I love t-shirts. I really do. They're comfortable and if they're of the graphic variety - like 99% of mine are - they're an expression of tastes, advertisements for your interests for everyone to see. I've got all kinds: one for each college I went to, several Philadelphia Phillies selections, a couple with Jack Kirby comic book art. Many describe my personal experiences, such as staff shirts from comic book conventions I worked to many from the wrestling promotions I whose shows I either attended or helped in some way.
The kind folks at Crazy Dog T-Shirts and Nacho Mama Tees passed along a couple shirts from their catalog, and they're very welcome additions to the t-shirt family. From Crazy Dog T-shirts, I received a white shirt with not only the WGON logo from Dawn of the Dead emblazoned on it, but a spelled-out warning "do not remain in your home..." with a list of the shelters that you glimpse at the beginning of the 1978 film. I like that attention to detail. Looks great. From Nacho Mama Tees, there came an olive green shirt with the logo of the pub from Shaun of the Dead, The Winchester Tavern.
Hey, the shirts are comfortable, I got them very quickly, and I have a feeling that if there was a problem, it would be resolved quickly and professionally. I plan on ordering from them again. Check out their sites, and browse around - lots of good choices. Here's a little bit more about each site, direct from the source:
About Crazy Dog T-shirts
"Crazy Dog T-shirts (www.crazydogtshirts.com) is the number one source online for funny t-shirts and vintage shirts that help you stand out and get noticed. Founded in 2004, the t-shirt empire offers custom shirts in Rochester, NY. They provide customers with a variety of cool t-shirts and crazy shirts featuring both creative original concepts and popular licensed designs. Looking for a funny t-shirt? They have hundreds of funny shirts which you won't want to miss!"
About Nachomamatees.com
"Nacho Mama Tees (www.nachomamatees.com) has some of the best offensive t-shirts around. Founded in 2004, the t-shirt giant offers funny shirts which include Chuck Norris shirts, The Hangover t-shirts, and zombie t-shirts. They provide a variety of funny t-shirts and crazy shirts. With new men's vintage tees and great movie t-shirts, you are sure to find one you will fall in love with!"
So my good friend and sister-in-horror Andre over at the fantastic blog The Horror Digest named her top ten moments that give her the willies. Not only that, but she tossed out a friendly challenge for the horror blogging community to name our favorites. Well, I like making lists, and I like sharing what I enjoy about horror and things that go bump in the night. So I give to you, my dear fellow survivors, this list of ten moments across media that give me the willies a.k.a. the heebie-jeebies:
Kairo - the "wavy" ghost
While the Ringu and Ju-On films are the Japanese horror flicks most people know about, there's this little 2001 offering from Kiyoshi Kurosawa called Kairo. It was remade in the States as the largely forgettable Pulse, but the original - as is usually the case - contains more creeps and a more solid storyline. There are several moments in the film that could qualify as creepy, including a scene with an airplane crash landing into Tokyo that is somehow haunting instead of terrifying. However, this little scene with a ghost stalking one of our young heroes is downright chill-inducing:
The Stand miniseries - "eat chicken with me" guy
I got into writing because of Stephen King. I read The Shining in two days as a middle school kid one summer. 'Salem's Lot was - and still is - one of my measuring sticks for vampire fiction. And no, his vampires don't mope around and sparkle. The Stand marked my first modern epic as I read feverishly - no pun intended, maybe - about my first exposure - OK, maybe pun intended - to apocalyptic infection horror, a genre that I still hugely enjoy to this day. One line in the book that seemed so absurd, yet so skin-crawling, was uttered by a dying man Stu Redman runs into while escaping the research hospital. To my eternal joy, the book was made into a fine miniseries many years later, and King left that line of dialogue in the screenplay:
"Down In The Park" by Gary Numan
I'm going to switch forms of media here to music, and a piece of music from the early 80's by the amazing Gary Numan, who also performed the hit, "Cars." "Down In The Park" is a song about a bleak, dystopian future where machines do horrible things to humans, who can do nothing but watch the horror unfold. Sample lyrics include: Down in the park where the Machmen meet/the machines play kill by numbers/down in the park with a friend called Five or Come to Zom's, it's the place to be/like it was built in one day/you can watch the humans trying to run all set to a minimalist, creepy little backdrop of music and sung by Numan's almost android-like voice. Use your imagination to peek into the frightening future he conjures:
The Changeling (1980) - after the seance
1980's The Changeling featured one of the grand old men of grizzled, George C. Scott, in an atmospheric haunted house story as a man mourning the tragic death of his family while investigating the strange occurrences in his new home. He brings in a psychic to contact the ghost and the seance itself is pretty crazy, featuring automatic writing and things moving on their own. But it was after the seance that always gets the chills going down my spine as Scott listens to a reel-to-reel tape of the seance. The following video picks up right at that point:
Lake Mungo - cell phone footage
Lake Mungo has to be at the top of my list when it comes to not only faux documentaries, but creepy ghost movies overall. The ghost footage was enough to get me to turn on the all the lights, but it was what the dead girl's cell phone captured on video that made me screech...I mean, high-five myself. The following video is the trailer, which shows enough to get the willies going, but you need to see the scene in question within the movie:
The Silent Hill games
Kids today with their hula hoops and their Xboxes and whatnot. I'm not caught up on the gaming scene like many others. In fact, I still have and enjoy my PlayStation 2. Years ago, I recalled seeing a trailer for a scary-looking game called Silent Hill, so I just had to try it out. I now have the first four games, each having been played multiple times. In the dark. There are so many scenes that get me chilled, but in the original, there is a scene featuring a young nurse who helps the protagonist. She's a tragic figure as you'll see in the video, when she realizes what she is and how she struggles wordlessly to maintain her humanity (starts about a minute in):
[REC] - the final moments
Andre labeled this as one of hers as well, and who am I to disagree? The [REC] films are amazing, and my love for them is well-documented in this blog here and here. While I almost chose a quick scene towards the end where the camera peers down the long stairwell to capture a horde of infected faces staring back, I think the final moments of the movie are so incredibly intense and creepy, this part of the movie bears repeating on my list. The fear is so palpable and you are right in the thick of it:
Dawn of the Dead (1978) - the basement + the lights go out in Philly
It's also no secret that I love the original Dawn of the Dead. There are so many moments I could throw on this list from this movie alone, including the trailer, which was a "kindertrauma" in its own right from my childhood. I choose two scenes in one long clip, one rather in-your-face and one somewhat subtle, but both equally creepy to me. The first willy-inducing clip is the tenement basement scene. The people of the tenement have discarded their "dead" in the basement of the building. SWAT guys Peter (Ken Foree) and Roger (Scott H. Reiniger) see what has become of the once-living people, and that's when it hits home. The music by Goblin and the increasing disgust and sadness on Peter's face just makes this an incredible scene. The subtle clip of which I spoke is as the heroes of the movie leave the docks in - wait for it - the WGON HELICOPTER! Woo-hoo! As they ascend into the night sky, the lights in an office building go out a few at a time. It's symbolic of the lights going out everywhere and serves as a haunting reminder of the end of the world:
Twin Peaks series finale - The Black Lodge
Seriously. This is so disturbing. It aired on TV, and may go down as one of the scariest scenes ever broadcast on network television. Sheryl Lee was insanely fantastic as the dead Laura Palmer around which the surreal series centered. Here, in the series finale directed by David Lynch, FBI Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) has entered the mystical Black Lodge to rescue Annie (Heather Graham) from his evil mentor, Windom Earle (Kenneth Walsh). In his quest, he meets Laura Palmer's doppelganger, who isn't exactly the best person to run into in the Lodge...or a dark alley...or your dreams:
Prince of Darkness - dream broadcasts
One of these days, I'm going to get around to doing a blog about one of my all-time favorite horror movies, John Carpenter's brilliant Prince of Darkness. A group of students are summoned by a physics professor and a scared priest to investigate a strange container that may hold the Devil himself. It is dark and heavy in atmosphere and an a street-level preview of the end of the world as one of Carpenter's "Apocalypse Trilogy" (The Thing and In the Mouth of Madness being the others). During the movie, several people experience "dreams" that turn out to be broadcasts from the future. I still get chills when I see them:
And so there you go, ten moments that give me the willies. Thanks, Andre, for putting out the challenge! It's always fun to not just share what I love about creepy movies and such, but to find out what others find scary in movies, music, TV, video games, and books.
Well, I've got to run, my fellow survivors. The undead outside the compound walls give me the willies, and I've got more movies to watch and talk about here on the Helicopter. Coming up next, I'll talk about the recent remake of 1973's The Crazies.
Hey, there, survivors. The WGON Helicopter landed for the first time in Parsippany, New Jersey, to attend the Chiller Theater Expo, and oh, what a beautiful experience it was, and not just because of Twin Peaks' Sherilyn Fenn:
It was a gathering of pop culture goodness, with the strongest concentrations in horror. The Hilton was packed to the brim with fans that were not only happy to be there, but happy to be amongst others of their kind: horror aficionados that wanted a personal experience with the stars and items of their favorite genre.
Overwhelming? You bet. Mostly in a good way, but "convention regret" did set in. So many things to buy, so many people to meet. Next time, I may have to bring enough money to feed a small country to do everything I wanted to do. In reality, I don't regret a single thing about my first experience there. I just wanted to be there. Any loot I scored was going to be a bonus.
Now, without further ado, some sights from this year's Chiller Theater Expo, starting with cult film legend Jeffrey Combs (The Frighteners, Re-Animator):
One of the most charismatic actors, and one who seemed to be entirely charming, William Forsythe (Devil's Rejects, Out For Justice):
Over on b-sol's report on the show, he focused on these dolls as well, but I had to show the awesome Nurse Zombie and Shaun of the Dead dolls on display:
As a young kid, I once had a terrifying night terror about these Zuni dolls from Trilogy of Terror, an incident that steered me towards the excitement and allure of the horror genre:
One of the main reasons I wanted to go was to meet people from the original Dawn of the Dead. There were several to choose from, and I really wanted to interact with them all, but I chose one to get the autograph and picture with using my limited funds. David Crawford, who plays Dr. Foster in the film, has a short part, but delivers some of the most memorable lines in any horror film:
Yeah, that's pretty damn awesome. Well, I have to say David Crawford was equally awesome in person. A friendly, funny guy who offered to "reenact" the scene with me:
Plus, he signed a picture with the exact quote I'd hoped he would include, without me asking: To me, that was amazing. Thank you, sir!
I also was able to score this sweet print of the British poster of Dawn of the Dead, which features prominently in the British TV series of which I seem to have an obsession, Spaced:
Worth every meager penny spent, Chiller Theater was worth it. You can rest assured that the helicopter will be fired up and flown to it next year, without hesitation.
Until next time, fellow survivors, remember to always hose off the front of your vehicle after plowing through the undead. Trust me on this.
Welcome to The WGON Helicopter, a blog which I hope will take off and be read by more than a few people, but will serve as a place for me to explore the horror genre even if it isn't. As it stands, I plan on putting my view out there regarding horror in its many media: films, television, books, video games, comics, music...and any that I didn't name or have not yet been invented.
Horror is the genre that rings a visceral bell for all of us. When I first started taking writing seriously (albeit I should take it even more seriously), I was told that the hardest genres to write were comedy and horror. They were the most base stimulators of emotion: laughter and terror. One could argue love or sadness or anger in there, too, but for the sake of this blog, let's just roll with those first two for now. I gravitated towards horror fiction at a young age, after initially being frightened by the now-innocuous images of Jerry Lewis transforming in "The Nutty Professor" and when Boris Karloff first shows up in "The Mummy." The television trailer for "The Exorcist" terrified me, as did pretty much any episode of "Kolchak: The Night Stalker." I remember seeing the trailer for "Dawn of the Dead" late one night in 1978 at a friend's house. For years, I couldn't shake that image of the undead bursting into the elevator, lunging for the first-person camera (at about the 0:48 mark in the trailer below).
Along the way through my preteen and teenage years, horror turned from something to avoid (Heaven forbid I should be in the same room when "The Exorcist" was on network TV) to something exciting. The insurmountable evil that the characters faced. The will and strength to battle back against it. The terrifying guises that the antagonists took. What would they (and we) have to go through in order to win, much less survive, against a horrible foe?
Stephen King was the gateway drug. Mustering up my 13-year-old strength one summer, I checked "The Shining" out from the library. I turned to page one and dove right in. Two days later, it was finished and I had learned to embrace the excitement of the horror genre. Yes, two days. Hey, I was 13, it was the summer of 1980, and it wasn't like we had the Internet or fancy video games to deter me from books and the outdoors. Not long after that came a book that took a bit longer to read, but made me focus my own writing: "The Stand." It still remains as my favorite book of all time, having been read four times in my life. From there, horror became my genre of choice when it came to books and movies.
For years, I had been afraid to watch "Dawn of the Dead." Would it be too much for me? Gore in film hadn't done much to make me queasy before, so why would it now? It had a mystique, but one I wanted to conquer. I'm glad I did. I was amazed at everything about it. Yes, there was gore. Oh, and plenty of it. Tom Savini is a visual effects god of the highest order, of that there is no doubt. But it was the story of the survivors, and that's what drew me, and continues to draw me, to the zombie horror/survival horror genre. Each survivor is a fingerprint representation of us, society, as a whole. I was mesmerized by this tiny band of survivors coming together, building a home, only to see greed on all sides tear it down. The zombies were secondary characters. It became my favorite horror film. On the long list of horror films I love, it remains in the top spot.
So that's why this blog is named "The WGON Helicopter." It's the chopper in which our heroes escape Philadelphia, and in which the remaining survivors leave the mall at the end of the film (what, spoilers? come on!). WGON is the fictional TV station for which the chopper reports traffic.
In this blog, I'll talk about horror "across the curriculum" and not just about zombie horror, despite the theme. I'll throw links on here if I find some interesting news, or maybe video once in a while. You never know. I just want to have fun with this thing and talk about the genre I love. Over on the right, you'll find a list of links. I highly recommend all of them. You'll find links to urban exploration, some great horror sites (like Bloody Disgusting and Kindertrauma), even a couple comic book sites. On some of those sites, you'll find even more links and news and...well, just discover for yourself. For now, though, I hope you enjoy whatever I post here.
Until later, this is me signing off, high in the sky, from the WGON traffic chopper --
