Reading diary.

- Love is love. An anthology of short comic book stories (all from one to two pages long) in response to the Orlando Pulse shooting of 2016, with all profits donated to assorted LGBTQA charities. Includes contributions from dozens of artists and writers. 

The stories are immensely varied. From deeply personal anecdotes to reflective essays to one-shots using licensed characters (DC, Archie comics, Harry Potter, and a few others) to illustrated poems and think-pieces. 

I found this entire comic powerful and very impacting to read. Enough so that it took me much longer to read than I thought —I had to read a very small number of entries at a time. Some of them *will* make you cry. And most of them will make you think. 

Truth be told, most of the stories using licensed characters were my least favorite —it’s hard not to feel that using fictitious characters to talk about a real life tragedy is a little inappropriate. And there are at least two entries that, while definitely well-meaning, they… well, they come across as the work of a straight person still struggling to understand Queer culture in general. But even those entries feel sincere —all are honest attempts to make sense of both tragedy and history. 

It’s a book I especially recommend, both for the stories themselves and for the humanitarian gesture. 

Film diary.

- The burning. (1981. Dir. Tony Maylam). A group of teenaged camp attendants seek to prank mean old custodian Cropsy —it goes horribly wrong. Cropsy, released after five years of intense physical therapy, attempts to pick up a prostitute —it ends in the worst way possible. And a new batch of campers take a canoe trip, unaware that they are heading straight into disaster…

One of the movies that best encapsulate 80’s slashers. While the plot has more than a few elements that you could either call “lifted from previous productions” or “clichés” depending how benevolent you feel, it is all pulled off with enough confidence to work. The script has essentially the internal logic of the campfire tale it’s framed as (that is, there are plot elements that don’t quite make sense if you think about them for too long, but which work perfectly in terms of being twists made up on the spot for a scary story); the acting ranges from pasable to surprisingly good and the score is more than a little effective. But as this is a slasher movie, the real highlight is the murder scenes —and they ARE good. The infamous raft sequence alone is as powerful and well-made as you have heard, and definitely worth the price of admission. 

All in all, an essential entry for genre fans. 

Film diary.

- Tourist Trap. (1979. Dir. David Schmoeller). Five young people on a roadside trip land in “Slausen’s Lost Oasis” —a ‘tourist trap’ of a wax museum. As they have been having car trouble, Slausen himself offers to drive to the nearest town for help. Just one rule —don’t disturb his brother, who lives in the house next door. But the house in question is filled to the brim with mannequins. Some of which appear to move on their own sometimes. And then, nobody who ever visited that house has come out of it…

What at first glance would seem to be a mis-mash of assorted horror clichés turns out to be one genuinely unique movie. While it’s true that it wears quite a few influences on its sleeve (“Psycho”, “The Texas chainsaw massacre”, “Carrie” and “Evil Dead” all spring to mind very quickly), said influences are used in a novel way: More than nods to the fans, they are used to set up situations that seem familiar, only to quickly turn them on their head. The storyline appears to be a by-the-numbers slasher movie at first —but then we get these seemingly living mannequins. Then it turns out that a few characters we had assumed to be dead might not be —and vice-versa. It all builds up to a genuinely delirious, truly oneiric (rather, truly nightmare-like) crescendo, complete with an appropriately surreal ending. 

Quite recommended, both for horror fans and for fans of offbeat cinema.