Monster Monday: Doctor Who Monsters

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This post is all my sister, Tasha's fault, because her Monster Monday post (click on the image above to hop over to her blog) is Doctor Who Monsters and she asked at the end if we had any favourites, and, being a classic Whovian, I had too many to put into a comment reply, so I decided to join her and add my own thoughts on Doctor Who monsters.

I have to say I'm more of a classic Who fan than I am of the reboot, but I do watch the reboot and I'm going to start with one of their monsters that has really stuck: the weeping angels. I have to say I think Blink is my favourite new Who episode ever. It has the power of storytelling and sheer terror that stayed with me even after the episode had ended, and the simple reason is the premise, that any statue could be like the weeping angels of the story, moving unseen, frozen when eyes are upon it, ready to attack with just a tiny flicker of your eyelids. This was proper scariness put to thoroughly good use. P.S. I will add here that the later uses of the weeping angels are no where near as good, in those they just become ordinary Doctor Who monsters, which just don't have the same impact for me.

Now I'm jumping back in time to classic Doctor Who to The Ark In Space and the Wirrn, the giant insects that try to take over the Ark space station and absorb the crew to do so. Now, just looking at them, the Wirrn are a giant paper mache thing with dangly bits for legs, but it wasn't the look of the creature that I found disturbing both as a child and now, it was what it could do. The fact that by a touch it could begin converting and absorbing another living creature, transforming it into a Wirrn while absorbing its knowledge as well just makes my skin crawl!

There are also some human monsters in Doctor Who that I love to hate. You'd think it would be the robots that I was scared of in Robots of Death, but it's not. Okay, yes, they are quite unnerving, especially with their lilting voices, but they are just things, and when one turns out to be a good guy, I found myself liking them, so no, they weren't always scary, No, it was the human who thought he was a robot, Taren Capel, who is the real monster. It is his intent the robots are carrying out. (And I'm not putting a picture of him in here, because that would give away too much of the plot).

It really is amazing what classic Doctor Who achieved with bubble wrap, sticky-backed plastic and some face paint. I know the effects are low budget, the acting sometimes criminal, but I thoroughly recommend folks take the time to follow the stories, because it is them that really make Doctor Who special.

What's your favourite Doctor Who story?

~

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Monster Monday: The Evil Dead

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I first saw Sam Raimi's Evil Dead when I was a teenager and it scared the pants off me! :)

Since then I have learnt to respect the rough-around-the-edges movie with its mixture of over-the-top horror and surprisingly subtle chills. And the reason - the demons.

For those who don't know, Evil Dead is a story about a group of college kids on a weekend vacation who discover a book, Naturom Demonto/Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, or as we'd say, the Book of the Dead. Reading from it brings to life ancient Sumerian demons and gives them leave to possess the living.With the book is found a tape recording of the archaeologist who unearthed it, who helpfully reading out the cursed passages.

What follows, as I've said, on one level is a pretty OTT horror, but the bits that get me every time are when Cheryl and Linda are possessed. Cheryl is the first to succumb to the demons and thus her transformation is the most shocking. The makeup is not brilliant, but she carries with her a menace that not all the others manage.

However, it is Linda's transformation that always gets me - she goes from a bit of a whiney young woman into a girly, giggling demon with psychotic tendencies. At one point, she just sits cross-legged on the floor watching the mayhem, giggling and twirling her hair. I can hear that screeching titter now and it still gives me the creeps. ::shudder::

There is no redeeming someone once these demons have got hold (not in the first movie, anyway). All they want to do is kill and cause havoc. They are truly the Evil Dead!

Do you find horror movies involving possession scary?

~

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Monster Monday: Voltan (Jack Palance at his growly best)

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So, I watched Hawk The Slayer at the weekend. It's the original sword and sorcery movie. Watching it led to a long and laugh-filled conversation with my sister, Tasha, and a discussion of the reasons to watch Hawk. Tash will be talking about that on Friday for her Fan Friday post. One of the reasons to watch IMO (and for a snort behind your hand), is the over-acting of Jack Palance as Hawk's evil brother, Voltan.

There's nothing subtle about Voltan. The first thing you see him do is kill his own father, because he won't share the secret of their family's power. He's full of rage, he definitely has a screw loose, and he's all fist-clenching and snarling. And then there's the face that not even a mother could love, and that's before the disfigurement ;P.

Voltan is truly a baddie you can love to hate. He has no redeeming features (and that includes how he's acted). He kills on a whim - he must go through henchmen at an alarming rate.  He makes stunningly awful decisions, and likes to share his plans with all and sundry whem he has them at his mercy. He's a classic! :D

Do you have any favourite OTT villains?

~

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Book Review: Vintage by Steve Berman (Ghost story, gay teen)

It might look like my blog is turning into a book review site, but I promise you, it's not, I have just been lucky enough to ready some really good books in the last month. It takes quite a lot for me to get over my own laziness and bother writing a review for a book, so you can take note of this book purely on that note. Anyway, here's my review of the YA Paranormal Ficiton book, Vintage.

Vintage: A Ghost Story by Steve Berman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've had this book for a while, it was a recommendation from author Patricia Lynne during the A to Z when I was talking about ghost stories on the Wittegen Press blog. Anyway, I finally got round to reading it, and I am really glad I did.

Vintage is about a teenage boy who meets 'the boy of his dreams' on a lonely road. That meeting is between a ghost and a boy who begins to realise he is a medium. Our narrator is a kid who ran away from home because his parents condemned him for being gay. He lives with his aunt, hiding his sexuality from a small town for fear of more rejection, sharing his life with his best friend, Trace. I love their relationship - frank, supportive and gothic :).

This is a story grounded in the reality of a gay youth dealing with others' reactions to his sexuality, but with the added frisson of his visions of the undead world. He's immediately a character I warmed to and I slipped into his life, following him as he stumbled through his new found gift/curse as well as through his interactions with the living. I even cried when he finally talks to his aunt about his future with her.

This is a warm, dryly funny and real book. I really enjoyed it.

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Book Series Review: Ellie Jordan Ghost Trapper by J.L. Bryan

So, I've been lucky over the last month, I've found two books series I love. This one, Ellie Jordan Ghost Trapper by J.L. Bryan, is focused around a ghost hunter, Ellie Jordan, who traps ghosts and takes them away from her clients' houses. These are (mainly) fast-paced action stories with a mystery to keep the reader guessing. These are my four reviews from Goodreads.

Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper by J.L. Bryan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I wasn't sure about this book when I first started it. I picked it up because it was a freebie and I like paranormal adventures. The first half of the book is bogged down with too much explanation, introducing the reader to the techniques, processes and equipment that Ellie uses in her paranormal investigations. There are whole paragraphs giving background information, and it was a little wearing.

However, the story held me. Something I'll say about all the Ellie Jordan books, they're good plots. There are spooks and spine chilling moments, mixed with a good mystery, since Ellie has to discover the ghosts' motives for haunting in order to deal with them.

This book is very much plot driven: the ghost hunting and the mystery pull the reader in and I wanted to find out what was going on. That's why I stuck out the explainy bits (that's why I docked it one star) and I was rewarded with a fantastic climax that made me go out and buy the next book.

Cold Shadows by J.L. Bryan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

So, I bought this book on the off chance that the story would be as good as the first book in the series, but with a lot fewer explainy bits. My gamble paid off. This is a better story than the first book, more tightly written and with a lot fewer pauses to drop in long explanations.

Like the first, it's plot driven, but the characters do begin to blossom slowly. Ellie is a woman with a troubled background locked in to the paranormal world. She didn't go searching for ghosts, they found her in a brutal way that led her to become a ghost hunter, wanting to help others who might end up in her position. She puts herself danger to save her clients. She doesn't feel sorry for herself and her past, she just gets on woth things with a dry humour as she narrates the story.

As with the first book, this story really pays off in the climax. All the pieces comes together and its exciting, and scary and I immediately went out and bought the next two books and the pre-ordered the fifth. I found myself getting hooked to this series thanks to this story.

The Crawling Darkness by J.L. Bryan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is book three of the series, and by the time I'd picked this up, I'd already read the first two in three days, so I had high hopes for this story too. And I loved it. I had got to know the main characters, Ellie and Stacy, well in the other stories and their repartee in this one made me smile.

This is another strong mystery that I thought I had pegged, but there's a twist at the climax, for which I tip my hat to the author.

Like any series, the ghosts get bigger and badder in this third installment and we find out some background on another character - Ellie has history with this ghost and it makes her vulnerable. That gives this story an added dimension and I couldn't put the book down. I just wanted to find out what happened.

Great mystery, growing characters. I enjoyed being scared by this book.

Terminal by J.L. Bryan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As much as I love the Ellie Jordan books, I was disappointed by this one. The strongest point of these books is the plot, the mystery and this book fell short in comparison to the previous three. It's an interesting overall story about a haunted housing estate, but it just did not hang together as well as the others.

There are some gaps in the story that bothered me. For example, there is an encounter between Ellie and a large number of ghosts in a basement, there's a silent face to face and then it just gets forgotten, not mentioned again. Since EVP had already been used, I thought there might be follow up using this, but there isn't. There's also a lack of interaction with 'the clients' towards the end of the story. I was always rooting for not only Ellie, but the clients as well by the end of the other three stories, but this one felt like they were remote from the end of the story and it left me dissatisfied.

I'm only making a supposition here, but I think the gaps and the remoteness of the story are down to the fact that, as has been the case with the other stories, J. L. Bryan is going bigger with the ghosts, but rather than making an individual spectre more dangerous, he has gone with more ghosts instead, and he's opened the 'stage' of the story out from one house to a large area of country. That created a separateness for me from the people in the story and there were too many moving parts for the plot to keep track, too many ghosts, not really enough resolution.

I also found the climax this time a bit too OTT.

There are lots of good ideas in this story - J.L. Bryan's take on a banshee, which had potential, making deals with hostile ghosts, a mixture of bad guys, but there were so many that none really bore fruit.

I hope the next book focuses back down. This is an okay story, but not a great one like the rest.

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