Great poster...the movie, not so much.

The Dunwich Horror is ’70s-era horror at its finest. Oh, it’s not scary; it’s not even good, for that matter.  But it encapsulizes that time in such a way that once glance tells you exactly when it was made – not in the ’60s, not in the ’90s – it’s thoroughly 1970s all the way, from the music to the wardrobes to the less-than-special special effects.

In a nutshell, the story (based on an H.P. Lovecraft tale) revolves around a young man from a sleepy little town with a weird past who shows up at a nearby university to woo a woman and take a peek at an invaluable book known as the Necronomicon. This book is so invaluable that the professor in charge of it lets his students lug it around like a regular textbook, as long as they take it straight back to the library and place it under its protective, unlocked case of glass.  The young man, tagged with the unfortunate name of Wilbur, shows up to find the book he’s seeking in the possession of a cute blonde. Score!

The professor, it turns out, knows of Wilbur, as well as the town he comes from. Seems the prof may or may not have been involved with some unseemly business there in the past, so he’s wary of letting the Necronomicon fall into Wilbur’s hands. This forces Wilbur to break into the library at night, where he gets into a fistfight with the security guard that turns out to be the action centerpiece of the whole movie. Book in hand, Wilbur uses his powers of persuasion (brought about by widening his

Dean "Wilbur" Stockwell's giant eyebrows, 'stache and pinky rings compel you!

eyes, furrowing his brow, and waggling his bushy ’70s eyebrows and Super ‘Stache) to bring the blonde (who, it should be noted, is played by Sandra Dee) back to his home. Some suggested sexual shenanigans take place, and when Blondie doesn’t come home, folks come looking for her.

The climax involves a mysterious cliffside ritual involving tons of candles, a duel of incomprehensible Lovecraftian language between Wilbur and the prof, and the momentary appearance of an “Old God” that looks like an old mop. There’s also a twist ending that I won’t give away here, but if you haven’t guessed it by the time it happens then you’re obviously not up-to-date on your horror movie twist endings. (I think this particular one is number 14 in the official horror movie twist ending manual).

I know it sounds like I didn’t like this movie, but that’s not true - I had a ball with it. This is what those of us twisted enough to enjoy “bad” horror live for – laughable acting, terrible effects, but enough earnestness and atmosphere to keep it all from being a total waste of time. I’m sure this will be running on various cable channels this month – that’s how I caught it – so give it a look if you get the chance.

Two new reviews are now up at Dark Scribe Magazine: Ronald Kelly’s Tennessee Terror, Hell Hollow; and Gregory Lamberson’s supernatural procedural thriller Personal Demons. And, coming soon to this blog, a look at The Dunwich Horror, a 1970 spectacle adapting H.P. Lovecraft’s story…and starring Sandra Dee! (Lovecraft and Dee – a match made in Heaven….)

My favorite month has arrived.

October. Cool weather. Autumn leaves. The smells of burning leaves, and apples and cinnamon. Pumpkins. Pumpkin pie. Pumpkin spice lattes. Horror movie marathons on channels like AMC and Turner Classic Movies. Halloween. Halloween.  Halloween decorations. Candy. Shorter days and longer nights. I love it all.

It’ll be a month-long celebration here, as I blog about the scary movies I watch and the scary books (and stories and comics) I read. I might write about Halloween night, and why it’s one of two nights of the year when I really, really miss being a child. I might also slip in a little bit about what it’s like to now experience this time of year through the eyes of my own children. There’s no solid plan in place, so stay tuned.

Vincent Price and his reporter friend.

I’ll start today, though, with a little write-up about my first scary movie of the month: From A Whisper To A Scream, aka The Offspring.  It’s an anthology movie, four stories and a wraparound segment featuring Vincent Price as a librarian sharing the mysterious past of the town of Oldfield with a reporter. Vincent Price? Laurence Tierney? Clu Culager? Martine Beswicke? Okay, decent cast. Directed by Jeff Burr of Stepfather 2 and Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III fame. Not exactly classics, but they had their moments.

This one does not. Unless you count bad moments. It has a lot of those. The dialogue is terrible. The acting is beyond terrible – one story, set in the Civil War, has acting on par with those weekend reenactments that are so popular here in the South. The special effects are occasionally effective, but mostly awful. The “twist endings” – pee-yew. This one definitely earns a slot in the “so-bad-it’s-fun” category. Which, when it comes to horror movies, is just fine by me.

New Nightmare On Elm Street trailer has hit the Web!

Like most of the recent reboots, this one looks stylistically beautiful. It’s great to see these ideas get an upgrade in production values. Whether they get the tone right or not remains to be seen. It looks like they are going for a pretty straight remake here – lots of the original Nightmare iconography, such as the glove in the tub and Tina’s above-ground assault, seem to be in place. I think Jackie Earl Haley is going to make a splendid Krueger, although he’s got some big shoes to fill. Looking forward to this one next year.

A couple of announcements today from your trusty town crier.

First, Fifty-Two Stitches, the print version, is now available for order from Amazon.com. 52 flash fiction stories, including my own “Sitting Up With Grandpa.” Don’t give candy at Halloween this year – be the cool house that gives scary stories!

Next, my review of the Ellen Datlow-edited, H.P. Lovecraft inspired anthology Lovecraft Unbound is now live at Dark Scribe Magazine. Enjoy!

My review of David (First Blood) Morrell’s latest, The Shimmer, is now available at Dark Scribe Magazine.

Excuse a moment of gratuitous back-patting, if you will – I just read a review of Horror Library Vol. 3 which singled out my story “Toll” as one of the reviewer’s favorites. Also, it seems my humble little tale may have stirred up some supernatural activity around the reviewer. Here’s the excerpt:

“Toll” by Blu Gilliand is probably one of my favorite stories for the book, as much for the writing as for the somewhat spooky and hilarious personal experience had while reading it aloud. The storytelling is precise and creates scenes of despair, anger, confusion, and revenge as each piece of the puzzle unfolds through the short appearances of ghostly characters. It all leads the protagonist on her own short journey to uncover the truth of her child’s suffering. An emotional and gratifying story of both compassion and revenge. On a personal note, the story itself may be haunted. Strange things happened while reading this story. Needless to say, it should not be read out loud or while around any electronic devices. (I’m only half kidding about the previous three sentences.)

The entire review can be read here. Thanks Nancy!

My new story is now live at Fifty-Two Stitches. It appears almost two years to the day after my first published story, “Books,” appeared on the (now defunct) Delirium Insider website on August 31, 2007. Enjoy!

I’m going to celebrate my two-year anniversary as a published author (now, doesn’t that sound all high-falutin’ and important) with a screening of Halloween 2 this afternoon. I’ll be back soon with thoughts on that, and on Inglourious Basterds.

A nice little review of the anthology Fifty-Two Stitches is available here. My flash fiction story “Sitting Up With Grandpa” is contained therein. You’ll be able to read that story online (and for free) on August 30th simply by going to the Fifty-Two Stitches website. If you’re one of them old fogies who’d rather have their reading matter on paper, by gum, then click here to preorder the paperback.   

Here’s a line from “Grandpa” to whet your appetite: “Jimmy tried not to look at Grandpa, but part of his job was to shoo away flies that gathered around the body.”

Summer is almost at an end. Of course, here in the Deep (Fried) South, summer weather will continue well into September, sometimes spilling over into my beloved October as well. But summer as we recognize it – those three heat-hazy months of swimming, grilling, cutting grass, no school, sweating, and summer blockbusters – is almost at an end.

This has been an unusually busy summer at the cinema for me. I caught pretty much every summer movie I wanted to see: Star Trek, Terminator: Salvation, Drag Me To Hell, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. (I know that’s not a lot, but truthfully, there wasn’t a ton I was dying to see in theaters this year.) Of those, only Star Trek really blew me away, and that’s probably because I’m no Trekkie, and I went in with my expectations low.

But now, as we near the end of the dog days, I’ve got back-to-back weekends where the two movies I’ve been looking forward to the most this summer – and, truthfully, this year – are coming out.

August 21 brings us Quentin Tarantino’s war flick Inglourious Basterds:

“And cousin, business is a-boomin’.” I can’t wait.

August 28 sees Rob Zombie’s “family film,” Halloween II:

I know people had problems with Zombie’s first take on John Carpenter’s classic slasher. I had problems with it. Zombie had problems with it, too. But the more I revisit it, the more I find to like. And this one looks like Zombie is going right for the jugular. Gritty, raw, and unrelenting. Again…I can’t wait.

Will these two films bring a somewhat lackluster summer cinema season to a blazing finish? Or will the disappointment continue? I’ll let you know.