The list said that the drawing for the day was “summon day” which could only mean draw a summoning, right?
Summoning a demon is one of the oldest chestnuts around and I haven’t seen it done seriously by anyone who isn’t a Christian evangelist, for years… (case in point)
When this happens, the only thing to do is go back to basics and do things completely straight.
Well, the Halloween season is officially here and with it this year’s Inktober sketch challenge. Usually, I go completely random picking monsters out of the magic Tupperware, but this year I’ve been trying to pass it off as a group event with some of my fellow cartoonists. So I’m using the list from this year’s Drawlaween in order. For the most part, I like this list, mainly because it’s extremely vague so there’s plenty of ways to interpret the labels.
So anyway, today’s picture suggestion is “Return From The Dead” which I suppose I could have done something zombie related, but instead, I went with something a little more upbeat with the Day of the Dead.
Halloween starts earlier every year doesn’t it? And why not? If we can stretch the Christmas season out for two months why not stretch out the really fun season for a couple of weeks? So to get things going I thought I would start with sheer kitsch that is eighties vampires (I originally planned to call this vampire comedy, but I was REALLY misinformed about my selection.)
I’d been hearing about Tom Holland’s Fright Night for years and the way it had been described to me made it sound like a comedy, though when I saw the trailer for the remake I started to have my doubts on that front.
Fright night tells the story of teenager, fan of b rated horror films Charley Brewster, played by William Ragsdale, who sees the new neighbors moving a coffin into the basement. Makes immediately makes the assumption (after a few murders in the neighborhood) that there’s a vampire living next door.
His attempt at investigating this quickly draws the attention of the vampire, Jerry Dandridge, played by Chris Sarandon, who makes it clear that he will not tolerate this anymore. In fear for his life. He seeks the help of former horror actor turned late night movie host Vincent, played by Roddy McDowall
I had mixed feelings about this film, with a lot of the plot being dependent on everybody being idiots. The vampire makes almost all of the mistakes that most horror fans love to point out, most notably the maxim “don’t &#*$ where you eat”
This is saved, however by Chris Sarandon’s performance who exudes an arrogant confidence, as well as casual sadism that is far scarier than anything he actually does as a vampire.
My next film to watch was Katheryn Bigelow’s Near Dark. Despite fitting into my eighties description if I’d known more about it I definitely paired it with something else… Probably under the category of what Tvtropes calls New Old West, though I can’t think of any other horror films on the list. (Scary as Anton Chigurh is, No Country For Old Men does not count.)
Near Dark tells the story of Caleb (Adrian Pasdar) a nice boy from Oklahoma who meets the Girl of his dreams alone at the side of the road in the one night. The girl, named Mae, played by Jenny Wright, turns out be a vampire, and the feeling is mutual, which is why she only turns him into a vampire rather than kill him.
Caleb soon finds himself captured by the rest of her vampire clan consisting of the dangerously psychotic Severen (Bill Paxton), their leader Jessie,(Lance Henriksen) his lover Diamondback (Jenette Goldstein) and the ancient child vampire, Homer () who drag him along on killing spree across Oklahoma. With his life forfeit if he doesn’t join in.
This was a good, though flawed film but is still one of the more interesting takes on the modern vampire. I heard one person claim that this is required viewing for players of Vampire the Masquerade and I can see that. By Masquerade standards our band of vampires would be a roving Sabat pack.
For the most part, I thought it did a good job touching on the allure of immortality for the vampires, as they are isolated due to being constantly on the run due to their murderous “life” style. And there were some solid performances from Paxton and Hendricson. But at the same time, it suffered from the problem that a lot of these movies have with how beings with centuries of experience can make the end of mistakes these ones do… Not to mention vampirism shouldn’t be cured by something as simple as a blood transfusion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ISgM9sjza8
For this week’s Rhapsody, we have the second of Alan Hovhaness three Armenian Rhapsodies.
This week’s selection I decided to watch some adaptions of John le Carré’s spy thrillers. I’ve been a fan of le Carré’s work for a long time. I like the level of cynicism portraying the spy world as a place that eats people up and chews them up. After reading him it’s impossible to take James Bond seriously
The first film on my list, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,directed by Martin Ritt, tells the story of Alec Leamas, played by Richard Burton, a British secret agent who is in charge of getting people across the Berlin Wall. After several of these people are killed he’s sent back to London where he is used in a plan to find the East German agent responsible.
The Spy Who Came Out From The Cold was first Le Carre books I’d read and while I only really got into his work later on this is a good one to introduce us to the dark world of spycraft where being a soldier in the Cold War is just a pointless job and no one is truly “good”.
This film does a pretty good job of portraying this dark worldview with Burton playing the burnt out Leamas with precision.
The second film on My list is The Little Drummer Girl directed by George Roy Hill which takes us away from the Cold War to the shadow war between the Israeli Mossad and the PLO.
Diane Keaton plays Charlie an anti-zionist actress who gets drafted by the Mossad to act as bait for a PLO bomber named Khalil. In the process, she is used, traumatized and lots of people around her die.
Despite a setting where everyone is a pawn it’s relatively optimistic by le Carré, standards.
It’s been years since I read the book and what I remember about it doesn’t go much further than I just described.
I’m afraid I really didn’t get into this one that much, even though Hill’s direction is as competent as usual, as is Keaton’s performance. For me, the most interesting part of the film was the spy craft of the Mossad team, led by a fantastic Klaus Kinski, who is handling and monitoring Charlie. I found myself fascinated by the brutal professionals, shown in every aspect of their work (regrettably I’m not using “brutal” for the sake of hyperbole as can be seen in the fate of Khalil’s younger brother who they apprehend early in the film.)
For this week’s Rhapsody, we have Rhapsody for Trombone and Piano by Eric Ewazen
