for the true genre fan.

Salem's Lot by Stephen King

       Salem’s Lot is the second published novel by American author Stephen King. It is the story of novelist Ben Mears who revisits his home town of Salem’s Lot, to overcome a childhood tragedy involving a haunted house, known as the Marsten house, while his recluse town is becoming over run by vampires. When Dracula was published in 1897, it soon became the mile stone for the modern day vampire. Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, in my view, is just a modern day retelling of the same story, but in a small town in New England, Maine known as Jerusalem’s Lot. While I am still in the process of reading Dracula, the parallels are uncanny. Even the physiognomy of the two characters are similar. They are both described as having an aquiline, or beaklike nose, pallor skin, high cheek bones, and a mouth with protruding teeth under a heavy mustache. They both involve many themes which include love, sexual desire, invasion, and fear of the unknown. The beginning is a bit slow, but not without cause, introducing us to the many characters through out the novel. Considering the many characters, even the tertiary ones are of importance. King paints a vivid picturesque view of small town living, and the many evils behind it.

There are many small towns in America that are so overseen, if the population was wiped out, they wouldn’t be missed or noticed. The wiping out of this small town is from the invasion of a vampire, named Kurt Barlow. He and his colleague/assistant Richard Straker come to the small town as antique dealers, set up a small antiques shop and purchase the benevolent, enigmatic house known as the Marsten House. The Marsten House is sort of a materialized evil, who’s previous owner murdered his wife and hung himself in a room on the second floor. Ben Mears as a child is persuaded by his friends to go into the house to prove his bravery. He goes into the room where Hubert Marsten hung himself, opens the door, and sees a man hanging from a scaffold. This is the reason Ben Mears comes back to his home town; to purchase the Marsten House, work on his novel involving the house, and to overcome his childhood fear of it. It’s an interesting fact that Stephen King stated he had a terrible dream as a child involving opening a door, seeing a man hanging from a scaffold, and opening his dead eyes, staring straight at him.

Childhood fear is a major theme among many of his novels. As we grow up into adulthood, we tend to shut out those childhood fears with reasoning. ‘That tapping at the window is just a tree branch.’ or ‘That ominous shadow is only an illusion from light.’ As a child our imaginations tend to get the best of us and reasoning isn’t in our vocabulary. Childhood fear is the most powerful of all fears simply that it’s the most primal and intuitive of them all. Evil is another major theme through out the novel. The Marsten house, and Kurt Barlow are the materialized versions of ‘Evil’ but ‘evil’ has always been present amongst us all. King reveals the many secretive evils of the characters, such as a mother who beats her infant child; or a wife, having an affair with a young man, is later caught, beaten, and constantly raped by her husband. The moral of ‘evil’ being, weather it’s a vampire that invades our town, or the evil inside man’s heart, the two are of the same. Small town living is an evil in itself as well. Being too enclosed in perfunctory ways, or becoming suspicious or unwelcoming to any outsider’s such as Ben Mears, can have an evil effect on us. Becoming a vampire is a sort an allegorical transformation to embracing all the evils we are ever so secretive about, fortifying it, and spreading it like a virus. Many people have said the only setback of the novel is the lack of showing us more of how the vampires lived. I think King’s novel is more of a morality tale of evil, faith, childhood fears, and small town living, then seeing the vampires in action. To me I enjoyed his genre infusion of vampires, haunted houses, and the evil living inside us all. Over all, I think Salem’s Lot is an important read to any vampire or horror enthusiast, and has shown me the reason as to why I used to enjoy the genre, before any Stephenie Meyers got a hold of the mythos, and destroyed it dearly.