This one had potential.  I like the set up—mom discovers a weird children’s book about “the Babadook”  that suggests that her son’s terror of monsters is not just all in his imagination.  She’s forced to confront the possibility of some sinister presence in the family home.

Alas, it very quickly becomes obvious that writer/director Jennifer Kent isn’t interested in the book-as-harbinger-or-portal-of-evil and that it is offered only as an outward manifestation of the bat-shit crazy mother’s batshit craziness.   The hackneyed trope of projection becomes the springboard to a handful of “creepy” CGI shots of the Babadook, a series of camera-rattling “frightening” action sequences, a few jump scares, and a seemingly unending final night of conflict that offers more fake climaxes than a pornographic triple-feature.   All in the service of an ending that is as unconvincing as it is unsatisfying. 

There are a few legitimately chilling moments, but, honestly, why should I fucking care?  They are certainly  not worth all the time and fuss.  The performances are adequate—but when you only have one note to play that’s not setting the bar very high.
​
Some people will tell you this is the scariest thing they’ve ever seen.  These are often the same people that think Hereditary is a great movie.  People like this cannot be reasoned with.  Just look at them funny and walk away.   

Every family has one: the cousin in the corner at the reunion that no one wants to talk about, let alone talk to.  The one who has a reputation for being more than just a little whacked.  Maybe he’s a charmer, but with that edge that makes people who know him uneasy.  His life seems to trail from one embarrassment or disaster to the next. 

In the family of twentieth century American literature, that guy is Jim Thompson. 

There can be little doubt, almost fifty years after his death, that Thompson was a major writer of his  era.  This is clear from the fact that a good many of his works are still in print and readily available, as well as from the number of positive comments and reviews those works still receive from appreciative readers. It’s clear, too, from his growing reputation.  Most importantly, it’s clear from the quality of the novels themselves.  

This doesn’t mean that Thompson is easy to cozy up to.  His fiction is where American pieties go to die.  Here, the cracks in the structure of the American Dream don’t just show, they split and swell to engulf everything.  It’s a vicious world where upward mobility is a myth and the Algerian idea that luck, pluck, and virtue win the day is nothing but a bad April Fools’ joke.  It’s hard to imagine any use for the wisdom of Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard in a Jim Thompson book.  In a world of madness and brutality, the only thing to do is scrabble hard for whatever you can get to survive . . . and to hell with who gets hurt in the process.  

Such a vision naturally makes many readers uneasy.  That doesn’t mean, however, it ought to be dismissed.  As readers and as human beings, we need to assess the dark, nihilistic spirals of madness, lust, and violence Thompson creates.  To me, this seems like a conversation that needs to take place: reckoning with Thompson's brutal vision forces us to grapple with the underside of U.S. history and culture. 
​
I think such books as The Killer Inside Me, The Golden Gizmo, and The Grifters (to name just a few) are more than thrilling tales about psychologically damaged losers making a mess of things.  Thompson had been a young man just starting to make his way in the world in 1929, when the market crashed and the depression gutted the U.S. economy.  His books are unflinching excavations of what happens to the people left behind when everything goes to hell.

​No real surprises here.   If you like the cheesy mix of breasts and bright red blood that define low-budget 80s horror, you’ll not be disappointed with this 1982 flick featuring actresses too old to be in high school playing high schoolers too old to be having a slumber party.  An escaped killer with a big-ass drill provides the entertainment as the number of party guests dwindle. 

The movie that proves that the pizza does not expire when the delivery guy does.   Not a lot of points for originality here, but enough sick fun that if you put it in your midnight marathon no one is going to complain.  Go for it and enjoy! 

I cut this lino print earlier this year, for no reason other than I was spending a lot of time with Shane Weller’s outstanding book German Expressionist Woodcuts. 

Chopping Mall (originally titled Killbots) is an oddball cross-genre movie from 1986, kind of a sci-fi/action premise that plays more as an action/horror piece.   The set up is pretty simple: the local shopping mall hires a security company that uses robots to patrol the premises after-hours.  Alas, a  lightening strike damages the central computers and the nearly indestructible security droids go on a killing rampage.  Sound unlikely?  Of course!

Just to ramp up that “I -can’t-see-this-happening-in-the-real-world-but-what-the-hell-it’s-an-eighties-movie” factor, a bunch of teens decide to hole up in the mall after hours, drinking and screwing.  Well, you don’t need me to tell you the bloody results.   The result is ridiculous, trashy fun.
​
Interesting divergence on the posters.  The early one on the left gives you a reasonably accurate visual gloss on the movie’s subject matter.  The second poster, more frequently seen, resulted as the distributor tried to shift marketing strategy and tap into horror/exploitation audiences and bears no relationship to anything that actually happens in the movie.    

Jean Wills has shared with me (and now I with you) her cover for the 9th issue of Pulp Asylum, coming on 1 October.

​Called I Could Not Stop for Death, the picture was inspired by a daguerreotype of Emily Dickinson in the 1840s and by the work of Edvard Munch.  

Back in the magical, mystical 60s & 70s–before people just threw their craziness out here on the internets–there was a whole publishing niche devoted to weird paranormal shit.  Among other things, books on UFOs were hot stuff.  To me, Erick von Däniken, with Chariots of the Gods and his other books on ancient astronauts, was king of the hill.  I always found his comprehensive theories about the extra-terrestrial origins of life on earth fascinating, even if the science was, well, a bit shaky.  I always appreciate imagination more than scientific rigor, anyway.   

Trevor Constable’s Sky Creatures is nothing so grand as Däniken's cosmology.  Still, this seemingly modest effort has surprising range.  It presents the author's theory that much of the recorded phenomena around UFOs are due to large organisms living in the earth’s atmosphere that are not visible to the unaided eye.  Constable claims to be able to photograph these buggers using specialized camera techniques.   He not only provides numerous photos, (think giant flying  amoebas) but also a detailed theory of the nature of the creatures and their existence.  If he sees further than other men, it is because he had stood on the shoulders of giants—especially, in this case, Wilhelm Reic, whose his theories about Orgone energy get a good airing here. 

It's not exactly science, but it’s damned entertaining.

Like many of my weird science texts from the era, I dug this one out of the old dormer closet of my late Great Aunt Catharine. 

I love the Mothman and have artwork relating to him.

I really dig this little painting of the Mothman.  It has vibrant energy and color, and I love those red, red eyes.  I’m sure I picked this up at a Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant, VW, at some point in the last decade or so, but I’ll be darned if I can tell you more than that.

Signed on the back by Artist Matt Griffith.   I wish I had more info about him.  If anyone knows more, please let me know!  

You say there's something down there?  Of course there is.  All sorts of stuff.  Not sad old stuff packed away in boxes, yesterday’s shit dead to the world, either.  The stuff here is alive.  Books, movies, magazines, pictures, odds, ends—stuff I made or gathered together from here, there, everywhere, wherever.   Scary stuff, weird stuff, fun stuff.  Pop in from time to time to see what’s happening.  If you like strange stuff, punk rock, pulp fiction, and creepy movies, I’m sure you’ll find something here you like.  For starters, here's just a little song.  Of course, I don't have the Exploding White Mice chained to the basement wall, but I have that old cassette tape down here, copied from a vinyl EP purchased at Used Kids Records on High Street way back when.