More Interviews, More Zombies

(1) ENTER THE OCTOPUS

There’s a nice new interview with me over at the site ENTER THE OCTOPUS, which is the blog of Matt Staggs, who’s been super-supportive of my work. Matt asked some better than average interview questions, and I discussed among other things the origins of my new novel HEALTH AGENT, the contents of my new collection VOICES FROM PUNKTOWN, and upcoming projects like my supernatural horror novel THOUGHT FORMS:

“THOUGHT FORMS is more outright supernatural horror, without my usual science fiction setting. I think it may be the single scariest thing I’ve ever written. It’s two alternating stories, really…that relate to each other. One plot-line follows a man living in a secluded house, haunted by personal demons and tormented by a romantic relationship, who comes under siege by a horde of mysterious robed figures. The other plot-line concerns this man’s cousin, trapped in a plastic factory at night with his coworkers by an elusive monster.”

Read my ENTER THE OCTOPUS interview HERE: http://entertheoctopus.wordpress.com/2008/12/29/interview-with-author-jeffrey-thomas/

(2) LOADS OF LIMITEDS

Previously I’ve discussed the limited edition of my novel HEALTH AGENT (published by Raw Dog Screaming Press). It’s limited to 150 copies, each with an original painting by artist Steven Archer, depicting the character Mauve Pond from the novel, with her mouth slit back to her ears. (She’s a performance artist who is mutilated like this for her show — every performance — and then has her wounds mended again. Ouch.) Well, a few days ago I opened up the first box of these suckers — 46 initial copies — and autographed them before sending them along to their destinations. And into each book I slipped a HEALTH AGENT business card (for more on this novelty, see the above-referenced interview) with a handwritten message from the novel’s villain Toll Loveland, no two messages alike, on the back of each card. But it was a mind-boggling sight to spread all these books out on the floor so that I could take a few pictures of them — rows of these faces, beautiul and ghastly at the same time, rendered in delicate, translucent colors. Some have darker eye shadow or lips, some are merely pale while others have a scarier smudged complexion, while some have a darker background than others. Quite a thing to behold. It still amazes me that the artist would be up to such an undertaking — it makes this artist feel tired (and lazy) just thinking about it! I hope you’re one of the lucky recipients waiting for one of these lovely collectibles to come your way. You can read about the limiteds — and view a sample cover — at the publisher’s site, HERE: http://www.rawdogscreaming.com/agent_ltd.html

(3) WILL SOMEONE PLEASE PUT A BULLET IN THE HEAD OF THE ZOMBIE FILM?

I love zombie films as much as the average horror fan, but what I don’t love as much is someone beating an undead horse. Maybe I’m getting too cranky in my old age, too unforgiving, but I’m still fuming over a couple of real poor efforts I’ve wasted my time watching recently when I could have been watching better movies, or working on one of my stories as they slip further behind their deadlines. The first of these was 2006’s low budget AUTOMATON TRANSFUSION. I had hopes for it because of its quirky, original title, but that’s all that’s original about it. It had one fairly decent gore effect of a jaw being pulled off, and the mohawked, hunky lead teenager had a decent heroic presence, but that’s all the praise I can muster. And to make matters worse, the DVD cover portrays a zombie bisected at the waist but still dragging itself along, eyes rolled up white — but this never even appears in the flick. Argh! Again, I hate to be a jerk here, because I’m sure the filmakers were having fun, but I wasn’t. When your film is being bought and rented alongside more professional efforts one expects a certain level of quality. But what the hell am I saying? Because the next reanimated travesty I rented was 2008’s remake of George Romero’s DAY OF THE DEAD, which for all its bigger budget and impressive special effects (a lot of nifty, digitally rendered beheadings — but rendered by a fucking surgical saw TAPED to a crutch!), is really more like a remake of AUTOMATON TRANSFUSION. Again, government bad guys, experiments gone awry, blah blah. In this one, flu-like symptoms lead to victims being transformed into pizza-faced zombies in a matter of seconds (or hours, if that better suits the plot for that scene). The plot barely resembles the vastly superior original; why even call it a remake, instead of something like, oh, THE FLU, in which case I might not have expected as much and been as disgusted with the thing? How bad is it? Well, at one point our sympathetic zombie Bud (Bub in the original) checks out the ass of heroine Mena Suvari — not that I can blame him, as she looks very fetching in camouflage and does a commendable job here, though Ving Rhames is wasted in a micro-role, hamming it up when he goes zombified. Though Suvari doesn’t bat an eye running down her own undead mom, she refuses to let go of Bud (recently one of her fellow soldiers) once he goes zombie, reasoning that he could come in handy (!?). I guess she can foresee that he will be the only good zombie in the hordes of brain-munchers, for some reason (in the original, Bub is conditioned and trained by our mad scientist). Particularly annoying is the character of streetwise Salazar, calculated to appeal to African-American horror fans, as he wisecracks and swaggers and wields his beheading crutch. Both films are of the new and already cliched “fast zombie” school, with the zombies in the latter film crawling across the ceiling and leaping about like bullfrogs. Hell, I really liked the remakes of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and DAWN OF THE DEAD (though I still much prefer the originals), but this is just such an insulting, lame effort. And yet today I finally saw 2007’s GRINDHOUSE, and while I was talking with my wife a lot throughout and thus really need to see the film(s) again in a more attentive situation, I could tell that Robert Rodriguez’s zombie-infested section PLANET TERROR was lightyears beyond the aforementioned films. Oh, it’s still government bad guys, an experiement gone awry, blah blah, but it’s all about the style: the humor, the over the top yuckiness, the zany images like Quentin Tarantino’s testicles sloughing off and the agonizingly sexy Rose McGowan with her amputated leg replaced with an M-16, and so on, delivered by a true cinematic artist. Oh, it goes too far at times (how does Rose, who could make an amputee freak out of the most staid individual, trigger that stump-gun, and the scene where she fires its grenade launcher feature into the ground so as to fly above the enemies — oh come on!), but it’s still loads of fluid-flying, flesh-oozing fun. See? I could have watched these two GRINDHOUSE flicks instead of the two turkeys I wasted my time (and money) on. It’s enough to make you feel resentful, damn it! But…Mena Suvari in camouflage. Mmm…at least this zombie could sink his teeth into that rump roast!