TUBI TIME / Dipshit Book Club - New Year changes nothing edition(s)

I was washing down my antidepressants with a can of white Monster in the drive-thru line at Taco Bell and thinking about my New Year's Resolutions the other day when it struck me that we really do live in a dystopia. The holidays are fun, but also difficult. Like, if you think that navigating the usual barrage of Christmas-based nostalgia, guilt, and despair is tough on your own; imagine doing it when you're responsible for making sure your kids have a good time too. Anyway, here are some things I have watched and/or read recently.

ZOMBIE 3 (1988) - This is a confusingly titled Lucio Fulci joint that fits somewhere within the bizarre anything-goes continuity of Italian DAWN OF THE DEAD copycats/spin offs/sequels. Its Fulci's movie, but multiple scenes were directed by Bruno Mattei after Fulci suffered a stroke. None of that matters to us. We simply seek entertainment. And this is one of those goofy Italian zombie movies that make you feel vaguely sweaty and feverish when you watch them. There are a lot of humorous and charming things to enjoy here, including a flying zombie head and some highly dubious firearms safety on display. It's not a must see cult classic, and it never goes quite as crazy as you think it should. With that in mind, it's a fine example of its type. Like, if you were organizing a nonstop zombie movie marathon in order from best to worst, you probably wouldn't get to ZOMBIE 3 until day 4 or so. Perfectly respectable but nothing outstanding.

THE RITUAL by ADAM NEVILL - Nevill is one of the relatively few contemporary horror authors with a distinctive voice. It seems to me that after Stephen King did ON WRITING, we got a big crop of horror authors slicing their prose to ribbons and writing in this bare-bones pulp magazine style. That's all fine and good, but it means that a lot of horror stories blend together into a shapeless blob of paranormal investigators making clever neckbeard cultural references. Nevill doesn't really go for that. He can really get down and wallow in dirty details, and you can tell he's not one of your standard Weird Tales fetishists. This plot concerns a group of buddies who go on a camping trip that goes terribly wrong. There's nothing revolutionary happening plot-wise. The meat is in Nevill's prose and descriptive powers. He's got a way about describing terror and discomfort that lends itself well to the grueling "I guess now THIS wound is infected" surivialist grist throughout. For example: there is a monster doing monster shit in this book, but the most horrible horror parts are about starving hikers chafing in wet jeans. My only complaints are that the book felt overlong to me and there's a plot twist about halfway through that left me unsure if I was still reading the same story. I legitimtely thought somebody had spliced two different books together with scotch tape as a prank. The first half is this "macho survival-of-the-fittest" stuff mixed in with some "is it good or bad that modern man has lost touch with his savage past" stuff and some "married men with office jobs are weak compared to single party dudes" type rhetoric. Which is bullshit, but OK. It's sort of like British Deliverance. The 2nd half is...something different. It was weird and jarring; as though Nevill was driving me to Dairy Queen and took a sharp, unannounced left turn to a hot dog stand. Like, the hot dogs are good too but I thought we were getting ice cream and now my neck hurts.

THE TOLL by CHERIE PRIEST - Cherie Priest writes a lot of fun stuff in a number of genres. I read a couple of her award-winning steampunk adventure books years ago and grew fond of them. I got a pleasant surprise out of seeing that she has some southern gothic/horror books out there as well. THE TOLL is an intriguing tale about a Silent Hill-esque backwater town, a monster under a bridge, and two spinster auntie badasses who play out sort of like a Faulkner short story directed by Sam Raimi. There's a lot to like about THE TOLL, but I found myself getting frustrated before the end. There are a number of interesting bits left dangling and unresolved in the plot. What is the deal with the "Doll House?" Why do the storefront dummies move around at night? What is the fucking deal with the magic these people seem to be able to do? These small frustrations aside, I enjoyed THE TOLL. It doesn't overstay its welcome and I dig the ideas within. Cherie Priest remains cool.