Haiti, Horror, a Dittohead, and Boris Karloff

"The horror! The horror!" Those are the final words spoken by the cruel, powerful character "Mr. Kurtz" in Joseph Conrad's book, Heart of Darkness. I've been thinking of this line lately, having recently watched a dvd of movie bogeyman Boris Karloff playing Kurtz in a 1950s TV adaptation of the novel. (And because I've been working on a review of that performance for a coming post.)

But today I'm reminded of the line because of the words coming out of the mouth of a contemporary Kurtz of the airwaves. A man who also has a horrible influence, and like Kurtz, he revels in his lack of compassion, and wants to corrupt others to be like himself.

Today I am so confounded and distressed by this man that I can't post something that's written solely for laughs. Ironically, though, I am referring to a guy who works as an entertainer, a clown. Nowadays, of course, clowns are seen as more frightening than foolish, but this clown is both:

Image source HERE.

Yeah, him.

I may describe this bozo as a clown, but he isn't a good one. A good clown should be silly. This man is sickeningly absurd.

Let me reassure my regular readers--I dislike having political topics here at TDSH. I prefer to focus on anything else. I'd far rather talk about and share the uncanny, the strange, and the kooky here. And the scary.

But--but but BUT--the following statements (on aid to the Haitian earthquake victims) have gone so far below the bar of common civility--a bar none too high already-- that I'm actually afraid of what awaits our country in the future:

"...President Obama speaking about Haiti this morning in Washington at the White House. He held a press conference. Now, I want you to remember, it took him three days to respond to the Christmas Day Fruit of Kaboom Bomber, three days. And when he came out after those three days, he was clearly irritated that he had to do it. He didn't want to do it. He comes out here in less than 24 hours to speak about Haiti.

"Oh, this is what he lives for. He lives for serving those in misery."

"So the country that he runs around the world apologizing for, the country that he has chip on his shoulder about, he now turns to as its president and asks people who have lost their jobs because of his policies to donate to WhiteHouse.gov to the people of Haiti, and we will do it."

"This will play right into Obama's hands. He's humanitarian, compassionate. They'll use this to burnish their, shall we say, 'credibility' with the black community -- in the both light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country. It's made-to-order for them. That's why he couldn't wait to get out there, could not wait to get out there."

"If I want to donate money to the Red Cross, why do I need to go to the WhiteHouse.gov page...your name is going to end up on a mailing list for the Obama people to start asking you for campaign donations for him and other causes.

"Besides, we've already donated to Haiti. It's called the US income tax."

Have we become so divided politically, so afraid of trusting others, that no amount of cynicism, or callousness in the face of suffering, is too shameful to share in public? Is the spirit of commonality that we felt in the wake of our own suffering on 9/11/2001 so forgotten that it can't share it when disaster strikes outside our borders? Is that where we are headed?

To attack the President in his capacity as a politician is perfectly fair; it can even be a civic good. But to attack our chosen leader for leading our country's humanitarian response to a disaster is monstrous. (That's an adjective normally used in a positive way at TDSH.)

Boris Karloff, the man I grew up thinking of as the "King of Horror," hated the use of the word "horror" to describe frightening movies and books of the day. In his introduction to his 1943 anthology Tales of Terror, "Horror carries with it a connotation of revulsion which has nothing to do with clean terror." He was right. The political comments I quoted above actually horrify me, more than they frighten me. But because they reflect more than the feelings of a few fringe radio ranters, I'm scared as well as disgusted!

Some today denounce depictions of realistic suffering in so-called "torture porn" films like the Saw and Hostel movies as desensitizing, and for glorifying cruelty. There may be something to that. But no one anywhere watched those films and thought what they were seeing was real, or that they presented examples to copy.Like all movies, we know they're all pretend, all put-on. But rather than "realistic," the views expressed by the broadcasting boor pictured above are, unhappily, too, too real.

Well, if you've made it this far through this post, you deserve a cheap laugh. So here's photos of a boob and a poo:





















Above to the left, we see a boob...and Lindsay Lohan standing next to that boob. The second picture, on the right, shows the only TV character with less dignity than that boob. (But not much less!)

You'll notice I've never said the name of the celebrity commentator I'm criticizing anywhere in this post. That is because names are said to have power and influence, and this scary character (no resemblance to a real person, living or dead) doesn't deserve to have any, any longer.

The Department of Mad Science

Seen at the NPR website, from the program Talk of the Nation:

"What happens when scientific research borders on science fiction? Michael Belfiore, author of the new book The Department of Mad Scientists, talks about the bizarre projects happening behind the scenes at DARPA — the secretive research arm of the Department of Defense."

Hear an interview with Belfiore about things like robot cars and insects, and other oddities from a secret section of the military intelligence establishment here.

Buy the book at this page of Barnes and Noble's website.

Jamie Lee Curtis warns parents

In a Huff Po column, former scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis decries children being exposed to modern films such as her breakout feature, Halloween. Wonders if she should. Fears Halloween (the holiday) has become too gory.

Read her op-ed piece here.

Sci-Fi film come to life!

Really Big Spiders Invade Australian Town!

Creepy crawlies in the news

(Or, "How I tied several unrelated news items together." But I digress. Ahem.)

So many new items have come out recently that have something to do with creepy crawly beasties, or remind me of them, that I'm weirded out by it all!

Speaking of being reminded of "them", actor James Whitmore passed away; he starred in the sci-fi movie classic Them, about gi-normous ants (gi-ants?). One of the most versatile of American character players, he is probably known by those under 40 for his part in the film The Shawshank Redemption, and for Them by older folks. (Whitmore was once asked by a young actor just what he had done, and he replied, "Well, I saved the world from giant ants once.")

And Lux Interior, lead singer of the band The Cramps, died. His most famous song was likely Human Fly, with clever lyrics like "I've got 96 tears and 96 eyes."

Then Bill Gates made the news recently for bugging people--literally. He was speaking at a conference on the need to stop the scourge of malaria, and released a swarm of mosquitoes into the room.

"Malaria is spread by mosquitoes. I brought some. Here, I'll let them roam around. There is no reason only poor people should be infected."

Gates waited a while before telling the audience that the mosquitoes were free of malaria. Even as a philanthropist now doing good work with his money, he's still an arrogant nerd (and still releasing bugs, only not ones of the virtual kind.)

And finally, the fossilized bones of a long-extinct gigantic snake (bigger than the one seen in the movie Anaconda), was discovered. This species was so gargantuan it could have eaten people--if any had been around then. Almost too bad Gates wasn't.

And if all the above wasn't enough to weird me out, creepy, crawling Rod Blagojevich called me, wanting to be interviewed! Boy, he is desperate! ' Course, I turned him down. I won't talk to man who has ten time more hair on his head than I do.

Related old weird animal news: A RODENT AS BIG AS A BULL

GLOWING GREEN PIGS

The maddest scientist living!

Though the subject line might make you think I refer to an angry climatology scientist ignored by the Bush administration-- there were a lot of 'em, apparently--I actually refer to this guy, Dr. Gunther Von Hagens:

Von Hagens is the pathologist who invented plastination, a process that preserves animal tissue through the replacement of water in the tissue with polymer. This has led to the use of plastic dead people supplementing traditionally-preserved cadavers in anatomy classes in medical schools. More famously (or infamously, depending on your viewpoint), Von Hagen's silicone stiffs have been displayed as art and sent out on tours of exhibition.

[A note of caution: There are pictures below the text that follows which may be upsetting to those sensitive to gore and images of the dead. Do not scroll down much further if the pictures above were distasteful to you.]

Why do I post about Von Hagens now? Well, I'd recently posted a link to an article at the blog Oddee on the "Top 10 Mad Scientists in History," and was a bit surprised not to see a mention of Von Hagens. His exhibition of fractionated and posed bodies, and his public autopsy (controversially broadcast live in England) earned him the sobriquet "Frankenstein"-- and I'm fascinated by all things Frankensteinian. This apellational analogy he disputes. As reported by the BBC, VonHagens has said, "In all human history - except for the renaissance - the human body was always exploited for disgusting feelings. I'm doing the opposite. Those plastinates show the beauty of our body interior. I break with the tradition of Frankenstein." (Maybe-- but many folks do report "disgusting feelings" after viewing his post-mortem handiwork, though I'm not one of them.) And I post on Von Hagens now partly because I was trolling through old photo files in my computer -- and found the pictures used in this post. (I don't know where they came from, but will give credit if notified, or remove if requested by the owners of the photos.)

Also, as a modest collector of monster toys and collectables, I have a fascination with "plastic dead men," as fellow collector Joseph Fotinos (a/k/a Prof. Griffin) calls his monster figures. I have pondered, with mixed feelings, on the fact that Von Hagens has turned the human body into a kind of plastic toy for display to curious adults. (Some of the "plastinates" also remind me of jack o' lanterns; both have generic faces, and both have been carved up for show.)

Von Hagens, as a man who has often been called 'Dr. Frankenstein' in the press, has also vilified for making "monstrous" creations, as in these anonymously posted comments at a BBC website:

"Von Hagens has displayed his plastinates in a manner in which all internal organs - nerves, blood vessels and bones - can be viewed by the public, thereby giving an insight into the human body...Leonardo da Vinci and Andreas Vesal, the two outstanding anatomical artists of the Renaissance, used anatomical drawings to better understand the workings of the human body. Von Hagens is fascinated by their work, but wrote 'Neither illustrations nor models can convey the individual beauty of these structures to us, for the source of truth is in the originals' and so has taken their work a stage further. Salvador Dali's painting 'Burning Giraffe' portrays a woman standing on stilts with drawers in her legs and torso. Von Hagens has recreated Dali's nightmare in a grotesque manner as 'Drawer Man' using a stout male corpse. The recreation of Dali's work is exploiting the human body; it has resulted in something purely fictitious taken from Dali's dreams being made into something real. Although Dali's painting is disturbing there is something genuinely monstrous about von Hagens taking a real human body and creating a storage unit from it."

For some, this objectifcation of dead flesh is reminiscent of human souvenirs found at Buchenwald. But not all use of human flesh for making objects has been as widely condemned. There is a controversial precedent in the use of human tissue for mixed educational and artistic purposes: creating books from the skin of the dead. A number of prestigious libraries have several such books. (My wife might think that would be a good use for my shortened carcass when I have passed on. She can already read me like a book now!)

Do I object to the display of voluntarily donated plasticized bodies? Well, no, not strongly. I was raised by a physician father who told me anecdotes of his days in medical school and who had graphic textbooks and slides. His work conveyed to me the message that seeing the human body dispassionately and with curiosity (even damaged, malformed or dead ones) was not wrong, if one had compassion for others.

Besides, this is like some movie starring a Boris Karloff-type mad scientist crossed with the plot of House of Wax or Bucket of Blood--I can't help being intrigued by it all. (Speaking of House of Wax, it turns out that Von Hagens is not the first medically-trained man to find a way preserve bodies in a way that would allow for posed display; a man named Honore Fragonard was similarly controversial for preserving bodies with a special injected wax--and this was 200 years before Von Hagens!)

But there has been a larger, legitimate concern: whether or not any of the bodies displayed were executed prisoners. Five years ago Von Hagens was criticized for not being certain that all his cadavers were voluntarily donated, and after some bad publicity about his Chinese plastination plant he did return a few bodies to the authorities that had bullet wounds to the head, and the bodies were buried. (He admitted he couldn't be certain they weren't prisoners.)

Some say exhibits like Von Hagens' desensitize people and make them less compassionate. Do they really? I don't know the answer to that. I had mixed feelings when I saw the rival Bodies exhibition that toured the U.S. last year. (I wrote about it here and here.) I felt some horror, but I've enjoyed movies that create similar feelings ever since I was small. I am wrong to have liked films like Psycho or Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte? I know they are fiction, but they depict violent acts that really do happen. Should people only view scenes that are uplifting? I say, "No."

Are pathologists just naturally an odder lot than their fellow physicians? Probably not, but when I think of Von Hagens, I also think of eccentric pathologist Dr. Jack Kevorkian, (a/k/a "Dr. Death"), the man on a mission to kill suicidal terminally ill people. Both are passionate about their causes (or, arguably, business, in Von Hagens' case), and both have demonstrated a love of odd headgear (Von Hagens is never seen without a black fedora, and Kevorkian once wore a powdered wig to his trial on second-degree murder charges.) But I associate the two mainly because I've wondered if the two shouldn't hook up--Kevorkian could "supply the meat", and Von Hagens could be "the boy who buys the beef"(to quote an old rhyme about body snatchers Burke and Hare and their customer, Dr. Knox.)

Finally, the photos and some related links:

Related links:

The Gunther Von Hagens website.

Marc Steinmetz Photography: A collection of professional photos taken at Von Hagens' plant, along with the photographer's thoughts on what he observed.

A petition to stop von Hagens.

An interview with Von Hagens.

This just in...

A real severed head story involving a shark can be found HERE. (Warning-- a true news item; tragic and rather gory.)

Just after I post some pictures of sharks, I read of this awful incident-- of course, I had to post it here at The Drunken Severed Head. You may need a drink after you read the story.

In other weird news, a German farmer receives the first double arm transplant. (And both transplants were complete arms, which is unusual; most similar transplants are of a hand and maybe part of an arm.) Positively Frankensteinian!

BODIES...The Exhibition Part Two

(BODIES...The Exhibition Part One found here. All photos with a white border were graciously loaned to this blog by Steven J. Messina. Caution: photos following may not be for the squeamish.)

In the exhibit, bodies posed to look like they were playing sports were placed at intervals to break up the drier educational tone of the other displays, as well as to counter the gruesomeness of it all. It had the opposite effect, at least for me-- by posing the corpses to make them seem more "alive", they seemed all the more gory and strange. I wondered why I felt that way, and I decided it was because the display of "movement" made me aware there were flayed bodies all around but there was no blood. This, and the captive aspect of "people" frozen in place were unnerving. (Of course this was something I read into it and completely subjective.)

The photo below, taken of a large poster for the exhibition, is one of a cadaver used in a lot of advertising for BODIES.


Here's a closeup I took of this figure when I saw it:

The details are what make bring on some of the moments of squeamishness. The photo below (from the Flickr account of Manuel Lino), shows the fingernails; they look even more "lifelike" than the plasticized flesh of the hand they are part of.



Hands are expressive. Perhaps that's why so many people who took pictures of the BODIES displays took photos of arms and hands, if the photos I've seen on the internet are typical. One photo I found at Marleen's Flickr account reminded me of the 1931 film Frankenstein, which features a closeup of a hand to reveal that life has entered the dead flesh of Frankenstein's creation.

Of course, seeing various organs and parts of people on display is a Frankensteinian experience.

I hope this wasn't a criminal brain! (Or, for that matter, from a prisoner from overseas.)



Colored resin was injected into the veins, arteries and capillaries of different systems and organs in the body to create perfect replicas. These were detailed down to the tiniest detail and were amazing in their intricacy.



I was reminded of another movie, the 2007 Sweeney Todd (which Jane and I saw in January) when I saw the display below, comprised of cross-sections of an individual. The flesh resembles the cuts of meat you might see in a supermarket display case, and made me pause for a long while in sad and horrified fascination:


Still, I knew that making people more aware of their bodies as objects of flesh had possible benefits. Making people think of themselves as animated, thinking objects, like a car or computer, might also make people more likely to maintain their own bodies, as they would their cars.
The display above was certainly designed to do that. Above is a pair of diseased smoker's lungs. Next to this disgusting display was a clear plastic receptacle for throwing away packs of cigarettes that visitors might have on them; many people had done so, and I hope people really were motivated to quit. (As a kid my father had done something similar-- he showed me cross-sections of preserved human lung he had in sheets inside a large binder; the lung samples were progressively more diseased from smoking. I never did take up the habit.)

Perhaps the displays would help people lose weight, too-- I know I didn't feel like eating for a good while afterwards. (Not even peanuts and crackerjack, despite all the bodies in sporting poses.)


From the Flickr account of one lailafrant comes this closeup of the soccer-playing dead man:



This was a display chosen to be used in the promotional materials-- see below-- and website; I assume the athletic corpses are supposed to draw in the average Joe.



Also at the official website (but thankfully not at the science center where I saw the exhibition), Premier Exhibitions (the company behind BODIES) are selling trinkets for the customer willing to buy BODIES merchandise! If there is an afterlife, I'd be okay with people learning anatomy from my shell on display, but I wouldn't want to be on this:
I'd expected the exhibit to be controversial, but there were no protests while it was here in Pittsburgh. I've heard of very little anywhere, (one of the exceptions being a small protest in Durham, NC.) I'm surprised, given that the cadavers are unclaimed bodies from China, not a favorite country of Amesty International. (Premier Exhibitions has an anatomist who examines the donated dead -- China, it's claimed, is not selling the bodies -- and he states that none of the bodies show any sign of wounds, trauma, torture or gunshots; all appear to have died naturally.) Various clergy have signed off on the ethical standards used by the company in obtaining the bodies from Dalian Medical University in China. I hope they're right.

A guide at the exhibit told me that no one had been upset enough to make a scene and be asked to leave, but that people of all ages --including children-- had fainted. On the positive side, medical students had raved about the displays; and doctors who visited often expressed a wish that these "plastinates" had been available for viewing when they were in medical school. (My own doctor -- mad, of course-- tells me there are not enough donated bodies in this country for all medical school classes nowadays, some medical students have to work with plastic replica cadavers with removable parts.)

At the end of the exhibit there was a wall where people could post comments on Post-It notes. Children were apparently asked to comment and give their ages; a few messages from kids were memorable enough to copy. One five year old wrote, "I thought I liked it." Another child named Samantha wrote "It was an very neat exhibit it made my stomach turn you should get more bodies". She drew a heart over her name. An eleven-year-old named Jared wrote, "I threw up in my mouth the whole time from when I started until up to now", and one older kid just left a drawing that made for a humorous end of the exhibit :


I hope this post didn't make you hurl.

BODIES...The Exhibition Part One

The Voodoo Queen and I, and a friend, went last month to see the controversial touring exhibit, BODIES: THE EXHIBITION. This is an exhibit of flayed, plasticized human bodies and organs. (If this subject makes you squeamish, do not scroll down any further-- pictures follow.)

With images of the exhibit having appeared on the news, on billboards, and in other forms of advertising, most of you here in the U.S. have probably seen at least one grisly image. So whether you're anxious or jaded about the subject at this point, I hope you'll keep reading.

I had some trepidation about going. I'd heard rumors that at least some of the bodies came from Chinese political prisoners, but the exhibition company and the government of China have both denied this. I went, not being sure what was the truth, and seeing this as an educational event unlike any other I was likely to see in my lifetime. An exhibit that combines science, art, and ghoulish gore? I had to go!

I don't consider human remains as being exactly sacred; it's the feelings of the living that must be considered. I reasoned that there was no chance that anyone who knew the bodies back when they were people would recognize a corpse and be traumatized. So we went.

The first image I saw was an advertisement:

Which made me really want to see what lay in store inside. This was not at all like the teaser art of the carnival sideshows I can just barely remember from my childhood, where what you were promised was more than what you'd see (the "Amazing Alligator Man" might just be a bald guy with a few snaggle teeth and a bad rash); this was a photo showing you exactly what you were in for. I was hooked. (This was an opportunity to see in real life the sorts of things I saw in photos as a child in my father's medical books-- my dad being a small-town doctor-- but in greater variety and arrayed with imagination.)

Besides, as a severed head, I got in for free.

I'll let the images speak for themselves, mostly. I can tell you that the exhibit made every attempt to give visitors a sense of how our muscles function (hence the poses of specimens kicking, throwing, etc.), and every display had ample text to educate viewers about what they were were seeing and how it all worked. Every organ had was labeled, even the smallest. The exhibition was divide into different areas by curtains, according to what biological systems and organs were being focused on. It was too much to take all of it, fully and with understanding, unless you had hours and hours. I felt that what you came away with seeing the exhibition depended on how much effort you put into it; full observation of all the details and relating them to the text took patience; and I suspect most people (including yours gruely) didn't spend enough time and trouble for a complete appreciation of the complexity of the human body. But I'm sure all visitors came away with similar feelings of wonder, fascination, and revulsion. And likely too, curiosity mixed with twinges of sadness about the nameless individuals whose deaths allowed their bodies to be a part of the display.

I know, I'm taking too long to get to the photos. Some of the photos are ones we took (the bad ones) and some-- most-- are photos taken by photographer Steven J. Messina, and graciously shared with this blog. His photos are all excellent, and the next best thing to actually seeing the corpses in person. (His photos all have a white border around them.)

A few were swiped from the net before I went to this exhibit, and I've forgotten where they came from. They will be removed upon request of the photographers.

One of the first sights seen at this portion of BODIES (other portions of the exhibition form different units, like different touring troupes of one circus) was this gleeful pose of a man dancing with his own skeleton:



Followed by organs, more bones, and cross sections of people:



One of the strangest sights was seeing the brain, eyes, and nervous system all laid out, reminding me of monsters from sci-fi flicks like Fiend Without a Face and Mars Attacks:


The top picture comes from the online version of Prick magazine, (as does the b & w photo found above) and can be seen as part of an article here.

Those staring eyes (the only real ones seen in the exhibit, the rest being glass so as to look shiny and alive) were very creepy to me.

But the most unnerving sight was one that reminded me of what I've lost, being a drunken severed head:


Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!

(Related link to the above photo: Icelandic Penis Museum news item)

Natural horror

Just over a week ago, I heard the horrible news of the flooding of the Meramec River in Missouri and the White River in Arkansas, The news brought back a lot of painful memories. In '93, I lived in St. Louis, and the Mississippi flooded much of the metro area. Friends and neighbors lost property, businesses shut down, and transportation was difficult. The Meramec flooded nearby communities west of St. Louis at that time. Here's a typical photo of much of the metro area:


The recent flooding news in Arkansas had a personal connection. My father grew up on a bluff overlooking the White River, in a town called Calico Rock. Many relatives and friends of the family grew up in the area. Many are still there. So the news saddens and horrifies me.

I grew up in a town about 30 miles away, called Mountain Home. They recently got a foot of rain in 24 hours, and more rain the next day; my brother's house suffered damage.

In my e-mail I got some photos and video showing how powerful and destructive a force water can be. Here's two, showing a small shack or large appliance floating downstream, (hard to tell, the perspective is from a low bluff), a reminder that someone was experiencing loss and misery:



This business was ruined:


Here is the video of the house that was carried away and demolished by a collision into a bridge:



I like this blog to be fun, and this is definitely waaay into no-fun territory. But sometimes, pain and trouble just pushes into life, and you might as well acknowledge what parts are fascinating, if sad. And the mystery of water, and how powerful it can be, fascinates me.

Seeing those photos and video brought back every anxious and scary memory that's associated with water that I have from childhood: my father telling of going "canoodling", when he was a boy, along the river bank (that's reaching into an underwater hole to grab a fish)-- and how a friend of his lost a finger to a snapping turtle that way. Seeing images of a corpse in water in the films "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte" and "The Tingler" (the former in a late-night viewing at age 4 with my mother, and the latter in "Famous Monsters" magazine.)


And seeing in "My Weekly Reader" this famous image and wondering what might lurk in our local lake, Lake Norfork:

To tell the truth, despite being a nervous and anxious little kid, I didn't let my imagination keep me from swimming in the lake! Just not by myself.

As a kid, I thought we were protected from floods, because I heard adults mention that we lived in a "dry county"!

That reminds me-- I think I need a drink.

What's next? BREASTS?

So the Voodoo Queen and I are in a store making the yearly Christmas returns and exchanges, when I see, out of the corner of my eye, a photo of a beautiful woman on the cover of a magazine. So I look, and the "beautiful woman" next to the words "Hottest Beauties Of The Year" is...MICHAEL JACKSON???

Oh my god. Okay, so "Hottest Beauties Of The Year" apparently refers to an article NOT about Michael Jackson. But, from the photo of the former King of Pop, I'm guessing he's had more done to his face that makes him look ever more she-male.


Seems to me he oughtta get the re-assignment surgery once and for all and be done with it. By the time he gets around to it, he'll look less like Diana Ross and more like Miss Jane Pittman.

Metaphorically, he'd have greater cojones if he had no cojones.

And speaking of Diana Ross, go here and see what she looks like today. Either she has a Dorian Gray-style portrait of herself in a closet, or she passed away and we're seeing the animatronic Diana, like the robots in WESTWORLD. Or maybe she's been plasticized like those corpses from China now touring in museums in the BODIES exhibition. (It's currently here in Pittsburgh, and I sorta have a yen to go and see it.) She seems to have stopped getting older, and I wish I knew the secret of her preservation. Can't be alcohol, though. I've been pickled for years and it hasn't kept me an ageless beauty!

Tidbits, gifts, news and recommendations

"IT'S TOO LATE FOR ME" DEPT. (Info for the Dr. Frankenstein in you!):

How much time you have to get a severed body part reattached.

Amputees will get artificial limbs that can actually feel! (This link leads to a pdf format article from a scientific journal.)


PRESENTS OF ODD 'OLIDAY AUDIO:

Do You Fear What I Fear (great gift from Erick at Wonderful Wonderblog!)

Holiday Horrors (from superb blogsite Universal Horror Sounds!)

Quirky Christmas (Jeffco generosity!)


FOR YOUR INNER "CHRISTMAS CURMUDGEON":

Musical fruitcake


SEVERED HEAD'S HEADLINES:

Man turning into a "tree" (Report #1)

Man turning into a "tree" (Report #2)

Man turning into a "tree" (Report #3)

(Stories with photos of a man who has a strange, rare skin condition that has made him appear to be growing bark. The Indonesian government won't let this poor man travel out of the country to get help. A tragedy.)

A real Rhedosaurus from "Beast From 20,000 Fathoms" discovered!

Cat alive and well with two faces (the pics ain't pretty!)


SNAZZY SNOW SNAPS: (These pics ARE pretty!)

Icarus snow sculpture

The art of the U.S. Snow Sculpting Team

2006 Snow Sculpture Championship winners


TASTY BLOG ROLL:

California Babylon

Creepy Los Angeles

Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine!

Celebrating the life of Hayden Milligan

At Monster Bash 2007, I met and spoke briefly with a friendly guy known as "I. Zombi", one Hayden Milligan. He was the horror host of a public access show called THE WITCHING HOUR, which aired in the very conservative area of Lexington, KY.

If you met him, you'd never forget him.

As a child, his life was dramatically and terribly altered when was burned very badly on his face and hands. They were severely damaged, and the end result was that Hayden wound up looking like some scarred vengeance-seeking character seen in HOUSE OF WAX or other horror movie.

Except Hayden, known as "I. Zombi", was no villain. He was a married man with a friendly, enthusiastic disposition, who played guitar and had many friends. He easily won friends with his amazing determination and his enthusiasm.

Sadly, illness took his life last Monday. A documentary on his life, "I. Zombi" (directed by Jeremy Newman) was making the rounds of the festival circuit at the time of his passing. A preview of it can be seen here. A relaxed, apparently domestic picture of Hayden Milligan can be seen at this web page for the John Hopkins Film Fest in Baltimore.

The DSH urges you to explore his website:

I.ZOMBI

I did not know him well at all, and in exploring his website, find we would have disagreed on some things. (I found his views on some subjects fairly credulous.) But he met adversity and pain with grace and imagination, and his too-short life is a life to be respected and admired.

May he be somewhere serene and doing what he loves best.

Update 07/23/08: Since Milligan's death, his website has become unavailable (viewers are immediately redirected to the domain host) . HERE is a link to a Wayback Machine archive of I. Zombi webpages, although many of those are also unavailable.

For Hallowe'en: A Forgotten Horror Star, Part Nine--The End of Laszlo Revik?

Dear god. Despite my flippant reply to the comment by Sparkle Plenty, I'm more afraid this Halloween than I've been in 30+ years. And it's just because of some news from Ted.

He has sent two e-mails that have left me reeling-- no film pun intended.

First there was the news of the death of the horrible death of "Faye", that cable exec who tried to sink the cable deal for the Revik films. Now I've learned that the details of her death are pretty nasty, even gruesome. From Ted:

Oh, boy, Max, is this the cynical replay of “the show must go on.” No sooner does this female executive get attacked, mauled, raped and—for God’s sake—partially eaten—does her twerpy preppie assistant get boosted into her job. The queen is dead, long live the prince. This 24 year old twerp reversed her decision and the cable company is dumping the Revik films onto the market, fast. The distributor, Andy Hensley (oh, go ahead and use his name. It’s been in all the trades) plans to saturate the media and try to make money quickly, then get out: coordinated dvd release-- they’re already working overtime pressing thousands of discs-- a cable marathon, and simultaneous streaming video. It’s gonna be radio station KRVK, all Revik, all the time, thirteen films, one after the other, in constant rotation. He’s pretty much forced to do it by circumstance. Once he learned they were ALL in PD, that’s giving video pirates a license to steal, clone every one of them a jillion times.

About Faye’s death: Somebody had followed her that night, through the dark park, stalking her. It was foggy that night, and I’m hearing old Hans Salter themes when I imagine it. There were BIG animal tracks leading up to the location of the body (it was found the next morning)—but the tracks didn’t lead anywhere, they just stopped. The local papers followed the police party line, suggesting she was attacked by an escaped animal from Griffith Park Zoo. They had to say something. My cop pal Brian told me they’ve again got conflicting clues, like they’re straddling realities—either that, or somebody’s faking things REALLY well. The forensics guys found human hairs on her body. And canine-family hairs. And yak hairs. Hint: the zoo is not missing an escaped disappearing, flying yak.

[Yak hair's used in film makeup, for those of you who aren't film geeks like me, or film pros like Ted.]

Remember Eva, Sam’s girlfriend? They’ve split, rather acrimoniously. If she’d been venal, she’d stick with him into the “big time” he thinks he’s going to hit, but she’s a sweetie, and he’s become a total dick with this Laszlo Revik fixation. Too bad. She’s got a part in some little Equity-waiver play, an Agatha Christie mystery. She deserves a better guy (I’d volunteer, but I’m busy), or at least a sober Sam Lee in his right mind. Or at least somebody who wasn’t a suspect in three homicides.

Yeah, three: a cleaning lady found Lorette dead in her hotel bathtub, naked and “completely ex-sanguinated.” ["Drained of blood", to spare some of you a Google search.] The hotel (Beverly Hills) is big enough to pressure the papers to keep quiet about this, but again, my pal Brian is giving me the inside scoop. She was naked (well, sure, it’s a bathtub), drained nearly dry, with two little marks on her—you know. So that’s one more obstacle out of the way of showing these movies. The old, obvious investigator’s question: Who benefits? The cops haven’t arrested anyone yet, but there are “persons of interest.” Sam, because the deal goes through; ditto his distributor, Andy Hensley; maybe the upwardly mobile ladder-climber at the cable company. And of course Laszlo Revik, because his creepy face and form become part of world-wide consciousness forever. Problem with him is, he’s been certifiably dead for 27 years and he only exists on films no one’s ever seen. I don’t think the cops consider him a serious suspect.

Given what they found in the hotel bathroom, off the top of my head, I’d put out an all-points-bulletin for Count Dracula, but that’s the romantic in me. And here’s one for Sherlock Holmes. Know anything about electric blueprint symbols? Lorette apparently drew a symbol on the tile in her own blood:
My Shop classes in eighth grade were a LONG time ago. I had to poke around the ‘net for an hour before I found it. It’s the symbol for grounding a circuit.

I’ve got to make this one short. Jeff Richards just called. He’s edited a video together, and says there’s more bad news. Should be an interesting Halloween. * * * * *

After reading this, I wasn't sure I wanted to open anymore e-mails from Ted. Seriously! As I feared, this morning the forthcoming news got worse. MUCH worse. Well, it gives me an excellent excuse to drink...

More pictures of Laszlo Revik below-- why I share the face of this bastard here, I don't know, but I feel compelled to-- followed by Ted's second message...

Sorry. I think you can use the distributor’s proper name now, Max. Andy Hensley’s a dead-un, along with a priest named McFarren. They’re probably both too obscure to make splash headlines, but tabloid TV might pick it up for surreal weirdness.

They found Hensley in his home/office, slumped on the floor, strangled, with a face like Barbara Leigh-Hunt in FRENZY. The priest was outside in his car, throttled with his own rosary, no less. Laszlo Revik sell-sheets were scattered around—the 8x10 color handouts with the cover art: THE KIND OF EVIL with Price, TRIUMPH OF EVIL, and the original 1943 ALIAS DR. GHOUL. There’d clearly been a scuffle. In the fireplace were the ashen remains of a cashier’s check, made out to cash, in the amount of one million frigging dollars. AND in the priest’s briefcase out in the car, there were three OTHER checks, one for a quarter million, one for half, and one for two million.

Jeeze Louise! Lets Hensley off the hook for the murders, I’d say. Not looking good for Sam.

Now, what kind of fight? That’s another dose of bizarre world. Hey, Hensley was a film distributor, so there’s any one of a thousand people who wouldn’t mind seeing him croak. But the culprit left something behind. His clothes. A herringbone jacket, shirt and tie, pants, shoes… this must’ve been an interesting business meeting!— plus a pair of dark sunglasses and a length of Ace bandage. The one “normal” clue the cops found was a small .22, but even that was outré. It’s been fired (they dig the bullets out of the wall), but there was a near-transparent length of mono-filament fishing line attached to it—as if someone had been puppeteering it to make it appear to “float.”

The cops finally issued and arrest warrant for Sam Lee, and he’s skated. Jeff Richards tells me “I don’t know where he went,” but I’d probably say the same thing for a friend. Jeff also brought over a little montage he’d edited from the Revik films—bits and pieces of all of them, like a cinematic acrostic puzzle. I watched it and saw what he was getting at. It goes into “what if--?” territory, and neither of us could prove anything. The cops and any sane person would laugh us out of the room. But it fits the stuff that’s happened.

What if you’re a brilliant attorney but on a mystical quest through life-- and you discover the secret of true immortality in some long-forgotten medieval grimoire stored in the Vatican archives? On the surface it would be an obliquely-worded thing, an illuminated manuscript like a thousand others. It would be an arcane, coded explanation that probably meant nothing in 1374, seemed like Latin gibberish in 1750, but by 1937, with a little imagination and insight as to what technology could do—or might do-- some day, the ideas and the method to achieve them started to make sense—but were impossible to achieve at that time? Stealing such a book would get you booted from the Church; offering the secret to Nazi occultists has certain drawbacks, like the threat of death once they found the secret. But Hollywood would have possibilities. Lots of high-profile people have gotten away with murder there. And that’s Laszlo Revik’s life up to the time he made his first film—about a devious alchemist seeking eternal life.

What was alchemy, anyway? Magically turning lead to gold? No, that’s the comic book version, the fairy tale view. It was about transmutation, changing one thing into the other. All “things” are energy (E=mc2, y’know). Energy can never be destroyed; it can only be transformed, or transmitted. And the human mind is incapable of differentiating between the “real” and the vividly imaginary. Our memory makes a thing real. Or, in this case, a person.

And say you could capture some of your energy, your essence, your personality, in a fixed medium— such as a coating of silver nitrate on 35mm film, silver being an excellent conductor of energy. When that “essence” was enhanced by energy (the light from a projector), the “personality” becomes alive.

But to what end? Showing a crummy monster movie to a dozen drunks in a Times Square flea-pit or a backwoods Thai movie house or some adobe shell in the plains of Madrid? You’d dribble it all away. But if you made sure no one would see these things until the proper time— until Goddard’s experimental rockets grew up to spawn broadcast satellites, until Vladimir Zworkin’s funny little picture-radio became ubiquitous TV screens, until a digital technology could give a viewer the exact image that was captured on the film…

There’s a line in Jeff’s video from ATOM-AGE ZOMBIES that made the hairs on my neck curl. Dr. Ghoul looks directly into camera and says, “My essence shall exist forever in the minds of men. I shall walk the earth in a thousand forms.” Through a combination of 21st century “alchemy,” manipulation of consciousness, and the power of instant worldwide transmission, that’s the plan—existing, eternally, in the real world via the implanted memories in a million minds.

And if you could go one way—coming “out” of a movie into the “real” world-- could you go another? Sending 2 dimensional “people” from our minds out into our three dimensional world? The string of killings—the characters from the Revik films, doing his bidding. Jeff and I think it was intentional, that the “accidental” public domain status of the 13 Revik films was exactly what he intended. The “unexplained” vault fires, studio bankrupcies, “lost” negatives. And like a character in any given Revik movie who thinks he’s going to get the edge on Joseph Elwin, Sam Lee is the fall guy. It’s crazy. It’s happening.

I don’t know what the hell any of us can do about it.

# # # #

For god's sake-- be careful, readers. The only advice I have to give is-- well, I'm not sure what to say. But I know what I'll do. You should do it, too.

Watch the shadows.