Skip to main content

Fanatics, Fools, Santas and Devils

Warning: This post may contain content considered obscene/objectionable by some viewers.



Photo Credit: Danny Hennesy/Kristian Svensson/Wikimedia Commons



I ran into a bunch of teens from a church while I was walking back to my house from town late this afternoon and they gave me an invitation card to their play. It turned out to be from a fundamentalist church. I get along with fundamentalist Christians as much as Jews got along with Samaritans in Jesus's time. You can't blame the kids, though; they're just going along with what their parents believe. But in the words of the British butler Cruikshank from 1966's Munster, Go Home!, I said as I tossed the invitation in the garbage as soon as I got in the house, "Adolescent, swine!" Only I replaced "adolesecent" with "fundamentalist". Man, I hate religious fanatics telling me what to believe and how. There's just no room in this horror writer's life for religious fanaticism since he is already a fanatic--a sci fi/fantasy fanatic, that is.

Anyway. . . Unfortunately my book, The Fool's Illusion, won't make it out before the New Year. As indicated on the book marks that I finally had printed and copied off, it's now due out early 2013.  Which may be better because the "13" in the year goes better with many of the stories in the book. (No, I didn't hold off publishing it just for that reason!) I don't know the specific month or day when it will be out, probably by the end of January (but I'm trying to get it out sooner). Just keep checking back here for more updates on the book. You can also follow me on Twitter.

If you want a book mark and are in the Sacramento area, you can get one at Movies On A Big Screen's (MOBS's) Crappy Christmas screening of the B-rated and mostly forgotten film, Santa Claus Vs. Satan, tomorrow evening at 7 p.m. (when the movie begins) at the Grange theatre. Provided that I'll be able to get a hold of one of the employees or organisers there to give them the book marks since I won't be able to make it to the screening itself.  But hey, if it turns out nobody is available to receive the book marks and therefore you see none there, you get to see the movie and laugh along at it's poor quality with your cool cat of a B movie/horror host, Mr. Lobo of syndicated Cinema Insomnia who will be there! So as far as the book marks go, it's just a maybe for the reason mentioned above, but like I said, you get the movie no matter what provided that you pay the five dollar admission fee. (Hey, the five bucks are for the show, not my book marks--those are free).

What's the movie about? It's about Santa versus Satan. If you want details, you'll probably have a better time reading them at MOBS's website than listening to me yap on about, what's said to be, one of the worst holiday movies ever (though I didn't think it was). Now if you do like listening to me yap on about such movies, then go to my review of it from last year's Crappy Christmas screening series. Or you can just wait until I talk about it in an upcoming article of mine on strange holiday movies, but I can't guarentee you it will be out on Examiner.com before the movie tomorrow.

Until next time and . . .

Happy Hallow-days, everybody!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Book-To-Movie: Stephen King’s 'The Raft'

Credit: Pixabay.com It's the third Saturday of the month and so that means it's time for another Book-To-Movie ! In a Book-To-Movie we review a book and its movie adaptation. One of the reasons I as a horror fan don’t read a lot of Stephen King’s work is because most of it consists of novels that go more than 400 pages. I have a short attention span when it comes to reading, ironically since I consider myself an avid reader, and so I normally won’t read a work that is much more than the equivalent to a 350-page mass market paperback. The other reason why I don’t read a lot of King’s work is that, as literary scholars will tell you, a lot of his writing is poor. However, he does have some good writing in his works, especially his earlier stuff, including his short horror tales. So if I read anything by Stephen King it’s usually his short stories or novellas. One of his collections I’ve read is Skeleton Crew which includes some of his good, or at least...

Book-To-Movie: Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Black Cat'

Credit: Wikimedia Commons It's another fourth Monday of the month and so that means it's time for another Book-To-Movie review! In a Book-To-Movie (BTM), we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation. A few years back, we had a BTM for Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Black Cat" and its movie adaptation. However, the movie we reviewed was actually a segment in Roger Corman’s anthology film, "Tales of Terror", which features three of Poe's short stories, including "Black Cat". And I'll tell you now, I liked that version far more than the version that we're going to review today which is the 1934 Universal adaptation starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. I like Corman's version better mostly because it stays more faithful to the original short story than Universal's does. However, even though Universal's "Black Cat", directed by Edgar Ulmer, strays (excuse the pun) far from Poe's short stor...

Book-To-Movie: ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth’

Both the 1959 and the 2008 movies based on Jules Verne's novel, "Journey to the Center of the Earth", feature terrifying monsters such as the ones here in this illustration from an early edition of the book. Credit: Ã‰douard Riou/ Wikimedia Commons   Warning: This review may contain spoilers. As I said last post , I’ve postponed the month’s Book-To-Movie review from last week to this week. For those of you who are just tuning into this blog, a Book-To-Movie is when we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation. And this weekend’s review is of Jules Verne’s novel, “Journey to the Center of the Earth” and its movie adaptations. There have been several movies based on this novel that was originally published in Paris in 1864 (as “Voyage au Centre de la Terre”). However, most of them have been either made for TV or video. Because I believe movies are best when made for the big screen, I am going to review the theatrical films in which there have been two: the 195...