NO SAFE WORD The Shocking Power Of Extreme Horror Fiction

Horror is defined by the heart of its audience.

What makes one person shudder may bore another, more jaded observer.

As a hardcore horror fanatic, I have encounter many occasions where I am not only bored by some of the genre’s efforts but also baffled by their popularity. For example, I cannot understand the appeal of the Paranormal Activity films. They rely on jolt scares and I find it to be lazy writing. However, a lot of people find these flicks terrifying. I also remember thinking, at age seventeen, that Angel Heart was one of the scariest films I had ever seen (and I still stand by that). I told all of my teenaged buddies to watch it, insisting it would keep them up nights. After watching it, they thought I was an imbecile for deeming it remotely scary. I realized then that they wanted zombies, chainsaws and special effects, not morbid detective noir. But more importantly it was visceral horror that interested them, not cerebral. That same year I was thunderstruck by In the Mouth of Madness while they all hailed Demon Knight instead. Both are great genre films, but both are vastly different.

 As I grew into a horror fiend I began to see patterns in tales of terror and began to predict the course of most horror films and stories. You can’t endure thousands of them without this happening. It isn’t a condemnation of the works, but rather a testament to the power of the human mind. Even books, which are always far less routine than films, began to lack surprise for me and the absence of suspense made the elements of horror fail to horrify a seasoned genre veteran like myself. I kept looking for newer, wilder mold breakers. I went from Stephen King to Clive Barker, then from Barker to classic Richard Matheson, then from Matheson to a wide variety of talented authors: Rex Miller, Tim Lebbon, Ramsey Campbell and more.

 After burning through all the high art of these craftsmen, I found myself adrift in a sea of mediocre genre fluff. By my mid-twenties I felt burnt out and hungry for something fresh as a kill. While I loved all the classics I’d treasured over the years, I had gotten so tired of going to the bookstore and picking up one new horror novel after another, each of them always having a scary looking house on the cover, and all of them delivering zero chills. Some were trash – but others were indeed well written and thought out, and were compelling enough to keep me reading through to the end, but they just didn’t scare me.

I began wonder when horror stopped being horrifying.

Thankfully, that is when I first discovered Jack Ketchum.

My girlfriend at the time worked at a bookstore. When big publishing houses send bookstores books that fail to sell, the store mails back the covers of the books and gets full credit to their account. However, they don’t want the whole books back, because of the shipping cost. So my girlfriend would bring home piles of books with no front cover.

One day she brought me a copy of Jack Ketchum’s Red, based upon what the back cover described. I’ve always been a big western fan. I love Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood. So she thought I would enjoy this book about an old man seeking justice on the young punks who killed his dog.

And boy was she right.

Not only is Red an emotionally charged story of violent revenge, loyalty and perseverance - it is also a very well written piece of fiction. While not a horror novel, its boil-building plot seized me with a page-turning suspense, the very feeling of dreadful anticipation that had been so painfully absent in the horror schlock I’d been reading.

I looked into Ketchum who, though a genre heavyweight now, was an obscure horror author back in the early 2000’s. But of what little I could find about him online, there was one book of his that I knew I had to track down.

Readers and critics alike where very black and white about Ketchum’s notorious horror novel Off Season, and remain so to this day. People either see it as a ghastly, perverted, incorrigible pile of filth or they think it is one of the most brilliant and intense horror novels ever written - much as I do.

Telling the simple story of group of friends vacationing in rural Maine only to be attacked by a pack of wild cannibals, Off Season is survival horror at its finest. It is also so graphic and relentless in its brutality that calling it just a horror story would not give the reader fair enough warning.

This was my introduction to extreme horror.

This sub-genre is reserved for books and films that break taboos and delve into the unmentionable and the inhumane with unapologetic force.  Even the most jaded horror fan can expect to be disgusted or offended. Shocking movies such as A Serbian Film, Nekromantik, Header, and The Burning Moon find themselves being banned in certain countries or being heavily edited for their release. Women’s groups vehemently attack books like American Psycho and the extreme works of horror author Edward Lee are often refereed to as mindless, gory sleaze.

But while some extreme horror is just gross for the sake of gross, and while much of it delves too deep into brainless torture scenarios, the genre can equally create simultaneous sensations of repulsion and mind-bending fear, and therein lies its power.

Think of some of the ghastliest moments in Se7en or Silence of the Lambs. These moments, though twisted and vile, were also part of a bigger whole – that whole being a masterpiece of modern horror.

For an author to not self-censor, and to expose the darkest corners of their imagination, can be the passport to new dimensions of horror storytelling. If the extremity is used correctly, as part of wider story arch and not just focused upon for its own sake, the overall effect can be staggering.

Hence the growing popularity of the before mentioned horror author,  Edward Lee.

Lee has a lot of stellar mainstream horror fiction, such as his gripping Infernal series and his Lovecraftian works such as The Dunwhich Romance and The Innswich Horror.  But lurking amidst his more mass friendly terrors are his underground novellas and collections, published on the outskirts, which seep with disturbing delights.

Books like Goon, Bullet Through Your Face and Brain Cheese Buffet are perfect examples of Lee’s spectacular skill at concocting the extreme. Brain Cheese Buffet was an awakening for me into a new world of horror fiction as foul as it was ingenious. The opening story, Mr. Torso, is one of the most haunting pieces of horror fiction my brain has ever been invaded by, and even though it falls into the forbidden extreme horror zone it still snagged the author a much deserved Stoker nomination. Additional stories in this vile volume include the utterly revolting The Dritiphilist and the uber-twisted The McCrath Model ss40-C, Series S. I encourage all true horror fans to seek out this paperback, but I am warning you right now that they will really test you.

You know that feeling you get when you watch a movie like Maniac? You like the movie but at the same time you don’t want anyone to walk in on you watching it? You kinda need a shower afterwards too, right? Welcome to every page of reading Brain Cheese Buffet. Put it in your safety deposit box when family visits, least they haul you off to a rubber room.

As a horror writer myself, I marvel at the talent and bravery of Lee and Ketchum for pushing a difficult and even unpopular sub-genre at the risk of damaging their writing careers. I’m so glad that it has all worked out in their favor too, and that the true horror fans came out to place their work on pedestals where they belong. Ketchum is so revered now by horror fans that when a movie is made out of his work, his name appears at the top instead of the director’s (such as in the movie Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door.)

This opened the floodgates for extreme horror fiction and films, which have been catching on more and more. As our genre floats in a sea of banal, big budget remakes,  the indie horror scene, as well as the foreign markets, have been exploding with extreme films like Dead Girl, The Loved Ones, Inside, I Saw the Devil and Martyrs – movies that are not only extreme, but are some of the best horror films out there today. 

In addition, newcomer authors feel less confined to old industry standards, so instead of just a sea of ghost novels with those scary house covers, there is also a world of small presses pumping out stellar, underground splatterpunk and high tension terror, such as Deadite Press, Dark Moon Books, Post Mortem Press, and many more. Magazines and anthologies are popping up offering a printed page home for horror writers like myself.

This month brings forth such an anthology that I am incredibly proud to be a part of, and puts my work in the company of some of these personal writing heroes.

D.O.A II is the sequel to Blood Bound Book’s popular extreme horror anthology D.O.A. This is the sort of mind-raping, stomach-pumping horror that I’ve been speaking of here. Along with one of my nasty short stories, this gruesome volume also contains some mean entries from Jack Ketchum, Wrath James White, J. F. Gonzalez, Robert Devereaux and many more.

In 2008, I met Jack Ketchum at a horror con and got him to sign a copy of his rare novella The Crossings for me. Now it is 2013 and I’m in a book with him! I’m sure you can appreciate the excitement this gives me, and I hope that after reading this article on extreme horror fiction that you’re all excited to check out this gnarly collection of carnage. And if you need a little more convincing about the book’s quality, just check out this blurb we got from the godfather of gore himself:

"Make sure your health insurance covers psychiatric counseling before reading this book, because you’re gonna need it. The experience of this collection may be likened to getting run over by a 666-car locomotive engineered by Lucifer. This is the cream of grotesquerie’s crop, a Whitman’s Sampler of the heinous, and an absolutely gut-wrenching celebration of the furthest extremities of the scatological, the taboo, the unconscionable, and the blasphemous.”

–EDWARD LEE

If we’re extreme enough for Edward Lee, then I’m one happy contributor indeed, and if you’re a horrorfiend hungry for newer, vivid abominations, I think I’ve given you plenty to go on. Just beware, the extreme horror writers are coming for you next, and there is no safe word.  

• Kristoher Triana
• (aka Koyote the Bartender at tavernofterror.com)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Koyote runs Tavern of Terror where you can find cool liquor and cult horror. It is the horror bar that reviews scary movies and suggests what alcohol to enjoy with them.

Hentai/Guro: The Dead World Gives You Choices

You pick up a volume of manga at the bookstore. You’re interested in the genre, and the cover looks pretty grotesque - pictures of moody-looking women and darkness and maybe a few monsters here or there - but you’re really not sure what you’re getting yourself into. Pretty soon, you’re seeing preteen girls being stripped of their skin, used as chairs, and raped by hair. It’s not the same thing as hentai, that genre of anime and manga that’s basically akin to cartoon porn, but it’s close.

Perhaps your experience with guro is limited to that extreme GIF of a young girl being stripped of her clothes, and then her flesh, by laser beam that recently went viral. It’s a fairly straightforward view of guro - offensive, disgusting, and pornographic in the most explicit sense of the word - but it's also lacking the literary quality that most guro captures in its panels.

That might seem like I'm stretching things a little bit. I mean, pornography rarely has any sort of plot, and if it does, it has something to do with a pizza man delivering more than just a steaming hot pie. Guro as literature is something that doesn't get much recognition; part of that would definitely stem from the lengths and extremities the stories go to be grotesque, the gratuitous rape scenes and full-frontal nudity involved, and the largely misogynistic storylines. But manga in general is also regarded as a lower form of entertainment by the masses. Like comics, anime and manga is reserved for dorky dudes who like fantasizing about colossal boobs and light beams shooting out of hands.

Except those who actually know the niche know that that's not always the case. There is manga that captures the essence of literature, and there is also guro that does the same. Just as Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and the films of Hayao Miyazaki have more to offer than disproportionate women and stuff blowing up, so too does the most horrific guro. And we can learn a lot from the extremes of guro, too, just like we can about the video nasties in horror.

We can start with the works of Junji Ito, a horror mangaka whose stories sit on the realm between extreme horror and guro. Ito is probably best known for his short-running manga Uzumaki, a plot that inspired a spin off live-action movie. Its theme is spirals, and it’s set in a town that’s dominated by the swirling shapes. Everyone begins to suffer from the delusions of spirals; one moment they’re fine, and the next they’re stabbing out their eardrums or breaking their bones to fit their own bodies into circular boxes.

Ito deals with obsession, a common theme in both horror manga and guro. In Japan, ghost stories always seem to have a fetish attachment - in The Ring, there is a video tape, in The Grudge there is a house that’s plagued with the spirits, and in Uzumaki, there are spirals. Obsession can ruin lives, and Ito delves into this with aplomb in his stories. I bring up Uzumaki because it is one of the most well-known of his works, but his other entries - Gyo, Tomie - deal with obsession in different ways as well.

But Ito’s works, despite being grotesque and - like an old gallon of milk - on the edge of spoiling, are not guro per se. They don’t hit the sexual deviances or the surrealist violence of those extreme stories. Demon Beast Invasion is very nearly there, although it is classified more as hentai than guro. This is the realm of tentacle porn, and it’s really just like it sounds. Monsters come to destroy humanity, prompting teenage girls to fight back to stop the destruction. It sounds like any PG-13 anime or mecha series, and yet these girls fight while being raped by the monster’s huge appendages, and sometimes their dicks too. La Blue Girl and Legend of the Overfiend fall into much the same category.

And yet still we haven’t really hit guro on the head. The latter manga entries are too overtly sexual - if we were to classify them in terms of live action films, they would fall squarely into the porno category of “little story, mucho sex.” Guro doesn’t dwell on its sex; at least in this sense, it’s not meant to be used as masturbatory fodder (maybe, if you’re particularly deviant). No, guro is still a whole different beast.
One of the most defining artists in guro is none other than Shintaro Kago. It’s perhaps not such an accomplishment to name someone the master of horror porn, but if there is such a thing as an award, it would go to this man. A master of both surrealism and grue, Kago has created a ton of short manga stories with intense material as its subject matter. Dead fetuses, rape, gross insertion - you name it, Kago has gone there.

That’s not to say that his stories are simply there to disturb or shock. His content is often thought-provoking, reaching the outer realms in an attempt to highlight disturbing societal norms. Take, for instance, a chapter of Taisougi called “The Big Funeral,” where a group of people attracted to funerals begin to try to locate the site of one inside a maze. The surrealist setting allows Kago to explore the dark characteristics within people; there’s a rapist who gets the thrill of attacking his victim in front of her husband’s funeral picture, and a necrophiliac. Kago doesn’t skimp on the detail, and a lot of it is significantly deranged, but it’s also a depiction of society’s darkest secrets.

Kago’s not the only significant artist working in the field. Sueharo Maruo and Waita Uziga are also spectacular artists working with much of the same tropes. Guro might seem to be categorized as something meant to offend and shock - and some might try to persuade that it’s all about young girls being raped - but the most defining moments are those that highlight the depths of human evil.

Lest we forget about those things, guro is there to let us know that they do still exist. A Kago piece entitled “Harakiri” explores the latest trend in Japan where young girls try to outdo each other by committing suicide, because it’s the “cool” thing to do. Kago’s blacker than black humor is far-reaching and extreme, but he gets his point across - there are things in society that we need to deal with, and sometimes it takes broad strokes to let us know that we’ve got some major shit to sort out.

If guro is pornography, it’s an artistic and culturally relevant form of that genre. In its extremity, it seeks to teach us about our own terrible selves; if we’re offended at the grotesqueries of using fetuses as artwork, of using rape as a form of literature, then that in turn helps us to reset our own moral compass. There must be humor in this foreboding world; when it comes from the unrestricting world of guro, it’s meant to be devoured as a sarcastic but critical appraisal of who we are as individuals. Take that to heart the next time you read or see tentacle rape.

- Ryne Barber

Ryne Barber writes and runs his own horror blog, TheMoonisaDeadWorld.net. He also writes for HorrorNews.net. He fits in pretty well at Guts & Grog, because when he's not writing or watching horror, he's drinking all types of brews.

The Kids Aren’t Alright: A Serbian Film & Dogtooth

I was going to title this, Kids Get Fucked, but I took a lesson from Texas and didn’t want any police suspicion nor 5 months in jail. 

When I heard that the Master of the Grog was going to do an extreme themed week, I said “well I might as well go as extreme as possible”. Kids are that extreme. Most of you reading this will have watched these films already, so no recap here, but my god do these kids get fucked up. Literally and psychologically. I watched them back to back, to really solidify the extremity. 

First up was A Serbian Film. I chose physically fucked up first. A Serbian Film, written, produced, and directed by Srdan Spasojevic, begins with a little psychological oedipal shit, the son watches a porn starring his father Milosh. He then goes on to talk about how it made him feel like there were wheels turning “down by his willy”. Turned on by your father’s porn? The serbs know how to introduce. A half-hour in we watch as a pubescent girl witnesses her mother suck Milosh’s dick, in a room in an orphaned children’s home. After an hour we get our the second, and by all accounts most disturbing child destruction, the fetus-fuck sequence. Not only do the screams sound genuinely painful, but the mother is smiling and the “doctor” sure seems to enjoy it. After this video is played the director shouts “Newborn Porn!”, as if its going to be the next big thing. I dunno maybe it will be. Finally Milosh gets all doped up with bull testosterone and goes on a rampage, culminating in a horrifying greek tragedy where the father ends up fucking a near-comatose son, and his brother fucks his wife. Then lots of murder, including a missing-eye-hole-fuck-kill, all of which the son is watching, and then a very comforting suicide at the end. Even though the tagline was “Not All Movies Have a Happy Ending”, the suicide seems like a relief after everything else that happened, going from a somewhat-normal family to a “real happy Serbian family” as the director says at the end. Serbian kids got it tough. 

After recovering slightly from war-torn Eastern Europe, I put in Dogtooth, a Greek film by Giorgos Lanthimos, which takes the physical brutality of A Serbian Film and turns it into psychological torture. The film begins with the three nearly-adult children learning “the words of the day” from a tape made by their mother, one word being “sea: a leather armchair”. The 3 children have never left their fenced in home, and are taught that airplanes fall out of the sky. The only outside influence is a security guard the father works with, who is brought home to fuck the son (presumably to have a child), but when she gives one of the girls a VHS (and the girl subsequently quotes every line from it), she is beaten with a VCR by the father. That didn’t last long. Once that experiment is over the father just makes the eldest daughter have sex with the son, just a little incest to keep the family alive. The children are rewarded for good behavior with stickers, and they are told that their brother lives on the other side of the fence. When a kitten makes it into the yard it is promptly killed and the kids are told that it killed their brother and that it is the “most dangerous animal on earth”. The only thing these kids have to look forward to is freedom once their right Dogtooth falls out, the eldest girl is really impatient and just knocks it out with a 5-pound weight. She hides in her father’s car, and although she is never shown exiting the trunk, we can assume she will eventually. The confinement seems almost Nazi-like, and the children are entirely at their parents control, until the desire to be free becomes to much, I guess. 

One thing’s for sure, the kids got fucked in these films. Whether it be in the ass or in the brain the kids will never be the same. As for extreme, they fit the bill, nothing says extreme like Newborn Porn or bashing out one’s own tooth, it was a bloody child mess.


- Peter Poison

Peter lives at the house of grog along with Tromeric. While he does not partake of the grog itself, he is heavily involved in the marathons and party's that revolve around it. Originally from New England, he found his way to Portland three years ago. He spends much of his time hiking and fishing in the Washington and Oregon outdoors. He is an artist who has had shows including one at the Lovecraft. He loves Honey Buns, M & Ms, Fritos, Southern Rap, and Doom Metal.

Son of Celluloid Has a Chat with Jimmy Screamerclauz

As any connoisseur of the extreme will attest, at some point you become pretty jaded. You feel like you’ve seen it all before. Nothing short of pure perverse brilliance moves you like those early excursions into the video fringe did. Hell, at this point my mind is like an uber-nerdy high school kid… getting blown is the rarest of rare occurrences. That’s why it’s so damn exciting when someone starts doing something new and different. When Stephen Biro from Unearthed Films gave me a copy of a film called Where The Dead Go To Die to review, I discovered that someone had charged headlong into a virgin extreme cinema frontier; hardcore independent animation. I had discovered the deranged, brilliant world of Jimmy Screamerclauz, and my mind was blown like it hadn’t been in ages.

That film went on to top my Best Flicks of 2012 list. I’ve watched it about 25 times throughout the process of exposing (subjecting?) as many of my friends to it as possible, and it never loses its power to punch me in the gut. Unlike a lot of “extreme” flicks, it infuses genuine emotion into the depravity. It’s also possibly the most fucked up feature visually that I’ve ever laid eyes on. Here, take a look at the trailer…

Pretty out there, huh? Well, you still have no idea. No trailer could do it justice. Screamerclauz’s music videos, as well as the “Clinical Sodomy” video he did for Butcher’s Harem, continue to show his aptitude for mind-bending visuals. His short film “Affection” (Google it) will either make you stand up and cheer, masturbate furiously, or cry for mommy depending on your level of psychosis. He’s one of the most exciting filmmakers out there today in my book, and he was kind enough to answer a few questions for Extreme Week. So, join me on a trip into the twisted brain of Jimmy Screamerclauz. Just make sure you leave that trail of breadcrumbs, ‘cause it sure as hell ain’t somewhere we want to get stuck.

SOC: First of all, I just want to state that you are a truly sick fuck, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. 

JS: That's not a question! That's it, interview’s over. Take me home.

SOC: Where did the name Jimmy Screamerclauz come from?


JS: The short version is that when I was a kid my friend and I started a band and were making up stage names. I was like 11 and obsessed with aliens so I wanted to name myself "the alien screaming head" but my friend told me it was too long and started calling me Screamer. Fast forward a few years when the internet first started coming to homes and it was time for me to make an email address. Some how, even though a lot of people weren't on the internet yet, almost every email host already had a "screamer" so I would invent last names, such as ScreamerDeath, ScreamerAlien, ScreamerIceCreamSocial, ScreamerFailedPregnacyScare, ScreamerI'mRunningOutOfCleverLastNames.com.org.net, etc. and then one Christmas I changed it to ScreamerClaus, which eventually evolved (or devolved) into ScreamerClauz. Then for whatever reason I just stopped changing it. Fast forward a few more years into my teenage years and I started making electronic music with my friend Homie and I used ScreamerClauz as my music name. Fast forward another bunch of years after playing shows and releasing some albums under that name and people would start contacting me and calling me ScreamerClauz, which would make me feel weird. I'd always be like "you can call me Jimmy!" which is my real first name (well, James is). Then people just started combining the two into Jimmy ScreamerClauz. When I started making movies I didn't know whether to drop the ScreamerClauz or use my real last name. I decided rather than starting all over I'd just keep the name for the sake of consistency. But now I'm 30 and I'm starting to think "Do I really want people calling me ScreamerClauz when I'm 60?" I haven't really come up with an answer yet. Maybe I'll die first! But what name would I use on my tombstone? This world is flawed.

SOC: I’m sure you get asked this question all the time, but where do you draw your inspiration from? 

JS: Sex, Drugs, and Electronic Music. Fuck Rock n' Roll. Its not made by aliens who encode hidden signals that only I can understand.

SOC: How is the creative process different or similar between music and film?

 JS: Hhmm, well, I learned a lot about using sound to terrify people because I spent so much time making creepy music, so when I started making movies I based a lot of the scenes around what kind of music/noise I would use to make it more terrifying. So it’s similar in the sense that I'm trying to use sound to evoke a feeling of dread, but different in the sense that movies have like, pictures and stuff. And the pictures even move, like magic! With music I always found it difficult to collaborate with other producers; especially if you are using different programs or methods. Movies are a little easier because then you can involve actors/actress’ and other musicians to help bring your insanity to life!

SOC: Between your music and your films, you’ve been working in what could be called “extreme art” for quite some time. If we can get philosophical for a second, what role do you think boundary-pushing art plays in society? 

JS: I guess it really all depends on the individual. To some people it’s a release and a way to explore the darker sides of their thoughts. Other people just like to test their limits and see how much they can endure. Then some people just like to see sex and death and people having sex with dead things. I think I'm guilty of all of the above


SOC: In your mind, what is extreme cinema? What makes a film extreme?


 JS: The craziest, most vile filth you never thought you'd want to see but can't get enough of! When I first discovered extreme films it was really exciting because I never knew what I was going to get and just how far it was going to go. It was magical, disturbing and heart warming! But after watching all that I possibly could I kind of hit a dead end. Now newer extreme films just don't do it for me anymore. That's why I had to start making my own!

SOC: What are some of your favorite extreme cinema flicks? 

JS: Cannibal Holocaust, Nekromanik, Blood-sucking Freaks, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, a couple of the Guinea Pigs, Maniac, and a bunch of other ones.

SOC: Do you set out making a short or feature with the intention of shocking people, or do you just make the films you want to make and let people take them however they will?

 JS: I always know going in that I'm dealing with disturbing subject matter, but I'm always shocked when people are actually offended or disturbed by it. When I look at it I just see silly little cartoons. Tainted Milk is the best example of this. It started as me just wanting to make a silly parody of Lassie. The video I did for Butchers Harem was another one I had no idea people were going to be actually offended by! I think I just don't know anything about the world


SOC: Your first flick was an animation/live action hybrid called Reality Bleed Through. I’ve seen the trailer, but never seen the film available anywhere. Has it been released? 

JS: It played in a few film festivals, but was never formally released. I never considered the festival cut of it the final version so I decided to teach myself some new animation techniques and that's where Tainted Milk came from. That eventually evolved into WTDGTD, which ended up eating up three years. Then it just felt like I was at different point in my life and Reality Bleed-Through didn't seem the direction to go. Now it just seems like too much time has passed to really do anything with it. There's parts of it I can go back and re-animate and make much better, but it just seems like a waste of time to do that and the other half of the movie that isn't animated can't really be altered. The whole film was really just an excuse for me try things out. I basically went from no experience in filmmaking at all straight into making that. I learned so much from doing it and I'm really proud of parts of it, but its not something I would really want to show people or do promotion for. I also started making another live action/animation hybrid called Dogshit, but pretty much the same exact thing happened. Now I have two half finished movies that I have no idea what to do with!

 SOC: As you know, I loved Where the Dead Go to Die. Could you tell us a little about the flick for the benefit of those unfamiliar with it? 

JS: Where The Dead Go To Die is an anthology film about emotionally disturbed children existing in multiple realities haunted by talking dogs and disfigured demons. I animated the entire film by myself using a variety of software over the course of three years. It stars my best friends, my heroes, and my loves; Ruby LaRocca, Brandon Slagle, Victor Bonacore, Joey Smack, Devanny Pinn, M dot Strange, Trent Haaga, Bushpig and lots more! It was the first thing I ever animated, and I learned how to animate one shot at time starting with the first chapter, "Tainted Milk". After I made the second chapter, "Liquid Memories," Imailed copies of both shorts to Stephen Biro at Unearthed Films on a whim. He said he wanted to release them but they weren't long enough. I already had a script for the third chapter, "The Masks That The Monsters Wear," and told him that I would animate it and then we could release it as a feature film. And here we are today!


SOC: In WTDGTD’s commentary track, you say that you originally envisioned Tainted Milk (the first segment) as a comedy. At what point did you realize that it was more effective as horror? 

JS: The thing about Tainted Milk is that I made it when I started doing marijuana. I avoided it completely through my teenager years. It was 2009, I was 26, my girlfriend and I had just broken up, and I was living completely alone for the first time in my life. I already had a morbid view on life and a twisted sense of humor, and the weed just made it worse (or better, depending on your opinion of the film!). So that movie was a complete stoner accident on every possible level. It used to have a sitcom laugh track and I recorded all the voice actors doing goofy voices on purpose. When I was editing it I realized that if I dropped the laugh track and the sitcom score and played it like a horror movie, it gave it this really unnerving bi-polar feeling. Then once I made the other two chapters I tried to take it a little more seriously, but my weird sense of humor still crept in now and then. I blame the weed and “under God” being taken out of the pledge of allegiance.

SOC: What has the reaction from critics and the general public to WTDGTD?

JS: It seems to be one of those “love it or hate it” films. On a scale of 1 to 10 it got either all 9 -10s or 1 - 2s. Rarely does it get the 3 - 8 range.

SOC: Have you gotten any funny/interesting responses from people your films have offended? 

JS: Honestly not really, which disappoints me slightly. The closest I got was when WTDGTD was released. It was put out by a big distributor, so when it hit all the illegal streams people thought it was just a new regular horror movie released in 2012. It got mixed in with all the current mainstream films. So a bunch of people who aren't into extreme or underground films watched it thinking it was some new studio movie and posted lots of angry comments about me being a pedophile and/or Satan. Oh, and one time a German guy emailed me a death threat in German. I used google translate but it was still hard to tell if he was threatening to fucking kill me or just fuck me, though either one would be a weekend spoiler.

SOC: In WTDGTD, there is a strong, recurring eyeball motif. Is there a meaning behind that?

 JS: I wish I had some intelligent thing to say about life and love and physics and pumpkin pie, but the truth is that I just think eyeballs look cool and I have a tendency to over do things so everything becomes eyeball central!


SOC: There is a strong religious undercurrent to both WTDGTD and your more recent short, Affection. Are you making a specific statement about religion or just intentionally courting controversy? 

JS: Not so much a statement. I'm just really obsessed with religion, especially extreme religion. My movies are never meant to be mocking or criticizing God. I'm mocking and criticizing the way people perceive these sorts of things. I try and create characters who either have the wrong idea about God or no idea at all. That's why they act the way they do and do the horrible things they do. I think that turning your mind off to the possibility that life isn't meaningless and that there is something after death is just as dangerous as the people who preach it too hard. People just get too crazy about it and everyone seems to believe that they know one way or the other. The truth is, nobody actually knows shit about dick. Religious people claim they know because their Bible says so, and atheists claim they know because the Bible has too many holes it. Everyone's religion should just be converted into "I should try my hardest to stop being an asshole because it directly affects my current life, not because the sky monster might get mad."

SOC: When I showed WTDGTD to some friends, one of the things I heard was “I’m way too sober for this movie.” Is there any particular drug or combination of drugs you would recommend to put the viewer in the right frame of mind for one of your flicks? 

 JS: The chemicals in juice boxes that turn kids gay. Watch


SOC: I’ve always said that horror lends itself well to animation, but outside of anime it hasn’t really been explored much. Through WTDGTD, your music videos like Butcher’s Harem’s “Clinical Sodomy,” and Affection, you’ve done more with it than anyone else. Do you ever see independent animated horror being a viable genre?

 JS: It wasn't until I released WTDGTD that I realized not many people were making animated horror films. M dot Strange (creator of We Are The Strange and Heart String Marionette) makes creepy horror-ish samurai films, but they aren't exactly horror. David Firth (creator of Salad Fingers) also makes some scary ass shit. I guess his would be closer to horror films. But as far as studios go I can't think of a single animated adult horror feature film. I guess that means I'm cornering the market! Why aren't I rich???


SOC: You seem to be pretty adept at freaking viewers out. What freaks Jimmy Screamerclauz out?

 JS: I don't like airplanes. I just flat out don't like it up there! I feel like the sky people are going to find out I'm defying nature and take me away. Every time I fly somewhere I come back slightly less sane than when I left. Sleep kind of freaks me too. It’s a really fucking weird concept to think about. You close your eyes and your soul leaves earth to view other worlds were there are no rules. No matter how rich or poor you are, everyone is given godlike powers for a few hours a night that nobody else can ever witness. Then you wake up back into this world and everything you did has no direct effect on your regular life. Eventually we will all come to the point where you don't wake up at all. Almost every night when I go to bed my brain tells me it’s going to be the night I die and I'm not going to wake up again. Plus, I can never cum in sex dreams. What kind of crock of shit is that?

SOC: Your next movie is called When Black Birds Fly. Can you tell us a little about that flick and any other projects you’d like to make the readers aware of? 

 JS: I made this page to send to potential voice actors.  It basically sums up the first 15 pages of the script and has some screenshots and stuff. I never publicly posted it anywhere, so I guess that makes this an exclusive or something!

SOC: Finally, on your website you offer to autograph orders for free and even include a unique little story written by you. Would you be willing to write a short story for us? 

JS: NO!!!! Well ok sure…Once upon a time there was this women who had fish sticks instead of breasts. All the local boys and girls lined up around the block to try and feed upon them but all ended up disappointed when they bit them to discover that they were hot on the outside but cold on the inside. The town was outraged and dragged her out into the street and burned her at the steak. Not a wooden one, but a large pile of meat that smelled funny. While she burned, all the local children rolled around in the meat to gain the scent of their master and then ostracized each other for smelling funny. After the whole town was collectively relegated to the time-out corner they realized that the woman had been burnt to a crisp, thus making the fish stick tits even less editable. Now the town was without food again and everyone smelled like rotten meat… I never said they were good I said they were free!

Nathan Hamilton is your average "slightly eccentric" horror movie junkie. At the age of 32, he’s already been involved in “horror business” for 20 years as a haunted house actor, ghost tour guide, and genre blogger/critic/journalist. He currently writes the horror movie blog Son of Celluloid. Nathan is also quite proficient with a chainsaw. You can decide for yourself if you’d rather experience his writing or chainsaw wielding talents. He’s happy either way.

Critters and Gods Salo Poster Contest

Jeremy has done up a beautiful one of a kind print for this week. It will be signed and numbered by him. There are few films as extreme as Salo in my opinion. This is  a movie I sought out as a child, and finally found it and had my brains blown out.

Now look at this beauty.

 

Click on it to see it in all it's glory. 

Now, how to win. Leave a comment here telling me your favorite foreign horror/dark/extreme film, and share one of the posts on the Twitter or Facebook. At the end of the week, I will take everyone that has done that and randomly pick a winner. It's that simple. Now get on it. You need this on your wall. 

Jeremy is a published writer. His books include "What the Master Does Not Speak Of – Poems and Drawings by Jeremy Gaulke" and "The Ghost of Harrison Sheets." He runs Critters and Gods which is an art zine inspired by H. P. Lovecraft. It features black and white and color illustrations depicting life, symbolism, and ritual in a post-Cthulhu world. 

TIME TO PUT YOUR DEATH FACE ON – Raw Meat, Pixy Stix and THE FACES OF DEATH

It all comes back to raw meat. Not the British horror flick from the 1970’s also known as Death Line. Actual meat that is the by-product of a dead animal, splintered and severed and wrapped in plastic and then served up on a plate after making its way, indifferent, over a grill. I don’t want to get into the politics of it. It’s really just the root, the beginning. A point from which my love of Faces of Death begins. It’s a story that I absolutely must tell you, so that you might preclude judgment upon me in the face of the video you are about to endure or enjoy or suffer through. It begins with meat. We end as meat. Here’s a story.

I can’t give you a year, but I can tell you that my buddy and I used to watch a whole lotta horror. Army of Darkness was out on VHS, so if that’s a reference point, use it. A.D. – After Darkness. We would go to Long Valley Video. We would rent horror movies, and we would read from the Leonard Maltin video guide as if it was our Bible (Ebert fans can suck it). Maltin’s book had a fairly thorough horror section or at least I thought so for the time. This was before the age of DVD and digital. This was an age of video piracy and sharing groups and catalogs straight from the back of Fangoria. It was perfect for our purposes; we wanted the horror movies with the most “gratuitous” nudity. That’s what Maltin would say of the nudity. Gratuitous. It’s a word like “gore”. It truly means excessive, but when you’re an adolescent male who has just discovered your dad’s porn collection, it means satiating an uncontrollable hunger for the all mighty mammary gland, boobs. So we would read from the pages of the video guide and good ol’ Leonard would demark wherever a movie was brimming with “the good stuff”. Pieces or Make Them Die Slowly. Zombie. He’d give all my favorites a “turkey” rating. If Leonard Maltin rated a movie a turkey as opposed to a star (one through five) that meant it went on our list and we’d have to locate it. Gradually the transition from pure nudity graduated into a need to watch more extreme films. More gore. More blood. More debauch. There would come a time when Long Valley Video wouldn’t have what we needed to thrive, but not today. Today it was our library of the macabre. Our tape… FACES OF DEATH.

Read the article first then watch.







 You walk down the aisles of a video store long enough over many visits and you’re likely to come across some pretty groovy shit. I can remember House by the Cemetery peaking at me from a shelf too high for me to reach for years and when I finally got to see Dr. Freudstein on the reverse he gave me beautiful nightmares. Same goes for Mark of the Devil. Funhouse. The baddie bad movies that my father didn’t want me to see. For some reason, even though the aforementioned movies (a list that might extend on for a bit) were strictly forbidden, my dad didn’t seem to have a problem with me watching Faces of Death. I went in after staring it down for several weeks, picked it off the shelf and rented it. It was Faces of Death IV and not the mondo original classic fake fest. It sat next to the Worst of and was released by the Medusa branded Gorgon Video. I was enamored; love at first sight and it was mine. Black protective tape case with all the hallmark 80’s markings that it came fresh out the video store. Getting up the guts to actually ask my dad if I could rent it was a whole other matter. Intense prep and timing, but we got our movie. It wouldn’t be our last.


Note: Someday I’ll reveal the great Codeine binge of the early 90’s as narrated by Camille Keaton’s generous rape sequence in I Spit on Your Grave followed by an intense night of Sonic the Hedgehog. Just not today. End Note.

I truly didn’t know what to expect except that when you looked it up in Maltin’s book you got a back story of the original film and not the sequels. From what I read I knew that we’d have to wait for my parents to go out for dinner or something. Something that left me home without a parent. Even though I got the movie into the house if mom saw me watching real people dying on screen, well, the proverbial jig would be up, sky high. We were going to have deli sandwiches for dinner. Roast beef for me. My parents left for the evening, tape went in and I continued to enjoy a juicy rare sandwich without much thought. I have a strong constitution for these things, and I don’t mind puking. Not one bit, but aside from some poor substance abuse choices and IPA hangovers, it really wasn’t an issue. (Don’t mix horse painkillers with red wine…ever).

I cannot tell you when it happened; what scene inspired it or how it turned a normal couch potato session into a toilet marathon, but my friend, who was in all fairness more squeamish than me, tossed his cookies. He was watching me, watching the people get cooked and drawn and quartered and autopsied. Fat spilling all about. Limbs ripped from torso. Giant leaches from a lake. Stupid people dying in stupid ways. Smart, successful people killing themselves on screen. He watched this and he watched me eating that damn roast beef sandwich. The result was insta-vomit. Projectile puking. I assume he puked in his mouth, caught it, tried to swallow it so as to not lose his shit on my parents rug, but then he had to put it all in the bowl. That’s how it all starts with meat. And what started? From that moment on I was a mondo junkie. There’s a competitive rush that you get when the guy next to you can’t handle his movie. It didn’t happen often, but it happened the first time we broke the mondo barrier.

True death, 400 hamburgers of maximum performance. (to paraphrase Rob Zombie). I sought out, for a short while, all of the best mondo, true death films I could find. Many Faces of Death, Faces of Death, the sequels there of, Traces of Death which would become my personal favorite because they were brutal and had the best death metal (Traces of Death II to be precise), Mondo Cane (both parts), Africa Blood and Guts, Shocking Africa. I forget them. When I see the covers come up on VHS trading sights I fawn over them and try to resist the urge to send people money even to this day. There are more real movies than the Faces of Death especially part IV, but you do not forget your first. Faces of Death IV and consequently the Faces of Death series was a benchmark for all subsequent mondo. More extreme than. Less Extreme than. More real scenes of carnage vs. reenactments a la mode. It’s a personal standard with no value other than it was standard I set and enjoyed until the video stores stopped buying new tapes and the old ones broke or the video stores moved on.

So if you are reading this, that’s why I recorded myself eating absolutely raw meat while watching scenes from the original Faces of Death, the Blu-ray released this past year. Because I had to try and out-do myself, and raw Filet Mignon out-does roast beef sandwich like rock out does scissors. Why the pixy stix? That’s a promise to the DOCTERROR people who got me to a certain benchmark on Facebook, and I fond memory of my early days of marathoning. You mean to tell me that you didn’t snort a few pixy stix while watching all of the Friday the 13th movies back to back to back etc.? Oh it burns… you gotta love the taste running down the back of your throat and the drip down the front of your face that you can’t help but lick because it tastes so darn good.

For a movie that was released in 1978 and grossed (grossed!) $30 million plus, Faces of Death is undeniable as the most popular piece of mondo. It wasn’t the first, but it’s the one you know. Banned in 42 countries and a tremendous marketing campaign assured its success. Throw in Dr. Francis B. Gröss as your lovely narrator, a pile of stock footage of true death straight out the news room, a generous helping of fictional accounts of scenes of actual death and some instructional autopsy videos and you have a movie you cannot look away from (unless you’re ready to spew). They made six of them and a Worst of (I only found out about number 6 while making our production after I made reference to it in the “grill” scene.

Be well. I hope this makes you laugh. We had a blast making it, and I didn’t vomit. Not once, but if you’re going to eat raw meat make sure to add some seasoning or a dipping sauce because it’s kinda bland and chewy. Thanks to Tromeric and Guts and Grog for holding my hair back while I vomited this article up for EXTREME WEEK. I saved you a filet.

No animals were harmed in the filming of this short except for the one I put in my belly, and that damn monkey that never stops spinning in that wood stockade (but that’s director, Conan LaCilaire’s problem I suppose).

Tee hee hee.

-Dr. TERROR

Dr. James Terror has many aliases. Dr. Terror knows where and when you sleep. Dr. Terror knows what you had for breakfast and thinks you may want to consider milk with a lower fat content. Dr. Terror is a horror host. Dr. Terror does not work for a television network, cable company or radio program... How is Dr. Terror a horror host with no show to host in any reasonable hosting outlet? Dr. Terror hosts the world... of horror... and terror... and words you find in the Thersaurus related there to!!! tee hee hee: Check out The Doc Here.

Welcome to Extreme Week

The time is here. The last theme week I put together for the grog, was all about children's horror. It was a blast and I got so many great contributions. I instantly wanted to put together another one. It took a bit, but it has all come together. I also figured if I was gonna do it, I wanted to go as completely away from the subject matter I started with. "Horror with Training Wheels" was a blast, and figuring out where everyone's love for horror started interested me. With "Extreme Week" I wanted to dig deep into the dark side of things. Why do we seek out such terrible things? Why do somewhat sane people want to watch people being gutted, dismembered or having their entire life ruined? I know it is different for everyone. It is also a broad term.

There are extreme films such as Cannibal Holocaust, Nekromantik, or Faces of Death that challenge with their brutal gore. Films like Irreversible, A Serbian Film, or I Spit on your Grave take you on a brutal ride full of rape, hate, and torture. They make you question yourself , and this world. Then there are filmmakers like Lars Von Trier that don't necessarily bask in gore, but will leave you feeling like nothing matters. These films are not for everyone, but  for us that embrace them, they can be quite therapeutic. People constantly ask me why I subject myself to some of these films. I have seen A Serbian Film at least ten times. I took my mom to See Cannibal Holocaust in 35mm, I will sit down and watch four Von Trier films back to back, just to see if I can.

Throughout the week expect to see write ups, lists, reviews,interviews, art,  and more. I got together a great group of artists and writers to tackle many of the films you would expect, as well as some you might not think of. There will be three contests throughout the week, that I promise you will want in on. Critters and Gods has a one of a kind print for me to give away that may make you shit yourself, VonKlingele Kustoms has a figure that will have you begging to sit on a bicycle with the seat taken off, and Blood Bound Books has donated an anthology full of extreme literature's who's who, including a story by one of the contributors. 

I am very excited to be presenting this week at the grog. It is something I have been wanting to do for a while, and it is nice to see it come to fruition. I almost postponed it as this last week I lost one of my closest friends. He was a friend to the grog, and on top of that a brother to me. Instead of postponing or canceling, I have decided to dedicate "Extreme Week" to him.  I will never forget the years we spent together. Whether it be talking about the Skid Row concert in middle school, smoking cigarettes and listening to records all night, horror film marathons, a six pack and a porch. The list goes on. I will hold all of these memories close to me.

RIP Jim 1980- 2013

  - Tromeric

10 Things I Would Have In A Monster Squad Style Tree House Horror Hangout!

So last week Freddy in Space put up an article on how he would decorate his tree house if he had one similar to the one in "The Monster Squad." It was a great read as always, but he also asked for anyone else to make up theirs. I intended on doing it right away, but with working everyday at the moment, this is the first chance I have had. Make sure you check his here,  and let me know what you think of mine. I would also love to see yours if you feel so inclined, and I know he would as well.

I was lucky enough to grow up with a tree house. It wasn't mine, but my best friends that was like three houses away, so naturally I spent a lot of time up there. Hours and hours were spent playing Dungeons and Dragons, bullshitting,  sneaking cigarettes, and talking about the new Scorpions record.

When I was twenty I lived in an underground tree house. I will explain. Some friends of mine, like me, were huge "Gleaming the Cube" fans. They convinced their parents to build them an underground fort inspired by the bomb shelter seen in "Gleaming the Cube." They dug a huge whole, buried an old shitty Chevy van that they had gutted, built supports, and ran electricity to it. It was fully encased in shag carpet, and had two beds. They then put a doghouse on top so it would be disguised. It was great taking people to it that weren't aware. I would invite them to my place. When we got there I would climb in a dog house. They were always confused. Once inside the doghouse, there was a ladder you climbed down and then you were in. It was great, it reminded me of the episode of "A Pup Named Scooby Doo" where Scrappy's doghouse is like a mansion once inside. I spent nine months in the doghouse. Watching horror films, listening to records, drinking beers, and bullshitting with friends. Well, now that I have rambled about my actual expieriances with tree houses, or underground tree houses, lets move onto what I would put in my horror tree house.

1. A copy of "Bunnicula."

This book played a huge role in my love of horror. I got it at some Scholastic book fair when I was in second grade, and have never stopped reading it. I am serious. I just read it probably six months ago. There are a grip of sequels that all rule, but this is the original, so I would definitely have this bad boy. 

2. Are You Afraid of the Dark? The Game

I loved games when I as a kid, as I still do. I spent hours playing D&D, but also enjoyed board games. I loved this game, and still have it proudly sitting on my bookshelf, not to far from "Bunnicula."

3. Monster Cereals

I lived off of these. Everyday I would pour myself a bowl(or 3) and watch cartoons and slasher films. I still eat these to this day, I just have to stock up as they are only available in October. 

4. Dokken- Dream Warriors Tape

Back in the eighties, the only thing I loved as much as horror, was heavy metal. When I first rented "Dream Warriors" and saw the video at the end, first I shit my pants, then I scrounged up my allowance and went to the record store and got this cassingle. Like my copy of the movie, I wore this tape to shit. 

5. A shitload of SLP mode VHS, full of films I taped off of "USA Up All Night" or other places. 

Long before the internet this is how you bootlegged. It seemed a lot more innocent. I had stacks and stacks with all kinds of shit. A lot of stuff from USA network, but also would tape a ton of shit when we got the free HBO weekend. I also would set up my video camera right in front of the TV and record a movie I had rented. I guess it was my first cam. That is how I first got "Nightmare on Elm Street." 

6. Camcorder and Walkman

These would be a necessity. The walkman to listen to my tapes of course, and the camcorder for two reasons. One I always loved taping things when I was a kid, and still do, and it was also a way to watch films. I mean it looked like shit, but at the time it was the best way to watch movies anywhere. Looking back I can't believe I would look through a tiny black and white viewfinder to see a film, but at the the time it was awesome. Felt like I was in some futuristic sci-fi film.  

7. "Goosebumps" Blanket

Sometimes it gets cold late at night when you are sitting in a tree house. What better way to stay warm then with a badass blanket from one of my favorite book series. 

8. "A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master" promo banner

Gotta decorate the house. This banner was found in a couch at the theater in my hometown that played all the horror movies. My friend just happened to put his hand under the cushion while we were sitting in the lobby waiting for a movie to start. Probably not the best idea, but it worked for me as I have had this thing for over twenty years. One of my oldest items in my collection. 

9. Issues of Fangoria

As long as I can remember I have always had stacks of Fango sitting around my house. Back then, it basically was just Fango, sometimes Gorezone. These days Horrorhound and Rue Morgue are mixed in, but you get the idea. I read these over and over, and eventually would cut them up and tape the pictures all over my room, or tree house. 

10. Garbage Pail Kids

The amount of money I spent on these cards is insane. Anytime I had a pocket full of change I would head to the store and get a pack or two. Always had them laying around. 

    - Tromeric