The young people of today may not realize just how scary the word Satanist used to be here in the United States. You see, being a Puritanical society most people had a fear of God. But if there was one thing that could scare them even more then God it was Satan. And thanks to Hollywood hits like The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby those fears were suddenly rationalized in celluloid.

Yes those kindly old neighbors are trying to stealthily allow Satan to rape you in your sleep. And yes, the reason your daughter has started cursing and crab walking everywhere is because she is possessed by a demon. And yes, that scary blind man constantly sitting in that chair in the attic is guarding the gateway to Hell.
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I always had a soft spot for John Carpenter. As a kid, he was the first director whose name meant something to me. Seeing his name flash across the screen for the commercials for The Fog when I was a child left an impression that I’m still trying to shake off today. More than any other director, Carpenter appeared to be making movies just for me. Halloween and The Fog were there when I was first discovering horror movies. Escape from New York, The Thing and Starman arrived when I was exploring other genres. When I discovered Stephen King, Christine arrived at the video store. When I stumbled on martial arts movies, he gave me Big Trouble in Little China. When I became interested in science, Carpenter churned out the underrated Prince of Darkness (a pessimistic and claustrophobic End of Days story offset by the optimism of quantum physics). And when I started to question authority, along came They Live (a movie remembered more for its excess than its restraint). Looking at Carpenter’s work from The Fog (1980) to They Live (1988), not only is it an impressive resume, but it is a body of work that perfectly reflects the paranoia, glut and cynicism that was the Eighties.

Sadly, the Nineties would not be a good time for Carpenter, and this, like many of us, is when I started to lose interest in his work. Memoirs of an Invisible Man, while inventive at times, is painful and never quite understands what kind of movie it wants to be; all of this is made worse by the fact that many scenes practically scream studio intervention.

So when I saw the trailer for 1995’s In the Mouth of Madness, I tried not to get my hopes too high. The good news was the movie ended up being pretty good, and the bad news was that it would be Carpenter’s last good movie. (more…)

Allow me for a moment, if you will, to wax rhapsodic about one of my favorite literary organizations, that being McSweeney’s. Every quarter McSweeney’s publishes their Quarterly Concerns, which is not only one of the coolest literary magazines imaginable, and the design of the magazine is often as amazing and fascinating as the works contained within it. McSweeney’s also publishes books from obscure and long forgotten authors, as well as works from widely read and respected modern authors, often times selling these works for ridiculously cheap prices (it is not uncommon that once a month a book be reduced to $.01) and often times donating much or all of the proceeds to various charities. McSweeney’s is an organization devoted to the advancement of art and literature and I am proud to give my money to such an esteemed organization.

Several years ago Nick Hornby (of High Fidelity fame) teamed up with several other writers to produce a new semi-monthly magazine from McSweeney’s entitled The Believer. It was filled with reviews and stories and original works and Amy Sedaris giving sex advice by proxy, everything one would want from a literary magazine. The Believer also accomplished two very important things, at least in my little corner of the world. The April ‘06 issue contained an interview with Paul Giamatti that was so fascinating and enjoyable I can safely call it the best interview I have ever had the pleasure of reading. The Etgar Keret interview in the same issue isn’t half bad either. But that was just the beginning, as later I would read their September ‘06 issue, simply referred to as the games issue. The issue was so captivating I have no qualms in naming it the best issue of any magazine I have ever read. Thus knocking off the July of ‘84 issue of Ranger Rick, a feat I previously deemed impossible. (more…)