Sure, the monsters that stalk through horror films aren’t great guys but they aren’t all bad. Matt Finley investigates the Upside Of Evil…

I didn’t write a tribute to the late Dennis Hopper. I wanted to. But what I could add to the conversation? Yeah, I saw “Speed” in the theatre, but I didn’t feel as though that qualified me to pen an adoring elegy to Easy Rider himself. The director of “Colors.” King of the Koopas.

Then, last night, I watched “Blue Velvet.” I gotta say, the movie gets more rewarding with every consecutive viewing, and it’s largely due to Hopper’s unfailingly disturbing portrayal of Frank Booth, a monster twice as grotesque as the latex-bound, corn syrup-smeared atrocities I usually address in these posts. Just like how every rose has its thorn, every thorn has its dreams (Or, you know, its overly cautious bee that has a crush on it but doesn’t want to get stabbed, or to jump-start the rumor mill). It would be arrogant to assume that, just because Frank Booth is a psychotic, gas-huffing, misogynistic sadist with a longshoreman’s tongue and a wolverine’s temper, we can’t learn something from him.

So, Mr. Hopper – Here’s to your f*ck:

The lessons begin AFTER THE JUMP. Also, if you haven’t seen Blue Velvet, consider yourself spoiler warned. (more…)

Sure, the monsters that stalk through horror films aren’t great guys but they aren’t all bad. Matt Finley investigates the Upside Of Evil…

I just re-watched the 1997 horror film “The Relic,” and I gotta say: Not bad. It makes you pine for the bygone days of leading lady Penelope Ann “Cute as a Bug’s Ear” Miller, and R-Rated horror films that were less about graphic torture and gore than they were about a superstitious cop and a sexy, hard-nosed evolutionary biologist using suspect science and street smarts to immolate a CG monstrosity. While the late Gene Siskel’s assertion that the film’s primary antagonist – Kothaga, a wily, mutated beetle-mohawk-lizard monster de-braining its way through Chicago’s Museum of Natural History’s staff – could “hold its own with the Alien” is enough of a stretch to dislocate something, the Stan Winston-designed creature definitely managed to a do a number on my preconceived notions of beetle-mohawk-lizard monsters. For every heart Kothaga broke, and every head he ripped off, ate parts of and then discarded, he did some nice things to:

Encouraged the Museum to Up its Exhibit Quality

Basically, if you’re the curator of a museum, you want to make sure that all the exhibits you’ve intentionally displayed are at least as interesting as the incidental stuff that just happens to be wandering around. It’s why there aren’t any art museums in the red light district. Additionally, if something’s actively murdering patrons, you should make it your beeswax to ensure that said patrons are risking their lives for a reason. A stuffed giraffe and a water tank that doesn’t make a whirlpool because the button broke aren’t going to cut it anymore. Maybe attach wires to all the dinosaur bones and host an elaborate prehistoric marionette show where the skeletons act out scenes from “The Land Before Time” and “The Crying Game.” Or wax down the main hall and let everyone use the mummies like boogie boards. Maybe just get a liquor license, a bigger tank and fix the button. No matter what you decide, no one should be leaving the museum saying that the coolest thing they saw was the freak beast that glory-holed their head bone.

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No one is all bad. Weird Things Cultural Researcher Matt Finley takes a look at the silver lining in famous fictional monsters.

Spoiler Alert(s), Internet!

Thanks to Ti West’s recent ‘70s/‘80s genre-smooching, suspense-laden “The House of the Devil,” a film that foregoes the kitschy pastiche of early Roth and Zombie in favor of a pure, effortless authenticity that’s as refreshing as it is familiar, we can take long look back at the days when Satanism was America’s threat du jour. We all know the score: the cultists wander around kidnapping all the single ladies, putting a runic ring on it, and impregnating them with the Archfiend’s baby. West seems pretty down on these Satanic OB-GYNs and their sinister fertilizations, but, c’mon girls, you could do worse. Rearing demon spawn does have its perks:

Biological Clock Stopper

Tick. John cheated on you. Tock. Mark was a closeted gay who begged you to tell your friends you broke it off because he was an uncomfortably straight alcoholic. Tick. Julian organized car accidents for the mob. Tock. Stan said the only good kid is a kid that isn’t his, and that also isn’t looking at him or eating a loud food like sourdough pretzels. Meanwhile, your desperation-powered cervix Swatch is quickly counting down to a menopausal zero-hour that’ll find your therapist blown clear into the next tax bracket. So when Satanists kidnap you, tie you to a pentagram, force you to chug the contents of a goat skull blood bong and, of course, impregnate you with the spawn of Satan, I say roll with it. “Satan” is only one letter away from “Stan,” and did you ever look at Stan? Say what you want about Satan – I don’t see Beelzebub passing on the man-boob gene.

Parental Stress Eraser

Nurturant Parent Model or Attachment Parenting? Baby Einstein or Baby Mozart? Moral Nihilism or Epistemological Nihilism? Who cares?! You’re raising Satan’s baby! Go ahead – drop him. Feed him some fiberglass pipe insulation. Now drop him again. On his neck. It doesn’t matter. You could be the Carol Bradyiest mom ever and the kid’s still going to grow up, turn off the sun and change everything encompassed by nouns into purple fire. You might as well just make yourself a cup of tea and leave him to his evil. The worst that could possibly happen is that everyone craps blood out of their mouths instead of puking it out their butts.

Afterlife Reservation Confirmer

Ask yourself – Do I want a thread-bare nosebleed seat in heaven or a reclining courtside seat in hell? That high up in heaven, you have to walk down six flights of steps just to get ice cream. That far down in hell, a waitress brings you nachos. And there are cloth napkins.

Clive Barker’s 1987 film “Hellraiser” is most famous for its portrayal of the cenobites – a hellish cadre of once-human monsters who inhabit a nightmarish dimension of assorted bodily tortures. Perhaps more interesting, though, is the key that opens the dimension… a key that appears in the form of an elaborately carved puzzle box created by the fictional French toymaker Philip Lemarchand. The box – referred to as The Lament Configuration – can be viewed as more than just the key to a soul-devouring hellscape of sado-masochistic insanity; it can be viewed as a gateway to simpler times:

An Era of Craftsmanship

There was a time when toys were as much unique displays of skilled artisanship as they were entertaining trifles to be teethed on. Painstakingly designed, lovingly crafted and painted by hand in the style of ancient Chinese puzzle cubes, there’s no way Target is going to start mass producing believable Lament Configurations. Lemarchand’s box not only laments the doomed soul of whoever might find damnation in its solution, but also a bygone era when even toys that didn’t send people to hell looked like maybe they could.

An Era that Valued Smarts

Now that every Rubik’s Cube comes with a bikini and fun beach accessories (Rubik’s Surf Buggy sold separately), it’s hard to imagine an age that valued thinking as something more than a math-related liability. The Lament Configuration demands that you employ your mind in examining markings, deciphering patterns and executing the ultimate solution. In exchange for a hearty amount of recreational thought, the puzzle helps prevent Alzheimer’s by sending cenobites to rip out your brain and nail it to a giant, rotating stone obelisk. According to the Internet, the obelisk is called the “Pillar of Souls.” Again – craftsmanship.

An Era that Respected Hedonism

Yes, there was a time when if you wanted to binge eat, you needed money, a grotesquely determined appetite and your own private butcher to keep you in rhinoceros steaks. If you wanted to binge drink, you put on a silk bib and chugged the finest Italian wine out of a giant pewter oyster shell. If you wanted to gracelessly descend into a bottomless abyss of sexual torments, you commissioned the best toymaker in France to build you an elaborately rendered evil cube. Now, of course, there are dollar menus, happy hours and haunted fleshlights. Lemarchand’s box is a steadfast reminder that gratuitous vice used to be classy sloppy. Today it’s just sloppy sloppy. With extra gravy.

Sure, they are evil but I doesn’t mean you couldn’t learn a thing or two from them. Matt Finley investigates The Upside of Evil.

Unlike a lot of free-thinking monsters, whose feel-like-a-nut agendas can be socio-politically spun into plain coconut initiatives for positive cultural change, the crawlers in Neil Marshall’s “The Descent” don’t really have a clear objective. Even for cave-dwelling albino subhumans, they’re overly impulsive, unhygienic and carnivorous in that disorganized, devil-may-care way where you just sort of recklessly murder and devour without forethought or napkins. Funny, then, that they’re able to provide such useful services to rag-tag spelunkers.

Extreme Relationship Counseling

As demonstrated by the film, the crawlers’ unapologetic therapy methods, like weird hissing and unprovoked violent attacks, provide the stress and adrenaline required to really get a group of friends talking. Repressed anger, secret jealousies and traitorous sexual misconduct are all tearfully confessed as the crawlers throw Freudian psychoanalysis to the wind in favor of boldly draconian screech-and-bite counseling techniques. As crawler teeth gnash and caver secrets spill out into the darkness, some friendships and some lives are ended, but, for once, they’re ended honestly.

Ego-suppressive Communion With Ancient Animalism

In a society that exchanged naked spear hunting and the beautiful, howling violence of nomadic barbarism for pajama tops with collars and cautionary “contains peanuts” stickers, it’s nice to know that somewhere out there is a cave you can accidentally get lost in where cannibalistic mole people will force you to reconnect with the dwindling vestiges of feral animalism leftover from a time when the closest thing on Earth to a Snuggie™ was the saber-toothed tiger that killed your family. By forcing people to channel the primal energy of an age before lifeguarded gene pools, the crawlers provide an experiential lesson in the excesses of modernity and the stark emptiness of a life without danger.

Concise Reminder That Caves Ain’t Be Triflin’

If someone goes into a cave, and that’s their job, that makes sense; if someone goes into a cave, and they’re just a looky-loo, that makes no sense. The crawlers use their voracious hunger and disregard for human life to remind everyone that caves aren’t a joke –they’re dark, they’re cold and they look like the kinds of places where ghosts probably go to have meetings. If you ask the crawlers nicely, there’s a chance that they’ll show you how to make your own crawler-free cozy cave out of the blankets, pillows and chairs that you already have in your house, but it’s not a good chance.

Sure, they are evil but I doesn’t mean you couldn’t learn a thing or two from them. Matt Finley investigates The Upside of Evil.

The witches in the movie “The Witches” are conspiring to contaminate chocolate bars with a magic potion that turns people into mice, and then distribute the candy to children all over the world. And it’s not like the kids keyed the witches’ cars or prank called them and addressed them as “sizzle chest.” The witches just really hate kids. There is, however, a certain elegance in the way these wicked women conduct their evil work, and perhaps even some lessons to be learned.

Public Decorum Counts

The witches are hawk-nosed, rotten-toothed hags with bad skin and old lady hands. But, when they go out in public, they wear wigs and masks and admirably pass for zombie MILFs or obsolete cougars. They don’t don the disguises for themselves; they do it for the people around them, who don’t want to eyeball their gross witchiness. Everyone should try this. Wear clothes that are large enough to cover your back fat. Conceal your missing eye with a patch. If you have a prosthesis, wear it. Especially if you’re going to a restaurant. The only people who care about how you look are everyone around you.

Spread the Wealth

The free market only functions when everyone making money is also spending it. The witches seem to have untold quantities of ill-gotten dollars and conjured hex pennies, which they could potentially amass and horde while surviving on food and blouse spells, and holding their big meetings in a buried pagan temple or haunted coffee shop. Instead, they take the whole coven to a resort hotel, where they eat lavish meals and rent out conference space. Let’s all take a cue from these horrible crones and shovel some cash into the flaming drunk driving accident that used be the economy.

Enjoy your Work

There are plenty of hateful SOBs who run around smacking kids and shaking babies, but it never seems like their hearts are really in it. Meanwhile, these witches invested time and money in advanced thaumatological chemistry to concoct a magic poison. To see the witches’ smiling faces as they dose unwitting children with their liquid mojo, and then realize, “hey, those c-words are at work right now.” is both joyful and refreshing. Try to channel their enthusiasm into your own work. Or, at the very least, into a song about your work. The song could be called “I’m Likin’ This Work!”

The backwoods family of homicidal, grave-robbing cannibals that form the exhumed backbone of Tobe Hooper’s 1974 horror watershed “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” are portrayed as equal parts bughouse-crazy bloodthirsty rednecks and hard-up blue collar strivers abandoned by the American dream – a little Thomas Harris, a little John Steinbeck. For as much as they killed, skinned and ate, they laughed, loved and cried. Perhaps, then, in this time of economic struggle, there are lessons to be learned from this determined American family and the values that they went to grisly, horrific lengths to preserve.

Waste Not, Want Not

For as many times as school teachers and morbidly obese plate lickers have blustered on about the Native Americans utilizing every part of the buffalos they killed, all but the contemptible found object artists among us continue to discard food packaging, old clothing and human remains. “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” paints a picture of a world where resources wasted equal a bone futon unconstructed or a skin lampshade unmade. There’s a beautiful simplicity in eating hamburger off of the cow’s hide and then defecating into its skull.

The Disabled Are People

While Sally’s wheelchair-bound brother Martin is subjected to the barbs and disrespect of his sister’s wake-and-bake buddies, he meets nothing but acceptance from Leatherface, who knows that the disabled deserve to be treated just like anyone else. Rather than letting prejudice guide his hand to slaughter Martin extra slow (out of hatred), or extra gently (out of pity), he simply lays into him with the chainsaw, quick and respectful, its blades buzzing out in steely, flesh-rending clarity, “I have a dream…”

Embrace Family Dinners

It’s an all too familiar picture: the parents eat drive-through chicken whatevers on their respective commutes home while the kids snarf down Pop Tarts between Idol votes and “Send to All” sexts. Meanwhile, somewhere in Texas, an aging patriarch sits at the head of a table, listening as his son talks human barbecue and his grandkids laugh and squabble over headcheese and murder. “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”’s infamous dinner scene is clear in its message: without a nightly, communal supper, a family’s close-knit relationship, along with its finely honed cooperative system of murder, dismemberment and consumption, will crumble like so many stale Pop Tarts. Also, etiquette dictates that the giant skull hammer be placed to the right of the plate.

No one is all bad. Weird Things Cultural Researcher Matt Finley takes a look at the silver lining in famous fictional monsters.

Two weeks ago, Weird Things took a look at the cooler-than-you clique of vampiric adolescent rapscallions in “The Lost Boys” and flirted with the possibility that they were, you know, from like a socio-political standpoint, maybe not all that bad. Today, the site looks at a group of gainfully employed, adult vampires from the 1996 film “From Dusk ‘Til Dawn,” and the positive ramifications of their self-made debauched corner of Mexican heaven, the Titty Twister.

A Boon to the Trucking Industry

More than just a vampire strip club, the Titty Twister is essentially the corporate headquarters of a consulting firm that evaluates the work ethic, morality and efficacy of big rig truckers. No trucking company wants its employees delaying shipments and spending their company allowances drinking bottom-shelf tequila off vampires’ feet while jabber-jawing with Danny Trejo. The staff of the Titty Twister weeds out los huevos malos to ensure that North America’s economy isn’t further damaged by shipping delays, and, in doing so, creates the legend of a vampire strip club, which subsequently terrifies other potential slackers while popularizing new CB radio warnings, such as “fanged beaver” and “drac muff.”

Preservation of an Historic Landmark

By ensuring that the ancient, evil pyramid that the Titty Twister is constructed upon stays in the hands of the grotesque, undead monsters that it was presumably built to honor, it’s guaranteed that one of Mexico’s most impressive and sinister National landmarks doesn’t get demolished to make way for a just-over-the-border human cloning facility or a just-over-the-border human cloning facility that also sells fireworks.

A Boon to Tourism

Imagine that the Titty Twister didn’t exist and all the vampire strippers, musicians and bar tenders had to fan out across the country, finding employment at various different taverns and strip clubs, and then murdering patrons indiscriminately at all of them. College spring breakers and middle-aged resort hoppers would pack up their Spanglish and alcoholism and take them somewhere that didn’t boast a blood-drinking killer in every pub. The Titty Twister ensures that blue collar vampires with experience in the service industry can find gainful employment and a healthy quantity of unwitting victims without disrupting the influx of binge-drinking Americans that Mexico depends on to keep their hospitals open.

No one is all bad. Weird Things Cultural Researcher Matt Finley takes a look at the silver lining in famous fictional monsters.

While the pesky teenaged vamps in the 1987 classic The Lost Boys did commit their fair share of wholly gratuitous, unprovoked murders, their methodology and social niche both belie a devotion to the greater good that should not go overlooked. Here are just a few of the cultural problem areas that their motorcycle-revving, trestle-jumping Jim Morrison worship competently addressed:

Adolescent Conduct

That’s right, druggies and vandals, the barometer for delinquency has been completely re-calibrated. Before the undead showed up in Santa Clara, a “good kid” was one who studied hard, kept away from drugs and avoided the sweaty, half-naked saxophonists that troll the amusement pier. After the vampires came? As long as that bong doesn’t have anyone’s blood in it, the “My Kid Isn’t a Vampire…Yet” bumper sticker is staying on the mini-van. Nothing puts booty shorts, whip-its and concealed birth control into perspective like the exsanguinated corpse of a child.

Obesity

Teaching kids about maintaining a healthful diet is imperative, but it’s hard to enforce, especially when they see you requesting extra salami on your Italian BMT like the bloated sausage casing you’ve become. Fortunately, all the kids are hanging out with totally righteous vampires, who are really keen on playing dinnertime mind control jokes, like making people see noodles as worms, rice as maggots and delicious Wendy’s hamburgers as Burger King hamburgers. While the trim, attractive kids live in constant fear that their food will morph into a hellscape of writhing insects, parents live in tranquil contentment knowing that their gluttonous kids won’t morph into swinish gut lumps.

Comic Book Sales

What would comic book publishers have done in the ‘80s if they hadn’t had the Frog brothers hocking superhero titles alongside the requisite vampire survival comics that are so crucial to life in Southern California? With every issue of “Vampires Everywhere!” that Edgar and Alan helpfully dispensed to their clientele, they ensured that yet another loyal customer knew enough about garlic and hell hounds to survive until the next issue of Spiderman’s crazy wedding storyline was released.