Fuan no Tane (Manga)

This is a very well-known series among people who visit paranormal imageboards, but I guess I can't expect everyone to have wasted a year's worth of their life on a chan site.

Fuan no Tane is a three-volume series that illustrates Japanese urban legends. Each chapter is very short, some of them only being two pages long. This greatly helps it. Each story jumps right into the freaky thing. There's no continuity to worry about and no characters to keep up with. Just weird shit that will creep you out.

Since the stories are based on Japanese stories, not all of them will make sense, and the ones that do make sense to an English-language reader probably won't hold the significance that they would to a Japanese reader. But I think that's a good thing. If someone tries to tell me about Bloody Mary, I scoff, because I've heard it before. I imagine that's how a Japanese person would react to some of these stories. "Kids on a sign come to life and cause a car wreck? Heard it - it's not true." But non-Japanese people won't know the stories and will be amazed at them. "A human-like lizard crawling across the top of a skyscraper? Damn, that's scary."

Also, because there are so many stories, you're sure to find something you like, something that unsettles you. Always been afraid of ghosts? Got it. Monster babies? Got it. Strange attackers that defy reason? Got it. And the art fits it all perfectly. It's simple but can be very detailed. It's like it lulls you into a sense of peace, right before it throws some horrifying thing at you.

This series has not been licensed or released in English (which makes sense as the stories are about Japanese urban legends), but it has been scanlated into English and posted across the internet. It's not hard to find, and I highly recommend it.

Note: There is a Fuan no Tane + (Plus) that has more stories, but only four chapters of it have been scanlated, due to bad raws.

Ghoulies (1985) & Miner's Massacre (2002)

Two movies in this post because neither one is worthy of a full post.

Ghoulies has a very misleading title. It makes you think you're going to see little creatures running around and causes havoc, but really, what you see is a story imitating a Lovecraft imitation. Some guy inherits a mansion, and while he's exploring it, he feels the need to practice black magic, because his dad was a great magician or something. Bad shit happens, and the ghoulies spend about ten minutes killing his friends. Then, the movie ends with an "OH SHIT!" moment that shows that the creators have a sequel planned. Hope the monsters actually do something in that sequel.

Miner's Massacre, also known as Curse of the Forty-Niner, is a ripoff of Leprechaun, except instead of a chatty, sometimes funny little person, we get a silent hulk. When his gold is taken, an angry miner returns from the dead to kill all those who have it. Seriously, it's fucking Leprechaun. Plus, the deaths are quick and unsatisfying, and the acting sucks. A completely pointless movie.

Doomed (Comic)

Doomed is a four-issue comic published by IDW, which is known for doing comics about zombies, horror, and TV shows. Thanks to this series, I looked into IDW and found a treasure trove, some of which I'll hopefully discuss in the future.

The series takes stories by noted horror authors and illustrates them. Each issue has four illustrated stories, based on works by four authors (each author has one story in each issue). There's Robert Bloch, who deserves more recognition than he gets, seeing as he wrote the famous book Psycho on which the movie is based; F. Paul Wilson, who's best known for his Repairman Jack character; David J. Schow, well-known in the splatterpunk genre; and Richard Matheson, author of the often-filmed I Am Legend. The average person will probably have only heard of one of those authors (I admit I didn't know any but Matheson before picking up the comic), but after reading these comics, every horror fan should want to seek out all they can find by any of them. (Or at the least, three out of the four.) The stories give you a taste of what horror fiction that isn't King or Rice is like, while providing good art that enhances the stories. As is common for IDW, the art isn't typical; it can look uneven and messy, but it parallels the stories, which feature humans, and the world itself, as an uneven and strange and hostile place.

There's also more to these comics than just the stories. Within each issue is something about the four authors, lengthy reads that provide insight to the minds of the writers and the horror genre itself. Furthermore, there are short stories (just text, no pictures) that give you even more to read. Each issue will take a few hours to get through, making it well worth the money spent.

If you see Doomed somewhere, grab it. If you don't know much beyond mainstream horror, it'll teach you a lot, and if do know more, you'll be pleased to see these authors getting the attention they deserve.

Mister Frost (1990)

I found this movie while going through Comcast's many free On-Demand movies. I had never heard of it before, but it starred Jeff Goldblum and was about the devil, so I figured I'd give it a shot. What I got was an above-average horror movie, which unfortunately makes for only an average movie, independent of genres.

That is more a critique of horror movies as a whole than praise for Mister Frost. No, this movie doesn't deserve praise. It's simply better than a lot of the other crap that's out there.

Jeff Goldblum plays a mass murderer that claims to be the devil. He admits to having a dead body on the premises when a police inspector shows up one day and offers no resistance whatsoever as the police dig up his yard and find the many corpses. He is smug, as if he is untouchable. This is pleasant for the first half of the movie, as we see him interact with the other characters, but as the film goes on, and the mystery and intrigue fade, it becomes boring. Goldblum, as the devil, does nothing himself but sit and talk, and he only talks to one person, a female psychiatrist will who supposedly help him regain his grasp on the world. The movie makes up for this by having a lot of things happen, interrupting the many conversations between Goldblum and the doctor, but once everything is out of the bag, and it's clear what's going to happen, you just don't care. All interest is lost, because even the plights of the other characters mean nothing. It all goes back to the devil and the doctor, and there's no suspense there.

However, like I said, this is an above-average horror movie. The first half of it is really good. If you get bored after forty minutes, turn it off and make up your own conclusion. It'll probably be better than the actual end of the movie.

Neglected No More

God, it's been a while since I've posted here. I'd feel bad about that, if anybody read this. But maybe people will actually read it now, since I've decided to start linking to it as I make my various journeys across the internet.

I haven't stopped loving horror, of course, but I did take a break for about a month and a half. In October, I decided that I wanted to watch one horror movie a day (or average that, at least), and I accomplished that goal. Unfortunately, a lot of the movies I saw were crap. (Thanks, FEARnet!) Thanks to that, I got sick of watching horror movies. Even though I tried to go in with no expectations whatsoever, I still ended disappointed, and often yawning before the movie had even reached the halfway point. So, in October, I watched thirty-one movies, and in November and December combined, I watched six. Bad way to end the year.

I went on a horror comic binge for a while, reading some very good things that I hope to eventually share here, but I got tired of that before too long. I live my life in waves, it seems. Something will intensely hold my interest for a while, but then the tide will pull back, and I'll move on. But the tide always returns, and with it, my devotion. Really, all I can hope to do is not let years go by before I let the tide of horror wash over me again.

My love was rekindled recently by new horror manga translations, thanks to a fellow named Daniel Lau. He scanlated some Junji Ito stuff, and I lapped it up. I've found a fair bit of horror manga out there, but none of it has struck me the way Ito's stuff has. (Except for Fuan no Tane, but there isn't a lot of that, and the author's other works aren't horror.) There's a lot of Ito stuff that isn't available in English, and it looks like Mr. Lau is the best shot we have of getting it.

Inspired by Ito's gruesome work, I've started watching horror movies again, and I'm planning to start reading the horror comics I've had on my computer for the past couple of months. I'm jumping back into the pit. I'll share my thoughts here, so people with similar tastes can be satiated and not have to go through the trouble I do.