So you're a dork and you like horror movies. No, because you're a dork, like your writer here, you haven't seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre a hundred times. But Santa Claus Conquers the Martians just might squeeze into your holiday scare marathon.
That's OK. Really. Be proud of your dorkiness. I am. Dorks unite.
With that in mind, this is the first in a series of lists for the discerning dork about all things horror--movies, books, games and perhaps the worst Taco Bells throughout the land. So sit back, fire up the DVD player and know, fellow dorks, you are not alone.
Oh, we have movies...the top Dork Horror picks are:
1) Well it's not available on DVD yet (legally!) but surely Don't Be Afraid of the Dark ranks up there among the best. Little known outside the horror world, this 1970s made-for-TV-wonder starred Kim Darby and some particularly nasty little goblins who live in the walls of her new home. So much for property value. Moody and tense, however, this is a gem amongst the dork's most request DVD releases.
2) Ok, technically a TV show and not a movie (though two movies were based on it), Dark Shadows. Sure, sets wobbled, actors continually flubbed their lines, and sometimes the writing was enough to make you drive a stake through your head, but it also had some of the genuinely scariest moments ever transferred to film. The ghost of Quentin Collins in a rocking chair by Rachel's bed in the dead of night; a headless body in the woods, lying in wait of innocent young things; a living head in a glass case and a creepy wrinkled hand in a ornate box. It took daytime TV and horror TV to new levels (while scraping the depths of a few others.)
3) John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness. Highly under-rated, cerebral horror mixed with the Biblical and physics. My dork complaint might be it didn't quite go far enough, but it presented some truly creepy moments and left some intriguing questions. And Alice Copper…need I say more?
4) Phantasm. Well, this one might end up on many horror fans' lists, but even a dork makes a mainstream pick once in a while! Is there really any horror icon creepier than the Tall Man? And all the funeral and mortuary stuff.
5) The Screaming Woman. Another 1970s Saturday Night movie of the week, this is technically not a horror movie, but let's face it, any story borrowing from Poe's Buried Alive theme is good for a few creeps. Not available on DVD yet, either, but we dorks live in hope.
6) The Unholy. I hear groans from horror aficionados, but there's a lot to like about this movie. For one, Ben Cross (an excellent Barnabas Collins in the Dark Shadows Revival Series) as a fallen priest tempted by a lovely woman (as a dork they would have had me there) and things that go bump in the church. Why Cross hasn't been in many more horror films is beyond me. He makes the movie. This isn't out on DVD either, unfortunately.
There are more but I'll cover them and books in future articles. But before I go, what would any list be without at least a couple guilty pleasures? Very guilty.
1) The aforementioned Santa Clause Conquers the Martians. Oh, stop it! Hoo-ray for Santy Claus, I say! Come on, it WAS Pia Zadora's first film--that has to count for something. I force, I mean, coax my niece into watching it every Christmas, right along with A Charlie Brown Christmas and Rudolph. Is it horror? You be the judge. My niece seems to think it is...
2) The Snoop Sisters horror episode. Anybody remember this short-lived mystery series starring Helen Hayes and Mildred Natwick in the ‘70s? I thought not. And probably with good reason. But there’s no accounting for taste. The episode featured Alice Cooper singing I Love My Things. Nuff said.
So what do you think, gentle Dorks? Am I missing a few? Want to add your favorite dork fest to the list?
Showing posts with label horror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label horror. Show all posts
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Sunday, January 13, 2008
The Truth About a Man in Black
I got a phone call the other day, from an interviewer for an Internet show dealing with unusual occurrences and the supernatural. The person I spoke with was interested in a member of my family who’d passed away a couple years back and a certain experience that relative had reported. I hadn’t thought about the story in ages, but it was an interesting conversation and dispelled something that probably had gone on for too long.
My uncle’s name was Dr. Herbert Hopkins. Most of you will say “huh?” and rightly so. A few of you, who are, like me, interested in studying legitimate unusual phenomena may recognize the name, and a handful really into investigating strange occurrences may know exactly who I am talking about. Those who don’t, stayed tuned and I’ll fill you in.
First, a bit of background in a couple areas, on my uncle himself, and on the peculiar phenomena known as the Men in Black (no, not the movie with Will Smith or Johnny Cash clones with bad attitudes).
My uncle was well-known locally and somewhat nationally for a couple reasons. He was a renowned allergist and made WHO’S WHO for his pioneering work with MS. He had a genius level IQ, and knew it, and as is the case sometimes with folks like that (nothing I’ll personally ever have to worry about) had trouble relating to people he thought beneath him in intellectual ability (though conversely he constantly craved an audience, no matter what level). He was often very cold and distant, clinical, the exact opposite of my aunt, who was a lovely, caring woman, if easily deluded. I spent nearly an entire summer living with them while my mother was going through a number of operations, and for the most part I loved every minute of it. Some of my best memories are of the holiday times we spent there, at least with my aunt and cousins, because relating to Uncle Herb was difficult on the best of days (God forbid you did something stupid because you would be belittled for it, and at times I was stupidity-prone). He was vehement in his opinions, strident in expressing them, and unforgiving of those who dared to disagree. And if he caught you, you were in for literally hours of enduring those opinions. Then usually a neck brace from nodding the whole time (if you knew what was good for you). But he could build an electronic organ from scratch, damn near cure the common cold sometimes and his house was a child’s wonderland of passages and an entire wall of speakers (and believe me once those were fired up the whole house shuddered with sound.) He was brilliant and the world was better for him. But sometimes that brilliance has its price, or takes its toll.
He also, for a time in the 1970s, ran a psychic “church”. I have some stories about that, but I’ll save those for another day.
Men in Black. Those enigmatic dudes dressed in, um, black, who show up after a UFO encounter to give some poor soul a bucket load of grief. Them of pasty faces, no lips and all the warmth of Martha Stewart.
And unfortunately the second thing my uncle is known for.
The story originally appeared in the tabloid rag The Star (though I clearly recall the night he first told it. I had just entered high school and my grandparents were up from Florida. They were the ones who my aunt was out with that fateful night and who brought the story back to me.) It was later picked up, with minor variations (or embellishments) in Time-Life’s Mysteries of the Unknown, the excellent encyclopedia set Mysteries of Mind, Space & Time and Jenny Randles’ book, The Truth Behind the Men in Black, among others.
The story goes like this: On a balmy September night in 1976 here in Old Orchard Beach, Dr. Herbert Hopkins, then 58, was home alone (he rarely went anywhere at that point) when he got a mysterious phone call from somebody purporting to be from the New Jersey UFO Research Organization, asking to stop by and discuss a recent case my uncle had been working on. My uncle was a fairly well-known hypnotherapist who had been assisting with the David Stephens abduction case (somewhat famous for the Oxford, Maine, sighting and abduction incident. Stephens and a friend had encountered floating lights on a night drive, experienced hallucinogenic after-effects and missing time.) This person from the NJ-UFO-RO wanted to discuss the case, so my uncle agreed. No sooner did he hang up and switch on the living room light (there were three doors to this place, one from the street, two from the side, one of those entering the shed leading to the kitchen and the other leading directly into the living room. A fourth door actually lay between those, leading to the underground doctor’s office and waiting room. So why the Man in Black (MIB) picked the living room instead of the front door is unknown.) than did this MIB appear at the door. The man had said he was calling from a phone booth, but the distance to the closest booth was many blocks away. (In one version I personally got from my uncle they had a big black car. The story grew quite a bit over time.)
The man had a bald head, drawn-on lips (he wore some sort of lipstick that rubbed off on his glove) and the usual deadpan, monotoned attitude associated with MIBs. I won’t go too deep into the actual story because you can read about it in numerous places, but in a nutshell, this MIB made a coin dematerialize to another “plane”, claimed to have done the same to the heart of another abductee nearby (he was referring to Barney Hill, whose heart, is indeed still intact) and threatened to do the same to my uncle if he did not erase all the tapes from the hypnotic session interviews of David Stephens (anyone wonder why a being who can makes hearts and coins vanish didn’t just simply make the tapes vanish? Tapes that were already public knowledge, incidentally, so why bother?)
At the end of the meeting the MIB’s voice slowed like a battery running down and he staggered away. Which is a pretty intimidating thing to do when you are threatening someone…
There is a related incident a bit later with my uncle’s oldest son and wife (who lived in an apartment on the property), but I will leave that one alone for now. Suffice to say, take it with a huge grain of salt. (As an aside, my cousin was later murdered by that very same wife, so that probably tells you something of the family dynamics there.)
Anyway, like I said, the whole thing was sold to the Star and propagated throughout many legitimate journals devoted to psychic and unusual phenomena investigation. Mostly based on a Dr.’s reputation, despite the obvious inconsistencies of the tale and inherent 50s paranoia overtones (which was exactly where the tale came from. My uncle was an avid reader of 50s horror and sci fi comics, paperbacks and old pulps and minimal research will turn up the parallels.)
My uncle was, unfortunately, a fantasy-prone individual, craved the center of attention and limelight and on a base level he sometimes just made things up—no matter how hyperbolic—to top everybody else. As brilliant as he was in many areas, however, he was unskilled at fiction.
And for much of the ‘70s and 80s, he was an alcoholic. Every night was spent alone with a magnum of wine (he made his own wine, too, in a still in the basement). He would stumble up the stairs at about 5am, tripping over the “invisible dog”. How did I know about the invisible dog? Well, a handful of times when I was sleeping over I would be awake and hear that tripping and the inevitable curse, “goddamn dog!” The real dog, incidentally, was next to me on the bed, staring out at the hall, wondering what the hell the thud had been.
The bottom line for this particular Man in Black tale is unfortunately pretty mundane. This mysterious being in black, inspired by cheap fiction and alcohol, probably less of malicious intent and more from some sad need for attention, was, alas, a simple lie, one that needs to be corrected for those into serious research in this area.
And y’all thought your relatives were weird?
My uncle’s name was Dr. Herbert Hopkins. Most of you will say “huh?” and rightly so. A few of you, who are, like me, interested in studying legitimate unusual phenomena may recognize the name, and a handful really into investigating strange occurrences may know exactly who I am talking about. Those who don’t, stayed tuned and I’ll fill you in.
First, a bit of background in a couple areas, on my uncle himself, and on the peculiar phenomena known as the Men in Black (no, not the movie with Will Smith or Johnny Cash clones with bad attitudes).
My uncle was well-known locally and somewhat nationally for a couple reasons. He was a renowned allergist and made WHO’S WHO for his pioneering work with MS. He had a genius level IQ, and knew it, and as is the case sometimes with folks like that (nothing I’ll personally ever have to worry about) had trouble relating to people he thought beneath him in intellectual ability (though conversely he constantly craved an audience, no matter what level). He was often very cold and distant, clinical, the exact opposite of my aunt, who was a lovely, caring woman, if easily deluded. I spent nearly an entire summer living with them while my mother was going through a number of operations, and for the most part I loved every minute of it. Some of my best memories are of the holiday times we spent there, at least with my aunt and cousins, because relating to Uncle Herb was difficult on the best of days (God forbid you did something stupid because you would be belittled for it, and at times I was stupidity-prone). He was vehement in his opinions, strident in expressing them, and unforgiving of those who dared to disagree. And if he caught you, you were in for literally hours of enduring those opinions. Then usually a neck brace from nodding the whole time (if you knew what was good for you). But he could build an electronic organ from scratch, damn near cure the common cold sometimes and his house was a child’s wonderland of passages and an entire wall of speakers (and believe me once those were fired up the whole house shuddered with sound.) He was brilliant and the world was better for him. But sometimes that brilliance has its price, or takes its toll.
He also, for a time in the 1970s, ran a psychic “church”. I have some stories about that, but I’ll save those for another day.
Men in Black. Those enigmatic dudes dressed in, um, black, who show up after a UFO encounter to give some poor soul a bucket load of grief. Them of pasty faces, no lips and all the warmth of Martha Stewart.
And unfortunately the second thing my uncle is known for.
The story originally appeared in the tabloid rag The Star (though I clearly recall the night he first told it. I had just entered high school and my grandparents were up from Florida. They were the ones who my aunt was out with that fateful night and who brought the story back to me.) It was later picked up, with minor variations (or embellishments) in Time-Life’s Mysteries of the Unknown, the excellent encyclopedia set Mysteries of Mind, Space & Time and Jenny Randles’ book, The Truth Behind the Men in Black, among others.
The story goes like this: On a balmy September night in 1976 here in Old Orchard Beach, Dr. Herbert Hopkins, then 58, was home alone (he rarely went anywhere at that point) when he got a mysterious phone call from somebody purporting to be from the New Jersey UFO Research Organization, asking to stop by and discuss a recent case my uncle had been working on. My uncle was a fairly well-known hypnotherapist who had been assisting with the David Stephens abduction case (somewhat famous for the Oxford, Maine, sighting and abduction incident. Stephens and a friend had encountered floating lights on a night drive, experienced hallucinogenic after-effects and missing time.) This person from the NJ-UFO-RO wanted to discuss the case, so my uncle agreed. No sooner did he hang up and switch on the living room light (there were three doors to this place, one from the street, two from the side, one of those entering the shed leading to the kitchen and the other leading directly into the living room. A fourth door actually lay between those, leading to the underground doctor’s office and waiting room. So why the Man in Black (MIB) picked the living room instead of the front door is unknown.) than did this MIB appear at the door. The man had said he was calling from a phone booth, but the distance to the closest booth was many blocks away. (In one version I personally got from my uncle they had a big black car. The story grew quite a bit over time.)
The man had a bald head, drawn-on lips (he wore some sort of lipstick that rubbed off on his glove) and the usual deadpan, monotoned attitude associated with MIBs. I won’t go too deep into the actual story because you can read about it in numerous places, but in a nutshell, this MIB made a coin dematerialize to another “plane”, claimed to have done the same to the heart of another abductee nearby (he was referring to Barney Hill, whose heart, is indeed still intact) and threatened to do the same to my uncle if he did not erase all the tapes from the hypnotic session interviews of David Stephens (anyone wonder why a being who can makes hearts and coins vanish didn’t just simply make the tapes vanish? Tapes that were already public knowledge, incidentally, so why bother?)
At the end of the meeting the MIB’s voice slowed like a battery running down and he staggered away. Which is a pretty intimidating thing to do when you are threatening someone…
There is a related incident a bit later with my uncle’s oldest son and wife (who lived in an apartment on the property), but I will leave that one alone for now. Suffice to say, take it with a huge grain of salt. (As an aside, my cousin was later murdered by that very same wife, so that probably tells you something of the family dynamics there.)
Anyway, like I said, the whole thing was sold to the Star and propagated throughout many legitimate journals devoted to psychic and unusual phenomena investigation. Mostly based on a Dr.’s reputation, despite the obvious inconsistencies of the tale and inherent 50s paranoia overtones (which was exactly where the tale came from. My uncle was an avid reader of 50s horror and sci fi comics, paperbacks and old pulps and minimal research will turn up the parallels.)
My uncle was, unfortunately, a fantasy-prone individual, craved the center of attention and limelight and on a base level he sometimes just made things up—no matter how hyperbolic—to top everybody else. As brilliant as he was in many areas, however, he was unskilled at fiction.
And for much of the ‘70s and 80s, he was an alcoholic. Every night was spent alone with a magnum of wine (he made his own wine, too, in a still in the basement). He would stumble up the stairs at about 5am, tripping over the “invisible dog”. How did I know about the invisible dog? Well, a handful of times when I was sleeping over I would be awake and hear that tripping and the inevitable curse, “goddamn dog!” The real dog, incidentally, was next to me on the bed, staring out at the hall, wondering what the hell the thud had been.
The bottom line for this particular Man in Black tale is unfortunately pretty mundane. This mysterious being in black, inspired by cheap fiction and alcohol, probably less of malicious intent and more from some sad need for attention, was, alas, a simple lie, one that needs to be corrected for those into serious research in this area.
And y’all thought your relatives were weird?
Monday, October 08, 2007
Instead of Candy...Headless Paperboys!
Paperboys can be a pain in the neck sometimes...they throw your paper in the bushes, hassle your poor dog who just wants one measly little ankle to bite and try to take pics with their cell phones of your best girl sunbathing.
And that's just the good stuff!
But what about a paperboy who's a pain in the neck literally? And what if he's a pain because he hasn't got a head of his own?
Seems every year in New Salem a certain headless ghost goes trolling for the noggins of other kids because somebody without a lot of brains swiped his. He likes to do this nasty little search right around Halloween and guess what? Halloween is almost here.
That's what October Williams discovers upon moving to New Salem and getting his butt chased by the headless ghost his very first day in town.
So what will he do to avoid having his own head added to the ghost's collection?
Find out in THE NIGHTMARE CLUB #1: THE HEADLESS PAPERBOY on sale now at:
http://www.amazon.com/Nightmare-Club-Headless-Paperboy/dp/1430306904/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3/002-8109904-3843238?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191870229&sr=1-3
First in the series, the book is appropriate for children 8 to adult. And hey it's waaay cheaper than the money you'd spend filling all those cavities they're sure to get from candy!
THE NIGHTMARE CLUB #1: The Headless Paperboy
Where Everyday is Halloween...
In paperback form http://www.amazon.com & http://www.bn.com
Author homepage: http://www.howardhopkins.com
And that's just the good stuff!
But what about a paperboy who's a pain in the neck literally? And what if he's a pain because he hasn't got a head of his own?
Seems every year in New Salem a certain headless ghost goes trolling for the noggins of other kids because somebody without a lot of brains swiped his. He likes to do this nasty little search right around Halloween and guess what? Halloween is almost here.
That's what October Williams discovers upon moving to New Salem and getting his butt chased by the headless ghost his very first day in town.
So what will he do to avoid having his own head added to the ghost's collection?
Find out in THE NIGHTMARE CLUB #1: THE HEADLESS PAPERBOY on sale now at:
http://www.amazon.com/Nightmare-Club-Headless-Paperboy/dp/1430306904/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3/002-8109904-3843238?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191870229&sr=1-3
First in the series, the book is appropriate for children 8 to adult. And hey it's waaay cheaper than the money you'd spend filling all those cavities they're sure to get from candy!
THE NIGHTMARE CLUB #1: The Headless Paperboy
Where Everyday is Halloween...
In paperback form http://www.amazon.com & http://www.bn.com
Author homepage: http://www.howardhopkins.com
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Halloween Book Buying
Halloween is quickly approaching, so I'd like to ask any of you thinking about book buying for the witching season to please consider giving one of my horror novels a try. If you like an old-fashioned pulpy horror tale of witches and demons, there's
GRIMM by Howard Hopkins
http://www.amazon.com/Grimm-Howard-Hopkins/dp/1430306947/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-7988278-1561742?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1189971080&sr=1-1
Or Stephen Kingish horror with NIGHT DEMONS
http://www.amazon.com/NIGHT-DEMONS-Howard-Hopkins/dp/1430318708/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/102-7988278-1561742?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1189971080&sr=1-2
Or if you enjoy short tales of horror and ghosts my short story/novella anthology, DARK HARBORS
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Harbors-Howard-Hopkins/dp/1430317167/ref=tag_dpp_lp_edpp_ttl/102-7988278-1561742?ie=UTF8&qid=1189971080&sr=1-2
And don't forget the kids! For a safe horror series for kids 8 and up there's my THE NIGHTMARE CLUB #1: THE HEADLESS PAPERBOY
http://www.amazon.com/Nightmare-Club-Headless-Paperboy/dp/1430306904/ref=pd_rhf_p_5/102-7988278-1561742?ie=UTF8&qid=1189971080&sr=1-2
And last but not least if you enjoy a little western with your fear, there's my ripper/western PISTOLERO and my vampire/Western THE DARK RIDERSEach comes with my fear-back guarantee--if they don't spook you I'll come to your house and scare the crap outta you personally! ;{)
--Howard
THE DARK RIDERS by Howard HopkinsThe West, where men were men, women were women and the outlaws were...vampires!
Trade paperback from: http://www.bn.com & http://www.amazon.com
Homepage: http://www.howardhopkins.com
GRIMM by Howard Hopkins
http://www.amazon.com/Grimm-Howard-Hopkins/dp/1430306947/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-7988278-1561742?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1189971080&sr=1-1
Or Stephen Kingish horror with NIGHT DEMONS
http://www.amazon.com/NIGHT-DEMONS-Howard-Hopkins/dp/1430318708/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/102-7988278-1561742?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1189971080&sr=1-2
Or if you enjoy short tales of horror and ghosts my short story/novella anthology, DARK HARBORS
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Harbors-Howard-Hopkins/dp/1430317167/ref=tag_dpp_lp_edpp_ttl/102-7988278-1561742?ie=UTF8&qid=1189971080&sr=1-2
And don't forget the kids! For a safe horror series for kids 8 and up there's my THE NIGHTMARE CLUB #1: THE HEADLESS PAPERBOY
http://www.amazon.com/Nightmare-Club-Headless-Paperboy/dp/1430306904/ref=pd_rhf_p_5/102-7988278-1561742?ie=UTF8&qid=1189971080&sr=1-2
And last but not least if you enjoy a little western with your fear, there's my ripper/western PISTOLERO and my vampire/Western THE DARK RIDERSEach comes with my fear-back guarantee--if they don't spook you I'll come to your house and scare the crap outta you personally! ;{)
--Howard
THE DARK RIDERS by Howard HopkinsThe West, where men were men, women were women and the outlaws were...vampires!
Trade paperback from: http://www.bn.com & http://www.amazon.com
Homepage: http://www.howardhopkins.com
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